Written for Roz McClure, yuletide 2005
Part I - Morning. In which the Lady Viola indulges her fancies and the Lady Olivia delights in teasing.
Sometimes it feels like many centuries. You remember the dress she wore to dance in, the soft, shimmery bluish lavender of it. But some of her other dresses you had not merely looked upon, but felt, when she pressed up against you, lifted that strained, perfect face under its too-heavy curls, touched you with her cold little hand, then her sleeve had brushed against you. That was when everything had fallen out perfectly, and natural as the passage of the seasons, and your Lord loved you, and danced with you, and your brother was resurrected, and your lady... your lady smiled upon you.
When Olivia arises on the morning of the great festal day, he still sleeps. She moves lightly about her chamber, looks into her glass of the beaten silver, that which gives her an aspect even fairer than that seen by all the world: perhaps her skin has always the perfection of marble, but in this glass it becomes something far sweeter - moonlight, perhaps. (casually as she dissembles when they praise her beauty, yet she has always loved the glasses that fill her house, one in every room) And, oh! her eyes are starry and strange and distant as the lands of the Orient, she feels the early air, hungry and cool on her skin through her muslin shift. He is sleeping.
But what you remember most is the sweet scent of her, like nothing that you, daughter of high birth but modest wealth, had ever known. And that night, that seems like many centuries ago - that night the whole room held wafts of the delicate, impossible scent, as if she trailed it about her as she danced.
The countess stands at the bed and looks at the soft young curves of his face, the fair hair fanning over the pillow (she will never, ever think of softer faces, fairer hair) she lies down again beside him, and he is warm. He murmurs in his sleep, and the light, musky odour of his breath is in the air. And it is not unpleasant, although she is angry with him - yes, not a little angered - for he has interfered with her arrangements for the feast. He is too full of kindness, she thinks now: he has written to the fool he thrashed, her erstwhile suitor. A man she does not wish to see again, and who will arrive some few hours hence.
You are seven months married, and you have known such joys! That you cannot deny, it would be cruel, untrue. He shows more care of you now, of course, and you are no longer forced to accept the rich wine, the strange male customs that were all unknown. But you ride with him still, you glory in the strengthening, slender planes of your body. Your hair grows again, and when you ride out with him in the early, early summer mornings you always try to bind it back with a silk ribbon - some bright colour, now that you can choose, now that the sober dress of maidenhood and the false vestments of your courtship have been sloughed off - yet always he will distract you, call your attention to some unusual flower, the call of a bird, even perhaps the mere play of light on the sea, then he will urge his horse forward, snatching away your ribbon and laughing as the hair tumbles free on your shoulders.
"Sebastian," she whispers.
As his eyes flutter open he says, "My lady," he smiles because he has forgotten that she is angry with him, and pulls her down to kiss her.
"Oh no, my lord. This wish I may not grant." She twists away, tangles her hand in the gauzy curtaining and smiles down at him. She is not sure yet whether she forgives him. It is true that she is not really very angry, but certainly irritated when she thinks of Sir Andrew's foolish face, his foppish manner, the pity that she does not like to feel. She would really prefer to forget about that time when, raw with grief, she wandered through the cloisters or sat, listless, in her darkened withdrawing room, a quiet, hollow shade, troubled only by carousing that she hated because it reminded her of life.
The ritual washing, also, remains. You are no longer shrinkingly modest, but let yourself enjoy the sensation of the water, almost too hot, on your hands, the slow anticipation of care as the sponge glides up and down his back, under his arms, lower, lower... He takes your hand in his, plucks away the sponge and gently releases it into the water. So you start again, with your hands this time - at first you were always startled by how rough his skin was, astonished at his complex maleness of scars and hair and muscles just beneath the skin, but now you are used to it - you always do everything slowly with him, it has always been like this.
And anger is amusing, too. She experiments, wrinkles her brow in a frown and pleats the curtain with quick, angry fingers: he is palpably uncomfortable, shifts where he lies and pushes back the coverings restlessly. For a moment she does feel guilty, because when he was just rousing he was like a child, milky and untroubled, and now, (though she can still see the faint, fair down on his throat, Cesario's pretty throat) he is troubled, he wants to placate her.
But you no longer go down to the stables to hear the fool's songs. Perhaps now you don't need to - your kind Lord doesn't need to be in the dark, to be in that strange, hazy middle-world (because alone is too dangerous, in the castle is too dangerous, and anyone, surely, can buy the silence of a fool?), just to put an arm around you, just to bend his head down and touch your hair, just to breath the same air. He doesn't have to be frightened.
She tires of the game. While he is still thinking of something to say she goes away from the bed into her antechamber to dress - this time she will not come back. She must bind up those dark curls, put on her dress and fold her lips into the harder smile they have worn of late. (now that Cesario has gone away for ever; now that she has this replacement who is identical, but, she thinks, less brave) She puts on a gown of light golden silk, for everybody, today, will wear only white and gold, so that the hall will glitter when they are all assembled there.
Perhaps you still want to go, though. Because you were never as sure as he was, either of how much was known to that man, or of how long he would keep his silence. Did he see the little party straggle onto the shore, half-drowned, wholly grieved? You never got the chance to ask him how he found the necklace (that, in your despair, you had tossed to the cold ground as you would yourself into the grave, had there been any grave but the endless sea), how he had known it was yours... You walked over alone for the last time, only a few days after your marriage, and he was gone. You sat in the drawing room with her, that day when your dresses still felt strange, and neither of you moved or walked about at all, except when she called to her new gentlewoman, to bring tea, called in a light voice that you had never heard before. Since then you have gone often with Orsino, but not alone.
They have not yet found another steward of such fearsome efficiency as Malvolio, and she regrets him far more than lost suitors or kinsmen: once she could have left everything to his disapproving care, now, although she will do nothing to make her hands less white, yet there is a feast to give, and the one thing that, she thinks, has not changed one whit is her pride of spirit. Nothing will be less good than she can make it - and by less good, she means, of course, less beautiful.
But had the fool perhaps been in the garden and seen how both of you trembled, how that terrible misunderstanding had worked upon you, how there had been no... amusement? Had he seen you looking out into the veriest depths of the grey sea's tossing, dashing the tears away with shaking hand because at any moment you might be called to your Lord?
Part II - Evening. In which a Twelfth Night feast is held in the house of the Lady Olivia.
On your way to the house, you ride through orchards ablaze with the light thrown by dozens of bonfires. The evening's mist hangs pillowy and silent around the roots of the apple trees, but the evening is not quiet, the minstrels are fiddling fast and merry, and even from here you can distinguish the regular slap-slap of dancing slippers on the hard floor of Olivia's largest salon. There are almost too many people in the room, and you are not yet quite at your ease with them - your dear Lord loves you so well that he rarely seeks society other than your own, and that of the Countess and your sweet brother. So you are dazzled, for a moment, at the brilliance of the gowns, the fleet, dainty dancing and the rippling music. It all happens quickly after your arrival is announced - the greetings, and then he takes you swiftly, gently into the dance.
And one moment you are simply dancing, almost too warm because your own gown is a modest white velvet, and you feel your face starting to glow - then in the movements of the dance across the room, you see through the throng of people for a moment, and there is that strange, haughty face, that you half-thought you would not see again, even though everyone said that he would come back, that he comes and goes like the rain. It is a sad face, a face that tells you nothing, although his eyes are kind. He stands with the minstrels to play, but a little apart, and the next moment a string of dancers moves in front of you and you cannot see him any longer.
He came just as dusk was beginning to fall, while she sat in her withdrawing room to rest. Martha, her new gentlewoman, announced him shyly and as he came into the room she heard his slightly halting gait before she even saw him.
"Sir Andrew."
"My lady." He bowed, but did not try to kiss her hand. She could think of nothing to say, and after a moment he began to blush, and muttered, "I will, my lady, promenaderai within the beauteous confines of your garden, if that displeaseth not."
"I wish you joy of it, sir. The gardens are but mean, with winter's chill."
"Nay, madam, the lands about your house cannot be cold." He had smiled, then - or simpered, she disliked it either way - and left her alone.
As she stands beside her husband in the salon, close to the double doors where each arrival is announced, smiling and laughing, greeting their friends - the people she had asked herself, without Sebastian's troublesome gestures of pity to complicate everything - she thinks that she is not really a kind person: he has come, she imagines, because they are the only people to have invited him, and no one would wish to be quite alone on a night of revels, he is a sad man, a man no longer young (she thinks that nothing could be worse than that, to be old), and a good Christian would make him welcome to the house. Perhaps she is not a good Christian, then: the Lord afforded little consolation to her in grief, try as she would, pray as she would. The only time that she has felt any warmth of love for her God, in truth, was at her marriage, standing in the little, sunlit Chapel as the priest placed her hand into Cesario's, as she said 'I will', with all her will. Sebastian's hand, she reminds herself. Her hand was in Sebastian's hand.
A delicate goblet of Venetian glass is pressed into your hand, and you sip the warm, spiced drink that might be made from apples in the very cart that you knocked over, the day that you had been forced to fight the tall, thin man who dances continuously with a fixed, bright smile. Your husband laughs about it (although you know he is not quite pleased that it was the seamen from Messaline, the kind Antonio, who aided you in that most dire need, rather than his ducal self), but still you know that it was sordid, and when you see the man's gaiety, so forced, you are ashamed that you ever joined in the mirth.
An instant later you are roused from fanciful reverie, as the cry rings out: "Wassailers! The wassailers are come, milady!" The revellers spill out into the courtyard, which is lit by flaring torches, and dance and follow the raggle-taggle wassailers into the orchards. The wassailers do not wear holy white and gold to celebrate the Epiphany. You can distinguish them easily among the throng, in their bright, ragged tunics of crimson and blue - quite unlike the homespun work-clothes of the peasants that you see on every other day of the year. They are a small band, all men, but their voices are surprisingly sweet, and there must be at least one boy among them, singing high treble notes that pierce the air - 'tis strange, you think, but passing lovely. Old apple tree, Old apple tree, We Wassail thee and hoping thou wilt bear, For the Lord doth know where we shall be Till apples come another year; For to bear well, and to bloom well, So merry let us be... You are cold, suddenly, but the Duke Orsino is not at your side - he has been swept away from you in the dance. Why could you not walk back to the house alone? You have been here many a time; you know the path. You gather up heavy velvet skirts and turn away from the lights, and the people, into the icy darkness.
The fool is not a wassailer. He will not sing to trees, much as he will not sing hymns. He does not think that a song is something you should trust to. But he still follows the party to the orchard - because when people are very sorrowful or very joyous, they forget that he is there (nobody notices a fool, and anyone can buy his silence) and then, then he sees.
Tonight he sees that the Duke Orsino is dancing beside the wassailing boy, the treble, who is surely young Benedicto Rossi from the village, fifteen years old, dark-haired and pretty as a girl. The Duke holds Rossi's hand tightly in his, but the fool smiles. Orsino loves his fair wife, and the little boy's clear voice will begin to break within the year.
He sees that the Duke's wife is not as happy as she thought she would be, that she wants to be free. He watches her withdraw slightly, she is no longer in the firelight but the moon is behind her, distant but lighting her up, a silver nimbus wreathing the fair hair that has grown long again in seven months of marriage. She looks, he thinks, like a strict, delicate Artemis, clothed all in white, half-shy, half-eager. After a moment she turns and leaves the throng, as if she felt his gaze.
He sees that her twin, the young soldier, the Countess's boy-husband, is out of temper, sulky and quiet. The Countess does not care to dance with him very much these days, or so the rumour goes. He is not a very practised dancer, although high-spirited and a pretty youth, and the fool knows that the lady does not tolerate lack of grace even in those she cherishes.
He sees that his own Madonna (hers is the only house he returns to, this wanderer) has a harder mouth than before, and a harder glitter in her eyes that makes her even more beautiful. Her eyes follow her sister, and he thinks that she should not have married, and that in another year she will be tired of playing with her little husband, and perhaps he will not come back again.
He sees a man he knows. Sir Andrew Aguecheek is leaving the dancers, his smile a rictus on a too-thin face. Are there tears in his eyes, or is it merely an illusion of the firelight? The fool sketches a loose, laughing bow to the knight.
"Sir Andrew, wilt not take a turn with me?"
"Aye, Feste. And talk of happier days!" Men dance together on a night of revels. A knight can take the outstretched hand of a fool and no one looks askance.
They dance, until Sir Andrew says, "I'd lief sit a while - I'm a-weary with frisking!"
"What you will, sir, what you will," says the fool, and they sit on the damp grass a little away from the others, silent at first for some minutes.
"What think'st thou, Feste, of the Lady Olivia?" Sir Andrew asks.
"Why, I think she is precious as an emerald, and lost as any sailor sans his chart. I think she should cast out her well-loved pride, which lets her not admit of errors done, and she should follow that fair lady now, the fair-haired Lady Viola, whom she loves. And they should listen, to revels far away, and hear them while they talk of love, but straight away forget them when they kiss. But that she daren't, for she's Madonna and mouse, too great and still too frightened to dare act, for all she be the greatest beauty in Illyria."
"They'd burn thee for a witch across the seas, as soon as see thee."
"Because I know too much? That's no sin here. And women's love is laughed at by the world. Illyrians pay no heed what knows a man, if he won't speak it. And a fool's silence can be cheaply bought, with naught more worthy than a Trojan prince."
"I'd throw a thousand princes to the winds, would fair Olivia speak one word of love."
"And therein lies the myth that poisons men: that any wealth can move a woman's heart! And, sir, you know right well that you feel nothing but a fancy's prick - she's not for you, or any man at heart."
"What can I do? For I have known love, and while I seek it out, and seek it out, at every turn it slips my eager grasp, and then, again alone, I needs must weep."
"The fault is in the seeking. Being sought, it stays not still, resists and proveth false. Will you not simply look? For love is sometimes ready, quiet, strange." The fool puts out one hand, empty and open. The knight is slow to understand, but when the Lady Viola returns to the dance, she sees that there are two men sitting under a tree, shadowed, their features hard to discern. She thinks that perhaps there are tears glinting on one the face of one of them. She thinks that perhaps the other is the fool - but then she thinks that it cannot be, because the man is more there than the fool has ever been, he is not merely watching. She really can't make out their features well at all.
The Duke Orsino stretches out a hand, and Viola joins the dance.
FIN
Disclaimer: Twelfth Night does not belong to me. Neither does Nunn's 1996 film, from which certain visuals and scenes are taken.
Author's Note: "A Trojan Prince" refers to Troilus, Cf. 3.1.56.
Thanks: To my fabulous beta, ionbond. I couldn't have done it without you!