A Lament

The twilight rules this place. From across the water comes a steady breath of wind neither warm nor cold. Perhaps it too is ethereal. It cascades gently against my home softly beating the stone walls then rises and entwines itself around the turreted battlements. A solemn silence reigns broken only by a rush of humming air. Faint bluish light cascades vaporously around me. I know where I am. I seem to linger in a fixed place here and I am carried about it seems by another wind: a breeze of stale memory, an imprint of what was. What was?

Pride. Excitement. A carriage decked with white flowers. A white horse pulls it. A smiling man beside me. A carriage ride through sunlit trees. The carriage halts. A broad green and high pristine stone lit up by sunlight. He takes my hand and I smile as he lifts me from the carriage. The vision evaporates and becomes a slowly swirling mist.

A cancerous ill feeling. Latent strife breeds in dark places around and within me.

Our lands must remain our lands he explains. Hillgakley Castle, our home, must remain ours. As if I am ignorant of this. An heir, a progeny is required. I am aware of this too. My father owned half of Leinster! Greed always conquers virtue and reason.

I am put to bed a week before time. I hear him without in the hallway.
“What news girl?” he asks the maid. Always the same question. “What news girl? What news? What of the child?”
Why so can he not inquire this of me? Am I extraneous to him? I shall not forget nor f..….

In the end it is an irrelevancy. Stillborn.

Temporal duration. Latent hate brews. He was becoming grotesque even before the unbirth. Coarsely insensitive. Flabby, hairy, eyes stewing like a bitter broth. Speaks nothing. We are approaching destiny.

Land but no heir. Land but no heir. Land but no heir is his ceaseless refrain. In shadowy stealth he plots. His mother. They plot in unison. Scattered kinsmen are chosen to succeed him. Not I.

Not I.

That dire woman! The one who squeezed him into being. She is as stubborn as she whom I sense lingers with me here: that hardy sprite who saw off Cromwell’s hordes before I came. No matter.

Ruthless action. My vexations have conquered me and send into exile my old sensitivities. What use be they in the coldness of the world?

He remains not immune to my long hid charms and bodily satisfaction. I am willing, yes. To regain a foot hold amidst his good graces and to lure him via subtle pleasures into my designs. Then I will wreak my own satisfaction. The reward is worth his odious skin against mine.

His covetous kinsmen are disinherited. The new testament is sanctioned in my favour. A gentle kiss and a smile to steady his good inclinations on this new course. But behind him lurks that shrewish mass of his maternal progenitor. Her warnings are like slashing poisoned blades upon the temperance of my mind. The altered will is her burning concern. She utters venomous prophecy; “ere three months of the day thou mark that Will thou will lie with thy father in the vault.”

Let us fulfill it.

A raging rain punches the windows as if to warn. To warn he or I? I brew the ailment in the tower. The tempests wail outside. It is ready. He shall drink this. He shall drink this. May I be dammed otherwise.

Our chamber nestles in the dark. His form portrudes beneath the sheets.
“Your drink my love,” say I.
He takes the chalice and consumes. He settles back and splutters, his eyes bulge in surprised fury at the knowledge of my deception.
“Enjoy thy death my sweet.”

He is Gone. Good.

Now I can set forth my plans for the betterment of this place. With my brother’s wealth and my guile we shall in unison and through our good industry uplift it and ourselves to the heights of oppulence and favour.

Passage of time and all be well. Then the elements shake and tumble round and round and round. My victory is pyrhic. This dwelling crumbles and fades. No. It lingers. Tis I that crumble and fade and yet languish here! Aye. Fettered somehow. Enthralled hither! O’ panic! Is death not a door? Have I fasened myself to these stones by my acts and my deeds? O’ to wail without a voice! This agony! This cannot be! Cannot be!

But it is.

And always will be.

Trapped forever more. I relive it all again and again: powerless to unwind my wicked course. I am outside myself and look and see, as though it were painted on shattered glass, the moving form of my living self plot and lie and kill and cry.

And die.

Tethered for perpetuity. Chained with murderous self-loathing. Spiralling downwards towards a noxious limbo. I am gnawing in upon myself. Again.

And again.

And again.

Because I could not choose to love.



© Ciaran McVeigh 2007