Thorn Boy and Other Dreams of Dark Desire (26 page)

This story is
a reinterpretation of the old Scottish fairy tale, ‘Tattercoats’.
In this retelling, I have been somewhat kinder to the stubborn old
grandfather than in the original story, where he is ultimately
condemned to a life of isolated misery.

The
unadulterated versions of the old tales are often quite grim, and
the majority of them have been cleaned up and sanitised to make
them suitable for children. But the original versions provide a
rich vein of inspiration for writers of fantasy, and there are now
dozens of collections of retold fairy tales aimed at adults.

The goosegirl
or gooseherd is a character that appears regularly in the old
tales, and quite often they have magical abilities. The goosegirl
in this story is a witch who plays a magical flute.There are echoes
of ‘Cinderella’ in the riches to rags to riches aspect of the tale
and the harsh treatment meted out to the main character before they
end up with the prince. Oops, is that a plot spoiler? Well, this is
a fairy story, so it’s hardly a secret how it’s going to turn
out.

There was once
a grand lord who had built his castle on a high cliff overlooking
the sea. The castle was named Emiraldra and was a happy prosperous
place. The vines grown in the vineyards produced the finest wine in
the land of Cos. The sheep in the fields of Emiraldra produced the
finest, softest wool, and all the corn was the plumpest, most
golden ever beheld. Lord Thaldocred was a fair and generous
employer. He had a wife and daughter whom he loved more than
anything. However, one dark, windy day the wife of Lord Thaldocred
succumbed to a fierce fever and within days she had wasted away and
was dead. The Lord was beside himself with grief and only the
comforting attentions of his beautiful daughter Shilalee, sustained
his will to live. ‘Think now, father,’ she said sweetly. ‘Though my
mother is gone from us, her life was one of fullness and happiness.
Now she has gone to a higher place, where one day, we shall all be
together again. Let us remember her with pleasure and not
sadness.’

Thaldocred
held his daughter close. ‘You are all that I have now,’ he
said.

In the Spring,
when the first buds were appearing upon the trees, a travelling
carnival came to the lawns of fair Emiraldra. People with bright
clothes, white flashing teeth and dark mysterious eyes came to
knock on the castle doors. Thaldocred would have preferred to send
them on their way (with perhaps a small gift, for he was not a mean
man), but Shilalee begged him to let the wanderers set up their
carousels and gaily-coloured stalls upon the green. People could
come from all the nearby villages, she argued gently, and it would
be a happy time for all; an assurance that the gaunt winter of
death and unhappiness had passed. Thaldocred, as putty in his
daughter’s hands, relented. Shilalee herself, dressed in green with
her long dark hair plaited with spring flowers, went to supervise
the arrangement of the carnival. It was then she caught sight of
the gypsy boy, Brackeny. Like her, he had long dark hair and a
ready smile. Like her, he was lithe and slim, but where her eyes
were dark brown, his were moss green and half hidden between thick
black lashes.

Shilalee first
saw him sitting upon the steps of a caravan, playing upon a reed
pipe. It was as if he played to her alone. At first intrigued and
attracted, by the time evening came again to the land, her interest
had thickened to love. She desired Brackeny more than anything she
had ever wanted before. Here was the prince she had so often
dreamed of in her cold virgin bed. Such beauty could never been
seen in the land around Emiraldra. They spoke together, drawn by
their similarities. He told her: ‘I will bring you unhappiness. I
cannot stay here.’

But she
replied firmly that only a few days spent in his company would be
worth the heartbreak of separation. Because she was indeed lovely
and bright, and a pleasure to be with, Brackeny became her lover;
the first she had known. Shilalee was careful not to let her father
discover what was going on, for she knew that had he known, his
anger would be dangerous for Brackeny. She was Thaldocred’s little
girl; only he would be given the privilege to decide when, and by
which man, she would be taken as a wife.

When the time
came for the travellers to move on, and she had bidden a sorrowful
farewell to the beautiful gypsy boy, Shilalee was obliged to keep
her grief to herself. And that was not all.

In the cold,
dark months of deepest Winter, just as the time when Thaldocred was
reminded most of death, Shilalee fell to the ground, crying out in
pain. For a long time, she had been trying to conceal the fact that
she was with child; now her time was upon her. Delirious with fear
and anger, incredulity and impotent lust for revenge, Thaldocred
watched helplessly as the single remaining object of his affection
writhed and screamed in agony. It was in a dark, heavily curtained
room, that was too hot from the effects of a blazing fire, and too
stuffy from the smell of human blood, the heaviness of human pain.
Here, as minutes passed into hours, Shilalee fought to deliver her
child. Women bustled, candles guttered and spat, outside the wind
howled. By morning, a pale watery sunlit morning, Shilalee lay
pale, lifeless and staring upon the bed. Close by, mewing in a
rough cot, her infant son gave voice to life.

From the
moment of his birth, the child became the focus of Thaldocred’s
hatred. If it was not for this pink mindless scrap, the father
reasoned, then his beloved Shilalee would still live. How could she
have kept such a thing from him? In rage and pain, he paced the
chamber, occasionally throwing bleak glances towards the child.
Then, in cold, colourless fury, he ordered that the boy be sent
down to the servants’ quarters. ‘Doubtless there is some barren
wench who may want it,’ he said.

Shilalee’s old
nurse, aghast at such callous sentiments, gathered the child in her
arms. She looked round the dark grand bedroom and shook her head.
The child was quiet against her breast. Sighing, she took him to
her own quarters in the east wing of the castle. Because she had
loved Shilalee’s mother and Shilalee herself, she devoted herself
to caring for the child. Of all those who lived in Emiraldra, she
alone had had some intimation of what had transpired the previous
spring. Because of this, she named the baby Brackeny, for his
father, and as he grew older, the child called her Mussy, which was
not quite mother, and not quite nurse, but something in
between.

Brackeny’s
childhood could have been sublime and happy, but there was a change
in the air of Emiraldra. All the love had gone from the place.
Thaldocred, unable to give proper vent to his grief, had become
cruel and petty, seeking solitude, shunning his old friends. The
servants, hapless victims of this changed, nit-picking personality,
inevitably took it out on Brackeny. Like Thaldocred, they felt that
he was to blame for everything, and consequently tried to make his
life a misery. They also welcomed the opportunity to treat a member
of the aristocracy as cruelly as they’d always dreamed of. They
gave him nothing. His grandfather gave him nothing. All his clothes
were cast-offs and hastily assembled rags, patiently gathered by
his beloved Mussy. Because of this, the servants called him
Tatters, and the name stuck. Mussy tried to shield him as best she
could from their abuse, but one particularly spiteful, grudging
individual, the steward of the castle, went carping to Thaldocred
about how Mussy was keeping the child in seclusion in the east wing
and how they desperately needed extra help in the kitchen. Hadn’t
Thaldocred himself promised the child to the servants on the day of
his birth? As if they mere mention of the boy’s existence gave him
pain, Thaldocred waved his hand quickly and told the man to do as
he wished with the child; he did not wish to hear of it. Mussy
could not argue with that. Every filthy, most tiring job in the
castle was given to Tatters. It was forgotten by nearly everyone
that he was the gentle Shilalee’s son; her memory itself seemed
forgotten. As Thaldocred had become bitter and cruel, it seemed all
his household followed suit, but far from becoming a down-trodden
weakling, the boy Tatters seemed to rise above it, or let
unpleasantness waft over him like a swift-moving stream. Mussy knew
that this was the heritage of his gypsy father, like his dark skin,
his dark green eyes, his thick black hair. Nothing could mar the
blossoming beauty of Tatters; not grime, not privation, nor even
hostility and cruelty. He had a ready smile and every evening, when
he returned to the draughty rooms he shared with Mussy in the east
wing, he would essay to make her smile. ‘Times are hard, my
lambkin,’ she would say, and the boy would reply,

‘
It is
just like Winter, Mussy.All Winters are hard. We must wait for the
Spring.’ He possessed an eerie optimism about his
estate.

Mussy had told
him at quiet an early age about his parents. She had also tried to
explain about his grandfather, but it seemed beyond the child’s
comprehension; he wasn’t interested in hearing about it. Shilalee
had been entombed within a grand mausoleum in the castle grounds.
Tatters liked to go there, whenever he could sneak away undetected,
hoping that his mother could see him. Sometimes he was sure he
could feel her there. Her likeness in cold marble was often warm to
the touch and her stone face was sad. Tatters told her not to mind
too much about things. He was too full of life to care deeply about
what the people of Emiraldra thought of him. They called him
bastard, changeling. Most of the time, he felt like a different
creature altogether; not even human. The shrilling of the servant
women, the kicking and pinching and cuffing of the men, could not
touch him. Sometimes he could barely understand their language.

And so the
grandson of Thaldocred grew up. Only Mussy kept a reckoning of his
birthdays, but by the time he was eighteen, many of the younger
female servants began to change their attitude towards him. Their
sharp teasing became laced with a different kind of tension. For,
from being a beautiful child, Tatters had grown into a beautiful
young adult, tall and clean-limbed, lithe as a forest cat, and
swift as an eagle. Tatters was not interested in the eyes of the
women. He sensed them as pungent, hot and heavy-breathing things,
whose spirits were mouths and hunger and nothing else. He felt
contaminated near them. But it was not just the women who were
aroused by him. Once, one of the stable lads, who had been
harbouring the desire for some time, jumped him in the dusk as he
walked back to the east wing. Tatters was afraid for the first
time. The only other living being who had touched him was Mussy and
this was clearly different. He could not understand what was
happening, only that he must get away. The man breathed filth and
hunger into his ear, fighting to open his clothes. Tatters was
disgusted. He held his breath. He fought back, blindly, wildly, and
the man fell away, coughing. Tatters saw an erect phallus
protruding from the man’s clothes. He did not understand and later,
Mussy was loath to explain.She told him to be wary of people, which
he took readily to heart.

In the Spring,
following Tatters’ eighteenth birthday, a young woman came to the
back door of the castle, seeking employment. She was an odd, skinny
creature, boyish and wild-looking, with wise eyes. Something about
her infuriated the steward at once, but then he was man who
bitterly resented any intimation of intelligence or beauty in
others, whatever their age or gender. It had happened that the lad
who had looked after the geese had died in the hard winter from a
fever of the lungs. Somebody new was needed to take over his
duties. The wages were insultingly low, the hours long and many
other household chores were included in the employment. The steward
grudgingly told the girl about this, pointing out that she hardly
looked strong enough to take the job on. Smiling, the girl thanked
him and said that appearances were deceptive, and she really was
very strong indeed; she was happy to accept the job. Her name was
Charlaise and she was a traveller.

One day,
Tatters was walking in the fields beyond Emiraldra. He was supposed
to be gathering mushrooms for the evening meal, but had so far been
unlucky in his search. As he walked, he became aware of a strange,
lilting sound wavering distantly in the air around him. He followed
it. Breasting a hill, he caught sight of a large flock of geese in
the valley below. Sitting on a stone with lifted knees, a slim
figure, dressed in green and brown, was playing on a wooden flute.
Tatters walked down into the valley, drawn by the sound. He could
not be sure whether the seated figure was male or female, for while
the clothes seemed male, something about the body within them
didn’t. He rarely listened to the servants’ chatter and hadn’t
heard about the goose girl. As for Charlaise, she was usually long
gone from he castle grounds by the time Tatters awoke in the
morning, and she came indoors long after he had fallen, exhausted,
into bed. She had been waiting to meet him, however.

As he
approached, she stopped playing and turned her face towards
him.

‘
Don’t
stop,’ he said. ‘It was the sound of the earth, and such sounds are
few in Emiraldra.’

‘
I can
play for you any time,’ she answered. ‘You must be
Brackeny.’

Tatters had
almost forgotten his true name. He nodded, a little confused. ‘It’s
been a long time since I was last called that.’

Charlaise
smiled, raised the flute to her lips, and played a few haunting
notes. The geese were all looking at Tatters as if resenting his
intrusion. They bustled around the stone where Charlaise sat.