by Nancy Holder
Nancy Holder says: “I love Edgar Allan Poe with a love that is more than love, and as soon as I heard about nEvermore!, I asked to write a story based on my darling’s very last poem. My living darling, Mark, suggested I use Annabel Lee’s point of view. Perfect! And never done, as far as we could tell. Here is my result. Note: snippets of other poems by EAP are sprinkled throughout my story.”
* * * * *
I was a child and he was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea,
But we loved with a love that was more than love—
—Quoth I, Annabel Lee
Our kingdom was luminous once, and fruitful. Time and tide have worn us down; on the cliff, my family seat leans over the precipice as if pondering that final leap. Weary decay is our architecture, our battlements and parapets weep tears of moss and slime. All die quickly, too young. Thus he and I had freedoms that children in other realms do not; my nurse had many charges to look after, at least at first— my three older brothers. Two were taken by the Red Death and the youngest was so disfigured that he ended his own life. The sea was his crypt, although his name was carved into the stones of our tomb.
As mine has been.
In the kingdom, there are so few children— even fewer unblemished. My family’s blood runs true: we are tall and slim, dark and pale. But in his youth he was stocky and apple-cheeked; his hair shone like a halo. I would tell myself years later that this was evidence of foreign blood — counted a rare and valuable thing — but among the squat cottages and shops, such fair looks were not unusual. They have been described at court as common as the common folk who bear them. They were new to me as I, of course, had never ventured among such people, and so he utterly mesmerized me when we met upon the quay. He was gathering seaweed for his mam; I was musing, daydreaming, as lonely only-children often do.
We were barely toddlers and perhaps the waters did rush too close, too strong that first time when he grabbed both my arms and dragged me back, and he kissed me. Lips to cheek; his green eyes were like the sea glass washed upon the beach. I had never been kissed by anyone but my nurse, and she would have suffered a long and painful death had it been known. Plagues and wasting diseases stole from us common kindnesses and expressions of affection, and perhaps that is why love beguiled me so.
A chance encounter became a series of rendezvous, though one might term them assignations. Of a moonlit night, hidden, we strolled the beaches, my long velvet skirts trailing over bleached bones and driftwood. In the kingdom, the custom of the poor is to consign those children who did not, or could not, or would not live long to the churning tides. The ground is poisoned enough. Neighboring lands have protested our sea burials, fearing that we will distort those patterns of life in the same way in which somehow, we have distorted our own.
My nurse learned our secret, of course. With my brothers dead, her attentions centered on me, the only surviving child of the noblest family in the kingdom (with truer blood even than of those who wear the crown, even to this day.) As I confessed the many hours we had spent in each other’s company, her emotions shifted across her gaunt features like shards in a kaleidoscope— joy for me, then terror, perhaps envy, and a stern reminder that someday, I must put aside selfish indulgence and do what was best for my family, and for the kingdom. We cannot marry within; our stock is too depleted. Grafting dying vine to dying vine yields nothing, not even the sourest of pomegranates. She opened the cameo locket that bore raven-black strands of my mother’s hair.
“She died in her childbed. Make it a good death,” she exhorted me.
But we were young then, so young. We had no thought of dynasties, and believed our love so ethereal that we would forever eschew the physical. We rarely touched in those early days. The brush of fingers, delicate as angels’ wings, caused such sensations that we would both have to sit down. An oblong, smooth rock served as our divan and we would breathe in the ocean air, he settling my long, jet shawl around my shoulders, I drawing his ivory lap robe over our limbs. He would gather seashells in the green velvet basket wherein I provisioned us from my family’s larder: smoked fish from our nets and bread from afar; absinthe and amontillado from a cloaked man Uncle Otranto visited every fortnight.
I have many kinsmen. My father is Rodrigo; my uncles are Udolfo, Otranto, and Polidoro; my oldest cousin is Prospero. They melt into shadows; they trail along the cobbles in whispering boots, stilettos flashing silent in the crimson slashes of their capes. My family has been feared and envied for generations, and of course our favor is more precious than unblemished apples, or pears, or grapes. Though our fortune has dwindled, our influence has not. There are many who would bend a knee or pen a poem, feigning soft feelings in a heart that is brimming over with malice and avarice.
We are courted.
I was courted. For while our kingdom is cursed, it is also enchanted, and our seashells do not echo the sea.
They whisper to us.
“He loves thee,” murmured the shells he held up to my ear. “Thou art the most beautiful maiden he has ever beheld. His heart is thine. His life is thine.”
“She loves thee,” declared the ones I put against his. Or he told me that they said. He recited to me the lovely pronouncements and promises that issued from my shells.
We were enthralled. How could we not be? We had no one but each other. Our besotted gazes spoke of hunger for union, for the flesh… and I trembled with fear but with joy as well. By then I knew of the ways of man and maid. We had never gone beyond chaste kisses, but as we grew up, I sensed a sea change within him. Within us.
My nurse attempted to speak of these things with me, but I did not allow it. Though she has sworn a hundred million times that she did not go to my father, soon he and my uncles began to discuss suitors for me. They fought, and I overheard my Uncle Otranto railing that our title should not be purchased, no matter how mortifying our circumstances, no, not even if we came to ruin. We are a proud race, a gently bred family, and if we must die out, then we would do so with our honor intact.
I revealed all of this to my love, and his desperation was terrible to see. He became my shadow, my daemon, my Ruthven; if I walked with my nurse along the cliff, he hovered behind; if I chanced out of the castle to view the daily catch from the sea, he materialized out of the fog. At night, upon my balcony, he appeared, when no one could possibly climb the wet, oozing wall of my tower, a hundred feet high in the clouds. He swore that a sympathetic servant had let him in, which struck terror into my heart: if my kinsmen should discover him, it would be that slow death for which we are infamous.
He haunted me like a phantom, a ghost, a spectre, and I began to wonder if he could work magic. If perhaps he had enchanted me with a love spell.
Lute songs and flute melodies sang to me on the wind; a poem appeared beneath my pillow, surrounded by crushed rose petals. Titled A Bridal Ballad, it told the story of a woman who had forsaken her true love for another, and caused his untimely death.
Then came another:
My love, she sleeps! Oh, may her sleep,
As it is lasting, so be deep!
Soft may the worms about her creep!
Far in the forest, dim and old,
For her may some tall vault unfold—
Some vault that oft hath flung its black
And winged panels fluttering back,
Triumphant, o’er the crested palls
Of her grand family funerals—
That one frightened me, and when I met him at our rendezvous point on the beach, I told him so. He embraced me and begged forgiveness, then pleaded with me to place into my pockets all the whispering seashells he had gathered for me. This he would do as well; then we would rush into the sea together, weighted down by words of true love, and so die, breathless, in one another’s arms. I took his ferocity for inflamed heartache, and matched it with my own. We kissed as never we had before, and held each other. Our emotions became a rising tide, and I confess it now: the sword of Desire dangled above my virtue, held there only by strands of hair— those of my dear mother, vouchsafed in my locket; she would surely wail her despair in heaven if I succumbed!
“Be satisfied tonight that I give you my vow,” I begged him. “I pledge myself to you, truly.”
Like a madman, he half-carried, half-dragged me to our oblong rock-divan, and threw me back upon it. I was stunned, and breathless. He reached for the embroidered bodice of my gown. I screamed into his ear but it did nothing to stop him.
He would have despoiled me had the waters not dredged up a poor changeling child, thrown into the sea but not yet drowned, mewling and keening for its life. It was left beside our rock divan— a horror, unfinished, and certain to die, but I scrambled from beneath him and gathered the child up against my breast. I began to run and stumble through the sand; I fled into a long shadow for refuge. He hung back, cringing, and I took advantage and climbed the hilly path, the tiny monstrum in my arms.
The shadow was my nurse, with a heavy cloak for me at the top of the cliff, and her face mirrored the tumult in my soul; but as I pressed the babe upon her, she refused to touch it. Then she began to grab for it and I sensed she would hurl it into the sea. I held it tightly, though even now I have no idea what possessed me: I am an aristocrat, and pity is not in my nature. Still, I began to weep and shriek, and my nurse bade me silent lest my father and uncles hear me. I had been sorely compromised, and she did not want my disheveled appearance nor mad devotion to the doomed babe to add weight to a brewing scandale attached to my name.
Lightning struck and rain assaulted us as she conveyed me to my rooms. The babe was hidden in my cloak, and the watch did not challenge us. I was Rodrigo’s daughter, and the chatelaine of his estate.
Upon entrance into my sleeping chamber, I started in horror: what appeared to be a black casket sized for an infant lay upon the lace and satin of my bedclothes. She hurried to it and opened it. It was not a coffin, or if it was, it had been refurbished for another purpose: it was filled with papers and as she laid them out upon my bed like a dozen tiny corpses, she told me that with the aid of the nameless cloaked man, my uncle Otranto and my cousin Prospero had stolen the casket from his family’s cottage. It belonged to him. These papers were his poems and drafts of several letters, one of them to me, a copy of which I had never received.
“Read them,” she told me, but I shook my head. On instinct, I dreaded the sight of them. I clung to the child, who was shuddering, and its lids flickered shut.
“Read them,” she said again.
The babe panted. Its chest fluttered.
“Care for this little one and I will,” I replied.
Disgust clouded her features. “That is not a little one. That is nothing.”
I remained silent, though by that time, I, too, was shuddering. With obvious revulsion, she took the half-dead child from me and muttered, “It wants milk.”
There is very little milk in our kingdom, but I had some in my private larder. As she picked up the pitcher, I crossed to the pile of parchment.
“From the one on top to the one on the bottom,” she instructed me. “They are in order, oldest to newest.”
First there were poems in a childish hand, so very pretty and sweet from our childhood; and then the passion of early youth:
For her this rhyme is penned, whose luminous eyes,
brightly expressive as the twins of Leda
But over time the verses curdled:
And all I loved, I loved alone.
Then, in the drafts of the letter to me, the horrible, torturous truth came out: he was the instrument of a terrible plot hatched by his family: they sought to ruin me so that I must either be married off to him or my family blackmailed for money. Fool, fools, had they no idea that we lived on less than tradesmen? That our only hope was a wealthy match, and that it must be with someone who lived beyond our borders? It is true that due to our status we could arrange a dispensation to marry within, but did he believe that our sovereign would allow the sullying of the aristocracy with a commoner such as he? Even our blood, which flows in the veins of His Majesty’s bitterest rivals, must be kept pure. It is the only hope for the kingdom.
I must, and I shall do it, he had written to me in one of his many drafts. But after I shall make you happy, such that you shall forgive me. I swear I shall.
None of that had ever reached my eyes until that night.
I wept for hours into the bitter wine that my nurse brought to soothe me; all warmth left my body and I shook with cold despite fresh woolens and heavy furs all around me. My head pounded and my teeth ached. My nurse’s arms came around me and she murmured into my ear, “I tried to warn you, poppet. My dark, dear fairy girl, all is as I have feared these long years. I am so sorry.”
Then she said, “The… babe… has died. I shall get rid of it.”
So my misplaced pity had forced it to linger, rather than sink into the waters and be done with it. When she left the room, I crawled to my collection of seashells and placed the first one to my ear:
He loves thee.
“He loves me not,” I whispered back.
A second one: His heart is thine.
“He loves me not.”
And a third: His life is thine.
I was undone, utterly, and could not stop weeping until my tears froze on my cheeks, or so it seemed; when my kinsmen came into my room, they threw all the shells on the floor and crushed them beneath their boot heels. My floor became as the beach, sandy and cluttered. They pulled out stilettos, daggers.
I could not fight them.
I could not fight them.
* * * * *
The bells. The bells, bells, bells,
All the bells of the kingdom,
sobbing, toiling, grieving.
For me.
I was borne on my bier to our tomb amid salt and sand and ocean swells; weeping willows hung down in dismay. Bells that tinkled on the harnesses of the horses; bells in the churches and chapels, announcing my death. His Majesty ordered deep mourning, but the cloaked man informed my kinsman that the king was holding a ball behind the gates of the palace. His jesters wore caps and bells. It was a cause for his rejoicing: Our direct line was dead. My cousin was the last hope for continuing our house, and he was caught in the grip of a wasting disease.
* * * * *
Now the bells are silent.
The pavanes have all been danced, the mourners have dried their tears.
I am waiting.
Moons have waxed and waned.
And I wait.
If he does not come, then it was all true.
It was his handwriting; I know it. But the shells whisper true, or so we have always heard. His life came from our kingdom, both poisonous and sustaining; was the same to be said of his love?
Poisonous and sustaining?
Reading his words, I felt I should die.
Lying in frozen estate day after day after day, I feel I will die, thus entombed.
For I wait in my sepulcher. My name has been carved, and I am as cold as the grave. My flesh is marble and ice.
He wrote:
My love, she sleeps! Oh, may her sleep,
As it is lasting, so be deep!
Did he wish me dead? That I would die so that he would not dishonor me? Is that why he begged me to fill my pockets with shells, then pushed me back to land… pushed me onto my back and grabbed the bodice of my gown…
If he does not come…
The bells…
“No bells are tolling,” my nurse tells me.
“It is the baby crying,” I reply.
But it is she who is crying.
* * * * *
I see the moonlight on the wall.
And then the shadow.
My heart quickens in the utter darkness of the sepulcher and I hear the boots on the marble floor: My father, Uncle Otranto, Uncle Udolfo, Uncle Polidoro. Cousin Prospero. Moonlight finds them through the grated window: their daggers and stilettos are drawn.
His life is thine, the seashell told me.
“He is coming,” my nurse says. “At last.”
Her voice is raised in excitement, but she has aged terribly during the months I have been hidden from view. The long hours I have been ‘dead.’
Of course the casket was returned to his home that very night, before he could notice that it was missing. My kinsmen had been alerted by my nurse that he was with me, on the beach, and ran to the village to steal it. They saw nothing of my dishonor, she had promised me. But my father can scarcely look at me and my cousin can scarcely stop looking. His eyes take liberties; he treats me like a fallen woman. A whore.
I do not know how they got the casket back into his home; that night, I had looked at the papers for an eternity of hours— the full lifetime of the misbegotten creature I held to my breast. But they assured me that they did replace them, and he remained ignorant of the theft. They have lain in wait to kill him and all his kinsmen with impunity. They will wipe his name from the face of the earth.
If I opened my mouth and called to him, I could save him. That he is coming means that he is grieving.
That he loved me.
My Cousin Prospero leans over me. I am resting on my bier, a gauze sheet covering me like a bridal veil. I am pretending to be dead. In case he has a spy, my death can be confirmed.
When I was with him, I had never felt so alive.
I see the flash of steel and I wonder at the length of the rest of my life. My cousin lifts the sheet and the window glow frames his eyes. There are wrinkles at the corners. He is smiling.
“Slow or quick?” he asks me. “We accord you that right.”
In my mind’s eye I view the sea, and his green-glass eyes, his halo of hair. I see us together, he in his worsteds and woolens, I in velvet and gold braid. The shells do not lie; they cannot.
I never received the letter from him. And I wonder now how my kinsmen knew of the casket, and accomplished its return without arousing suspicion. If their cloaked man had penned forgeries in his hand. If all of this had been a mummer’s pageant to force us apart.
“Cousin?” he murmurs. “Slow or quick?”
We loved with a love that was more than love—
I lie here because of that. Because of a love that transcends our dying kingdom. They have promised me that once justice is done, a wealthy merchant across the water awaits my hand. He has seen my miniature, and has been told only that my death has been feigned to release me from a lesser match in favor of his. He cares not. He has promised that the family seat will be restored. It is a brilliant match for us.
I think of the misshapen babe who washed up into my arms. Who saved my honor when the man I believed loved me would have taken it.
“Someone comes to the door of our tomb. It is he,” my father whispers in the darkness. He grunts. “His arms are laden with roses. How could a beggar like him acquire roses? He is kneeling. His head is bowed. It is a perfect time to strike.”
He does love me. He loves me still.
“Cousin?” My cousin prompts. He is holding a seashell to his ear.
“What does it tell you?” I whisper to him.
He snorts in derision. “That his heart is thine.”
And I am of this place, this kingdom by the sea. My family’s roots are steeped in poison, and I am free of pity.
If his heart is mine, then I will not break it.
I close my eyes to freeze the tears.
“Make it quick,” I command.
That way, he will not know.
* * * * *