September Excerpt: The Legend of Good Women (Patreon)

Since I'm officially on maternity leave, I'm not writing much for the next twelve weeks while I learn how to look after a brand new human. But that doesn't mean I intend to leave your excerpt-hungry hearts high and dry! 

This one is SERIOUSLY from the vaults. As in, only two people have ever read it before. It was commissioned by a jewelry-maker to accompany a piece of the same title, and was sent to its new owner tucked underneath the jewels--something like ten years ago now. It's a response to Chaucer's famous poem The Legend of Good Women, in which Our Geoff is accused of being a total douche to and about women in his work (wholly fair) and commanded to say nice things about ladies for a whole poem or go sit in the corner with the other jerks. The poem then goes on to rather whitewash a lot of mythological double X chromosomes and make them into nice girls you can take home to mum.

Well, little medievalist me couldn't have that. 

So please enjoy this old piece of the most exclusive kind, and next month I'll have something new for you.

The Legend of Good Women

Look, sisters! His bones are stiff and straight, at attention, one might almost say. 

Slumber, O, slumber, Sir! Lie back among the pear seeds and laurels! We apple-nymphs will guard you, our crisp green skin shining hard and mottled, our hair like broken stems—fear no errant incubus whilst we are by! Sleep on your shield, sleep on their star-seeded breasts. Sleep and sleep, still, oh, still!

Did not our Geoffrey slumber thus? Did not we bring him dreams of maidens so white in virtue their veins ran with alum? We shall tell you a secret, oh sleeping knight ours—when we sent those ladies to the bedside of Chaucer, his flask and wallet empty by his side, we cut out their hearts, so that they would speak to him only dully, of no passion, of no high blood, but of doves and pastry and trousseau. The Queen bade us do it, we accept no blame.

But not for you will we commit such butchery. Are we not kind nymphs and true? We bring such dreams in our boughs, and ask for nearly nothing in return! 

First see the nymph of pears spin and whirl and don the dress of Ariadne—how her hair flies on Naxos! How her colored dress is torn! Do not look, virtuous knight! Her breast hangs round and sweet from her ruined garments! Was she not gentle, was she not wise? See how her clew strangles her pretty neck! How her brother’s bull-bright shade beats her around the shoulders! How Dionysios holds her face to the sand and cavorts! Was she not a good woman? She is Rage, she is Revenge, she is a fury with hair like a labyrinth, but Theseus may shrug in Athens and call her loyal enough for use, though not for love. 

Then see the nymph of oranges peel herself white and lie on Cleopatra’s couch—never a pretty woman, but pharaoh of the forest! How those men saw Isis move in her, how they saw Hathor’s moon between her legs—and how relieved they were that she went the way of Eve and loved the serpent so dearly! Was she not a good woman? Ah, but a good woman cannot outstay her welcome, and must be clever enough to leap from man to man like a frog if she wishes to keep her head! We shall keep her head among us and love her, not for Egypt but for the moon within her, and her sweet voice singing out the stars in date-heady Alexandria! She is Lust, she is Ambition, she is the mistress of serpents, and who if not us will keep her safe?

Then see the nymph of plums wriggle in her violet garlands and become Medea, with a slaughtered son in each hand! Was she not virtuous? Was she not a good mother? Did she not get her babes in bet by half past eight, with milk in their bellies and their blankets tucked tight? Did she not love her husband, his tongue that tasted of olives, his golden fleece tossed upon the couch and forgotten? Ah, but only a father may choose the fate of his sons—how dare she fail to vanish in the face of a lovelier woman? She is Scorn, she is Murder, she drives her dragon-chariot hard and fast, her hair burning in the wind! 

Then see the nymph of quince blush green and paint upon herself the smile of Hypsipyle—how well she knows Ariadne, how well Medea! Look upon these Three Graces, their blameless hearts beaming! Was she not a good woman? Did she not bear two children also to the great Argonaut, his oar prancing through Lemnos all a-spangle? She and Ariadne may weep together, abandoned on their rocky isles—too virtuous to keep, we presume. She is Mercy Regretted, she is Abandon, she drags her boys behind her starving and shunned, their knees scratched, her womb ragged—why, you can see the virtue shining through the wounds!

See, too, the nymph of tangerines laugh like sand falling through fingers and resemble Dido, Queen of Africa! Oh, she was a woman for if ever there was! What a wife, with a nation appended to her wedding-hand, with hecatombs in her heart and columns in her kiss! How kind Aeneas was to her, to match her merit, who sent a sword in his place to run her through and make her cry out in her tower! Ah, well, it hardly matters. Carthago delenda est, after all. This is virtue, is it not? To stand quite still and never to disturb the hero in his rapine and abandon! We applaud her fortitude, who is Suicide, who is Grief! Why, she could so have easily given in to sin, and lived beyond her use!

See beside her the nymph of cherries grasp her scarlet breasts and scream like a Sabine! Lucretia weeping virgin’s blood—what a good girl, the best of girls, exempla to all the rest! Sit in your school-chairs, girls, and learn how to be a good daughter. Why she hardly cried at all when Tarquin tore open her legs! And how saintly, how celestial of her not to remain among all her adulterer-kin, to spoil their fun by living on after use fulfilled! She is Rape, she is Violence, she is our dutiful homework! Surely this is our model of womanhood—for what is the legend of good women but the legend of dead women? Once dead, they may be gratefully forgotten, and there is no better lady than she whom we need think not of. 

See now the nymph of the garden wall crack open and show Thisbe, who stands with pearl-mouthed Dido, crimson Lucretia, and snake-braceleted Cleopatra, the four suicide evangelists! And here is she, the lion, her golden face contorted in a rictus of virtue, living not one moment beyond her lover—for what use is a good woman without a man to keep her? What need have we of Thisbe without Pyramus? None! She is Fornication, she is Deception, she is a sweet girl lying dead beneath a wall (cruel wall!) and all may mourn her, for a woman is only a woman when she is mourned.

See then the nymph of the willow open her branches and show a lonely swallow within—oh, silent Philomela! We tried, when our Geoff woke, to ask which it was that made you virtuous, your ravishment or your severed tongue, and for all we know he is still considering the question. How thoughtful of you to suffer, how clever of you to turn into a songless swallow, so that no man would have to hear your brainless weeping! O, Suffering, O, Tell-Tale Heart! Fall into Lucretia’s arms—she will love you best, and show you her wounds where all her piety shimmers! 

See before you the nymph of almonds shed her skin and show whiteness beneath: pretty, white-armed Phyllis, never sinning, never erring, never once daring to live when her love had gone but three inches from her side. O unfaithful women of the world! How can you bear to walk and speak when your husbands turn away to bathe? Practice the virtue of Phyllis and become a tree the moment he looks not on you, and bloom henceforth only in his presence, for you are nothing but the stalk which bears him fruit. She is the Eradication of Self, glorious pearl of beauty! Follow her into the bark!

See last the nymph of pears smile sweetly, the nurse of all these, whose hair and face and skin glows all whiter than the dove of Christ, Hypermnestra the virgin, alone of these inviolate, joyful, abandoned by no one on no shale-slippery isle off the Grecian strand. She holds them all to her breast, and notes the symptoms of their virtue on a clean, crisp leaf. After all, it was difficult not to kill her husband with all her sisters—perhaps she toils in penance here, with new sisters to watch over. 

The Queen bade us show that poet who lay here before you, O knight our own, a virtue he could understand. And so of our dream-memory he pulled bloodied women who begged only rest. When they spoke of suffering, he heard paeans of love. Presented with nymphs numbering ten, whose beauty blinds swans, he could not think of a maid but that she was rent to pieces beneath a hero’s galloping destiny.

You are better, we know. How your shield gleams! Let us put our lips to you, our sweet-blossomed kisses, and go in our name to the den of Jason, to the ships of Theseus, to the seraglios of Tarquin and Antony—go with our favor tied round your arm, and instruct those poor sheep, long strayed from the flock, the sacred virtue that Medea knows!