Somnium Read online

  We danced and danced; a moment when we paused she insisted that, thenceforth, when we were quite alone, then I should call her ‘Cynthia’ instead of ‘Mistress Brown’ (though I should always call her by the latter in company, and especially in that of her husband, whose nature, I know full well, it tends toward the jealous). And, although I sought it not, when we were both too drunk for further dancing and I asked her to release me to my room, she kissed me a most fond goodnight. And I confess I did not stop her; neither the first time, nor the second. I looked back as I climbed the stairs and thought that, with the slightest invitation, she would have followed on; I had not thought that I would ever see a woman looking at me quite so sweet and tender as I took myself to bed. And such a gentle smile. Indeed, although I know that I was rather more the drunk than she, I found it hard, I must confess, to turn my back on her. Perhaps the fact that she, too, has such large and bright brown eyes, reminded me of my dearest Liz, and somehow saved me from my baser instincts. Though having written that, I cannot think of why it should.

  I dreamt of lovely women in a hall made quite of moonlight, dancing young and naked in my arms, and laughing oh-so-sweet. And all their kisses, each and every one, were nectar and ambrosia.

  This morning, being Sunday, I was suddenly awoken by the foul Jude Brown (I think with viciousness and malevolent perversity) at ten of the clock; it greatly did annoy me. One of the reasons that I chose this inn, rather than one in a village further on from London, was because there is no church to be found upon the hill. And so I was disgusted, then, to be informed by the unspeakable Brown that the assembly room (scene last night of such debauch) doubles as a chapel on Sunday mornings, and that a quite insufferable travelling preacher called Kinnock (I will not call him ‘Reverend’, because from me he deserves no reverence at all) holds weekly service there for staff and guests, hectoring them as to their supposed sins and moralising tediously in a way that hardly would convince a puling child. Being my first weekend upon the premises, I felt obliged to attend for the sake of appearance; though I noticed that foul Brown’s fairest wife did not, and so I wondered why I did besides. I need hardly add that I spent the entire hour of Kinnock’s ridiculous sermonising praying fervently to Diana, Jove and any of the other elder Gods who might be listening, that the damnable wretch might be accosted by highwaymen, or hauled off to the Clink for debt, or struck down with the French pox, or somehow otherwise detained before he gets the opportunity to return here and torment me with his inanities next Sunday.

  And when at last I had escaped, dear Mistress Brown she looked at me and shook her head, and on her face was such a puzzled smile. I wanted then to rush to her and make some explanation; but then we both saw ‘Judas’ Brown nearby, a smirking sneer upon his face, and I know she understood just how I had been tricked.

  I came back up to my room to find my copy of Mr Taylor’s recent translation of The Hymns of Orpheus; and when I had I chanted out aloud the ‘Hymn to the Moon’ until I felt the air was clean. I think, each night from now, I’ll chant it over again at dusk, by way of invocation. This is the only book I have with me; I rather wish I’d brought my Vathek.

  The incident did depress me. I’d thought that leaving depraved and sinful London I’d leave behind besides the vile patriotism, tricks and lies, the thievish ways, hypocrisy, cant and Christian church (for all of these to me are sin and foul corruption); and yet they’re even here. I almost thought to catch the coach, and suffer back at home, where at least there is my Lizzie. Yet here there is dear Cynthia, and if I can but wish away the rest…

  Yet if I had but one wish, I know, it would be this: to restore somehow the pagan world, its religion and its art; and more than this, its freedoms. Mr Taylor, I know, he feels the same; yet even if he only speaks of Plato, still the poor man is abused. I feel the loss of all the Christians have destroyed; and more I feel the loss of all that could have been besides. What epics and romances might have echoed down the years, what hymns to sweetest Goddess, what poems of the Moon divine. Who knows, in Somnium, or other things I’ll write, it may be mine to write a pagan literature of the present day (or not too distant past). I wish I’d been at Placentia or Nonsuch, to write the Virgin Queen in Diana’s fairest form, like Lyly, Ralegh and the rest. Yet born too late, I have to write the Moon as she appears to me; and always ere the last few days, she has been Lizzie… and now I do not know…

  Dinner done, I took a nap. I know now why I call my story Somnium; because I am quite sure this is a hill of dreams. I hardly stop, from candle-out to sun-up, and now I find they continue in the afternoon. I dream of Liz. I dream of Cynthia Brown. I dream of dear Diana, the sweetest Goddess of the Moon (though always in my dreams, somehow, she insists upon the Greek original of her name: Selene). They kiss me in my sleep. They come to me all naked. I wake and wonder where they are; and hate myself for waking. And now I have to find a way to write all this. Ideas I had to write before I came here, all seem nothing now. But dream and wine, they turn my mind quite upside down.

  And more, I drink and then I dream, and lovely women quite apart, my dreams are full of palaces. Great spires and towers, and grandiosities the like I never thought; so ‘Somnium’ is now a palace of the Moon, all builded up of dream-stuff, that sprawls on ancient Shooters Hill. And I know somehow The Bull’s a small part of that much-beloved and all-too-awesome structure, a gatehouse to the world of lunar dream. And Cynthia, or Liz, or Diana, I cannot tell them quite apart, especially when they’re naked; they wait for me and beckon, sadly smiling, calling me home from all this weary world of dust. They are so sweetly tender; if only I knew how I could accompany them, then home with them I’d go.

  But what’s to do except to make this so by writing? So supper done tonight, and claret to support me, I’ll dip the pen and start again. With someone rather lovely.

  Whether she was merely Queen of all the World, or in everything below the Starry Sphere the Goddess, he could not tell, but thought her both and more besides. He looked the once upon her exquisite grace, and saw a vision like to break his heart. If ever there was loveliness under heaven, then it was she, and never was there other.

  She sat, enthroned, upon a marble dais, and all around were sylphs the equal of that lovely one who’d led him in. And as those nymphs looked down, from high above, on all the mortal women of the world, so she who ruled here yet surpassed them still, and many times the more besides. She was, in short, the perfection of all the beauty that ever ravished up man’s soul, quite since the star-bespangled universe began.

  He looked, he loved. What more to say?

  Down on a knee he went, and bowed his head; and knew, without her licence, he’d never rise again. And hardly a breath was heard to break the silence of that silvered palace room.

  ‘Good sir,’ she said at last, and with her voice the Music of the Spheres matched absolute harmonious. ‘This gallant gesture of respect does you the greatest credit, but now you must decide. If terror has unmanned you quite, then merely nod your head, and within the hour you’ll awake, and think this naught but dream. If, though… and I believe it so… you have the mettle, then pray look up, for I would rather see your eyes than look down on your pate.’

  ‘As my lady wishes,’ he began, the slightest smile upon his lips, and would have more continued. But once his eyes were to their work again, his tongue was frozen stiff.

  She sat among those white-clad nymphs, alone a blaze of colour. Gold sandals clasped her small and dainty feet, and wound their gilded thongs about her graceful ankles. Belted tight around her narrow waist, a brocade skirt of cobalt blue, threaded through with beaded gold, cascaded down in broad and tumbling flounces. Above, the neckline of a clinging bodice, welkin-bright and trimmed in gilt, plunged navelwards and left exposed more fairest flesh than ever he had thought to see. About her shoulders, a wide-spaced pectoral mesh of shining gold was studded all with moonstones huge, with gleamy mottled turquoise, with crystals bright a-sparkle; while necklaces of massy pea
rls hung down in ropes between her lovely naked breasts, so round, so soft, so sweet.

  Yet marvelled as he was by all of this, it was forgot when at the last his eyes were cast up to the heaven of her face. Framed all about with tumbling chestnut tresses that spilled down to her hips, they were the dearest features he had ever seen. A fringe swept uncontrolled across her brow, despite the gleaming golden band about her forehead, surmounted with a shining lunar crescent. Above her soft pink lips a tilt-tip nose and, then, the glories of that visage most symmetrical, two enormous deep-brown eyes, with black, dilated pupils, all a-glint with Moonsparks.

  And little white-jade teeth, that peeped out when she smiled.

  ‘Ah, now will you stay then nine full days?’ her lilting question came. ‘For we have wonders here to show, and as you know… no wonder lasts for less.’

  ‘A true wonder lasts forever, dear lady,’ he remarked, ‘for if it lasts not, it is not true. And may you also live forever, lady mine, for you are wonder too.’

  ‘Oh, I shall,’ she soft and slowly said, a sweet and secret smile upon her lips. ‘Sir Endimion Lee, I bid you very welcome, and now come near, and kiss my hand.’

  ‘Right gladly, highness… but will you tell me first precisely where I am, and whose the hand I’ll press close to my lips?’

  ‘It amuses me to name this palace Somnium,’ she told him then. ‘And if it amuses you, then think of me as Diana Regina, though I have many names, and use them as I will.’

  ‘Then by your grace I’d hope to learn them all, delightful queen,’ said he, advancing to the dais. ‘But is there time in all the world for such a task as this?’

  ‘No,’ she told him simply.

  Before her throne he knelt again, and gazed upon the pale smooth softness of her skin; breathed in the perfume of her hair, of jasmine and of eglantine; then pressed her fingers to his lip, and tasted of the Moon.

  ‘Divine Diana,’ he hardly more than whispered, ‘for I know you more than queen, with this kiss I offer up allegiance, devotion and submission, and all I am is yours, my body, heart and soul…’

  ‘And will you give me mind, as well?’ all eagerly she asked, ‘and love and hope and dream?’

  ‘I will,’ he assured her.

  ‘And your sword? Is that mine too?’

  ‘Even this.’

  ‘And your honour?’

  ‘No, dear lady,’ he looked up, and met her earnest eyes. ‘My honour is my own alone, and I would no more give it up than I would have you give up yours.’

  The radiant smile that lit her face up then was full of warmth and dazzle.

  ‘Sweet knight,’ she said, and raised him up. ‘Keep your honour, and your mind and soul and hope. And I will give you dreams.’

  ‘And love?’

  ‘Yours I know I have,’ she told him then, an eyebrow arched in thought, ‘but mine is strange, and far more strangely given. Some desire it, but have it not at all. Some there are who bring it on themselves, but know it not. And there are others yet besides, to whom my love is but a riddle. One or two, perhaps, since this fair and Moon-becircled world began, had it both and knew it… but whether it profited them at all, well, who can say?’

  ‘If a lover finds his love returned, then surely this is profit,’ he responded.

  ‘My good and gallant knight,’ she smiled, ‘this is wondrous sweet and innocent. And for love of men and maids, enough. But do I give my love to men whose love is otherwise for maids? Or to men whose love soars upwards to the Moon? And who, in loving of the Moon, love only maids unconsummate. For those who love the Moon, you know, are lunatic, and special friends of mine.

  ‘But enough of this for now!’ she laughed, a sound that ravished up his soul. ‘By your furrowed brow I see I’ve caused you more confusion than intended. These nymphs of mine are special friends as well, so let them lead you to your rooms. When you’re bathed and freshly clad, we’ll dine and talk more privy in my chamber.

  ‘And so, my dear Endimion Lee, most welcome guest, find ease awhile in Somnium. And within the hour we’ll drink each other’s health.’

  Monday, 24th September 1803

  Is there some strange convergence here? For like Endimion Lee, I think that I could also spend my time just drinking with a lovely lady, in a palatial building here on Shooters Hill. Oh, there is temptation in those eyes of Mistress Cynthia Brown’s. Last night I saw her looking at me after supper; I had to smile at her and quickly look away, for otherwise I knew my evening would be lost. And writing Somnium is so deliciously seductive. Temptation or seduction, who’s to choose? Last night I chose to write.

  I drank and wrote, and all of it came flooding out again. The strange part is that while I know, and fully did intend, that Endimion Lee should be my surrogate to journey through this world of fiction, he will not do quite what I want him to; he is too independent. And more, Diana Regina is not Liz, nor Cynthia besides. I simply do not understand. I write, but when I do, I am not sure quite who I am; and all my characters, written, they are not quite the ones I thought they were. I wonder if, perchance, I do not write at all, but that my words are written for me by that man two centuries hence. And then I read my lines again and think they’re from some ancient book, discovered in a tomb. But most of all, I like to think, they whisper sweetly from the Moon.

  At two this morning, when the Moon declined unto the west, I looked out my front window, rather fogged with wine, and thought to see Cynthia sat upon the mounting block before the inn and gazing at the sky. She wore a cloak against the night-time cold, but quite what she did out there, I really cannot think. A shooting star sparked overhead, seemed plunging from the Moon, and then she looked up to my window. The look upon her face was completely enigmatic; and if she wished upon a falling star, I cannot quite think what. And then she stood, and came back into the inn. And so I went back to my writing, and fell asleep at four.

  I know it sounds incomprehensible, but I swear I walked the corridors of Somnium before the daylight dawned. It might be said that this was nothing more than any might expect: a writer dreaming of his own creation. But all this was too lucid and too lucent to match the vagaries of dream-stuff, and somehow I trod marble veined with Moonlight, heard the faintest tintinnabulation of some fair lady’s distant gem-and-silver earring, scented jasmine on the warm and censered air. I briefly walked a corridor inlaid with sapphires, then stood before a niche where sat a silver statuette, of fair Selene, long hair flowing in the winds of time itself, as on she drove her swift and eager steeds, the Moon-chariot all a-race through skies of deepest night. I paused and leant closer to examine the exquisite argent Goddess, and as I did so she, in turn, raised up her lovely head and gave me such a glance, it jolted me awake.

  I lay in bed no little time, just thinking of my ‘dream’; but in the end I knew not what to make of the experience. Perhaps my head was still a little piece a-swirl with this, when down I went for breakfast; for my strange awakening was swiftly followed by a rude one.

  A certain Doctor Gould, of Charlton Village, who drank and danced here on the Saturday night, was robbed of one whole guinea as he walked off home, and some smaller coin besides. I spoke of this to bald Jude Brown this morning, my most innocent and conciliatory smile quite firmly plastered on my poor misguided face, in hope that sharing conversation might somehow reassure him that I had no designs upon his sweet and charming wife. He snarled at me so foully I was quite took aback; then turned away and swore uncouthly, like a common drayman. I will not try to humour him again. I’d wish him nothing but the clap or pox, except I fear he’d give them to dear Cynthia; though as I cannot imagine her ever sleeping with so foul a brute, mayhap he’d never get the chance. Instead I wish him roast in hell, a spit right through his bowels. No longer will I compromise with oafs, or modern fools, or knaves with nothing twixt their ears; and if my spitting it could reach to Woolwich town, the army there would have my foul contempt as well. I do not like this world at all. I’d save my Liz and Cynthia Brow
n; I’m sure there must be other lovely women quite as sweet; but men (apart from me, I must confess) I’d damn them all to hell. Consumption, pox and black-spot plague on all of them; especially Jude Brown. If he were dead, then who knows what? I fear I don’t. And perhaps it’s better that I do not think it.

  I find that with each passing day I rise the later in the morning. Cynthia teases that I am too late for breakfast; I told her from tomorrow I’ll begin the day with dinner. She laughed and ruffled up my hair as if I was child; I confess I looked around me then, to make quite sure her wretched husband was not watching.

  The afternoons I begin to explore old Shooters Hill; and though I know that all who live here think it commonplace enough, it is all strange to me. The stag beetles in the woods are absolute profuse: I look upon their ‘antlers’, think of deer, and think in turn of fleet-foot Diana huntress. All about are springs and wells of cool delightful water, and in the field behind the tavern, a dewpond; I cannot help but think how, to the ancient Greeks, the dew was daughter to the lovely Moon. And pools, in turn, remind me of Diana bathing, and Actæon turned into a stag, and so we come full circle to the beetles, which feed on fallen silver birches, the colour of the Moon.

  I would be quite content, I must admit, to wander alone along the lanes about the hill, looking at the views and probing, dilettantish I confess, into its few but choice antiquities. However, to my vast amusement, dear Cynthia Brown insists that always on these expeditions I’m accompanied by that waggish youth Tom Watkins who, when we step outside, she ensures is always armed with a brace of pistols quite obviously too heavy for him to properly raise and aim. ‘Against the highwaymen,’ she assures me, though if any of these gentlemen rogues were on the sudden to appear, I can only think of poor young Watkins fainting on the ground. And he, quite bluntly, told me that he would rather run for life and love and luck than fire a shot and risk one in return. I carry a light purse on these occasions, sufficiently satisfying to preserve my life if such should be demanded, but far from all my funds. I suspect Tom Watkins will have the more from me than any passing highwayman, for I’m gratuitous enough to make his eyes light up with every exploration.