It’s difficult to believe Madame and I had met only four times for tea. Sometimes it seems we have met much more often. At those times, I even wonder how long I’ve been in the country. Days — a week, weeks? Longer! Yet I fled the City immediately after the murder of the Count.
There’s this to consider in accounting for the occasional inexactitude of my perceptions: Each meeting with Madame has been intense, and we’ve roamed through centuries together. Our discussions have assumed a continuity of their own, the subject of them lingering in my mind, extending into my quarters, where, later, I invite memories; and, then, time surrenders its boundaries — the time of day, night, dusk, dawn, even the season. Still, it seems I have been in isolation so much longer. Until, of course, I met Madame Bernice.
Only three teas ago?
There are moments when I feel that I have known her all my life, through all my lives; that she has always been guiding me.
At the beginning of our dissent yesterday, she and I agreed to end our tea and meet earlier today than on previous days, since we have so much to rehearse before interviews.
Heavy fog had thickened the darkness as I walked back to my château. My lantern cast only a pale glow as the candle dimmed. Night erased my hooded shadow within a darkness that followed me past my gates, into my château echoing with loss, and up into my quarters, this time to sleep, only to sleep. I did not invite the invisible audience I previously welcomed into my quarters to rehearse with, as Madame continued to encourage. No, tonight I slept, deep sleep without memories.
Morning!
The day had glimmered like Madame Bernice’s jewelry. From my window, I thrilled to the spectacle of newly blooming silk-floss trees, dark green leaves parted by lavender-pink flowers that burst open into yellow stars.
But now, at tea, our discussion about my life as Medea — a subject I made sure to continue immediately — threatened to compromise the bright mood of the day.
“We’ll be in trouble,” Madame said, “if you claim that your essence knew her essence!”
“I remember the blood at my feet, I —”
“That was a dream!”
I looked at her, darkly. “Then you’ve lied to me,” I said. “You choose what is memory and what are dreams. You lied.”
Madame Bernice faced me. Within the silence that followed, I held my accusation by staring unblinking at her. As she retained her gaze just as steadily on me, I felt a sense of terror, yes, terror, as if I were suddenly adrift in — what? — adrift in nothing. I heard my voice — in total control, wasn’t it? — speaking words I wanted to withdraw the moment they formed: “Madame, have you been lying to me?”
Why didn’t she answer me!
Although during her long silence, which was still extending, I longed to withdraw my question, I was not frantic. I was not frantic! I said calmly: “When we met and you saw me crying —”
I’m not sure whether I spoke more words then, or, if I did not, what I had intended to say, because I was startled by the fact — was it possible? — that it was night. How had it come so quickly? — so quickly that it seemed to have originated in my mind. Had I dozed, was I now dreaming?
“Oh, Lady, how could you distrust me?” Madame’s emphatic words asserted that I was awake. “It was that very question that I was asking myself during my long silence: How could you doubt me?”
How could I have doubted her? Had I? No, this moment revised all the ones that had preceded it. Of course it was not night. The sky was blue, and it was afternoon. My memories had become so real that past skies had become present skies. I was now sure that during a momentary disorientation I had been remembering the sky over the Black Sea.
“Lady, I only wish that I had disbelieved you, because the task in which I immediately joined you is daunting. What I said to you from the memorable moment that we met is so. What reason would I have to lie to you? I’m committed to our mutual goal — may I say that it has become mutual by now?”
I was only too glad to nod.
“Of course, your essence knew Medea — and just as vividly as you remember. You’re right that truth becomes a lie by editing and selection. Now let’s drink our tea. It’s the brew we both enjoyed so the first time, remember? I asked my cook to prepare these heavenly delights again.”
Brightened by the release of the earlier tension, Ermenegildo strained to peer into the silver platter, as if selecting his pastry; Madame discreetly set it aside for him.
“Still,” Madame continued, very carefully, “might we compromise and say that your eternal essence as a blamed woman only peered into Medea’s soul —?”
Oh, she was relentless!
“— and for a moment, only a moment, lingered — and then fled just at the point when she —?”
“I lived through the depth of her despair,” I said — and those words opened the wound that was carved by love and desire from the very beginning, and deepened —
— on the waters of the Hellespont when I sailed with Jason, laughing with him, loving him. I was beautiful the way only a woman of tragic destiny is beautiful, with despair. My eyes were savage — like daggers, they said, like green daggers cutting across a swarthy complexion, dark gold in the sun, dark brown in moonlight. Jason and I made love on the Golden Fleece that he had searched for in my country, where the precious hide hung in a sacred grove guarded fiercely. I made the treasure his — ours! — through cruel, bloody sacrifices.
To Jason and to the violence of the sea, I bared my breasts, dark lush fruit. His hands clasped them, and I lowered them to his starved mouth. He licked them until they gleamed with his saliva. “I desire you, my savage beautiful Medea, I love you, my barbarian wife, promise you’ll stay as you are, always, promise!” The sea whirled about us and heard my oath: “I vow it, forever!”
“And I’ll desire and love you, forever, Medea, forever,” Jason breathed.
Waves of night grappled with the sea and thrust his words back in a roar.
Under tossing sails of his triumphant ship, my dark body under his fair body, his fair body under my dark body, I taught him to be a barbarian. He probed and entered every orifice in me, and I explored his. No part of my naked body was left untouched by his tongue, nor any part of his by mine. His mouth between my legs sought eagerly to locate the exact origin of my moist desire, and found it, as my lips embraced his arousal, which I buried into my throat.
I taught him to remain in me for a length of time he had not dreamt possible. I opened my legs, coaxing his naked hips higher. I spread my thighs wider so he could enter me deeper. Still, I ground against him, demanding even deeper probing. I clasped my legs about him, locking him in me, unmoving, keeping him at that height, within that deepest depth. Fused, we rode waves of sensation, reached what was the highest until I unclasped my legs for only a moment so that we rose on another crest, just as another overtook it and peaked, surpassed itself, and still there was another.
I flung my head back to the night, and pulled away from him, only so that the moist tip of his arousal kissed the opening at my legs, and then I slid down, back to the deepest depth we had located, and he filled me and I filled him, joined so close that it was as if his body was brown, mine fair, his fair, mine brown, both glowing with the mutual sweat of our passion as we reached crest after crest, mine meeting his, challenging his to rise higher, his meeting my challenge, which I challenged again, and we spilled bursts of love and desire as turbulent waves of the sea swept over our bodies and I shouted his vow that was now mine, that was now ours:
“Forever!”
I must have been speaking some of these memories aloud, at tea with Madame Bernice, because I had begun to notice her trying to get my attention by emitting a few, at first delicate, coughs, coughs that increased aggressively. Until then, I had taken her subdued sounds to be a reaction to a chill in the air during this seasonless season.
“Madame?”
“Lady. I didn’t mean to interrupt your vivid, indeed graphic, recollec
tions —”
She had, of course.
“— I simply remembered something I wanted to be sure not to forget — and might if I became even slightly more overwhelmed by your very graphic memories.” She paused — Madame Bernice is very attentive to the pauses necessary to effectively shift a subject. “Now!” Her peremptory word brought back the afternoon entirely. “We must assume that our vast undertaking and our intention to reveal everything at interviews will become increasingly known to hostile elements. I have a strong feeling that there is already afoot a powerful attempt to keep interviews from occurring.”
“What form do you fore —” I rejected that word. “What form do you suppose that ambush might take?”
To my distress, Madame closed her eyes, pressed her hands at her temples as if preparing deepest concentration. When I reared back from the possibility that she might, before my very eyes, proceed to fall into a mystic trance, she laughed aloud. “That isn’t how it’s done, Lady, except by charlatans.”
I’m becoming very fond of Madame’s humor and surprises.
She leaned toward me, as if even her whispered words might be overheard. “I’m not sure how. We must be constantly alert to any development. There are enormous stakes involved, powerful forces and factions — and they are powerful —”
“— the Count du Muir’s brother, their sister Irena, the Pope, a spy, perhaps even the man in the château on the hill —” I reiterated, feeling a compulsion to lessen the gravity of Madame’s admonition by donating identities to it and omitting the ominous Enquirer, the possible hired Inquisitor.
“We must keep in mind how strongly our revelations threaten certain parties, a threat to centuries of unjust blame. Once we question those, other entrenched lies may be exposed. A whole structure of deceit may be revealed.” Madame stopped to add gravity. “It’s possible that whatever is being planned as ambush may occur when we’re not together; so we must be in constant touch. I’ve devised a plan. Now listen closely, Lady:
“Since the largest window in your chambers faces mine across the way, if anything untoward occurs at night, stand there with a candle and move it up and down and I’ll respond. I shall do the same. In the daytime, when we’re not together at tea, we’ll use reflections on mirrors and on windowpanes.” She went on to fashion an ingenious alphabet of messages, short and long flashes, slow and fast, up, down, across.
Did she know more than she was telling me? Did she have knowledge of definite developments of danger? Was that the real reason why the matter of the enquiring Inquisitor had come up? Was she shielding me, not wanting to alarm me during this crucial period of rehearsals? Her determination that we must be in touch at all times made me even more aware of her commitment to our goal — and of the import and dangers of our journey — but I was not afraid.
With typical aplomb, she shifted our discussion — away from impending peril, away from my life as Medea: “Now have your tea and tell me, Lady, please — I’ve waited quite long — the truth about the War in Heaven.” Her eyes closed, to visualize it all.
Was I up to describing robed priests, plagues, fires, hailstorms, shooting stars, more plagues? No. But how could I refuse her? Her eyes had remained closed. I began: “God adored the angel Lucifer, the most beautiful angel, but He merely tolerated Cassandra.”
“Oh, but of course she would annoy Him,” Madame greeted that with a fond chuckle.
“Lucifer had loved God. But after he and Cassandra and the other rebellious angels soared into spheres and whorls of blue skies beyond God’s Heaven —” My voice grew weary.
Madame detected that. “I needed only a hint of it all,” she said. “Let’s roam another day through the battlefields of Heaven.”
I finished my tea. Madame summoned Ermenegildo for the pastry she had reserved for him, mumbling something to him — this is not a judgment, Madame does sometimes mumble.
When we part, Madame and I, we are true to our breeding. We exchange formal pleasantries, but we know our ordinary words are asserting our steadfast closeness and trust. We are, after all, conspirators against history.
As I walked onto the road, I shielded my face with my cowl. I do not like the sting of night’s coldness on my face. Unbreathing, the candle in my lantern seemed hypnotized by the night. I encountered a cluster of sad wanderers from the City. They must be newly arrived in the country, since they fled from me, unlike the others who now recognize me and most often only retreat into shadows. These wanderers are not violent, only defeated. Even if one of them were prone to attempt an outrage, he would be subdued by the others.
As I neared my château, I saw what I thought was a figure moving toward me out of the darkness, as if a piece of the night itself had been severed, had moved, and now stood there for moments. I held my lantern up, undaunted, like a shield. The dark presence was not there. It had been an impression created by the shadows.
But this was not:
A piece of paper was attached to the grillwork of my gate. I held my lantern to it. I read, written in bold red letters that dripped like blood down the jagged paper:
“Whore! Stop your lies!”
VII
I’M IN MY CHAMBERS. It’s night. I stand at the window, facing Madame’s château. Should I initiate communication with her now about the warning posted on my gate or shall I wait until tomorrow’s tea?
I can see Madame in her quarters. Her head is bowed. Is she praying? I have long inferred that she is, in her own way, a religious woman. She kneels. Is she holding a rosary? I’ve entertained the notion that at some time in her life she may have taken holy vows. She straightens up now, lifts her head. In exaltation? She’s rising. Oh, she was looking for one of her rings, which she had dropped and just found. I see her put it on her finger.
I hold my lantern up, its candle lit. With one hand, I cover its light, uncover it — three flashes. I wait, repeat the sequence. The signal is returned! Madame is alert to the testing of our system of communication. The proof that it works does not relax me. I listen to silence. Oh, I have heard it. It contains unscreamed screams, protests, pleading whispers. I cover my ears.
Still, I hear it, like the insistent wail of a hurt child. Night is so vast. I feel its magnitude. I close my eyes to it and replace that darkly glowering sky with the pure sky of Eden under which I first saw Adam. Oh, Adam, Adam, you’re always with me, the first, the most beloved, my lover through eternity. Our love is made even greater by the subsequent lovers I was destined to encounter in each succeeding life in my journey of redemption. As my essence embarks on its newly discovered journey, it is locked to you from the beginning of time, forever.
Within my quarters, populated only by my memories of past lives, sounds assume a presence. I hear — or do I feel? — footsteps within that void of sound. They stop. I have had today’s meals, always left outside by my most trusted servant. I keep the doors of my quarters locked, of course. They will be triumphantly opened when Madame Bernice agrees that we have reached the exact time to grant interviews. A muffled, quick movement outside my door.
I have a gun, the gun Irena planted in my hand. The gun is always near me in my chambers. When I sit on a chair, I place it next to me. When I lie in bed, I locate it beside me. When I walk about the room, I keep relocating it. I will use it if necessary.
Has whoever left the messages at the gate of my château bribed the suspicious maid to let him in and is he — or she — they! — now leaving further warnings outside my quarters? Earlier, there was a clanging at the gates.
There it is again!
I get my gun, I listen closely at the door.
Nothing.
I breathe in relief. I secure the lock, the key always in place should I have to escape — From — To — Within the thick silence, I hear the lock click as loudly as the clanging gates of a prison. I return the gun to its place.
I must — I must — I must —
A scream!
It invades my rooms!
I wait for
its echo. None. Did it occur? I realize this with relief: I had closed my eyes, and in that moment I dreamt — yes, that had been a dream — I dreamt that a woman screamed. Her scream has rendered me fully awake, auguring a sleepless night.
I shall follow Madame’s instructions and continue to rehearse with you, those I have allowed into my quarters in preparation for interviews, when I shall replace lies with truth, and redefine the word “whore,” and reveal that in me lodges the essence of every fallen woman unjustly blamed, whom I shall redeem —
I hear your sounds of cynicism. Why are you, whom I’ve graciously invited in, so skeptical, so immediately? I shall disarm you more slowly.
There was a flower that grew only in Eden, a flower so glorious it did not need the decoration of leaves —
I do not have to rehearse that memory. It’s firm in my mind. But that was a start. I hope that you may become my ally, at least some of you, in my journey of redemption.
I shall convince you of my commitment to truth by withholding nothing, no matter how painful. How shall I do so immediately? Yes! In an even voice, I shall read aloud more of the gross lies that attempt to taint my love for the Count du Muir, and his for me. I reach for the sullying sheets of the “First Installment” of this outrage:
The Writer of this True Account — aware that the Reader (confronted with this Chronicle of assaults on everything deemed honorable) may have chosen a respite before embarking further on this necessary exposure of corruption — here reminds that the Whore had intercepted the Noble Count’s carriage (on its way from a gala at the opera) by pretending that she was a lady pursued by an attacker with a knife, actually her conspirator, the Reverend Pimp.
When the Count opened the door, he was overwhelmed by pity for the woman sobbing out a litany of false abuse at the hands of men. A kind soul, as kind as he was handsome, as handsome as he was rich, the Count attempted to soothe her, continuing to cover her nudity with his cape while she slyly persisted in causing it to slip off her salacious flesh, exposed for his uninitiated eyes. (The interior of coaches was not foreign to her; she had often sold her services in the same setting.)