May the following day become a liturgy of trials and signs. A visit to St Michael, a humble relic as protection, the news of a suitor chosen by my father and, under the market sun, the suspicion that the shadow man knows how to disguise himself as a gallant, because light does not destroy the night, it occupies it; and occupation becomes learning, giving fear a name, fitting it with a bridle of bread and patience, and ending the day with a simple vow that, without triumph, allows sleep.
October 7.
It breaks with a clarity less frozen than yesterday’s, as though the hand that brought water into the world had warmed the bowl over the slow fire of the kitchen; there are still splinters in my chest, yes, but I can move without my breath wounding me like a spur; the room keeps, in its half-light of linen and dust, a new obedience, and the glass of water on the table, the same one from last night… reflects a small sky in which my doubts fit, lined up like fish; far off I hear the creak of the door that leads to the courtyard, the footsteps of the servants, the bronze of the kettle calling its congregation of cups, and I feel my heart, clumsy like a schoolchild copying the alphabet again, practicing, not a courage, but an order. I wash my face; from the mirror there still falls a pollen of shadow that is not enough to darken me; as I brush my eyelids with the towel, the temptation reappears to lie down again, to surrender the field to the night even in full day, but a distant little bell, perhaps from the stable, perhaps from the church, draws a line in the air, and on that line I set my foot. I put on a simple skirt; I do not seek beauty, I am content to be clothed within; I tremble like the willows at the edge of the lake, yet the trembling does not break me; I take a piece of bread from the basket, smell it, and remember yesterday’s bridle; the flour, which knows nothing of demons, has learned to guide horses.
They tell me that my father’s carriage has already left Linlithgow for St Michael, so today there will be counsel and dealings, and, if I hurry, I may reach the church before terce ends; I step out with a light coat, cross the courtyard where a rooster displays, in its own way, the persistence of the world, and take the gravel path; the wind stirs the damp scent of the earth and brings to me a conversation of magpies; the lake stretches like a ribbon of burnished lead and shows, at its edge, the finest script of the reeds, the city awakens with that quiet honor the poor give to laying a blanket well, thus I reach the square where the market raises its curtain of voices; the apples rehearse their red, the fishmongers weigh the shine of the scales against the morning’s balance, a girl carries in her hand a small bouquet of rue and waves it as if to chase invisible flies; there are birds that, on the wires, sustain a colloquy in a major key, I feel, for one clear instant, that the nocturnal tyrant does not know how to read this score.
I enter St Michael, I see that the stone keeps an honest cold that does not wound, the stained glass lets fall, in portions, a quiet honey, I do not come to ask for miracles, but to assemble the day with small things; the sacristan, a thin man, gray beard, the pulse of a shoemaker in his fingers… offers me holy water, the cross he traced on my forehead falls upon me like a well-chosen memory, and I dare to ask him, softly, for something that might serve as anchor; I do not want a fairground talisman, I want a task, the sacristan, who does not trade in miracles, brings me a linen cord, very simple; “For those who are learning to tie,” he says; I smile in gratitude and kneel at a side bench; unease does not leave me, but it learns to breathe through the nose; my lips attempt a prayer without architecture, only planks laid over a deep river, and on that loose wood I hold myself; I think that, if my guilt is an animal, it does not need to be chased with torches, only taught to sleep, I ask for myself the poverty of a humble remedy, a task, a rope, a gesture that draws no notice.
On returning, the market is already another music; the clouds have laid down their army’s rank to become linens hung to dry and then I buy a bundle of vervain from the old woman who asks nothing; the leaf smells of fresh memory, at a pottery stall, a clay cup looks at me with a perfect eye and I take it, as if adopting a bird; there is a letter waiting when I return home, my father’s handwriting is that of a man who does not allow the horns of authority to bend; he abbreviates the news but not the purpose, this week I will be formally presented to the gentleman who, by arrangement and advantage, could, he says, safeguard my future; my name does not tremble on the paper, it trembles in my blood; I read again, now with the eyes of the fear that knows how to subtract; I notice a phrase… “a man of firmness” and I hear, beneath the metal of the word, the laugh that is not a laugh, my bread becomes bridle in my hand; guilt raises its head, ready to sing its rusted hymn, and yet it cannot command the choir.
I order the room with the devotion of a sacristy; I open the windows and let the morning officiate; I tie the linen cord to the bedpost, not as one who would bind the demon, but as one who tells the horse: here; I light a candle and place it, humbly, beside the new cup; I boil water; the tea fulfills its duty as invisible monk and brings order to my tongue; I sit to embroider without haste… a minimal letter, the initial of my name, with dark thread on pale linen; hearing the needle enter and exit prescribes me a music; at times, the memory of the breath on my nape bristles my skin and nearly tears from me, at a stroke, the day’s progress, but the thread does not break; I say, under my breath, a name that is not an insult but a promise, and the skin, obedient, learns it again.
At the hour of none the gentleman arrives; he is neither old nor young; his skin like well-kept parchment, his eyes that blue that commits to no one; his greeting is impeccable, the bow of a man who learned angles before emotions; his conversation has no edges where the hand may hold; he asks me, with distilled courtesy, after my mother’s health; the kitchen dog, who loves everything, does not approach; his shadow, the gentleman’s, falls on the floor with a blade not matching his voice; I do not tremble, but a cold runs under my spine like the tip of a knife someone holds with the handkerchief of good manners; I answer just enough; I introduce into the conversation a word I learned today: sanity; I leave it there, like one who ties to a post an animal no one has yet seen; the gentleman looks, through the window, at the garden; he states that he prefers cypresses to roses; I smile without showing my teeth; when he leaves, he leaves in the air a clean trail of perfume, but the ear, that faithful dog, insists something howled within; I do not know if I have met a man or a form of smoke; I close the windows afterward, not as one who barricades, but as one who gathers the tablecloths at the end of the meal.
The afternoon bleeds out with decorum; the sun writes its daily letter on the façade, and the tree in the courtyard expels, with a noble shake, the last ghosts that escort me; I prepare a clear soup, as if cooking for a convalescent who is myself; I set aside the cigarettes from the drawer and tell them, not with iron renunciation, but with the patience learned through blows: “tomorrow”; I place, under the pillow, not a relic, but a small piece of bread wrapped in linen; let the yeast do its secret work through the night; I tie the linen cord to my wrist; I do not want it to restrain me, I want it to remind me; I return to the diary; the handwriting straightens under the application of a novice; I write: “I did not conquer; I occupied”; I write: “if the sea fits in a shell, today I learned that the face of fear fits in a name”; I write “if it presents itself in suit and opinions, the light still recognizes the laugh that is not a laugh.”
Vespers.
Lord my God, who balances hearts like lamps in the nave of the wind, receive this poor cord that today I have tied without skill and make of it a sign of peace; if the shadow man learns my paths and knows, with borrowed voices, how to ask for entrance, grant me not the courage of heroes, but the precision of the humble, to occupy with your light each corner where he presumes command; may I lack neither bread for the bridle, nor patience for the unbroken horse, nor hands to loosen the knot when pride tightens it too much; if the temptation returns dressed in apparent goodness, teach me, like the shepherds, to recognize the howl that hides beneath courtesy; if this flesh of mine trembles on the same ember where pain and delight confuse their tongues, do not judge me as hopeless, see me instead as one who learns to walk on planks over a very deep river; place oil on my brow, just silence in my veins, and a small candle that does not humiliate the night, but forces it to retreat to the bowl that belongs to it; and if I am to wake tomorrow, permit it… that my lips name you without shame and my heart follow you with new obedience, not for triumph, but for restitution. Amen.
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