- Did you hear the news?
- About what?
- The White Ship.
They said that she was mad. Sitting on her rocky perch day after day, watching for his ship, waiting for his return. They said that he must have run off with another girl. A prettier girl they said, one that laughed and smiled. They did not stop to wonder whether this girl had once laughed and smiled.
They saw her gazing with hollow eyes unblinking at the ebb and the flow of the tide, as if she feared that it would disappear if she looked away. Her face might have been considered beautiful, but it was curiously devoid of any expression or animation. She looked as if she had been carved out of alabaster, smooth pale and unblemished, more like a funerary effigy than a living girl.
The wind grabbed at her hair, pulling it into dark tangles across her face. She had no veil, the long length left unbound to whip freely about her shoulders. Not once did they see her lift a hand to move the flyaway strands that brushed her cheek.
They spied her unmoving and silent when they awoke at dawn and there she remained long into the night. She seemed more like a fey creature than a girl. Morning fog coiled around her body like some queer woollen mantle. The hem of her dress was sodden and dark with water stains, as if she clambered across the shore each night in an attempt to return to the sea.
They said that the girl wept perfect silent tears that ran down her pallid cheeks and collected in her lap. They spoke sagely of weeping statues, images that shed tears of blood or holy oil. It was said that in her grief for the lover she lost and the sea which rejected her, she wept tears of cold, bitter seawater.
- The White Ship?
- It is such a terrible tragedy.
- They were only travelling from Normandy to England.
- I heard they hit a rock.
- Apparently the whole crew was drunk.
- Sinners the lot of them. Drunken sailors and debauched courtiers.
- It is known that God punishes sinners.
They think I do not know that they believe me mad. I can see it in their wary expressions. I can read it in their guarded eyes. Yet I am not mad. I yearn to express all the anguish and misfortune that encloses my heart. But I am like the storm that rages far out at sea. Dark clouds may swirl upon the horizon but only those within the storm itself can feel the pounding of angry thunder and spark of furious lightning. For me there are no loud cries of pain, no gulping breaths of grief, but a silent isolated sorrow.
I was born deaf, unable to hear the sounds that others take for granted. Often I was thought stupid and cuffed around the ear for my slow wits. Inside I screamed in frustration against the injustice of it all. I had all these questions and feelings that roared around my head and yet I had no means to express them. No means that is until he found me.
One day he just took my hand and smiled and the clamouring in my head calmed to a whisper. He was my connection to the outside world. He showed to me the richness of sounds I could never experience and made music come to life before my eyes. He taught me to read lips and to communicate with others through my hands. Owing to his kindness I was able to express all that before I had simply felt. It was a gift beyond price.
Here though his lessons do not help me. I cannot decipher the movements their lips make. It is unfamiliar like a new language or dialect.
He went to sea with the prince. He was handsome, young and ambitious. I did not want him to go to sea and leave me, but he promised to return. Without him I am alone again isolated in my silent world. And so I am waiting here for him to come back. I want to ask those who pass by me if they have heard any news of the White Ship but they would not understand the frantic motions of my trembling hands.
I can remember our hands linked in the dappled sunlight as he shaped my fingers to his. I can remember the contrasting textures of our skin as he slowly caressed the lines criss-crossing over my palm. I can remember the feel of his smiling lips as he brushed a kiss over my wrist.
They are talking and gossiping again. Not just about me this time though. It is as if some new piece of news has caught their interest. It is perhaps something sad or tragic if I have read their expressions correctly. But I cannot tell any more from the quirk of lips or lift of an eyebrow.
So I shall just continue to sit here and watch for his return. He will return to me, I know it. He would not leave me alone here. He loves me. He will return. After all he promised he would return to me.
- They say that all onboard the White Ship died.
- What a waste. All those young lives.
- The King’s heir is supposedly among the dead.
- Many other people’s sons and daughters and lovers died that night as well.
No comments:
Post a Comment