Somnium Page 6

  Ah, too much claret, too much fondness.

  Too much Liz, too far away.

  I should not drink before supper; the day’s events are all forgot.

  I often fall to misquotation (perhaps from old Menander?) that: ‘Whom the Gods would write, they first make mad.’ Too true, and so I fear I am. But now the way I work can better be summed up: ‘Whom the Gods would write, they first make drunk.’

  And so indeed I am, and so I should begin to work, invoking lunar vision.

  Deep and dreamful was that sleep of dizzied Endimion Lee, when at the last he took him to his bed. He thought, although he knew himself asleep, no sooner had he closed his eyes than Queen Diana came to him in all her godhead’s glory and, without so much as magic pass, drew up his soul from out his body. Taking then his immaterial hand in hers, she led him on through walls and down through floors, and quite outside the palace. Across the garden next they made their way, with pools a-glint by moonlight and those pallid statues all regarding them with cool and stony gaze, until at last they passed a silvered gate. Beyond, they paused besides a massive marble slab, all carved up with the bathing of the lovely maiden Moon.

  Nearby an ancient Grecian chariot stood, two-wheeled and silver-bodied, covered all in jewels. A pair of harnessed snow-white mares stood there before it snorting, impatient to be off the ground and onward. And sweet Diana Regina, in a short white shift that hardly would have made a half a nightgown down at Richmond or at Greenwich, and which was, besides, all cut away to reveal one full and lovely breast quite naked to his gaze, reached out to take his hand. Together then they mounted swift the chariot’s shining car, and so with practised ease she took the silken reins in both her hands, requiring him with jaunty smiles to find him something certain to hold fast to. So trusting all to love and dream, he wrapped an arm around her waist and matched her smile insouciant.

  With softest laugh she flicked the reins and urged the horses on, and on and upwards from the Earth, a-gallop for the stars. And Endimion Lee, no longer trusting just to dream, clamped his teeth upon a scream, and hung on to his dear for life.

  West they went and ever higher, Thames aglitter far beneath, Marlboro Downs and Mendips giving way to Bristol Channel and beyond, at last, to silver-sparkled broad Atlantic Sea. Over Ocean, higher still, went the Chariot of the Moon, Diana laughing, long hair streaming in the wind; and awe-exhilarated now, Lee looked down on all the passing world below. The Northern Americas now in turn gave way to vast Pacific Sea, and then to old baroque Cathay, of which the Venetian wrote such lies. Wars he saw, and burning towns, locust-swarms and yellow deserts; and yet towers and minarets he saw as well, palaces and glories built in bold defiance still of all the passing tides of time. And he wept for both, the horror to the one hand, and the wonder to the other. Over Tartary and Muscovy they soared nocturnal, Polack-land and German States, United Provinces soaked in blood, and then at last, relieved, back to sweetest England’s Isle. And never was a lovelier land, he thought, than that from which they’d left, and to which they now returned. And when the chariot descended from the sky, and landed once again on dear and homely Shooters Hill, he thanked her with the utmost grace for showing him how all the wide and spacious Earth looked from the circling silver Moon, in its glory, and its madness, its birthing and its blood. And when he would have knelt, she raised him up, and looked at him with large and melting eyes, and sighed, and kissed him on the lips.

  He woke, to feel the softest, girlish lips, quite warm and moist and brushing swift across his own. Diana’s name was on his tongue, but hardly out his mouth, before he heard a giggling peal of delightful feminine laughter, sprung from many sweet young mouths. Opening up his eyes, he saw Diana’s nymphs en masse and gathered all around, and in their midst that charming maid, all flushed and pink, who’d greeted his arrival. Before her, at the wide bed’s side, there lay a breakfast tray, with bread and cheese and golden apples, and the more, a choice of cordial or of wine.

  ‘This looks like mischief,’ remarked a voice he knew and loved, although it struck the tittering nymphs to silence most profound.

  ‘Melissa,’ continued dearest Queen Diana, all a-sigh as she surveyed the baby-blushing sprite. ‘I should have known…’

  The Sovereign Lady of the Moon stood framed there in the doorway, a painter’s vision of a perfect Roman Empress, filigreed in golden jewellery and swathed in long white silks. Her hair, all curls and ringlets now, was gathered up behind her head, exposing lovely neck and dainty ears a-drip with finest-water pearls and gold-set gleaming gems; and then those loose remaining tresses, wove with little golden stars, spilled far in sweet cascade all down her shapely back. The softness of her swelling breasts above the rounded low-cut neckline made two cushions of display for all the chains of diamonds strung across her lovely flesh, which sparked so bright each time she inward breathed. And on her brow, as ever, the crescent of the gilded Moon; and on her lips, the smile of sweet despair.

  ‘Oh Melissa,’ she almost whispered, barely heard. ‘Some other mistress, she would ask, all pained: “now what are we to do with you?” But you and I, we both already know.’

  ‘Oh, mistress, please!’ Melissa moaned, wide-eyed and almost tearful. And yet, by then, the other nymphs had closed in all around.

  ‘Ah, look not so concerned, my puissant knight,’ Diana said, a lovely silken shimmer as she sat upon the bed. ‘And rear up not so chivalrous. This is the merest mischief, of minor-most degree. And yet, did ever mistress anywhere leave even “merest” mischief unamended? I think not. And up there in the Moon above, this is how we correct, with love…’

  A throaty gasp, and then the gathered nymphs, all like a curtain, parted to show unto his wondered eyes Melissa, all blushing pink and held up off the ground. And then a half a hundred elfin fingers, dainty, small and unremitting, began to tickle soft and quaking maiden-flesh: sides and armpits, soles of feet, shapely breasts and squirming stomach, calves and thighs and anywhere that could be reached.

  A childish giggle, a breathless squeak. And then the squealing started, growing loud.

  ‘But what has the poor child done?’ asked soft-heart knight Endimion Lee, eyes all wide and fixed upon her wriggles.

  ‘Usurped the royal prerogative,’ his lady said, her perfect teeth a perfect circle biting in an apple. ‘For who but I should wake a sleeping hero with a kiss?

  ‘And now,’ she offered him the golden fruit, a little bit, ‘if it pleases you, then it would please me more besides to make you my accomplice in the eating of my brother’s golden apples, all stolen from his many west-benighted Hesperides by my nimble-fingered nymphs, while I held bright-gleamed Helius all-bedimmed with soft and too-seductive moonbeams of my smiles.’

  ‘Dear mistress, pray forgive,’ he pleaded then all urgent. ‘Forgive me please, forgive her too; for if you will forgive not one, then the other is forgiven not besides. And if you’d have my love, remember this, and answer me this question. For which is the greater love of two: is passion, or compassion? And if you say the first, and prefer it to the latter, then neither will you have of me, nor any love besides.’

  ‘Endimion Lee,’ a pretty laugh in sudden silence when, at just the slightest nod, those small, tormenting fingers ceased their work, ‘I swear you have the rightest questions ever asked, and more you have the rightest answers too. So for your innocent soul’s gentility, I forgive; and hope, although I doubt it much, no further such occasions will arise.’

  With that she sent her nymphs away and offered up the apple once again. Some deep down pang disturbed his mind with thoughts of ancient snakes and paradisal gardens, and yet he took it gladly, bit, and ate, his eyes all fixed upon her loving smile. And so he fell not into sin, but rose above it; merest thought of old Adamic error quite washed away and with it that vast edifice of guilt that’s built upon it. Sacramental then the bread and cheese and apples, sacred too the wine, and holy all the world around, below the Moon and far above: for realising that there was no si
n to pay for with redemption, he found the world redeemed.

  He ate, and laughed for joy, and worshipped with his eyes. And if Beauty is Truth, and Truth is Good, and Good is Holy too, then he knew now that before him sat the Holiest Goddess quite, best and truest and more lovely still than all the worlds she ruled. And so his happiness overspilled, until he could hardly see her for the teardrops in his eyes.

  His breakfast all consumed at last, he asked for her command.

  ‘Why, every man who’d do me service always starts his day…’ she paused, and played him like a kitten with a ball, ‘…all naked in the bath.’

  And then she sat there, saucy-eyed, to see what he would do.

  ‘Oh, come now, bold Endimion Lee!’ she laughed, and licked her lips. ‘This may be well enough for due-dubbed knights of England’s ancient realm… to sit and hug the bedclothes to your breast like maidens all a-quaking… but Somnium’s queen demands the more than this!

  ‘Besides,’ and now her sweet voice dipped down low, a soft conspiracy of chuckles, ‘you and I both know that since I raised the question yester-eve, you’ve thought much on the answer. “What if it had been I who aided your undressing, and assisted at the bath?” And so your fancies bring you opportunity, and warning.

  ‘The opportunity? To discover for yourself, in truth, exactly how you’d act… and, mayhap yet more apposite, how indeed would I? And would you then enjoy it?

  ‘The warning? Be careful what you imagine, fanciful knight! For dreams dreamed here in Somnium quite often do come true.’

  Their eyes they locked then, moment-swift, like fencers quite engaged and looking for advantage. Then all-undaunted, up he stood, bedclothes cast away, and faced her in his nightshirt. Sparkle-eyed, she raised a brow: a query, a temptation and, with merest nod of head, a challenge.

  Lee flourished her a bow, and made a leg, a grin upon his lips; and then, as devil-may-care as ever he had been, he turned and marched into the adjoining room. No door to shut behind him, he stood there face-away and stripped himself quite naked, then sank down in the bath.

  A moment later, though he knew not how, she was sitting there upon a chair and facing him, appreciative glances (or did they mock?) upon her lovely face. And despite his best intentions, his body started then to betray his admiration. She laughed, a lovely sound, and laughing found him guiltless.

  And then his mind reminded him, as minds so often do, that she’d called this a bath for nine, and baths that size were surely big enough for two. And on the instant there she was, a naiad splashing in the water, fully-dressed but clothes all soaked, and giggling like his sweetheart. No sooner had his eyes engulfed her in the bath, than there she wasn’t, and back upon the chair she sat. For moments then he struggled in his head, to sort the imagined from the real, and deciding on the former, looked again.

  And there she sat, all soaked, with breasts thrust out, a preening vision in wet and clinging silk. And when she stood, and marched off to the door, wet footprints followed her, across the marble floor.

  She turned then, wistful smile upon her lips, as if for five-year-olds or charming little boys.

  ‘You see then now, Endimion Lee, imagination’s power. And yet, you also see, how all untrained, it lasts not for an hour.

  ‘But be this as it may, and bathe you as you will. And when you’re ready for the day, my maids await you still.’

  Wednesday, 26th September 1803

  I hardly know what to think of Somnium. I think it far the better than anything I have ever written before, but how I write it, I simply do not know. I know that some would laugh and say I do not know because I am too drunk. And yet I think the truth is nearer to what I wrote last night: that all this comes from Moonland, and sweet Diana whispers all her story in my ear. And if what I am is but amanuensis to a Goddess, was there ever sweeter task for humble man to bear?

  But then again, what if all this were not fiction, and somehow I just wrote down what had happened, two centuries now behind? This is a conceit that pleases me enormous.

  Or yet again, what if all of this was happening now in Dreamland, and Somnium was indeed that very place? After all, I see those Somniac towers so frequent in my dreams, I no longer have to think now how to describe them. And if Endimion Lee’s adventures are watched by me in dreamtime, then somehow forgotten and buried in the basement of my memory, only released again by claret and by writing … then writing somehow makes all this quite real.

  And so I write the whole night through, and sleep the morning off till dinner; and Cynthia laughs and asks me if I am awake enough to eat or whether she should feed me with a spoon as if I was a little boy. I confess she tempts me to the latter, just to see if quite she would; and if she’d let me fall asleep, my head upon her breast. And something, that I know’s against all wisdom, it tells me that she would. I think, while foul Jude Brown’s about, it’s better that I should not try.

  Late morning when I first arose and took me to the dining room for dinner, there was a letter here from Liz; Cynthia presented it to me with such a smile, I almost thought she’d read it, and yet the seal was quite secure. I read it so agog I hardly tasted anything at all. So sweet, so sad, it was so hard to bear; especially the post scriptum note explaining how her tears had dripped and caused the ink to run. How the dear girl misses me; and how I miss her in return. She writes so sweet of garden flowers and neighbours’ cats, I almost cried myself to read it; of how her comfort was to look upon the Moon whilst knowing that I did the same (that touched me to the quick); of how she missed our goodnight hugs and kisses; and how she sleeps still with the candle lit for, though she knows old Mistress Jones quite close at hand, she is not used to being in the house at night without me. And that, I think, was hardest-most to bear: for if she had not closed her letter with a sweet, imperious command to stay here where I am and write of silver Moon and golden Love, then that single, candle-lit line of hers would have had me on the homeward coach forthwith, to take her in my arms once more and never let her go. She ended saying that she loved me; if she but knew the way I love her in return.

  This afternoon, young Watkins and I made further explorations. Some four or five hundred yards along the lane, going northwards from the inn, are half a dozen tumuli; a cemetery, no doubt of ancient, ante-Romanum kings (or perhaps, I like to think, of pre-imperial and uproarious queens). Who’s buried there, or when, there’s no-one hereabouts who knows. The moster part of them are flattened and eroded by the heavy hand of time, and cropped close by the many sheep that bald Jude Brown grazes here atop the hill; and if young Tom were not there to point them out to me, I never would have seen them. He wonders if they’re full of treasure; wants to know if I will dig them soon. I told him these are holy dead to me, more sacred yet than those all buried in a churchyard, because they never heard of Christ. I think he did not understand.

  There’s one mound, though, all green and grassy, standing by the lane itself, that’s well enough preserved and surrounded by a ring of trees. Standing on its rounded crest, I had a notion come to me: that whether king or queen or other they were buried here, their spirit had somehow become the genius loci of old Shooters Hill; its God or Goddess, habited here throughout the millennia, watching as its woad-smeared people gave way in turn to Romans, and Saxons, and Danes and Normans, and wondrous Tudors descended from old Trojan Brute, and idiot Stuarts, and crophead Parliamentarians, and maddened Hanoverian line. And me, most insignificant of all, but the only one, perhaps, to stand there, thinking, and acknowledging, and saying: ‘Oh Guardian of this place, here from long-gone past and still remaining, perduring to the long-becoming future, look kindly on me standing here, a merest eyeblink in eternity, and let me write, not the story of this place as it appears, a cowfield on a Roman road, but as it should be, as it is in dreams of glory, enamelled with the palaces of the Moon, bejewelled with temples quite Ephesian, the silvered throne of that most puissant Goddess/Queen, who is Diana of the lunar crescent, Titania of the fairies, Elizabeth
who’s of England both and sister too, and queen of all my heart (and, perhaps, I think, as now I write, who’s Cynthia Brown as well), and all of these, insoluble in one mere name, the oldest of them all… Selene.’

  (I think it was a prayer made after its own fulfilment; I think this most because, last night, my pen would hardly stop and all my words seemed wrought in gold. So perhaps in praying I merely offered thanks.)

  Yet more thoughts then occurred to me besides: that this rounded, Moon-shaped mound, that swells upon the hill like sweet Diana’s breast, is perhaps the latest of them all; that the others, now all worn away, mayhap were tombs of former Guardians, or that same Guardian born and born again, and cycling on and on through time. I wondered then if I had addressed the last-most of his line, and how long his position had been held, and if there was another still to come. I like to think there is, and always will be, until the hill itself is ground away to dust.

  And more, I thought that this mound it would survive, as all the other five would not. I felt the loss that comes with passing tides of time; and more, the loss, far greater than destruction, when things are quite forgotten. I would I were the Memory of the World, to treasure up the all that ever was; and all that ever wasn’t too, besides, for dreams and myths and magic spells are every bit as important as idiot-kings and stupid wars, and an apple-blossomed branch is far more lovely than a mace or sceptre.

  But be that as it may, I thought this mound would still be here two centuries hence when, if my late vision held some truth, this hill would all be smothered up with strangely-builded houses and too-unthinking men. Unthinking perhaps, I thought, except for that single future-man who, like me, will walk this hill and write because there is no other thing to do.