“No.” Caliban lowers his head and shakes it like a goat balking at the rope. “You told me to let it be.”
I take a step toward the bank. “You caught me unawares.”
“There is nothing we can do,” Caliban says. “You did say it; I am no match for Master’s—for Prospero’s—magic.”
“We can seek to allay our own ignorance, Caliban!” I say. “Are you not weary of it?” I think I have him cornered on the rocks and he must stay and answer me, but I have underestimated both his agility and his determination to avoid my presence, for he abandons the pail and turns his back on me, leaping from boulder to boulder across the rushing stream.
Well, he has underestimated my determination, too. I am done with letting him flee my presence without ever once telling me what in the name of all that is holy troubles him so.
“Caliban!” I call after him, hoisting the skirts of my gown to my ankles. I step onto the first boulder. “I will follow you day and night until you stop and talk to me!”
Midstream, he pauses and turns to face me, his gaze filled with alarm. “Miranda, no! It’s too dangerous.”
The rocks are slippery, but Caliban is looking at me, truly looking at me without flinching away. True, ’tis with fear and concern, but for the first time in long months, I feel as though he is seeing me and not whatever it is I have become in his eyes that he cannot abide the sight of. It is a big step to the next boulder. I let go my skirts and flail my arms for balance, toes clinging to the surface of the slick rock beneath the shining rush of water. “Will you stay and talk to me, then? Else I will follow.”
He hesitates.
It will require a short jump to reach the next boulder, which protrudes from the surface of the stream. The water is colder than I reckoned, and I am not so hardy as Caliban; nor even so hardy as I was before I began spending my days assisting Papa in his sanctum. My feet are growing numb and the hem of my gown is sodden and heavy, tangling around my ankles. On the far bank, shimmering dragonflies hover above the reeds. Some distance upstream, the water elementals cease their antics and watch with idle interest.
If I do not make the attempt, I shall lose my nerve and my threat shall be proven a vain one. Gathering my skirts and my courage, I leap. For a moment, I think I have gained the boulder safely and begin to smile in triumph, but then one foot slips, and suddenly I am falling.
“Miranda!”
Caliban’s cry is the last thing I hear before the rush of the stream stops my ears. The shock of the cold water drives the breath from my lungs; cold, colder than I reckoned, and deeper, too. When I open my mouth, it fills with water and it is all I can do not to inhale it. The weight of my gown drags me down into the depths of the stream and the current takes me. I thrash against it to no avail.
I cannot breathe.
Oh, good Lord God, I cannot breathe! The water is cold, so cold, and the current is so strong that I cannot tell up from down.
My lungs burn.
Papa will be so angry at me for dying thusly, I think foolishly.
And then a hand clamps my wrist, pulling so hard that my shoulder aches in its socket. My head breaks the surface, and I gasp and sputter. Caliban gets his hands under my arms and hauls me from the stream to the safety of the near bank, where I lie curled and trembling with the cold, my teeth a-chatter.
“Miranda!” He pats at me with anxious hands, his worried face inches from mine. “Are you hurt?”
“N-n-nuh!” I force the words out between my chattering teeth. “Cold!”
Caliban bounds away to fetch an armload of broom, returning to scrub vigorously at me with the coarse stalks. Although it is a strange course of treatment, it causes the blood to rise to my skin and warms my limbs until I am no longer trembling. “Is that better?”
“Yes, thank you.” I manage to sit upright. “Forgive me, Caliban. That was unwise.”
He backs away from me and averts his gaze. “Yes.”
I should like to weep in sheer frustration. “Oh, Caliban! What has come between us? Why will you not look at me?”
“I cannot,” he murmurs. “You are too beautiful, Miranda.”
“Beautiful!” A wild laugh escapes me. I am a mess, soaked from head to toe. My hair is dripping and I am covered in bright yellow broom blossoms, their ragged petals clinging to my wet gown. I stare at him. “Do you jest?”
Caliban’s shoulders tense. “Do not look at me. You should not look at me.”
“Why?”
He steals one quick, darting glance at me. “Because you are beautiful,” he says again. “And I am a monster.”
The words are like a blow to my heart. “How can you say such a thing?”
“Because it is true!” There is a savage note of anguish in Caliban’s voice. “I am a swart, stooped thing with hunched shoulders and bowed legs, and … and a villain’s brow, and sullen eyes, speckled like a toad!”
Each word is a fresh new blow, cruel and vicious, cracking open my ignorant, selfish heart and driving understanding into it. Caliban loves me not as a friend, not with the innocence of childhood, but as a man loves a woman; loves me and believes himself unworthy.
Love is strong as death, says the Song of Solomon; jealousy is cruel as the grave.
I should like to laugh and rant like a madwoman at the blindness of my own folly; I should like to weep an ocean of salt tears for Caliban’s pain. He does not seek to flee my presence, only squats quietly on his haunches, his head hanging low, breathing like some hunted beast that can run no farther.
He is set against himself, Ariel said to me, and thou art the cause of it.
Ariel.
The words Caliban spoke are not his own, I am sure of it. Only the mercurial spirit would be so cruel.
Gathering myself, I go to Caliban. When I touch his shoulder, he flinches. “Did Ariel say as much to you?”
“It does not matter,” Caliban mutters. “It is true.”
“No.” I flatten my palm against his warm skin. “It is a lie. You are dear to me, and beautiful in my eyes, Caliban. Every part of you. You could never be otherwise.”
Caliban shakes his head. “Do not say so.”
“Should I not love you because your skin shines like polished wood in the sunlight?” Kneeling before him, I stroke his upper arms, feeling the corded muscles tense beneath my hands. “Should I not love you for the strength of these limbs that have saved my life this very day?” My heart quickening in my breast, I touch his averted face, stroke the hair from his brow. “Should I not love this face that is so dear to me? It is the first thing I saw when I emerged from a sleep like death. And your gaze … since we have been friends, your gaze has always been sweet toward me, has it not?” One by one, I touch the scattered moles on his face. “Should I not love you because you wear a constellation of stars upon your skin?”
“Miranda!” he groans. “Do not do this.”
Oh, but I have gained understanding; an understanding that is fragile and precious, and yet there is power in it.
“A constellation of stars,” I whisper again, touching his throat, his shoulders, the broad expanse of his bare chest, making a pattern with my fingertips. His skin is warm, so warm! At the base of my own throat, my pulse flutters like a dragonfly’s wings. “Will you not look at me, Caliban?”
The sun climbs higher into the sky and the stream sings a fast, burbling song to itself as it rushes over the rocks.
The scent of bruised flowers hangs in the air.
Somewhere, a bird is singing.
Caliban raises his head and looks at me with dark, dark eyes filled with longing and misery and desperate hope.
Now he touches my face, and though his hands are rough, his touch is oh, so gentle. He kisses me, his lips soft on mine.
Now I am trembling.
Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth: for thy love is better than wine.
The understanding I have gained unfolds and unfolds and unfolds, growing vaster and deeper.
I am a woman.
Caliban is a man.
Behold, thou art fair, my beloved, yea, pleasant: also our bed is green.
He kisses me and kisses me, and I kiss him and kiss him in turn, both of us trading kisses back and forth like presents we demand and exchange in a game of rewards in which every player wins, and although I do not know what wine is, I think it must be a heady thing, for it seems my head is spinning with pleasure, and I find that I am no longer kneeling but lying on the green bank of the stream, the green bed of Solomon’s song, Caliban’s weight pinning me to the sweet earth.
I hear my bodice tear.
A bundle of myrrh is my well-beloved unto me; he shall lie all night betwixt my breasts.
Caliban’s mouth is at my breasts. My nipples are yet hard and tight from the coldness of the stream, exposed in the morning air. I sink my fingers into his thick, coarse hair and guide one into his mouth and moan when he suckles it, drawing hard on my taut flesh.
I welcome it.
There is a hardness that presses at the juncture of my thighs where Caliban lies between them and I understand that this is the immodest thing, the part of a man that I am forbidden to see; and yet I feel no wrongness in this moment. My hips lift of their own urgent accord to push against the hardness.
Later I shall wonder if there was a moment when Eve first ate of the apple and gained forbidden knowledge that she reckoned it worth the price.
Mayhap.
Mayhap not.
“Oh, vilest of wretches!” Papa’s voice breaks like thunder over the isle, deep and resonant with fury. “I’ll flay your muscles from the bone!”
I do not see him stride across the field of yellow broom to grasp the hair at the nape of Caliban’s neck and haul him off me; I know only that Caliban’s weight is gone. I clamber to my feet in horror, grasping the edges of the torn bodice of my gown.
Caliban staggers and Papa stalks after him, amulet clutched in one hand as he calls down all manner of torment upon him. “Knave! Villain! Did I not forbid you to lay so much as a finger on my daughter?” he asks grimly. “And instead you attack her and seek to violate her innocence?”
“Papa, no!” I cry. “It’s not his fault!”
Papa ignores me. His hand clutches the amulet so hard I think he will crush it. With a groan of agony, Caliban falls to his knees, and then to his side. His body twitches and convulses. The skin that I have just touched writhes unnaturally as his muscles cramp and twist beneath it. The hands that have just touched me with such tenderness scrabble at the earth, pulling up stalks of broom.
“Piece of filth!” Papa’s face is purple with rage. “Oh, ungrateful beast! Would you flee the scene of your vile deed? Would you flee the righteousness of a father’s wrath? Then crawl on your belly like the worm that you are!”
“Papa!”
“Crawl, I say!”
Caliban attempts to crawl on limbs that do not obey him. It is a piteous sight.
“Shall I let you flee? No, I think not.” Papa plants one foot on the back of Caliban’s neck, shoving his face into the grassy bank. He lifts the amulet high. “Indeed, I can think of no reason to suffer you to live.”
There is murder in his voice, and the sound of it makes my blood run cold with terror.
Letting go my torn bodice, I catch Papa’s arm in both hands. “No!” He looks at me in disbelief, but I do not relinquish my grip. “Caliban did not attack me,” I say to him. “How could he? Caliban cannot raise a hand against me in harm. Your own magic precludes it.”
I see myself reflected in Papa’s gaze; bare-breasted, wet-haired, and bedraggled in my torn, soaked gown with grass and petals clinging to it, my skin still flushed with desire. I see him take in the truth of my words, and understand the meaning of them. A look of profound disgust suffuses his features.
Although I am ashamed, I do not let go his arm. No matter what punishment I suffer for it, I will stay his hand.
In the grass, Caliban groans.
“So be it.” Papa jerks his arm from my grasp, lowering the amulet. He takes his foot from Caliban’s neck. Breathing hard, he lowers his voice. “The lad lives. I’ll not shed innocent blood.”
“Thank you, Papa,” I whisper.
Papa shudders and looks away from me. “Begone from my sight, Miranda,” he says. “I do not trust myself to mete out a fitting punishment to you. Until such time as I send for you, confine yourself to your chamber.”
I clasp my torn bodice and curtsy. “Yes, Papa.”
“Go!”
When I turn to depart, I see Ariel. In the shock of the moment, I had not thought to wonder how Papa knew to find Caliban and me, but of course it was Ariel. The spirit’s eyes are dark and I cannot fathom his expression.
He bows his head and lets me pass.
THIRTY-SIX
CALIBAN
Oh, Miranda!
Mirandamirandamiranda.
I hurt.
I hurt so very badly.
But I see your face behind my eyes when I close them and there is love in it. You did see the badness in me and make it beautiful with kisses. You with yellow flowers on your blue gown, and your skin like milk.
I did touch you.
I did tear your gown.
And you did not run, no; you put your breast that was still cold from the stream to my mouth, and I did suck and suck on your pink nipple, and that was the sweetest thing in the everest ever.
You in the sunlight.
You on the grass.
You with the yellow flowers.
THIRTY-SEVEN
MIRANDA
It is three full days before Papa can bring himself to speak to me, and I spend them in a state of suspended terror, awaiting his judgment. I do not stir from my chamber, not even to venture into my garden. Although I have no food to eat, there is water in my wash-basin that I might drink.
One of the silent little gnomes comes every morning to empty my chamber-pot and for once, I am glad they do not speak.
Still, it is a long time to be alone with my thoughts.
I mend my torn bodice, which I am forced to do with red thread that is all that is left in the sewing casket Papa gave me so long ago. Although I try to make my stitches as small as possible, when I have finished a ragged red line of mending meanders down the front of my bodice.
Caliban.
Oh, dear Lord God, how could I have done such a wanton, immodest thing?
Betimes the shame of it flushes my entire body until I feel hot and sick and feverish, my empty stomach heaving in a vain effort to expel the food it does not contain, only the bitter taste of bile in my mouth.
But betimes I think of the longing and hope in Caliban’s eyes; I think of the kisses we traded back and forth like gifts, I think of his mouth on my breast, and it seems to me that there is a curious innocence in it.
A bird sang.
Did a bird sing in the Garden of Eden when Adam and Eve first discovered what it was to love as man and woman, naked and unashamed together beneath the blue skies of heaven?
I do not know.
I do not know.
On the evening of the third day, Papa comes to my bed-chamber. I sit on the edge of my pallet, head bowed, hands clasped before me in a pose of supplication. My body tenses in anticipation of the long-awaited punishment; and yet I think I shall be glad to have done with it. Although I am light-headed with hunger, I am grateful that Papa chose to wait rather than act in anger.
“I have considered,” Papa says without looking at me. It is a cruel irony that now that Caliban can bear the sight of me, Papa cannot. “And I shall not punish you further, child.”
My breath catches in my throat; I am not sure whether it is due to relief or fresh apprehension, for I do not even for a single heartbeat’s worth of time imagine that Papa has forgiven me.
Papa gives me a sideways glinting glance, nostrils flaring with distaste. His grey eyes are stormy and beneath his beard, the line of his jaw is set and hard. “Women
are weak, perfidious creatures,” he says. “Even the best of them may fall victim to their lesser natures. Your mother had the appearance of a virtuous woman during our lives together, Miranda, but after…” He pauses for a moment, scowling at his own dark thoughts. “Would you know why I sought to create a homunculus endowed with her very soul’s memories?”
It is the first time he has spoken of my mother since the incident. “If you would have me know, Papa,” I whisper.
“Suffice it that you understand it is because there came a day when I was given cause to doubt the loyalty and trustworthiness of everyone I knew.” Papa begins pacing the room with such vigor that the amulets strung around his neck rustle and clink. “Some were proven to be traitors indeed; some proven faithful, yet powerless. But your mother … your mother’s true nature, I could not know, for she died in the bearing of you. I could not ask her if she was a faithful and true wife, or if she pinned a cuckold’s horns upon me. Did I have cause to suspect her?” He shakes his head. “No. And yet, I suspected naught of those who took everything from me until the very moment that it came to pass. How could I not suspect her in turn?”
I fix my gaze on my clasped hands and say nothing.
“’Twas not a thought that came to me at the outset,” Papa muses, and I realize he is talking more to himself than to me, as he was wont to do when I was a child. “And yet, here on the isle, betimes I came to wonder: Were you in truth the daughter of my blood and the fruit of my loins, Miranda? Or did your mother betray me, too?”
I glance up with a sharp gasp. “Oh, Papa! Do not say so!”
“Hold your tongue!” he reprimands me, one hand rising to grasp my amulet. I obey. “I made the homunculus with my own seed and a lock of your mother’s hair that I might ask her from beyond the grave if she was a faithful wife and you were, in truth, my daughter.”
He falls silent.
I think of the pale thing floating in its jar, its lips moving as though to speak. In the world beyond my windows, dusk is descending. I can hear swallows twittering in concert and the faint splash of a fountain. In my bed-chamber, the silence stretches until it grows unbearable.