As Ashley and I fought I heard Pericles barking and heard voices, saw Ashley’s men and my own, now in the fog, now out of it, shifting distorts.
My rapier hilt felt icy; the whip of steel on steel had a ring to it I had never heard. I hated the fog, telling myself I must make it serve me: it was to my advantage as well as his. Our blades spat fire. I drew back. The ruins caught the inserting sun and stood distinctly above us: in my inner sight Caesar’s legions were amused at us. Other watchers appeared—grinning. Death is always grinning.
Ashley drove me back, steadily, steadily, forcing me toward the base of the castle where blocks of stone menaced, strewn amidst thick weeds. I fought to keep my footing and tried to beat him off. He was fighting savagely: his blade had a whiteness about it I couldn’t understand. I felt that whiteness slice my white belly: so, stumbling over Caesar’s masonry I was to die.
But I am ’gainst self-slaughter and somehow drove him in front of me and got yards away from the wall, deflecting blow after blow. Ashley was fighting like a privateer with a cutlass, each blow shoulder-down. My wrist felt beaten. I parried a series of terrific blows and then staggered.
At that moment, Pericles hurled himself on Ashley, playing, growling, jumping joyously; with a bound he leaped at me and before I could call off the dog or beat him off, I fell. As I came to my knees, Ashley was waiting and shoved his blade into my groin.
The fog and woods...they were there in that pain, and Jonson’s voice was there...my rapier, I kept thinking, where is it? Will they pick it up? I felt that months had passed, that I had aged a multitude of years, like the stone, like the battlement: age, that alchemy, filtered through the fog and sun...
I remember them carrying me.
Henley Street
November 8, ’15