by A. S. Byatt
He had devised a ceremony in which his eyes were bound, his robes were parted and his posterior fiercely whipped by the officiating Pope, or Priest, or Bishop, to whom he gave a stack of white willow wands and urged her to ruddy them truly and not in jest, for real and not faked blood was required to flow in their new world. Now the Pope under the flammiform cornute mitre was none other than the Lady Mavis, who was quite as reluctant as Samson Origen to perform any role in the Carnival rites, but had not that gentleman’s cold blood, or his certainty of rectitude. And Culvert had overridden her demurrings and diffidences with accusations that she was not prepared to sacrifice her private desires for the general life. And when she retorted that it had not been part of the project to enforce people to submit their individual beings to the general will, but to harmonise both equally, he accused her of equivocation and bad faith. It was clear, he said, that she hankered for old orders, for bourgeois fustiness and the servile respect of servants, for hypocrisies and respectabilities and niceties that had been swept away by openness and truth. It was true also, said he, that she inclined still towards the vices induced by that stultifying and crippling institution, the Family. Truly, said Culvert to the Lady Mavis, it appeared to him that perhaps she should consider returning to the world outside. And she thought of the burned and salted fields of her home, of the gibbets and the death cells, of the roving bands of hungry soldiers, and wept bitterly. She thought also of her vision of fêtes champêtres and beribboned hats under sheltering trees, and wept more strongly. And she was afraid, for her history had taught her that fear was reasonable and appropriate, and she said she would play a small part. And her child too, the little Felicitas, Culvert insisted, should play a part, she should be the New Year, the Birth of the Sun, a candle to light the whole community to brighter days. Her terror pleased him, for she had always in the past looked at him with a kindly, indulgent, critical look, as though he might grow into a good man in some distant future when he should have discarded certain follies. It pleased him to make her the instrument of his ritual chastisement, for she would hate in principle to see any man whipped for any reason, and yet she would desire, in part, to whip himself for his treatment of her, and yet, too, she would hate that in herself.
And so it proved, for the hand that was raised to whip the white (if pimpled) posterior of the Whore trembled greatly, and fell lightly. Lay on, said Culvert between his teeth, or it will go ill with you. Lay on, said Colonel Grim, in his character of sage femme, lay on lustily or you will never be free, and you may reasonably do, dear lady, what both of you desire you to do. Lay on, said the Lady Roseace, laughing behind her hawk-mask, let him see what a Fury a woman can be, when aroused to righteous wrath.
So the Pope laid on, softly, hesitatingly, and then, as Culvert’s blood began to blossom, more and more furiously, cutting his backside into a trellis of weals, and continuing even when Culvert’s frenzy of pleasure and pain had reached its sighing, sinking climax, so that Reason and Ananke had to pull her back from her task. And then she sat down on the stage, her head nodding under her mitre, and howled like a beaten child. And Reason and Ananke brought great tubs of red winelees, and poured them over Culvert’s scarlet posterior, so that the stage was a sea of blood and wine. And out into this red liquid, between the straddled legs, crept a naked child, with a candle, the little Felicitas, who had been cowering under the throne in the stink and turbulence and juices, and now did as she was told, a blood-red naked child, holding aloft a lighted candle, and quite unable to control her bitter weeping. And the people murmured, because both Pope and New Year were so miserable and howling. And Culvert rose in his robes, suddenly deflated, and his eyes darted daggers. And one pair of hands, Samson Origen’s, clapped twice, softly. And outside, over the woods, the watchmen saw the first red slip of the new sun, for Culvert’s timing had been impeccable.
Tales have been told earlier in this narrative of the delicate and indelicate doings in the Dormitories devised by Culvert. That wise man’s conception of childhood was, it is to be feared, somewhat idealistic in its paradisal vision, for he saw the small human creatures in those vaulted sleeping places as rays of pure energy, as beings made of pure, warm, uncorrupted flesh and instincts full of creative kindness, of high inventiveness, of playful spontaneity when not thwarted, perverted and deformed by sick adult inhibitions—prohibitions sprouted from a sick society with stunted desires. It is true that the playfulness, spontaneity and inventiveness of the Lattermen, as the heads of the latrine corps were called, had flourished exceedingly amongst the beds and couches in the juvenile Harem. “To the free judgement of their peers,” Culvert had said, “the community would trust the correction of the little peccadilloes, the omissions and hesitancies, of the youthful aspirants to freedom, for they would best know what was appropriate, and how to weigh the offence against the atonement, which might be a small thing, a brief abstention from chocolate, or perhaps a small service, the cleaning of another child’s shoes.”
What punishments the Lattermen devised in the dark hours has been told, as far as I dare tell. Jojo, Adolphus, Capo and the Grinner have been duly celebrated for the sweet humiliations, the atmosphere of apprehension, the wonderful arbitrariness they devised, so that boys and girls could be induced to punish themselves with sickly fears, and obsessive dreads, not knowing when the jolly mockery might begin, or the process of accusation be set in motion, day or night. For these bright boys were as adept at invading the essence of the closed grey soft matter in the young skull, or the bloody rhythm of the little heart, as they were at invading the beds, and mouths, and bottoms, of the little sleeping figures. And on the day after the Rite of the Solstice they pronounced themselves most dissatisfied with the behaviour of the child Felicitas, and that on two counts; first, that she had shown herself off in taking a central rôle in the Rite, she had sucked up and abased herself in order to procure this putting of herself on view, all naked with her silly candle. And secondly, that having displayed her meagre little body in this ostentatious way, she had wept like a baby and spoiled the whole jolly occasion; she had mightily let everyone down.
So they stood the little thing in the middle of the Dormitory, and pulled off her nightgown, and laughed at her nakedness. They wore the pretty masks they had all pranced in during the Carnival, Owls and Pussycats, Tadpoles and Newts, toothy Rabbits and snouty Bears, and pushy little Lambs, and they danced round her, pointing and poking and criticising her little belly and thighs and her trembling little knees. And then Jojo pronounced that she would not be punished now for her misdemeanours, but would be given time to think, and reflect, and that the judges would come when they were ready, and do to her what they would do, though they would not say now what it would be.
So they all turned away from her, and giggled together, and the little thing took up her nightdress and crept away to a cot in a corner where she often lay curled like a desperate snail in its shell. And Jojo came after her and snatched at the garment, saying she had wanted to be naked, and naked she should be. So she crawled in under her blanket, and her teeth clattered together like knitting needles, and this noise annoyed Adolphus, who took hold of her jaw and clattered it up and down in good earnest, whilst the others laughed.
And during the night, Felicitas could be heard sobbing and wailing, although these sounds were partly stifled by her pillow and blanket. But Jojo and Adolphus and Capo could not, they declared, sleep in this racket, so they rose up, and took the child from the cot, and put her on her head in the broom cupboard and turned the key. See if you can howl arsy-versy, they told her through the door, but she did not answer, for she could not.
And in the morning the door was opened by her brother Florian when everyone had gone to breakfast, chattering and laughing together. And the child fell out of the cupboard, rigid as a board, and cold as a stone to touch. She was not dead, Florian found, putting his cheek to her grey lips, which breathed a little warmth on his own warm skin. So he wrapped her in a blanket, and nurs
ed her, and lulled her, and after a time she began to shiver, and the blood began to flow through her limbs, and she got to her feet. And she said, “B-b-b-b-b,” and “C-c-c-c,” but no other word. Nor did she ever again speak word, but crept silently about the Tower, always hugging the wall, for she would not stand freely, and would meet no one’s eye, and drooled from the corner of her mouth.
And Florian asked himself whether he should speak to any member of the community about what had happened to his little sister. He saw it would be best to say nothing, for his own sake, and did indeed keep silence for some little time. But one day, finding his mother weeping over her silent child, he could not help himself, and told how it had come about, all of it, only he would give no names. And the Lady Mavis wept bitterly when she heard him, and could not think what was best to do. It might be thought, she should have spoken of the matter openly in the Council of the community, and sought justice for her child. But she judged it best to make peace, for the children were children she had risked her life to save from the soldiers of the Revolution, and she believed they were only children, and had done more harm than they knew. So she asked Jojo and Adolphus and Capo to come to her room, and there she said that no good was done by accusations or retribution; it was part of her creed that no eye should be plucked or tooth extracted in rage or cold vindictiveness. We must love each other, however hard it is, said the Lady Mavis to the meekly downcast boys. Who replied that she was quite right, and also quite wrong to suppose they had harmed her child, who had over-reacted to her rôle as the New Year. Someone, they said, had tittle-tattled, and told lies, but, as she herself had said, forgiveness was of the essence of community living and loving, and they would forgive, naturally.
And the next day, at breakfast, Florian was not to be found. A search was instituted, after twelve hours or so, when it was deemed by the community to be urgent, but the Tower was vast, and the pits and wells and glory-holes and oubliettes so many, and the moat so deep and the ramparts so high that no sign was ever seen again of the foolhardy boy, neither hair, nor bone, nor drop of blood, nor sweet smile.
After the disappearance of Florian, and the unavailing search of the Tower, the Lady Mavis became silent and withdrawn, although she still continued to perform tasks in the community, to peel potatoes, to mend torn clothing, to cook the little cakes, the spiced pastries or mirlitons, which she made better than anyone. She asked to be excused from her duties in the nurseries, and this withdrawal was felt to be graceful and natural, despite the general desire to do away with the feelings of partial maternity which gave rise to it.
But after some little time, the members of the community all received pretty little notes bidding them to a feast in the paved courtyard at the summit of the White Tower, or the Pierced Tower (it went by both names, which referred to the colour of its stone, and the ornamental aspect of its architecture, with many ogive and lanceolate windows). The pretty little notes referred to a fête champêtre, which was not so inapposite as it may sound, for the summit of the Tower, surrounded by crumbling battlements, had long been overgrown with tufted carpets of self-sown wild grasses, tenacious barren fig trees and gaudy ragwort, snapdragons and dandelions. And although there was a general opinion that my Lady Mavis’s fêtes champêtres were now a little tame, a little passée, there was also pity for her in the community, and most of them mounted the cracked stairs at the appointed time, jostling each other on the turns, laughing and greedy for the good fare they confidently expected.
It could be seen that the Lady Mavis had prepared her little feast with some care, building a small canopy of red and black silk against the decaying battlements, and setting out on a long damask-covered table beneath it tasty dishes, flagons of pink bubbling wine and garlands of holly, with leaves like needles and berries red as blood. And she herself wore a snow-white robe under a scarlet overdress, with a garland of the holly shining in her hair.
Now the people quickly perceived that with great ingenuity the feast had been laid out on the table in the form of a Man or possibly of a Woman, for the Lady Mavis, in her old-fashioned modesty, had wreathed the joining of the legs in further holly, beneath which sugared figs could be seen nestling, and the breasts were, as we shall see, ambiguous. Now this human feast seemed on first sight like a giant gingerbread man, such as the Witch offered to Hansel and Gretel to entice them into her cottage, a great form composed of smaller forms, custards and tartlets, marzipan sweetmeats and blancmanges, jellies and syllabubs, mincemeats and flummeries, fools and darioles, mirlitons and millefeuilles. Its head was crowned with a circlet of tarts, of cockscombs, and the flesh of its body was all veined and contoured and dimpling, made of peaches and cream here, and slices of quince there, blueberry veinings and blackcurrant flushes. The face was whipped cream and meringue with rosepetal pies for cheeks and huge lips plump and red with apple cheeks and cranberry froth opening on an oval tart of baked larks’ tongues, surrounded by sugared almond teeth. The eyes had sloeberry tartlets for pupils, and greengage jelly for the iris, flecked with vanilla, and white syllabub slicked round that, fringed with lashes of burned spun sugar. The Sweet Human had long red shining nails, on its fingers and toes, made of pointed tartlets glazed with scarlet redcurrant jelly, from which dripped pendant tarts like gouts of blood, also glazed scarlet. The breasts of this confected Being were low circling mounds of pink marzipan sweetmeats, with a castle of chocolate truffles for nipples: they were the breasts of a young girl or nubile boy, sweet to touch, sweet to taste. The navel was a deep custard tart amongst the peaches and cream, with a spiral swirl of crème pâtissière inside it. The sweetmeat body was, so to speak, naked except for a necklace of round red tarts of currants in scarlet jelly, and a line of these ran also, like Pantaloon’s buttons, from chin to belly to crotch, and a further line also dissected this line at the waist, bonds or quarterings of glistening vermilion. “Like flies drowned in blood,” said Jojo to Adolphus, of these round tarts, licking his lips.
Between the breasts of the Human Cake was a large shield-shaped exterior heart, composed of a phalanx of tiny, blood-red, heart-shaped tarts. Into the triangle which pierced darkly down between the plump red shoulders of the plump red heart was pushed a dark, triangular slice of cake, like a blade, covered with what appeared to be soot.
The Lady Mavis watched and smiled as the happy horde dismembered and savoured the Baked Human. She remarked smilingly to Culvert that in the early days of their planning of their escape, the dark days of hiding, and mutual trust, and danger, they had imagined a society where sweet things were freely prepared for all comers, where everyone could eat cake, and spiced tartlets, who desired them. Culvert, who had a sweet tooth, bit into a mirliton and reminisced about how he planned to replace wars in the New Order with great contests of gastrosophy, with tournaments of pastry-cookery, with intense trials of skill in the construction of raised pies, or “melting moments” or “bouchées à la Reine” or frangipani, or succotash, or meringues glacées.
And when the limbs of the Cake-Man were scattered and despoiled, when the sweetness had been sucked from its navel and the chocolate nipples had melted succulently in various mouths, when its face and its heart were tattered and disfigured with gaping holes, the Lady Mavis climbed on to the battlement steps, and stood dark against the sky, with the winter wind ruffling the silk canopy at her side, and lifting her somewhat dishevelled hair.
“I have a few words to say,” said this Lady, “if you will grant me a few precious moments, before you resume your nibblings and savourings and sippings, which I hope are satisfying as I meant them to be. And my few words consist of a question, and after that, if I have no answer, of a statement.”
“She is like the schoolmistress confronting the naughty boys,” said Jojo to Adolphus. “But we have no such silly authority here; here are no teachers and no pupils, but freedom.”
“My question,” said the Lady Mavis, “to which I fear I may have no answer, is Where is my son Florian? For I do not believe th
at no one knows what became of him. I believe there are those among you who could say, if they chose. And if he is alive, I wish to succour him, to release him, to embrace him, and if he is dead, to weep for him and to bury him decently. This is not much to ask.”
The Lady Roseace, flushed with pain, said, “You know well that we have searched everywhere, and for days. We could not have been more diligent if he were our own child—which indeed he was—for we are all part of each other. We have left no stone unturned; we have dragged the moat; we have combed the woods.”
“And opened every cupboard,” said Jojo, with an air of grave concern. “He was not shut in any cupboard in the castle: we made it our business to investigate every cupboard, every coal-hole, every storeroom.”
“He was a self-willed little boy,” said Adolphus. “He could have wandered into the pig-pen, or the abattoir, or fallen into a well, or been carried off by wolves. He did not listen to advice. I do not think you will see him again.”