She Walks in Shadows(23)
What emerged beneath the guidance of her hands was something my memory has forced into a locked box. When I think on it, the world shutters to black and it feels as though iced water runs through my veins.22 My blood does not exactly stop, nor does my heart cease, but I do not think overlong on the things we saw. I cannot, because the box is locked.
When we emerged, the clouds had broken and thin sunlight dribbled onto our faces. A backward glance23 showed us nothing whatsoever amiss. Edgar laughed and wrapped an arm around my aching shoulder as we walked back to the car.
“I would have sworn ....” He trailed off, as if unsure what led us here.
And I frowned, because I almost couldn’t remember, either, but then it was night and we slept, and — Only dreamed.
Lady Margaret whispered from Edgar’s mouth and I know the heat of the ancient sands parting, as if I, as if we, are stretched upon that altar in offering. She laughs and when I wake, I cannot wholly remember because I have placed that in the box, too.
When Edgar tells me he has to help friends move, I think little of it. He remains friends with people he knew before we even met and some do not know he has a lover. I nod, because I have my studies and there is always a paper in need of writing, so it will be good to have the nights. I think on the week that was and cannot fully place everything we have done, until Edgar returns, pressing a kiss against the corner of my mouth —
(the gleam of fangs
and he’s coiled in the cradle of her hips,
waiting to be born,
waiting to be loosed —
unspoken words in the corner of his mouth, his maw.)
He got foolishly lost, he laughs, and there was no house, but there was still a place I needed to see. A place he wanted to take me.
Edgar always knew. And I —
Not yet.24
There once was a ‘ho liked to murder
Adept with both knife & stray girder
She hiked up her skirt
Put the men in the dirt
And nobody talked shit about her.
— The Lady Daemon (1992)25
* * *
1 We may debate exactly when Edgar knew at length, but I am not convinced there was ever a single, discernable point one can reference; as the notions herein are circular,20 I feel so, too, was Edgar’s knowledge.
2 I have often been asked if there was an event at all; I cannot prove the existence of “the event,” only that Edgar did leave, around 6pm on a Friday evening, and did not return until 2pm the following Sunday. He told me friends he’d had longer than he’d had me were moving and needed his help, but Edgar’s hands never betrayed a lick of work.
3 Had been sunk, he phrased it so, as if some hand had pulled the abbey down with great intention.
4 If one cares to look, the reasoning for this can be found in my chapbook, Terrible London, Meridian (2012). Everything but the food, dear reader; I found great comfort in warm beer and dry potatoes — No.
5 Edgar did not possess any religious leanings, which made his discovery of the abbey all the more curious. It wasn’t something he would have made up, even to gain favor with me — and being that he already possessed much more than my favor, this only lent credence to the story he told me. It is a terrible thing, to understand the limits of storytelling and be drawn in even so.
6 Was he? Or was this merely part of the story he was telling?
7 In my coursework, I had studied the rumors of Exham Priory at length and they were simply not to be believed. There were terrible things in this world, to be certain, but I refused to believe in the numerous atrocities that were said to have taken place at Exham Priory. Inbreeding, people confined within cages, one body sewn to another to create a third thing entirely. Elephantine forms, long in places and bloated in others. Myths and legends, happenings that existed only within the fragments of ballads, ghost stories. Imagination has a way of shaping all things, including culture and politics. Perhaps especially these.
8 We drove approximately two hours south, though I would be hard-pressed to pinpoint our location beyond this. Indeed, the River Tyne was nearby and we passed through a wood that was surely the Whitelee Moor National Nature Reserve, but I can recollect nothing more specific.
9 Reader, forgive my indulgence. I would banish this cliché, were it not true. In trying to keep to the facts at hand, I must include my infatuation for Edgar.
10 I cannot recollect the name of the town or the B&B, but my memory of each is otherwise intact: small, historical, charming. The woman who claimed ownership of the B&B is one Mrs. Baird, but without a location to search, I have been unable to find her. Baird is often as common a name as Smith.
11 Given the nature of dreams, perhaps this account should not be present, but to eliminate it also eliminates a truth I feel to this day. I have been unable to forget the feel of that silk between my fingers or that sickly yellow light.
12 If need be, I would compare what I saw to something pilots experience: sensory illusions when your eyes grow tired of an unchanging, blank landscape. It was not that I believed myself to be flying, but seeing these spirals made me waver and stumble as if drunk. We had not, however, been drinking.
13 Lady Margaret Trevor of Cornwall. She married the second son of the fifth Baron Exham. Fourteenth-fifteenth century, though I, like so many before, have been unable to establish any firmer dates for her. She refuses to be pinned to any single point, looping through the histories of as many as eleven distinct cultures, but none so firmly held as those along the Welsh border. Children still fear she will take them from their beds, into the priory’s cellars where she will bend them, cut them apart, breed them.