Fungus looked smug. SeePee looked uneasy. He said, "Should our team leader's private affairs become the conversational topic du jour ?" But he had had about as much to drink as I, and if he was thinking of shoving off and leaving us lowlifes to wallow in gossip, he couldn't quite act on the thought.
Centipede Sam ignored him anyway and said, "Look at the bright side. This could mean The Wasp Woman's waspier aspects will yield to her womanlier aspects. Result: things get better for everyone."
I responded to that by pretending to stick my finger way into the back of my throat.
"I still can't imagine the two of them," said Fungus. "I mean, it must be like, I dunno, scorpions mating or something."
Centipede Sam said, "Have you ever seen scorpions mate? The difference between those two and scorpions is just a matter of degree. Scorpions have more primitive wiring and plumbing."
"Count on you," I said, "to reduce love to wiring and plumbing."
Centipede Sam shrugged to show what he thought of my opinion. "When my old cat Sophie had a litter—I let her have one litter before I got her fixed—she let me examine them a couple or three days after they were born. I'd stroke 'em on their bellies, and they'd go into nursing mode. Extending and curling their tongues. Their wiring was in such an undeveloped state at that point in time that if something felt good to them, they automatically responded to it as though they were nursing."
Then SeePee astonished me by taking Centipede Sam's side. He said, "Love comes out of all that wiring and plumbing. The brain's limbic system is where the electrical and chemical disturbances occur that produce the basic emotions. Love, joy, sadness, fear, and so forth are the effects of phenylethylamine, norepinephrine, dopamine, and so forth."
"I'm sure," I said, "and I don't care. I much prefer to think of love as Laberius did."
"Who?"
"Laberius."
"Laberius!"
"Hey, I read a poem every now and then myself. Laberius compared falling in love to a cockroach falling into a basin."
"Sounds like a poet all right." From the way Centipede Sam said it you'd have thought "poet" was a synonym for "pedophile."
SeePee shook his head solemnly. "Love isn't some external thing that ambushes people. The phrase 'falling in love' always annoys me. You create love within yourself. Infatuation is just chemistry. The ingredients are brain chemicals. The turtle cannot sing, yet it knows love."
"Is that Gilbert White, too?"
SeePee shook his head. "No, some poet. White was a naturalist."
"Whatever."
Fungus said, "Maybe they can't help themselves. SeePee talks about brain chemicals. Consider the possible effect on brain chemicals of a primitive fungoid organism that produces a hallucinogen when taken into the system, resulting not just in mild hallucinations, but also shed inhibitions. I think there could be such an organism here."
"You are the only primitive fungoid organism here," I said, "and also the only one hallucinating. And don't even think about shedding your inhibitions, whatever they may be."
"No, no," Fungus persisted, "think about it."
"If that were the case," Centipede Sam put in, "it wouldn't be just the Wasp Woman and the Acid Drip who'd gone nuts. Everybody's brains would've turned to crap."
"Some people are ahead of the curve on that one."
"It could affect different people in different ways."
"Fungus," I said, "you are so lame."
Just then, the Wasp Woman appeared out of the darkness from the direction of the base camp. She walked quickly, almost stalking, and as she entered the circle of light surrounding us I saw that she had both hands clenched into tight hard fists and a look on her face that told me something had gone distinctly wrong in the shining city of love.
"It's late, people," she snapped, "and we have another busy day ahead of us."
Suddenly, unexpectedly, things were back to normal.
I NEVER FOUND OUT what had happened between her and the Acid Drip, and didn't try, but a couple of days later, apropos of I'm no longer sure what, she happened to mention him and astronomers generally in unflattering terms. "Conceited," "arrogant," and "unpleasantest people I ever met" were the mildest terms she used.
When, later, I discreetly relayed this to SeePee, he clucked his tongue and said, "It's Jane Austen in reverse. The happy ending came before the unhappy beginning."
"What?"
"On first meeting Mr. Darcy, Elizabeth Bennet and the other female Bennets decide that he is a most disagreeable, horrid man, not at all worth pleasing."
"SeePee, may I borrow that book you showed me?"
"Of course. It is my favorite work of fiction. I hope you'll like it."
And I did, too, and asked for more, and SeePee supplied it: Sense and Sensibility, Mansfield Park, Emma.
And during the long course of our year in Paleozoic time I found myself looking at him differently. Oh, nothing really changed. Just as the Wasp Woman and the Paleo Boys went on being their respectively waspish or primevally male selves, so, too, SeePee remained frog-faced, round-bodied, and long-limbed. But something beautiful began to radiate from within him. Finally, not long before we were to wrap up and go home, he and I took half a bottle of rum with us to a nice perch on the ridge overlooking the bay, and we watched the sun go down together, and I heaved me a great sigh and said, "SeePee, if only you weren't gay."
He looked at me in obvious surprise. "But I'm not."
Reader, I married him.
Just kidding.
* * *
The Queen and the Cambion
By Richard Bowes | 6960 words
Which figure, one wonders, is more mythic: the queen or the cambion?
1.
"SILLY BILLY, THE SAILOR King," some called King William IV of Great Britain. But never, of course, to his royal face. Then it was always, "Yes, sire," and, "As your majesty wishes!"
Because certain adults responsible for her care didn't watch their words in front of a child, the king's young niece and heir to his throne heard such things said. It angered her.
Princess Victoria liked her uncle and knew that King William IV always treated her as nicely as a boozy, confused former sea captain of a monarch could be expected to, and much of the time rather better.
Often when she greeted him, he would lean forward, slip a secret gift into her hands, and whisper something like, "Discovered this in the late king your grandfather's desk at Windsor."
These generally were small items, trinkets, jewels, mementos, long-ago tributes from minor potentates that he'd found in the huge half-used royal palaces, stuck in his pocket, and as often as not remembered to give to his niece.
The one she found most fascinating was a piece of very ancient parchment which someone had pressed under glass hundreds of years before. This came into her possession one day when she was twelve as King William passed Victoria and her governess on his way to the royal coach.
His Britannic Majesty paused and said in her ear, "It's a spell, little cub. Put your paw in mine."
Victoria felt something in her hand and slipped it into a pouch under her cloak while the Sailor King lurched by as though he was walking the quarterdeck of a ship in rough water. "Every ruler of this island has had it and many of us have invoked it," he mumbled while climbing the carriage steps.
She followed him. "To use in times of great danger to Britain?" she whispered.
He leaned out the window. "Or on a day of doldrums and no wind in the sails," he roared as if she was up in a crow's nest, his face red as semi-rare roast beef. "You'll be the monarch and damn all who'd say you no."
Victoria didn't take the gift from under her cloak until she was quite alone in the library of the dark and dreary palace at Kensington. It was where she lived under the intense care of her mother the widowed Duchess of Kent, a German lady, and Sir John Conroy, a handsome enough Irish army officer of good family.
The duchess had appointed Conroy comptroller of her household. Between
them they tried to make sure the princess had no independence at all. Victoria really only got out of their sight when King Billy summoned her to the Royal Court.
Nobody at Kensington ever used the library. She went to the far end of that long room lined with portraits of the obscure daughters and younger sons of various British kings, many with their plump consorts and empty-eyed children. Victoria pushed aside a full-length curtain and in the waning daylight looked at the page.
She deciphered a bit of the script and discovered words in Latin that she knew. She saw the name Arturus which made her gasp. Other words just seemed to be a collection of letters.
Then for fear that someone was coming she hid it away behind a shelf full of books of sermons by long-dead clergymen. It was where she kept some other secret possessions, for she was allowed very little privacy.
She knew the pronunciation for the Latin. By copying several of the other words and showing them to her language tutor, she discovered they were Welsh.
Her music teacher, born in Wales, taught her some pronunciation but became too curious about a few of the words she showed him. Victoria then sought out the old stable master who spoke the language including some of the ancient tongue and could read and write a bit.
He was honored and kept her secret when the princess practiced with him. One evening when she had learned all the words and her guardians were busy, Victoria went to the library, took out the page, and slowly read it aloud.
She wasn't quite finished when a silver light shone on the dusty shelves and paintings. Before her was a mountaintop with the sun shining through clouds. In the air, heading her way, sailed a man who rode the wind as another might a horse.
In his hand was a black staff topped with a dragon's head. His grey cloak and robes showed the golden moon in all its phases. His white hair and beard whipped about as the wind brought him to the mountaintop.
At the moment he alighted he noticed Victoria. A look of such vexation came over his face that she stumbled on the words and couldn't immediately repeat them. He and the mountaintop faded from her sight. She, however, remembered what she'd seen.
Victoria was no scholar. But the library at Kensington Palace did contain certain old volumes and she read all she could find about Arthur and especially about Merlin.
An observant child like Victoria knew John Conroy was more than the duchess's comptroller. She understood it was his idea to keep her isolated and to have her every move watched. From an early age she knew why.
She heard her uncle tell someone in confidence but with a voice that could carry over wind, waves, and cannon fire, "The mad old man, my father, King George that was, had a coachload and more of us sons. But in the event, only my brother Kent before he died produced an heir, fair, square, and legitimate. So the little girl over there stands to inherit the crown when I go under."
If the king did "go under" before she was eighteen, Victoria knew, her mother would be regent. The Duchess of Kent would control her daughter and the Royal Court, and Conroy would control the duchess.
In the winter before her eighteenth birthday, five years after he gave her the spell, King William became very ill. But even in sickness, he remembered what the duchess and Conroy were up to. And though his condition was grave, he resolutely refused to die.
On May 24, 1837, Victoria would become eighteen. On May 22 the king was in a coma and the duchess and her comptroller had a plan.
From a window of the library at Kensington Palace Victoria saw carriages drive up through a mid-spring drizzle, saw figures in black emerge. She recognized men that Conroy knew: several hungry attorneys, a minor cabinet minister, a rural justice, the secretary of a bishop who believed he should have been an archbishop. They gathered in Conroy's offices downstairs.
Because the servants were loyal, the princess knew that a document had been prepared in which Victoria would cite her own youth and foolishness and beg that her mother (and her mother's "wise advisor") be regent until she was twenty-one.
Even those who admired Victoria would not have said the princess was brilliant, but neither was she dull or naive. She knew how much damage the conspirators would be able to do in three years of regency. She might never become free. All they needed was her signature.
Understanding what was afoot, Victoria went to the shelf where the manuscript page was hidden. She wondered if she was entitled to do this before she was actually the monarch and if the old wizard would be as angry as the last time.
Victoria heard footsteps on the stairs. She looked at the pictures of her obscure and forgotten ancestors all exiled to the library and made her choice.
The door at the other end of the library opened. The duchess and Conroy entered with half a dozen very solemn men.
"My dearest daughter, we have been trying to decide how best to protect you," said her mother.
By the light of three candles Victoria stood firm and recited the Latin, rolled out the Welsh syllables the way she'd been taught.
Duchess and accomplice exchanged glances. Madness was commonplace in the British dynasty. George III had been so mad that a regent had been appointed.
They started toward Victoria, then stopped and stared. She turned and saw what they did—a great stone hall lit by shafts of sun through tall windows. The light fell on figures including a big man crowned and sitting on a throne.
Victoria saw again the tall figure in robes adorned with golden moons in all their phases. In his hand was the black staff topped with a dragon's head. This time his hair and beard were iron gray, not white. He shot the king a look of intense irritation. The king avoided his stare and seemed a bit amused.
Merlin strode out of the court at Camelot and the royal hall vanished behind him. Under his breath he muttered, "A curse upon the day I was so addled as to make any oath to serve at the beck and call of every halfwit or lunatic who planted a royal behind on the throne of Britain."
Then he realized who had summoned him to this dim and dusty place, and his face softened just a bit. Not a monarch yet to judge by her attire. But soon enough she would be.
Victoria gestured toward the people gaping at him. Merlin was accustomed to those who tried to seize power using bloody axes, not pieces of paper. But a wizard understands the cooing of the dove, the howl of the wolf, and the usurper's greed.
He leveled his staff and blue flames leaped forth.
The documents Conroy held caught fire, and he dropped them. The red wig on one attorney and the ruffled cuffs of the bishop's secretary also ignited. Since none of them would ever admit to having been there none would ever have to describe how they fled, the men snuffing out flames, barely pausing to let the duchess go first.
When they were gone, Merlin erased the fire with a casual wave. Easy enough, he thought. Nothing like Hastings or the Battle of Britain. Shortly he'd be back in Camelot giving the king a piece of his mind.
"Lord Merlin…," the young princess began, "We thank you."
A wizard understands a bee and a queen equally. And both can understand a wizard. Merlin spoke and she heard the word "Majesty" in her head. He dropped to one knee and kissed her hand. For young Victoria this was their first meeting. For Merlin it was not.
Time was a path that crossed itself again and again and memory could be prophecy. Later in her life, earlier in his, this queen would summon him.
He had a certain affection for her. But in his lifetime he'd already served all four of the Richards, five or six of the Henrys, the first Elizabeth, the ever-tiresome Ethelred, Saxon Harold, Norman William, and a dozen others.
He waited for her to dismiss him. But Victoria said in a rush of words, "I read that you are a cambion born of Princess Gwenddydd by the incubus Albercanix. She became a nun after your birth." The princess was enthralled.
Merlin met her gaze, gave the quick smile a busy adult has for a child. One trick that always distracted monarchs was to show how they came to have power over such a one as he.
The wizard waved his hand and
Victoria saw the scene after Mount Badon, the great victory which made Arthur king of Britain. That day Merlin ensorcelled seven Saxon wizards, Arthur slew seven Saxon kings, and may well have saved his sorcerer's life.
For this princess Merlin mostly hid the gore away. He showed her Arthur and himself younger, flushed with victory and many cups of celebratory mead as in gratitude the wizard granted the king any wish within his power to give.
"Neither of us knew much law so it wasn't well thought out," he explained, and showed himself swearing an oath to come forevermore to the aid of any monarch of Britain who summoned him. "But my time is precious and must not be wasted," he told her.
Even this mild version left Victoria round-eyed with wonder, as was Merlin's intent. For certain monarchs his message could be so clear and terrifying that Richard III had gone to his death on Bosworth Field and Charles I had let his head be whacked off without trying to summon him.
For a moment wizard and princess listened and smiled at the sounds downstairs of carriages fleeing into the night.
He bowed, asked if there was anything more she desired. When she could think of nothing he bowed once more, stepped backward through the bookshelves and the wall of Kensington Palace.
She watched as the great hall of the castle with its knights and king appeared and swallowed up Merlin.
2.
"I am ruled by our young queen and happily so, as is every man of fair mind in this land," said Lord Melbourne, Queen Victoria's first prime minister. And for a brief time that was true.
Melbourne could be a bit of a wizard, producing parliamentary majorities out of nothing, or making them disappear without a trace. A few years into young Victoria's reign, gossip held she was in the palm of his hand.
In fact she found him charming, but with her mother left behind at Kensington Palace and John Conroy exiled to the Continent, the headstrong young queen was led by no one.
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