Miranda and Caliban(77)

MIRANDA


When the storm dies at last, it is like a long-sought blessing. Still, I cannot stop weeping. I sit with my back pressed against the wall of the watchtower and my knees drawn up beneath my rain-soaked yellow gown. Silent tears slide down my face. My body aches, my burned hip hurts, and I cannot summon the will to stand.

Papa lowers his staff, retrieves the fallen spyglass, and surveys the sea. “The greater part of the deed is done,” he says in a voice grown hoarse from long chanting. “Though it is no thanks to you my working did not fail.”

“I trust there are no survivors,” I say, and I am surprised at the depth of bitterness in my own voice.

Papa stares at me, his face haggard. “No survivors? What manner of man do you take me for?”

I look away. “I do not know.”

“Oh, Miranda!” Now a note of sorrowful reproach enters his voice. “Could you not, just once, have done as I bade you? Could you not have trusted me as I have begged you so many times? If Ariel has carried out the fullness of my bidding as I believe he has done, he has spirited them all to safety, and not a man aboard the ship did perish.”

So they are not dead.

I am not complicit in killing an entire shipful of men.

My breath hitches in my throat, and I take in a gulp of air. I do not know whether to laugh or scream. I let my head fall back against the stones of the tower and gaze at Papa. “Well, if it is so, I am surpassingly glad to hear it. But could you have not, just once, entrusted me with the whole truth?”

He frowns at me. “Child, you know full well that it was imperative that the working be untainted—”

“If knowledge be a taint, the working was tainted!” I shout at him. Papa falls silent in astonishment at my interruption, looking at me with lips parted. I press the heels of my hands against my stinging eyes, then lower them. “I know you seek vengeance against your brother and the king, Papa,” I say wearily. “I know you seek to ensnare the king’s son with a love potion.”

Papa takes a deep breath, the spyglass in his hand trembling. “How did you come by this knowledge?”

I rock my head back and forth against the hard stone. “Oh, Papa! It matters naught. What matters is the truth, and the truth is that the working didn’t require perfect ignorance on my part.”

I should like him to acknowledge the truth of my words; I should like him to apologize.

He does neither.

Papa, I think, does not like to be wrong. I do not think he understands how a world can exist in which he is wrong and I am right.

At least he does not punish me for my disrespect. I suspect he is too exhausted to do so.

I am tired, too.

I do not want to quarrel.

Neither, it seems, does Papa. He slumps to sit heavily on the ledge of the window across from me, bracing himself with his staff. “Do you remember a time before the isle, Miranda?”

“I think so.” I keep my voice low. “I remember a house with pictures—paintings, they were paintings—on the walls. Betimes it seems as though I must have dreamed it. And yet I remember women with soft hands and gentle voices, who combed my hair and put ribbons in it, who sang me to sleep at night.”

Papa nods. “’Tis true. There were several women who attended you. Do you remember how we came to the isle?”

I hesitate, then shake my head. Although I know what Caliban has told me, I have no memory of it. “No, Papa.”

He gazes out the window opposite him. “Would you hear a piece of irony, child? It is in this very hour, with the greatest part of my working done, that I meant to divulge the truth of our origins to you.”

I do not know whether to believe him.

His gaze returns to me. “Twelve years gone by, I held the title of Duke of Milan, ruler of a great city and a mighty duchy, and you, my only child, were not yet three years of age. But I cared naught for the trappings of power, only for my studies. I entrusted the affairs of state to my brother Antonio, your uncle.” He grimaces. “I should have seen the ambition growing in him like a canker. But being absorbed with celestial matters, I paid too little heed to worldly ones. He suborned the loyalty of my courtiers with bribes, favors, and promotions; and at last, he struck a vile bargain with the king of Naples, offering him fealty and tribute in exchange for the title of Duke of Milan.”

Papa’s voice cracks at the telling of this, and despite everything I am ashamed of my disloyalty. “A vile betrayal indeed,” I murmur.

“Under cover of night, my brother opened the gates of Milan to the king’s troops,” he continues. “We were abducted, child; abducted and set adrift at sea on the rotten carcass of a ship lacking sails or rigging.”

I cannot help but shudder, thinking of the storm I just witnessed. “Why did he not kill us outright?”

“He dared not,” Papa says simply. “Although Antonio had turned the court against me, the commonfolk yet revered me for my hard-won reputation for fairness and wisdom. And then there was you, Miranda, innocent as the dawn. My brother and the king dared not besmirch their hands with our blood, but trusted the sea to do it for them.”

“How did we survive?” I whisper. “By your arts?”

“By my arts, by God’s grace, and by the kindness of one of the noblemen entrusted to carry out the deed,” Papa says in a grim tone. “Lacking the heart to condemn us outright, he saw to it that the ship was outfitted with a measure of food and water, clothing and linens, many of my books and instruments, and my staff. Without those things, we surely would have perished.”