A Man and a Woman by Robin Schone

Author:Robin Schone [Schone, Robin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kensington
Published: 2014-08-28T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Five

Ragged pieces of cloth hung from thorns, mothers’ last-year votive offerings torn from swaddling cloths to appease the old gods.

He stared at the clear spring water, and wondered why he had brought Megan to Madron Well.

The truth chuckled and bubbled out from underneath the rock.

Hilla-ridden—to have the stag—was a West Cornish term for a man whose life was riddled with nightmares. Legend claimed that a man could be cured if he washed in Madron Well.

He wanted to be cured.

He wanted to wash in Madron Well and bathe the past away.

“It is said that in 1650 there was a cripple named John Trelilie,” Megan said. The brim of her hat and the fold of black veiling hid her face from his view. “He dreamed three times that he should wash himself in Madron Well. But he was crippled, and no one would bring him, so he crawled here to wash himself in the waters. It cured him, they say. They say he walked away from the well upright.”

“Do you believe the story is true?” he asked neutrally.

“It is certainly less farfetched than some other Cornish legends.” Megan looked up; sunlight sharply illuminated her white skin and the network of fine lines that defined it. “Are, there similar legends in your country?”

Arabia was filled with legends. Of genies. Of magical oases.

He opened his mouth to tell her of Arabia. “Eunuchs have been known to marry,” he said instead.

It was not what he had intended to say.

Her moss green eyes remained calm. “What did you mean, earlier, when you said that eunuchs such as yourself grow erect? Are there eunuchs who do not . . . grow erect?”

A bird warbled; the spring gurgled.

It all seemed so far away, the years he had been whole and the day he had been altered.

“There are three types of castration,” he said, feeling as removed as the bird’s warble. “There is the sandali, or castrati, in which a boy’s—or man’s—penis and testicles are cleanly cut off by a razor; there are those who have their penis only cut off; and there are those like me, who have their testicles either crushed or removed.”

He spoke dispassionately, as if it had happened to someone else other than himself; as if the crimes perpetrated were not monstrous, but were perfectly acceptable.

In Arabia, they were.

The horror he had earlier expected to see in her eyes was clearly visible. “These men who do not have their manhood—how do they relieve themselves?”

“They urinate through a straw. Or else they squat.”

Like a woman.

But they did not deserve that analogy—not from a fellow eunuch.

“And so these men—these men who do not have their manhood—they must suffer, without any consolation at all.”

“A eunuch’s level of desire corresponds to the age he was castrated,” he said stoically, unable to lie and tell her that a eunuch never felt desire, because they did feel desire.

Even those who were castrated before the onset of puberty.

Even those who were sandali.

“At what age were you? . . . .” She paused, unable to say the word.

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