Down a Crevasse

Go back the other way: Unevenness Foretold

I am the cast off son of a king. What is grief to me? I occasionally witness it. A woman bent over, shaking, as though unable to stand upright, someone leading her to the side of the road. I assume she was crossing it, or perhaps just standing by the road holding her pet dog. He got away from her and was run over by a carriage. Some stranger bends down and carefully picks the dog up, taking it to the side of the road. As he does so, I see the dog's mouth, a red pool of blood. The dog is lifeless, plainly dead. It seems strange to use the possessive form, talking of "the dog's mouth". The dog is no longer a dog, just a lifeless thing, limp in a stranger's hands with its mouth full of blood. All this goes by in a flash as I pass on the way to see the family.

You see I am only cast off in the sense that they would not trust me with a lifeless dog never mind a kingdom. They are still perfectly civil, always ready for polite conversation, always willing to stand for the childish tirades I occasionally have to resort to in order to cover my debts or deal with some outraged citizen.

It is a city, so there are citizens; being citizens, they have their rights; rights but no honor. Those that have such pretensions can be bought with a title. Those that don't can be cowed by a visit from some royal personage. "They sat in that very chair, you know, took a drink, passed wind." The less extreme hosts offer the chair to some other honored guest, compounding the blessing with another honorable backside. The most extreme among them will rope off the chair and not allow anyone else to sit in it.

If I were king, I would make a point of sitting on the toilet, not merely peeing in it. Grunting and groaning so they might not mistake my intent. Leaving them a blest seat of ease that they will not doubt feel obliged to rope off along with the other royally blessed furniture, eventually rendering their house an uninhabitable monument to the royal presence. I remind myself, I am sure you are already reminding me, I am the cast off son of a king, no royal seats for me. The most I aspire to is a Princely estate for which, I am sure, no seats will be roped off.

I am summoned to the royal presence to make amends for a little escapade of the last month. A little too much drink; a citizen's daughter left under compromising circumstances. A charming chit of a thing; she had no complaints even if her parents did. Well the only complaint I heard was the absence of my company.

Circumstances serve me very well. I plead absence by necessity in the form of her parents and shift all the blame on to them, leaving me free to pursue other ends. In any event, it necessitated the presence of the royal rear end on some otherwise unvisited chair. Now they summon me to come and make amends. I expect amendment will take the form of an ugly scion of an even uglier local dignitary from the now freezing north, who would no doubt expect me to live in a hut, eat oats and drink beer all winter.

Talking to myself is my besetting vice. Not that I regard talking about myself as a vice, on the contrary, the only vicious element in the piece is that my internal discourse goes unrecorded; possibly the most interesting conversation in the entire, dreary narrative of our local existence rattles away in my head with no one but myself as witness.

"You should keep a diary", I hear you suggest. The notion is ridiculous. How can you faithfully record your own internal narrative? It is manifestly impossible, what do you expect me to do? Write about the experience of writing? About the fact that I don't want to write? About the fact that I'll never write all this down? It was a tedious suggestion anyway and here we are, arrived at the royal palace. The royal pile; cold, draughty, poorly lit, enormous, infested with swarms of flees, armies of rats and the servants that feed them. Some of the rats even have four legs and some of the fleas have six, or do fleas have eight legs, I forget.

"Give me your hand, man." Does he expect me to stand down in such fashionable shoes from such an old fashioned carriage? The shoes are remarkable, quite comfortable, but I think a good half-hand higher than the shoes dear Basadone had on the other day. The stairs, of course, the back stairs, good enough for a cast-off, dreadfully steep, "Here, give me your hand again."

I wandered these halls as a child. Its curious to think of such a thing; me as a dribbling, mewling brat. That was an age ago, nothing to do with me now. Gloves, cloak, tights, shoes, hair. A mirror, where is there a mirror, there was one here somewhere. That face, my face, you are so fortunate to see it, while I must find a mirror.

I look at myself. The eyes are a little heavy this morning, though that specific for bloodshot eyes seems to have worked wonders. I look sideways; turn my head, revealing the whites. Left, right, looking up, looking down, raising my eyelids, remarkable; I must discover what's in it. Perhaps it would work for a bloodshot temperament, I could give a mug-full of the stuff to the king.

There is a flurry of skirts and cloaks in the corridor and I am swept up in a crowd of women: The Queen and her attendants. I bow, allowing my eyes to rest ostentatiously on the Queen's décolletage. She regards it as a form of compliment and would be put out if I were to stare at her feet.

Really, the older women are so much better served by the current fashion than the older men. She wears a close fitting bodice cut so deep that the neckline almost reaches below her ribs. The edges of the neckline are tight against the yielding flesh of her breasts, pulling the skin taught across her chest, just a hint of the color of the nipples. Or is it rouge? I'm not sure, I must look more closely when opportunity offers. The rest of the garment is relatively full about the hips and lower torso but short, showing the legs below the knees, her feet wearing a pair of delicate high heeled slippers, her legs encased in beautiful silk stockings, giving a pleasing smoothness and roundness that pleases the eye and promises pleasure to the touch as well.

"Mother, you do look wonderful." She approves of the maternal designation when combined with positive remarks about her appearance. Not that I would ever dare to criticize her. Why would I do such a thing? I work hard enough as it is to curry favor with her, it would be like throwing money away.

I do occasionally commiserate with her about the miseries of her existence. Putting up with the king, the awful food, the fleas and the rats. Then she weeps, or rather she pretends to weep, to actually weep would necessitate a visit to the boudoir to repair the damage inflicted by the tears. She pretends to weep, puckering her face, her shoulders heaving with the unevenness of her breath, her décolletage distracting all but the shortsighted within hailing distance.

She recovers herself, smiles brightly with a faint quiver to her lips, puts out a hand, which one is obliged to take and kiss affectionately. Then I usually bring out some such line as "You mustn't disturb yourself so mother, grief should be a stranger to such a beautiful face."

Now the older men, the king especially merely look ridiculous in fashionable garb. The tights simply reveal his shapeless and feeble legs. He cannot walk in the appropriate shoes so he goes round like a truncated dwarf. He hasn't enough hair to build up a decent coif so he wears a wig; a wig of a ridiculous color and texture looking like some monstrous bird has planted its nest on his head; anyway, no point in complementing him on his appearance. I follow the Queen down the endless corridors of the royal pile.

We are off to the south reception room. South because it is a little warmer and the Queen is singularly exposed, at least in her upper parts. We arrive, the room is full of the usual collection of rats and fleas, speaking of which that dratted man that handed me out of the carriage and up the stairs seems to have passed on some of the local vermin. I will have to decontaminate myself, myself and my clothes, how tedious.

"Yes, how do you do, so nice to see you again. No mother, I have not met the Margrave of Loro." Furthermore, I have no desire to do so. I am escorted, one might say frog-marched, across the room in the direction of the royal personage, not mother, the King. Not to the King himself you understand but to the aforementioned Margrave.

This is no doubt the ugly local dignitary; you will recall, I mentioned him earlier in connection with making amends. Ugly he surely is and looking decidedly warm, smelling decidedly warm, dressed no doubt for his normal habitat, the frozen north.

I approach, distancing myself, holding out a hand at the same time. He takes it with the apparent intention of removing it, keeping it entirely to himself, perhaps to stuff it in a pouch along with a collection of other nameless objects collected from his unfortunate victims. Eventually he returns it to me, mangled, greasy, warm as though it had been sat on by an oversized dog. I wipe it on my cloak.

The Margrave turns away and addresses mother, or rather mother's dcolletage. I imagine him leaning over her, dribbling down the taught skin of her breast; probably over dinner, he will do just that.

I cast my eye about the room looking for something else to engage my mind and notice a woman standing a little back, between the Margrave and the wall. As far as I can tell, she is dressed in a large sack with nothing to adorn her other than a stony expression on her face.

I am about to turn away when the Queen notices the object of my attention. The Queen has an unfortunate talent for such things. She has a knack for prying into one's private mind, asking exactly the most awkward possible question, saying precisely the wrong thing. Ordinarily, I would not spend any attention at all on a creature such as the sack woman, but she stands out so remarkably in the company of the south reception room that I find it momentarily impossible to drag my attention away.

It is this, no doubt, that catches the Queen's eye. "My dear boy, come you have not been introduced. The Margrave's daughter" The rest of the flow of words emanating from her mouth is lost in the shock and horror of actually being introduced to the creature.

If she has a name, it does not register. She makes some sort of obeisance in my direction, or at least she apparently gets shorter temporarily before recovering her preposterous height, it is hard to tell as she is entirely covered by the sack. Even with the shoes, the shoes half a hand higher than Basadone's, I still find myself looking her in the eye.

The stony expression remains. Mother is blathering away in the background. She pokes me in the ribs with her fan, making some inane remark to the Margrave, who responds with a shout of laughter accompanied by spittle and other nameless bodily fluids as he approaches me, thumping me on the back, causing me to stumble in the direction of the sack woman.

She evidently sees me coming and grasps my arm with a grip like a smithy, hauling me upright as though I were a sackful of laundry. The Queen and the Margrave seem to think this the funniest thing they have seen all year; they are thrown into further transports of hideous amusement.

Then, to my horror, the Margrave says something, the first thing from him I've understood since the Queen dragged me across the room, something like, "He'll have all the support he needs coming north with us for the winter."

I imagine a look of shock and horror registers on my face. The Queen's knack reasserts itself, she takes one look at me and takes me by the arm, before I can say a word and marches me across the room to the King, hotly pursued by the Margrave and the sack woman.

We arrive, the Queen snapping her fan, cutting through the circle round the King like a hot knife through butter. "Sire," she says, instilling a further chill in my heart as she never uses the salutation in quite that tone of voice unless she is about to make him do something he would otherwise not do. "Sire, you were to announce your gracious dispensation to the Margrave of Loro concerning our son, the Prince." These last words are spoken with a terrible emphasis that brings silence to the surrounding crowd.

I was not usually referred to as "The Prince", having been cast out some time ago. It meant that she had arranged some accommodation and I hardly needed the words from the King to know what they were. I was to be reinstated and sent off with the Margrave to see out the winter in his mud hut in the north.

Not reinstated to the extent of being heir apparent, he would not go that far, no doubt in case the Margrave got careless and lost me down a crevasse, or allowed me to be swept away in one of his frozen rivers. No, I would go north with the Margrave, acquaint myself with the northern regions of the kingdom and ingratiate myself with such of the King's subjects as never had the opportunity to see the King's own person. The King droned on to this effect at length, another indication that he was unhappy with the arrangement. I knew my only chance was to get to him in private and make him see sense. Mother evidently knew this as well. She prompted him, "Sire", that awful 'Sire' again, "you must say your farewells, we will not see him again till summer. The Margrave and his daughter are leaving immediately after the reception and will take the Prince with them."

To follow this thread in the story go to: Dressed in a Sack

The next section to read is: Words of His

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