Danielle Dutton - Margaret the First

“It starts as in a dream,” she likely said, “with the abduction of a lady, stolen by a merchant seaman, taken to his ship and into a mighty storm. Next comes the death of the merchant and his men. For after that storm, the ship drifts not only to the pole of the world, but even to the pole of another, which joins close to the first, so that this cold, having a double strength at the conjunction of two poles, is insupportable. Too weak to throw their bodies over, the lady lives for days amid blueing flesh, kept alive by the light of her beauty and the heat of her youth as the ship floats across the fish-bright sea. Eventually, she and the vessel pass — mysteriously, unavoidably — into the other world, a world called the Blazing World, where cometlike stars make nights as bright as days. When at last the lady spies land, it glitters with fallen snow, and talking bears, up on two legs, are coming to her rescue. But she is unable to eat what the gentle bears offer, so the bears take her to Fox-men, who take her to Geese-men, who take her to Satyrs, who take her to meet the emperor of the land. They travel for days on a golden ship in a river of liquid crystal.”

Then darkness fell, and John and Mary rose, but Margaret wasn’t tired. John and Mary curtsied, bowed. Margaret stayed and watched the moon wheel across the sky; she climbed the stairs; she lay upon the sheets.

Might it have been more prudent, she thinks, lying there in the room, to have better explained the book’s more serious philosophical contemplation, for without it the other half no doubt sounds pure fancy and could be easily misunderstood? The night is hot and close. An owl calls in the woods. Margaret sleeps. And she dreams of that room without a mirror on Bow Street, and Robert Boyle asleep in the bed with her Blazing World on his lap, open to a passage about a golden hollow rock, which produces a medicinal gum, which causes a body to scab, which scab will open along the back and come off like a suit of armor.

“Some believe I act as if drunk,” Margaret reports one night in early autumn, “as I stammer out words, or only pieces of the letters of words.” “You’re not so bad as that,” William replies, dipping bread in soup. A letter has come from London with most distressing news. It seems Mary Evelyn—“Was Deptford near to the fire?” he asks, but how should Margaret know — that Mary Evelyn has reported to her vast London acquaintance how Margaret’s “mien surpasses the imagination of the poets; her gracious bows, seasonable nods, courteous stretching out of her hands, twinkling of her eyes, and various gestures of approbation, show what may be expected from her discourse, which is as airy, empty, whimsical, and rambling as her books!” Evelyn himself, the letter writer maintains, came to Margaret’s defense, arguing that in the duchess’s body are housed together all the learned ladies of the age. “Never did I see a woman so full of herself,” countered Mary, “so amazingly vain and ambitious.” “Not that I should care what Mary Evelyn thinks,” Margaret says, pushing away her plate. I have made a world, she thinks, for which nobody should blame me.

“Yet it’s true I am so often out of countenance,” she says, walking with William in the garden before bed, “as I not only pity myself, but others pity me, which is a condition I would not be in.” Despite her radished curls and pleasant curtsies, Mary Evelyn has called her masculine and vain!

“My tongue runs fast and foolish,” she despairs the next day at tea, “so much, and fast, as none can understand.” In the sweet-smelling room, a pendulum clock: ping, ping, ping, ping . And looking across the table, she finds her husband grown old. No, only weary, she thinks, reaching for some toast. There have been so many disputes, and tenants unable to pay, and the draining of the marshes. “The truth is,” William suddenly says, “women should never speak more than to ask rational questions, or to give a discreet answer to a question asked of them. They ought,” he wipes his mouth, “to be sparing of speech, especially in company of men.” To which surprising rejoinder Margaret sits in silence, her throat blocked up with bread.

The lady floats for days across a fish-bright sea. At least it isn’t putrid; the cold contains the smell. In the galley she finds a crate of pears and eats one right after another, on the floor beside a frozen boy, listening to bits of ice bump against the hull. She is strangely unafraid. Hadn’t she always longed for adventure, back at her father’s home?

On the fifth night of this solitude, she falls asleep with a candle burning and dreams herself a mermaid with a thick and golden tail, a crown of shimmering conch shells, then awakens with a start. Whether the ship hit something or something hit the ship, another change has come. The ship is dying; she can feel it slipping away. She waits beneath the blanket for icy water to greet her. But instead of the sea, it’s a bear that opens the door.

A great white bear up on its hind legs steps across the threshold.

“Good morning,” he says, and reaches out a paw.

“Is it morning?” she says, and stands, though this belies her shock. For here is a talking bear! And she clicks through stories she’s read or heard: seizing children in the night, yes, and claws and hunger. But, too, constellations. And in “East of the Sun and West of the Moon” the bear is a prince all along.

“We must hurry,” says the bear.

“Certainly,” she says. “Yes,” she covers herself with her arms, “the ship is sinking,” as though she’s only just realized, the floor of the cabin now swirling with water and small silver fish that bump against her toes. Still, she does not move.

“Miss,” he says, more urgently now. But she only stands and stares. So he takes her in his enormous arms and rushes to the deck. The water rises around them, and from her perch she sees the sun has also risen — or rises, still — and at last breaks through the clouds that have surrounded the ship for days. The ice, too, is breaking up in all directions. The sea is itself again. She sees bodies stiffly bobbing. But the water and sunlight have raised the bear’s fur to a gleam. He is blinding: bright as snow in springtime. She shuts her eyes.

“Where are we going?” she shouts above the waves and another noise — a shrieking. Is it the ship itself that cries?

“There,” he says. He pants.

She opens her eyes again to a rocky spit of beach, just beyond the prow. A dozen bears wave their paws at them and frown as if to say: Hurry , or We don’t think you’re going to make it , or All this trouble for a girl ? A hole is opening, a sea-mouth fit to swallow them up. Is it the water, she wonders, that makes the terrible noise?

“Hold on tight,” he shouts, so she holds him.

She rides him to the shore, where he lumbers up on all fours, then sets her down and shakes. Seawater rains over her (the bear is nine feet tall, at least), and several of the silver fish slide out of his fur and gasp. The other bears surround them. They seem impressed, or else amused. One of them helps her to her feet. They sniff her, not impolitely. She can hardly think to stand with all the shrieking. She glances up at the sky and sees massive circling parrots — it is they who make the noise! The beach is sharply pebbled. The lady wears no shoes. The bears give off a musky, fishy smell. One of them offers a blanket made of fur, but not of bear. Sailors’ bodies dot the bay. She smells salt. She smells the musky bears, hears them softly discussing whether to pull the sailors to shore, whether or not to eat them. Yet, she is unafraid. If she shakes, she shakes now from the day, which she feels at last, her skin growing pale and blue in the insupportable cold.