Pamela Dean

by Tam Lin (pdf)

  "Well—two dearer. Anne and Odile? Or Kit and Johnny. I'm Johnny's fault; that's how she'll think of it now."

  Janet thought of two other people Medeous might mean, but she said nothing. Dearer to whom, that was the question. Seven years was a long time. In seven years she might be dead, or the baby might. She was not sure she could get through the next seven minutes.

  Her finger was still bleeding from the swan; her whole back smarted; there was an entire network of stings on her head. No burns, though, for what that was worth. And now she was stuck with having a baby.

  They went into Forbes, garnering a few comments from students dressed, for Hallowe'en, in garments hardly less strange than Thomas's. Of course, none of them was dripping wet. Thomas let himself into his room and emerged after a moment in his bathrobe. He gave Janet a Blackstock T-shirt and a pair of Robin's jeans. He distributed towels, both his own and Robin's, which made Molly laugh, and made sure Molly had a book. Then he pointed Janet in the direction of the women's bathroom, and walked down the hall to the men's.

  Janet was cold, but there was no lingering smell from the water, only a little sand and gravel painfully ingrained. She was going to be all over bruises tomorrow, and she had to stand under the water a long time before she stopped trembling. "Sorry, kid," she said to her flat, swan-clawed stomach. It was hard to believe there was anybody in there. She had no idea what was bad for embryos, except alcohol. She could research the matter. That would help.

  Robin's jeans smelled like lavender. Thomas's T-shirt smelled like rue. Janet wished they would wash with chemicals like normal people.

  Thomas made them tea when they were all assembled in the room again. They talked a little about Victoria Thompson and Margaret Roxburgh. "I feel as if I ought to write a book about them," said Janet, "but who would believe it?"

  "Even if you left out the faerie element, it could be a very good book," said Molly. "I suppose that's bad scholarship, though, isn't it?"

  "It might be good sense," said Janet. "I don't want some modern version of Pope satirizing me the way he went after Bentley."

  "There are no modern versions of Pope," said Thomas.

  "More's the pity."

  "Who's Bentley?" said Molly.

  Janet said, "He was a very great classical scholar. He also appears to have been an unpleasant person—"

  "Yes," said Thomas, "when he was Master of Trinity College he was tried and very nearly tossed out for what they called despotic rule."

  "Yes, I know, and what he did to Milton passes belief. That, of course, is why he's in

  The Dunciad with Colley Cibber and Nahum Tate and—"

  "Robin's Colley Cibber?" said Molly. "The one who mucked with Shakespeare?

  Robin despises him."

  "That's him," said Janet. "And Bentley did that with Mil ton—except it was even worse, in a way, because Cibber just said he was improving Shakespeare, while Bentley said he was restoring what Milton meant to write, only his secretary wrote it down wrong and the printer screwed up. Milton's secretary, that is. I'm glad Evans can't hear me now."

  "What's The Dunciad? "

  Janet and Thomas looked at each other. Thomas said, a little helplessly, "It's a mock epic on the history and nature of Dullness and its eventual conquest of the world. It's hilarious if you've read Homer." He pushed his wet hair out of his eyes and recited, "'Turn what they will to verse, their toil is vain. Critics like me will make it Prose again.'"

  "I thought you had trouble in that class," said Janet.

  "I had trouble with Swift. Pope is a wonder."

  "Anyway," said Janet, "regardless of all his bad qualities, Bentley really was a very great classical scholar, and he invented practically single-handed the science of textual criticism—except he hadn't the tools for it, which is why he made such a mess of Milton—and he was responsible for one of the most important discoveries ever made in Homeric scholarship. But Pope couldn't see that."

  "Was it fair to expect him to?" said Molly.

  "Maybe not. Similarly, it's probably not fair to expect anybody who might read any book I might write to give credit to the parts they think are sensible while pooh-poohing the supernatural elements."

  "This is far too hypothetical for me," said Molly, yawning and standing up. She set her teacup neatly in the middle of Robin's open volume of the Greek New Testament. "I am going home to my cold couch."

  Janet got up.

  "You stay right here," said Molly. "If you come home in less than an hour I'll kick you out. The Meebe and I." She scooped up her sweater and effected a majestic exit.

  The door clicked behind her. Janet looked at Thomas, who cleared his throat. "If," he said, "I did my best not to be an idiot—"

  "Don't. Let's take this one thing at a time, okay? I understand that you don't want to marry me just because you got me—we got me—what a silly language—pregnant. Well, I don't want to marry you just because I'm pregnant. Let's make it easy for those disgusting people who count the months between the wedding anniversary and the child's birthday, shall we? Let's get married on the kid's first birthday, and put the kid in the wedding pictures. If I'm going to make myself a scandal and a hissing, I might as well enjoy it."

  "What should you like to do in the meantime?"

  "Finish my senior year, and you should do the same. Oh, God, I'll be eight months pregnant when I take my comprehensives."

  "Take a leave of absence and finish up the following fall," said Thomas. "You wanted another autumn at Blackstock." He looked thoughtful. "Maybe nobody will throw any books," he said. "Maybe Victoria and Margaret are avenged."

  "What will you do? Don't you want to go to graduate school?"

  "Having taken seven years to get my B.A., I won't be thought odd at all for taking a year off between undergraduate and graduate work. I could get a job; I understand babies are expensive."

  "This really isn't going to work, Thomas; there's a recession, for God's sake."

  "I understand that the publishing industry is unaffected by recessions," said Thomas, still thoughtfully. "We might look into that. I might like digging ditches—you never can tell."

  "You're hopeless."

  "Not as hopeless as I was earlier this evening."

  Janet looked at him. "I'm sorry I hesitated for a minute," she said. "It's not as if I had Robin's excuse."

  "Don't. You didn't more than half believe me; and if you resented being suddenly bullied into the female role, who could blame you?" He rubbed his eyes.

  Janet got up from his desk chair and walked over to the bed, where he was sitting. She put a hand on his damp head. Two next time, Medeous had said. By then, if all went well, there would be three of them. No, you don't get us, thought Janet. You had your chance.

  She wondered about the rest of them. But when Medeous said two next time, she thought, nobody said a word of protest.

  "It really would be better," said Thomas from under his hand, "if youth could sleep out the rest. But since we can't, let us tell one another stories around the campfire until the sun of maturity rises over the hills." He dropped his hand and began to laugh. 'God, what would Pope say about that metaphor?"

  "I don't know," said Janet slowly, "but—" She made a bound at the desk, flung herself into the chair again, rummaged a pen out of the center drawer, and found a piece of typewritten manuscript with a line drawn violently across its diagonal. She turned it over; the back was usefully blank.

  "Janet, for God's sake come to bed."

  "In a minute," said Janet. "I'm writing you a poem."

  AUTHOR'S NOTE

  Readers acquainted with Carleton College will find much that is familiar to them in the architecture, landscape, classes, terminology, and general atmosphere of Blackstock.

  They are earnestly advised that it would be unwise to refine too much upon this.

  Blackstock is not Carleton. It has its own history and its own characters, and even some minor physical differences: those who trouble to consider suc
h things will notice, for example, that Davis Hall has disappeared, that the old Music Building has taken on considerable grandeur, and that a number of distances have been altered.

  The people who occupy Blackstock are entirely imaginary. In particular, I never encountered at Carleton, in the Classics Department or outside it, anybody remotely resembling Melinda Wolfe or Professor Medeous. It would also be unwise, though certainly in accord with human nature, to identify the author with the protagonist.

  I do not mean to denigrate my debt to Carleton, which is enormous: what little I may be said to know about the joys and responsibilities of the intellect and the glory of literature Carleton, and in particular its Classics and English Departments, has taught me. My errors, of course, are my own.

  AFTERWORD

  This is the hardest part of the book; what I had to say about "Tam Lin," I've said already. But there are a few bare facts that may be interesting. "Tam Lin" is not in fact a fairy tale at all, but a member of that curious class, the sixteenth-century Scottish ballad.

  You can find it in Volume I of Francis James Child's invaluable work, The English and Scottish Popular Ballads—it's Number 39. I was first introduced to it by Fairport Convention, who included a rather sedate (by their later standards) rock version of it on their album Liege and Leaf.

  The song had fascinated me for years. I liked the fact that the girl got to rescue the boy; the way she went straight to Carter Hall the moment somebody told her not to; the fact that she was the one who plucked the rose; the shape-shifting; the ominous and ambiguous ending that gives the Faerie Queen the last word.

  I was still fascinated when Terri Windling told me about the Fairy Tale Line, and after delving among all my much-loved fairy tales and mumbling to myself a lot, I finally confessed to her that I wanted to adapt a ballad instead. It had enough fairy-tale elements in it to satisfy her. She thought I might set it in Elizabethan England, which seemed to be a splendid idea, except that I couldn't get anywhere with it. I was scowling over all the alternate versions in Child (they go from A to I), when I came across some verses that are not included in the song I knew.

  Four and twenty ladies fair

  Were playing at the ba',

  And out then came the fair Janet,

  Ance the flower among them a'.

  Four and twenty ladies fair

  Were playing at the chess,

  And out then came the fair Janet,

  As green as onie glass.

  And suddenly it all reminded me of college, where the fear of getting pregnant collaborated with the conviction that you weren't nearly as smart as you'd thought you were, that you would never amount to anything practical even if all the professors thought you were a genius, and that the world was going to hell so fast that you'd be lucky to have a B.A. to show the devil when it got there, to produce a sub-clinical state of frenzy; where juggling your love life with anything else was almost but never quite completely impossible; where we all did any number of foolish and peculiar things while surrounded by and occasionally even absorbing the wisdom of the ages.

  This was a song about adolescents. I could set it in a college. I did; and everything else, including the ghosts, who had no part in the original outline, sprang from that.

  In many versions of the song, the last verse reads, "O ha d I known at early morn

  Tomlin would from me gone, I would have taken out his heart of flesh, Put in a heart of stone."

  At the moment, if you asked me, I would say that this book is about keeping the heart of flesh in a world that wants to put in a heart of stone; and about how, regardless of the accusations regularly flung at them from all quarters, learning and literature can help their adherents accomplish that.

  If you asked me tomorrow, I might say something else.

  Pamela Dean

  Minneapolis, Minnesota

  8 July 1990

  TAM LIN (CHILD 39—A)

  O I forbid you, maidens a',

  That wear gowd on your hair,

  To come or gae by Carterhaugh,

  For young Tam Lin is there.

  There's nane that gaes by Carterhaugh

  But they leave him a wad,

  Either their rings, or green mantles,

  Or else their maidenhead.

  Janet has kilted her green kirtle

  A little aboon her knee,

  And she has broded her yellow hair

  A little aboon her bree,

  And she's awa to Carterhaugh

  As fast as she can hie.

  When she came to Carterhaugh

  Tam Lin was at the well,

  And there she fand his steed standing,

  But away was himsel.

  She had na pu'd a double rose,

  A rose but only twa,

  Till up then started young Tam Lin,

  Says, Lady, thou's pu nae mae.

  Why pu's thou the rose, Janet,

  And why breaks thou the wand?

  Or why comes thou to Carterhaugh

  Withoutten my command?

  "Carterhaugh, it is my own,

  My daddy gave it me;

  I'll come and gang by Carterhaugh,

  And ask nae leave at thee."

  Janet has kilted her green kirtle

  A little aboon her knee,

  And she has broded her yellow hair

  A little aboon her bree,

  And she is to her father's ha,

  As fast as she can hie.

  Four and twenty ladies fair

  Were playing at the ba,

  And out then came the fair Janet,

  The flower among them a'.

  Four and twenty ladies fair

  Were playing at the chess,

  And out then came the fair Janet,

  As green as onie glass.

  Out then spak an auld grey knight,

  Lay oer the castle wa,

  And says, Alas, fair Janet, for thee,

  But we'll be blamed a'.

  "Haud your tongue, ye auld fac'd knight,

  Some ill death may ye die!

  Father my bairn on whom I will,

  I'll father none on thee."

  Out then spak her father dear,

  And he spak meek and mild,

  "And ever alas, sweet Janet," he says,

  "I think thou gaest wi child."

  "If that I gae wi child, father,

  Mysel maun bear the blame,

  There's neer a laird about your ha

  Shall get the bairn's name.

  "If my love were an earthly knight,

  As he's an elfin grey,

  I wad na gie my ain true-love

  For nae lord that ye hae.

  "The steed that my true love rides on

  Is lighter than the wind,

  Wi siller he is shod before,

  Wi burning gowd behind."

  Janet has kilted her green kirtle

  A little aboon her knee,

  And she has broded her yellow hair

  A little aboon her bree,

  And she's awa to Carterhaugh

  As fast as she can hie.

  When she came to Carterhaugh,

  Tam Lin was at the well,

  And there she fand his steed standing,

  But away was himsel.

  She had na pud a double rose,

  A rose but only twa,

  Till up then started young Tam Lin,

  Says, Lady, thou pu's nae mae.

  "Why pu's thou the rose, Janet,

  Amang the groves sae green,

  And a' to kill the bonny babe

  That we gat us between?"

  "O tell me, tell me, Tam Lin," she says,

  "For's sake that died on tree,

  If eer ye was in holy chapel,

  Or Christendom did see?"

  "Roxbrugh he was my grandfather,

  Took me with him to bide,

  And ance it fell upon a day

  That wae did me betide.

  "And ance it fell
upon a day

  A cauld day and a snell,

  When we were frae the hunting come,

  That frae my horse I fell;

  The Queen o' Fairies she caught me,

  In yon green hill do dwell.

  "And pleasant is the fairy land,

  But, an eerie tale to tell,

  Ay at the end of seven years,

  We pay a tiend to hell,

  I am sae fair and fu o flesh,

  I'm feard it be mysel.

  "But the night is Halloween, lady,

  The morn is Hallow day.

  Then win me, win me, an ye will,

  For weel I wat ye may.

  "Just at the mirk and midnight hour

  The fairy folk will ride,

  And they that wad their true-love win,

  At Miles Cross they maun bide."

  "But how shall I thee ken, Tam Lin,

  Or how my true-love know,

  Amang sa mony unco knights,

  The like I never saw?"

  "O first let pass the black, lady,

  And syne let pass the brown,

  But quickly run to the milk-white steed,

  Pu ye his rider down.

  "For I'll ride on the milk-white steed,

  And ay nearest the town,

  Because I was an earthly knight

  They gie me that renown.

  "My right hand will be gloved, lady,

  My left hand will be bare,

  Cockt up shall my bonnet be,

  And kaimed down shall my hair,

  And thae's the takens I gie thee,

  Nae doubt I will be there.

  "They'll turn me in your arms, lady,

  Into an esk and adder,

  But hold me fast, and fear me not,

  I am your bairn's father.

  "They'll turn me to a bear sae grim,

  And then a lion bold;

  But hold me fast, and fear me not,

  And ye shall love your child.

  "Again they'll turn me in your arms

  To a red het gand of airn;