Our Mrs. Gray
My new home is built of the bones of the last. Same walls and foundations, same plan of rooms. The two adjoining houses suffered less in the fire that consumed my old home, my old life. With my new wealth I purchased both, combining floors. The result makes an absurd monstrosity. At times I wander astonished. I stand in my home again, returned from flame. And yet, here is a door where yesterday was wall. There a hallway leading I scarcely know where. So very like the dream of wandering a familiar place, finding rooms one has never before entered.
I paused at the doorstep, appreciating how the outer façade stood cleaned of soot. Within, hammers and saws, shouts and thumps made a pleasant welcome. I took deep breathes of sawdust, of paint, of varnish. The stench of the fire all but erased. Phineas struggled to maneuver the table-top carving out from the carriage. The maid took my cloak, 'tsk'ing at its condition. I strode past, down a hall to the front parlor.
A tableau of urbane drama awaited curtain-rise. Three persons poised for Act 1, Scene 1: the Reunion. Myself at the door, hesitant. A clerical person sitting, balancing tea-cup on knee. A woman standing. The audience immediately focuses upon her gazing out to the flowerless garden.
If a room be on fire, first you shall note upon entering is flame. Just so, when someone possesses such strange hair. The eye leaps to it. Elspeth had hair of copper red to match her Dublin lilt, her snub of nose. This woman's hair glowed the color of fox-fur at sunset, a rich warm fur of woman-hair.
I gradually turned eyes to the face. Strong chin, thin nose... she deliberately did not turn upon my entrance, allowing me time to consider. Did I know her? No. Yes. No. She echoed familiarity in all her parts. But I did not know the whole. Absurd, but she reminded me of Penn. Himself a creature of parts. A hint of the snake-woman in the neck, the dramatic pose. My gaze traveled down her person. Two pale hands rested in clear statement upon the slight swelling of her waist. Ah.
The gentleman seated by the fire stood. I knew him. The young cleric from this morning's unconsummated duel.
"Destiny seems determined our paths shall cross, Mister Gray," he drawled.
"That or you are determined to pester me," I replied, and strode past him to stand beside the woman. She continued to stare out the window. We pretended to consider the view together. In truth, I eyed her reflection in the glass. She eyed mine. Some twenty-odd years old, I'd guess. She stood tall and thin, but for the swelling of her womb. She bit lip, determined not to speak, nor to cry. What a menacing bear my reflection looked beside hers. I felt ashamed, focused my eyes beyond the glass and into the courtyard beyond.
"An oak stood there before the fire," I told her. "Branches black as night between the stars. Old as the city itself, no doubt. See how thick the trunk stood. Wide as any cart-wheel." Strange, this conversation. The words tasted familiar to my tongue.
She said naught. Should I draw her out? What does one ask one's forgotten wife? How did we meet? How went our honeymoon? Where is my favorite old coat?
"In the roots of the burned tree we found a bronze box," I observed. "Buried there centuries past." Excellent. Now she would ask what lay within the box. I would tease, dangling the answer.
Still she said naught. No interest in mystery? So much for female curiosity. I returned gaze from the absence of a tree to her reflection. I marked how she trembled. I was a beast, she a frightened thing in the animal's den. What to speak of? Politics? God, no. Gardening?
"No plant or statue could be worthy of replacing the lost tree," I declared. "But perhaps some ancient rock would serve. Carved by druids, imported from pagan hills. Unless it is best replaced with something entirely ephemeral. Something that speaks of time as much as any oak. A single rose bush, maybe."
At that she gave over silence, turned to me, red brows raised. Eyes of forest green. With such eyes and hair she should have reminded of Elspeth. But no, she made me think of foxes peering out from brush. Lovely and familiar. And yet, I felt no tug of heart. I felt at ease. Almost, I laughed.
"At least the fountain remains," I added. "Not that I can ever keep the water flowing. I content myself to watch the lion drink the rain."
Eyebrows still raised, she turned from me, to the stone lion in the fountain, back to me. Finally found her line in the script.
"This is not the reunion I pictured," she declared.
"What did you picture, madam?"
She frowned at 'madam'. "That you would weep. Hold me. Else scowl, order me from your house." Our eyes met. I could think of nothing to do but bow.
"Rayne Gray, at your service. Now please explain, who are you?"
The young cleric laughed, if you name airy expulsion from the gut's bile as laughter. He set tea-cup to table with a divine and forceful clink.
"Master Rayne, within the registry of the Church of All Saints you will find your name, entered and signed in solemn ceremony of marriage, which I myself conducted. I had not known till some hours ago that you'd decided to end what God had begun. But then, you planned to end a life this morning. The acts are much the same."
I did not turn at that, continued to meet the woman's eyes. I repeated my name, magically summoning myself. "Rayne Gray. And you...?"
She sighed. "I am Sionnach Gray your wife. As this priest says. Married to you some two months past. Your valet Stephano witnessed the event, as did my cousin Faun. I, I bear your child. Conceived on our wedding night."
Some instinct made me look to my left hand. No ring. Why even think to look? And two months? Scarce time to show such clear sign of child within womb. But not a thing for a gentleman to observe. We leave it for the ladies to reckon backwards from birth-bed to wedding-bed, smiling at sums less than nine.
"Stephano is dead," I announced. "Our carriage was waylaid on the road north. I myself was wounded. That was a bloody night." The night I'd killed Black. And Dealer. Various guards. Also a high judge. A minister of the War Department. I hadn't killed Stephano, he'd died protecting me. Ironic, that ending. I'd meant to kill him for dessert.
She turned back to considering the stone lion. "You live a violent life, Rayne."
"True. But I have lived it here," I pointed out. "Where have you been?"
She answered soft, almost sing-song, a child reciting play rhyme. "In Edinburgh. You were to join me. When you did not, I wrote. Beautiful letters, those. Pink flower-petal words telling you I trusted, I loved, I believed. No answer came and no answer came and no answer and no. Till my heart said you must lie dead, or in gaol-chains again. And so I returned seeking your grave, your cell."
Stamp of foot! No more child-voice, but angry affronted woman. "And your servants turned me from your proud new door. Me! I must fetch lawyer and priest before your valet would grudge audience."
I pictured these letters, never seen. Paper scented with lilac and tears. Affirmations to a hole in the heart, an absence in the soul that made the hand shake, penned words blur. The first letters would be hopeful. The final letters, mere moan of anguish.
"My servants have their instructions," I explained. "Politics, wealth and reputation draws strange visitors. My household has never heard of any Mrs. Gray, excepting a lunatic message through the window."
At that she cocked head, curious. A fetching look, and familiar. "What message?"
"Oh, that I had a wife, but forgot her due to the machinations of men in tinted lenses." I did not add the part about being a blood-drinker. Really, that went trop.
"You are serious," she declared. "Rayne. My love. You, you truly claim not to know me?"
I hesitated. I did not know her. But I remembered someone like her. She shut eyes at my hesitation, assumed I gathered breath to lie.
"This is less than I expected," she said. She turning her back to me, placing hands again upon the swelling waist. "And crueler than I feared."
The cleric stood, cleared throat. Ah, his turn in the theatre-script. Should I interrupt, spoil his lines? No, let him declaim.
"If you wish to put aside your wife, Rayne Gray, that is between you and your honor. But man's law and God's will stand firm. She shall not be turned out the door. Nor shall her child conceived in lawful wedlock be so dismissed. If you claim now to be lunatic I stand the first to affirm it. But who will believe you forgot a wife?"
Who? Not me, certainly. I studied the man. "Why do you wear those idiot spectacles?" I asked. "The day is fog, the room scarce lit. Take them off."
He looked annoyed. Sighed, removed the lenses. The revealed eyes should have been narrowed holes from which a mouse-soul peeked, squeaking catechism. But no; behold open eyes near filled with tears. Eyes to match the crystal and purple orbs of Penn. I shook myself from losing myself in those eyes. Looked to the woman, who'd turned her back to me.
"It may be that I am mad," I admitted. "But I would never forget a woman so striking." Here I bowed to Sionnach. "At the very least, I should know her upon our reunion. But I do not. You remind me of someone. But it is not you."
She put hands to face. I could tell naught of what they hid. I appealed to her hair as if it could play mediator twixt our species. Strange thought, that. But hair held silent, red locks shielding ears and nape. I felt an idiot urge to reach out, push aside the fox-fur hair, reveal the naked neck. Could she object? She believed we'd lain together. I imagined her freed from the bright yellow silk dress, patterned with black. She lacked the pallor and freckles that oft accompanied ginger hair. Dark of skin as if she spent her days naked in sunshine, not huddling in the cold twilight north.
Silence in the room. Waiting. My turn in the script? Missed my cue. Where were we in the play? Ah, of course. Time for the logical explanation for comedy's confusion.
"The night Stephano died. Others did as well. One was a strange sort, busy pretending to be me. A French actor named Pierrot Decoursey."
She stiffened, just slightly. Did she know the name? But the cleric laughed loud. "Will you now pretend some other man of your appearance married this woman in your guise? Absurdity unworthy of a gentleman."
"A frequent occurrence in plays," I pointed out. "Disguises, twins, doubles and devils. Pierrot was an actor playing assassin. He used astonishing talent to go as he pleased wearing my face. The Magisterium will confirm this event occurred. Inquire of Magister Green himself, who saw the villain die."
At that Sionnach turned to me. No difficulty now to read emotion. Fury. I stepped back, expecting her to leap. She showed teeth white and sharp as any that ever ripped a throat.
"Ever the calm one, Rayne Gray. The posturing smiling Seraph. Ever the survivor, the victor marching a path of corpses nameless as cobbles. Caring naught for the loser's loss of heart or life. Hell with your courtly face, man. You'd do better to wear rags of black. Yes, and smear yourself with shit and blood! Crouch in a cave howling at the moon. Oh, let honesty guide you to leer and slobber, Master Gray. Limp and hunch along for a Caliban. Then we'd know the man behind the part you play."
This... was not in the script. I retreated another step, looked to the cleric. He'd replaced his spectacles, returned his soul to hiding. No telling what he thought.
Caliban? I never thought of myself as such. I suppose one never does. I felt urge to defend my mirror's high opinion. But, no. Pointless in the face of such rage. I retreated into quotation. The Tempest, obviously. I held hands out, empty of weapon or wedding ring.
"For every trifle are they set upon me;
Sometimes like apes that mow and chatter at me.
Sometime am I all wound with adders who with cloven tongues
Do hiss me into madness."
Sionnach stared. Then shook head, entirely confounded. The motion freed a bit of ear out from pinned hair. An ear-tip pointed as any fox in brush. My turn to stare confounded. She glared, ordered her hair in defiance. The ear-tip vanished.
"I shall return to Edinburgh," she declared, calm as surgeon selecting knife. "This is a cruel, mad city, and you the very king of it."
Damnation. I hadn't wanted her here. Life was confusing enough. I needed a week of sanity, else the work of years would founder. But I could not simply slam doors upon her. Something about her hinted of what I lacked. Far more than any bronze dragon. I wanted her close by.
"Where you go is yours to say," I declared. "But consider there are but two possibilities. Either I am mad, and my madness has done you harm. Else a man who meant me harm, has done you harm. In either case I am honor bound to your service."
She stamped foot, looked away. "I am no beggar at your damned door."
"No one would take you for such. You are a beautiful woman who has been wronged. I am the posturing Caliban who has done wrong. Allow him chance to play the role with hope of applause, not hisses."
She put fists to head, beat upon the thoughts within.
"Ach. You are mad, truly. In your house I will soon be the same."
For a moment I considered traveling towards Bedlam with another. Such journeys are easier for the company.
"Well, if you go mad, then we shall burn the house down again, build it up again," I decided. "Soon or late it must stand sound and sane."
Sionnach stared at me, then crossed arms.
"I will not stay without sane company," she declared. "And if you are not my husband, then 'twere best I have a chaperone. I ask that the Father stay the night as well."
I considered refusing the priest. But arguing against his presence would cast shadows on my motives. The woman was young and comely and I had a reputation to keep. At least for another week. It would not do to have clerics preaching sermons denouncing the New Charter's champion as an abuser of women.
"Be welcome to my house," I nodded to her if not to him. "I will fetch servants, have them prepare you suitable rooms, all you need."
I turned to find most of the servants already in attendance. They stood in the open door, else out in the hall peering in, audience for the play. The cook. Edward the groom, a few random carpenters. Mrs. Grumble the housekeeper still holding my cloak. Eyes round as owls', mouths a circle of delight. My valet Phineas standing to the back. Eyes hid behind lenses; mouth shut tight.