Twenty years ago, nearly twenty years ago I had punished him for saying that.
“Child,” I said, as I had said then, “You will not cross me—” And I snapped apart the fractured bone I had just set.
It woke him. He stared at me in full comprehension, and utter disbelief. His other arm was bound at his side; the shoulder was broken. His legs were bound to heavy splints. There was nothing free but this hand, which I held between my own.
“I will teach you to cross me—” I spoke through my teeth, and broke apart another balanced fracture.
He gave a soundless scream, neck arched in agony, gasping for air. He looked as though he were drowning. The fish hooked one final time—
I began to weep, now, myself, as I finished the work he had begun, methodically twisting and cracking the bones in his hand beyond any hope of repair.
I know, I know, how ugly a vengeance this was. I am sorry I did it. But even in my regret I am selfish. I am not sorry that I punished Medraut; I am only sorry that I so thoroughly destroyed the hand I loved so well. I still dream of his hands. They are whole, in my dreams.
I bound and bandaged the hand in its wrecked state, and it took Medraut three days of begging and pleading and threatening Huarwar, and the others who tended him, before he was able to convince them to go against my ordinance and remove the bindings. When they discovered what had I had done they banished me from his side for over a month. Oh, they could not have stopped me seeing him if I had insisted, but he never asked for me in all that time, and I felt I must wait.
He never did send for me, but he overruled my exile at last. I came to his bedside one afternoon like a visitor to a convalescent in a monastery. For all my anger I ached at seeing how helpless he was still; he had not attempted to walk since his legs had been broken, the shattered shoulder was not strong enough to bear his weight when he tried to raise himself up on one elbow, and the hand, the hand—
“They cut your hair,” I said.
“Fever.”
I leaned over and ran my fingers through the short and tangled mane. The lightness of it made him look like a child. “Don’t,” he said, wincing away from my touch.
I drew back a little. “I used to plait it for you,” I said.
He tried to shrug, then uttered bitterly, “But usually I had to plait it myself, and that would be difficult now.”
“Yes,” I said slowly. “That is true. Is the hand healing?”
“As may be,” he muttered.
“Let me see.”
He held it out to me in defiance, stubbornly battling fear. I carefully undid the bandages and removed the splints. He held very still as gently, gently, I tested the tendons, felt the setting bones, examined the newly healed scars.
“Your hands are beautiful,” I said at last.
“I had been vain of them,” he whispered.
“The scars will fade in time,” I said. “Who reset the last three fingers?”
“I did.”
“That was bravely done,” I said, and bent again over the hand, in admiration. “I taught you well. Those fingers are straight and whole as they ever were, except that they do not bend.”
“You tore the tendons,” he said bitterly “The joints were ruined beyond repair.”
I let his hand fall back onto his chest, but did not let go of it.
“I could have done that to your wrist, which I set also,” I said softly, “Or your legs.”
He closed his eyes and drew a sharp, haggard breath. I saw the shiver go through him. “Why didn’t you?” he said.
“Medraut, you are the most beautiful and splendid lover I have ever had. And you are my son. I could not cripple you.”
“Your lover and your son,” he repeated in quiet. “You have crippled me.”
There was one time, still before Medraut was able to walk, when I thought I would go mad with knowing that he lay so close to me day in, day out, and that I could not hold his powerful and comely body pulsing inside mine yet one more time. When I came to him, as ever, he could neither deny nor hide how quickly his passion for me kindled; but it was a strange and sad thing to find his frame and form so changed with illness, and I wish I had not forced him. Pitiably cautious, he held his arm carefully away from our bodies as we pressed against each other in this last lovemaking, too fearful of jarring his damaged hand to lose himself in desire.
It was well into October before he could walk any distance, and he came to me then to tell me he was leaving. I turned from the dressing table where I was seated before the candles and the mirrors, and asked him when.
“Tomorrow morning. I will take passage to the mainland with one of the fishermen.”
“It’s too late to travel to Camlan this year.”
“I won t stay.”
He did not say it, but I could well imagine that he was thinking: I would rather freeze to death in a snowstorm in the Caledonian highlands than risk another winter of suffering and slaving at your hands.
I closed my eyes, and sighed deeply.
“You are polite and gracious as ever to dare to bid me goodbye.”
“Well, Godmother,” he said in a quiet voice, “I can scarcely bear to think of leaving you. But even Odysseus left Calypso at last.”
He could have called me so many evil names, and chose Calypso. Calypso, the sea nymph, the lover. Calypso, who let Odysseus go his way at last. I bowed my head against my hand, leaning on the dressing table, and could not answer him. He stood gazing at me, unmoving, his sound right hand gripping the back of a chair, because he was still unsteady on his feet.
The silence was complete. One of the tapers guttered on the iron tine that held it, and I put it out by crushing its flame beneath two outstretched fingers. I held my hand still like that for a few moments, fingertips resting in hot wax, but did not flinch; as if somehow Medraut’s words were burning into me as well, through the quenched flame.
I folded my hands in my lap and raised my head.
“Well, I think we should bid one another goodnight, then.”
I stood up and began putting out the candles one by one, dousing all their flames between my fingers or beneath the palm of my hand, and then began killing the lights in the oil lamps with the same self-destructive vehemence.
Medraut said gently, “Godmother, you will hurt your hands,” and took them in his own, the hands I had crippled. “Now stop,” he said. “Just stop.”
I turned my face to his, and he let go of my hands.
“You truly mean to go.”
“I must,” he said.
I raised my hand, and he flinched. Still he flinched.
But all I did was to kiss the tips of my sootblackened fingertips and touch his lips with them.
“All right. Good night.”
“Goodbye.”
“Good night now, and goodbye in the morning.”
I do not understand why I should feel so betrayed and abandoned now that he has gone. Have I not sent him off to do my bidding, trained him in poison, tutored him in the art of fear? Have I have not twisted and torqued his stubborn loyalty to his father with a tormented loyalty to me: his father’s sister, his mother, his lover? I still dream of his hands.
Attachments
Pat Murphy
MY BROTHER’S WIFE ADELAIDE pours me a glass of cider and smiles at me sadly. I love my brother’s wife, and that’s the problem.
The year is 1874 and I am sixty-three years old. I am playing chess with the learned Dr. Ruschenberger while my brother, at my side as always, tells dirty jokes to the doctor’s assistant. My brother’s laughter — braying, foolish laughter — rumbles against my side as I contemplate my next move. He calls to his beautiful wife for another glass of whiskey.