Stories by Sofia Hardy
The Marsh King
Part 2
Her husband came home late. He was in a good mood. An important client had given him a good order to fill. He came up to her, just after she had put their daughter to bed.
“I saw Beck, on his way out,” He said.
“Yes, he said goodbye but I couldn’t go down,” She replied. “We went over to see Ag together, today.”
“To see Ag? Did you take our daughter?” He asked.
“No,” She said, and told him the child had stayed with the neighbour. “Ag has offered us a good deal of financial help,” She said. “Also she offered to take our daughter, and to educate her properly.”
Her husband frowned angrily at her. “You know I want no help from your family,” He exploded. “Have you been complaining of poverty to them? Work is good, it is coming in well. Don’t I work hard enough?”
“I did not complain,” She said. “I told Ag we were very happy with the way things are.”
Her husband did not know the full extent of the wife’s trouble with their daughter, and he was very angry at the suggestion she be removed to Ag’s home. “Such impudence,” He said. “As if they can tell us how we should live, or raise our daughter.”
The wife wanted to say; you do not know how hard it is for me, because you are out so much of the time. You do not see the times I yell at her, and I have to stop myself from striking her. You do not see the times I have to lock her in her room, while she screams and screams, because I cannot bear to be near her.
She said nothing; but that night, when she went to sleep, she had very vivid dreams, as if the designs carved above the lintel in Ag’s house were living and moving before her eyes as if they had come fully alive and she watched the marsh king and his court, saw him lolling in his high chair at his table; saw the servants bowed beneath the weight of the food brought to the table, saw their froglike legs stagger under the burdens of the gold booty that was brought, the taxation that was imposed by the marsh king.
And she saw many fierce battles, saw them fighting with great ferocity, saw the marsh king riding out to fight with his people, saw his horde overrun the neighbouring countries, so that all were very afraid of him.
It was all so different, all such a long time ago. She could detect that she saw only fleetingly, how different things were then; the vegetation, everything, almost as if it was a different world, when she knew, it was this world, only a very long time ago; and her mind, which had been shaped by a more recent history, could not recognise or understand much of what she saw.
She saw, though, that the marsh king had been a terror. Opulent, and with unimaginable wealth and power, but his armies had been terrible, and the confusion and chaos he had perpetrated had laid waste a very large area, many many hundreds of miles had felt his influence and had been in fear of his tyranny.
“What a dreadful creature!” She thought, in her dream; while before her there flashed the edge of a strangely formed sabre, whether of stone or of some ancient and forgotten metal, she could not decide.
And the opulence of jewels, of arms that shone in an uncanny light; designs drawn in a style completely unknown to her, and bales of strange cloth woven by some process she could never have understood.
And through all of this, there was the scent of the Rue’s Colard.
She woke up coughing, and thinking, “How dreadful it is, that the marsh king will return, as times have become so ready for him, and the world has changed to be his world again!”
Shocked, she sat up, coughing and retching.
“What is it,” mumbled her husband.
“Nothing,” She said. “ A coughing fit, I believe a cat may have got into the house.”
She went downstairs, but there was no cat, anywhere.
She drank a glass of water. The dreams were all still in her mind, and they were terrible; there had been manlike beings there, they had fought the marsh king, and they had been losing. She remembered the marsh king sitting astride the beast he rode, shouting with his huge mouth open, yelling in a ghastly triumph; saw the fear in the faces of the men, and, though the men were like no nation she recognised, she felt akin to them, and very sorry for them.
“He was winning,” She thought. “I wonder what stopped him.”
Then she thought; “If anything did stop him!”
She felt very sad. “All I wanted was a happy life,” She thought. “And now I have all this to consider, and I am so confused.”
She was looking toward the kitchen window, and through it she saw a cat. It was as black as night and glaring at her with it’s huge yellow eyes.
She was so startled she dropped her glass. “Oh!” She cried, and the cat, startled in his turn, lashed it’s tail and jumped down, out of sight.
She remembered, very vaguely, because the dream had been very fragmented, there had been a cat; large, and striped, not much like any of the cat species she recognised but she knew it was a cat all the same, and she thought that, in the dream, the marsh king had hated and had feared those big wild cats.
“Like me,” She thought. “I am frightened of cats, and they make me sneeze.”
Days passed. She dreamed badly and woke many times coughing. She was very tired and her days dragged; they seemed to pass so slowly sometimes she wondered if her time had been slowed down.
“I have chosen,” She thought,” But it is no solution. I cannot find a solution, and I know Ag did not tell me everything, and I do not know if everything she told me is true.”
And her nights were dreadful with the dreams.
Her husband did not seem to notice her deteriorating condition. “So long as his breakfast is made he does not care,” She thought resentfully one morning. She looked across at him, he was playing with their daughter, and was laughing.
“It is true, what Ag said,” She thought. “I am forced into being part of his dream, and he is just a part of mine. I was looking for someone who was nothing like my family, and I found him because I was rebellious.”
In her despair, she took the plate she held and dashed it to the floor; and her husband's breakfast was lost, spattered everywhere, on the walls and the floor.
They both looked at her, shocked. Her husband was very angry, he stood over her and shouted at her, as she had never heard him shout before.
She looked at him standing tall above her as she sat cowering in her chair; his eyes were blazing, and all around him was the fragrance of the Rue’s Colard.
“It was you,” She said, suddenly. “It was you, put the Rue’s Colard into my shawl.”
He quieted down. “Yes,” he said. “All I wanted was a family, and a wife, and a house to call my own. When I saw how much you liked to wander by yourself I became afraid it would endanger our happiness, and I talked to Beck. He gave me the herb and I put it into the drawer everytime you washed your shawl. And it has kept you here with me.
“But you don’t want or need me,” She said. “And you don’t love me. I am just a part of the fiction you have created about your life.”
He became angry again, and he told her what a fool she was, and how she had always been too ready to cast away everything they had built together.
“No,” She said. “You built it, it was always what you wanted, not me.”
“You wanted it,” He said. “You told me you wanted it. It made you happy.”
“I do not know what I want any more,” She said. “I do not think I have ever known what I have really wanted.”
As he left for work the neighbour was at the door, she had tales and rumours of wars and battles, fought still at some distance form their country, but the neighbour had two grown up sons and she was alarmed.
The wife listened to her without much interest, but later she heard the same story; war was in the air.
“It is all so difficult,” She thought. “Even the little security and happiness I have will be taken from me.”
“On one hand, I could have wealth in plenty,” She thought. “If war comes, perhaps I should throw in my lot with Ag.”
She was very tired. In the afternoon, her daughter was playing at the top of the stair, and the wife thought that she should check on the child. But she was lying on her bed, too tired to get up and bring the little girl away from the head of the stair.
After a while she got up from the bed, and looked around the edge of the door. The little girl had dragged a chair to the head of the stair, and had it precariously balanced there, playing some game of her own; she had all her toys spread around, and the wife leaned against the door and watched her.
After a few moments, the little girl began to climb onto the chair. The legs wobbled, the stairs were high; the mother could see that this was extremely dangerous and the child could easily fall from the chair and all the way down the staircase; and there, at the foot of the stair, was the stone flagged floor.
For an instant, the mother thought, and the thought felt very cold and rational; I could let it happen. It would be an accident, and I would be free. Anyone coming to look, afterwards, would see it was only an accident. I would be perfectly safe, I would say I was downstairs, cooking the dinner. She is five years old, she should know better than to play on the stairs like this, anyway.
But even as she thought she was moving forward and she took the child from the chair, and moved the chair and the toys . Then she scolded the child and told her what she had done was extremely dangerous, and might have had terrible consequences. The little girl cried, but, as usual she had that strange equilibrium of temperament when she was not screaming; and, after a few moments she went downstairs to play with her dolls house.
The mother expected to feel agitated, but instead felt a strange calm. All the time, while she was making the dinner, she thought, “It could have happened. It would have been a dreadful shock, but I would have been free.”
 That night she had a dream. She dreamed she was among the war host of the marsh king, and sat astride one of their riding beasts. There was the taste of blood in her mouth which she could feel was very wide and without lips; and she could feel a great appetite for killing, and for slaughter and cruelty, and she raised her sabre and shook it, and howled with the rest of the war host.
She was positioned above a valley. Below her she could see green lands and there were fields and orchards and she shouted again, and felt within her a raging hunger. The desire to posses that land, to live upon it and to breed her offspring there; then to move on, and gain yet more land, to make all hers for herself and for her close kin.
She woke, very shaken and dismayed. "What a dreadful dream!” She thought, washing her face, as if to wash the dream out of her.
But the feeling stayed with her, it took a long time to fade.
“Is that what I am like?” She wondered, appalled. “I have always liked owning things even if it was only a little patch of garden or my own little house. It has always been important to me to own, and to possess.
“But I am not that bad,” She thought. “I have never been a part of a war host, in fact, I am against war. And have never been so greedy I would have joined Ag, though members of my family are, and have bought land and have invested heavily in property so that many are landlords and have great wealth. And all of them like to possess, and above all there is a terrible greed about them, to accumulate, for themselves and for their family.”
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