Mythophidia

by Storm Constantine

  Still, she came. Alone, this time, and her hair pinned up. She did not seem quite so drunk, but called out a bright hello to the first soldier she passed. His apparent ignorance of her presence did not appear to offend her. Then, she saw Orlando.

  ‘Why, it’s you!’ she cried, and then laughed.

  It was Hell in its truest form for Orlando as he suffered the predations of the Princess Phedra. She goaded him, she kissed him, she pawed his face, fondled him through his clothes, whispered lewd promises. He felt as if his soul might break, as if he might die, as the heat pressed down like a fist from the pulsing dark sky and the woman writhed like a succubus around him. He found himself thinking that she was mad, and perhaps to be pitied, and this thought strengthened him. Then an unexpected stab of anger passed through him, hotter than the night. He wanted to push her away, spit on her, tell her she did not deserve the title Princess. She dishonoured the ancient noble house of her ancestors. But all this took place only in his mind.

  Eventually, Princess Phedra tired of her sport. She sighed, and for a moment, leaned against the soldier, feeling for that moment like a sad, lost creature, without weight or substance. Then, she retreated. ‘You must join my prissy sister’s retinue of lovely catamites,’ she said, ‘for clearly you have no interest in women.’ She called to the sentry standing rigidly to attention some yards away. ‘Take him indoors and see to him, soldier. It’s what he wants, I’ll wager.’ Then she hiccuped and walked away along the path, disappearing round the corner that led to the place where she had first accosted Orlando.

  Silence descended, and the soldiers did not look at one another, not once throughout the long, hot reaches of the night.

  In the dawn, when the change came, Orlando’s confederates of the night came to offer support, a hand upon the shoulder, quiet words. Orlando shrugged them off. He felt numb yet invigorated. He went straight to his superior officer. The man listened in silence as Orlando related what had happened in the night.

  ‘I would not have come to you and told you these things if there was any other way,’ Orlando said with dignity, standing straight. ‘But we cannot endure this treatment for much longer. It is inhuman.’

  ‘Do you suppose I’m unaware of what happens around here?’ drawled the officer.

  Orlando shook his head. ‘No sir.’

  ‘And will you be the one to go to the King and report what is happening?’

  Orlando stuttered. ‘It is... it is not my place, sir.’

  ‘No,’ replied the officer, dryly. ‘In fact, it is not anyone’s place. The King would order you hanged for treason. The royal daughters are beyond reproach, you must know this. They are inviolate, and their ways are not to be questioned. That is an end to the matter.’

  ‘But...’ began Orlando.

  ‘It is to be hoped Her Highness will presently tire of her little games,’ interrupted the officer. ‘The best way to deal with it is to ignore it.’

  ‘Yes sir.’

  ‘And if you mention this matter again to me, I will have you flogged.’

  ‘Yes sir.’

  ‘As far as you’re concerned, it did not happen.’

  ‘Yes sir.’ But Orlando knew that it had. His faith in his work had been shaken. He no longer felt loyal, only abused.

  As the leaves upon the cedars turned to the brazen hues of death in the palace garden, Orlando went home to the country on leave for a few days. Although the officers of the guard had not mentioned the antics of Princess Phedra to their men, it must have been discussed among themselves, because certain precautions had been introduced. The guard now changed more frequently, so that the sentries were not obliged to endure long hours of motionless torment after surviving the attentions of the Princess. She generally appeared in the garden between two or three hours before dawn. Naturally, this shift became unpopular among the guard. Certain soldiers, she clearly singled out for special attention. Orlando was one of them. He rarely found himself on sentry duty after one o’clock in the morning, or before dawn thereafter. Still, it was impossible to avoid Princess Phedra completely. Often, she would walk in the gardens in the afternoon, with her sister, Seramis, and her mother. If Orlando, or any of her other favourites, were on duty, she would stare at them beneath the brim of her sun-hat, and smile a wide, predatory smile. Once she sauntered past Orlando on her way into the house and said, ‘Why, I believe you are avoiding me, soldier!’ Then she laughed. ‘But it won’t be for ever.’

  Orlando burned with an emotion so complex he could not name it. In some ways it was flavoured with a perverse desire, in others a lust to kill. Phedra was lovely in her wantonness. Her defiance of convention held its own wicked allure. She tempted, and should anyone succumb to that temptation, she betrayed. None of the guard entertained any doubts she would report them if one of them ever broke their silence before her again.

  So, Orlando went home. His mother remarked that his letters had become infrequent over the past couple of months, and that he had lost weight. Was all well with him? Orlando, naturally, had not reported the happenings at the palace to his family. He muttered excuses; work was hard.

  ‘You seemed so glad to be there,’ his mother said, undeceived. ‘It was a stroke of luck you got the post, and you trained so hard for it. Other boys at the barracks envied you, because palace duties are less onerous than others. Were you all so wrong?’

  ‘We have heavy responsibilities,’ Orlando answered. His lips were sealed now, not by loyalty to the crown, but because he knew to speak the truth could cost him his life. Privately, the situation obsessed him; he thought of it constantly. If he were Phedra’s father, he would have her beaten naked before the whole guard, whether she was a princess or not. A whore who accosted guards on duty would be hanged or burned. Phedra was no better. And yet... He thought of her in the garden, the afternoon gilding the trees, her misty smile beneath her wide hat. He thought of her low laughter, the flash of her eyes, the intelligent humour there, and something sharp twisted inside him.

  He visited his grandmother, his mother’s mother, in her attic room in the house. Here a huge stove kept the draughts at bay and Granny’s collection of arcana cluttered the walls and shelves. She was considered to be eccentric, but forgiven for her age, for she was very old. Her eyesight and her intuition, however, were still keen.

  ‘So, who is this woman who’s breaking your heart?’ she demanded when Orlando sat down on the rug before her chair.

  Orlando glanced up, stunned. ‘No-one!’ he declared, but a burn came to his cheeks.

  Granny flapped a disbelieving hand. ‘But it is written all over you, as if her claws had scratched it into your skin. Don’t lie to me, Olly, my sweet. You never could lie to Granny.’

  Orlando stared at the carpet. ‘I know what you see in me, but it is not what you think,’ he said. ‘Neither can I explain it to you.’

  ‘Try!’ said the old woman.

  Orlando shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I don’t need to try. I could tell you in simple words quite easily. It’s just that I am honour bound to silence.’ He looked up. ‘My life depends on it.’

  Granny frowned. ‘And who will I tell? The wind, to spread it around the world? The birds to fly it here and there? Bah!’ She laughed and threw up her hands. ‘Who will I tell, little Olly, who might threaten your life?’

  ‘I would prefer to keep silent,’ Orlando answered. ‘In truth, I would feel soiled speaking of it, for it is terrible.’

  Granny narrowed her keen eyes. ‘Hmm. You are just a boy. You need help. I won’t have you thinning away in your grief. You must tell me something, just a little something, so I might help you.’

  ‘I don’t see how you possibly could.’ His head came up and fire came into his voice. ‘It is a torment that is clawing me to rags! It will not let me be! I cannot see how it will end! If I succumb, I am lost, but my strength is failing...’ He shook his head. ‘It is a great evil, a spirit of evil!’

  Granny narrowed her eyes and made a sug
gestion. ‘In the form of a woman?’

  Orlando nodded silently. He felt his eyes grow hot, and suddenly he was weeping against his grandmother’s knees. In his mind, he was thinking this was not the way a soldier should behave, certainly not a soldier of the palace guard, but he couldn’t help it. Granny patted his head and hummed to herself. Orlando wondered whether he’d said too much. Granny was astute. Perhaps she’d guessed some of the meaning behind his words. Presently, she said, ‘Dry your tears, my lovely boy, and help me up. We have to delve in my trunk.’

  Granny’s trunk was a vast thing, bound in iron, and off-limits to other members of the household. Orlando had never seen inside it, although, as a child, one of his sisters had told him their grandmother kept the mummified corpse of a former lover inside it. This, Orlando had believed, for Granny seemed capable of anything like that. She was, after all, eccentric. Now, he scorned such fancies, but he still felt breathless as she wrestled with the fastenings to the iron bands. But when the trunk was opened, it was only full of the usual items that comprised her ‘collection’: bottles, jars, powders, twigs, leaves, dried mice and lizards, glass marbles, broken clocks, hanks of hair, skeins of silk, bright necklaces of glittering jewels, folded gowns rusty with age, boxes of candles, and the like.

  Granny delved. ‘Ah, here we are!’ she declared and kneeled upright on her creaking knees. She held an elegant little glass vase up to the light. It was brown and opaque, but something seemed to shine within its depths.

  ‘What is it?’ Orlando asked.

  ‘Take it!’ ordered Granny and thrust the vase into his hands. It felt warm to the skin. Presently Granny re-emerged from the depths of the trunk holding a companion vase of blue glass. This was clearly filled with liquid. ‘One to remedy, one to bane!’ declared the grandmother. ‘Help me up now!’

  Orlando did so.

  ‘You must take these,’ Granny said. ‘In the brown vase is a powder. This you must dust upon your lips - or indeed any other place you deem suitable! But before you do this, you must dab three drops of the liquid from the blue vase on your tongue.’

  ‘Why?’ Orlando asked, nervously shaking the blue vase and looking at its contents.

  ‘Because the powder will kill you unless you prepare yourself against its effects with the liquid.’

  ‘A poison,’ murmured Orlando.

  ‘Oh, wake up a little, Olly!’ snapped Granny. ‘If you powder your lips with my bane-dust, whoever kisses you is dead within a week! If a she-devil harrows your shadow, then poison it.’

  Orlando swiftly put down the vases on his grandmother’s table. ‘No,’ he said, shaking his head vehemently. ‘I can’t do that! It’s absolutely impossible.’ His Granny had not guessed the truth of his dilemma, then.

  ‘Nonsense,’ admonished the old woman. ‘The poison is undetectable. I paid a great deal for it once. Its effects mimic a clench of the heart, and as I said, takes some days to work. No-one will suspect you! If the recipient should also have drunk a little wine, or some other liquor, before you apply the powder, all to the better.’

  ‘That would not be difficult,’ said Orlando, and with those words he realised he was seriously considering the idea.

  He could tell no-one, of course, but then he had a reputation for being reclusive among his peers. Would anyone suspect? Surely not. Who would dare to poison a princess, however cruel and wayward she might be? His life was dedicated to protecting her and her family. At this thought, he felt a twinge of self-rebuke. How could he, a man of honour, even consider stooping to murder, for murder it would be? Phedra was a high-spirited girl, who did not, could not, comprehend the effects of her conduct on the sentries. You could not kill a person for silly behaviour. And yet, some part of him suspected Phedra knew all too well what she was doing, and that her antics were leading to a grisly climax. She was pushing the situation further all the time, pushing it as far as it would go. He felt that if nothing were done about it, someone would die because of her. No. Ridiculous.

  He pondered the matter all the time he was with his family. His grandmother did not mention his visit to her again, and the subject of the vases was not raised. His mother continued to criticise his appearance and mien, and tried to improve his mood with large meals. His father simply regaled him with tales of his own days in the army, while his sisters languished for local young men, and did not really notice him.

  Soon, his period of leave was over and it was time for him to return to the city. As he packed the night before leaving, the vases stood on the window-sill in his room. It was only as he was about to lock the case that his hands reached nervelessly to push them inside among his shirts.

  By the time he reached Kadrid, and the reality of the city grew before him, in sight and in presence, Orlando had abandoned the thought of poisoning Princess Phedra. The idea seemed absurd now, dangerous even. He was a creature of order and correctness, and must not let his grandmother’s eccentricities affect him. Then he heard the news.

  While he’d been away, Phedra had reported one of the night sentries for indecent assault. ‘He didn’t have a chance,’ said Orlando’s informant. ‘She was a she-demon. Others saw it, and were powerless. He cracked. Simple as that. It had to happen eventually.’

  The King had ordered the assailant to be hanged. The execution had been carried out only two days before.

  ‘They gave him the poppy at the end,’ Orlando was told. ‘They did that much for him. He died dreaming.’

  Orlando went numb. That could have been him kicking air, dying cruelly in the arms of Lady Morphia and the rope. Perhaps only a timely holiday had saved him, passed the death card along to some other wretch.

  He went to his room alone, and locked the door. For some moments, he sat upon his bed, his hands hanging limply between his knees, his mind empty. Eventually, he roused himself and set about unpacking his case. The shirts around the vases felt warm as if they’d been hung next to a stove. He stared at the glass vessels for a short while, before gently lifting them in turn, opening their stoppers and sniffing the contents. Kiss this bane, he thought. Kiss it with your sly smile, and your clever, cruel laughter. Die as he died, kicking...

  The only time he could do this terrible thing would be at night, but he was never on duty at the crucial hour nowadays. Then, he remembered Phedra’s words, that he would not be able to avoid her forever. She, he felt, was waiting to hunt him down, and weirdly, because of that, he trusted her. It also gave him an advantage she did not suspect. The prey, when it was driven into the open, would be stronger and fiercer than she imagined.

  The following afternoon, Orlando was on sentinel duty in the gardens. Phedra spotted him the moment she walked across the upper lawn behind her mother, but waited for over an hour to launch an attack. She strolled along the gravel path, pausing at his station to gaze haughtily up at him; a beautiful, exquisite, evil thing. ‘I have missed you these past days,’ she said. Her voice was a sweet poison. ‘Missed your pretty face. Where have you been? Off with your lover? Is he pretty too?’

  For a fraction of second, Orlando flicked his glance towards hers. It was, he hoped, an enigmatic look, yet charged with intention, so brief, the Princess might believe she’d only imagined it. He knew it would not be enough for her to report him, but enough for something, something.

  She raised her brows, but said nothing, and walked on.

  Orlando was confident the challenge had been recognised. He was filled with an intense and dark excitement.

  Dead of night, and the harvest moon hung low behind the barracks. Like a ghost she came along the corridor, where the long windows overlooked the parade yard. Like a ghost in her floating white linen, with her unbound harvest hair, her naiad’s eyes. No-one saw her moving from moonbeam to shadow, no-one heard her silent feet. But she came, nonetheless. Hunting.

  Orlando had not expected such an obvious move. When the door to his room opened and he awoke to behold a slim silhouette in the pale light at the threshold, he thought one of t
he whores had come to him. Then she came inside, shut the door and leaned against it, gripping the handle behind her. Corn-coloured hair spilled forward over her shoulders, her face was heavily shadowed, almost demonic. Orlando was not on duty now, nor bound to silence. At once, every nerve in his body became alert. He sensed her weapons, the lashing tongue, the mordant eyes, perhaps, at last, the claws. Yet he did not speak.

  ‘Soldier,’ said the Princess, conversationally. ‘Here I am. What will you do?’

  Orlando was half sitting up in the bed, crouching, like some cornered thing. He pulled himself upright. ‘What would you have me do, Your Highness?’

  Phedra narrowed her eyes at his tone, but chose not to comment on it. ‘Whatever your imagination can come up with,’ she answered.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Orlando.

  Phedra padded into the room, her robe - a night-gown - aswirl around her thighs. ‘Oh, don’t be dull! This is a private time. Are you afraid of me?’

  ‘Your word is law in this place.’

  ‘Then I could claim you raped me!’

  ‘In my own bedchamber? What would you be doing here?’

  Phedra narrowed her eyes again. ‘I would say you’d crept into my room. Who would be believed?’

  ‘We know the answer to that.’

  ‘Then throw dice with the gods! Dally with me! Of course, I might have you punished severely! But, then, you’ll not find out till dawn. That should lend spice to your performance!’ She paused. ‘If you refuse me, I shall be piqued, and in that mood, more likely to cause trouble for you, surely.’ She sat down on the end of his bed, reached for his feet through the bedclothes. ‘Anyway, you desire me. I know it.’