I want her as she appeared to me then as I want nothing else, not even my peace and happiness. I want until my flesh burns with it and as long as I live, I shall want no other.
My flesh has become scales, my feet a serpent’s tail. My belly slides over the icy flagstones of my own castle, slithering forward alone. Always alone. She is never by my side in these dreams, nor when I wake, sweating, to the dawn.
They lived happily ever after: this is the way the story ends. So we learn when we are but babes at our nurse’s knee. Always it begins with “once upon a time,” with no knowing what is to come. And had I known then what I know now, I should have never left my father’s keep. But I was young and foolish and brave and I would not heed warnings or advice. Instead, I went to court to serve my king, dreaming then only of honor, love, adventure. There I met a lady, the like I had never seen.
This then, is what went before I came to the pass I now find myself in. I heard the talk from the courtiers long ere I beheld her. They whispered that the king himself sought to bring her to his bed but I heard no word of his success. Beautiful and terrible they said she was, like a dragon or a tiger, not the way women’s beauty is praised. My curiosity, my obsession grew with each passing day until I had to see her, had to speak with her.
When that moment finally came, I saw no dragons but knew her only as the fulfillment of my heart’s desire. What she felt when she first saw me, I know not, though I was held a handsome youth and a brave knight, broad of shoulder and strong of arm like warriors of old. I wore the Holy Cross on my shield with pride through battle and tourney and many ladies longed for me to pay my court to them. But there were none like her and I saw them not. I pursued her as I would a hart or stag and she smiled upon me. So certain I was that I saw love in her face that I never thought to ask what she saw in mine.
I remember the feel of icy stones on cold scales from my dreams, my way lit by the last of the night’s torches. I remember the strange wildness I saw gazing out of her green, green eyes and wonder how my own eyes appear. If there were any to see them.
Then I saw only the looks that followed her at court. How they lingered, almost like a timid caress, yet turning abashed and afeared to other views when she returned their regard. But not I, for I had never known fear or doubt before. I desired her as I desired no other woman, not merely for her beauty but because I wanted to conquer what others dreaded. Then, too, I wanted the sons she would bear, sturdy heirs of my body from those wide hips, and the daughters as beautiful as she. Their faces looked out at me from her eyes.
There were other things that I saw as well, and things I heard when first I spoke of her to my companions. Witch they said she was and Fey and in my heart I knew it was so. Certain there were those among my former friends who say now that I should have listened and watched more closely. I hang my head for the shame of neglecting their counsel but in those days, I was a man in love. I fought with some and turned others from my door to haunt only hers.
There I remained for several moons before I asked her leave to address her father as I would have asked no other woman. She looked upon me kindly and did not say me nay. I went then to her father, a knight from distant lands who had come to pay allegiance to the king. Swiftly, too swiftly, did he grant me her hand and her dower. Yet I did not mark it then, not even when he left after our wedding in the manner of one who parts with tainted goods he never thought to sell. Not a thought did I give to this then but today I believe I would give him his daughter and the dower thrice over to be whole once more.
A thousand yesterdays ago, or so it seems, I loved her and ruled my lands with her at my side. The first year of our bond, she bore me a son, and a daughter the second. More children followed, just as I had dreamed when I first looked on her. And such children they were! Beautiful and perfect, but for my eldest son.
He had eyes slitted like a cat’s and was quick and sly and cruel. Still, I tried to love him for her sake for she loved him best of all. I even made him my steward on his seventeenth birthday so that he might learn to rule after me for her sake. I did it despite my fears that he hoped his wait would be but a short one.
At night my sleep was often unquiet, my dreams full of monsters unseen but always nearby, watching me. I woke shaking, fearing the feel of their claws in my flesh. Trembling lest they lie in wait for me in the dawn’s light, their fangs ready to feast on me, to consume me until I became one of their number. Always too I felt desire, moving hand in hand with repulsion and I tried my hardest to forget this. Always I awoke shivering next to my bride, her warm flesh comforting my night terrors until I could forget my fears, my unnatural longings.
That I shall never forget nor cease to love, even now. Her beauty calls me still in my waking dreams. I want her as she appeared to me then as I want nothing else, not even my peace and happiness. I want until my flesh burns with it and as long as I live, I shall want no other.
Yet all was not well between me and my lady wife despite the comforts she brought me. Each Sabbath eve of our wedded life, she kept to her chambers while I watched the candles burn down and yearned for her. In my waking dreams, she lay in her bath, her round, full ripeness glowing golden against the marble sides. Red lips and black hair framed the green eyes that spoke at once of spring glades and of wild forests. My flesh hardened at the memory of her soft glory and in the rage at her absence that I could not bear to confess to myself.
It was on one such Sabbath eve that I sat and watched the flames, thinking on her walking in the gardens in moonlight, her lips parted in song and the vines lengthening as they followed her slow stride. The very flowers blossomed at her call as I had myself. For she had chosen me of all the lords at court, all those who craved the feel of her breasts in their hands, the soft wonder of her thighs but dared them not. I laughed to think on it and remembered on, my eyes lost in the tapestry before my chair, one truth ringing loudly above all others: mine, she was mine.
The sun had not set when my son, the steward of my lands, came into the room as soft as if on a cat’s paws and my thoughts scattered like birds before . . . but no, I banished all thoughts of slitted green or yellow eyes. These were the stuff of nightmares and left for sleep alone, not to be seen when I was awake, the ruler of my lands and family. None should know that my nights were haunted.
He paid no heed to my distraction, asking instead those questions that he had asked on the dozens of Sabbath eves that had gone before. Did the countess his mother keep to her chambers this day? Would she do so after the king arrived? Always he spoke this way though I suspected that he knew the answers and asked only to torment me.
Each day for three years, he had spoken to me thus: first, of harvests and kingdom, and last and oh so softly! of my lady wife, his mother. Naught but praise had he for her wisdom, her goodness, but some emotion that I could not fathom hung on his every word. Why did his mother keep to her chamber each sennight? Surely she had told me, and he as my son had the right to know. But perhaps I could not tell him.
Then he would begin again on another line of questioning. His words hissed from his lips like a serpent’s. “How well my father bears with his wife’s absence! How patient you are with her woman’s moods. But surely, my lord, my father, you know what she does in those apartments whence even her maids and the children are barred? It cannot be forbidden to you.” And again. “She will not keep to her chamber thus when the king is here, depriving him of her beauty and wise counsel, no, surely not. My lord will need her by his side.”
His words broke against the wall of my thoughts, just as his hatred roiled beneath their waves, though I failed to hear it at first. I loved him not and had but little faith in him, however I tried to conceal it. That day in my folly, I heard only one word of the many he spoke: forbidden.
The fury of a fool swirled within me as I remembered what she had told me when we wed twenty years ago. Each sennight she was to keep to her chambers and I might not see her until Sabbath morn. Forbidden. That was the word she used, my countess, my own.
True, there were softer words around it, set to lull and soothe but there it remained, cold and hard in the midst of them all. Was I not Raymond de Colombiers, master of these estates and vassals, and indeed, of she who shared my bed? How could my wife’s bath be forbidden me, I who loved her more than gold, than kin, than life itself?
I tired quickly of my son’s presence and tried to let my anger leave me for these were not thoughts that I might share. Moreover, what use had I for kings when I had such a one as she who lay in a dark green pool some corridors away? My skin still bore the marks of her pleasure from this very morning and my fingers found them while I thought only of her as a man enchanted. My steward spoke on though it was clear that his father’s mind was elsewhere until I could bear it no longer. My hand waved him hence though neither king nor pastures would wait upon my pleasure.
My ring I gave him to place my seal on such judgments as he needed to make. I gave it away as if it meant nothing, as if I could not see the hunger for power shining in his eyes like the gold he craved. He cast me one look over his should as he went, a glance filled with scorn. But I watched him leave and cared not.
True, after he departed I thought more on the coming of the king, as he had surely intended. Here was my lord come to see his demesne for the first time since my father’s death. Surely he would be pleased. The people prospered, the merchants were rich, the land flowered. They said it was due more to my lady wife than to me but what cared I for that? They whispered too that she was an enchantress who held me in thrall and right they were.
Right I was also to be held for I was determined to be happy thus. I had even removed the old priest when the simpleton began to speak of dark powers yet drew up short of the word “witch.” The new priest understood his place better, speaking well of both lord and lady. I would let nothing come between us, neither God nor king nor man.
But that day doubts assailed me anew and I wondered if I was as sure of my lady’s heart as I believed. What of the king? What power had I to prevent him from conquering hearts where he chose and commanding what I might prize most? Would the king be forbidden my wife’s chambers as I was this day or would she welcome him with parted thighs and soft gasps? If it were so, would he take her with him when he rode away? My heart screamed with rage.
These visions of the fool I was danced before my eyes and I forgot that she loved none but me. I remembered only that I owned, that she was mine and no other’s. My steward, for I will not name him my son, not now, yet his words had burned in my mind even when I thought I paid him no heed. They planted my fears one on top of the other and lit the tinder beneath. Still I cannot blame him for all of it: my jealousy rose from myself alone and I can blame no other for the results.
On that day of happily ever afters that might have been, my thoughts turned unceasingly on the King and my lady wife. My jealousy knew no truth. Why should I be barred from what the king, if he so commanded, might enjoy? Why should I not go to my wife, my Melusine, and feel her beneath me, floating in fire-warmed waters? I must know that she loved no one but me. I had conquered where others feared to go and that victory must remain mine and mine alone.
At this thought, I rose in anger with the word “forbidden” ringing in my ears. It sped my steps through the corridors to her chamber. The stone halls echoed behind with my passage and the guards stood straighter and taller when I passed. But they were as nothing to me.
A turn, a stair, a few strides more and I stood still before the oaken door. From within I fancied I heard the water slide caressingly over her limbs and the gentle sound of her breath. I rested my head a moment against the solid beams of the door, weighed down by a sudden fever that made my hands tremble.
Then I thought I heard another sound, one I dared not speak of aloud. My loins burned with fire, until I trembled against the wood of the chamber door. My breath rose and my heart ran like a deer pursued by the dogs. I entered my dreams even as I stood there, awake in my own hall and I felt the scales of creatures unseen slide across my own flesh. I felt their forked tongues and fangs taste of me while I gave them all that I had, surrendering even as I took them in unholy union.
Forbidden she had said it was and forbidden it should be that a common man should lie with such as she. But I had known her touch both waking and sleeping and I was no common man. This I knew even as my knees trembled beneath me. I would know all the King might know, all the secrets that my beloved held. Like an idiot, I thought, too, that I would love her still, that I would desire whatever I found on the other side of the door, no matter what that was.
With that, I threw it open and went in to greet my beloved, my Melusine. There I found the substance of my dreams, and my downfall. Even so, had it not been for the tip of her tail draped over the side of the bath, I might have denied the monster she was. As it was, her slitted eyes met my own and she hissed a single word through transformed lips and tongue, “Husband?”
I will never know if there was love in those eyes; I only know that in my rage and my desire, God help me, I took her. I embraced her in her other form as I would the creatures from my dreams, though my soul cried out against it.
When I woke on the Sabbath, I looked upon she who lay beside me and I ordered the executioner to my steward, her son’s door. There would be no more words, no more cunning. I thought then to erase what had come before, to return only to the sweet days we had known when we were first wed. I knew the crime I had committed after the words were spoken, after it was too late, and my son lay dead in the grave. I knew that I had killed him with my fears, my jealousy, as surely as if I had swung the blade myself.
But even this was for nothing. Now each night I go and lie beside her to stare open-eyed at the ceiling above our bed so that none will know me for a coward. When I sleep at last, I know only the hard cobbles beneath my scales and the ache of being absolutely alone.
Each morning I beg her to enchant me again, to make me forget what I know and each day she says only one thing to me, “There are many kinds of monsters here.” Then she turns away, hatred in her eyes and leaves me to sit and watch the candles burn before the tapestries. Here I remain, unable to go or stay, knowing that my beloved remains at my side only to send me the dreams that fill my mind with horrors. Such is my punishment. For this, too, is how the story ends: with an open door and a man gazing at the unclean depths of his soul.