Christabella: Part Three

   


                  Part Three:

   
            As Fate Conspired



Betimes, to forge ahead we must return:
Beginnings are the point we all discern
The way we might have wandered on the road,
Or how to best convey the aching load;
And so we must return unto the gloom
Of funeral bells, whose knell spelled out her doom.
    Now Christabella was the grade of girl
Who could discern a pebble from a pearl;
She, like her mother, lively, kind and bright,
Brilliant as lightning in the gloomy night,
Was sensitive to wrong: so gentle she
When pain was dealt to someone near that she
Adored, as if her own soul had been bruised,
Felt the injustice: knew that truth, abused,
Can always only damage every one
Who breathes upon this earth beneath this sun.
    Although she was confused in loss and pain
And heartbreak stormed in her like gales of rain
In hurricanes sweep homes and souls away,
When storm surge drowns all in the tempestuous bay,                                               
Still, somehow now she held a rankling sense
That someone somewhere held some grave offense.
She knew that something in these three was wrong.
Yet as a fragile sobbing girl, not strong
Enough to have Papa quite understand
That scores of snakes were slithering through the land,
That these perhaps were they, she lay it by.
She tried to hope, despite her anxious sigh:
Although there was some cautious coolness there,
Perchance they simply had no grace to care
With fine consideration: and perhaps
She felt the strangeness of those who trade caps;
Since few were magical as her Mama,
So she must trust the judgment of Papa.
    She was inclined by nature to think well
Of every homme to each mademoiselle,
And not assume the worst of anyone.
It was by trust she gradually was undone.
    Then, when they wed, she mattered not at all.
Papa was anxious. Strangers filled the hall.
Confusion reigned in her tormented soul:
Her mourning still, and having no control
O'er half her life or well, indeed it all;
Her strange thoughts had mad power to appall.
She banished all those thoughts: how could she think that they
Were treating both of them like vanquished prey.
    She reasoned dear papa was in such pain
That to beg for redemption was in vain.
So, not the whining kind, despite the pain,
She, being respectful, just did not complain.
In truth she'd known so few families that
She figured she'd been blessed before and that
This must be what most are, and that she must
Just make the best of things: depend on trust.

    Afraid she'd disappoint her dear papa,
She was obedient to her stepmama
And he? He'd no idea that she'd been banished
Beneath the eaves, and he'd assumed she'd vanished
Abashed and temperamental at the loss:
To be expected, so he wasn't cross.
    At times he missed her and then sometimes she
Reminded him of dear Mama so he
In tears could not endure her company;
Thus, at the mercy of her stepkin she
Had slid into silent obscurity,
The one that children do and women do
When so abused with their abuse unknown:
Polite society effaced them and withdrew,
Their friends dissolved and she was all alone.
    Far too ashamed to face that he'd been fooled,
Too good hearted, and too bereft: Papa was ruled
In hellish heartless whims: they sometimes praised
Him, his pathetic expectations raised
And then condemned or drowned each happy thought
In crushing condescension, thus they taught,
Him, being each one, a refined sort of hog,
Allowed to fawn just like  a beaten dog,
As long as he behaved and knew his place:
If he walked upright it was a disgrace.


    And rules, oh there were rules, and rules galore,
Rules, rules, new rules and every one a chore;
Abundant rules, conflicting rules, and rules
Unshaped and uninvented, till the rules
Unearthed themselves in some monstrous infraction
That made these three boors scold her to distraction.
    And all of this was always, so they said,
Because they loved her: weak Mama was dead,
Who spoiled and coddled her and damned her soul
Indulging all her lack of self control
Till vile moral decrepitude leaked in
To fill her, seething, with ignoble sin.
Or so they claimed, then they would whip it out;
She nary was allowed the merest pout,
And spanking, whipping, flogging, missing meals,
The worst humiliation a child feels
Most keen, inflicted with a kind of zeal
That made fear terror, and each mad ordeal,
Far beyond grace and mercy and correction,
With no kind discipline and no direction,
Just made her thankful for the lonesome cold
Where she could calm her weeping. She was told
She was so lazy: she had never "worked",
And every chore it seemed she always shirked,
And so when she was banished from her room
She mused she missed some dust rat with her broom.

So, far more difficult to tell in verse,
The situation slid from bad to worse,
Their world, they all began to rearrange
So gradually they didn't think it strange,
And slid into acceptance of the thing:
They slid to ruin and all that time would bring.

    One night after a several hour scold
Made autumn trees no longer shine like gold
She was allowed to creep off up the stairs:
In sleep's oblivion to erase her cares;
She had a dream remembering the months
Soon after her Mama had died; those months
Of weeping now seemed months of living gold
For she was warm and showered with love, all told;
O those were royal times! This woke her with a smart,
Began a roiling turmoil in her heart.
    Awakened now by her own echoing moans,
She shifted on the icy chimney stones,
And curled her hands around her freezy feet
To stem the draft, then wrapped her shivering arms
Around her legs to mitigate the harms;
Admitted, with a groan, her own defeat.
    "Why don't they love me? What have I done wrong?
The words I speak, and every single song
Is horrible because it comes from me,
O why o why can't they just let me be?
They all tell me they wish that I had died
When dear Mama died. I wish I had died.
    "They loved me once. Why don't they love me now?
It's my fault they don't love me. O Lord how
Can I persuade them that I've really changed:
I'm not so spoiled now, yet they're still estranged".
And then an old thought struck her, quiet and small:
"Perhaps they never loved me after all".
    "O if I was a princess or a queen
Or light wreathed faery dancing on the green
Perhaps they'd love me then! I'd make them smile
With fair enchantments that can all beguile!
But what am I? I'm not a magic thing.
I'm not an elf or angel on the wing.
I feel so frightened that I cringe and cry
And hide for hours. How I ache to die.
To die, to cease this pain, these wasted years,
Or fade away, or just dissolve in tears,
In those old faery tales Mama once told,
When nights were velvet and when days were gold,
The persevering maiden reaps rewards:
A young prince rescues her with flashing swords.
But I'm no maiden in a moonlit tower.
I'm no Rapunzel with her magic dower:
Her wreath-ed skeins of braided golden hair,
And there's no soul to know or even care."
    The tears rolled down her cheeks, all grimed and streaked
And mice came to console her: how they squeaked
When rains of tears baptized them: off they ran
Distressed and terrified to the last man!
Their gentle giant mourned. Each briny splash
Sprinkled the stones and clumped each sad eyelash.
Splotched with gray charcoal and clumped with grim ash
She seemed their name indeed! She stretched her hand
To gift the mice some crumbly contraband.
    "You mice and rats, my weird quick whiskery friends,
You all come to such sad untimely ends!
As gray as rags, more shadowy than dust,
God knows how you've all come to feel such trust?
You all know Pussywillow was my cat.
Plenty of times she cornered some poor rat
And sent him to that buttery in the sky
Where your ancestors feast on bins of rye
And golden wheat, and mincemeat pudding dregs,
And sip Madeira from wine cellar kegs.
There's one last measly mouthful of stray crumbs,
I wish that even you had sugarplums!"
    Then Christabella curled up by the grate.
The huge and drafty fireplace of late
Held little heat from morning use, when they
Commanded that she flame it for the day.
She watched her little legions congregate
In moonlight from the window. And as fate
Conspired, cold stones, each mousy peep,
Her freezy rags: all this robbed her of sleep.
But most of all, I must admit it's true:
It was her birthday and she knew they knew.
Today she was thirteen: an awful sum!
At this odd thought she wept till she was numb.
    She mused upon the fishes and the loaves,
And wished for all her mice she'd treasure troves....
Ah.....Loaves again! The hour to kneed the bread
For those upstairs asleep more than the dead!