Miranda and Caliban Read online

  Terrified though I am, I find my voice. “He has a name, Papa!” I call up to him, hoping the news will offset his anger. “The wild boy has a name!”

  “Oh, does he indeed?” Papa’s voice is dangerously quiet. “And how might you have discovered it, lass?”

  Trembling, I stand my ground. “He told it to me, Papa.”

  Papa is silent for a long moment. I cannot tell what he is thinking. “For all of our sakes, I pray it prove true, child,” he says at last. “But if it is so, I would hear the lad speak it himself that I may know it is the truth, and not a flight of fancy your overly tender heart has accorded to some savage utterance or bestial grunt.”

  I go to the wild boy, squatting before him and ducking my head low to meet his gaze. “You must tell him,” I whisper. Even though I know he does not understand my words, I will him to grasp my meaning. “You must say it aloud or he will bespell you again, and we shall never be friends.” I touch my chest. “Miranda,” I say once more, then point at him.

  Beneath the shelter of his wiry arms, the wild boy peers back at me. “Caliban,” he whispers.

  Louder; it must be louder, else Papa will not hear him. I stand, tapping my chest. “Miranda.” The wild boy whines. “Please!” I beg him, my voice rising in despair. “Oh, please!”

  The wild boy’s shoulders tighten, but then he lowers his arms and straightens slowly from his crouch, lifting his head to gaze toward Papa in the gallery. “Caliban.” He brushes his chest with his knuckles in unmistakable meaning and repeats the name with exaggerated care. “Cal-i-ban.”

  I feel triumphant and scared.

  Papa strokes his beard and looks down at us. “So it seems that youth and innocence has prevailed over wisdom and experience in the matter of taming the savage breast,” he murmurs to himself. “Curious, indeed. ’Tis a phenomenon that bears further study. Mayhap there is a correspondence of innocence and ignorance at work, the significance of which I had not fully reckoned.”

  I begin to hope that Papa is so pleased with this discovery that he will not punish me.

  But no, his gaze sharpens and he reaches for the amulet that binds me to him, the one that bears a lock of my hair. I look down at the floor and make my hands into fists in anticipation of the pinprick stings of correction that will follow.

  “Miranda.” Papa waits until I look up again. His expression is grave and disappointed. “Even if I did not expressly forbid it, I daresay you are sensible enough to know that you defied my wishes in entering the wild boy’s cell without permission. Is this not so?”

  I cannot be untruthful. “Yes, Papa.”

  “Very well.” He lets go of the amulet. I slacken with relief. “Because I do not wish to agitate the lad’s sympathies and cause him to regress to a state of abject savagery, I shall spare you the immediate punishment that is merited for this transgression. Confine yourself to your chamber and meditate on the nature of your disobedience until I summon you. For a daughter to willfully disobey her father is to violate the divine order of nature itself,” he says sternly. “God in His heaven weeps.”

  I look down, ashamed.

  The wild boy whines, then makes his crooning sound.

  “Go!” Papa orders me.

  I hesitate. “Papa … you won’t work a deeper binding spell on him just yet, will you?”

  Papa folds his arms and glares. “Begone, lass! To your chamber!”

  I obey.

  FIVE

  CALIBAN

  Caliban, Caliban, Ca-ca-ca-caliban!

  Caliban.

  Miranda.

  Master.

  Yes. No. Food. Water. Eat food. Drink water. Please. Yes, eat food, please. Yes, drink water, please. Thank you. Food, please, Master. Thank you, Master.

  I Caliban.

  She Miranda.

  He Master.

  Sun. Moon.

  Good, bad. Yes, good. No, bad.

  Bad, bad, bad.

  I am Caliban. Caliban is good. She is Miranda. Miranda is good. He is Master. Master is good.

  Food is good. Water is good. Yes, please. Thank you, Master.

  Sun is good.

  Moon is good.

  Yes, please. Eat food is good. Drink water is good. Master is good. Miranda is good. Thank you, Master.

  I am Caliban.

  Caliban is good.

  No, bad. Bad, bad, bad.

  Sorry.

  Caliban is sorry.

  Yes, Master. Please, Master. Thank you, Master.

  SIX

  MIRANDA

  Teaching the wild boy—no, teaching Caliban—to speak is a lengthy business, but I do not mind. I am grateful that Papa allows me to play a role in it.

  And I am very, very grateful that Papa chose to let Caliban keep his wits after all, judging that it would be a greater endeavor to continue attempting to civilize him than to tame him with magic. He says nothing of the spirit in the pine, though I am sure it too has something to do with his decision.

  Papa casts the deeper binding spell he devised on Oriana instead. I am not permitted to attend, but at least casting this spell on a mere beast requires no sacrificial offering. Papa grumbles about wasting his art on a goat, but I think he wishes to know if it works.

  It does. Oriana no longer tries to escape. She is different, though. All her mischief is gone and her lively gaze is dull. She takes no interest in the antics of the clutch of chicks that Elisabetta has hatched. She never tries to butt me when I milk her, but she takes no pleasure in it when I scratch her head.

  Papa is pleased with the results.

  Yes, I am very grateful that he chose not to further bespell Caliban.

  I should like to say that Caliban is a good pupil, but it is only true sometimes. On good days he is eager to please. On bad days, he works himself into a fury at his captivity and howls and rages as wildly as ever. When that happens, Papa punishes him.

  It grieves me to see Caliban fall writhing to the floor of his cell, his limbs twitching in pain.

  He learns, though.

  Bit by bit, day by day, the fight drains from him. He ceases to bloody the nails of his fingers and toes in an effort to escape, and no longer claws at his breech-cloth. Although he has not learned to use the chamber-pot, he no longer smears ordure on the walls of his cell, and the elemental spirits are better able to clean his messes. It still stinks, though.

  On good days, Caliban regards Papa with worshipful awe. Those are the days on which he is most apt to master a new word or come to a new understanding of the way that words fit together to form a greater meaning.

  On bad days, Caliban regards Papa with a mixture of suspicion and craven fear, and although his rages lessen, he is sullen and willful. I do my best to make him understand that if he only obeys Papa, there will be no punishment. On good days, it seems he understands this, but on bad days, he is beyond the reach of reason.

  I think that if Papa would only allow Caliban a measure of freedom it might help, but Papa will not soften.

  “The ability to reason is what separates us from beasts, child,” he says to me when I suggest it over supper. “I’ll grant you, the lad has evinced glimmerings of the faculty I feared we might never see, but a mere glimmering does not suffice. If he ever proves capable of demonstrating it consistently over time, remaining helpful and willing to learn and earn my trust, I will reckon him deserving of a chance to prove himself worthy of it outside his cell.”

  “How much time, Papa?” I ask humbly.

  He considers the question. “A full month’s time.”

  A month.

  It seems like a very long time; but then, it was a full month’s time before Papa decided I might be entrusted to give Caliban lessons on my own. I think mayhap Papa found the process more tiresome than he reckoned in comparison with his own studies, but I am grateful to occupy myself gainfully. I begin making marks on the walls of Caliban’s cell with ochre chalk to count the good days, hoping I might use them to teach him.

  It is not
easy.

  “One, two, three, four.” I point at a series of Xs. “Good, good, good, good. See?” I hold up four fingers. “For four days Caliban was good.” I point at an O. “Bad. Yesterday Caliban was bad.” I erase the chalk markings with the heel of my hand, dusting it on the folds of my robe.

  Caliban sets his jaw. “No!” Although he has not altogether lost the habit of crouching, he stands straighter now than he did when Papa first summoned him, and is a head taller than me.

  “Yes,” I say firmly. I draw an X. “Today Caliban was good. One day.” I hold up one finger, then all ten fingers thrice over. “Master says that if you are good this many days, you may have sun.”

  He lets out a long, wistful sigh. “Sun!” It is one of the first words he learned, pointing to the sun when its bright rays streamed through the high windows on the upper story. I think it has come to stand for all that is good in the world outside his cell, all that is lost to him.

  “Sun,” I agree sadly. Surely it would be easier to teach him were he allowed to leave his cell, for there are only so many things I can name within its confines. But I dare not defy Papa.

  “Sun is good,” Caliban says. “Miranda is good.” He touches a lock of my hair with unexpected gentleness. “Miranda is sun.”

  I laugh. “No!”

  “Yes!” His dark eyes are intent with a desire to convey meaning. “Miranda is sun.”

  It is a compliment, I think; the highest one he knows how to give. I do not know what to do other than return it. “Caliban is sun, too.”

  “No.” He shakes his head, a shadow crossing his face. “Caliban is bad.”

  “Do not say so!” I catch his rough-skinned hands in mine. “Yesterday, yes. But not today, and not tomorrow, not for a whole month of tomorrows! Oh, Caliban, you have to be good! If you’re not, Papa will bespell you and you’ll be like Oriana, not yourself at all, and I’ll be alone again!” I know it is far too many words for him to understand, but I cannot stop myself any more than I can hold back the tears that fill my eyes and spill down my cheeks. “I don’t want to be so alone!”

  “No, Miranda, no!” Caliban makes his crooning sound and squats to pat my shoulders and my hair. His jaw hardens and his wide brow creases in a disapproving scowl. “Master is bad.”

  “What? No!” Alarmed, I cover his mouth with one hand. “Never say such a thing!”

  Though he continues to scowl, he quiets under my touch.

  I take my hand away.

  “Friend,” Caliban says. It is another word he has learned from me.

  “Yes.” I nod. “Friend.”

  It seems strange to me that I should know such words, and yet have no memory of learning them. Who taught me to speak? And why was it not such a difficult endeavor as it is with the wild boy?

  When I lie abed at night, I try to remember. There is Papa, of course. When he speaks to me, he speaks to me at length. Sometimes I think that because Papa has no one else to speak to, he forgets I do not always understand what he is saying, even as I forget Caliban cannot understand the words I blurt out in a rush of feeling.

  But what about before? Before the island?

  Was there truly a before?

  If there was, I understood the lullabies the ladies with their soft hands and soft cheeks sang to me. How?

  I do not know.

  And so I cease to cudgel my wits. I think about teaching Caliban to speak and be civilized as a very long walk that we are taking together, step by step by step. Sometimes we go backward, but mostly we go forward. I keep a tally of the good days on the wall of his cell. It stretches to ten days before a bad day comes and we must start the count anew, and then to seventeen days. It is hard to start over after seventeen days, but we do.

  There are triumphs great and small along the way. Every new word mastered is a triumph.

  But my greatest triumph is convincing Caliban to use the chamber-pot. In the early days, he is in the habit of squatting to relieve himself whenever the urge comes upon him with no more sense of modesty than Oriana or the hens. When he does so, I avert my gaze, point to the chamber-pot, and leave his cell. Because he does not like for me to leave so abruptly, in time he comes to understand that this is not something to be done in front of others.

  The chamber-pot is another matter.

  In fairness, there is no reason Caliban should have any inkling of its purpose or understand why I point at it when he relieves himself. If I were a boy, I think mayhap I would simply show him; but Papa has made it clear that a girl must never be immodest. At last I think to mime the action, sitting on the chamber-pot and using a pail of dirt clods from the garden and a wooden cup of water in place of urine and stools. I feel foolish doing it and I am not wholly sure that it is not immodest to do so, but after I go through the mime several times, I see Caliban’s eyes widen in surprised comprehension. After that, he begs for the pail and the cup so that he might sit upon the chamber-pot and imitate me, as though it is a cunning new game I have devised for us.

  In fact, it is not until the next day when Caliban leads me proudly to the chamber-pot to view his waste that I am certain he understood.

  “I am good?” he asks hopefully.

  “Very good,” I assure him. Clapping my hands together, I make a song of it. “Caliban is good today, Caliban is good today! Today, yesterday, tomorrow, and every day, Caliban is good!”

  He claps too, and jumps up and down.

  “Miranda!” Papa’s voice calls from the gallery, sharp and stern. Once again, he has emerged from his sanctum to appear above us unexpected and unnoticed. “What manner of nonsense is this?”

  Chastened, I cease. “I was only praising him, Papa. He has learned to use the chamber-pot.”

  Caliban rests on his haunches and lifts his bright, hopeful gaze to the gallery.

  Papa hesitates, then nods in approval. “Is it so? Well done, lad,” he says in a kind voice. “’Twas time and more for that revelation, but I daresay we shall all breathe the easier for it.”

  Caliban basks in his praise.

  I wish Papa would praise me, too, but he does not; only summons a gnome to empty the chamber-pot and returns to his studies.

  Nonetheless, I am inspired by my success.

  It seems to me that making a game of things is a key, and so I decide to make a game of cleanliness. First, I rub my arms with soil in the kitchen garden until my skin is dark with grime. Then I bring an additional basin of water and a little pot of soap into Caliban’s cell. I show him my arms. “Dirty,” I say, drawing one fingertip through the grime. “Dirty is bad.” Then I unstopper the pot of soap and make a show of smelling it.

  Caliban sniffs it, too. “Sun!”

  I smile. “Soap.” In a way he is right, though. Papa makes the soap from wood ash gathered from the kitchen hearth and olive oil pressed from the grove outside the palace, and when the jasmine is in bloom, he gathers its blossoms and steeps them in the mixture to perfume it. The scent is very like unto the gardens in summer sunlight. I plunge one arm into the basin, then take a dollop of soap and scrub away the grime. “Clean!” I rinse and show him. “Clean is good.” Caliban is delighted by this new game, and we play it until I daresay he’s cleaner than he’s ever been in his life. I have to call a halt to it lest we use too much precious soap.

  Papa is pleased, too; so pleased that he decides Caliban is ready for more civilized clothing. I am not as certain, but to my surprise, Caliban is proud to don a pair of Papa’s breeches cut down to size. Papa even succeeds in teaching him to knot them around his waist.

  “The lad’s dexterity has improved,” Papa says to me at supper that evening. “Note it well, child! As the higher functions of speech and reason grow stronger, so do the lesser faculties follow suit.”

  I nod.

  “Miranda.” Papa’s voice is gentle. I look up at him. “You have made wonderful progress with our wild boy. Wonderful progress. Do not think I am unaware that it is your tender heart that first stirred sympathies in
his savage breast, and that it is your diligent efforts that have borne fruit. I am tremendously impressed with your achievements, my daughter.”

  My cheeks flush and my heart swells with pride. “Thank you, Papa.”

  Mayhap it is pride that makes me careless. I conceive a new game, a counting game wherein Caliban and I promenade around his cell and count the tiles on the walls, chanting the count aloud.

  I think it will be a good way to increase his understanding of numbers.

  But I forget about the door.

  No, I do not forget, exactly. I reckon it in our counting. Thirty-six, thirty-seven, thirty-eight, door—and then we begin our count anew. The first few times we play this game, Caliban simply echoes me. He understands the idea of the counting game, but he has not memorized the names of numbers beyond seven yet. That is all I am thinking about when he hesitates on the fourth or fifth time, his hand splayed on the weathered planks, and questions the notion of the word. “Door?”

  “Yes.” I knock on the wood. “Door.”

  “Door.” Before I can think to stop him, Caliban gives the handle an experimental tug.

  Both of us freeze when the door creaks ajar. For the space of a heartbeat, I curse my folly. In all the hours I’ve spent with Caliban, it has never occurred to him to try the door in my presence, never occurred to him that it might prove yielding. I put too much trust in his ignorance.

  Caliban’s eyes take on a wild shine. He yanks at the door, looking much like Oriana used to look when she’d slipped her tether and was preparing to bolt.

  “No!” I catch his arm. “You mustn’t!” He shakes me off, and I grab at him again with both hands. This time, he bares his teeth at me and shoves me away. I stumble backward and fall. With a sharp yelp of agony, Caliban falls too, his muscles twitching and cramping.

  Papa’s spell has been invoked.

  “Bad!” Caliban moans, curling onto his side. “Bad, bad, bad! Caliban is bad! Caliban is sorry!”