This was, of course, not much for the Rooster to know. And it didn’t come all at once. Over many days and with several tricks he learned this information from the Wee Widow. But every time he said, or even hinted, “Why? Why did you take the trip at all?” the Widow went deadly silent, totally ignorant of the importance of causes to rulers who make decisions. Instead, her eyes returned the “Why?” to him, and neither did he have an answer. So much the philosopher he was not; and his own ignorance before her eyes hurt him.
After their first meeting, the Wee Widow Mouse never again mentioned her husband or his death or the Terebinth Oak. That was the only picture which Chauntecleer had of anything before the trip, and he didn’t understand it at all.
The fourth victim in the Coop hospital took the longest time of all to heal. Even Pertelote was breathing better—her cough gone, her breath able to handle a song now and again—before this one healed. This one moaned much in his pain. He moaned at the level of a shout. And he shouted his moans at any given ascension of the sun, but most especially at night.
When all the Coop had settled into sleep, this one would have his most stabbing pains: “Ignore it!” he would suddenly moan. “Put it out of your minds! Beryl, bring me no water! It is too much a burden for the least of you to consider what I am enduring; and I would not have the least of you suffer my suffering. Not a drop, Beryl! Not a moist handkerchief! But sleep, sleep on.”
And should one or another of the sleepers happen accidentally to awaken, this mourner would moan: “Wait! Be patient! Patience you gentle folk have in abundance. Wait—for I am going outside in a little. I’ll carry this torment out to the weather. But you—you sleep with the peace which God has given to you.”
Then he would duly step outside of the Coop; and there he would bellow his moan with the quietness of a cannon: “MAROOOOOONED!”
Mundo Cani’s problem was that tiny Mice had bitten tiny pieces out of the roof of his cavernous mouth—not to mention a cramp in his tongue.
But, ah, beauty! None of this moaning ever awakened Chauntecleer from his good dreams, so joyful had the cock become. And let it be unwritten what grief such oblivious rejection caused a Dog.
[TEN] The winter comes, with snow and with a marriage
The raining never stopped. From horizon to horizon, the clouds were locked in place, and the earth was shut up. An east wind—an odd wind to command the weather—brought this wetness and never stopped bringing it.
But perhaps God looked down from his heaven and had pity upon the Coop, for a merciful change occurred in the rain. It became snow. And where water as rain was mere misery, the same water as snow was a soft delight: A hard freeze made the ground bony and firm; snow followed to whiten and to reveal the gentle contour of that ground; the cold air snapped life into the creatures who ventured forth to walk on it; the forest greeted them, tinkling and clinking as if its great trees had tiny voices—and more than any of that, the Coop became muffled in its warmth, because snow drifted up the outside of its walls.
Now the place was no longer strange to the Beautiful Pertelote, and she sang some clear, haunting melodies. Her singing was like the moon in a wintry night—sharp edges, hard silver, slow in its motion, and full of grace; so it took the place of so much that was missing in those days, for there was no moon. And in this season of the snow, one other fine thing happened. Chauntecleer and the Hen of the blazing throat were married.
Early one morning, before lauds and before any sleeper had awakened, Chauntecleer had crept to Pertelote’s side in order to talk with her. He heard the wind outside; and he heard, from a great distance, the ice on the river shooting off its mighty guns, for the night was very cold.
“You are a singer,” Chauntecleer said in a low voice.
The Beautiful Pertelote moved in order to show that she was awake. She raised, then lowered, her head.
“Some of God’s creatures sing. Some very few are singers. You, Lady, are among those very few.”
Bang! went the river ice; and Chauntecleer was suddenly pleased to hear it, because it made him feel all the more snug with her who listened to him.
“Will you sing a melody for me now?”
She hummed for him a quiet melody like ringing crystal, neither clearing her throat nor raising her head first. It was as if the melody had always been on the rim of her soul, waiting for the touch to release it. And Chauntecleer was moved. This melody was for no one but him; it was offered at his request; it was so immediate, so ready, but altogether new. So he felt a little more bold to ask the thing which had long been on his mind.
“My Beautiful Pertelote,” he said about the melody, when it was done, and he held his peace for the moment.
And then he said, “Don’t be angry for my asking this; but listen and then answer me. It’s not a hard question. It’s an important one.” He waited. “My Beautiful Pertelote, are you afraid of me?”
She raised her head and looked at him. “No,” she said.
Chauntecleer waited, then blinked; and then he cleared his throat. He thought there would be more to her answer than that, since there had been so much to the question. “But there was a time,” he began again, “when you were afraid of me, isn’t that so?”
“No, never,” she said easily.
“So, you say,” he said lamely, searching for words, “never.”
“Since I have lived in this Coop, Proud Chauntecleer,” she said, and his heart leaped to hear her speak of her own accord, “I have looked at you with wonder. I have never been afraid of you.”
Bang! went the river. “Does wonder,” she said, “look like fear to you? That would be foolish.”
“Oh, no,” he said. “I know wonder and I know the difference. But I don’t know what to do with wonder when I see it in you. Wonder is also different from respect—greater than respect—because I know what to do with respect when I see it in the other Hens. I command it. And I draw away from it. But wonder . . . You are not like any other Hen to me.”
The Beautiful Pertelote smiled and said nothing.
Bang! The ice exploded, grinding against itself. And Chauntecleer went back to his earlier question, because it truly bothered him.
“Forgive me: Was there ever a time when you were afraid of me? Even before you came to my Coop?”
He was trying to focus upon a particular time without actually naming that time. He was afraid that if he said, “When we first met on the shore of the river,” he might resurrect dangerous feelings all over again, and then everything would be lost. Such a delicate game he played.
Pertelote said, “No, never.”
Chauntecleer popped. “But you screamed at me!” There was his great anguish and the memory that knifed him. And immediately when he had said the thing aloud, he held his breath to see what she would do. Maybe, remembering, she would begin to scream again, and then what?
But she only said, “Yes, I screamed at you.”
“Oh, Pertelote,” he went on in spite of himself, “you ran away from me. And when I held you, you tried to blind me. Do you remember that?”
“Of course I do. Yes, I did those things to you.”
“Then you were afraid of me.”
“I’m sorry about it, Chauntecleer.”
“But you were afraid of me!”
The ice cracked and rumbled; the rumbling came even through the earth. She waited until it was done, and there was pure, dark silence.
“No. I have never been afraid of you.”
Now Chauntecleer heard more than the words. He heard the tone of her voice. More than that, she was talking straight to the frightful moment and still confessing her peace with him. Therefore Chauntecleer—who simply could not let it lie—took courage and probed further:
“If you weren’t afraid,” he said slowly, “what then?”
“Pro
ud Chauntecleer,” she said so softly, “you always think more thoughts than someone has said to you. I was afraid. But I was not afraid of you. I was—” Pertelote broke it off. This was the first time since she had come to Chauntecleer’s Coop that she was talking about herself. It was difficult to do.
“I was afraid of what I saw in you,” she said.
The Rooster’s head came up erect and he knew a chill. “What you saw in me. You saw something in me to terrify you? What?”
There was a long silence. Then Pertelote spoke very carefully.
“Chauntecleer, what I thought I saw in you was not there. What I saw I should not have seen. My seeing was not true: The thing was not there, nor could it ever be there in you. I know that. My imagination made me afraid. But I was not afraid of you.”
So kindly she tried to reassure him. But reassurance without a fact or two left the poor Rooster in a fit of his own imaginings about himself and about the monster in him that might one day make her scream again.
“What did make you afraid?” he pleaded.
“It doesn’t matter,” she said. He could hear by her voice that her head was down. “It wasn’t there.”
“Tell me what it was. Tell me. I will judge.”
“It doesn’t matter—sir,” she said.
“Tell me, Pertelote,” Chauntecleer cried, almost angry. “Tell me, so that I never become the thing you fear. Pertelote, I should despair to be the thing that makes you afraid!”
“Lord Chauntecleer!” Pertelote spoke with so much authority—more than that, there was such a choking pain in her voice—that the Rooster swallowed and fell silent. Then she continued: “Lord Chauntecleer, you are something to me. But you’re asking me to remember things I don’t want to remember. You want me to name a name which suffocates me. I don’t want to go back, Chauntecleer. Not even in my mind do I want to go back.” She was beseeching him, and leaving pauses in her speech so that he might say something. “I don’t want to ruin the peace which your Coop has given me. I don’t want to die again.”
Then don’t, Chauntecleer said in his mind. But he didn’t say it out loud, and a long time passed by. Then:
“You looked like Cockatrice.” Pertelote breathed the words so very softly, and Chauntecleer began to hate himself.
“I thought there were scales on your stomach; but it was only mud. I thought that I had not gotten away, that there was nowhere in the world to hide—but it was you, with a bleeding wound. And your name isn’t Cockatrice. It’s Chauntecleer. But I didn’t know that, and I screamed. So. So. So.”
In the silence that followed Chauntecleer almost didn’t breathe. He held himself in utter contempt. He wished that he could hold her now, to comfort her; but at the same time he felt that he had lost that right forever by forcing her—for his own petty foolishness—backward into such an obvious pain. And after all of this, he had not the slightest idea who Cockatrice might be. So it was a worthless triumph. His was a damn hollow victory. In return for a name which meant nothing to him, he had separated himself from the Beautiful Pertelote. In return for what?—a Cockatrice—he had caused her a nameless hurt all over again.
“Lady,” he managed to say, scraping the floor with a fat and stupid claw, “I’m sorry.”
She said nothing.
“I’m not even something fearful,” he mumbled. “Just cheap.”
Still, she said nothing. And that was, he thought, as it should be. But he heard a stirring where she was; and then she came very close to him and laid her head upon his shoulder.
Immediately every thought of apology fled from his brains. Immediately he was breathing very much. Immediately he stretched his wings around her for the second time, and held her tightly, and gurgled.
She had come to him for comfort. Why, then, what a comfort he would be to her! But—now that he wanted them—the poor Chauntecleer had absolutely no words to say. They had all gone away, and he was left with an empty head, all on account of her willing touch. Out of his empty head there stuck a beak; and upon that beak there began to dance a silly smile. He turned his neck, and in the half-light he smiled at everyone in the Coop, one at a time, though every last one of them was sleeping.
And when the river ice exploded its most remarkable gun, a splitting crack which made the Coop to tremble, Chauntecleer thought it to be a most charming and meaningful sound.
So they were married in the snow. It was a snow wedding, for they made their procession through the snow, and the snow fell on them as they went. In the front of a long line of dancing animals, there strutted a proud golden cock and next to him his bride. And the feathers at her throat were a flame so crimson and so intense that they warmed the cock beside her.
“WHEE-YA-HOO!”
This amazing cheer came from the middle of the procession. Animals turned around when they heard it; but when they looked, they couldn’t tell for sure who had made it. For in the middle of the procession was Mundo Cani Dog; and, riding on his nose, Tick-tock the Black Ant. Now, Mundo Cani Dog was weeping so helplessly that no one thought the cheer had come from him. And surely the dignified little Ant on the tip of his nose couldn’t have . . . wouldn’t have . . . But there, on his tiny black face, was a tiny black smile.
In the middle of a white field, all the dancers formed a wide ring around Chauntecleer and his bride. Then they stamped the snow down in special places to write words in it and to draw pictures there. The pictures were blooming flowers, snow lilies and the winter rose. Someone drew a magnificent stallion in the snow, with its mane wild in the wind. Someone else drew the midnight sky and filled it with all of the stars which had not been seen for months. Another one drew a map of Chauntecleer’s land, and drew an iron fence all the way around it—to say, This land is protected. Beryl was the last to draw. She came forward shy and delicate, and she drew her picture with much love. When she was done, the entire congregation said, “Ah!” though hers was, perhaps, the simplest drawing of all. Yet it was the most perfect. She had drawn three fair eggs, one beside the other in the snow. Chauntecleer said, “I will name them now.” The animals fell silent to listen. “I will name them Ten Pin and Five Pin and One Pin. And they shall all be sons!” The animals cheered, and Chauntecleer burst into joyful laughter. The Beautiful Pertelote put her head down and was happy.
These were the gifts which his animals had brought him on his wedding day. And the words which they wrote in the snow were these:
“OUR LORD AND LADY STAND IN THE EYE OF GOD. LET HIM BE KIND TO THEM.”
Here ends the first part of the story about Chauntecleer the Rooster and his Coop, Wyrm’s Keepers.
PART TWO
[ELEVEN] Cockatrice rules his land unto its utter destruction
Cockatrice never buried the bones of his father, nor ever again seemed to think of them. Senex lay ragged in his little heap to the left of the Coop door day and night untouched. Blowflies saw an opportunity and took it: They slipped underneath his feathers and massed their tiny yellow eggs by the thousands against his ancient flesh; and when the right time had passed, maggots lived in his body. They ate through his eyes, until Senex was sightless before heaven; they ate his tongue, and Senex was speechless; they squirmed through his old wooden heart; they dwelt in the little sack of his stomach. They were the only life left in the Rooster—and that for but a little while, because Senex had died exhausted, with remarkably little meat on his bones.
A stench arose in the land. The poor animals whined and scraped at their noses. Everywhere they gagged and vomited. Eating became impossible. And the smaller and the weaker among them took sick and began to die. The very smell itself was so oppressive, like grief, that small hearts simply could not bear it and stopped beating. This was no plague, because there were no symptoms with the dying. Incredibly, this was just an odor—foul, thick, blighting, and horribly rotten.
So those animals
who could think most clearly formed a committee in order to carry a petition to Cockatrice; they had no other Lord.
They found him not in the Coop. He had not again entered that building after Senex had dropped down dead before it. They found him idle below an enormous Oak which grew near the bank of the river. Next to him was squatting Toad, the same who had brooded over Cockatrice’s leathery egg. But neither one greeted the Committee as it approached, nor gave them leave to talk.
“Well,” said a Hog, nuzzling the ground, “we have come.”
Toad blinked hugely, but silently. Cockatrice merely turned his red eye upon the Hog and slowly twisted his serpent’s tail.
“Well,” said the Hog again, shifting his barrel weight from side to side, “we have something to say. To ask,” he hastily caught himself: “To ask.”
Low down among the Committee was a Mouse, unnoticed. He was darting his eyes from the Hog to Cockatrice and back again, fiercely anxious that the meeting be neither lost nor wasted.
The Book of the Dun Cow Page 7
