What was she doing here?
Opening the rickety wooden gate and treading the garden path towards the left one of the twin houses, she wondered if she’d taken leave of her senses.
Oh, she knew well enough that she needed someone to talk to, someone whom she could be sure would understand her.
Someone whom she could be sure of not being involved in the conspiracy with the centaurs. She thought of Malachite and shuddered.
Malachite, Malachite, for whose loyalty both she and Quicksilver would have set their hands on hot coals.
Walking up the garden path, between neatly tended rows of vegetables stunted by the unseasonable, humid heat, Ariel thought it was no wonder Quicksilver had proved a weak king. His right hand was a traitor, perjured to his bosom.
And his wife. Ah, his wife.
What had Ariel done, then, that Malachite had thought she’d be such easy prey? What had she done that everyone -- everyone -- knew she despised Quicksilver and thought she loved him not.
Great reason that her noble lord be rated for weakness, when he’d no one to lean on, no one to trust.
Good king, to be so mightily abused!
And yet, he’d been unfaithful to her, had he not? The recording in the drop of water could not be doubted. It wasn’t in elven kind to counterfeit such, and not all magic could obtain so believable a likeness.
She thought of what the drop of water displayed and flinched. How could she love Quicksilver, when he would turn into Silver and go running -- a heedless bawd in search of fun?
Ariel lifted her white gown, embroidered all with seed pearls, to walk up the whitewashed steps to the back door, and there she stood, on the back stoop, wondering whether to knock or not.
For what did she want from Nan, that Nan could tell her?
What could this human housewife do that would resolve the problems of the Queen of faerieland?
Nan knew not magic. Nor did Nan know the problems of living with an elf that could change between the two genders at will. Nor even did Nan, like women of old, know the medicines of herbs, the secrets of the moon and which sacred stones held virtue against infertility.
So, what could Nan teach her?
And yet, unguided, confused, Ariel knew she must talk to someone. Someone. She must tell someone about the events of faerieland.
Let that someone be Nan, if Nan would allow it.
Ariel knocked, strongly, once, twice, upon the sturdy oak door.
Would Nan even remember her?
At first nothing happened, and Ariel knocked again.
She heard steps inside the house. The door opened, suddenly, revealing a small child -- were she in faerieland Ariel would have thought him a pixie -- with dark curls and bright, golden-brown eyes.
He wore a voluminous nightgown that covered him to his ankles and held a candle in his small hand, and looked at her, amazement and curiosity mingling in his features that still retained the rounded shape of a babe’s face. “Who are you?” he asked. And, “What do you wish?”
He couldn’t be much more than five or six, Ariel judged, though not sure how fast mortals grew, and his voice was a faerie piping, full of music and liveliness.
Ariel bowed slightly, and smiled, trying her all to look as any mortal would who’d call upon a friend. But what did she know of how mortals looked? “I wish,” she said, speaking slowly and clearly as she could to one so small in sense and body. “To see your mother. And I am her friend.”
He looked at her, puzzled and slow, and tilted his head sideways, just a little, in the way Ariel had seen Will do in their brief acquaintance, long ago.
His hawk-like eyes stared, examining her from head to toe, taking measure of her essence and the portent of her being here. Then he nodded and closed the door softly, leaving Ariel standing on the stoop.
Ariel smiled, despite herself, at hearing the bolt shot home, inside the door.
Did this mean the little boy had gone to fetch his mother? Or was this his way of blocking the intruder?
And yet, she smiled, at his precaution, his cautious behavior.
Not that the bolt would hold her, if she wished. Much too easy to use magic to slide that bolt away, even though it was metal, and even through the door.
But Ariel didn’t want to enter this house by force, and so she waited.
Deep within the rose garden, a cricket thrilled his love song. In the distance, a dog wailed at some unknown ill. Standing outside the door, Ariel wondered if anyone would have noticed her missing from the faerie palace.
They’d come for her, as soon as they noticed. They couldn’t allow their hope to escape.
But would they think she had escaped?
Not likely. They didn’t know what she had overheard. They’d think her absent on some walk to clear her mind.
At length she heard steps at behind the door and Nan’s voice said something. Through the door, it all sounded too indistinct for the words to be understood, but Ariel recognized Nan’s sharp tones.
The bolt slid, the door opened with new decision, and the little boy was telling his mother, “I couldn’t sleep and I thought it might be grandad, next door, who was taken ill and needed you.”
Nan had her lips compressed tight, if at the argument or at her son having opened the door on his own, in the middle of the night, Ariel could never tell.
On seeing Ariel, Nan’s pursed lips relaxed, and her mouth opened, as Nan’s jaw sagged in surprise.
“Milady,” she said, then cleared her throat and closed her mouth, and narrowed her eyes and managed a very creditable impression of her normal sharp tones. “What do you want, Lady Ariel?” As she spoke, Nan took the candle from her son’s hand, and put her hand on his shoulder, grasping so firmly that the child squirmed and looked up, shocked at his mother’s use of force.
Ariel bobbed a courtesy, as if these had been the old days in the faerie palace, when Nan had been kidnapped to nurse the faerie princess, and the old king, Sylvanus, had taken a fancy to the human, and Ariel had been appointed as her maid. Then had she bent her knee to Nan. Then had she expected Nan to be the future queen of faerieland.
But Nan had done that odd thing, resisted faerie glamoury, and held out for her husband, who’d rescued her and to whose arms she’d happily returned.
Her choice had cost her aging, Ariel decided, as she looked up at Nan’s weather-beaten face.
Had Nan stayed in the faerie hill, she’d have looked still as she had ten years ago: a twenty-eight-year-old farmer girl, not beautiful, maybe even not pretty, but possessed of her own wholesome charm, her round face tanned but supple, her round, pale blue eyes full of spirit, her broad, generous mouth still soft and promising many gentle summers to come.
The ten years in the mortal world had changed all that. Around Nan’s blue eyes, a fine nest of lines had collected, each one no doubt marking one sleepless night, one worry over the children. Around the mouth, too, lines gathered, making it look like Nan too often pursed her lips in disapproval. And her once tanned-but-fresh face had grown coarse and dark. Silver threads had twined themselves in her hair, which was loose down her back, since she wore no bonnet with the loose white shirt that was, no doubt, her night attire and covered her well enough from neck to ankle, but didn’t manage to hide how much her figure had broadened.
Ariel gazed at her and said, “Nan, milady, I must talk to you. I need your help.”
Nan, without replying, had turned, and shoved the little boy in the small of the back. “Go, Hamnet. Go upstairs. And to sleep, mind you, and no listening. You have petty school tomorrow and I want to see how you’ll remember your letters with no sleep.”
The boy frowned, and looked disappointed at once, the look of a schoolboy reminded of his obligation to his books.
He turned to Ariel, yet, and looked at Nan again, his preternaturally knowing eyes alert. “Who is this, Mother? How come she's your friend? She looks like a fine lady from the court, as father shows us in those engravings -- ”
“To bed, I said.” Nan raised her voice, as if to make herself heard over Hamnet’s internal dreams. “To bed and plague me no more. A fine lady indeed. Do I look like the kind who has fine ladies for friends? This is your cousin, five times removed, who has been away in Ireland, with her husband who is in the army. And no doubt, she’s picked up too fine an attire these years.” She gave Ariel a stern look. “But is not for that a fine lady.” As she spoke, she pushed Hamnet all the way to the darkened door that led to some interior space. “To bed sirrah, and let me not find you awake when I check, and I will check in a few breaths.” She pushed him to the inner door, and through the doorway into the hallway beyond, and closed the interior door softly.
She turned to Ariel, her arms crossed. “And now you, milady? What will you? Why plague me like this, in the middle of the night? Think you not of changelings. The two children I have, the younger ones, are too old for you to steal for your dissolute ways, your hill living.”
Ariel heard the sharp tones, but sensed behind them, behind the lie Nan had told her son, something--if not willingness to help, at least interest, or maybe curiosity, like to what Hamnet had displayed.
That curiosity Ariel smiled to, that curiosity she answered, and not Nan’s rebukes. “May I come in?” she asked.
“May you come in?” Nan mimicked, making her voice unnaturally soft, to sound like Ariel’s own voice. She grimaced and sighed, and threw the door wide open. “You may, of course, as though I could stop you. Ten years ago, it was, enough of you entered, and none of you asked my permission.”
Ariel nodded to that, and smiled still, a polite smile, and entered the kitchen.
In this kitchen, ten years ago, the lady Silver had seduced that peasant boy and petty schoolmaster, Will Shakespeare.
“Will you sit?” Nan asked, and gestured towards the table.
Ariel pushed the image out of her mind, and lowered herself to the rough-hewn long bench next to the equally rough-hewn pine table. The kitchen was small, and maybe it was typical of mortal kitchens, though Ariel wouldn’t know it. She had little enough experience of her own kitchens in the palace, leaving the tending of roasts, the serving of food, to lesser elves and the small, winged servant fairies who did all the tedious work of faerieland.
This one was equipped with a tall keeping cupboard, made of dark wood and fitted with a net on the doors, presumably to keep the flies off the food within; with a tall box-table, whose use Ariel couldn’t even guess, save that it might be for the preparation of some food, or perhaps of most foods; with a bewildering multitude of baskets and ceramic implements, and carved wooden bowls, all neatly stacked in a corner. That and the wide hearth, wide enough that, were it not for the fire burning in it, the entire table and bench might have been placed within it, and two large iron pots that even at this distance made Ariel uncomfortable, seemed to be the full stock and store of Nan’s cooking implements and domestic wealth.
No, maybe not all. A large cat, with black and white spots, lay in one of the larger baskets, near the fire.
“Is that -- ” Ariel started, looking at the cat and remembering a cat very like it who had accompanied Will and Nan out of faerieland.
Nan shook her head matter-of-factly. She stood by the table, and did not sit. “No. Old Tom died, these five years ago. Nay, longer, because it was the Michaelmas before Hamnet and Judith were born. This is his daughter, Bess. She will have a litter of kittens in another septnight.” She crossed her arms on her chest. “Came you to ask me for a kitten?”
Ariel looked at Nan and shook her head, though she thought she wouldn’t mind a kitten, if it came to that, if her life were back to normal by then.
Back to normal.
Ariel thought of what that would entail: Quicksilver by her side, the hill obedient to them both. Oh, what a dream, what a mad vain hope. And how she hoped it would come to pass.
“What then?” Nan asked, and this time sat down, at the bench across from Ariel’s, on the other side of the table. She used her candle to light one on a candlestick on the table between them, then blew the one in her hand out. “What troubles you, milady? How may I help? Why come to me, since I know that your own science exceeds all that my advice can give you?”
On those words, Ariel felt tears sting her eyes. On those words, she felt herself tremble.
The fear and ire that had held her up all the way here from the hill, that fear and ire she told herself were self control and courage and lack of weak feelings, now collapsed. Nan knew not how to help her? She spoke of Ariel’s science.
Ariel’s science.
Oh, the Queen of fairies was a miserable being, who should know so much, but knew nothing. What was her science? What her wisdom? What had she to show for her more than half century of life, except this blamable, damnable disdain for her own husband, this broken marriage, this treacherous vassal who thought he could overpower her and make her love him?
The words poured from her mouth, before she could think how she would say them, and she wiped her tears on the back of her pearl-embroidered sleeve, having quite forgotten a handkerchief.
She told Nan everything, everything, from the day she had married Quicksilver, and Quicksilver had agreed to vows of fidelity and -- in the sweet embraces of that night when their nuptial day was done, and tapers burned to bedward -- had promised never to change into Silver again.
And how those promises had got broken, and how sullied, and how she’d come to despise where she had loved, and yet loved still, and how and what dread threatened faerieland, if she couldn’t resolve her differences with Quicksilver. Quicksilver who was absent and away, pursuing a threat that might be no threat.
At first Nan heard attentively, her head supported on her hand, her elbow resting upon the table. Halfway through, though, she stood up and, stirring the embers in the fireplace to a blaze, got something from a jar, and something else from a basket, and yet something from a small box, put all of it into the smaller iron pot, and set it on the fire.
Ariel stopped, staring at Nan
Nan turned back, “I’m listening, milady. I’m listening.”
“Oh,” Ariel said. And then, “I don’t know what else to tell you. I don’t know what else to do. I think I love Quicksilver ever -- haven’t I ever loved him? But then how can all these people think I love him not? Is to see a man’s defects not to love him? Is to wish him different to deny him? I do not wish my lord dethroned and sent from the hill to die in exile. I do not wish him any ill. I only....”
“You only wish he weren’t himself,” Nan said, and, dipping a long-handled spoon into her brew poured it into two cups and brought them to the table, setting one in front of Ariel.
Ariel looked up. “I didn’t say that,” she said, surprised, shocked at Nan’s conclusion. “Who should he be, if not himself?”
“Ah,” Nan said. She blew upon the contents of her mug, and took a sip. “Let me tell you, milady, how I married Will when he was yet the sketch of a man, the barest sketch, drawn with God’s own hand upon a boy’s body and a witty but unwise mind.”
Ariel blinked. What did this have to do with her? She surveyed the red clay cup in front of her, that was filled with a foamy mixture that smelled sweet and pungent with herbs. She smelled it, but dared not taste it.
“It’s not a potion, milady,” Nan said, noticing her confusion. “Just ale with spices and honey.” She smiled. “It makes it more companionable, and if you’re going to come in and announce yourself as my friend, you’ll get the treatment my friends get. Drink it; it will not harm you.”
Ariel took the mixture to her lips and tasted it. It was not unpleasant, and warmed her. She hadn’t realized how cold she’d felt. The night was warm and yet Malachite’s treason had set her trembling, made her colder than she dared admit.
Had she liked the fool changeling? Were his hopes founded on that much fact?
“I said,” Nan resumed. “That when I married Will he was little more than a boy and, as h
e grew, I became aware Stratford wouldn’t hold his ambition. He wanted to write poetry and be recognized for his wit and mind. He wanted to go on the stage and be applauded. When the itinerant companies came by, Will would follow the actors around, and drink in their talk, like a child begging for a sweet.” Nan looked up, her blue eyes staring, unflinching. “I’m not an easy woman to live with, either, and I know we often had words when we need not and we.... Ah, but that’s not what called Will forth. It was this thing that he must be, this thing that he needed and I could not give him.
“I could have kept him. I could have kept him here, made him aware of his duty to his children. But what good is a husband kept at home, when he wishes to extend his wings elsewhere? It’s like clipping the hawk’s wings and keeping him blinded and cowed by the hearth. It might keep its owner fed, and serve his purpose, but it makes for a miserable hawk, who cannot soar to the skies. And the hawk I loved in Will must be allowed his chance.
“So, to keep him, I let him go. And he’s mine still, though he be in London.” She smiled at Ariel. “And I wish the Lady Silver much luck, if she thinks to turn his love from me, because even in London, he’s left his heart behind here, with me and Hamnet, and Susannah and Judith.”
Ariel gulped sweet ale and tried to think how to explain to Nan how different her cases were. “My husband does not wish to be a poet. He wishes to be a lady. At least half the time he does. This is not an ambition I can brook. Were kisses all the joys in bed, one woman would another wed. But they’re not, and I do not wish to.”
Nan laughed. “You’re not married to Lady Silver, milady, and yet she is the component and part of the man you wed, the man you say you love.” She shook her head, and put her hand out to touch Ariel’s wrist. “No, hear me out. I feared this would happen even as I saw you attain your heart’s desire in marrying your husband. For it was not Quicksilver you loved, flawed Quicksilver, bright and flashing like Silver and mutable like mercury, who can change from male to female and from bright to dark, from morning to night and night to morning again. No. You loved the Quicksilver you imagined. And that, milady, is your mistake. You love not the man you married; you do not even know him.”
All Night Awake Page 46
