Tale of Raw Head and Bloody Bones (9781101614631) (58 page)

I stood up.

“Strike her not, Viviane!” I said. “She is not yours to harm. You stole her from her Mother, and that Mother loves her, and misses her, and would have her returned. You shall not strike her.”

Viviane had not sent Bat to torture me. She had not sent Bat to me at all. It had been at Viviane’s Order that she had been stolen back; but the Infant Bat had come, by herself, by her own free Will and fay Enchantments seeking the mortal Man whose Name she had never forgot; the Bloody Bones her Mother loved, who should have been her Father: Tristan Hart.

Why ever had I thought it otherwise? The Bat was not an Human Child; in her Spirit and Mind she was as antient a Being as the Changeling who had never seen Water boiled in an Egg-shell; but in her Body she was still a Babe, and she needed Love. Love of a
Species, I thought, that was as alien and incomprehensible to Nathaniel and Viviane as their own was to me.

Viviane turned again upon me, and her Face was as white as that of the Chalk Horse itself, or of the Owl she had so very lately been.

They have Laws, Katherine had said.

“You have not her real Name,” I said, hoping, as I said it, that ’twas true. “You have it not, even as you have not mine. You cannot curse me, Viviane! You have no Power over either of us! Bat is not yours. You must surrender her. You must let us go.”

“What!” cried Viviane. “Ha!”

For an Instant it appeared, and verily I thought, that she should wrap her Gown up into Feathers and fly away again, in Rage. Her black Eyes seemed as if they would burst from her Head, so wide and furious were they, and her Lips became as thin as silver Wires.

Nathaniel held up an Hand. He glanced in a questioning Manner at the Countenance of his Queen, and then, seeing perhaps therein some Assent: “Wait,” he said. “Have Care, Sir. ’Tis true that my Lady’s Curse cannot touch you. But consider what it must mean to you and yours, to the very Land of which you shall be Lord, if you incur upon your Family seven generations’ Enmity with my People. Also, consider that the Bat is not, and hath neither the Behaviours, nor the Appearance of an Human Child. If you take her into your House, your Servants will panick and your Neighbours will shun you.”

“Egad,” I said. “They do that already. I do not mind it.”

Nathaniel shook his Head, in a wondering Fashion. “What a fascinating Being you are,” he said. “An Houre ago you tore open a Man’s Chest because you thought, mistakenly, that he had fathered a Bastard upon your Wife; yet you would take that same Bastard into your Family, and raise it as if it were your own.”

I glared at him.

“So,” Viviane said. “So. You will not come, and we will be Enemies. Is that your Decision? Consider your Reply, Caligula, for I have asked three Times and I shall never ask again.”

But my Mind was tired, and I could not perceive how I might answer otherwise. I was certain that Viviane’s Ignorance of my real Name would somehow protect my Family from her direct Wrath. But Nathaniel was right. If I did not hang, then when my Father died, I would be Squire of Shirelands. I saw it plain: Viviane’s People, and her Followers amidst the Bees and Creatures of the Field and Hill, would no longer buzz and flutter amid the Crops and Trees. Every creeping, crawling, slithering thing, every Snail and gnawing Worm that cankered the Heart or strippt bare the Leaf, would turn against us. Shirelands Estate would starve, and its Tenancy fall victim to as much Disease and Misery as the Inhabitants of St Giles in the Field; whilst I, the Cause of it, would dwell untouched within the four Walls of my Study, studying Medicine to cure Humanity of its Ills whilst Men died for me in Droves; and all the Time being afraid, horribly afraid lest Viviane or any of her Ilk should come a-creeping in, and by some Sorcery learn, at last, my Name. And after seven Generations of such terrible Decay, what Estate, what Humanity, would be left?

I remembered how I had taken the Blame for Nathaniel in his Father’s apple Orchard.

“Tristan,” said Nathaniel’s Voice, distant in Memory. “It is possible. It is real. Look thro’.”

Look thro’. Virtue and Vice, Right and Wrong, Life and Death. Verily, it doth seem to us that these things stand opposed, each facing the other across a trackless Void, like Images reflected in a window Pane; but the Truth is that this Seeming is dependent upon the Place in which we, the Watchers, stand. One small Movement upon our Part, one Step to the right or the left, and the Illusion is dispelled. Take but another Step, and then another, and what seemed before in Opposition stands conjoined. One last, and both have ceased to be.

*   *   *

And at last I remembered my Mother; and she was, this Time, neither a Voice in a Poem, nor an Image in the flickering dream-Vision of Infantile Memory, but my real Mother, clear and present and profound as if she had been that Instant in my physical Sight. I remembered her as she had looked, when she had sate before the changing Window, thinly drawn, no longer laughing at the Shaddowes, trying one last Time to capture with her Brush the faint Impression of the fading Light.

“Come here,” she said. “Come here, Tristan. Look. Do you see? Do you see this Flower? ’Tis a Primrose, Tristan, the earliest little Flower. Dost perceive how delicate are its Petals, how tender its Perfume?”

“I see a Flower, Mama,” I said, with a Shrug.

“Whence came the Flower?”

“Our Lord made it.”

My Mother put her Arm around me. “Listen,” she said. “Listen well, but tell no one; especially not the Rector Ravenscroft; but do not ever forget. When I was a Girl in Amsterdam, my Uncle Jacob told me of a Man whom he had known in his own Youth. A Man of great Courage, Tristan, who made Lenses, so that People might see thro’; who dared to say, even to write, unspeakable things. And he told my Uncle a great Secret; which is great because it is true; and my Uncle told it me, and I am telling you. This Flower was not made by God, Tristan, because it is Part of God. It is the living Body of our Lord, the very Form of his Name. All things are One.”

And then I perceived that betwixt Matter and Spirit there is, truly, no Difference; that the Difficulty we identify regarding Mind
and Body, the Impossibility of their Interaction, which seemeth an Interaction betwixt two independent Substances, is a Fallacy arising from our Use of Words: for what we call Matter, and what we call Mind are really two different Properties of the same Substance, which lies at the very Fundament of all Reality. And some even call it God, and some the World, and some Faerieland; and it matters not, for all these, anyway, are Human Terms, mere Words, Names; falsely boundaried and constrained by Human Rationality and Human Conceit, and as such none of them can hope to comprehend the Nature of the thing.

Matter and Spirit, One; God and Aether, One; Sky and Heaven, One; Heaven and Earth, One; Mind and Body, One; Dream and Conscience, One; Love and Pain, One; Life and Death, seeming opposing Faces in a Mirrour, that one small Step will reveal as merely two Points upon one continuous Line.

I looked up at the stoppt Sunne in the East, and I knew that to Viviane and her Kind, seven Generations was as the Blinking of an Eye, and the Differences betwixt Life and Death, Presence and Absence, as meaningless as Human Words. And this was so because of what they were, which was not Mortal, not Human, but Entities timeless and unboundaried as the whole, intelligent, World; like Sylphs, or Ideas, or Dreams.

“I shall not die,” my Mother said. “I shall become the Soil and the Aire, the Barley and the Green, the brown Wren and the Nightingale. I shall be Part of Ha-Shem, still, even as I am Part of Him now. I shall not die.”

Whatever happens, I shall not die.

Leave my Katherine? No. Abandon my Son? No. Betray my Bat? No. Allow Ruin to descend upon my Land, that compasst within it the Body and Soule of my beloved Mother?

I am the Red Kite. I traverse the high Heavens, and the Whole of my green Valley is in mine Eye. Mine House, my Family, my Meadows, my Woods, my Fields, my Chaffinches, my Chalk, my People; all mine to protect or to destroy, but never to forswear.

But even as I formed the Image in mine Imagination, some other, half submerged Part of my Mind cried: No! Death might be meaningless, to a dying Woman in search of Comfort, or to a Faerie, or to the Earth itself; but ’tis not so to me!

I want my mortal Life! I want to see my Son grow up. I want to become a Surgeon, to battle against Death, and control Disease and Pain. I want Katherine, Katherine, Katherine.

They may hang me, I thought, but—

“My Lady Viviane,” I said. “Help me, I beg you. I would repay you, if you would allow me Time. You have no Power over me. You can neither Curse nor Compel me. But I mislike much the Idea that mine Heirs and mine Estate must suffer for a Mistake that was mine only. If you will but stay your Hand against my Fields, as I have stayed mine against your Goblin Knight, and permit me to choose the Service I shall render you, then I swear that you shall have it.”

Viviane looked upon me, and her Countenance was harder than Stone. “And what,” she said. “would you choose?”

“Let me live,” I said. “Let me return home, to my Wife, and care for her, and steward this Valley, until the Daye on which I should naturally die, upon which I shall come to you, and you should have full seven Generations’ Reparation from me, and it shall be gladly rendered.”

“That Daye,” she answered, “may be closer than you think, Caligula.”

“Indeed,” I said. My Breath felt raw upon my Lips. “I know it;
still I pray you, Viviane, grant me this! Grant me this, and let all War be ended between us. I will no longer call your People Gypsy, but give them fair Treatment in my Lands. Ye shall not be harried; never shall ye be hanged. Your antient Rights and Ways shall be protected; your Woods and Waterways and Chalklands kept open, never inclosed.”

Viviane stared at me, and tho’ there was no Time, it seemed to me she looked upon me for a Century. “You jabber like a Monkey,” she said, at last. “But it is enow. The Bargain you would offer me is fair and seemly. No more will there be bad Blood between us. You shall steward my Valley. But if you think ever to betray me, if you think to depart it; to break your Word, to abandon your Wife, neglect your People, forget your Promise, my Anger shall fall swift and deadly as the White Owl. The Bat may go to her Mother. She will come back to me of her own Choice when the Seasons change. None of my Kind can endure long amongst yours.”

The white Horse tossed her Head, and the Bits jingled; the Sunne moved again.

Viviane steppt back into the slanting Light. I squinted up mine Eyes to see her, for it seemed the Rays shone thro’ the faint Gossamer of her Dress so bright that she was become the very Dawn. Then she was changing, transforming once again into her other Form; and I wondered whether Viviane was truly the White Owl, or the White Owl was Viviane; or whether both Shapes were never more than Signs.

*   *   *

As soon as the Owl was gone from my Sight, Bat jumped up from her Place and ran to leap into mine Arms. Startled, I caught her.

The Bat’s Body was light and dry, brittle seeming as a small Twig
that hath been left near to a roaring Fire. Yet she had an Heartbeat, and I felt it it rattle furious and strong against mine Hand. So, she is not as inhuman, I thought, as Nathaniel and Viviane would have had me believe.

“So, Tris,” Nathaniel said, rising to his Feet and stretching lazily, his Hands linked behind his Head, as if he were a Fencer cooling his Muscles after a Match. “All’s well that ends well, as the Play hath it. Now all that remains is for us to toss this useless Lump of Flesh in the River, and you shall have carried the Daye.”

“Dost care not,” I said, “that this Flesh, which lately was a Man, died not for his own Fault, but for yours?”

“That,” answered Nathaniel, “may be true; or it may not. What you feared in Joseph Cox was not my monstrous Nature, Tristan, but your own; who shall say whether he died not for that? Anyway, I care not; he was a brutal Swine who did not deserve to go on living, even if he had not earned the Death he got. Better for all he died by your Hand. What matter? Now pick up the Corpse and shov’t as far out as you can into the Current. It is strong.”

“Will it not float?” I said.

Nathaniel laughed. “Nay, Tris, not in these Waters,” he said. “Swollen as they are, they are as treacherous as the Avon. ’Twill be many Weeks before the thing is found, and you know full well what Condition it may attain in that Time.”

I did not move.

“Tristan,” said Nathaniel impatiently. “I am trying to assist you. Be discovered with the Body if you will; there will surely be an Inquest, if not a Trial, and as Joe Cox hath a gaping Hole in his Chest several Inches wide, it cannot go well for you. In vain may you plead Defense of Self when the Look of the Business is that you insanely murdered the Man for Anatomy.”

I knew Nathaniel was right. How I wished that he was not.

“If they do not hang you,” Nathaniel said, “they will lock you away in the Hospital.”

I lowered my Bat, gently, to the Ground. “Stand forth, sweet Heart,” I told her. “I must rid me of this Cadaver, ere it betray me.”

I did not intirely trust Nathaniel’s Assertion regarding the River, so to be more certain of my desired Result I scrabbled around in the dirt Bank until I had unearthed sufficient Quantity of large Stones to have filled Joe Cox’s Coat, and fastened about his Neck a farther two of such Weight that I could scarce lift them together. It was mine Hope that the combined Drag of all these would anchor the Cadaver in Place against the gassy Pressure that would build up within it as it began its Decay, and safeguard against its Rise before the river Eels had done their Work upon it.

With an almighty Effort, I dragged the whole Load across the Grass and droppt it at the River’s Edge.

The swollen Waters roiled before me, black and endless in the long Shaddowe of the Bank, and I recalled how I had sate upon the daye of my Collapse staring into the Thames; and in mine imagined Memory the Thames rose up above the Rooftops of the City, rearing like a black water-Snake, seeking me out, wrapping me up in its Coils and drowning the Life from me. The little River Coller was not the Thames, was not a Fraction of that great River’s Span and seething Depth, but yet it seemed to me in that Moment that it had become’t, and my Balance reeled.