Dreamers

by James Gunn

  He had left his horse and armor with a trusted friend near the coast. He had proceeded to the castle on foot with only a knife to defend himself against thieves and cutthroats, and there were many stories he could have told, had he a mind to do so, of battles and narrow escapes from death along the roads and paths. But they were nothing compared with the ten years he had spent fighting the Lord's battles in the Holy Land.

  No one knew him in the green countryside where he had ruled, nor in the forests where he had hunted boar and deer with his friends. Now many of the fields had been abandoned to weeds, and those that were tilled were worked by sullen peasants guarded by men-at-arms, and the forests had been stripped of game and left to silence.

  He should have returned with squires and men-at-arms, bedecked in shining armor with banners floating above, but all the men he had taken with him were dead on the battlefields of the Holy Land or lost to plague along the way. There was no one to welcome him as he came across the lowered drawbridge into the castle, admitted for the night like any wandering stranger who looked as if he would not kill them as they slept.

  The old seneschal was dead. The new seneschal he had never seen. He recognized none of the servants and was recognized by none. He had changed. He knew that. He had left clean-shaven. He had left a young wife and two small sons. He had left to the cheers and blessings of the faithful. He returned with a beard streaked with gray, a scar across his face from eye to chin, and hair turned white and worn long around his shoulders. His eyes, too, were changed. They had looked on death too often, and they were cold, and, like his soul, reluctant to be warmed.

  No one knew him as he was ushered into the great hall where the long table already was set for dining. The smell of the meat cooking before the great fire—a whole pig, a haunch of venison, chickens—and the fragrant rushes strewn upon the stone floor, all the odors of the room brought back memories; they flooded into his mind from happier times, of a wife's gentle hands and winding hair, of children's voices laughing at play, of nobles and ladies laughing and shouting in the hall, gathered to share the fellowship of the meal, and servants bringing to the table great carcasses of stags and beeves to be carved or torn apart, flagons of wine, great round slabs of bread.

  There was no merriment in this great hall. The master of the castle sat at the head of the table: his brother Thomas, grown older and thinner and peevish. Thomas nodded curtly and motioned him to a place just above the salt. Beside Thomas sat the mistress of the castle—his wife, Eloise, whom he had left in charge of the castle and its lands when he departed for the Crusade. She, too, was older and haggard; her glossy dark hair had streaks of gray, and her face was the face of a hawk, with strange, watchful blue eyes.

  He wondered that they did not recognize him in spite of the changes in him, this treacherous younger brother who had stolen his place not long after he left and this faithless wife who had aided the usurper—nay, who had instigated the betrayal, slipping between incestuous sheets, whispering words of passion and beguilement. He could see the terrible vision as if he had been there watching and unable to act: the loyal, old seneschal summoned to her chambers to be slaughtered by the unsuspected blade, and then a scream, a story of treacherous attack upon her frustrated only by the watchful brother. And then a careful scrutiny of the servants to see which ones doubted, which ones were willing to defend the master's place, so that they, too, could be disposed of.

  Now this bloody pair still watched shadows, still studied strangers, still remained unable to enjoy their treachery. Had he changed so much, or had the Blessed Virgin veiled their eyes so that he could obtain his heaven-blessed revenge? The rushes crunched beneath his feet as he walked toward the table, and he looked at the two young men on either side of the master and the mistress; they had been his sons, his hopes, innocent children learning to be men when he left and now large and surly and dark, muttering to each other and cursing the servants.

  Above all else he could not forgive his wife and his brother for this—for ruining his children, for destroying the future. The red tide of anger surged through his veins, warming him in the chill of the room, but his voice was steady as he answered the questions that Thomas had for him. Was he from the Holy Land? And had he fought many battles? And how went the Lord's Holy War against the infidel? Was the Saracen to be thrown out of Jerusalem? And had he known the master's brother, Eric, who had perished so tragically while in the service of the Lord?

  But the shifty-eyed Thomas had no ear for the answers, even to the last question, and Eric, spurning the meat, ate only the cheese he took from his pouch, while he fingered the hilt of his knife and thought of blood.

  When all had retired for the night, Eric rose from his bed of straw in the stable and went the old, hidden route into the keep, up through the trapdoor, and up the old stairway that twined around the interior of the tower. The narrow defensive slits let in only slivers of light from the partly clouded sky, but his bare feet knew these cold stone stairs—he had imagined climbing them many times in the past ten years—and his feet did not slip.

  Finally he reached the room in which he had slept when he was master here. He did not try the door; it would be barred. Murderers fear the assassin. But the old way behind the hanging drapes had not been discovered, and he pushed open the hinged stones and in an instant was beside the bed, his knife to the throat of the traitorous brother who lay beside the woman who had been his wife.

  The fire burning in the hearth across the room painted a devil's mask across his brother's face. “You know me now?” Eric asked.

  “Eric?” his brother gasped, as stiff as death. “Eric? But word came of your death with all your men."

  He felt the sleek, silk sheets beneath his hand and the trembling of the vein at the point of the knife. Bite deeply, knife! Taste blood, as you have tasted the blood of a dozen Saracens! “My men, yes, may their souls be with God. But I escaped, as you see. Escaped to return and confront you with your treachery."

  “We thought you dead,” Thomas said thickly, feeling his death on him. “We did only what was right, what was approved by the Crown and the Church."

  “With what unseemly haste you did it, not after learning of my presumed death but within months—nay, weeks—of my leaving."

  “Eric!” Eloise said then, throwing herself against his left arm. On her knees in the bed, she clutched his waist in arms strengthened by panic. “You have returned to save me from this beast whom you called brother! I couldn't help myself. He did it all. He threatened me with death if I refused him, not just my death but the death of my sons as well. I had to save them for you."

  “Eloise—!” Thomas began.

  And then her hand struck Eric's right hand, driving the blade deep into his brother's throat. Thomas's scream ended in bubbles as he strangled on his own blood, his body jerking in a simulation of life.

  Eric pulled the knife free and wiped the hot blood from his hand on the sheet. “Good Eloise,” he said. “Gentle Eloise. How good it is to know that you are still pure of heart, if not of body."

  “Yes,” she said. “I am pure. I am. I did only what I had to do to save the children.” She caught up his right hand and kissed the blood, and ignored the body still dying beside her.

  “You are a liar, Eloise,” Eric said, “and you are an adulteress and a murderer and a cheat, and you must die along with your perfidious lover, or men will sleep uneasy in their graves and injustice will rule in this green land. You will die more slowly than he whose ending you mercifully hastened."

  She retreated from his anger, crouching back into a corner of the room far from the fireplace, where the flickering flames reached for her like knives, turning her into a nightmare figure from some dream he had forgotten. He moved toward her, his knife ready to begin its work, but before he could reach her feral body, the air began to glow between him and his appointed victim.

  He hesitated, puzzled, and saw a figure form in the glow. It was a woman clad in long, gleaming garments,
her right hand outstretched toward him in a gesture of sympathy and concern, her face sweet beyond description but saddened now and wise. It was the Virgin. There was no doubt of that, and Eric fell upon his knees.

  “my son,” the Virgin said. He thought she spoke, but there was no sound, and perhaps the words only appeared, unspoken, inside his head. “you must not seek your own vengeance. ‘vengeance is mine,’ sayeth the lord."

  “'An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,'” he muttered.

  “no, my son,” the vision said. “you endanger your immortal soul. this woman isn't worth it. you will not kill her. you will spare her life. leave her to a nunnery and to god. there are men—and women, too—who still are honorable and worthy, and there still is time for you."

  He struggled with the idea. Desire for vengeance still burned through his veins. Hunger for the sweet sounds of repentance still tormented his body. “No,” he said hoarsely. “This is not the way it was meant to be."

  “this is the way it must be,” the vision said.

  Slowly, on his knees, his anger began to seep away, and in its place came a kind of peace.

  THE CHANGELING

  The eggs had hatched, and all the little finned creatures had wriggled away except one. He watched it now as it struggled perversely up from the water onto the beach and lay gasping upon the sand. The terror of it almost overcame him, and he saw that this unnatural offspring lived in the corrosive, weighty environment that had never been meant for life. He leaped out of the water into the air for one last look. The creature on the beach pulled itself up through the sand, away from the water. He fell back into the sea and dived deep, trying to forget.

  He felt her come into the room from the kitchen. He felt the weight of her presence behind him, and he wondered if she had a knife in her hand and he should brace his shoulders for the blow that would send the blade through his back seeking his heart. But she went past him toward her chair. What she had in her hand was a drink—a Scotch and soda, he knew from long experience—and she sat in the striped, cut-velvet chair staring out the picture window into the garden.

  The garden had bloomed splendidly this year. The right combination of rain and sun had brought forth more blossoms than ever before, and the colors were more brilliant—yellows and reds and blues. It was her garden, and it was like her: its heads lifted proudly into the crystal air and its roots drawing their sustenance out of decay.

  He saw her face in profile, the delicate dark beauty of her hair like clouds framing her face, the straight forehead and the shapely nose and lips, perfect, as though sculpted by an artist, but most of all the eyes, blue and unfathomable, capable of freezing with anger or melting with laughter or love. He remembered the tender times, the first moments of awareness, the heightened sensitivity as they met more often, the casual touches that became purposeful, the kisses, the caresses, the passion that touched fire to cool flesh, the intimate, glorious things she had done for him, that she had wanted to do, that she had invented, and the final ecstasy of their total union....

  That was all over. It had been over now for months, but a new development had been introduced into the relationship. He had introduced it, and she knew what he had done. She sat there, that perfect body, so well remembered and so distant, and he waited, filled with the knowledge that he had avenged himself, for the satisfaction of her reaction.

  Waiting, he got up and went to the bar to fix himself a bourbon and soda, knowing she had shifted her head to watch him, knowing she could not resist much longer.

  “Why did you do it?” she asked.

  “Do what?” he asked, returning to the sofa, picking up the paper, prolonging the moment.

  “You know what you did."

  “You mean, why did I tell the committee that your lover was a poor teacher and a man of low moral standards?” He took a sip of his drink; it was strong but not strong enough. Nothing was strong enough to erase the memories that would not let him sleep or rest.

  “Yes. Why did you do it?"

  “I plead truth."

  “He is a good teacher."

  “You don't know him. He is a bad teacher, a poor scholar, and probably he would not have won tenure anyway. My voice was only one among many. In the end, he had no support from anyone."

  “Do you think this could possibly stop us from seeing each other?"

  She still had not looked at him. He wondered if she would ever look at him again. “No,” he said, “but it will make the seeing more difficult. You and he are going to have to make some choices, both of you. Everything won't be easy anymore."

  “Your vaunted civilization is slipping."

  “We can be just as civilized as ever,” he said evenly, “but we don't have to make adultery easy. Why should adultery be easy? Nothing else is."

  “You can always leave,” she said. Now she looked at him; it was a look of hate—no, worse than hate, disgust. “Or you can divorce me."

  “You're safe in saying that,” he said. “You know I won't do either. You've ruined me; I'm a wreck, not a man. I can't leave you. Even if I can't have you, I want to see you whenever I can. ‘My face, my moon, my everybody's moon, which everybody looks on and calls his.’ And I can't divorce you. While we still are man and wife I can cling to the faint hope that you will love me again."

  “Don't delude yourself.” The sneer marred that perfect face.

  “But now, you see, he must choose,” he said. “He will not have a job as a teacher; if he wants to teach, he will have to go somewhere else after his terminal year."

  “You are willing to wait a whole year?"

  “'I am grown peaceful as old age tonight.’”

  “What are you quoting now?"

  He went on, ignoring her, “If he wants to stay in this town, near you, he will have to take some other kind of job, as a salesman of automobiles, perhaps, or of real estate."

  “You think that would matter to me?"

  “I'm sure it would,” he said. “You have this sense of propriety, which doesn't keep you faithful but which keeps you from being unfaithful with someone inappropriate. Sin is irrelevant; good taste is everything. But maybe we will test his attachment, too. He will have to decide which is more important to him, you or his profession."

  “You think that will be a problem?” she said with great scorn. “For you, maybe, but not everybody is as cold-blooded as you are."

  “Cold-blooded,” he said, and almost choked on the lump of grief that rose in his throat.

  “You make this big show of jealousy,” she said, “but really you're as cold as a fish. It's no wonder I turned to someone else for warmth."

  “Go on,” he said. “Turn the knife a little more. I thought I couldn't feel anything, but I can still enjoy the pain."

  “You'll see. He'll find something here, some way we can be together. Some—"

  The telephone rang as if on cue. Distantly the thought echoed, On cue, on cue, on cue. He didn't move, and after a few rings she went to answer it.

  “Hello,” she said, and then her voice softened into intimacy and he knew who it was, if he hadn't known before. “Yes. No, I'm not alone, but it doesn't matter...."

  That cousin here again? He waits outside?

  “Go ahead,” she said. “You can say anything....” Her hubris spoke. “What kind of bad news? ... When? ... Where are you going? ... Yes.... Of course I understand.... Your profession is important.... Yes.... As soon as you're settled? No, I couldn't do that.... Well, I don't want to do it; put it that way.... No, I'm not angry. Disappointed, maybe. A bit sad. Not angry. Not with you.... Of course we'll meet again before you go.... We'll say good-bye then."

  She hung up the telephone and turned to him. He knew that without looking. “You knew he was going to call, didn't you?” she said. “You knew he had a job on the Coast, and you worked it around so that I would consider it a test of what we had together. Congratulations. You won."

  “But do not let us quarrel any more. No, my Lucrezia...” h
e began before her words and their terrible import made him turn in his chair. She was behind him with a knife; it was the premonition that had brushed him earlier. But the knife was not aimed at him. She held it in front of her chest with both hands, awkwardly but with deadly intensity.

  He knew the wrongness of it as he came out of his chair. This wasn't the way it was supposed to be. How he knew that he was not sure, but he knew it was wrong, and he reached her just as the knife plunged toward her breast, in time to touch her hands as they moved but not in time to stop the knife in its descent. It was almost as if he guided the knife toward its palpitating destination.

  As he caught her dying body, the blood spurted onto his hands and chest and neck, warm and thick and sickening.

  THE RETURN TO THE WOMB

  He lay basking in the sun on a rock near the sea. The sun was warm, and his imperfect lungs were working easily, drawing in life-giving air, sending waves of contentment through his scaly body. Into his little Eden intruded a rustle of nearby weeds. He lifted his head, trying to perceive movement with his right eye. For a moment, nothing. Then something moved. It was scaly and moved clumsily on ill-adapted fins, but it approached rapidly, almost running. Just before it reached him, he flipped his body off the rock and into the comforting depths of the amniotic sea.

  The pink room rose comfortingly around him like a promise of eternal love as he ascended the lift shaft. It was her color, not his—his was a rich brown—but he had grown to love pink because it was hers, because it was a constant reminder of her, because he was so much in love with her that being in this room was a constant reassurance that he was safe within her love. The room smelled of her, too—the fragrance of roses.

  He had to battle the room and everything it meant to him when his duties called him away. If he had been like other men, he would never have had to leave; he could have spent his life in this rose-scented pink room, with its silky carpet, its all-purpose console, its total convenience, and its total love—his love, his wife, his beautiful, gentle, always exciting wife.