Take No Prisoners (34 page)

"If he'd wanted to – if he'd tried to. Oh, he was probably too much of a fool to do so himself, but there were some clever men about him: he could have directed one of them to find out who had killed the queen."

"And Posthumus, you say, was murdered?" She hardly knew that she was speaking. Since the wolf seemed able to read her thoughts, it was often difficult to know whether or not she'd spoken them.

"I believe he was. I believe you were the one who murdered him."

"Are you certain?" She still had no memory of the act.

"Perfectly."

"Why are you so sure?"

"Discovering the truth of past deeds is always, to be trite, a matter of probing memories: who saw what happen and where, and piecing together the jigsaw of all the pieces that seemed inconsequential to them at the time. But detection of guilt can work in another way, for not everyone
knows
their own guilt. You don't, as yet. Even if you hadn't been in the suffocating embrace of your madness you might not have known."

The wolf nudged her with its head in a curiously affectionate way. Yes, she had been right to call him Cymbeline, and also Father Wolf, because this was the kind of fondness and understanding she'd always sought in her father, but never found. She had loved him so much, even after he had banished Posthumus, but he had been too tangled up in the duties of kingship ever to notice her.

Or perhaps he had.

"So to discover the truth of a crime you must take memories, which are elusive things, and put them all together," said the wolf. "Sometimes people take the memories of others and weave them until they make a tapestry which is the truth of what occurred. In your case, Imogen my daughter, you have only your
own
memories to explore. You must uncover your own crimes."

~

"You have fresh blood on your hands, and on your riding-gown," says Fidele.

"Nothing that will not wash away," says Imogen. She strips the garment off over her head, as always unembarrassed by her nudity in front of Pisanio – no, this is Fidele – though at the same time wishing her body did not bear the all too obvious marks of having borne Posthumus's children. It is little wonder that Posthumus has come to her bed only rarely these years, and then usually with an expression of grim duty on his face. Equally, it is little wonder that, as is common knowledge in her father's house, he was taking his pleasures elsewhere. Fidele told her this long ago; everyone else conspired to try to keep it a secret from her. "Come down to the river with me. You can bathe me, if you like, just as Pisanio used to do."

"The gown will never come clean," says Fidele. "You'd be better to burn it, or bury it."

"No," she says. "I need the blood still to be there when I return to my father's house, as I shriek and wail and tell them all how thieves set upon my husband and stole the pouch of coins he wore at his belt and the diamond ring from his finger and then slit his throat. After they had gone his loving wife took him in her arms and held him, even though his life had ebbed by then. What must be hidden is not the gown but the pouch and the ring – and the dagger. Would you do this for me?"

"We can only do it together," says Fidele, looking across to where the horses are tethered. The animals are nervous, trying to distance themselves from Posthumus's motionless, prostrate form.

Fidele.

Her perfect lover.

The one who has always been faithful to her. The only one who has not simply tried to use her, in some way or another.

Together they take the pouch and the ring and the dagger down towards the riverbank. She smiles at Fidele, and he smiles back at her.

"Swim out into the river," he says. "I'll swim by your side."

He takes off his doublet and hose, then squelches through the mud of the bank ahead of her and dives ungracefully into the water. She laughs at him, with him, and they laugh again when she performs the manoeuvre with equal awkwardness.

The water is sweetly cold on their skins after the heat of the noonday. Both of them take a mouthful of it as they swim to the center of the river.

"Here?" says Fidele. He has in one hand the dagger and in the other the pouch.

"Yes, here."

He lets the objects loose, and they vanish into the darkness of the water. Perhaps one day the sluggish current will carry them to the sea.

Imogen waits a little longer before she sends the diamond ring to the same destination. It was her loving-gift to Posthumus, but he used it as the wager in a drunken bet he made with a schemer. She, who loved him, was the basis of a bet. Yet she is reluctant to let it go, for it reminds her of how much and how purely and passionately she did love him, once. Before she became something for him to bet on. Before he destroyed her body and aged her with the children. Before he began to come to her bed only because it was expected of him by the court, so that every time he made love with her it was as if he were hurling abuse in her face.

She has hated him for many years. Her revenge has been overdue.

"Hiding the ring is the only way to lose your misery," says Fidele, floating easily in the water, moving his arms and legs just enough to counter the current.

"Yes," she says. "You"re right.'

She is crying, but she drops the ring from her hand.

And then suddenly there is no more crying. She feels as if her body has become lighter, so that the water hardly needs to support her. She flips over on her back, and Fidele does the same. Now the warmth of the summer sun is like a hand stroking her – and she opens her eyes to find that it is indeed a hand.

Fidele's hand.

"You asked me to bathe you," he says.

"We shall bathe each other," she replies. "Then afterwards, perhaps, we can make love before I must re-don my gown and make the pell-mell ride. The thieves would have raped me, you know. Even though I'm a king's daughter, the wise-wives will look for evidence."

"I cannot give you that," says Fidele, washing each finger one by one, and then kissing them. For a reason she does not understand, she is attending to each of his fingers as well, as if there might be blood on his hands too. But it wasn't he who lured Posthumus away from the court for a ride through the country together, and it wasn't he who steered them towards a glade in the forest where they once made love on pine needles, and it wasn't he who chose that spot as the place where, as her husband despised her nostalgia, she plunged the wicked dagger into his throat.

Later, after both she and Fidele are clean, they do indeed make love on the riverbank, and then she puts back on her bloodied gown and, with Posthumus's horse following behind her, rides home.

The afternoon sun is cooler.

~

"I killed him," said Imogen wearily. "Fidele helped me."

The wolf shifted against her.

"Fidele helped you in so many things," it said.

"Did I kill my father as well?"

"No. Your father is still alive, just. But you took all his will to live from him. It might have been kinder if you had killed him."

"How do you know this?" Despite the heat of the fire, she was trembling with cold.

"Because I
am
your father."

"Father Wolf?"

"Cymbeline."

"You've known all along. Everything about me. But you've never told me that you knew. Always you've pretended I was just some bit of household goods – as if I were a ham hanging in the kitchen or a jester dancing in the Great Hall."

"I'm a king. It is the duty of kings to create heirs, not to nurture their daughters."

The wolf abruptly moved itself away from her. It looked at her as if it wanted to kiss her. She turned her head and gazed into its eyes. There was love visible there.

"No," she said, "you're not my father."

"How can you tell?" said the wolf.

"Your eyes. You love me."

"I'm an old and ailing wolf."

"You love me."

"Perhaps."

"Don't lie."

Imogen closed her eyes in weariness, then opened them again.

There was no wolf in the cave, only the shadows that the fire made on the furthest wall.

Yet she still felt that the wolf had loved her in a truer way than anyone else.

It had loved her. Unlike the other Cymbeline, it had not regarded her as its possession.

She wound her body around a fire that for days had been nothing but ash, shut her eyes, and begged the cold of the night to take her forever from the things she remembered.