Good With a Knife

“You know, Plum-Bottom, I feel I am more handsome with each passing day.”

The purple feline stretched and yawned. He found that was an adequate response to most human conversation, but he was moved to ask in his driest purr, “Plum-Bottom?”

Marlowe ignored the question. “And today I will go wooing, to plight my troth to dear Drunais, Princess of Faerie, Queen of My Heart!”

“Who happens to be a sweet young fey of ninety-two. In thirty years you’ll be a withered old man, and she’ll still be in the first bloom of youth.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

Cat didn’t deign to reply, but stuck out one leg and began to groom himself, though not before turning so Marlowe wouldn’t see what he now unaccountably considered his embarrassing bits.

Marlowe continued his shave, quietly musing to himself as the sharp blade passed expertly over his face:

“‘Tis dreadful that my friends of distant night
believe that I was bested in a fight.”

“I don’t know if it’s harder to endure being this ridiculous colour, or having to listen to your flights of verse,” Cat replied in a pause from licking his purple fur. “Love makes you foolish, like a child after candy.”

“Now I set sail to grasp my Helen from
the clutches of vile Fate, cold Fortune
and her father.”

“Whom rumour has it can split hairs with his sword,” Cat reminded him.

Marlowe sheathed his knife and said, “We’ll hope it doesn’t come to that.”

“Would you be the cause of war between the fey and the mundane?” Cat asked.

“The Faerie folk do not make war. I’ve not even been able to get them to understand the idea.”

“Quite sensible,” Cat said. “No species but humans makes war. I wonder why that is?”

“No thirst for glory,” Marlowe suggested, buckling on his sword, but Cat opined, “Too clever.”

“Nor do any but the mundane–as you call us–make poetry,” Marlowe reminded him.

“Perhaps you need it to assuage the horrors you inflict upon each other.”

“Perhaps the horrors are a necessary adjunct of the songs.”

“Perhaps I am the Queen of England,” Cat replied.

“Impossible,” said Marlowe. “Her hair is red.”

“I don’t suppose you’ve asked Sir Hyphen-Dash for permission to woo young Drunais?” Cat asked.

“Just because he’s Governor of Her Majesty’s Colony of New Albion does not give him power over the hearts of his subjects,” Marlowe proclaimed, but Cat reminded him, “In fact I think it does. I’ve read the charter, you know.”

“The charter bedamned! I’ll do as I please. Sir Hyphen-Dash has had enough of my permissions.”

“This isn’t the first?” Cat asked, and Marlowe shook his head. “I was once promised to his daughter.”

“Broke it off, did you?”

“More like I was broken off. That demon Walsingham instructed me to fake my death and join this secret expedition, so here I am. But it’s not without comforts.”

“Or mustard,” replied Cat cryptically.

Outside his little house Marlowe looked around at the overcast day and remarked, “Perhaps we’ll see some sign of rescue before long.”

Cat hopped up on the woodpile that was stacked almost to the low eves. “And perhaps the King and Queen of Faerie will take pity on us and transport us magically back to the kingdom of men, our purses laden with gold.

“Besides, if you’re settled here with Drunais, raising lots of little hybrid children, what would there be left to rescue you from?”

Marlowe contemplated the raw oysters he’d had for breakfast, the stewed clams he’d had for dinner and the smoked fish that was waiting for his lunch.

“Seafood,” he replied.

“This day reminds me of the first time I saw my love, her hair gilding the water’s surface as she did glide… then my beloved’s form rose like some sylvan Venus from her forest pool” Marlowe enthused as they walked through the tiny village. A thin fog simmered off the trees and wafted slowly across the bay, touching the Earth like the fingers of a questing hand.

Cat jumped up on a loosely stacked woodpile and began foraging for mice. The skitters of small claws could be heard within, and here and there tiny whiskered snouts emerged while beady eyes kept lookout.

“You mean the day you spied secretly on a young woman as she bathed?” Cat pounced unsuccessfully at a vanished mouse.

“Spying? Nonsense! I know spying. This was nothing of the kind. I merely observed from a clandestine distance!”

“Ah. A different thing altogether, then.”

“Consider my rise and fall, Plum-Bottom,” Marlowe said. Cat gave him a look of distain and didn’t deign to answer, though Marlowe was now so far lost in the past he didn’t notice as Cat muttered his replies.

M: “From the outer rim I clawed my way
to the very hub of England’s wheel
then cast aside, a stone upon the road,
removed by Royal fiat, Her command
to Die, no less! Impressed aboard a ship
that wandered Neptune’s vast and barren sea
until in tempest tossed we plunged beyond
the limits of the world, to shipwreck here
where my love awaited, all alone.”
C: “My journey was more modest, from a kit
to young rambunctious scrapper on the wharf.
I chased off gulls for pleasure, took the sun,
while cadging scraps from sailors rough and bold
who with a purr and sad pathetic mew
could be convinced to find a gift a cat
might revel in: a fish, a sausage burned…
until one day a poet came along
and foolishly I followed him aboard.”

“Sounds like you have a knack for landing on your feet,” said Cat, who had been listening as well as talking. He made a long leap off the woodpile to the ground.

They left the gap-toothed palisade that surrounded the village and took a well-worn path into the forest.

“There she stood in all of Nature’s glory,” Marlowe persisted. “Her lithe tigress body dripping with water like diamonds glistening in the forest light as she stepped upon the mossy bank, a precious pearl withouten spot!”

“Or a stitch on,” Cat observed.

Marlowe continued to expostulate as if he had not heard, “Who am I to challenge love with hate? Who am I to question and deliberate? Who am I to struggle against fate?”

“Who are you to ignore such an amazing derrière?” Cat interjected, interrupting the rhythm of Marlowe’s questions.

“Well, that too,” he admitted, after a moment’s pause for thought.

Cat left the trail to go hunting small furry creatures in the understory while Marlowe carried on, his mind wrapped as ever in a cloak of his own thoughts.

Dear Drunais! How could a trochee with no particularly gracious rhymes be so beautiful? he wondered. It was one of life’s deep mysteries, not at all in keeping with sound poetic principles. He had found life rarely was, and it continued to perplex him.

A weasel shot across the path in front of him, a purple blur in close pursuit, but he barely noticed as he muttered fragments of poetry to himself. “Drunais… always? Trite. Drunais… through her hair the starlight strays? Perhaps. Drunais… mayonnaise?”

So many questions, so few answers. What strange power had brought him here in the service of his Queen? What purpose did it further to inspire poetry for an audience of one? What had that other poet seen? And why was his beloved aiming an arrow at his heart?

“Really, ‘mayonnaise’ was just a joke!” he cried before she could let fly.

He was torn between opposing impulses. To rush forward or to dive for cover? To grasp the bow and gently prise it from her fingers or duck behind a tree and hope for the best? To be or not to be?

The arrow traversed away from him as she slowly rotated on the ball of one foot, seemingly by magic. He reached out for her.

“Long-bow is very hard!” she said as he took a grip on the bow and steadied her with his other hand. She leaned forward to kiss him and accidentally let go of the string which snapped against Marlowe’s unprotected hand while the arrow vanished into the trees.

“O darling!” Drunais cried, dropping the bow and falling against Marlowe, carrying them both to the ground. “I did not hurt you, I?”

He looked at the red line where the string had snapped against his hand but before he could reply Cat dragged the arrow out of the underbrush and dropped it by Marlowe’s head, asking, “I don’t suppose this belongs to you?”

“Never in a life,” Marlowe said, trying to lift Drunais off him while Cat began to groom himself.

“I just about had that ferret, I’ll have you know,” Cat sniffed. Marlowe ignored him, turning his attention to the woman who lay atop him.

“What on Earth did you think you were doing!” he asked.

“lovely Diana ~ crescent Moon her silver bow ~ how like her I am,” she said, then giggled.

“So like to her in shape,” Marlowe told her. “Slim, strong, and wearing such a short tunic… You’re not eternally chaste, are you?” he asked with a sudden frown.

“Chaste?” she replied, shaping her mouth around the unfamiliar word.

“Chased she is,” said Cat. “But will ever she be caught?”

“Chaste is…” Marlowe began, the paused in the face of the gulf between them. He felt like a man at the edge of a grand canyon, attempting a flying leap.

“You said I must have wanton poets!” she reminded him. “Are wanton poets chaste?”

“Quite the opposite,” Cat commented while Marlowe floundered.

Drunais looked at Marlowe very seriously for a moment, then kissed him and shook her head. “No. I am not chaste.”

“Not eternally chaste, you mean?” Marlowe asked with a deeper frown than ever.

She shook her head emphatically, and gave a laugh. “No, not chaste! This is good, no?”

“Err… no?” Marlowe replied, his heart sinking within him.

Cat jumped up on Drunais’ shoulder, making himself the top of the pyramid of bodies.

Marlowe ignored him, instead saying musingly, “I love thee not for sacred chastity. Who loves for that? But… chasteness ordinary, that I do appreciate.”

“ordinary, me? ~ without Moon goddess aspect? ~ just a common girl?” Drunais roused herself up, spilling Cat to the ground in the process.

“No! I didn’t mean… I mean… I meant…” Marlowe scrambled to his feet after her with a grunt of frustration. “I am not fashioned for these amorous times, to court thy beauty with lascivious rhymes!”

“Lascivious? Like wanton? So am I chaste and wanton? Can’t make up your mind?”

“No! I mean yes! I mean…” he shook his head. This was not going as planned.

“I mean, now, let us go then, now, I mean,” he stumbled. “While the day is spread amongst the trees.”

“To talk of you and me?” Druais replied a little snippily.

“It will all be worthwhile!”

“To have bitten off the matter with a smile?”

“I am Lazarus, come back from the dead, come back to tell you, to ask you…” he began, feeling the anger radiating off her like heat from a forge. How had this gone so askew? It was like he’d fallen into the wrong poem.

“That isn’t what I meant at all! That is not it at all!”

“Then let me ask my overwhelming question!” he shouted, and to his surprise she was silent.

“Shall I hold your cloak?” Cat asked, as Marlowe prepared to speak.

Marlowe went on bended knee before Drunais and assumed what he hoped was an earnest gaze:

“Come live with me and be my love,
so we might all the pleasures prove,
that valleys, beaches, hills, and fields,
forests or high mountains yield.

I’ll make a belt of ivy vines
stolen from these towering pines
to gird your body as you move…
come live with me and be my looove.”

Drunais looked at him with seriousity, curiosity, faeriosity and a tiny bit of generosity. Then she shook her head and said dismissively, “pull the other one ~ pretty words and poetry ~ it might have bells on”

“I do not deserve such spurning!” Marlowe shouted. “Chaste or no you are my love!”

She raised her hand to his face and he flinched away, but she touched him gently. “So much anger. Your people, when they are angry with each other, what do they do?” she asked.

Taken aback, he answered, “Do? Shout. Throw things. Punch and hit. Set fire to each other, if we’re in a religious mood. Now and then we try talking, but why talk when knife-fights work so well?”

“Does this ‘knife-fight’ really work very well?” she asked, genuinely curious. He replied with some reluctance, “For a certain value of ‘work’, I suppose.”

“So your people, they are always at peace?”

“Always at each other’s throats, more like!”

“Then perhaps we should settle this my people’s way,” she said, pulling him down to the soft forest floor.

Marlowe’s astonishment at her gentle assault was barely overcome by the ardor of her kiss when the clanging of the village bell broke the silence of the forest. The harsh metallic sound rang cold through the ancient trees.

He sat up, dumping Drunais onto the loam. “The village!”

“My love!” she cried dramatically.

He got to his feet, torn between his duty and his passion.

What was it that heretical German preacher said? Man is a horse with two riders? Queen and country always managed to wrest the reigns from love, Marlowe found. He gave Drunais a last longing look where she lay sprawled in a heap and strode off through the trees without another word.

“That went well,” opined Cat, rubbing his head against Drunais’ thigh in the hope he might be rewarded with a bit of residual cuddling.