W
AS A CHILD ONLY THE SUM of its parents? Her father had been the monstrous, ignorant Draco. Her mother was the mad witch-queen. No doubt, she had a thread of both of them, wound in her blood. But Candacis (Coira) was also herself. Her roots ran back, like those of a plant, to other progenitors. And she had been brought up in such a strange way, after all.
Alterations had begun when she was eight. That was, after the night of the Scorpion Moon. But Coira did not recall anything of the ceremony at the altar, except as a sort of dream she might have had, something to do with the fever and her recovery. The dream was both wonderful and frightening. She never forgot it, but neither did she take it as actual.
During the winter and spring after the dream, other events began.
Coira’s nurse became friendly with another woman of the palace, who then often came to see her, in the child’s room.
The other woman was more interested in Coira than in the nurse, as Coira noted quite quickly (although her nurse did not). There were outings then. They went to the market to watch traveling entertainers, who performed magical conjurings, or fought battles with wooden swords. Or the women, with Coira, went to the meadows, or down to the seashore, in a rickety carriage pulled by rams. Coira played in the sand, forming buildings from it, or hunted for shells. Sometimes the woman-friend of the nurse, leaving the nurse, would assist Coira.
This woman was called Ulvit. She taught Coira rhymes, and now and then told her stories. She was not affectionate, but she treated Coira as a live and intelligent presence, more so, perhaps, than she treated the nurse. Ulvit knew many clever things, such as the name and nature of a shell Coira once discovered walking sideways. When Coira’s little palaces of sand were swallowed by the returning tide, Ulvit assured her that nothing was ever lost, once it had been constructed. Each creation had a soul, not only men and women. The beasts had souls, and the trees, the land had a soul—which sometimes became visible in a pale shimmering at twilight. “And even a palace made of sand has a soul. And a song. And every word we speak.”
“Even wrong words?” asked Coira with cautious sagacity.
“Yes,” said Ulvit.
Meanwhile the nurse, left on her own, started a courtship with the driver of the ram-carriage. A decade or so before she had given her own child away in order to tend the queen’s. She did not know where it was, but perhaps hankered after it. Though so brisk with babies, she was now sentimentally broody. And after two years, this developed into a marriage. With a perfect equilibrium then, Ulvit, as the nurse abandoned Coira, assumed the role of her nurse.
It was Ulvit who forewarned of the coming of Coira’s first menstrual blood. Ulvit suggested this was not to be considered fearful or aggravating, but as a privilege given by the gods to women, because, in this instance, they had been thought the more deserving of childbearing.
Ulvit was, of course, a pagan woman from the wood. through she never took Coira there by day, let alone to any night ritual, still she extended to her the teachings of this primal canon.
So Coira grew now, with two distinct sides. The silent, loveless, white, light side, where everything was clear and plain and harsh. And the shadow side, softer and secretive, kind in its own elemental way, philosophical, and convinced of spirit.
But even this was not the sum of Coira. She was so young in the world, it was not possible yet to ascertain what she might be.
When Coira was thirteen, her two maids—who were seldom with her—also left her entirely. Kaya had fallen pregnant to a guard, and wed him. Julah, bitter in virginity, went inland to be a nun.
Eventually Prince Tusaj sent for Coira. That is, he sent for Candacis, King Draco’s legal daughter.
“I’d heard of her, but forgot the girl.
He
seems to have forgotten her. But I’d better look her over. She must be marriagable by now.”
They had told him her age. The nurse had got this wrong, clipping a year from Coira’s aggregate. Coira herself had come to say she was only seven, then only nine, eleven, twelve, thirteen, although she knew, too, that she was eight, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen … (Perhaps Ulvit may even have assisted in this. In some occult way, was it an advantage to have two ages, as to have two names?)
The prince squinted at Candacis. He liked to collect curiosities, a lynx, a hunchback. But this girl would not be one of them. She was not, he thought, prepossessing. Overly slender, almost breastless, too white of skin and with colorless eyes. Like her mother. “But she’s sound in lung and limb, and not a booby. Though she has a crazy look.” Like the mother, too.
Tusaj asked Candacis politely if there was anything she lacked or might especially want. He hoped she would be modest in her desires. She was. She told him, No.
Humbleness and lack of ambition were always estimable in a woman.
Coira was not concerned with the court. Used to the palace, she accepted it, and even her royal status, when occasionally it was recognized.
But she expected nothing, yearned after nothing. Wants had been excised by her mother’s aversion to her. Even in the long-ago dream, she had not looked for anything from the gentle man in red, who held her so carefully and stroked her hair. The sun itself warmed, but that was its way. Why should it notice her, and why should he?
Candacis was not unhappy. Her life was almost rustic, yet she received a little tuition. She could read, she could sing. She could dance, and well, for Ulvit had taught her the formal measures of the court—later she might be called to engage in the greater feasts at Belgra. But also Ulvit had taught her dances of the wood. Coira had one gift that was always evident: she was unusually graceful. If she was not pretty, yet she drew the eyes, held them. Even Tusaj had been aware of that.
Her hair was her glory. The prince had not observed it under its net and veil, but unbound, thick yet sheer, it dropped in a curtain of black silk to her knees.
Some must have seen her, going to and fro with her companion, this slight young royal maiden. In the meadows under the palace, her hair loose and hanging round her, black as the crows in the pine trees. She was snapping off the seed-cases of poppies so they could be crushed for medicine. With a knife she cut strands of fennel and heads of lavender, and put these, too, into her basket.
On the hills, in the sinking afternoon, the woods rested like a smoke; but as the sun came and went in cloud above the sea, the smoke brightened, faded, brightened again.
Candacis had moved through all the ten years, as her mother, Arpazia, had.
Now Candacis straightened, and shaded her eyes against the brown fall sunset.
A change had happened, It was very sudden.
Ulvit, standing up from her own gathering, with her hands full of lambs-grass to ease stiffness—her back told her she would need
it herself—stayed quiet, gazing at her charge. This month Coira-Candacis would be eighteen—or seventeen, according to the former nurse’s timetable.
“She has come into herself, Mother,” murmured Ulvit, to the goddess.
It seemed so. Candacis was not as she had been, even half an hour before. Now she was all at once a woman, mysterious where she had only been closed, profound where she had been only rather sad.
There was no plot or scheme among Ulvit’s kind. Ulvit had taken on her role with Coira more from compassion than connivance. Yet—the people of the pagan wood recognized its archetypes.
They had selected no Woods Queen since Arpazia, who anyway had proved no more than a mirror-image of herself. But here another stood, the goddess-as-maiden.
“Come, Coira,” Ulvit called. “The sun’s that low. It’ll be dark before we’ve climbed up to the house.” As if the palace were only a cottage.
T
WO ELDERLY WOMEN BENT ABOVE a smoking bowl. One straightened. She was not old.
“What will this do?”
“I told you, Queen.”
“Tell me again.”
Facing each other, they were like a woman and her reflection in a mirror.
The crone said, amiably, “Whatever you want, Queen.”
Arpazia hesitated a long while. She no longer knew what she wanted. It was as if her only lover were dead. And perhaps he was. Perhaps that story the cart-man had once told her was a fact. Klymeno had been a hunter, and a boar had killed him. Would she
have grieved—had she done so? Had she ever properly wept, for more than a moment or two, now and then—as if she could not spare her pain, to let it do what it must? And had she ever spoken to him, or let him speak to her, other than in commonplaces, love-words, cries? She could remember nothing about him except for his looks, his voice. And all that was ten years ago. It was cold today, the first cold day, and her wrists ached, but her heart was numb.
“Let it keep me young,” said the queen of the spell, glancing back at the potion.
“You’re
young. You’re a girl. I can’t recall what it was like, to be so young as you.”
These hags, who all looked alike, were always impertinent. Arpazia summoned them only to pass the time, and because she was used to them. Sometimes they worked tricks. A bird might fly up from the smoke and vanish, or a shadow assume a face and speak, but only in some language Arpazia could not understand.
“Soon,” said the hag, “is the Scorpion Moon. Do you go to the wood?”
“No.” But Arpazia was undecided. She seemed driven back to the wood often. As if she might find something she had lost. In a similar way, she had taken sometimes to wandering about the palace and its terraces, going in and out of its walled gardens. She had seen the prince’s menagerie on these travels, in its courtyard. They shocked her, the gray lynx fierce behind its bars, the sleeping bear in the sunlight … She had for a second been interested. Maybe, it was only her boredom which drove her back to the wood.
“She will be there, for the Great Orb Night. Only her second time, but the first not recalled, and perhaps not her last.”
The queen did not pay attention.
“Your daughter,” added the old woman, it seemed in a sinister and meaningful tone.
Arpazia cast a look at her. “What daughter? I have no child. Your hunter helped me kill it, and your crone, ten years ago.”
“Oh no, Queen. You bore
this
one, and she lives.”
Troubled, frowning, Arpazia tried to think of what that meant.
She had a sudden image of giving birth, herself contorted and shrieking, split by agony, and she pressed her hands to her belly to silence the memory of her womb.
“I thought it was dead.”
But the born child
must
have died too. This hag lied for some pernicious reason.
“Well, come to the wood, and you will see her.”
See … whom?
Arpazia sat in the church, expressionless, shivering a little in her black furs, which now were slightly shabby.
Her lover, Brother Gaborus, was assisting the priest at the altar. Gaborus also did not wear very well. In bed, they still performed actions which no longer had, for Arpazia, much meaning. He snored continuously when he slept; she had taken to turning him out after sex.
During her confessions to him, she had never confessed that she went to the wood. He had probably seen her there, on his own excursions.
The other priest stood up now, ready to address them all. He had that terrible glare they took on, these men of Christ, as if they longed for taloned whips to flay the congregation, and were annoyed, having to make do with their barbed tongues.
“You have heard of the Apple Tree of the Garden, the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Know that in the world, there is another forbidden tree, and every fruit on it is poison. Yes—poison so toxic it will swiftly destroy you. What is this tree? you will ask, seeking to avoid it. Too late. Let me tell you. It is planted in your very hearts. Each fruit of it is of a differing shape, a differing hue, but the taste of them seems delicious. Ah, then, of this poison tree none of you can get enough. You reach in and pluck the fruits. You gorge on them and suck them dry. Listen, they are the apples that make you blind and deaf to all but your own selves. They corrupt you and hide from you the light of God.
But still you gobble them, the apples of the Poison Tree, hugging close your lusts and grievances, thinking only, What can I gain for myself, and keep? Only I am here, say you, these others are only shadows, and they speak in a language that means nothing to me. Oh yes, the poisoned apples assure you of this. And all the while, as it comforts you, the bane spreads itself through and through, until your soul itself shrivels up and falls to the ground, a blackened thing of rot. Then no saint or angel, nor even the Christ Himself, can save you. For he may resurrect the body. but how to revitalize a
soul
which is dead?”
The anxious faces stared, row on row. Only the face of the queen was completely pristine, stern and unmoved. She had not heard more than two or three phrases. Her mind was wandering about instead of her body. She thought of the bear sleeping in the sunlight, its fur more glossy than her mantle. She thought of the pagan altar, and of—Klymeno. But when she thought of him. she felt neither desire or sorrow, now.
On the morning of her birthday, there had been two gifts.
Candacis was eighteen—or seventeen, and, through Ulvit, had years before learned again the day of her birth, even its hour.
“Who sent these things? Not the prince?”
“The people sent them.”
“Why?”
“It’s thought fitting. You’re the princess in the palace.”
“But my mother was disgraced by the king,” said Candacis. She spoke offhandedly, and even the word
mother
had become, it seemed, merely a title, as when she said
king.
“Put them on, see what you think of them,” invited Ulvit.
For the gifts were a dress and a necklace. The dress was of a shining white fabric. It might have been costly samite, from the East, so fine, so smooth to feel. The necklace was of hammered gold.
Candacis did put on the dress and the necklace.
Ulvit stood by. She had never dressed this girl, rarely touched her.
“You look very well.”
There was, of course, no mirror. Ulvit had to be the looking glass. She reflected faithfully, smiling and nodding.
“Two
gifts,” said Candacis.
Ulvit said, “One for the princess. One for the maiden, Coira.”
“Which for which?”
“Think, and tell me.”
Candacis said, not needing to think, “The gold is for royalty. The gown—for purity? They used to dress me in white when I was a child. Must I be a child, still?”
“White may be also for virgins. You are a virgin.”
Candacis blushed red. Her eyes were lowered, then lifted quickly, in defiance. “Very well, that’s true. Is it right that
they
should send me a virgin’s dress?”
Ulvit said, “These are the land’s people, who follow the ancient ways. The goddess’s daughter was a virgin, and because of her the white snow came, but later she brought back the spring and the first white flowers.”
Candacis nodded. She had learned these pagan matters from Ulvit at the same time she had learned the Christian ethic of the Church. Both systems coexisted in Coira-Candacis without abrasion. And so, she accepted the dress.
Ulvit began speaking then of the first Full Moon of winter, the Scorpion Moon of the next month. Fires would be lit and vows made to the cold season the goddess sent, and to the dead, and there must be a sacrifice for the god of the Underworld, Hadz, Death’s King, who at other times of the year might be called Dianus, or Klymeno.
“That is like—a dream I had once,” the girl exclaimed suddenly. She had never mentioned it before; through the years it had sunk away like buried leaves. Yet now it was as if the white dress woke it up.
“What dream is this?” Ulvit, mildly folding clothes at the chest.
“Oh—black night and thick trees—and fires burning. There was a tall, slim man, lordly, and in red, with a crown of berries and thorns—I thought he was a king, I thought he was my father … but Draco’s not like that?”
“Never. What else, in the dream?”
“I can’t be sure—but—I stood on a stone and the moon rang round my head three times. There was another man. In a white chariot. He was a king too.”
“And did you see
him?”
Ulvit paused, listening with every inch of her frame.
“There were bulls drawing the chariot—or boars—or horses, perhaps. I don’t remember. I admired so much the man in red.” She did not blush now. She had favored him as king, as father. “I thought he’d be able to keep me safe always.” No wistfulness in her voice. Even in the past or the dream, she had not actually thought he would.
“And the other, in the chariot—were you afraid of him?”
“No. He was only like the night. Yet … I
was
afraid of him. What do I mean?”
“Never mind, it was your dream. At the Scorpion Moon, shall I take you up to the wood? It’s a pagan place, as you know, but no one will harm you or try to make you do what you wouldn’t like. That isn’t our way.”
“Yes, I know that. I’ll be pleased to go with you.”
Ulvit, though her rescuer and constant companion all these years, had never stirred love in Candacis. No one, in that time, had done so. To Ulvit, Candacis offered her receptivity, some loyalty, good manners, and, today, a restrained interest in fresh things. But love—Of course, love had been gouged out in early childhood. Even Ulvit’s unintrusive care could not revitalize a poisoned soul. Ulvit had not expected that it would.
Yet, watching Candacis as she moved about, examining the dress, Ulvit (the mirror) added, testingly, “There are young men, and handsome ones, in the wood.”
Candacis glanced round. Her face did not alter, but for a moment
a dense black absence filled her eyes. She said, in a voice which startled Ulvit, who once or twice had heard Arpazia speak, “What are they to me?”
Carefully, Ulvit said, “In their manner, some of them are royal, just as you are.”
“Draco’s bastards?” She spoke coarsely, for her.
“No, the royal ones of the wood, known to the gods. Like the man you saw in red in your dream.”
Unblushing and cool, the face, and the eyes, investigated Ulvit now, as they had sometimes done even when a child’s. Well, she had grown first among betrayers.
Ulvit did not answer the eyes. As she closed the lid of the chest, the girl said, “I’m not from your kind, Ulvit.”
“You’re a Christian maiden, I know.”
“Nor a Christian. Besides, it’s all one, that. Don’t you say so?”
“So it is.”
Ulvit waited then, but when she turned, only the dress was there. Candacis had taken it off, casting it like a bar of white light across the chair. She had put on her ordinary garments and gone our. The necklace—how strange, could she have guessed?—she had let drop on the floor.
But there was another month to wait.