Boxing the Compass
Title: Boxing the Compass
Author: the_alchemist
Play/Poem: Winter's Tale (with cameo appearances from characters in Julius Caesar, MSND, Don Quixote, the Aeneid, Antony and Cleopatra, The Tempest, Twelfth Night, 1001 Nights, Sudanese mythology, Macbeth, and one or two real people as well)
Recipient: angevin2
Rating: Suitable for anyone
Summary: Queen Hermione is not ready to return to her abusive husband Leontes, so instead she decides to travel...
Warnings: None
Length: About 2000 words
Author's Notes: Thanks to Sam, Ash, Marcus lareinenoire who provided useful beta-ish comments.
Boxing the compass
"I don't want to go back." The queen sat up in bed.
Her lady smoothed the pillows. "Don't you remember, love? The messengers have returned. He knows the truth. He'll take you back."
"He killed my children, Paulina. I haven't forgiven him. I'm not sure I'll ever forgive him."
Paulina nodded slowly. "I know," she said. "I know. But..."
"Tell him I'm dead," Hermione said suddenly. "Go back, quickly now. Tell him I'm dead."
"But what'll you..."
"Tell him." She spoke with the voice of an empress. There was no denying her. Paulina went back and did as she was told.
Alone, Hermione put her head into her hands. "But what will I do?" she whispered. "What will I do?"
*
"This is the cottage I've found," said Paulina. It was a cheerful little place, with clean white curtains and an enclosed garden round the back. "You'll be safe here. I'll bring you everything you need. You can live like a nun until you're ready to go back."
"Thank you," said Hermione. "But I don't need anything except my children, and I'm not going to go back until I can embrace them."
"But Hermione..." said Paulina gently.
"That will be never," said Hermione. "Yes, I know."
If you'd asked Paulina a week ago whether Hermione was doing the right thing, she would have said 'of course'. It wasn't right for a woman to let her husband treat her like that. Better to live alone, or with other women.
Now it was different. How could someone choose to live as a widow when she could still lie warm in her husband's arms, feel his sweet breath, face against chest, skin against skin? Paulina thought she would run mad with envy. And the worst of it was she knew she had been right before, and was wrong now.
"I'm going to travel," said Hermione. "I never have before, not properly anyway. Find me a horse. Pack me a bag, with enough money to hire a boat. And I'll need a veil to wear until I'm out of Sicily. I will leave tomorrow."
"But where will you go?"
Hermione walked to the simple wooden door and looked out. She pointed to a path. "Which way is that?" she said.
"North, I think," said Paulina.
"Then I'm going north."
Hermione went north. She rode to the coast, then sailed onwards. And when she alighted, she began to walk. She hailed a farmer's wife on the road. "Where does this road lead?" she asked.
"The same place all roads lead," said the woman. "To Rome."
The Eternal City gleamed on the horizon as though it were made of pearl. Hermione walked on, and gradually the trickle of fellow travellers became a stream, and then a jostling crowd. She relished the anonymity of her plain brown dress as she walked the streets, staring up at the grand houses, each one as tall as a palace.
As she rounded a corner towards the Circus Maximus, someone grabbed her arm. She tried to disguise her fear as anger. "Get off," she said.
"Your majesty," said the ragged stranger. She tried to work out whether she had seen him before - he had a Roman accent, not a Sicilian one.
She made her voice sound light. "Majesty?" she laughed. "I wish..."
The stranger ignored her. "Majesty," he said. "Are you going to visit him? Could you tell him..."
She broke him off with a laugh. "Do I look like a queen?" she said.
"Yes," said the stranger. "Every inch a queen." He paused, and looked into her eyes. "Do not give up hope, Hermione," he said. "She is alive. You will see her again."
Her heart began to beat faster. "Who are you?" she said. "How do you know who I am? And what do you know of Perdita?"
He shook his head, as though trying to shake something out. "Nothing," he said. "I'm no-one, and what I see is never clear. I'm sorry I..." He gasped.
"Are you all right?" she said.
He nodded. "I see I made a mistake. You're not on a visit of state at all. Your clothes... I should have paid more attention to my eyes and less to... But if you do happen to see him..."
"Who?" said Hermione, but he ignored her.
"Tell him to beware the Ides of March."
*
"Oh, Madam!" Paulina ran out of the cottage to hug her mistress and friend. "It's been a year, a whole year. I thought you were dead!"
Hermione smiled. "I went to Rome," she said. "I saw the Divine Julius, riding on a white horse through the streets. And she's alive, Paulina. Perdita is alive."
Paulina's face crumpled in concern. "Come in," she said. "Get warm, get dry. I've been so worried. Never do that again."
Hermione smiled. "But I must," she said. "Tomorrow I will go east."
In the east, Hermione found Athens. Compared to Rome, it was disappointing. An ugly little man kept following her around asking idiotic questions, and in the woods outside the city, a troupe of players were rehearsing the most shambolic play she had ever seen. It took her another year to get there and back.
Then she went south.
"And what happened this time?" asked Paulina, after the third year had passed.
"I went to Carthage and met Queen Dido," she said. "We had a good long talk about the faithlessness of men."
Paulina smiled sadly, unsure whether Hermione was lying or mad, unsure which she wanted it to be. "What really happened?" she asked. "Queen Dido died long ago, if she ever existed."
"Nonetheless," said Hermione, "I met her. Now if you'll excuse me I need to get ready to go west."
Hermione travelled west to Spain. In an inn one night, she met a knight errant, and they stayed up late talking about their respective adventures.
"Do not leave the inn tonight, fair Madam," the knight warned, when Hermione said she must soon be on her way. "For we are surrounded by fearsome giants." He gestured out of the window, but Hermione could only see windmills.
The knight must have mistaken her puzzlement for fear. "Do not be dismayed, gentle lady," he said. "For I will not rest until I have slain every one of them."
It did not make Hermione laugh to see him trying to fight them, and neither did it make her cry. She saw instead a mirror of her own quest, and it gave her perverse hope.
*
She returned home to the little cottage, to find a fourth year had passed.
"You've been around the world," said Paulina. "North, east, south and west. Now surely it is time to stay at home and rest?"
Hermione shook her head. "Now I will go northeast," she said.
She returned to her father's Russian court the slow way. On her marriage journey she had travelled in a covered carriage, with her ladies on either side. It pleased her to look at all the things she had missed then. The emperor her father wept with joy to see her.
"And do I have grandchildren?" he asked.
"Yes," said Hermione. "Perdita. She is four and a half now, and the most beautiful little thing you've ever seen." It was true. She knew it was true.
Wrapped in white furs, she set off back for Paulina's cottage.
"Now I'm going..."
"Yes, I know," said Paulina. "Southeast. I've already packed for you. You'll want your nice straw hat to keep off the sun."
Hermione kissed her, and after resting for one night, she departed.
She liked Egypt, and resolved to build a little pyramid for Mamillius as soon as her travels were over. However, she found Cleopatra very disagreeable company compared to Dido.
In the seventh year, Hermione travelled southwest to Tunisia. The King had dark brown skin like Dido, but the Queen was pale, the daughter of the King of Naples.
"I hope you find your daughter," said Queen Claribel as Hermione got ready to depart. "My sister-in-law is coming to visit next month, and she is a great magician. I will be sure to ask her whether there is anything you can do to speed the day on which you are reunited with dear Perdita."
"Thank you," said Hermione.
In the eighth year, Hermione travelled northwest, to France. The Queen and her three best friends made her very welcome.
"Normally I think happy endings are overrated," said the Queen. "But I really hope you get yours."
"I hope you all get yours too," said Hermione, who had heard about their love lives.
And Hermione returned home.
*
"There's a letter for you," said Paulina, as Hermione crossed the cottage threshold again. "It's from Tunisia."
"Claribel!" said Hermione and tore it open. "She says her sister-in-law Miranda suggests making a magic circle and walking round it three times."
So Hermione went outside into the little cottage garden, and, avoiding Paulina's carefully tended onions and carrots, she drew a circle in the dirt, and put some candles around to make it more magical. She walked around it three times clockwise, then three times anti-clockwise. Nothing happened.
"Go to the court, Paulina," she said. "Find out if she's back."
But she wasn't.
That night, exactly eight years since she first departed, Hermione cried herself to sleep, at last beginning to doubt she would ever see her daughter again.
*
At the start of the ninth year, to Paulina's renewed protests, Hermione travelled north-northeast to Illyria. She met a Duchess who liked to dress as a boy, and a Countess who loved her in a more-than-sisterly fashion. Eight years ago such things would have shocked her, but no longer. She was glad they had found a way of being happy. And a yearlong sojourn in Lesbos (east-northeast) taught her even more about what ladies may do when gentlemen are not around.
In Arabia (east-southeast) she met a woman who had told stories for a 1001 nights in order to postpone her execution at the hands of a cruel Royal husband. Hermione counselled Scheherazade to leave him and travel, but never found out whether her advice was taken.
In Sudan (south-southeast) she prayed to a God called Ajok, who (it was said) had once resurrected a man's dead son. Nothing happened. Despair crept into her heart, and as for two years she wandered Numidia (south-southwest) and Morocco (west-southwest), bit by bit it seemed to fill every part of her mind and body.
"It's been fourteen years," Hermione told Paulina. "Perdita will be a woman now, if she is alive."
"Then let yourself rest," said Paulina. "Stay here for a while, or go back to the palace, to Leontes. Not one moment has gone by when he hasn't regretted what he did. Maybe it is time to think about forgiving him?"
Hermione shook her head. "Never," she said. "I will walk and walk until I die, but I will not give up."
And Hermione went west-northwest, and one day she found England.
In an inn by a river in the city of Southwark, she met a man called Will, to whom she told her story, and those of many others she had visited. He made notes in a big book he carried, and his thirst to hear was like the thirst Hermione had felt as she walked the Saharan desert.
"I sense your quest is near its end," he said.
"I don't think it will ever end," she replied.
"But you have walked three times round the world," he said. "When you have been north-northwest, Miranda's magic circle will be complete."
"I no longer believe in magic," said Hermione.
"But you will still go north-northwest," said Will.
"Yes," said Hermione. "Still I will go north-northwest."
And she did. She went north-northwest to Scotland. And on the way back she stopped off in England again, because she knew Will would want to hear about the people she met there.
*
Back in the cottage, she barely recognised her own face. "I am an old woman, Paulina," she said. "My back aches, and my feet are a mess of blisters. I'm not sure I have the strength to keep walking. I fear that my next journey will be my last."
"You look like a grandmother," said Paulina, smiling. "And god-willing you will soon be one, because tonight is your daughter's wedding night."
The two women looked at one another. Paulina nodded. "She's back," she said.
Hermione lay back in her chair, taking it in, resting the muscles which had not stopped moving for sixteen years, motionless as a statue.
Author: the_alchemist
Play/Poem: Winter's Tale (with cameo appearances from characters in Julius Caesar, MSND, Don Quixote, the Aeneid, Antony and Cleopatra, The Tempest, Twelfth Night, 1001 Nights, Sudanese mythology, Macbeth, and one or two real people as well)
Recipient: angevin2
Rating: Suitable for anyone
Summary: Queen Hermione is not ready to return to her abusive husband Leontes, so instead she decides to travel...
Warnings: None
Length: About 2000 words
Author's Notes: Thanks to Sam, Ash, Marcus lareinenoire who provided useful beta-ish comments.
Boxing the compass
"I don't want to go back." The queen sat up in bed.
Her lady smoothed the pillows. "Don't you remember, love? The messengers have returned. He knows the truth. He'll take you back."
"He killed my children, Paulina. I haven't forgiven him. I'm not sure I'll ever forgive him."
Paulina nodded slowly. "I know," she said. "I know. But..."
"Tell him I'm dead," Hermione said suddenly. "Go back, quickly now. Tell him I'm dead."
"But what'll you..."
"Tell him." She spoke with the voice of an empress. There was no denying her. Paulina went back and did as she was told.
Alone, Hermione put her head into her hands. "But what will I do?" she whispered. "What will I do?"
*
"This is the cottage I've found," said Paulina. It was a cheerful little place, with clean white curtains and an enclosed garden round the back. "You'll be safe here. I'll bring you everything you need. You can live like a nun until you're ready to go back."
"Thank you," said Hermione. "But I don't need anything except my children, and I'm not going to go back until I can embrace them."
"But Hermione..." said Paulina gently.
"That will be never," said Hermione. "Yes, I know."
If you'd asked Paulina a week ago whether Hermione was doing the right thing, she would have said 'of course'. It wasn't right for a woman to let her husband treat her like that. Better to live alone, or with other women.
Now it was different. How could someone choose to live as a widow when she could still lie warm in her husband's arms, feel his sweet breath, face against chest, skin against skin? Paulina thought she would run mad with envy. And the worst of it was she knew she had been right before, and was wrong now.
"I'm going to travel," said Hermione. "I never have before, not properly anyway. Find me a horse. Pack me a bag, with enough money to hire a boat. And I'll need a veil to wear until I'm out of Sicily. I will leave tomorrow."
"But where will you go?"
Hermione walked to the simple wooden door and looked out. She pointed to a path. "Which way is that?" she said.
"North, I think," said Paulina.
"Then I'm going north."
Hermione went north. She rode to the coast, then sailed onwards. And when she alighted, she began to walk. She hailed a farmer's wife on the road. "Where does this road lead?" she asked.
"The same place all roads lead," said the woman. "To Rome."
The Eternal City gleamed on the horizon as though it were made of pearl. Hermione walked on, and gradually the trickle of fellow travellers became a stream, and then a jostling crowd. She relished the anonymity of her plain brown dress as she walked the streets, staring up at the grand houses, each one as tall as a palace.
As she rounded a corner towards the Circus Maximus, someone grabbed her arm. She tried to disguise her fear as anger. "Get off," she said.
"Your majesty," said the ragged stranger. She tried to work out whether she had seen him before - he had a Roman accent, not a Sicilian one.
She made her voice sound light. "Majesty?" she laughed. "I wish..."
The stranger ignored her. "Majesty," he said. "Are you going to visit him? Could you tell him..."
She broke him off with a laugh. "Do I look like a queen?" she said.
"Yes," said the stranger. "Every inch a queen." He paused, and looked into her eyes. "Do not give up hope, Hermione," he said. "She is alive. You will see her again."
Her heart began to beat faster. "Who are you?" she said. "How do you know who I am? And what do you know of Perdita?"
He shook his head, as though trying to shake something out. "Nothing," he said. "I'm no-one, and what I see is never clear. I'm sorry I..." He gasped.
"Are you all right?" she said.
He nodded. "I see I made a mistake. You're not on a visit of state at all. Your clothes... I should have paid more attention to my eyes and less to... But if you do happen to see him..."
"Who?" said Hermione, but he ignored her.
"Tell him to beware the Ides of March."
*
"Oh, Madam!" Paulina ran out of the cottage to hug her mistress and friend. "It's been a year, a whole year. I thought you were dead!"
Hermione smiled. "I went to Rome," she said. "I saw the Divine Julius, riding on a white horse through the streets. And she's alive, Paulina. Perdita is alive."
Paulina's face crumpled in concern. "Come in," she said. "Get warm, get dry. I've been so worried. Never do that again."
Hermione smiled. "But I must," she said. "Tomorrow I will go east."
In the east, Hermione found Athens. Compared to Rome, it was disappointing. An ugly little man kept following her around asking idiotic questions, and in the woods outside the city, a troupe of players were rehearsing the most shambolic play she had ever seen. It took her another year to get there and back.
Then she went south.
"And what happened this time?" asked Paulina, after the third year had passed.
"I went to Carthage and met Queen Dido," she said. "We had a good long talk about the faithlessness of men."
Paulina smiled sadly, unsure whether Hermione was lying or mad, unsure which she wanted it to be. "What really happened?" she asked. "Queen Dido died long ago, if she ever existed."
"Nonetheless," said Hermione, "I met her. Now if you'll excuse me I need to get ready to go west."
Hermione travelled west to Spain. In an inn one night, she met a knight errant, and they stayed up late talking about their respective adventures.
"Do not leave the inn tonight, fair Madam," the knight warned, when Hermione said she must soon be on her way. "For we are surrounded by fearsome giants." He gestured out of the window, but Hermione could only see windmills.
The knight must have mistaken her puzzlement for fear. "Do not be dismayed, gentle lady," he said. "For I will not rest until I have slain every one of them."
It did not make Hermione laugh to see him trying to fight them, and neither did it make her cry. She saw instead a mirror of her own quest, and it gave her perverse hope.
*
She returned home to the little cottage, to find a fourth year had passed.
"You've been around the world," said Paulina. "North, east, south and west. Now surely it is time to stay at home and rest?"
Hermione shook her head. "Now I will go northeast," she said.
She returned to her father's Russian court the slow way. On her marriage journey she had travelled in a covered carriage, with her ladies on either side. It pleased her to look at all the things she had missed then. The emperor her father wept with joy to see her.
"And do I have grandchildren?" he asked.
"Yes," said Hermione. "Perdita. She is four and a half now, and the most beautiful little thing you've ever seen." It was true. She knew it was true.
Wrapped in white furs, she set off back for Paulina's cottage.
"Now I'm going..."
"Yes, I know," said Paulina. "Southeast. I've already packed for you. You'll want your nice straw hat to keep off the sun."
Hermione kissed her, and after resting for one night, she departed.
She liked Egypt, and resolved to build a little pyramid for Mamillius as soon as her travels were over. However, she found Cleopatra very disagreeable company compared to Dido.
In the seventh year, Hermione travelled southwest to Tunisia. The King had dark brown skin like Dido, but the Queen was pale, the daughter of the King of Naples.
"I hope you find your daughter," said Queen Claribel as Hermione got ready to depart. "My sister-in-law is coming to visit next month, and she is a great magician. I will be sure to ask her whether there is anything you can do to speed the day on which you are reunited with dear Perdita."
"Thank you," said Hermione.
In the eighth year, Hermione travelled northwest, to France. The Queen and her three best friends made her very welcome.
"Normally I think happy endings are overrated," said the Queen. "But I really hope you get yours."
"I hope you all get yours too," said Hermione, who had heard about their love lives.
And Hermione returned home.
*
"There's a letter for you," said Paulina, as Hermione crossed the cottage threshold again. "It's from Tunisia."
"Claribel!" said Hermione and tore it open. "She says her sister-in-law Miranda suggests making a magic circle and walking round it three times."
So Hermione went outside into the little cottage garden, and, avoiding Paulina's carefully tended onions and carrots, she drew a circle in the dirt, and put some candles around to make it more magical. She walked around it three times clockwise, then three times anti-clockwise. Nothing happened.
"Go to the court, Paulina," she said. "Find out if she's back."
But she wasn't.
That night, exactly eight years since she first departed, Hermione cried herself to sleep, at last beginning to doubt she would ever see her daughter again.
*
At the start of the ninth year, to Paulina's renewed protests, Hermione travelled north-northeast to Illyria. She met a Duchess who liked to dress as a boy, and a Countess who loved her in a more-than-sisterly fashion. Eight years ago such things would have shocked her, but no longer. She was glad they had found a way of being happy. And a yearlong sojourn in Lesbos (east-northeast) taught her even more about what ladies may do when gentlemen are not around.
In Arabia (east-southeast) she met a woman who had told stories for a 1001 nights in order to postpone her execution at the hands of a cruel Royal husband. Hermione counselled Scheherazade to leave him and travel, but never found out whether her advice was taken.
In Sudan (south-southeast) she prayed to a God called Ajok, who (it was said) had once resurrected a man's dead son. Nothing happened. Despair crept into her heart, and as for two years she wandered Numidia (south-southwest) and Morocco (west-southwest), bit by bit it seemed to fill every part of her mind and body.
"It's been fourteen years," Hermione told Paulina. "Perdita will be a woman now, if she is alive."
"Then let yourself rest," said Paulina. "Stay here for a while, or go back to the palace, to Leontes. Not one moment has gone by when he hasn't regretted what he did. Maybe it is time to think about forgiving him?"
Hermione shook her head. "Never," she said. "I will walk and walk until I die, but I will not give up."
And Hermione went west-northwest, and one day she found England.
In an inn by a river in the city of Southwark, she met a man called Will, to whom she told her story, and those of many others she had visited. He made notes in a big book he carried, and his thirst to hear was like the thirst Hermione had felt as she walked the Saharan desert.
"I sense your quest is near its end," he said.
"I don't think it will ever end," she replied.
"But you have walked three times round the world," he said. "When you have been north-northwest, Miranda's magic circle will be complete."
"I no longer believe in magic," said Hermione.
"But you will still go north-northwest," said Will.
"Yes," said Hermione. "Still I will go north-northwest."
And she did. She went north-northwest to Scotland. And on the way back she stopped off in England again, because she knew Will would want to hear about the people she met there.
*
Back in the cottage, she barely recognised her own face. "I am an old woman, Paulina," she said. "My back aches, and my feet are a mess of blisters. I'm not sure I have the strength to keep walking. I fear that my next journey will be my last."
"You look like a grandmother," said Paulina, smiling. "And god-willing you will soon be one, because tonight is your daughter's wedding night."
The two women looked at one another. Paulina nodded. "She's back," she said.
Hermione lay back in her chair, taking it in, resting the muscles which had not stopped moving for sixteen years, motionless as a statue.