Miranda and Caliban(70)

He falls silent.

I think of the pale thing floating in its jar, its lips moving as though to speak. In the world beyond my windows, dusk is descending. I can hear swallows twittering in concert and the faint splash of a fountain. In my bed-chamber, the silence stretches until it grows unbearable.

“Am I?” I ask at last.

“You are,” Papa says in a tone that makes it clear he takes no pleasure in the fact; not today, mayhap never again. “Appearances did not lie; your mother was a virtuous woman, Miranda. Virtuous and true. And I tell you, you have shamed her memory most grievously.”

Hot tears seep from my eyes, trickle down my cheeks.

“I should not have doubted,” he continues. “Those who betrayed me took everything from me but you. Had you not been mine, they surely would have taken you, too. You were precious to me, once, and what I did in my hunger for certainty was wrong. It was a violation of the Lord God’s order. I knew it in my heart, and yet I pursued it. I thought her death and your affliction was my punishment for it, but I think now that I was too hasty to presume that I in my finite wisdom understood God’s intention.”

You were precious to me, once. I bow my head, tears falling to spatter the backs of my hands.

“What you did—” Papa pauses again, breathing hard through his nose. “It was perverse and unnatural. To cast aside all modesty, to lie brazen beneath the open skies with a misshapen brute of a creature, a witch’s spawn, an illiterate, half-tamed savage, and suffer his touch willingly—”

I think of the profound gentleness with which Caliban touched me, and weep harder.

For myself?

For him?

I am not sure.

Papa cannot bear to continue in the same vein. “It was a violation of God’s order as surely as was my own trespass,” he says firmly. “And as such, I believe that your transgression is the just penance I have reaped for my own. It is for that reason that I have chosen not to punish you further.”

I lift my head and gaze at him through my tears, and there is a bitter edge to my voice. “Shall I thank you for it?”

Papa frowns. “You should give thanks to the good Lord God in His mercy and wisdom that His servant Ariel alerted me before your honor was wholly despoiled,” he says in a curt voice. “If you would give thanks to me, I will take it in the form of your unquestioning obedience.”

“Yes, Papa.” What else am I to say? My empty belly gripes with hunger. “May I have something to eat now?”

“You may spend this last night in fasting and prayer,” Papa says. “On the morrow, you may break your fast and resume your labors.”

So I am to be allowed to continue. A month ago, I should have been nothing but grateful to hear it. Now I merely wonder that Papa does not reckon my innocence so despoiled that I will taint his great working.

Oh, but for all that he has hinted at its very purpose tonight, he reckons me too ignorant to grasp it. He does not imagine the breadth of the illicit knowledge I have gained.

My brother, my liege.

A love spell to ensnare a king’s son, the salamander said.

Papa seeks vengeance on those who betrayed him, and I … I am nothing more than the bait in his snare. Lowering my head once more, I let my hair fall to curtain the sides of my face.

“Miranda,” Papa says in a harsh tone, and I jerk my head upward in response, feeling faint at the sudden movement. Oh, dear Lord God, I am so very hungry. Papa’s gaze pins me to the pallet where I sit. “You are to have no further communication with…” The hard line of his lips twists in disgust, as though the name he will utter tastes foul and rotten in his mouth. “Caliban. And if you fail to obey me…” One by one, he touches the amulets that hang from his neck, selecting Caliban’s and closing his fingers around it with deliberate menace. “I will not punish you, no. The witch’s whelp will pay the price for both of you. Do you understand?”

Understand? Oh, I am fairly well sick with understanding. But at least his threat means Caliban yet lives.

I nod. “Yes, Papa.”

He nods back at me. “Very well.”





THIRTY-EIGHT





CALIBAN


Yes, Master. No, Master.

I will not touch Miranda, no, not with the littlest finger of my hand, never ever never again.

I will not speak to Miranda.

I will not look at Miranda.

Yes, Master, I will do my chores. I will fetch wood for the hearth, I will bring food for the larder.

No, Master, I will not go to the high place; I will not say prayers to Setebos, which is nothing but a whale’s skull, because you have forbidden it.

(Oh, Setebos!)

Yes, Master, you are merciful.

Yes, Master, you are wise.

These are the things I say, but they are only noises I make with my mouth. Inside my head, I am thinking how I might kill you.

Oh, it is a bad thought, a very bad thought, the worstest of thoughts, but I cannot help it.

You would have killed me if Miranda did not stop you, Master. Prospero. You very nearly did. You very nearly did kill Miranda, too.

But I cannot raise my hand against you, no. Even to think it makes me shake with my skin all a-creeping, and all the hurting you did give me hurts like it is new. And so I look at the chains around your neck and the charms that do hang from them and sparkle in the sunlight, silver and gold, bits of hair and blood, and oh, there is Miranda’s charm and there is Caliban’s charm, and if it were not there, you could not tell me to come and go and hurt me so.