The afternoon was better. Jehan’s groom brought a new stallion for him to ride. He could still do it. He still felt young in the saddle. He trotted the horse around the yard, faster and faster; and within his mind he heard that infinitely haunting song all the while; and his doubts increased, like plaster falling; and he saw the dead knight in the worm-filled helmet, walking amid wolves, which closed around him, then drew away, disturbed, but able to dismiss him as carrion too far gone to be worth devouring.
The earth trembled. A dragon reared up, filling the sky, its flaming breath roaring over him. Yet he divided the fires with his sword as a ship’s prow divides the ocean, and the dragon fell away, and the sword was made new and strong by the heat of the flames, and the fire was the slow and gentle sunrise, and still he heard that voice within his mind.
He startled the groom by spurring the horse suddenly and riding out of the castle yard, through the gate, down the curving path past the mill, over the bridge until he drew up at the rectory behind the new cathedral and pounded on the door, while the townspeople gaped and remarked that old Jehan (whatever they called him) had not moved like that in twenty years.
In his mind, more plaster fell from the ceiling. In his mind, the earth shook. In his mind, he heard, still, that bewitching, yet not at all comforting song he could just about make out as, in his continuing dream of memory, he came to a town, where all fled before him in terror, but for one dirty-faced child, who spoke with the voice of prophecy, saying, “Your lady awaits.” But a mounted knight waited for him in the middle of the road, beyond a ruined bridge at the edge of the town. There was no challenge. The knight lowered his spear and charged; and the dead youth in the worm-filled helm caught hold of the spear with more than human strength. He yanked the horseman out of the saddle and swung him shrieking down onto the ground, like a thresher threshing wheat; and the rider died in the roadway, his neck broken, his ghost stirring in confusion like a little whirlwind amid the dust, before it found its way either to Paradise or the Pit.
Yet the young knight who had arisen from the dead had no such relief. He seized the terrified horse, holding it to his will. He mounted and galloped, as memories rose in his mind like bubbles from the depths of a dark pool, summoned by that song he constantly heard, beautiful, terrible, almost resolving itself into words of infinite mystery and power.
Jehan pounded on the door, which opened. He sent novices scurrying to fetch Father Giles, a learned and holy man. He spoke to the holy man in a torrent of words, a great tempest of sputtering fears which ended over and over again in the question, “What if—? What if—”
And Father Giles took him aside, into a great hall, where massive books were kept chained to desks. He opened a volume of chronicles, pointing to the pictures and running his fingers slowly over the words as he read how Jehan the Brave, in the eighteenth year of his life, had put on the cross and journeyed to the Orient, where he won great worship as a servant of Christ, riding at the side of the hero Godfrey of Bouillon into Jerusalem when the city was taken and the streets ran with blood of slaughtered pagans up to the knees of the horses, all for the glory of God. This was all written down. It was certain: the deeds of Jehan, his return, his marriage, the births and exploits of his sons.
But Jehan told how he had dreamed of a young man who took up the cross, yes, but also carried his lady’s glove beneath his surcoat, thinking on her when he should have been thinking on God; how he was killed over some trivial point of chivalry before he even got to the Holy Land and left like a heap of rubbish in a field, rotting and rusting while his soul was caught like an animal in a trap.
“These doubts are like scabs,” said Father Giles. “Don’t pick at them.”
Yet Jehan felt the cold earth upon his face. He felt the wind and the leaves and the frost upon his bones. Nervously, irritatedly, he brushed his shoulders.
He fled from Father Giles and leapt onto his horse, riding back up the long, curving road to the castle in the evening twilight—for the day had somehow fled all too fast—and he felt the stones become an avalanche in his mind, the plaster gone now, the edifice of his life and sanity collapsing. He saw a dragon rearing up behind the castle. He saw the leprous moon above the towers, calling out his name; and the stars were blotted out as if ink had been spilled over them. He reared up his horse and called out a challenge, yet no one answered him, save for that singing voice he still heard within his mind, beautiful, shrill, bewitching, horrible, telling him in words he almost entirely understood now, that at long last he had awakened, that what he had thought to be real life was a dream and his dream was reality.
He trembled. He wept. Like a player who has forgotten all his lines and has to pretend, fooling no one, he dismounted and entered the great hall of the castle.
There a dirty-faced servant child stood before him, and spoke with the voice of prophecy.
“The Lady Asenath awaits you.”
Now he heard the music of his dream clearly, and he understood the words without any doubt. When he confronted his wife, her eyes widened, and she knew that he knew and with a long, despairing wail, she fled from him.
And the dead knight, returning home from the wars, greeted the Lady Asenath whom he still loved, and he removed his great helm, scattering worms. She screamed and screamed. And her scream became a kind of music, the echo of it a song just at the edge of understanding; and she did not sing alone, but joined her voice with another, one who cried out in anger and pain and the despair of utterly lost hopes.
There was, in this castle, a certain room Jehan was not allowed to enter, far below in the vaults, a room kept barred with heavy bars, chained and locked, blocked with stones, forgotten in the darkness and damp. It has been Asenath’s castle before it was his. Her father had died without male heir, and he gained the place through marriage, having proven his worth in the wars of the Cross. But he married and gained the castle on the single condition that he never go down into that vault, unbar that door, or discover the secret of that room.
At the time he had laughed about it. “I don’t have to know everything,” he’d said. “Just let it stay where it is and I will stay where I am, and all will be well.”
And his bride Asenath, who loved him, laughed and agreed.
But now she turned from her flight and followed after him. She shrieked and clung to him, and fell to her knees, begging that he remember his promise, that he just leave things alone and let all go on as before.
“If you love me—” she cried. “If you love me—”
He did love her, still, but he could not. It was too late. He had awakened. The singing voice inside his mind revealed all. Outside that barred door, he heard that voice, not in his mind but with his ears, like any other sound.
His wife shrieked and no servant dared stop him as he hurled away the stones. He had but to touch the door and the heavy bar, the locks, and chains all fell away like dust. The door swung open, and there within, revealed by some unnatural light of vision, was a harp set upon a stone coffin. The harp was made of human bones and strung with golden hair. It played itself and sang with the voice he had heard all these years in his dreams. And as he looked there rose up from out of the stone coffin the ghost of a maiden, who sang and played upon the harp now, where before it had played alone.
Jehan turned to Asenath and demanded in astonishment, though he already knew the answer from his dreams, “What is this?”
She fell to her knees, sobbing, and said only, “I did it all because I loved you.”
He listened as she told how she had drowned her own sister, Eleanor, down by the mill.
“But you didn’t have a sister.”
“You could not remember her, for she was not part of the new thing I made by—”
“By what?”
“By witchcraft.” And Asenath told him how her younger sister foolishly loved Jehan the Brave also, though he was betrothed to the elder. When word came back that Jehan was killed in a duel, and the younger dared mock
the elder, all else followed: the murder; the frenzy of younger sister’s absurd, twisted love, her anger, and pain bound into the harp by Asenath’s great magic; the harp commanded by Asenath to call Jehan back, to alter the very course of time and turn their lives in another direction.
“This was surely a great sin,” said Jehan. He drew his sword and struck a blow, smashing the singing harp. In profound silence, the spirit of the murdered Eleanor drifted up. It gazed upon Asenath in terrible reproach, but only for an instant. Then that gaze turned to things beyond the living world, and the spirit passed through the stone ceiling and was gone.
In silence, Jehan beheld his wife, on her knees before him, her face wet with tears.
“It was for nothing,” she said softly.
In the final instant of the dream, Asenath recovered her composure. She stopped screaming and spoke calmly, saying, “Welcome husband. I have waited long for your return.” And trembling, she accepted his embrace.
Old Jehan knelt down and raised her up. He realized that he should be angry. He should condemn. Yet he could not.
He got out her glove from beneath his clothing, where he’d always kept it as a love-token, and pressed it to his face as if it were the sweetest-smelling of roses.
A worm fell onto his shoulder, and another.
She looked at him, wide-eyed, brimming with tears, but silent.
“I cannot judge,” he said at last. “I can only say that these things are for God and that from God you should seek forgiveness, not from me. A true knight must defend and succor his lady always, or else he is not a knight.” He took her by the hand and said in a low voice, “Hurry, I don’t think we have much time.”
He led her upstairs into the great hall. He commanded that a feast be set and that all make merry. But he and his wife took their supper in their own chamber while the household celebrated, uncertain what was being celebrated.
He ate little, gazing into her face all the evening. Once a worm fell into his wine cup. Discreetly, he spilled it out.
While he still had the strength (which was failing fast), he led her to their bed and lifted her onto it. He lay beside her. They did not touch, but merely lay there, on their last night together, speaking of the love of two young people who lived long ago. Was it not expected, he put to her, something you read in the chronicles anyway, that a knight’s love for his lady should transcend all things, even morality? Did it not follow, she rejoined, that hers should do likewise?
He supposed that it should. “Let God sort it out.”
Later, he held her hand in his, though his hand was no more than bone and a few scraps of flesh and old leaves. He was afraid. He asked her to comfort him, to tell him that yes, somehow, they really did have three brave sons, that such sons would be possible, born out of illusion, begotten by a corpse, and still be living sons.
“Let God sort it out,” she said. “I think so.”
“Truly ours is the greatest romance in all the annals of chivalry,” he said.
“I think so.”
“I love you,” he said, but he did not say, more than God, nor did she say it.
And so it ended.
* * * *
In the morning, then, the servants found her kneeling by her bed, weeping before some old bones which had somehow come to be there. This was a great prodigy, they knew. Father Giles was sent for. Asenath confessed to him, and gave over all her riches and lands to her sons. She put on the veil, spending the rest of her brief life as a penitent, beseeching the forgiveness of God, and of Jehan, and of her sister Eleanor.
But that same morning, just before dawn, Jehan saw the leprous, devil-faced moon crumble into sparks and shooting stars. He saw the sun rise. His soul broke free, like an animal out of a trap, knowing that the quest of his life was complete, that his knightly task had been nothing less than to draw Lady Asenath back from the brink of the Pit.
He had done it, by the grace of God, and he gave thanks.
His soul leapt up. The angels caught hold of him.
THE MOST BEAUTIFUL DEAD WOMAN IN THE WORLD
I
The dead come from the sea, at night. Of course no one ever witnesses their arrival, since it is been the immemorial custom of our town, particularly on those nights of all nights, that everyone is snug in their bed, behind bolted doors and locked shutters. We know, not by any calendrical calculation, but merely by a feeling in the air, by an unbidden pause in rhythm of life itself, that such an advent is upon us. Then we wait, in silence, in the darkness, and, in silence and darkness, the dead arrive. We find them in the morning, on the docks, piled in great heaps like a catch of fish.
That is when I am called upon in my official capacity. On such mornings, it is my duty to arrive at the water’s edge first, just at dawn, when I can still observe the black silhouettes of the ships which have delivered the dead to us, anchored offshore, visible in the thinning fog.
This particular morning, I discern two tramp freighters. In ancient, mildewed paintings in the town hall, you can behold a similar scene, rendered in shades of grey, showing tall-masted ships with half-furled sails like stagnant clouds. I have no memory of ships like that, and I never asked my father about them, nor, I suspect, did he ever ask his. Thus are we left free of any disturbing hint of change; for, indeed, nothing changes in our town, save that the number of the dead who reside among us slowly increases beyond counting.
In the dim, cold morning, I stand on the dock in my black coat with its pewter buttons, in my dampstained bicorn hat which I inherited from my father (and he from his). As an official of the unseen government, I must preside, as the townspeople slowly emerge from their houses and process down to the docks, the looks on their faces as blank as those of the corpses. In fancy, once, I thought, they are like condemned prisoners on the way to execution, but, no, it was never like that, nor are they like hopeless slaves in a salt-mine. (I must have gotten these images from reading.) The better analogy is to the carven figures that move before the face of the great clock before the Town Hall: the reaper, the sower, the man with the shovel, the coachman driving his hearse. All these, unthinking, without volition, go about their business, complete their rounds, and so the cycle continues.
It is hardly necessary for me to do anything, that morning or any other. More for the comfort than anything else, for the sense that I am, as a representative of the unseen government, capable of giving direction, I walk among the crowds and heaps of corpses, pointing with my cane (which was my father’s, and my father’s father’s) as if to say, without words, You, take that one.
One by one, the corpses are hauled away by the townspeople, who will carry them into their homes, set them up in positions of familiarity or comfort, accepting the dead as our guests and neighbors. Strong men sometimes heft one or two on their shoulders. You can see family groups with wheelbarrows or small wagons, piling on a load. This morning an old beggar woman, ragged, barefoot, soon to be a corpse herself, I suspect, grabs a dead child by the wrists and drags it off. She weeps softly, from unimaginable dreams or longings or simply from senility; I cannot know. But even this is part of the larger, inscrutable pattern of our existence, and I do not interfere.
And so it is, mere routine, until, as the corpses are uncovered, layer upon layer—earthquake! cataclysm! She is revealed: the body of a young woman (such as I am able to estimate age), whose face and features are, despite her sodden condition, exquisite, like some perfect marble statue, almost translucent from a sunrise gleaming behind it. (Not something I have ever seen, or even dreamed; again, perhaps, imagery from some crumbling book perused in the town library during my off-duty hours.)
This is the beginning of my transgression, the mere sight of her, the fascination.
Hoping no one will notice, I pull her out of the heap, then stand with my feet on either side of her, as if I hope to hide her under my long coat, pretending she isn’t there. With increased determination, I flick my cane this way and that, imposing the power of the unseen g
overnment to maintain the smooth flow of things. The process is concluded; the clockwork figures complete their rounds; and I stand alone, astride my beauty, on the deserted dock.
Now the sun has risen, as bright as it ever gets in our town. The fog is not quite dispelled, the sky still grey, but there is an increased light, and the black silhouettes of the freighters across the water have vanished.
Alone, then, I take up my prize in my arms, as if she were a living child. She weighs almost nothing. I am amazed by that, as I am at the beauty of her face and the perfection of her hands and feet (which are bare and muddy; she wears only a tattered white gown). I am frightened at the way my heart races so, out of fear, out of dread of detection, yes, but moreso out of the terror of the discovery of myself, as if, from a dream, with this beautiful one in my arms, I have awakened into some wholly new and different reality.
The touch of her is neither warm nor cold. I feel almost no sensation as I carry her, save her wet hair touching my cheek, shifting slightly as I walk.
Alone, then, for the townspeople have gone back to their homes to find places for the new arrivals, I make my way up the main street of our town, past the confectioner’s shop, where the undecaying dead are set in the bay window, around a little table, as if enjoying cakes and candies; past the shoemaker’s, where an old, white-bearded man sits in a chair above the door, held in place by ropes, his feet dangling down to display the finest quality boots.
Others of the dead line benches, or sit in doorways. Some lie in heaps in the alleys, supposedly sleeping, but, disgraceful though it may seem, more like discarded trash. I know I should do something about that, deliver official complaints to certain persons, but I never have, and doubt I ever shall.
If there have ever been more zealous officials in our town, I do not know of them, nor did my father speak of any to me, or his father to him.
With my beautiful dead one in my arms, I arrive, then, unchallenged, at my own dwelling, which is in a loft, reached by a winding exterior staircase, in the back of the Town Hall adjoining the clock tower. I ascend, drawing very near to the wooden figures of the town clock, which are nearly life-sized, but old and worn, their paint chipping off. (They rest in coffin-like niches when the mechanism has not called them up before the clock face to perform their circumambulations.) A pigeon roosts on the hearse-driver’s upraised whip-hand.
The Darrell Schweitzer Megapack Page 30