LITMIR.BIZ

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too much, and the stranger said only, ‘Another life.’

      ‘Tell me about that life.’

      ‘It starts,’ they hunched forward, staring into the leaping flames, ‘with twin girls …’

      ‘Ah!’ I could barely contain myself – twins are always deformed or twisted, either on the outside or on the inside, or one is perfect and beautiful and the other an ugly wretch. Or one is saintly and delightful and the other evil and malevolent.

      ‘… daughters of some earl, I forget who. This was years before I was born. You know the type. Rich lands, beautiful girls. The twins married off at first bloom. To two earls. Also of the usual sort.’ They spoke in a hitching, hesitant way.

      Dear listener, what follows is the story as I recall it. Or as I recount it. Or, perhaps, as I have shaped it. For stories bear the imprint of all who tell them. Silence told it to me in that little inn, and I have told it to myself many times since then. And now, listener, I share it with you. I share it in the spirit of truth, knowing that you, in turn, will make it your own.

       CHAPTER ONE

      Once there were twin girls, born – perfect and beautiful – to Earl Le Valle. Their mother died when they were but infants, and their father raised them to be pleasant, mild, and diligent alike. He doted on them. Even the household staff could seldom tell them apart, they were so equally flawless and winsome. As they grew, they ripened, like grapes on the vine, swelling just right, softening just so, sweetening to perfection. And at the height of that perfection, two dashing earls – we’ll call them Rodney and Jacques – married the twins in great joy at their father’s court.

      No expense was spared for the wedding festivities. The earl hired a dozen minstrels (minstrels are the most important part of any wedding), a dozen jugglers, and a troupe of mummers. Hunters flushed a hundred deer from the earl’s woods and so the kitchen-yard was filled with a hundred spit-boys roasting the meat to perfection. Feathers flew as geese and capons were plucked. The priest even had the altar boys polish the church bell. In short, everything was done to perfect excess and the twins were married and their husbands took them to their separate manors.

      Not long after, the twins’ father died, and the two husbands laid claim to the earl’s estate – each saying his wife was the older twin. The girls themselves, of course, had no memory of their birth, and their father had insisted on raising them as equals, never disclosing their order of birth. Retainers were questioned, their old nursemaid was dragged from retirement, but no one could say for sure. The old earl had been so fair-minded – so naïve – that he had never recorded which girl emerged first. Rather, that silly fool had told them they came out side by side, holding hands (poor mother!).

      The husbands fumed, stormed, and consulted their counsellors but there was no resolution at all. They appealed directly to King Evan, known across England for his sense of justice and his utter faith in the law. (Now, of course, as king he makes the law, which makes his faith in the law rather, well, self-serving, but let us never mind that. A king ought to be praised, if a minstrel wants to make a living.) King Evan considered the matter carefully and discussed it with his advisers, who examined every letter of the law. But even they could make no resolution of the quandary, apart from to suggest evenly splitting the land and holdings. Neither husband would agree to this – half a holding! When it could all be his? And so in the end the earls agreed to a bout of single combat to settle the matter.

      They met on the king’s pitch: that long stretch of packed earth, its tufts of grass nurtured by the noble blood that has been spilled there. That hard and level plain beneath Winchester’s walls where men are tested and found, all too often, to be wanting. The parties went out in the morning. Two priests blessed the earls. The king, resplendent in a robe of rich blood-red, presided from a shaded pavilion. He was young then, his hair as dark as a raven’s feathers, his jaw so square it might have been carved from stone, and not yet married – his beautiful queen, Eufeme, would be won in a few years’ time. The crowd and two earls waited until the sun stood directly overhead so neither would have the advantage. Then the young lords took to the pitch. One of the earls wore armour his father had given him, with gold worked into the greaves, so that he sparkled in the sun, a gleaming paragon of manhood. The other wore a helm, won in a battle against the Danes, set with precious gems, and with every turn of his head, green and red crystals glowed; never had a man seemed more worthy.

      The king raised his hand; the earls raised their swords, saluting one another. Their squires had sharpened those swords at that day’s dawning, working the edges with a whetstone until either earl could have shaved his throat, so keen were they. They set their stances. Behind the king, in the shade of the pavilion, the earls’ wives, those two twins, clung to each other and wept, tears staining their angelic faces.

      The king dropped his hand, the trumpet blasted, the two earls leapt at each other, their blades shrieking, locking, the two men grappling, leaping back, trying each to gain the advantage over the other. But they were as well-matched in war as in wives and so within an hour, both earls lay dead upon the ground. The twins were now widows. The two spring flowers of knighthood had been plucked too early and their two ladies, once perfect lilies, were now left to wilt.

      King Evan flew into a terrible rage – what an utter waste! What vile stupidity! If it went on like this, he’d have no knights left. And so he declared, from that day forward, no girl or woman anywhere in his kingdom could inherit a thing. Not land, not title, not even a skein of yarn.

      He seized the twins’ father’s lands for himself, sent the bereaved twin widows to a convent, and …

      My stranger’s name proved true for a moment. Silence. The cat came around again and jumped into their lap. It eyed me as I poured more wine. Around us, the inn had darkened. Night waited at the windows. A gust rattled the door, pushed down against the flames in the hearth. Then they leapt back up, illuminating a golden highlight in Silence’s hair, so momentarily radiant, I swore I could smell sun-warmed oats and not the smoky belch of the fire. They leaned back, putting themselves in shadow, nodding to themselves, as if they were telling themselves the story, keeping it from me. Unfair.

      I fed the fire another log. I prompted as gently as I could with a conversational nothing: ‘Twins. They’re always evil.’ But even as I mumbled, my mind was spinning out the twists this story might take (a visit from an incubus to the convent, one of the twins conceiving the person who sat beside me). ‘Was it,’ I tried, ‘a demon? Who came to lie with one of the fair twins?’ I paused, but no answer came. ‘Like Merlin’s own begetting?’ I prompted. ‘Surely you know the story how the great wizard’s mother lay with an incubus and that is how Merlin got his sorcer—’

      My stranger stirs. ‘You will hear of Merlin soon enough.’

      I lean closer to them, my fingers flexing. I could already imagine how I’d tell this tale – how at the earls’ dual fall, I’d strike my harp, thus and so! And the promise of Merlin, and magic to come …

      Silence cleared their throat a little. ‘Sometimes it seems it’s all a dream. I wake from one only to find myself in another.’

      That voice seized me back to the present. An old man’s words. Odd to hear them in the mild tenor of a boy’s voice, with the huskiness of innocence. I waited, trying to be as patient as a priest.

      ‘Maybe it doesn’t begin there,’ Silence said at last. ‘Maybe it starts with …’

      My stranger was threatening to settle into deep brooding, so I pushed their mug closer. They drank deeply. I watched the cords of their throat move with each swallow (no Adam’s apple, but not all men have one). Some downy hairs on their cheeks, though their words made them seem old enough to be a greybeard. Words! Few enough of those to go around.

      ‘Perhaps it starts with my father. He served King Evan. Was a knight of his inner circle. Fought at his side in many a battle. But mostly he went hunting.’

      We were off again at last, all herky-jerky.

      ‘My

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