Finally, I longed to see the sun the more. I packed what I had brought with me—my honor, my name, my troth, my kisses, and made to pass three-necked Cerberus once more.
But, came the voice of the Cold Queen. You have eaten of the pomegranate.
Rather a lot of pomegranate, said the Fiery King. And some grapes as well. And venison.
What is the punishment? said I.
To stay as many months of the year as you have eaten, Persephone laughed, and was glad, to trick as she had been tricked. Every girl deserves her day.
Ah, but I have bargained with Death, and she has vouchsafed me fifty years in the land of the living, I countered. I will return when I have done with Death’s sentence, and serve out my time with my Lord and my Lady.
They called it good, and so did I, and we spat in our hands on the bargain. I walked up the long stair once more and into the French wood, where I found my fellow mummers but waking from their night’s sleep and ready to press on to the next town after a few sausages and pears had been enjoyed over a morning’s fire.
My father, like his son, bed, wed, and bred; some of these better than others, some worse.
As many days as seeds I eat.
I am quite sure the sun and the earth have worked it out between the two of them, and like a good babe I do not meddle in the quarrels of my parents.
Of a certainty. I knew a vampire once in Kiev, who would only drink the blood of Boyars. He ate their beards, too, leaving them quite enervated and foolish-looking. They would present themselves to their Tsar only to find their laws unwritten, their advice unheard, and their taxes due. My vampire friend, who was called Robertus, passed unnoticed through their ranks, drinking blood and influence until he was quite fat and unpresentable in society. But by then the Mongols had come with their short beards and horses and disinterest in writing laws. Robertus had drunk so much influence that all simply presumed him to be the Tsar of Rus, even the Tsar Ivan and his wife Yelena, who bowed to him and hoped he might marry one of their daughters. Unfortunately, this meant the Khan had Robertus beheaded with a quickness. When they took off his head, however, they discovered his body was empty save the hair of a century’s worth of long, pointed beards, which spilled out over the floor, and all the Boyars seized them once more. The beards affixed themselves gratefully to the lords’ chins, and all was as it had been except that they were all Mongols now and no longer Rus.
Poor bastard—but let us have it as a lesson to move with the times!
I am a light sleeper, madam, and every time sleep tries to take a century from me the turning of January startles me awake.
I have seventeen daughters—ten wicked, five fair, and two bishops.
I believe Simon had at them with a spoon until they agreed to be courtesans like their father wanted.
I have heard of the Wall, but am assured that I could never stand near it, for I would be burnt quite up.
The state of my soul is my private affair. But look, come near, I will open my mouth as children do for the village doctor, and you may glimpse a bit of my soul sticking out, and judge for yourself if it possesses sufficiency.
As long as my wives do not miss me.
As many months as caskets of wine resting in the dark.
Fifty years, of which I have forty remaining. Possibly thirty. Oh, how the time goes on ahead of a man, such horses dragging his cart through the mud and the rain and the sun and the snow.
JUPITER, HOT AND MOIST
When we go to war, we have fourteen golden and bejeweled crosses borne before us instead of banners. Each of these crosses is followed by ten thousand horsemen and one hundred thousand foot soldiers, fully armed, without reckoning those in charge of the luggage and provision.
When we ride abroad plainly we have a wooden, unadorned cross without gold or gems about it, borne before us in order that we meditate on the sufferings of our Lord Jesus Christ; also a golden bowl filled with earth to remind us of that whence we sprung and that to which we must return; but besides these there is borne a silver bowl full of gold as a token to all that we are the Lord of Lords.
—The Letter of Prester John
1165
THE CONFESSIONS
A rhythm formed; I felt mechanized. My eyes flitted, back and forth, from the blue book and its pale violet pages swimming with perfume, swimming with bluebell and plum and a deep, unsettling musk. My gaze was steady, fluid—the blue pages to mine, over and over, my attention a little silver spoon dipping into the war, into the winged girl and the bull-astronomer and emptying itself onto my own solid, assured page, in my own solid, assured hand, a page the color pages are meant to be, the ink smelling a little of iron, a little of wax, and that’s all.
The danger of rhythm is its lull. I found myself soon drifting to sleep, as the moon came down, drifting to dreams and the long, lightless river that flows along the bottom of unconsciousness. In and out, the spoon moving, the man still, and all scribes know that distant feeling, as though he hovers over his text in a silk balloon—he knows what he is writing, can feel the text moving through his brain, but it is just so separate from him. His hand cribbing along looks like the hand of another man; his breath comes so slowly, and he can almost guess what the next line of the original will be before he glances over to capture it. Mechanized, perfect, oh, we will waste no ink this time! No scratching out, no imperfectly declined nouns, why, you could almost do it sleeping.
I was only a man. I am only a man. It was only that I was so tired. So much to do, so little time, and my body drifted away from my purpose. I dreamt.
Hiob stands beside me, and he stands in a river, a river of impossible colors, so many and flowing so quickly I cannot even name them before they’re gone.