The Tell-Tale House of Usher

more determined to have her. Finally, as I could wait no more, I called out to her.

  "You must stop before I go out of my mind." Brute honesty has its charms.

  "I beg your pardon," she said. "My harmless little walk about is to blame for your impending insanity? If you're to go mad then you'd best continue on. I've had my fill of crazy people. Marriage will do that to one. Take heed."

  "Oh, you're married. And your husband's family is insane?"

  "He is dead. They, unfortunately, are all very much alive."

  "I'm looking for a wife." With that statement I had bumped up against the limits of brute honesty.

  "Oh, you ridiculous infant." She said it with disgust but also a hint of playfulness. "Goodbye," she said, "our time is drawing to a close." And with that she began walking away.

  "Wait," I called out after her. "I'm hunting tomorrow. I will bring you back good meat and some beautiful pelts."

  "I don't want for food and I haven't a great taste for meat. However you may bring me the pelts the day after tomorrow just before sunset at the house of my cousin, Pamat, the scribe. I'm staying there this week and next. Leopard skins, I think. I expect them to be scraped and clean and smelling of spices – sweet, rare spices. Otherwise, I won't accept them."

  I was about to speak to her again but she raised her hand and waved me off. "We are done now. Till we meet again." And I let her go.

  I was from then on an instrument of the Gods; not one minute of my time was wasted, not one thought given to anything other than my objective of impressing this woman. I contacted tanners and craftsmen from my father's estate. They had to be found amidst the crowd and bribed to get them back to their houses ready for the tasks ahead. How they would manage to tan and prepare the skins I brought back in one day, I couldn't imagine; I told them to pray and prepare. I located two of my brothers and a friend and told them I had to make large kills in a hurry – all for the love of a woman. They rolled their eyes and laughed; their revels and drink they left reluctantly but all agreed to accompany me that night to begin our hunt instead of waiting for the next day.

  To be sure of catching leopards we would need to venture further out than originally planned. They hunt at night and we would stalk the game that they do. Already we had been told of an antelope herd gone to Thet-fur, the spring in the hills above Kesh; we had planned on getting to them on their return to the lower desert but now I was sure we could by stealth meet them this night and, the Gods willing, bag the leopards tempted to make meals of them. I prayed to Neith as goddess of the hunt. My brothers rallied their attendants and we were a party of six experienced hunters and some dozen retainers that set off into the declining day on our chariots and horses, the servants trailing behind us on donkeys and carts. It was to be a journey of many hours but we still had daylight and when Nuit again swallowed Ra, the sun, we would have Khonsu, god of the Moon and lover of games, to light our way.

  It was many hours into the night when we began to ascend the hills. We could see from a distance the small forest that grew in the oasis of the natural springs. Here the leopards could make their kills, then drag them up the trees to keep them away form the other large cats. There might even be lions about, an irresistible thought but a distraction perhaps from my goal of bagging four leopards. Still, a lion – what a prize to throw at the feet of any woman. She could not but see me as one worthy of respect and fear, an excellent position for her future husband. And the smell of fear on a woman – not too much mind you, just enough – is a powerful incitement to love.

  We all held back, allowing for any big cats to hunt in their stealth. Within an hour of arrival at the spring, we were witness to six leopards tearing into the herd. It was an unusual sight, as they are solitary hunters and I took it as a sign of the Gods' favor. We then quickly descended on the massacre, hunting both predator and prey. Never have arrows flown truer. Seven of mine found four of the leopards. The other two were bagged by one of my brothers. In the distance we could hear but not see a lion roaring. We continued killing until we had culled a tenth of the antelope herd.

  My brothers and friends would return immediately with me while the others, the servants with their donkeys and carts made camp for the night. They would stay behind and begin to prepare the antelope carcasses for travel the next day. Those of us returning were six chariots, each with a leopard secured to it's front so that our bodies were pressed against the still fresh kills, the animal heat warming us in the chilly desert air. By the time we arrived home, their carcasses were stone cold.

  I brought her the skins, smelling as sweet as a virgin's bath and I took her that night on each one of them, spilling my seed six times before collapsing in blissful exhaustion.

  I brought her to my father's house so that she could see for herself the wealth and importance of my family and the wisdom of binding herself to such an entity by marrying me. My family was cool toward her, even my father initially, whom she especially tried to charm, though my brothers could certainly appreciate her attractions. My mother in particular scorned her, referring to her only as "that old woman". Certainly at 28 she was a generation removed from the girls in our family who became brides at 12 and 13. My mother had married at 15 and there had been talk as to what had kept her waiting so long. But my father came to appreciate her sex and was pleased that she had previously married well and profitably. After examining her accounts and receiving confirmation from his doctor that she was healthy and still fertile, he was satisfied that this would make a good match and so gave his blessing.

  The circumstances of our first meeting seem to be so obviously a harbinger of the blood lust of Sekhmet as embodied in my wife, that I curse that idiot, my own youthful self, for not seeing the horror to come. Sekhmet was stayed from spilling the blood of all mankind by intoxication; my wife remained sober and deadly.

  It took only a year of joyful gratification followed by two dead children ejected from her womb, as though they chose death rather than be mothered by such a woman, to begin the rupture between us. Then several years of increasing estrangement made life with her unbearable. Our customs regarding divorce and inheritance ensured payment to the wife of one third of the estate and I was loath to pay it – better to starve her under my roof than see her feast under her own. She had inherited wealth in her own right from her dead husband, but she had so mismanaged it and used up the principle for trifles that there was little else of value left in her estate by the fifth year of our marriage. She became what I had sworn never to abide – a woman whose ambitions ran contrary to my own. I endured our marriage in order to keep an eye on her, she who had become my enemy but I then took other wives and this sparked a true fury in my first that would grow until her murderous rage consumed my most beloved third wife, Akana and the children she bore me.

  I won't subscribe to the folly of the bereaved by exaggerating the good qualities of Akana. She could be petty and quick to anger but she delighted in all children, not just her own. She knew how to keep her husband wanting her body, begging her kisses and she made me laugh and I adored her for it. And though she was an innocent of fifteen when we married, she proved to have impressive command of household management and began taking on responsibilities strategically designed to choke the influence of my first wife. Their relationship hardly needed more conflicts but room was made for an ever-increasing store of them.

  I haven't mentioned my second wife, Miu – married for her womb rather than her looks – for she was too good natured and self-sufficient to merit a page in this sad history. I had taken a second wife to give me an heir because, let me tell you, I would sooner have burned and laid waste all my possessions than leave them to the son of my first wife. Miu was a wise soul who tolerated me with good humor but always reserved herself for herself. She was a good mother but I think even her children felt this distance, though she was not so remote as to deny them love. They were loved and she loved me too, I think, but she needed the comforts and stability I could provide; she didn't
need me.

  She brought into the household two of her brothers, fearsome young men that functioned as her body guards, for she knew the reputation of my first wife and made it known to her that though she was a gentle soul, behind her stood mountains of flesh that would destroy anyone who dared disrupt her inner peace. She also made it known that she had no ambition or desire to in any way run the household or my first wife and that she, my first wife, could have as free a hand as I would allow her. Her brothers stayed only long enough to make her point but returned regularly to refresh it.

  Her wisdom kept her far removed from the other two and their battles; she was most content weaving – beautifully, I might add – by the side of the lotus pool in her private garden, keeping an eye on the younger children and instructing the older ones in their chores. She had insisted on privacy and an apartment inviolate, with a garden, in her own area at the edge of our compound. Distance, always distance with her until events came running into her, bloodying her hands as they cupped the dying head of Akana. It was she who secured the compound in the hours after the tragedy and sent armed men to hunt down the cut-throats and others