Gertrude and Claudius by John Updike

before, days when she ate too much, days when she light-headedly fasted, days that began with the Sund glazed like a lake of mercury beneath a pearly dawn, days when wind whipped spray from wild waves like flares of white fire, menstrual days, saints’ days—thedays passed, and Gerutha felt them stealing away with her life, all the while that she moved through such activities and engagements as befitted a Scandinavian queen, helpmate to a handsome blond king who with the years grew ever more admirable and remote, as if enlarging as he receded from her.
    “The Hammer,” Feng told her. “I used to call him the Hammer. Dull, but he hit you square on the head.”
    And that was how Gerutha felt on the days after she and the King had made love—hammered into a somewhat blissful submission, nailed down, dispatched. Feng, Horwendil’s brother, had returned from adventuring in the south, having placed his sword and lance and versatile tongue at the service, most recently, of the masters of Genoa in its long struggles with Pisa over the control of Corsica and Sardinia. “The Mediterranean,” Feng explained to Gerutha, “is warm enough for a man to swim in pleasurably, if certain transparent bell-shaped creatures do not sting him to death. On the other shore lies Africa, where the Muslim infidels refine their tortures and abominations, and to the east lies an empire of curious Oriental Christians, who send armies to dispute the presence or absence of an ‘i’ in a Greek theological term, and who permit their priests to marry and wear beards. I would like, next, to visit there. Their nobles, rather than wield the cudgel and broadsword as in these backward northern lands, prefer the dagger and have greatly developed the art of poisoning, so I have beentold. Many insidious Asiatic influences are brought back to Genoa by returning Crusaders and their captives, along with much wealth and ingenuity of thought. You would like the land south of the Alps, Gerutha. It is hilly and green, and each hilltop city vies with the others, making endless work for us roving warriors. There is a jewelled, fantastic aspect not seen in our foggy bogs, or boggy fogs. The villages perch most astoundingly on rocks; the slopes are terraced up to every crag; and the people, who are darker-skinned than we, have a soft and clever nature, sunny yet assiduous in the practice of manual crafts.”
    “I remember,” she said, “an oval silver platter, with strange intense linear designs all along its broad brim, that you sent to our wedding, which you were unable to attend.”
    “I regretted my absence. I thought I would not be missed.”
    “You were, by me, though we had not met since I was a child, when you favored me with a glance now and then. I have often thought back to how you seemed. The brother of one’s husband is a figure of interest, providing another version of him—him recast, as it were, by another throw of the dice.”
    “It has been my fate,” said Feng, with some impatience, “to be seen always as a lesser version of my brother. Accordingly I have travelled to where the comparison could not be made. His wedding to King Rorik’s daughter loomed, I supposed, as yet another opportunity to compare my fortune unfavorably with his.”
    This man spoke with a thrilling freedom, Gerutha thought, in a way challenging both to her and to himself. He enunciated easily, with intriguing variations in speed, the words tripping and then languishing on his lips, which were not thin and prim like Horwendil’s or fat and slippery like the lower lip of Corambus but ruddy and shapely, the exact amount of necessary flesh, like a woman’s lips, without being exactly feminine. His lips were not cut like Horwendil’s or loosely poured like Corambus’s but molded, as if by loving and careful fingers. His voice was deeper—a more lustrous instrument, expertly bowed—than her husband’s, and his skin darker, whether from natural tinge or southern sojourn