Work Text:
My Elizabeth
My friend, though I know not if I should call you that
My dear Mrs Wylding,
You will think me a little fool, of course, chasing rumours out West in hope of my very own Mauthe Dog or Essex Serpent. Perhaps I am—but I must, after all, do something with my time, and I am determined I will remain a woman of science and good sense. I seek to explain, not to wonder!
Perhaps you still won’t approve. I seem to remember you saying that was, in fact, my problem.
Caermaen itself is charming enough, nestled between its green and wooded hills as though it had grown up out of the land, and surprisingly civilised—though one hears, here and there, smatterings of what the locals call ‘yr hen iaith’. The oldest language of our isles, unless one believes the queer tale of Miss Lally, who vanished from London society some years ago, and I confess I have never been sure.
My hosts, Mr and Mrs M_____, live in a handsome white house overlooking the pleasant valley. They have been nothing but courtesy and solicitude, though they urge me to disregard tales of the Beast as the imaginings of some local drunks and children run mad. Perhaps they are right, and yet the resemblances to other scattered tales are enough I feel I must investigate further.
The M_____s are quiet, sober people otherwise, and keep to themselves. The house seems at times to have a kind of mourning hush over it, and the room I am staying in must have belonged to somebody, at one time. I found a box of possessions under the bed: a silver hairbrush, engraved with the legend ‘My dear R, with love, H’ and a notebook, perhaps a diary. You’ll be pleased to know I haven’t yet opened it—perhaps you won’t despair of me quite yet.
Don’t forget me, will you, amid the whirl of newlywed life?
Yours, in love and friendship,
B
My dear Mrs Wylding,
I have been exploring! I suppose you would call it snooping, though I certainly haven’t been poking around any dusty old libraries with a magnifying glass. No, I’ve been out walking, sometimes for miles and miles. The air here is fresh and sweet. I eat like a horse. And there is so much green! It lifts the spirits—practically intoxicates.
In town I interrogated a local ‘character’, one of those who claims to have seen the Beast, and bribed a few children for their stories. I could make little sense of them, and certainly put together no coherent picture of the Beast. Aside vague mentions of horns and fur and eyes that burned like coals, their descriptions were extraordinarily nebulous, as though the English language encountered some impassable threshold of meaning when they tried to say what they had seen. One child lapsed entirely into his native tongue, and simply mumbled, “‘Mbo,” which Mrs M_____ tells me equates to the “Dunno” of the London urchin.
I had rather more luck with narrowing down the location of the sightings. I gather they’ve occurred around a lonely stretch of the old Roman road, where the trees cluster thickly on all sides. I mean to head out tomorrow, or the day after, whenever the rain clears up. I shall have to sneak out early in the morning: Mr M_____ was horrified when I mentioned my plans, and insisted he would ask one of the local farmers, a Mr Pritchard, to accompany me with the rifle he keeps for seeing off foxes. He even made noises about gathering an expedition party, for safety in numbers.
But I mean to see the Beast, not to walk out at the head of a gaggle of farmers who’ll scare it away with guns and loud voices before we ever get close!
Oh, one other thing—an explanation, perhaps, for the over-caution of my hosts. I asked around in town. There was a daughter, Rachel: the ‘R’ of the hairbrush, no doubt. She died some years ago, amid an unspecified scandal. I was unable to get any more. Even the voluble shopkeeper’s wife who seems to be custodian of all local gossip clammed up after that: she simply said, quite firmly, “We do not talk about it.”
Poor Mr and Mrs M_____. My heart quite goes out to them. I’ll find my way around their worries, nonetheless!
Yours,
B.
My friend,
Something wonderful has happened! I’m afraid you won’t quite believe it—you have never trusted that ‘There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Elizabeth’—but you must trust me, and try.
On Thursday morning I slipped out of the house early, just as I’d planned. A pearly dawn crept up above the rolling hills, but the woods shivered and held onto their shadows, as though they meant to keep a few scraps of night here with us in the valley. I confess I shuddered, though I knew not whether with fear or excitement.
The light had turned to gold by the time I reached the old road. The day was warm as summer, already, and a heady sweet scent rose off the trees and out of the undergrowth—thick as roses, though there were none to be seen. The rustle of the spring breeze in the leaves and the chirping of insects seemed to meld into a kind of hum, into music, as though all the land were singing. It was honey wine for all the senses, and I reached my destination in a state akin to drunkenness.
And then grew, quite suddenly, conscious of a presence up ahead.
I was afraid, then. I looked for the Beast, and my imagination ran quite wild. I’m ashamed to admit it, but I pictured slavering jaws and fangs, a devil’s hooves, slotted yellow eyes with sickly flame in their depths.
Instead, I saw her. Rachel.
More sylph than ghost or woman, she seemed made of the dappled sunlight, a golden, sloe-eyed vision. All the picture I had of her came from her hairbrush and a few village whispers—and yet we knew each other, immediately, and were drawn together.
She kissed me (oh, don’t pretend to be scandalised!) and her lips were as warm and sweet as those phantom roses. Only later did it occur to me to ask, “Why are you here? Your mother and father—”
Rachel shook her head. “I am a guide now,” she told me. “Only those who seek the God can find me.”
I was surprised. “The God? You mean the Beast?”
She only shrugged, and said, “He wears many cloaks of flesh.” And for a moment, beneath the beauteous lines of her face, I thought I saw
A fancy. I rather lost track of time, and came back to the house late and a little disoriented. Mrs M_____ says I haven’t been sleeping enough and is insisting on putting me to bed with hot cocoa.
I haven't told her anything of this.
Yours,
B.
Elizabeth,
I have seen such things as you shall never believe. Such stories will I have to tell you when I come back to London—but even as I write to you, I find myself wondering how I will ever put them into words, and if I will ever come back. You and London seem so terribly far away, and insubstantial, all of it images in a dream. The world is only a shade, and behind it there are great, strange shapes, and singing so sweet and wild it fills my head with light…
Before you start to worry, rest assured that Mrs M_____ has already had the doctor call. He pronounced me suffering from a slight chill, thanks to too much traipsing through the woods, and nothing worse. I suspect he may be something of a quack, for I feel quite well and think I could get out of bed this moment and go dancing into the night!
B.
My dear Elizabeth,
Ah, I never should have come here! I should have stayed in London, near you, and eventually we would have been widows together, and happy, after a fashion.
I saw Rachel again yesterday, in the usual spot, and tonight she will come to me. She looked quite sad as she told me this, and pressed my hand and said that I should not let her in. Then she bade me read her diary.
I wish I had not. The things hinted at in her childish hand, even behind the veil of words, fill me with cold horror—and yet I am helpless. A part of me wishes to listen to her; to shut the window and latch it tightly and tomorrow run back to London as fast as the steam-engine can carry me.
But there can be no return. I have loved a woman who is not a woman, and have known the melting warmth of her flesh. The memory fills me with a delicious lassitude that makes my limbs like to lead, and keeps me pinned here upon the bed, waiting.
I have flung the casement wide and brushed my hair a hundred times so that it lies upon the white pillow like spun gold. The M_____s believe I am ill, or at least are willing to pretend they believe it. Mrs M_____ came up about an hour ago, and put her hand to my brow and looked into my eyes, and turned quite white at what she saw there. She scurried away, muttering something about getting the doctor back in the morning, and later on I heard her weeping.
I know not what they will find here in the morning. I feel the warm wind, and smell a sweetness like fruit gently rotting in the sun, and beneath it all I hear the singing.
She comes. If you could hear her, Elizabeth, if you were here... but you are not, and so I must cleave to Rachel, and to the beast that is a God.
Do not look for me, not even if this letter reaches you. Not even if the pages smell of honey wine.