let me tell you and let me go on by Paul Griffiths

Author:Paul Griffiths
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: New York Review Books
Published: 2025-04-22T00:00:00+00:00

‘You cannot play with me’, I say. ‘For me that’s all over. What comes now I do not know.’

Then, out of no where, I go up to the lady and say this:

There was a time when I held you to be

One I could some day tell my in-most heart,

But now I know that day will never come:

The light is on but there’s no-one at home.

But I do not wish to speak thus. It’s as if she will draw me in, and I have to come away again to the window and close my eyes so that I may go on with what I wish to say: ‘But this I do know: that what comes will be mine and will be true.’

The king lets go of his lady and comes up to me.

‘What is true?’

Before I could say something, he’s turned to his lady: ‘My sweet, would you let us have some words, O and I, one on one? Thank you.’

The lady goes, and his eyes are on me again when the words of the two watchmen come another time. ‘What goes there?’ ‘Nay, show yourself.’ I look hard at the king. He’s given nothing away, but I know, as truly as I may see him, that the two watchmen did speak again. Their words make me fear the more. This is the time to go. This is the time when I must go. Another night here and the time will be over.

‘Do you not like it here?’

‘This was my home, my lord, as you know. That’s all there is to say. For each of us there comes a day when home, where we have been raised, becomes something to which and in which we are locked. For many that will be all well and good. But not for me. I find I now have in my hand a key.’

‘I think I know him.’

‘The key, my lord, is not a he and not a she— which is not to say that love may not be a help.’

‘You cannot love and still be here with us?’

His hand is on my wrist. His speech is like a sigh.

‘You cannot love—no, my little fair one—you cannot love that youth of my lady’s—that lady the two of us have had, my brother and me, one before the other—if not the two at one time. Ha! Think of that!’

His hand now comes up my arm as he goes on.

‘If I did, before all this, take some joy in this lady, that day is done—and that night long, long done. I took the lady for reason of state. Are you with me?’

‘My lord,’ I say, ‘all I have come here for is to tell you I must go. You cannot say me nay. What I would ask is for you to speak with my father. Tell him I go on my own, and of my own will. Tell him my mind is made up, as never before. Tell him I know what I face. Tell him I love him, and could never have left if I did not have to.

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