NOVEL NEXT Chapter 102: Taboo
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Claire: [indistinct noise from across the cavern]
Harry (bellowing): You're doing a great job!
Gordon: I didn't hear her.
Harry: I believe in her.
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Thursday, November 21st, 2090, about 3:13 pm MST, Ghostlands, the open road (9,253 viewing)
Coming down out of the bamboo, Claire found herself in a changed world.
Gone were the Mesoamerican hilly plains with desert and jungle-adjacent shrubs and palms. This was straight-up pastoral—as interpreted by someone who had never been a farmer. Rice paddies climbed and dipped across shallow hills in a profusion of beautiful colors, overshadowed by what seemed to be some sort of fantasy depiction of cherry blossom trees mixed with weeping willows—oversized trees, hundreds of feet tall, thick as oaks.
The farmers all wore fezzes.
There was plenty of shade, so perhaps they didn't need the traditional rice paddy hat.
The priests were in a terrible mood. Horrible. They'd lost one of their members. They'd lost one of their carts. They were all going to starve—or at least, they'd have to choose between making beer and making bread for part of the winter.
The storyline didn't make a whole lot of sense to Claire. She looked around at the rice paddies.
I'm taking wheat, she thought, to the abbey in the middle of farmland that grows rice. . . so they don't starve over the winter.
When she relayed her thoughts to the newly reincarnated Karen back in Wutaar, she got back a short, quippy answer:
It's all for beer, duh.
Which made sense.
The noble, on the other hand, was beside himself.
He had just seen the woman who had apparently been his nanny torn to shreds in front of him. The guards—on both the prisoner / indentured servant / slash slave transport (Claire still couldn't believe she'd missed that)—had been reduced in number to six. Their corpses had been left where they lay.
The rush to get out of the bamboo fire—and the bamboo fire itself—had probably claimed as many lives as the dead.
Claire privately admitted to herself that this was probably not her finest moment.
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The peasant cottages reminded her of Lord of the Rings—arched, with large beams ridged on top, but with open doorways. The setting sun filtered through. It had been a bit of a walk from the necromancer's ambush point to the end of the bamboo, and now they were stepping into a village where the cottages were aligned perfectly—doors east to west, the sun visible through one house after another in a straight shot.
"This is pretty," said Harry. "I like the trees. They did a good job with those trees."
"Those are foxglove flowers growing from the tree, by the way," said Harry. "The blossom, that is."
"If I were a 3D artist," he mused, "I would have made a tree like that."
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"Okay," said Claire. "Out with it. Karen, I know you've been dying to tell us what's going on."
"This is Mercutio," Karen said, pointing to the nobleman's coach-and-four. "He is here and traveling from A to B, bandied up with the caravan for company along the road—like the pilgrims from The Canterbury Tales. And he's a poet!"
"Okay?" said Claire, unimpressed.
"He seems to have an actual sonnet he's composing for his lady love, who he says he expects to encounter and declaim his love toward. It's cute! Like living in Ivanhoe or something."
Claire could see that. "Shakespearean," she suggested.
"Yeah! Like that."
"I wonder which sonnet they loaded him with," Harry commented.
They both looked at him.
"What?" he added. "Can't a man like poetry?"
"I'm just imagining you trying to identify the sonnet," Claire said. "Hadn't known you were so widely read."
Harry, to Karen, elaborated. "I grew up with my grandfather on my father's side. Because of a car accident."
"So your grandfather is a rabbi?"
"I grew up fairly secularly, but he always pushed a love of reading and books and stuff. He said there's no excuse for wasting the mind that you were given through not feeding it enough."
"And so we come full circle to love poetry?" asked Claire.
He nodded. "It's not just that. There's a rhythm to poetry—and focusing on reading it correctly can make you a better speaker."
"The chat wants to hear you read the poem," said Claire.
They did, in fact:
> Randoon_the_Wizard: I DARE you to read us some good iambs
Harry laughed. "Sure. Where's our friend Mercutio? Karen?"
"At lunch, I think," said Karen. "But the coach is just here—and—" She reached inside. "I saw him using this pen case. . ."
She withdrew a leather satchel and tossed it over. "No harm in reading it to the chat, right? Won't spoil anything for his lady love."
The handwriting was angular and spidery, but Harry gripped the paper like things were suddenly serious and took a dramatic stance upon his horse.
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"Ahem. Sweet LIPS / that TITS / there SUPPED. . . what the hell is this."
> businessCatz: He's writing to someone supping on tits.
> x_TremeSnooze: Nothing to see here, business as usual.
> Randoon_the_Wizard: Could be writing to his cat
"No," said Harry darkly, reading on. "I don't think so. Claire, I think we found another problem area in the game."
"Read it," she said dully.
'. . .where ONCE / Did I / and SHARED / aLIKE / while DAND / led ON / her THIGH. . .'
Harry, quietly: "They shared a wet nurse. He's writing to a girl he breastfed next to."
Karen put her hands over her ears. "No. No no no no. No. Nope. La la la la la."
Harry shook his head, "And. . .this is a midwest accent stress pattern."
Claire rounded on him. "SHUT UP?" she said, completely disbelieving.
"No, like me: . . .while DAND / led ON / her THIGH. . . ."
It sort of worked.
Claire rubbed her temples. "His nursemaid died in the attack earlier. I remember thinking it was weird that he had his nursemaid with him—Is that a thing? Did people just. . . take them on as lifetime housemarms or something?"
"Uh. . ." said Harry. "Yes, they did that sometimes. Nanny to housekeeper was plausible. . . Um, yeah, I think I'm just going to have to go for it. If I gotta read this, so do you."
He cleared his throat and read it from the beginning.
Sweet LIPS | which TITS | there SUPPED | where ONCE | did I
and SHARED | aLIKE | while DAN | dled ON | her THIGH
her BO | som BARE | where SUC | kled WE
who SLUM | bered PERCHED | upON | her KNEE
we TWO | not KIN | but ELSE | aLIKE
which SHARE | what LACK | most LOVES | beLIKE
were BORNE | in TWAIN | beNEATH | the LUCK | y SKY
whereFORE | we TWO—| each HEART | emBIT | tered—LIE
when TORN | at LENGTH, | which DES | tined FROM | our STARTS
to JOIN | as ONE | in PAS | sions AND | in PARTS
But WE | which PAIRred | ensnAR'ED | were NOT
by KIN | or BLOOD | or LINE | beGOT
WhyFOR | should THEN | not LOV | ers we
which ELSE | unCHAINed | would STRAN | gers BE?
As IF | beFORE | each STOOD | a SPAN
that PINned | en WRIT | some MEM'rey | PLANed
For I | for THEN | tis JUST | a VOID
should GODS | or MEN | be THUS | annOYED?
I SWEAR| beFORE | each EARTH| ly POWER
to ME| you ARE| the MAID| en's FLOWER!
For YOU | if WORD| or THOUGHT | be WRONG
| to YOU | e'en STILL | my HEART | and SONG
and IN | the END | if DAY | be RIGHT
I'll BLEED | and SPEED | to END | less NIGHT
There was silence.
> Randoon_the_Wizard: Scans well?
"You are to me the maiden's flower," Karen told Claire dramatically.
"That's 'vagina' in modern English," Claire responded dourly. "Like, you just told me I'm the archetype of pure. . . femme beauty."
"I know what I said," Karen said confidently.
"I don't know if we need to intervene here," Harry said slowly, ignoring the byplay. "This doesn't seem. . .healthy."
"Does he have a point?" asked Karen.
Claire stared at her friend.
"Just saying—they're not related. Clearly the nursemaid was still in the picture, so maybe they grew up together, but that doesn't make them related either. People in small-knit groups still get to marry and stuff. Is he actually. . . as gross as it sounds, or does it just feel icky?"
Harry was quiet for a second. "Historically they often did marry cousins, etc. This would be better than that. But. . ."
Claire completed her fiancé's sentence.
". . .Better doesn't have to mean good. Also, he never mentions her name but he talks about her mom's boobs twice."
"Her name is Eunice," came a small voice.
The group turned as one—Mercutio, carrying what looked to be a sack lunch, had walked up on them without their noticing.
"Doesn't rhyme with much."
Claire stared at him, then swung around to Harry, who was counting out the meter on his fingers.
"Yeah, no," he said. "That's not bad."
"What about it isn't?" demanded Claire.
"If it's not racy," said Mercutio, "is it really a love poem? Besides, how would you have written it? Would you have just said, 'People don't approve of us because we shared a wet nurse'? That doesn't sound poetic at all. First you have to state the problem without just saying it, and then you have to stay with thesis, and then you have to support the thesis. There's a format to these things."
"He's right," said Harry.
> luckyNumber3: Are you siding with him?!
"Okay," said Harry. "I still have questions, but if his lady love has heard other sonnets, then she might want hers to sound at least as good."
"I have sung to her every poem I could lay hands on," boasted Mercutio, "but they rang flat and false because they were not mine."
Claire's eyebrows were climbing her forehead, disappearing under her bangs.
"Harry. This is a new side of you."
> GoodShipLollipop: Guys, I'm not liking this tonal shift here
> WifeByKnight: Tonal shift. What is this, poetry appreciation day?
> GoodShipLollipop: I signed on to watch Claire X Harry, not listen to. . .that.
> Randoon_the_Wizard: Hey Harry how would you classify this poem, like as a category?
"I guess it's a sonnet," he said absently. "Claire, you're acting like I'm at risk for incest."
> Randoon_the_Wizard: OH YEAH she's got that covered, we're okay guys.
"It isn't incest," Mercutio said stubbornly. "Even her mother knew that."
"Her mother?" asked Claire.
"My nursemaid's daughter Eunice is my intended. We were cruelly separated some years ago, and I mean to show her the depths of my affections in lyrical verse."
His foot tapped. "Listen, I've been quite cordial with you, and you clearly have me out-numbered and out-classed for steel, but this is my sonnet and my case of pens besides."
Karen handed him his poem back.
He glared at it critically before rolling it up and putting it away.
"I trust that was entertaining," he said shortly, and stamped off to his coach.
> Randoon_the_Wizard: . . .okay. Now I need to write a limerick to recover morale.
> Randoon_the_Wizard: . . .ahem. There once was a blue ship, the belle / that danced with the storm's ebb and swell /
> Randoon_the_Wizard: tied up in her locke / she hopped up on the dock / and alighted all perfectly well.
Harry stared off into space. "I was so sure that was going to have a dirty twist ending," he commented.