by John Riley
Veritas lux me
SLENDER AND SLIGHT IS ELIZA. Born of sign Capricorn, she needed solace in quiet ways and wandered alone in places that people rarely frequent. For might a suitor draw towards a presumption? One so innocent and vulnerable needs another affection to cherish.
Oh, Eliza, whose radiance shone beyond her form, illuminated by the moon’s arc across the night sky. There are events fated to take place in a life so young and naïve of experience.
Entranced was Darius, a young poet and Piscean and soon besotted. For such grace with words and deeds, casting spells of joy in a lover’s heart.
In the heavens, do signs reveal a synastry? Eliza and Darius are star-struck, two families uniting.
Would not the ancients comply that both luminaries, alongside Mars and Venus, foretell of lovers? But would they not also observe and take note of shadowy Saturn’s sorrowful influence on each life mapped at birth?
Each shall devote their love long through eternity even though promised until death does us part.
Sweethearts soon pronounce before the altar that they are husband and wife, sealed and bound by custom a ring and kiss.
Too brief is the year for newlyweds. Spring had arrived, then passed on with little sunlight and icy winds to nip back tender shoots.
Summer is suppressed by grey-laden days and deep lows that bring rain.
Autumn gives way too long a winter and misery.
Born out of a January chill consumption and death. A thief in the night and a widow alone. Lost forever is young love.
Saturn came out of the shadows.
A family cemetery whose plots are draped with misty cobwebby veils. Where the remains of a fence are splintered and bone that no longer protects from the encroaching unhallowed ground.
‘Tis a place unloved those final resting tombs of the family Lunanoir. Buried deep in solitude and abandoned beneath clods of heavy sod.
No parent, widow or widower, shall bear standing at these graves in deep contemplation. Weeping amongst this gloom of ancestral woe, save but one, Eliza.
Four seasons long grieving and lamentable song lain over her lover’s grave, she gives her soul to be with her Darius. He now six deep and clothed in oak and Eliza behind black and sorrow weeping day and night.
Retreating from family and life confined in a north-facing, sparsely furnished room, lit by a small fire and bedside lantern.
She comes and goes, fleeting as a memory. The family Lunanoir yield and accept her malady. Never is she spoken of in conversation, never more.
This late hour on All Hallows’ Eve, Eliza upon her lover’s grave, reciting from her troubled heart sorrowful prose. Swearing allegiance, promising her soul and no different on the evening’s new moon.
Upon midnight at the toll of the cemetery bell, when uttering the last of words, enters a stranger. It is all withered and buckled, appearing out of the night shadows.
It calls out for forgiveness and acceptance for startling a troubled widow.
He comes with a proposition, a passage beyond to take her where lover now remains in a place called limbo.
His master has taken pity and caught the cry from a heart deep as a water well. This stranger brings a revelation to Eliza’s graveside vigil.
In a wooded thicket, dense and complex, she weaves through intricate maze-crazed paths, following and meandering amongst the briar and nettle.
Eliza keeping near to the buckled-back stranger.
The darkness grows and spreads and reaches far in this place while upon the night air, old corruption remains. Eliza turned and looked sideward and checked back at the trodden track. For she felt things were watching and drawing near.
Then, a twinkling through the woven mass of wood. The stranger makes haste to a clearing and enters through a modest wooden gate.
In view is the manor house, hidden from the mortal world. A house of faded wear, lanterns lit from every window.
Eliza is now a figure alone, approaching the grand front door.
She stands before the door and is surprised when opened by a long-since dead relative in faded velvet and cloth, peppered with chalk-white dust.
Stepping across a threshold and gestured to move beyond, not noticing the others out at the side of the spacious hallway and staircase.
Her sights were dewy, fixed upon her lover, radiant and reaching out with open arms to embrace and seek solace.
The ensemble stands and marvels, witnessing a joining together. Coveted with joy, sadness no more, and Eliza seeking this moment to last an eternity.
Tempting they are for her to embrace and kiss those lips so denied when in his final sleep. Yearning is she for his caress.
She cannot resist and takes one final glance at others, smiling and willing to fulfil that passion.
Yet, in the corner of her eye, at the front door, did she spy a demon? Upon facing it, no, but smiling Uncle Hathaway, who had died when she had turned twelve.
She can wait no longer, rushing to Darius’s open arms that close around her and hold his bride.
Then a voice familiar, loud and pleading from outside the front door not to kiss dead lips for she will become the Devil’s bride!
Unable to cross the threshold is the spirit of Darius.
See that your real love stands outside. He tells the Devil, Eliza gave her soul to me. I am Darius, so go, Old Deceiver, by the rites of this place, you have no command over the soul of Eliza! She has not taken you to her heart now be gone!
The Devil’s spell is broken.
So it is in slumber Darius will wait until Eliza embraces death’s repose, and they lie together beneath a wild briar rose.
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