must die and be consumed, so the whole world is a fire even at its very core and that is what haunts you most—that is what you cannot bring yourself to face and so you invent me, The Dragon, your own fears made manifest—but please know this: the wind that blows through the orange blossoms and whips this child’s gown and hair also cools my nostrils and scales and bones and it blows behind me into the cave, where I have laid and hidden a thousand and more eggs, and that same wind blows, like belly breath from my own body, outward over the chained child and beyond her into the entire known world, including you, who come armored in far less metal than I have hoarded in my caves yet still you charge.
Dear sir, I beseech you, as I unfurl my wings and take a great breath, lower your weapon and embrace me for I am you and even if you kill me today I will be resurrected, a phoenix rising in flames, hissing from within the darkest recess of your heart.
Cleolinda, 14,
Pagan, Virgin, & Princess
T hough I have always dreamed of Leptis Magna and its statuary and mosaics and circus and amphitheater and of floating naked in the Mediterranean and bending the world to my will, I never imagined my father would sacrifice me to certain death—I did know that he would sell me to the highest bidder, to whoever had the greatest army or the largest estate or the most power, use me as a mere string to tie a knot between two kingdoms—I always knew this, the same as I know that every lady-in-waiting who has attended me, combed my hair or fluffed my pillows or polished my shoes, wished in her secret heart to be me, the doted-upon princess—to be the lone child of King Ptolemy and Queen Sa’diyya—to be the one heaped with diamonds and attention, dressed in the finest Egyptian cottons and dyed linens, and studied by every woman who has enough ambition to be jealous—though each of these maids stands worshipped by every mother of six toiling in the street with rags on her bones, who ventures off to the market, the abattoir, the spring-fed well, and returns home to her brood of indifferent sucklings, her arms laden with a sack of grain, a shank of lamb, a drawn skein of water, to cook for a husband who does not hate her, only that and nothing more—these women, in turn, are both despised and admired by prostitutes with rut-bruised knees, blistered backs, and unforgiving aches in the middle of their bodies—yet these harlots of the street who envy these domestic women’s safe lives, would never worship me, because I am, after all, one of their own.
This noble fool comes scampering up—body heaving and heavy beneath all that metal—if he kills the dragon and frees me from my chains, I know I will marry him and convert to his god but only if he grants me one favor more: Good sir of the Royal Order of Christ, slip into my father’s chambers and find him sleeping and slit his awful pimp throat .
Judicium Dei or Trial by Combat: Le Gris v. Carrouges
In the Last Trial by Combat Ever Decreed by the Parlement of Paris, Saint-Martin-des-Champs, on Île de la Cité, Paris, France,
December 29, 1386
Charles VI, 18,
Mad King of France
I cherish a good spectacle, the Lord knows I do, tournaments and banners and armor and arms, and I have entered them myself, the thundering steed between my thighs, the lance leveled heavy and true, but last night my only son, three months old and sickly, succumbed and died—Queen Isabeau is distraught, the fairness gone from her cheeks, the luster from her hair, and Sir Jean’s lady-wife, Marguerite, has also given birth but does it belong to her husband or Jacques, the squire she’s accused of rape—how can any man know the truth of such an accusation and so I am proven mortal—the joy of the joust is not with us today but rather certain death as in the constant wars with England or my own father or my own son—today one of my bravest men will die—his body will be stripped to the skin,
Dear sir, I beseech you, as I unfurl my wings and take a great breath, lower your weapon and embrace me for I am you and even if you kill me today I will be resurrected, a phoenix rising in flames, hissing from within the darkest recess of your heart.
Cleolinda, 14,
Pagan, Virgin, & Princess
T hough I have always dreamed of Leptis Magna and its statuary and mosaics and circus and amphitheater and of floating naked in the Mediterranean and bending the world to my will, I never imagined my father would sacrifice me to certain death—I did know that he would sell me to the highest bidder, to whoever had the greatest army or the largest estate or the most power, use me as a mere string to tie a knot between two kingdoms—I always knew this, the same as I know that every lady-in-waiting who has attended me, combed my hair or fluffed my pillows or polished my shoes, wished in her secret heart to be me, the doted-upon princess—to be the lone child of King Ptolemy and Queen Sa’diyya—to be the one heaped with diamonds and attention, dressed in the finest Egyptian cottons and dyed linens, and studied by every woman who has enough ambition to be jealous—though each of these maids stands worshipped by every mother of six toiling in the street with rags on her bones, who ventures off to the market, the abattoir, the spring-fed well, and returns home to her brood of indifferent sucklings, her arms laden with a sack of grain, a shank of lamb, a drawn skein of water, to cook for a husband who does not hate her, only that and nothing more—these women, in turn, are both despised and admired by prostitutes with rut-bruised knees, blistered backs, and unforgiving aches in the middle of their bodies—yet these harlots of the street who envy these domestic women’s safe lives, would never worship me, because I am, after all, one of their own.
This noble fool comes scampering up—body heaving and heavy beneath all that metal—if he kills the dragon and frees me from my chains, I know I will marry him and convert to his god but only if he grants me one favor more: Good sir of the Royal Order of Christ, slip into my father’s chambers and find him sleeping and slit his awful pimp throat .
Judicium Dei or Trial by Combat: Le Gris v. Carrouges
In the Last Trial by Combat Ever Decreed by the Parlement of Paris, Saint-Martin-des-Champs, on Île de la Cité, Paris, France,
December 29, 1386
Charles VI, 18,
Mad King of France
I cherish a good spectacle, the Lord knows I do, tournaments and banners and armor and arms, and I have entered them myself, the thundering steed between my thighs, the lance leveled heavy and true, but last night my only son, three months old and sickly, succumbed and died—Queen Isabeau is distraught, the fairness gone from her cheeks, the luster from her hair, and Sir Jean’s lady-wife, Marguerite, has also given birth but does it belong to her husband or Jacques, the squire she’s accused of rape—how can any man know the truth of such an accusation and so I am proven mortal—the joy of the joust is not with us today but rather certain death as in the constant wars with England or my own father or my own son—today one of my bravest men will die—his body will be stripped to the skin,
Similar Books
