Corpse Wax

At dawn, still gripping the bloodied hilt of Wetgullet and stinking of war, you ask to be brought to St. Lillians. The city is a luminous ribcage, needle-thin towers puncturing crisp skies. Nascent sunlight drips honey over spires. These are the precious, feral days in between the imperial tyrants of old and whatever is to follow. Change is here. As the saying goes, a child of Vardanel cannot be unborn.

Only now, in this holy enclave of the city, has the tension finally begun to abate. The pain of fresh wounds forces you to your knees at the altar. You sink toward the floor and place palms flat against ancient stone and weep. The Owd Scriven chants his blessing as he weaves gold through the air. He has worn the same scat-coloured robes, the same vulpine leather mask, as long as you can remember. You try to focus on his words, to celebrate this moment, but even now you are haunted by the tongueless presence of your oldest enemy. The severed head of Menas Glas, speared on your son’s pike, watches you. It cannot be so, he is dead as the saints, yet you will not let the head out of your sight. It would not be beyond the last king of Vardenel to reveal a parlor trick. He may be alive yet.

Only your two children accompanied you to the altar, the rest of the army—so depleted in number it is hard to call them one still—wait outside. Arabella kneels by you in solidarity. She holds her shoulder, hastily bandaged between leaving the battlefield and reentering the city. Buccio stands guard by the door; even now, he watches for assassins. You suckled them as babes and now they are grown into warriors, more skilled and shrewd than you. They have learned how to be ruthless, to their advantage. But did you show them enough love? Instill in them enough compassion to rule without tyranny? Some days you look into their flint-grey eyes and wonder.

The Owd Scriven blows out the ceremonial candles and helps Arabella lift you to your feet. “It is done,” he says.

You step outside, and the vicious spring sunshine stings your eyes. You cannot be sure how long you have been awake. Buccio notes how the weather exalts you. Even the air is redolent of victory. Oh, how the bells ring out over Vardanel as jubilant morning light rains over the city. You were named Clara for the bells; their song, so bright on the day of your birth, would always remind your parents of their only daughter. 

One of the guards passes you a skin of water and a hard wheaten cake, which you swiftly toss to the red-breasted linnets. The birds perched in the surrounding rowan trees sing, for they know. Menas Glas is dead and you cannot eat. You swung Wetgullet at the king’s neck and his head rolled into the dark forested night. It had been the will of the people and you acted upon it. Five long years of war, many dead on both sides. But it is over and whatever happens next is out of your hands. Many of the men propose finding a nearby tavern in order to begin the celebrations, but you simply ask to be taken to the little house on Copeland Street where Arabella and Buccio were born. The room where the embers of rebellion were first lit. The bed on which you watched Mateo transition from this life to the next. You cannot call it a home, you have not rested there in so long. 

Arabella looks to Buccio, a conversation between them conducted in silence. They close in around you so the others would not hear. Buccio, still bearing the speared head, brings Menas Glas as if he were a fourth in your circle of confidence.

“The council will be waiting on your guidance, Mother. They will expect you to name a leader. They will anticipate you nominating yourself and that you will have an actionable plan in place to secure the city. There is much work to be done,” Arabella says.

“I’m too old to politic,” you say. “It should be either of you, or Agapeto if neither of you want it.”

They look at you as if they were babes again, waiting for you to divide a handful of raspberries between them. Their concerns seem so insignificant. You have played your part in the history of this city. The burden of what happens next cannot be on your shoulders.

“But, it is your time Mother,” Buccio says, softly.

“It is time for me to go home, children,” you say, taking the speared head from Buccio and asking one of the guards to bring a carriage.

A guard has left a small pack of your belongings by the blackthorn tree. You have few possessions. A journal, a ring extracted from the stiff hand of Iones, your beloved lieutenant. You bend down to pick up the satchel and suddenly the world pitches. You sense movement overhead and your battle reflexes, still sharp, kick into action. But as you look to the sky, you see no falling arrows. Something strange has occurred. The sun has divided, there are now two glowing orbs in the sky. Iridescent circles float across your vision and a curtain of darkness begins to move across the sky. Knees buckle. Buccio’s tall frame rushes to protect you. A low rumbling noise, ceaseless thunder smothers everything. You cannot hear what anyone says.

* * *

In the little house on Copeland Street, you tell Buccio and Arabella that they must go out and celebrate. You’re fine, just exhausted. They deliberate in hushed tones in the parlor. In order to solidify their position, they need to be seen. To remind the people which family brought them victory. But their concern for you is palpable.

“Children, I insist you go. Nothing will be achieved by watching me sleep.”

* * *

The unnatural quiet of an empty house at night. Sleep will not come. Abstract shapes cobweb across your vision, forming strange, unnatural constellations. You are tired to your bones, yet as soon as sleep comes you are transported to that moment on the hill.

 

A hatred for this house blazes through you. You never felt haunted like this on the road. You were never alone like this when you were with your troops, when a sleepless night meant shots of plum liquor and sharing stories underneath the stars.

In the corner of your chamber, the rotting head of your oldest enemy stands. Long hair dark as ink. His skin belies wealth; even in death, he looks regal. You look at his pallid lips and wonder how many people that mouth has caressed. You would kiss him now, bite into him like a ripe pear, just so you could say you stole the final embrace from the last king of Vardanel. Maybe it’s just the flickering light of the fire, but you swear you see his lips move. You pull the rough blanket around you. A low murmuring emits from Menas Glas. Some symptom of rigor mortis surely. The murmuring grows louder and fear seizes your throat. And that’s when you realize he is laughing. The old bastard is laughing at you. His laughter turns into hysterics and you scream for his silence. A terracotta jug on your bedside table shatters. Water seeps through the cracks in the floor. 

* * *

Arabella and Buccio did not return home before dawn. They clattered around with an inebriated illusion of stealth. You rouse them at noon, their eyes bleary, faces slow with sleep. Arabella bleeds through her bandages.

“Children, there is something I need your help with. You must return to Fairman’s Copse, where we piled the bodies of the king’s army. You must locate the body of Menas Glas and from his skin, scrape the corpse wax and bring it to me. The sun is high, but it is not yet too hot.”

“But why Mother?” Buccio asks.

“Because I believe there is some lingering malevolence that can only be extinguished with fire.”

“Keeping the head of Menas Glas here isn’t good for you.”

“You will be rid of it soon, Mother. The Liberation parade is tomorrow. You must present the head to the people, it belongs to them.” Arabella says. Buccio nods. 

“Do you always agree with each other?” you smirk. They had begun to speak so alike, it was getting difficult to tell them apart. Arabella was once shy and moved with the lyricism of a seer. Buccio would have done anything to earn his mother’s approval, his voice loud and clear and always demanding. They bore an acerbic hatred for each other you worried they would never overcome. There were always tears over some stolen iced bun or a destroyed doll or the perception of preferential treatment administered to one or the other. Constant snipping at each that you did not have the experience to understand was completely natural between siblings, having none of your own. And yet it was somehow more disturbing seeing them kneeling before you now, so synchronous in personality and appearance it is hard to tell them apart, with their battle-shorn heads and ears looped with gold and the self-assurance of gods. Their words were chosen to soothe, to charm, to coerce. It belied a ferocious sense of competition they had learned to navigate with silver tongues.

“We don’t have time to leave the city. We must discuss what moves are to be made. Agapeto is talking of trade with the Lumms, but we think there is a better price to be found to the north. Trade, Mother. Finally a free market to move our goods without the King’s taxes.” Buccio says.

“Increase export, decrease import. Force the northern cities to buy our goods, all the while we become self-sufficient. It’s possible now we can start to grow crops on royal land,” Arabella says. “Imagine, Mother. Factories by the docks, jobs for a free Vardanel.”

And so it begins, you think. The jockeying for power, the redivision of wealth. Exploitation is sure to follow. You let silence fall between you.

“Tell me how it was done,” you say. “On the battlefield. Don’t look at me like that, Buccio. Indulge me. Your talks of economics can wait.”

You ignore their sighs, as they pull cushions to the floor and sit by your feet. Arabella proceeds to give an account of the final battle. Menas Glas and his men outnumbered them, but the army of the free Vardenel used the topography to their advantage, stationing archers in declivities the royal soldiers would not be aware of. She gives a blow-by-blow account, right up to the moment where she found you, screaming with triumph by the decapitated body. Everything she says rings true, but it is not how you remember it. How, in the darkest part of the night you thrust Wetgullet deep into the guts of Alwyn Glas, the crunch as you cracked open his innards. The cry of the king over the death of his only son. The look of surrender in his eyes as he realized you had bested him. It was intoxicating. To bring the most powerful man in the city to his knees. And then, he was dead. Arabella remembers you screaming in triumph, but it felt to you more like grief.

Buccio and Arabella begin to argue about whether Octavia or Felix had been the better marksman that night, but you feel absent from the conversation and their voices wash over you, until finally you say,

“Bring the corpse wax to me by evening, children. Then we will discuss the future.”

* * *

You open gluey eyes to blue twilight. Outside, the distant sounds of a market vendor loading a carriage with his wares. How long did you sleep? It feels like minutes since the children left. Once again, you find yourself in the unnerving stillness of an empty house. Something feels amiss, an absence you can’t shake. The head of Menas Glas has gone. Arabella and Buccio must have taken it, to protect you from yourself. Or there are darker forces at play here. There may be some royal sympathy still amongst the Owds, they could pool their powers against you. To convince you of your madness. Or worst still, reanimation. You should have told the children to burn the corpse. Even the most powerful Owds could not have brought back a king without a body.

Outside your chamber you find a small clay pot. Inside, a greyish goop, the corpse wax you had asked for. Maybe Arabella and Buccio saw this as a fitting exchange. The wax for the head. They had barely spent a minute inside the house since your return to the city. Did they spend their time plotting how they would kill you to gain legitimacy? The old days of imperial tradition may be on the wane, but the people still demanded blood to anoint. You would hand them power gladly, you had told them as much. What a way to die, destroyed by your own increase. If only Menas Glas were here, he would know a thing or two about parricide. 

You retreat into your chamber with the corpse wax and take the box of matches by the paraffin lamp. You strike one and light the wax. The flame burns brightly and then extinguishes just as quick, followed by a terrible cloud of brown, billowing smoke. The smell is wretched. Dense, acrid fumes fill the air around you. Through the haze you see something worse yet to come. Smoke will fill the city within the year, huge industrial chimneys belching out noxious gasses into the air. Pollutants will drip into the mouth of the River Scorr. And tiny hands, mangled and bloodied, will be trapped in the teeth of great metal cogs. The people are screaming. Bones will burst out from their sallow skin, their skeletons crack as they reform into gargantuan machines. There will be a lifetime of labor for the citizens of Vardanel. You sacrificed everything for this. Your youth, the safety of your children (who you saw fit to bring into battle with you). Iones, Mateo, their deaths meant nothing. The fog clears and from the mist emerges the newly christened Victory Hill. Atop will stand Buccio and Arabella, locked in a sickening embrace, arms linked, as they push into each other until they will become one. A monster of your own creation. 

The darkness comes quickly and you are grateful. The void is welcome after you see what is to come.

* * *

The bells rouse you, four notes chiming in an endless downward spiral. The smell of death permeates the room, the clay pot discarded on the floor, blackened by flame. As you rise stiffly from the old bed, a vertiginous feeling comes on and you hold onto the bedframe to anchor yourself. In the distance, you hear trumpets and, nausea rising, you realize they herald the victory parade. Those fools and their pageantry. 

You run out onto Copeland Street, grey tresses billowing wildly across your face in the spring breeze. A convivial spirit runs throughout the city. The air is thick and heavy with wine and sweat, even though the hour is not past noon. Young girls are dressed in taffeta and sequins, their parents clasping tiny hands as they weave in and out of the drunks who sway across the street like streamers in the wind. A group of men are singing an old dockworkers song, lyrics changed to suit the occasion: Fuck the King, He’s dead, He’s lost his fucking head. Over and over again. Two women approach you on bended knee, tears glistening in their eyes. They thank you for freeing them. For bringing peace. You thank them, and ask them kindly for a cloak, and the younger woman hands hers over freely. You pull the hood up and make your way with the current of revelers to the market square. A stage has been erected and two people, dressed in crude likeness, enact the moment when you slew Menas Glas. A mighty roar goes up from the crowd and your heart pounds. The beating of a drum thuds through the people; they are compelled by a primal rhythm. The actors clear the stage and then there is Arabella and Buccio. They are dressed in swathes of mauve silk, your house colors. They look regal, triumphant. And in that moment, you realize that fate has already cast its die. Agapeto brings an engraved box onto the stage. The crowd bay, hungry to revel in your victory. Buccio lifts the lid and, along with Arabella, they pull a head out of the box by the hair. But it is not Menas Glas.  

The head is your own.

 

 

 

About the Author

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R.L. Summerling (she/her) is a writer living in Southeast London, UK. She has fiction in places such as The Dark, Seize the Press, ergot., Interzone and Year's Best Dark Fantasy and Horror Volume 5. In 2023 she self-published a chapbook of feel bad prose and poetry titled FLESHPOTS.

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