Dilys-Rose - Unspeakable

Unspeakable

Unspeakable

Dilys Rose

First published 2017

Freight Books
49-53 Virginia Street
Glasgow, G1 ITS
www.freightbooks.co.uk

Copyright 2017 Dilys Rose

The moral right of Dilys Rose to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without either prior permission in writing from the publisher or by licence, permitting restricted copying. In the United Kingdom such licences are issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1P 0LP.

A CIP catalogue reference for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978-1-911332-15-2
eISBN 978-1-911332-16-9

Typeset by Freight in Plantin
Printed and bound by Bell and Bain, Glasgow

Dilys Rose is a novelist, short story writer, poet and librettist. She has published eleven books and received various awards for her work, including the Macallan/Scotland on Sunday Short Story Award, the McCash prize, two Scottish Arts Council Book Awards, a Society of Authors Travel Award and a Canongate Prize. She lives in Edinburgh.

Other books by Dilys Rose

Fiction

Our Lady of the Pickpockets

Red Tides

War Dolls

Pest Maiden

Selected Stories

Lord of Illusions

Pelmanism

Poetry

Madame Doubtfires Dilemma

Lure

Bodywork

Poetry for children

When I Wear My Leopard Hat

For Geraldine

It is a principle innate and co-natural to every man to have an insatiable inclination to the truth, and to seek for it as for hid treasure.

Thomas Aikenhead, January 8th, 1697

Contents

Part One

Elephant

When he is taken from the Tolbooth in chains and escorted by armed guard down Leith Wynd to the Gallowlee, Thomas Aikenhead will recall standing amongst close-packed adult legs, straining to see the elephant.

The creature, from India, is the first of its species to which the city has ever opened its gates. For the whole morning a gangly, outlandishly garbed showman and his tow-headed drummer boy tramp up and down the High Street, announcing that a marvellous creature from the Eastern Indies will be on view, for a price, at dinner-time.

On a platform assembled at the Mercat Cross in readiness for the arrival of the main attraction, two tumbling girls entertain spectators with supple coilings and writhings, leapfrogs and somersaults, crab walks and headspins. The girls are slight and lithe, cinnamon-skinned, with lips as purple and juicy as damsons, flashing eyes and crow-black braids worked into topknots. Their arms are ringed with bracelets, their ankles with jingling bells.

They twist into such an array of fankles and launch into such leaps that they might have springs for bones or wings attached to their sharp little shoulders. Thomas, not yet five years old, thinks them beautiful but possibly malevolent, like the faerie folk, sprites that pinch and pull your hair and might steal you away to a land beyond the hills where you must live in silence for seven years. He cant imagine how it might be to stay quiet for such an eternity; he loves to talk.

In the cold winter light it is evident that the tumbling girls are only human: bruises on their legs and arms stand out like archipelagos inked on the maps of their skin. When the crowd cheers at some marvellous contortion, the girls bow so low that their topknots graze their knees. They never smile.

Throughout the morning a raw wind blows up from the Firth of Forth, a pale streamer below the hills of Fife, which, on this November day, are hazy. The sky is thick as broth. Snow begins to fall, light smatters at first, drifting around then pouring down from the heavens, settling on bare heads, on hats and hoods as the elephant, with the drummer boy astride its shoulders and his bare legs kicking about the animals great lugs, plods up the street.

The showman is garbed in a raspberry cloak and matching breeks. His head, on the end of a scrawny neck, nestles amid layers of yellow satin.

The mannies got a tulip for a heid! says Thomas.

And a seedpod for brains! says a fat man beside them. A bunch of shoelaces dangle like rats tails from the pocket of his cobblers apron.

A great cratur like yon must cost a kings ransom tae stable.

Whits a kings ransom? says Thomas.

Weel now, says the man, its a sum few can pit thir haunds on.

The showman struts by the elephants side, affecting an air of pomp and ceremony. He carries a stout, sharpened stick and grips the end of a heavy chain attached to one of its forelegs.

Is the elephant a prisoner? says Thomas.

Efter a fashion, the cobbler replies.

But whits he done wrang?

Stole a bannock? Theyd be for packin him off tae the New World wi aw the sinners they dinna hae space for in the Tolbooth, but hed mair than likely sink the boat!

Wheres the New World? says Thomas. How dye get there? Efter ye cross the ocean, dye haveta fly?

Stap yir pesterin, says his big sister, Katharine.

Nae hairm, says the cobbler. If he disna ask, he willna ken.

He niver stops. Even when naebody wants tae hear, he prattles on and on. Theres a time tae talk and a time to haud yir tongue.

You tell him, lass, says the cobbler, ruffling Katharines hair, which she doesnt like one bit.

When the elephant approaches the ramp leading to the platform it halts, shakes its head, extends its monstrous trunk and blares a great trumpeting across all the assembled snow-dusted pates. The crowds initial wariness gives way to amusement. The showman jabs the elephant. When it doesnt respond, he jabs it again and thrashes the loose end of the chain against its leg.

Hes hurtin it, says Thomas. Why is he hurtin it?

Because hell no mak money frae a beast that disna dae his biddin, says Katharine.

The elephant gives another trumpet, is jabbed and beaten again until it lumbers forwards, head rising and dipping, trunk coiling and uncoiling; it raises one huge foot after another then heaves its great bulk onto the creaking, swaying platform.

From the adjacent gibbet where, like the hanged man on a tarot card, they have been demonstrating the art of dangling upside down from a single slender foot, the tumbling girls right themselves, leap off the gibbet and land neatly on the elephants back. They stand on tiptoe and snake their arms about, causing their bracelets to rustle like wind shaking the barley. At a nod from the showman, they sweep the drummer boy off the elephants head and fling him out onto the street, where he lands with a flourish.

The girls tumble onto the street then flit around, collecting payment. Though slight, they are fierce and tenacious, with a way of catching and holding a persons gaze. Again Thomas thinks of faeries and magic spells, of the evil eye and how it might snare a person, drag him into its orbit and not let go.

The drummer boy unhooks the panniers which hang either side of the elephants head and brings out three loaves and six jugs of ale. As for the elephant, grey as the day itself, it turns in obedient circles, giving onlookers who have flocked from all over an opportunity to observe its novel anatomy. They marvel at the big blunt feet which, at some point in the future, will become velvet-topped stools in the house of a wealthy merchant with a predilection for curiosities the spindle tail; the restless, freakish trunk; the curved tusks; the hide ridged and wrinkled as bark; the great, flapping, skatefish lugs; the eyes which glint like nails driven deep into its skull.