“I kept to my task like I said but there’s been almost nothing of you,” said he, keeping his voice low.
“You’re a married man now, my brother,” said Greta, trying to keep a lightness to her words. The smile she fought to put there faded.
“As you bade me, I did.” Hans laid his tools down carefully and crossed his arms. “For that I am a married man.”
“Not a task, not a chore, to be done lightly to win my kisses.” Hans did not look away. “You were married because it was best and right and what a man like you should do.”
“She has not your mouth or eyes or—”
“Hush, now. There’s nothing to be said of that. I’m here with news of my own.”
“And what would that be?” asked Hans, his face grave and stern, and his heart shrinking a little with prickles of foreknowledge. His words were slow and taut.
“My own time at the kirk come Sunday.”
Hans stayed still and silent.
“Me and William Colven to be joined alongside the others. He’ll be about to ask your leave.”
“My leave?”
“Of course. I’ll not marry without my brother’s leave.”
“You’ll not marry…”
“Don’t repeat what I say. Hans, please don’t. It’s done and can’t be undone and I’ll love you all my life and hope to see you all my days but no more of this other.”
His gaze broke and he looked down at his tools, not caring what he saw as long as it was not his sister’s face.
“Hans,” said Greta. “Look up.”
Hans did not.
“Hans, please. Listen. This is her, don’t you see? Her curse on us for escaping. Everything that should be sweet is rotten. She, her, without her…” She trailed off and still Hans would not look at her. “We must stop. Or otherwise she will stop us.”
Hans watched as she walked away across the field, humming one of their mother’s sad foreign songs. “She’s burned,” he said. “Dead and gone.” He waited for William Colven to come ask his leave. It was a long wait with no reward.
In the morning their father’s wife was garlanding Greta in hugs and fretting about the dress. Greta’s father was grave but pleased. The rest of her sisters and brothers covered her in kisses and congratulations, laughing at the manners of William, who had gone down on his knees before each and every one seeking their consent. Everyone but Hans, who kept himself scarce from the house. His wife Beth did not come down the stairs once that week before the wedding, though there was plenty of work to be done.
Hans was not at the kirk that Sunday. First light had seen him disappear and they could not find him, though they called and called. The four couples were wed without him. Greta knew she was right to be wearing the ring and joining her hand to that of William Colven, though there was no heat in her blood to be near him. It does not matter, she told herself. I’ve had all the heat I need, and now my stomach is bairn-full with it.
Her father set her on her milk-white mare; William adjusted her cloak and then he took the bridle. Hans stood silent at the kirkyard gate. Greta smiled to see him. Her heart felt light, though his face was long. As they reached the gate, Hans asked his sister for a kiss and Greta leaned over the saddlebow. Then all the world slowed. Greta could not tell exactly how it went: she felt his mouth against her cheek, heard him whisper words in her ear so that it tickled. His breath smelt fresh and good. He was in close to her, and then so too was his knife, and he wounded her deep.
Greta’s eyes grew wide but she uttered no sound. Her Hans stood back from her. He walked away. She opened her mouth to stay him, but nothing came out.
Toward the town William led her on the horse, chatting merrily to his best young man and the other brides and grooms and folk of the wedding procession, and all the while her heart’s blood stained her gown.
“I think this bride looks pale and wan,” the best young man told William, smiling. “It’s well she be modest and a small pinch afraid.”
There was laughter but Greta heard none of it, for she was fixed on her heart’s steady leak. William patted her thigh and smiled at her. “I won’t hurt you, my love.”
Greta heard that this husband of hers made a sound, but not what he said. “You did not ask his leave,” she whispered. She thought of a house with walls sweet and slippery and slick. Then she saw the slight rise of a hill and a tree broad and strong. “Lead me gently,” she said. Blood leaving her, words too; she wondered how much time was left to her. “The tree—I’ll sit down, I’ll make my will.” Only William heard, and he did not catch all her words.
“Rest now, my love?”
“A short rest, a short while.”
He stopped the horse and helped Greta down. She thought she would faint, there was so much pain.
“Look at them! Can’t wait till they get indoors, can they?” said the best young man. The laughter of the crowd drowned out her gasps.
“Are you well, my love? You are pale.”
“I must make my will.” The world around her contracted down into almost nothing. She could not see her Hans. She could not see anyone.
“Your will? You cannot be feeling so unwell as that?” William smiled his indulgence at her.
“For my father, the milk-white mare that brought me here.” Even though it is now stained red, she thought.
William decided to let her play this game. “And for your mother?”
Surely, my mother is dead? Out loud, she said, “My velvet pall and silken gear.”
“And for the littlies?”
“Give Ann my rose scarf.” She tried to think of what they might like, but it was hard; she hurt. “And for the other girls, divide what is left of my dowry. My youngest brothers can share what there is in the oaken chest. For Seth, my new penknife.”
“And your sister Mary?”
“My bloody gown to wash.”
“Your—” William pushed back her cloak and reached his arm around her; her waist was damp and sticky.
“You haven’t asked me about my brother Hans,” said Greta. Her words were slow in coming, and nothing before her eyes was where it should be. She wished her brother hell, all of it, and her there with him.
“Your brother Hans?” echoed William, looking at his fingers. They were covered with red.
“A rope and a gallows to hang him on,” said Greta.
“So what would you give your own true lover?” William pulled Greta closer to him and began to weep.
“My own true lover?” said Greta with so little breath that only the dead could hear. “I give him my dying kiss and my love forever.”
Copyright © 2001 Justine Larbalestier
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Justine Larbalestier is a research fellow at the University of Sydney. Her first book, The Battle of the Sexes in Science Fiction, will be published by Wesleyan University Press in Spring 2002.
The Rented Swan
By Joan Aiken
10/29/01
“This, you know, will not do,” said Edwin Luffington. “It will not do at all.” He gazed distastefully at the arched brick roof, from which a greenish drip occasionally fell to the floor. “My dear David (I may call you David?), we must get you out of here.”
“Why? I’ve been here for a year. It’s handy.”
“It is quite unsuitable for a man in your position.”
David Glendower looked at Edwin vaguely and then, a good phrase suddenly occurring to him, returned to his writing. There was nothing particularly striking about his immediate position; he was seated on two orange crates and making use of two more as a desk. His room, an enclosed arch under a viaduct in Kentish town, was neatly furnished with a series of shelves piled high with manuscripts, and a bed, all constructed from more orange crates; at two shillings a box they must have represented some five pounds’ worth of outlay. The floor was muddy.
“Do you live here all the time?” pursued Luffington.
“Oh, no. I go to the castle in Wales for the summer months.”
“Castle?” Luffington’s expression perceptibly brightened.
“Pwllafftheniog. My ancestral home. I don’t stay there in the winter because it’s rather inaccessible; people won’t deliver groceries.” Reminded of food, he took another spoonful from a packet of mixed raw rice and currants which stood on his desk. “It’s a day’s ride from the nearest village.”
“On what?”
“Donkey.”
“Could you be photographed at the castle?”
“I could, I suppose. If it was a fine day. There are only two rooms with ceilings, and they leak a bit…. That’s why I like this place. It reminds me of home.”