Darlington said quietly, “It’s that cloak you’re wearing, isn’t it? That’s Titania’s cloak.”
“I heard her laugh,” Elias Patterson said, “and it was like the first time I had wakened to her singing—soft and clear and proud, as though she had just invented singing at that very moment. She was moving away slowly, back the way we had come—I could feel it, just as I felt the great shadows sullenly trailing behind, and felt their savage bewilderment. Under that cloak, I did not exist for them; and yet the Queen of Faery was laughing joyously at them, and they knew it. I could feel them knowing it, as their night lifted from my mind.”
“It’s a cloak of invisibility, like in the fairy tales.” Darlington was talking aloud to himself. “But it can’t be, for you’re plain enough to see right now. How does the bloody thing work?” His voice had grown harsh and hungry when he raised his eyes to meet Elias Patterson’s eyes.
“I wish I could tell you,” Elias Patterson answered him sincerely. “It didn’t make me invisible—unthinkable, really, is what I suspect. All I can say with any certainty is that it’s quite a warm cloak. And easy to clean.”
“Good to know.” Darlington brought out his pistol, though not particularly pointing it at Elias Patterson. “For a man in my profession.”
Elias Patterson smiled at him. “Your gun’s empty, as we are both aware, but that doesn’t matter. I’ll give you the cloak, gladly—but if I might make a suggestion, you should wait a bit before you take possession. For your own good.”
Darlington scowled, puzzled. “Why?”
“Trust me. I was, after all, a minister of the Gospel.”
Darlington put his pistol away. “I do have bullets around somewhere,” he said, but absently, still caught up in the tale, still eyeing Elias Patterson’s cloak. “So she led them away, and you escaped back to this world.”
“So it was. I waited until I could feel that I was safe, and then I scurried to that hemlock grove Titania had pointed out, like a frightened little mouse, with her cloak wrapped round me. Between one mouse-step and the next, I was walking English earth, under an English heaven, safe from the wrath of Hell and Oberon alike—and, if you’ll believe it, already frantic to turn and go straight back, whatever the price, whatever the doom. But the grove was gone, the land was as flat and flavorless as I remembered it, and hemlocks don’t grow in that soil, anyway. The country Under the Hill was shut to me. I was... home.”
“And was it—” Darlington hesitated,—“is it a hundred years later? Than when you walked out of your house, that Beltane eve?”
“It was a hundred and six, to be accurate, which such things rarely are. But yes, it turned out exactly as the ballads have it. All my friends and family were long gone, my house had apparently blown down in a storm—and been quite nicely rebuilt, by the by—and my church now belonged to a denomination that hadn’t existed in my time. There was nothing of me left in that town, except for an All Hallows’ Eve tale of the minister who was snatched away by the Devil—or by the Old Ones, if you talked to the most elderly of the villagers. Tabula rasa, you might say, and doubtless the better off for it.”
Darlington was staring at him, his expression a mixture of superstitious awe and genuine pity. Elias Patterson laughed outright. “Believe me, good highwayman, there’s something to be said for the completely blank slate, the scroll of perfect virgin vellum on which anything at all might yet be inscribed. I wandered away from my village for the second time, perfectly content, and I have never looked back. I have been... otherwise occupied.”
“Doing what? If you’re not a minister anymore—”
But the white-haired man was suddenly on his feet, half-crouched, his posture almost that of an animal sniffing the air. “Down,” he said very quietly. “Down.”
Darlington had not heard that particular voice before, and he did not question it for a moment. He knelt clumsily, briefly noticing Elias Patterson fumbling with the fastenings of his cloak; then he was flat on the cold ground, with the cloak over him, listening helplessly to slow, deliberate hoofbeats and the soft ring of light mail. He heard Elias Patterson’s voice again, now with a strange, singsong boyishness to it, saying eagerly, “Welcome, welcome, captain! It is captain, isn’t it?”
A growl, impatient but not discourteous, answered him. “Sergeant, sir, sorry to say. What are you doing up here alone?”
The reply, tossed back lightly and cheerily, chilled Darlington more than the ground beneath him. “Why, searching for Faery, sergeant. That’s my appointed study in this world, and I flatter myself that I’m uncommon good at it.”
Three horses, by the sound, so two other riders, and very bewildered riders they must be by now, Darlington thought.
The sergeant said, a little warily, “That’s... interesting, sir. We’ve been all this day and night in pursuit of a dangerous highwayman named Roger Darlington. Would you have seen him the night, by any chance, or heard any word of him? There’s five hundred pounds on his head.”
Elias Patterson was saying, in his odd new voice, “No, sergeant, I’m afraid I hardly notice anything when I’m at my searching. It’s terribly demanding work, you know.”
“I don’t doubt it,” the sergeant rumbled agreement. “But isn’t it cold work as well, on a night like this? That fire can’t throw much heat, surely—and you without a proper cloak, at that. Hate to find you frozen stiff as a bull’s pizzle on our way back.”
Another rider’s grunt: “Wager old Darlington’ll be happy when we catch him, just to get in out of the weather.”
I’m right at your feet, you natural-born imbecile! Practically under your feet, and you can’t see me!
“Never fear, good sergeant,” Elias Peterson chirped in response. “All the warmth I need is here in my hand.” Darlington heard the leather flask gurgle. “Taste and see, I beg you.”
Three clearly audible swallows—three distinctly louder gasps of “Jesus!”—then the third rider: “God’s teeth, rouse a stinking corpse, this would. Where’d you come on it?”
Elias Peterson giggled brightly. “The Queen of Faery gave it me, as a remembrance. We are old friends, you see—oh, very old. Very old.”
He’ll never get away with it. But plainly he had done exactly that—Darlington could hear it in the sergeant’s words: “Well, that’s a fine thing indeed, sir, to be a friend of the Queen of... But you won’t want to be passing it around so free, or there’ll be none left to warm your old bones, hey?” The horses were stamping fretfully, already beginning to move away.
Another playfully demented giggle. “Ah, no fear there either,” Christ, don’t overdo it! “This is an enchanted flask, never yet empty in all the years it’s companioned me on my quest. A wonderful gift now, don’t you think?”
“Wonderful,” the sergeant agreed. “Well, we’ll be on our way, sir, and my thanks for your kindness. And if by chance you should hear any word of that Darlington fellow—”
“I’ll pass it on to you directly, of course I will. On the instant.” A knowing chuckle. “I know how to reach you on the instant, you see.”
“I’m sure you do. Good night to you then, sir.”
Darlington waited a good deal beyond the time when he could no longer hear the hoofs crunching the light snowcrust before he threw off the cloak and scrambled to his feet. “I wouldn’t have believed it! I wouldn’t have bloody believed it! I really was invisible, the same as you were!”
Elias Patterson shook his head. “No, I told you—they saw you, all right, just as those creatures come from Hell saw me. They saw that cloak covering some object, but it meant nothing to them, it suggested no connection, no picture in their minds, as most things we even glimpse do. The cloak breaks that connection in some way. I don’t understand it, but I know that must be what it does, when sorely needed.” He paused, watching Darlington staring after the departed horsemen. In a lower voice, he said, “And why Faery is only seen when it chooses to be seen.”
“Well, however it wor
ks, it’s bound to come in useful,” Darlington said. “And so might that ever-full flask on a hard night, now I think of it.” He held out his hand.
“I think not, Mr. Darlington,” Elias Patterson said gently. Their eyes met, and though the reverend was a century and more older than the other, in a little while Darlington lowered his hand. Elias Patterson said, “It is growing light.”
“Aye, I’d best be off, find myself a horse. First farm I come to—” Darlington grinned suddenly—“if the goodman’s a bit easier to bluff than you.”
He offered his hand again, in a different manner, and Elias Patterson took it, saying, “I’d head south and west if I were you. As far as Sheffield, and straight west from there. Dorset might suit you for a time, in my opinion.”
“Poor as churchmice, Dorset. Nothing worth stealing but a bit of copper piping, a bit of lead off the roofs. Hardly my style.” He shook Elias Patterson’s hand firmly. “But south-west you tell me, so south-west it is. And good fortune to you on your own quest, Reverend.”
“Faery is all around us, Mr. Darlington,” Elias Patterson said. “The border never stays in one place—Oberon moves and maintains it constantly, to keep me from crossing back—but it is always permeable from the far side, not merely at Beltane and Samhain. That is how the fox and
unicorn come and go as they please, as do the phoenix and the mermaid. Not even Oberon can bar their way.” He folded his hands where he sat, and nodded again to Darlington. “And that is why I pay heed to foxes.”
Staring at him, Darlington saw the madness fully for the first time. He said, “You really believe you can cross a border that the King of Faery is determined to hide from you forever? A border that will keep moving and moving away from you, even if you find it?”
“The Queen of Faery remembers me,” Elias Patterson said. “I have faith in that, as I once had faith in something quite different; and what a fox knows a determined man may discover. Go now, Mr. Darlington—south and west—before those men come back. And do not trust my lady’s cloak to hide you a second time. It never did for me. I think you must give it to someone else, in your turn, before it chooses to work again.”
“No doubt I’ll find reason to test that, Reverend.”
“No doubt.” Elias Patterson nodded once, placidly. “God be with you, my friend.”
Darlington started off, fastening the cloak at his throat. The sky was pale green with dawn over the moors before he looked back. He could still see the hilltop, and even the last bright threads of the dying fire, but there was no sign of Elias Patterson. The highwayman stood for some while, waiting; then finally snugged Titania’s cloak about him again, and walked on.
THE UNICORN TAPESTRIES
In 1938, a year before I was born, New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art opened an extraordinary extension in Manhattan’s Fort Tryon Park which it called The Cloisters. The name comes from the fact that portions of five medieval French cloisters were incorporated into the construction of the building, and the general idea of the place was (and is) to present art, sculpture, and crafts from the Middle Ages in a setting which would reflect the time and spirit of their creation.
I loved going to The Cloisters as a child, even though something there would always trigger my allergies, causing me to lose my voice. It was worth not speaking for a few hours to see the stained glass and stonework, the covered walkways and open gardens, the view of the tree-lined Hudson River from the West Terrace... and especially to see the Unicorn Tapestries. Woven from silk, gold, and silver sometime around the end of the 15th century, brilliantly dyed with weld, madder, and woad, these seven hangings captured my imagination with their silent tale of a brutal unicorn hunt.
Some many years later an ambitious publisher in New York decided that he wanted to put out something new and different based on these tapestries, and concluded—thanks to The Last Unicorn—that I was exactly the person to tackle the subject in a poem cycle. His book, sadly, never appeared; and except for two rather obscure, small-edition reprints, neither did my poetry. I’m glad to end that invisibility here.
The poems are told from the point of view of a small boy who appears in the sixth tapestry, just behind the lord and lady who must have commissioned the hunt, and who might indeed be his parents. He is playing with his dog, and he is so careful not to look at the dead unicorn as it is carried by. The three young dandies in the first tapestry are his older brothers; and the dog’s name is Pepée because I knew a nice dog by that name once.
The only other important note is that the ceremonial virgin who captures the unicorn is never actually seen. A long strip is missing from the center of the fifth tapestry, and the only thing left of the virtuous betrayer herself is a bit of her sleeve, and one hand toying gracefully with the unicorn’s mane. The heavy-lidded minx who is often taken for the virgin is in fact her maidservant. I chose to imagine that the boy’s mind had closed the woman out: literally refused to remember a person who could do what she had done. The truly terrible thing, however—as Jean Renoir reminds us in La Regle du Jeu—is that she probably had her reasons, like everyone else.
First Tapestry
The running-hounds woke us before the sun.
Under my window, we heard them call,
“The day is up, and the hunt’s begun!”
And the greyhounds said never a word at all.
And we ran to the window, Pepée and I,
and saw my brothers go by below,
with the greyhounds eager as birds to fly,
and the air like honey and harps and snow.
The greyhounds’ collars were silk brocade—
the running-hounds leaned on a twist of rope.
Their eyes were gold in the dappled glade,
and their coats were lilac and heliotrope.
And I leaned far out, until I could see
to the forest’s edge, to the brim of day,
and fat Guillaume in a walnut tree
calling us to follow the wondrous prey.
Second Tapestry
My mother made me sit to board,
and then my tunic would not tie,
and then I could not find my sword,
so we were late, Pepée and I.
But in a clearing, all agleam
with morning dew, the hunt we found.
There was a fountain, and a stream,
and there were lions all around.
And stags; and genets, wicked-wise;
a panther, sweet-breathed as the morn;
hyenas, with their human eyes;
and rabbits, and a unicorn.
He was not white as ivory,
or snow, or milk, as men declare,
but white as moonlight on the sea—
oh, white as daisies! white as air!
The stream was thick and slow and spoiled:
he knelt and bowed, as though to pray—
and all the poison hissed and boiled,
and rose like mist, and fled away.
A pheasant was the first to drink—
he hopped upon the fountain’s brim,
and gave a whistle and a wink,
as though it had been all for him!
Then all the other beasts drew near—
the lean hyena and the swan
the panther and the gentle deer
drank side by side, and he looked on.
The hounds all whimpered and lay flat;
the hunters fretted at delay.
My father in his feathered hat
lifted his hand and bade them stay.
He said, “We may not give him chase
till he is roused and starts to run.
Stand you a moment in his grace
and ask his pardon, every one.”
Then I was glad to be his son.
Third Tapestry
And then he turned
and saw us, and he sprang
across the stream like thunder.
We blew our bugles till the morning r
ang,
He flew so fast, and left so little sign,
we might have lost him—but he had to shine,
and we went trampling where the great horn burned,
the silver seashell horn....
What must we look like to a unicorn?
Pepée and I,
we fell so far behind
I nearly started crying—
but then we heard my father’s bugle wind
“He’s gone to water!” and the dogs replying,
and we caught up in time to see him swim,
swift as a seal, bright as the seraphim.
Spears ringed him, but they fell to let him by
before his dazzling scorn....
What must we look like to a unicorn?
Fourth Tapestry
He came out of the water in one singing glory of wrath,
and flew at the spears like a storm gathered into a spear.
My father was calling them all to stand out of his path,
but the men had no knowledge of him, and the dogs had no fear.
The greyhounds went at him as they would have gone at a stag—
all harry and hold till the men can come up for the kill—
but his horn turned the brave Ogier to a poor tattered rag,
and his hoofs broke the huntsmen as millstones break grain in the mill.
I remember the barking, the chime of his hoofs on the ground,
and two peasants who came to cut wood when our play should be done,
and my brother Rene holding fast to my father’s best hound
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