Weeping still, he rose, helmet upon his head and covered his face, sword in hand. I could not see his eyes.
“The Hero must rise up and go into the world of living men, and there commit deeds of unspeakable atrocity so that men will admire him; and this must continue until he can recruit some companion, who would love him so much, so desire that the tale of his deeds remain pure, that the Hero might gain release.”
He raised his sword. I thought he was going to kill me.
I said, “It might work that way...in the story. Which isn’t true. Which is over.”
“For the Hero, perhaps. But no one loves a liar. No one will ever give him release.”
He vanished into the night then, and I almost thought I had dreamed the entire episode, but for the war and plague, fire and death that followed in his wake like a tide over the subsequent weeks and months and years, for which such a farrago of lies can hardly be sufficient explanation.
That morning, I took up my own sword and put on my own helmet and set out after him.
TOM O’BEDLAM AND THE MYSTERY OF LOVE
Love is madness and madness is love, and never the twain shall part.
—Anonymous the Elder
Winter. London. Fifteen Hundred and Something-Something. In his bed at Whitehall, King Henry VIII dreamed of love, of lovely maidens who became his numerous queens, some of them now minus their heads...which sometimes happened in the entanglements of love, a way of cutting through the Gordian knot of the heartstrings, so to speak.... He dreamed of dancing, of songs, of roistering, of maidens and meat-pies.
Courtiers, with their heads in their hands, serenaded him with lines he’d stolen from another but of which he was nevertheless inordinately proud, “Alas, my love, you do me wrong.....”
He sniffled. He started to sneeze.
* * * * * * *
Tom O’Bedlam dreamed. Nick the Lunatic dreamed with him, his bosom and boon companion, whom Tom had redeemed long since from the labors of Reason, from the ardors, the cruelty, the slavery of Sanity. This same Nicholas, who had once been gaoler in Bedlam before Tom spoke to him with the true Voice of the place and set him free, which is to say mad; AHEM! This very Nicholas walked with Tom O’Bedlam in the dream they both dreamed together, in the cold and the dark of the night.
They passed a troop of the Watch, pikes and armor gleaming in the pale moonlight; but sober watchers do not affect to see madmen, particularly madmen abroad in dreams; therefore, dreaming, Tom and Nick went on their way without any interference.
Dreaming still, they reached the countryside, drifting down empty lanes, past trees naked of all but their last leaf. And that last leaf rattled mournfully, one leaf per tree, as it was the custom among trees in winter to retain but one.
Tom and Nick jangled their bells, mournfully, by moonlit midnight, as was their custom to reply; but they felt, the both of them, a certain emptiness, a melancholy, and remarked on it without words, for two madmen dreaming the same dream surely do not have to trouble themselves to speak.
Alas, for great loss.
Something burning where the heart is broken, where joy is stolen away, like the last spark sputtering when the fireplace is swept clean.
Aye, and swept clean of all hope, but beautiful in its tragedy, its sorrows like intricately-carven black onyx.
Is there any other kind?
You got me.
They passed through a forest of branchless trees, the naked trunks like enormous, tangled blades of silver grass. A wind rustled through the forest, sighing far away.
The forest gave way to open country, but like none Tom had ever seen. The ground was white in the moonlight, but not covered with snow; more leathery than earthen. It had a distinct bounce to it.
Nick did a handstand, bells jangling. He clapped the sides of his soleless shoes and wiggled his dirty toes, then flung himself high into the air as if from a trampoline...high, high...until great black, winged things began to circle him hungrily, eclipsing the Moon as they passed.
He called out to Tom, who leapt up to catch Nick as he tumbled and caught him by the ankles and hauled him down, out of the clutches of the fiery-eyed, softly buzzing flyers with their gleaming-metal talons; down, down—
They bounced for several miles, soaring over another stand of forest, coming to rest before what seemed a vast mountain with two oval caves in it, side by side. Here yawned the very Abyss, the darkness which swallows up even madmen.
Fortunately more of the silvery strands grew thickly about. Tom and Nick clung to them, at the very edge of the abyss, to avoid falling him.
And standing there, gazing into the depths, Tom O’Bedlam had a vision, as if he were dreaming his own dream within the dream and had now awakened from it.
He understood, as only a madman could.
It was this: he and Nick had become as lice. They had travelled for what seemed like hours across an enormous face, through the forest of the beard, escaping the flying peril of the gnats (or perhaps flies) until they found themselves deposited at the very lip of No! No! That wasn’t it. Abysses may have lips but nostrils don’t!
He and Nick clung desperately to a giant’s nose-hairs as their presence had unfortunate consequences.
“AH—AH—AH—!”
Now the wind roared more profoundly than all the world’s hurricanes—profound, yes, though it didn’t actually say anything; for the hurricane is the philosopher among storms, Tom always said, or one day would, or so said in his dreams (some confusion on this point), and its profundity is so profound that even the hurricane cannot fathom it—
“AH—AH—AH—!!”
—the one certainty being the thunder of its blast, as the eye of the storm passed, or in this case perhaps you might say it was the nose of the storm; and the winds reversed themselves and Tom and Nick lost their grip and went tumbling into an abyss vaster than any that yawns between the grave and the world, between the world and the stars—
“CHOOO!!!”
* * * * * * *
Burning the midnight oil that would never expire, because this midnight would never pass, Peter the Poet paced petulantly in his drafty garret. He sat down at his desk again.
His fancies raged. But words would not come.
His quill scratched across the page:
Alas, my love, you do me wrong,
to cast me off discourteously....
Rubbish, he knew. Anybody could do better than that, even, he fancied, a pair of lice crawling up someone’s nose.
* * * * * * *
King Henry sneezed and awoke briefly. He thought of love. His royal wrath roused. He considered shouting for
