The Girl with the Peacock Harp

by Michael Eisele

  As often as I have tried to relive the scene that followed, I have been unable to clearly recall what it was that I saw. There was I know the pale oval of a face, and behind it a shadowy form obscured by a drifting corona of fine tendrils. I must have made some movement forward which succeeded only in wetting me further and I distinctly saw the face turn from side to side in an unmistakable gesture of negation and warning. Then with a swirl of bubbles and a soft splash it was gone, merging with the shadows of the depths.

  I found myself with tears running down my cheeks into my beard, clenching my fingers into the shingle until the presence of some hard object in one hand recalled me to myself. Peering blurrily I saw again the shine of polished metal, but there was no time to examine it for the tide was now rising rapidly. I thrust my find into one trouser pocket as I hauled myself to my feet and began the long climb back to the safety of the lighthouse.

  Later in the afternoon, washed and in dry clothes, I stood at the stove preparing a meal from the stores which, true to his word, my employer had caused to be delivered. I had been pleasantly surprised at the sumptuousness of the viands when received, but the lad when asked to convey my thanks, had jerked a chin at the horizon where the dark clouds were already massing, making me to understand that due to the impending storm it might be some days before deliveries would again be possible.

  Such was my state of mind that I felt no apprehension of Old Harry’s ‘Monster storm’—rather I seemed filled with a strange contentment shot through at times by flashes of exultation. I had met Ligeia, seen her, almost I had touched her! Tonight when we talked I would confess my feelings, precipitant as it might seem . . . why not? Did I not have here on my hand a sure proof of her regard for me?

  For it might have been the hundredth time since washing my find and rubbing it clean, I lifted my hand and admired the look of the heavy jewel on my index finger. The gold was a deep, buttery yellow, almost without alloy, it seemed, and contrasted well with the rich translucent red of the oval intaglio set in the bezel, a finely detailed carving of a bearded man wearing an olive wreath. The work looked Roman, perhaps one of the Emperors, and I wondered just how old it really was, and how long it had been since it had seen the light of day.

  A smell of burning brought me forcefully back to the present, where it seemed I had overcooked my dinner. I removed the pan, scraped out what I could into a tin plate and put the clotted pan to soak. Oblivious to the bitter taste I spooned the mess rapidly into my mouth, washing it down with some decidedly over-brewed tea, dark as treacle. A glance out of the single window showed me the promised storm was imminent, so clattering the remains of my hasty meal into the sink I ascended to the lamp room.

  Outside the sun had been swallowed up by a blue black mass of cloud rising from the western horizon. The calm shining surface of the sea was already only a memory, for the white capped waters began assaulting my rocky eminence even as the wind hurled the first drops of rain against the broad windows.

  I made haste to light the beacon, and started the lens revolving, sending the clear beam of light spearing out defiantly into the dark. I did these things with an automaton precision, my eyes constantly drawn to the mutely capped brass tube, and as soon as I was able I took my seat and with fingers tingling in anticipation I drew out the bung.

  Instantly I was assaulted by the usual underwater sounds magnified a hundredfold. The vibration that shook my tower to its foundations was translated into an audible maelstrom of grinding, groaning, crashing noise and in terror I called, ‘Ligeia! Ligeia!’, for it seemed that nothing could live in such a fury of nature.

  Back came her voice in answer, no longer calm, no longer quiet. Rather it seemed to ride the violence of the storm as if Ligeia were riding on the crest of the waves on the back of some great spectral horse made of sea foam. ‘Harald!’ she called in answer, ‘Is it not glorious? Have you never seen such waves?’ There was a pause and the sounds like whale music rose to a crescendo and subsided, then she spoke again, quieter, but still with the throb of ecstasy in her voice, ‘How like you my gift?’

  ‘It—it is beautiful, Ligeia,’ I answered, haltingly, ‘if only I . . .’ The words I had meant to say died in my throat, for above the noise of the storm I heard a ship’s horn, and I turned to see above the tossing wave tops the lights of a great fishing trawler near, too near to the deadly rocks of the coastal waters. In haste I pulled the lever that actuated the bell that was rung to warn ships during fogs, once, twice, and then I heard Ligeia’s voice rising over everything. ‘Fool, what are you doing?’

  ‘There is a ship, dearest,’ I shouted in return, though my hand clenched on the lever seemed suddenly paralysed. ‘A ship in trouble in the storm!’ Surely she understood the danger to all those lives on board the vessel, would understand the desperate need for action!

  Instead I heard laughter, on such a wild high note it might have been the voice of the wind itself. ‘Do I not know?’ she said in tones that turned my blood to ice. ‘Have I not prayed without cease to the Old Ones to send just such a storm? Too long have we endured without the proper sacrifice and now they are here!—capturing and slaying my people in their cruel nets, flaying them with the metal knives that drive their vessel, but now, ah now . . .’ here her voice sank to a grating, penetrating growl that was worse than a scream, ‘. . . now they shall learn what it is to be prey!’

  ‘Ligeia!’ I pleaded desperately, ‘You don’t mean it! You cannot mean it! Of whatever you or your people have suffered, these folk may be entirely innocent! You cannot know! You cannot!’

  Her voice was pitiless with a cold certainty. ‘I know.’ Then, ‘Put out the light, Harald.’

  I stared at the open aperture of the speaking tube in frozen horror. ‘Ligeia!’ I protested in a helpless bleat, ‘If I do that they will be lost! No!’

  But already my hand that wore the Roman ring was rising, seeking the stopcock that controlled the flow of fuel to the lamp and as if in a nightmare I heard the voice of my Love, that magical wonder of a voice, now chanting, exulting, ‘. . . my gift upon thy hand, my heart over thy heart, my will over thy will . . .’

  Outside the waves were rising higher, the spray as they broke against the windows seemed as if the whole tower would be engulfed, and the wind was a constant shriek through the ventilator opening overhead, and beyond I could see the lights of the trawler as it rolled in the trough; but surely the beacon would save them, would warn them of their peril, it must not go out—it cannot go out! In a frenzy I seized the wooden stopper in my free hand and rammed it home, sealing the tube, but it made no difference for my hand that wore her ring still rose toward the fuel valve as if possessed with a mind of its own, her mind, her will and then in the midst of the violence of the storm I heard one single bell ring, and the lens stopped revolving for the weight that powered it had reached its terminus, but I could not move, for now my hand with the cursed ring was at the fuel pipe and I made to grab my own wrist with my left hand which seemed still partially under my control and I wrestled with myself, one hand grasping the other and a still voice in the centre of my mind said calmly, so this is madness, I have gone mad like the other, like John . . .’

  Mad I surely was at that moment, for with strength I had not known I possessed I gave one terrific wrench and the fuel pipe came free, drenching the lampstand and the hot lens with combustible oil and the whole beacon was suddenly a mass of flame and I stumbled backward and half fell down the steps, beating at my sleeve which was ablaze, hearing behind me the roar of the flames and then a deeper roar, a thunderous crash as a wave bigger than all the rest struck the lighthouse tower and I felt the whole structure shift and give way, and then I was out the door and running, staggering over the rocks, buffeted by the gale and the monster waves until finally there came one final crash and I was engulfed as the whole ocean fell upon me and I knew no more.

  They found me the next morning, insensible and wedged into a crevice between the rocks which alone had saved me
from being washed out to sea. Old Harry himself wrapped me in a warm blanket and supported my faltering steps back along the weed strewn quay. Once I turned back to look at the lighthouse, but saw instead merely a ruin of tumbled stones over which the eternal gulls flew in circles, mewing sadly. It seemed from what I gleaned of Harry’s colourful explanations that a submarine cave had been responsible, having undermined the building’s foundations from the first. In Harry’s judgment, ‘th’ Professor (who had designed the structure), mought ha’ been a clever chap, look you, but na great shakes at buildin’.’

  Then as we made our way I spied a long pale-coloured object bobbing among the flotsam left by the storm. I did not need to see the wide ribbed fish tail, or the oddly dwarfish arms that floated limp and listless in the waves among a profusion of hair, like the tendrils of a Portuguese man of war. I knew who it was, who must have been trapped and crushed in the wreck as the lighthouse crashed into the sea cave below. I believe I made an involuntary movement as if to render some sort of aid, but Old Harry held my arm back in a vicelike grip which belied his years. I looked into his wise face, seamed and wrinkled like some ancient monkey as he slowly shook his head. ‘ ’Tis the sea’s business, sor,’ he murmured. ‘She looks arter ’er own.’ And even as he spoke the body rolled over one final time and sank into the dark waters.

  For several weeks after, so they told me later, I hovered between life and death, for pneumonia set in and I drifted in and out of hallucinations brought on by the high fever. Sometimes I was pursued by wild-haired furies with the tails of giant fish, and I swam endlessly through inky black grottoes to escape their vengeance; or at times I helplessly watched as ship after ship lay broken on the rocks while the water was boiled to foam as if by shoals of ravenous sharks preying on the sailors, but they were not sharks. When the fever abated and I had come to my senses, still I lay consumed in guilt over the fate of the trawler on that terrible night, and only gradually could the nurses begin to make me understand that I was a hero, that my selfless action in setting the beacon ablaze had alerted the helmsman of the proximity to the deadly rocks and saved both vessel and crew. Then one day a man in the sober dress of a solicitor came to see me, to inform me that the owners of the fishing fleet had investigated my circumstances, and pronounced themselves appalled at the meagreness of my pension. I was awarded an annuity of £100 per annum in recognition of my efforts on behalf of the trawler, which meant that to all intents and purposes I could retire from the lighthouse profession and live carefully but well for the remainder of my days. This was welcome, for my health had suffered irreparable damage and my nerves would never be the same, so the doctors told me. Certainly even a short walk now exhausted me and my sleep continued to be broken by half remembered nightmares, although I had occasion to laugh when the advice was to partake of the sea air as much as possible.

  The second stroke of good fortune was as strange as it was unexpected. As soon as I could get about I travelled to Truro, to the Royal Museum, and showed the gold ring I had been given to a professor of antiquities there. He nodded over my find, pronouncing it a fine example of the goldsmith’s art.

  ‘Second Century BC or thereabouts,’ he said. I naturally inquired how he could be so precise. ‘Well,’ he said, seeming surprised that I should ask, ‘because of the intaglio.’ What had the carving to do with it, I said. He shrugged. The carving was of the Emperor Hadrian as he was generally portrayed during his reign, he said. As he spoke he was examining the inside of the ring through a small monocle lens. Of a sudden he stiffened and his bushy eyebrows climbed toward his hairline. His hand groped for the monocle which had fallen to the table, and he turned to me a face gone quite pink in a passion of anger. ‘See here, sir, are you making game of me?’ I assured him that such was not my intention. He reinserted the magnifier and again focused on the inside of the ring where it broadened out to form the bezel. ‘No, no,’ I heard him mutter, ‘it’s quite in order, the engraving is from the same period . . . but my dear sir,’ he said, looking up at me in dismay, ‘it’s perfectly ridiculous!’

  The upshot of it was, the museum bought the ring from me for a tidy sum, claiming it to be an important artefact, the inscription showing it to be a gift from the Emperor Hadrian to someone called ‘Antinous’ who had drowned, so went the legend, on a trip up the Nile, and whose body had never been recovered. Thus I lost the fatal gift Ligeia had given me, not without a pang, for now I possessed only my memories of that brief time.

  There is not much more to tell. With the money from the sale of the ring I was able to buy this small solitary cottage on a knoll in western Cornwall, where I pass my days beach combing and watching the ships pass . . . and waiting. For what, you ask? Well, you may think me foolish, but I have gone over and over what I saw the morning after the storm, that limp alien form floating amid the wreckage the storm had left . . . and over the years I have grown certain that I saw a quiver of life in the great finned tail just before Ligeia returned to the depths. Dead bodies do not sink of themselves after all, do they?

  So I am waiting, waiting patiently for the day when my love shall return; even if, as is all too probable, it is the last day I shall ever see.

  THE EYES

  The frigid air, after the stale fug of the overheated ballroom, was like a tonic. Natalia exhaled with deliberate violence, standing at the top of the marble staircase that led to the circular drive at the front of the mansion. She hugged her birthday present, the extravagant Siberian fox fur wrap her Uncle Vanya had left for her snugly about her bare shoulders, feeling the icy fingers of the Russian winter invade the hem of her silken ball gown and the cold of the marble steps begin to penetrate the thin dancing pumps she still wore. Not another minute!—she told herself, close to hysteria. The nightmare of her eighteenth birthday ball was still fresh in her mind, the jaded suitors with their artificially languid manners and calculating eyes, the younger men even worse with their moist spaniel gaze . . . suddenly it was too much, all the eyes in their greedy or vapid faces crowding in on her, surrounding her with their inane chatter.

  ‘Natalia!’ Oh, by all the saints it was Marisha, her omnipresent duenna. ‘Come back inside at once! What are you thinking of, my dear?’ The last uncharacteristic softening a belated recognition that at last! She was of age, and her own mistress!

  She turned to confront the impossible old fool, the bane of her childhood. ‘I’ve had enough,’ she said haughtily, trying for a manner like Princess Fyodorovna whom she had seen once at the opera with the royal family, ‘I’m bored, I’m leaving!’

  ‘From your own birthday ball?’ Marisha’s mouth stayed open in a foolish gape. ‘But you can’t! It just isn’t done!’ It sounded even worse for being in the mincing French she affected. ‘What will your father say when he hears? And Count Alexy was just now asking for you! Count Alexy himself, sending his servant to find you! What will he think?’

  ‘That the gouty old fool should have come after me himself,’ Natalia thought to herself, but before she could frame a suitable retort there was a rapid crunch of steps from below, and the bulky form of Ivan her manservant approached the bottom of the stairs wiping his whiskers and shrugging into his long bulky coat. She supposed he had heard somehow of the hullabaloo her exit had caused and she felt a moment’s pang at having drawn him from the comfortable warmth of the servant’s wing.

  His manner was as deferential as always, however, with no trace of rancour she could detect. ‘My Lady?’ he said. ‘How may I serve you?’ The blunt Russian speech was one with the cold, the sweep of sky glittering with stars, and the icy road that stretched away into the darkness.

  ‘My sleigh,’ she said, the impulse having just come to her. ‘I’m going home.’

  Ivan looked uncertainly at Marisha. ‘But my Lady, would it not be wise to wait for the others? Travelling alone, by night . . . there are dangers . . .’

  ‘Quite right,’ snapped Marisha in a return of her nursery manner. ‘You’ll come back inside this
instant!’

  ‘I,’ returned Natalia, ‘am Natalia Nerovna Mikalovski and of age, and therefore mistress of the house in my father’s absence, and I am your mistress, Marisha Patelovna, and yours, Ivan Tiborovitch, and I say I want my sleigh readied now!’ She was breathing hard by the time she had got all that out, her breath pluming white in the frosty air and the trembling of her knees becoming uncontrollable in the gathering cold. In the sleigh there would be more furs to wrap herself in, and the swift journey along the icy roads with Sasha her beloved bay mare trotting surefooted along. Gratified, she saw Ivan salute and set off at a jog trot for the stables while Marisha, after one horrified glare, whirled in a flurry of bustle and corseted skirts probably to enlist re-enforcements. Then she stood in a fever of waiting, the trembling of her knees increasing until with a lift of her heart she heard the familiar hoof beats and the hiss of the runners and with a jingle of harness bells the sleek polished shape of her own sleigh slid into view, Ivan already well wrapped on the driver’s bench with the long coach whip quivering next to him in its socket like the antennae of some questing insect.

  She ran rapidly down the steps, careless of the frost that was already forming and Ivan jumped down to aid her deferentially, one huge hand urging her elbow upward as she boarded. The heavy weight of the fur travelling rug with its almost instant warmth was tucked carefully around her knees, and with a thrill she saw Ivan silently resume his seat while Sasha stamped impatiently, eager to be off. It seemed the two of them shared her mood, wordlessly longing for the silence and the mystery of solitude and the empty road stretching away in front. Ivan made a soft clicking sound as he picked up the reins (he seldom used the whip, she knew) and Sasha obediently stepped out with a jingle of her harness bells, passing through the grim granite gates and out of the circle of lamplight cast by the torches ensconced there. Ivan had lit the twin lanterns on either side of his bench, she noticed, and as they entered upon the main roadway she called out, ‘Is there light enough, do you think?’