"Can I play with Magick?" Truly, when an editor such as myself, who is well-schooled in chaos magick, meets a story like the following short masterpiece, there is a resonance in the Cosmic Aether! Do you dare to read a story which may make you fear sorcery all over again? Or will you click away to some safer domain? Either way, there's no escaping the brilliance of Rosemary Hawley Jarman's fiction. Do yourself a favor and check out her critically acclaimed novel "The Captain's Witch" Tanith Lee called this novel: "One of the greatest dark fantasies ever written...."

I'll tell you confidentially, editor to sword and sorcery lover, that Tanith Lee herself forwarded Rosemary's excellent story to me, originally, with a strong recommendation that I find a home for it. This will be its second publication under my auspices; the first we was in issue 8.1 of Pitch-Black's literary journal Prism Quarterly.

Click here for a recent interview with Rosemary Hawley Jarman by Daniel E. Blackston


- Daniel

The Mist of Melusine
by
Rosemary Hawley Jarman

It is midnight, the dawn of Easter Day. At last I am alone; I have dismissed my women of the bedchamber. The wetnurse has taken my newborn son, who sleeps, into the next room. Everyone was loath to leave me as I am still weak from childbed, but I am not one who is disobeyed. I commanded them, telling them that I shall spend the night in prayer.

I spoke the truth, but if any knew to who I intended to pray and have prayed to during these many years of trial and triumph, I should, Queen or no Queen, doting husband or no, be dragged to the stake of burning within a very short time indeed.

In this room at Baynards Castle on the Thames, a great log fire burns in the hearth. I have only to feel the heat of its flames to be reminded how secret my work must be. Next to the bid bed with its tapestried canopy, there is a prie-dieu beneath a Christ with bloody wounds. A little flame flickers under the crucifix. Kneeling here is where everyone envisages me this night. No so. For these my prayers, perhaps the most important of my life, I shall stay before my own mirror.

I have opened a small high window with latticed glass and armorial bearings. Muffled by mist rising from the Thames comes the sound of church bells. It is Easter, when He who died on the Tree rose from the dead to redeem us all. And soon, very soon, something else will rise from the mist and enter this room. And after all these years I am still afraid of her.

I have prayed using the old words, summoning her. Now I sit motionless in front of my mirror. It is a large mirror of highly polished silver. All around the rim are enameled flowers, the White Rose of York. I hear a faint whisper of breath from the window, and steel myself to turn my head a little. She is not here yet. But she is coming.

The mirror shows me myself. Without delusion I acknowledge my own beauty, undimmed even after all my tribulation. I still look young and girlish. The recent birth has colored my cheeks, where the skin is like satin. My hair, with which Edward the King first fell in love, is the same color and texture as the pale cloth-of-gold robe I wear. My hair glides from my high unlined forehead and covers me in a gleaming fall. And my eyes are the blue of oceans, my hands like white fishes. My body is once again slender and supple as an eel. Water is my element. And water is the dwelling place of the one for whom I wait, trembling and in hope. I am Elizabeth Wydville, Queen to Edward the Fourth of England and of York, that powerful House which has been embroiled in bitter warfare against the equal power of Lancaster these past ten years. It is said that I ensnared King Edward with my beauty and my virtue. I., Elizabeth, a commoner, when he could have had any of the great princesses of Europe. I, Elizabeth, whose family was always loyal to Lancaster!

It was not my beauty or my virtue, although these were tools. I twas here. Her will, her direction, her limitless power. She, who came long age from the deep water of mystery. Beneath the clangor of the Eastertide bells, I utter her name once more in homage.

Melusine.

Melusine, the witch of Luxembourg, from whom I am descended through my mother.

Again there is the whispered sigh at the window. The fire shudders and suddenly burns less brightly, and the room grows chill. Today there will be another great battle between York and Lancaster. This is why I need her spirit, her craft. I need her sight beyond the dimensions. If Kind Edward should be vanquished, I, too, an utterly lost.

Last month Edward came back under cover of darkness from exile in Flanders where he had fled with his men after being ambushed and pursued by the armies of Lancaster in the North. I say him but briefly where I lay in Sanctuary at Westminster in fear of our enemies with my mother and my daughters and with a prince in my womb. Edward mustered hi loyal followers and rode off to join the battle once again. And the battle will be at a place not far from here; that I know already. I do not love Edward. He is several years younger than I and they call him the Rose of Rouen, his birthplace, because of his beauty, his generosity, his courage. I only ever loved once, my first husband, John Grey, who was killed in a battle against my grand enemy. Yet I need the King, oh, how I need him! He is my hope and salvation.

He looked magnificent albeit exhausted by his exile, when last I saw him. Six feet four inches tall, golden haired, full of renewed zeal and lust to restore York to England's throne. At present, witless King Henry the Sixth of Lancaster occupies that throne, knowing not whether it is day or night. He has been restored to this sorry monarchy by my grand enemy, he whom I pray this night will be finally destroyed.

My grand enemy is Richard, Earl of Warwick. They call him the Kingmaker. It was he who set Edward on the throne before turning against him and joining forces with Lancaster. All my life Warwick has persecuted me, at every Turn machinating against me and my family. He stripped me of my home, my beloved manor of Bradgate. He has good reason to hate me, for I spoiled his grand design, and his vengeance was terrible. My dear father and brother who fought for Lancaster he beheaded. With his own hands he held up their bloody heads before the people, then spiked the heads upon the wall of Coventry. And now in this turmoil of changing loyalties he rides against King Edward, whom once he professed to love and honor.

The fire is trembling. The logs seem to have been overcome by damp, for they hiss in displeasure and die. The bells have stopped their clangor. I think it was the bells that kept her away, for I feel her presence strongly now. Mist is beginning to pour copiously through the window.

Ah. She is here. My skin is creeping. I am shivering as if with palsy. I must remember that she loves me. She is not my servant. I am hers. And I am afraid. My eyes in the mirror are enormous. The blue pupils have turned black, enlarged by fear in the candlelight. Mist begins to dance and wreathe around the mirror, laying a film of moisture on the enameled Rose of York. Behind me a shape is forming, so amorphous it is barely more than a scintillating shadow, and the candle flames shudder. I cannot look in the mirror any more. I stare down at my own shivering knees, my small feet in their pearl-trimmed slippers of martens' fur. To stop my hands from trembling I twine my fingers in the girdle at my waist, where at other times hang my keys and my crucifix.

I bow my head low. Now I can feel fingers of mist on the nape of my neck where my fine gilt hair parts itself. If I look up, I shall see her in the mirror. This is where she manifests herself when there is no lake or pond nearby. Her essence is palpable behind me. My flesh prickles with chill. Still I cannot look up, and I have to find the courage.

For courage all I have to do is fan my anger. I will think again of Warwick the Kingmaker. He who had Edward crowned after two great battles when together they routed the forces of Henry the Sixth and his queen, Margaret of Anjou, and my own House of Lancaster fell. York was supreme fro a season. Yet as on the toss of the dice, everything changed. And I was the reason for that!

Warwick's wrath was because of my marriage to Edward, for whom he had great plans for a powerful foreign alliance. He hated it when I raised my family to great estate. He call me witch under his breath. He calls my mother witch. Yes, my lord of Warwick! My anger casts out fear.

And now he and Edward are to meet in the field. If Warwick wins the day, we are all cast down from our height. We shall be utterly demolished. To think I should wish the House of York, my old enemy, to triumph! But Edward is my doting protector, provider of riches and lands and security for me and for my vast brethren, my children. He is my salvation.

Once more the mist lays a finger on the back of my neck. My shivering becomes an ague. And I hear her voice like the faint rush of seas in a conch shell.

Elizabeth?

Soft it comes, so soft. It is not a human voice. It is like the breeze in midnight trees, like the susurration of stirred water. It is a voice of chaos and dreams. It is like the dreams my mother and I gave to Edward when at Melusine's direction we fed him the magic mushroom to make him pliant, and mine.

Elizabeth?

Very slowly I raise my head. And there she is in the mirror.

She is disembodied, which is as well. I have on occasion seen her body and could not bear it again yet. The face is more than enough. There is a kind of reptilian beauty there. It is a face not to be trusted. It is to be feared and homaged, which I do. I spread my shaking hands outward, palms up, and bow a little. Then I look at her squarely.

The face is triangular. It is almost a child's face. The black eyes are also triangular; they slant upward and gleam. They are soulless, reptile's eyes, and very bright. The red mouth is thin and long. It, too, curves upward in a line which could be a smile. The lips are parted and there is the pointed glimmer of little teeth. Her skin is very white, a dead whiteness like one who has been long in water, with the faintest tinge of green. Her hair is black and long and full, and drapes her like waterweed. The mist swirls about her. I can see the merest outline of a breast, with nothing visible below that. She stands in a cloud, but I can see her little hands with their long curves nails.

The face is interested, pert, curious with an unholy curiosity as to what these foolish humans plan and bungle, or maybe it is all beneath her, for what could they do without her aid? Further exposed, the little teeth are jagged as if filed to points. Yes, she is smiling at me. She is mine for tonight, and for the third time she calls me, in that tiny voice of mist and water.

Elizabeth?

My whole body is now transfixed with fright. I try to answer her and am dumb.

Between the little smiling teeth a tongue tip, almost colorless, shows itself for a second. I know from the past that the tongue is thin and bifurcated, and am swooning, thankful when she puts is away. In the hearth the fire has completely died to black ash. And glancing past Melusine in the mirror, I see that the little flame beneath the Christ has also gone out. His Body hands there in darkness.

"You called me, child," she says. "And I have come. Have you no greeting for me this time?" Her voice is a little louder now, more mature. Still I cannot utter a word and she says, sounding amused by my fear: "Must I remind your of our first meeting? You were wary of me then. Yet by the end of our time together, you were mine."

She shakes back her long hair and drops of mist or water fly icily on to my hands. She tilts her head backward, looking down at me with sly amusement from her small slanting eyes in the white wedge of face.

"It is Easter Day," I hear myself whisper, and Melusine laughs out loud. Her amusement is the inhuman patter of a falling fountain.

"I am older than Easter Day," she says. "I am eternal."

Then, without warning, she makes a fast flying gesture with her hands, and summons a whirl of mist into the mirror, blotting out her image and mine. A picture is forming, and she says:"Remember what was. Mark what will be."

It is so cold now in this chamber. Yet in the mirror the sun is shining. I am looking at my home, the manor of Grafton Regis where I spent my earliest days before I came to Court as a waiting-woman to the Lancastrian Queen, Margaret of Anjou. I see the greensward and the slope of pasture leading away from the house down to my favorite place, my bower of solitude beside the lonely lake set in a hollow and screening by thick willow trees. The sun is high, but all the birds are silent. The silver mere stretches like an inland sea, and is fringed with reeds and bulrushes.

And I am there, young in my beauty, in a worn silk dress, my hair loose as befits a maiden. It is strange seeing myself as I once was. I knew discontent then, through the poverty of our estate, and longed for excitement and riches. The water ripples.

She is whispering in my ear, and her whisper is like rain.

"It was I who released you from your boredom. I who sent you out into the world, of jewels and jousts and love."

I bow my head in acknowledgment. And now the sun shines no longer in the mirror; dusk is falling, treacherous, menacing, but I am not alone, my mother is with me.

My mother, Jacquetta, Duchess of Bedford, she is young again, not old and senile as she is today, her mind overset of grief at my father's beheading. She is so beautiful, her hair is minted gold, her eyes cobalt butterflies. She is powerful, laughing, teaching, telling, unafraid as the dusk gathers.

Lovely Jacquetta holds my hand. A weird light is gather on the lake as if the water has sucked up part of the day.

"Hear me well, sweetheart," she says. "We are descended from Melusine the Fair. She who was so cunning. She enchanted the great lord Raymond of Poitou. Even on their first meeting he promised her all the land that could be covered by a stag's hide. So she cut the hide into ten thousand strips and gained for herself a county. Raymond never knew he had courted an enchantress."

The light grows in the middle of the lake.

"When she was of this earth," says my mother, "Raymond was besotted with her. But he was foolish. Although she had warned him not to, he sought out her secret. Her followed her one night to her lake. He found her in her private place. He saw her as she is, in her true form. He never saw her again. Yet men say that what he had seen that night turned him mad."

The water begins to move as if stirred by a giant spoon. Where the light shines a column of mist arises. And there she is, coming toward us, waist deep in the water, not swimming or wading, but seeming to go as a swan goes, her nether parts moving underwater, strong yet invisible. She holding out her white arms. She is pleased to greet me. And the Melusine watching the mirror behind me emits a little hiss of amusement to see herself thus out of time, for Melusine is timeless.

She comes to the edge of the lake and lies half in half out of the water. Prone in the reeds by the lake I raise my face to her and she kisses me on the forehead. Her kiss is like the burn of ice. She speaks my name. My mother makes a little noise of pleasure and reverence. She beings to pray, homaging Melusine, thanking her. The mirror-mist swirls like smoke from a bonfire in the wind. The scene changes.

It is the last day of April. Beltane, one of the great pagan feast days. I am older, a widow, the mother of my husband John's two sons. My mother is older, too, but we are both still lovely. There is moonlight and again we are by the lake at Grafton, for I am home again, dispossessed of my lands by the fiend Warwick.

My mother has made a waxen image of the young King Edward. She has taken blood from where he scratched himself upon my pin while he was trying to ravish me. She has taken a strand of his golden hair from the collar of his velvet cloak. She offers the image to Melusine, who rises quickly from her watery demesne. My mother throws the image over the lake and Melusine laughs, like the cry of a night bird, and catches it easily in her hand. She sinks slowly below the water, crying softly: "Elizabeth! Queen Elizabeth!"

The silver mirror shimmers as it about to turn to water. The Melusine of the past rises again, moves closer. I can barely see her shape through the mist of time. She stretches out her hand. I see that she holds another wax image, not Edward for all that was consummated long ago. This is the effigy I and my mother made of Warwick. A perfect replica. Tall, handsome, with black curly hair. Warwick, so popular with the people of London to whom he threw open his banqueting hall, magnanimous, currying favor for so long. His waxen face is contorted in agony; there is a little iron band about his waist. For some years he had complained of the bloody flux and pains in his belly.

The images are fading away. Again I see Melusine, not of the past but of the present, and now the white mist around her is fading too, revealing more of her shape. Her waist, naked, wasplike, shimmering green-white, slowly emerges. She is no longer smiling as she speaks.

"Your mother is in grave danger," she whispers. "Warwick's witch-finder knows abut the images. They will burn her, Elizabeth."

And I cry out No! In agony, but my cry emerges as a breath.

Just to remind me, she sows in the mirror Jacquetta my mother, holding the bloody severed head of my father to her breast. The bodice of her dress is soaked with red. Tears furrow her old face.

"Oh, poor Mother," says Melusine, almost in mockery.

"Help us," I whisper, and weep.

And she speaks soothingly, her voice like the lap of water on reeds in summer.

"Have I ever failed you, my love?"

My tears are falling. I reach up behind me to take her hand and clasp a thing of icy water, but water like iron with the power of oceans in it, out of the deeps of centuries.

She is making more pictures. She shows me the battles of yesterday. Snow is falling over the field of Towton, hindering the forces of Lancaster, and Edward rides in a final triumphant charge, glorious, his enemies falling beneath his steel like harvest corn, his golden hair streaming from beneath his helm, his armor bright with the blood of others.

"I sent the snow," she whispers.

She shows me the battle of Mortimer's Cross. Edward gazes upward, rapt at the good omen in the sky. Three suns have appeared to him, harbinger of glory. She shows me again the rout of Lancaster by the forces of York.

"I sent the three suns," she whispers.

The picture comes clearer, homing in on the King's standard. She Sun in Splendor. A golden disk withing sharp rays, the banner immense and blazing, borne on the wind of triumph like the sail of a fighting ship.

"See the Sun in Splendor!" Melusine says to me. " The spikes around the Sun. It looks like a star!"

I know from her voice that what she says must be significant, but I do not understand. The bells begin again; they are ringing for Prime, the first office of the day and time is rolling forward; we are truly in Easter Day. Melusine hears the bells and casts a contemptuous glance toward the source of the sound.

I am weeping more now. She has shown me only the triumphs of the past, almost as if I should be content, and we are in mortal danger. The reversal of all Edward fought for is at hand. And if he should lose, we are damned and doomed. "Melusine!" I cry through the tears. " Show me more than yesterday! Where is Edward? She me Edward, for the love of heaven..."

She laughs, a spiky cackle like waterbirds disturbed on a pond. "Do not speak to me of heaven, Elizabeth," she says. "You chose your heaven. It is here on earth. You have no gods but me."

I am in fear that I have offended her. Yet she is still mine, for she slicks her fingers of water and rolls away time itself, showing the preparations for what will be today. Edward is in his pavilion. His esquires are arming him.

He wears Nuremberg steel. The cuirass over his breast is richly chased and gleaming, like the pauldrons on his shoulders and the gorget covering his throat. They house his arms in bright brassards and his legs in shining greaves. His feet are armored in sollerets. He holds out his hands for the steel gauntlets. Overall he wears the surcoat of the White Rose of York and the royal arms, for in his mind and in the mind of his followers he is still the rightful King. His chaplain is in attendance. Before Edwards dons his helm, he crosses his breast, asks pardon of hold Jesus for doing battle on Easter Day. He listens for the voice of Christ. He invokes Saint Michael and Saint George. He is reassured that the cause is good.

His esquires hand him his weapons, his battle-ax and sword, his spiked mace and his dagger. Outside the pavilion his great warhorse, armored in mail from ears to fetlocks, tosses its head, aroused by the smell of war.

Edward's men are all around him: his loyal brother Richard of Gloucester (another of my enemies for once he loved Warwick like a father), the companions of his exile, Lord Hastings and others, his noble peers of York. They are tense but in good heart. And all this is taking place very near. There he is. Warwick. Full of hubris, smiling, arming as they are all arming. His standard, the Bear and Ragged Staff, is planted outside his pavilion. The Earl of Oxford, his chief captain and commander of his secondary force, puts on his helm with its trailing plume. His standard-bearer lifts high Oxford's banner of a Silver Star.

There is low and high ground, a valley and a hill. Upon the scene there is real mist, not only in my mirror. The whole valley is becoming filled with it. It is light at the moment, rising like a thin blanket from a deep marshy hollow. The two camps are separated by its veil.

Melusine leans forward. She presses her hand on my head, like a cap of ice. "See what I am conjuring for you, Elizabeth. Mist. Fog. I command the waters."

"Will it be soon?" I ask her. I am still weeping.

The bells ring out again, this time for Matins. Melusine's mirror-time has joined with real time. The time is now.

"Warwick has fielded fifteen thousand men. Far more than the King," she says. "What will you give me, Elizabeth, to safeguard your destiny?"

I am wild now with despair and fear. If she were solid, I would cling to her, for I am less afraid of her than of what will be. I clasp my hand over the hand of water which is soaking my hair. My tears blur the moil of warriors in the mirror-mist, that true mist the Melusine has sent upon Barnet Field.

"My soul," I whisper, and she laughs, her sea-bird's laugh.

"But I have that already, Queen. I took your soul long ago when I gave you the King, riches, security. Will you give me your newborn son?"

"Yes, yes!" I cry. "He is yours. Melusine, my Melusine, do not fail us now."

"And your son to come, your second prince that will be born?"

"If this is so, yes, both of them," I whisper. "Their souls, my Melusine, their bodies, too. Only save us this day."

I only half believe this pledge that I am making, for I have only one prince, yet if there are more to be born, this can only mean that Edward will live as King and come back to me.

Yet she persists, saying: "Even if their lives are short? Another King will come to praise me, my love, Tudor his name...."

She is teasing me and I am desperate, for the time is racing forward, the mirror shows horsemen advancing through mist. I hear the faint sound of trumpets, distorted by the mirror. I nod my head to whatever she is saying in absolute obedience, and drops of water from her caressing hand spatter my gown like tears.

And once agin I whisper: "Help us!"

She is growing taller, longer. I see her white body with its greenish tint as far as her belly. She has no navel. I am again in craven dread of her, and she holds my destiny and that of York, of England. She is smiling broadly now with her little shark's teeth. Any beauty she had has vanished; there is only sorcery enjoying itself. "Watch, Elizabeth! Now they fight!"

I see armies mustered. The Duke of Exeter commands Warwick's left wing between the St. Albans road and the treacherous marshy hollow. Lord Montagu holds the center, the Earl of Oxford holds the right wing. Warwick commands the reserve.

The watery grayness thickens around them and a little breeze, far from dispersing it, tosses it around them like spectral dancers.

Edward's forces are deployed in similar fashion. Richard of Gloucester leads his men up the slope and they fall upon the flank of Warwick's force, but the hill is steep and they reel back disadvantaged. The trumpets blare in command. They fight like lions with desperation that augurs ill for York. The mist lightens a little; I look in panic at Melusine. I see she is laughing like a cat, a humorless yawn of laughter. For Warwick's men have rallied and form a new front to north and south. Reinforcements are coming out of the mist to join them. The Yorkists are outmatched.

I can hear myself screaming, but the scream stays inside my head. We watch closely through the mirror and the mist: the masses of horsemen; footsoldiers; archers; the maimed; the slain; the blood. We hear the faint war cries and the screams of men and horses.

The earl of oxford crashes into Hastings' flank. Many of Hastings' men are unhorsed or slain; the survivors begin to retreat, some running, some riding in panic toward the town, and my enemy Warwick at the head of a squadron of fighting men pursues them. Some other Yorkists forces begin to flee, already crying that the day is lost.

"Melusine," I moan. "Save us."

The hand of ice comes again to caress my head. Water runs down my brow into my eyes. "Wait, darling, wait," she says, like the sighing of oceans. "See your great lord!"

Edward is fighting under the swaying pulsing standard of the sun. He fights like twenty men, laying about him with his battle-ax and sword. His Household battle shoulder to shoulder with him. The clang of steel on armor rings trough the mirror. The Duke of Gloucester has reformed his troops. Hastings has gathered the remnants of his army. They fight on in the mist.

Yet here is my enemy again, shouting in the harsh voice that once berated me as an upstart - giving new commands to the Earl of Oxford. He will fall upon Edward's company from the rear. And they come, pounding toward the lines of battle, and the moment is now, and my Melusine leans forward over my shoulder.

Her whole body changes, becomes powerful ether. It swells and swells into a gigantic cloud of white, reaching the ceiling of the chamber. The cloud is directed into the mirror in a poisonous stream which bears the stench of putrid oceans, of the corpses of seamen devoured by a pitiless sea, of rank weed, of stagnant ponds, enough to bring a retching to my throat. It streams through the mirror as if from a funnel. It is more than mist. It is more than fog. It is as if the air were a thick broth of gray water. The cold is unbearable. My flesh crawls and my hair stands erect. The last of the white cloud enters the mirror like smoke bellowed out of a storm wind, and the forces of Warwick, Oxford, Exeter, all my enemy's fighting men so close to triumph are surrounded by its denseness.

There is a tremendous crying. There is a limitless confusion. There comes a scream of Treason! The fog shifts to allow a tiny window through which Melusine and I can see what passes.

"Look!" she shrieks in her sea-bird's voice. "Lancaster is undone! They are fighting one another!"

The Earl of Montagu, bringing reinforcements to strike at Edward's reargaurd, has in the fog mistaken the Silver Star of Oxford for the Sun in Splendor. They are killing their own men. And my King and his commander revive; they lay into the enemy forces with all their royal puissance. And Warwick is in flight!

I am on my knees in front of the mirror, crying to her: "Kill him!" No longer weeping, I am laughing, and she is laughing, that crazed seabird's cackle, and with a flick of her fingers it seems she sends a galloping knot of Yorkists after the great Earl. His face is bloodsplashed. There is terror on it. The corner him in a hollow and strike at him. As he falls, he turns and slithers along the muddy ground with a great wound in his belly. The fog kisses his head where his helm has been struck away. I see his agony. Through the fog of Melusine he writhes toward us. He sees us! To my dying day i swear he sees us. He cries Mercy! but one of King Edward's captains strikes his word away. And he is dead. I hear the sounds of a great rout. Then the trumpets, the cheering.

"God bless the House of York!" they are yelling. "Praise to Jesus our Redeemer, who sent this victory!"

Then slowly the whole picture fades and I am left, trembling and laughing and crying, my eyes fixed in gratitude on the strange triangular face and the reptilian eyes on mine in the mirror, and I turn my head to kiss her hand and find my mouth filled with water that tastes of the corpses of the drowned.

Day has come. Outside the sun begins to glint through the dispersing river-mist. She speaks to me once more, and her voice is no longer eldritch, but strong, fathoms deep.

"Remember me, Queen, when I come for my dues."

She stretches up her arms, stretches her body to a height so that she is revealed from the top of her head to where she meets the floor. And she has no legs. I knew this once, but I have tried to forget it. This is the sight that drove Raymond of Poitou insane.

From her waist down she is a serpent, shimmering with moisture, a great barrel of a reptile's body gleaming from the water with little pockets of weed and tiny sea creatures caught among her scales. This is no pretty mermaid. This is a loathsome, noxious serpent through all her legs and womanly pats, a serpent like the form Satan took in the Garden of Eden. She is evil.

And she is my savior, and the savior of the King, the House of York, of England. We are safe once more, for a season.

She is fading in all her repulsive power. She does not like the day. Below the window lies the river and she will enter it as she came, as mist. Mist is clearing from the chamber and she goes with it, leaving me with one last languorous glance almost of lust, certainly of triumph. There is a price to be paid, but it is not yet.

Already the news of our victory is beginning. I can hear across the river a courier shouting in hoarse ecstacy. There is distant cheering, no louder than a gnat's whine. The exaltation will grow, as Edward returns in glory. Edward, the Sun in Splendor, whose standard, through Melusine's mist, so resembled a Star.

My women are tapping at the door. My chaplain is with them, come to give thanks with me on Easter Day. I glance toward the Christ over the prie-dieu. His Body is filmed with a patina of damp, and his wet wounds look new.

End

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