Extracts From The White Queen

In the darkness of the forest the young knight could hear the splashing of the fountain long before he could see the glimmer of moonlight reflected on the still surface. He was about to step forward, longing to dip his head, drink in the coolness, when he caught his breath at the sight of something dark, moving deep in the water. There was a greenish shadow in the sunken bowl of the fountain, something like a great fish, something like a drowned body. Then it moved and stood upright and he saw, frighteningly naked: a bathing woman. Her skin as she rose up, water coursing down her flanks, was even paler than the white marble bowl, her wet hair dark as a shadow.

She is Melusina, the water goddess, and she is found in hidden springs and waterfalls in any forest in Christendom, even in those as far away as Greece. She bathes in the Moorish fountains too. They know her by another name in the northern countries, where the lakes are glazed with ice and it crackles when she rises. A man may love her if he keeps her secret and lets her alone when she wants to bathe, and she may love him in return until he breaks his word, as men always do, and she sweeps him into the deeps, with her fishy tail, and turns his faithless blood to water.

The tragedy of Melusina, whatever language tells it, whatever tune it sings, is that a man will always promise more than he can do to a woman he cannot understand.

In the dark ness of the forest he saw her, and whispered her name, Melusina, and at that summoning she rose out of the water and he saw she was a woman of cool and complete beauty to the waist, and below that she was scaled, like a fish.

She promised him that she would come to him and be his wife, she promised him that she would make him happy as any mortal woman can, she promised him that she would curb her wild side, her tidal nature, that she would be an ordinary wife to him, a wife that he could be proud of; if in return would let her have a time when she could be herself again, when she could return to her element of water, when she could wash away the drudgery of a woman’s lot and be, for just a little while, a water goddess once more.

She knew that being a mortal woman is hard on the heart, hard on the feet. She knew she would need to be alone in the water, under the water, the ripples reflected on her scaly tail now and then.

He promised that he would give her everything, everything she wanted, as men in love always do. And she trusted him despite herself, as women in love always do.

Melusina’s mortal husband loved her, but she puzzled him. He did not understand her nature and he was not content to live with a woman who was a mystery to him.

He allowed a guest to persuade him to spy on her. He hid behind the hangings in her bath house and saw her swim beneath the water of her bath, saw – horrified – the gleam of ripples on scales, learnt her secret: that although she loved him, truly loved him, she was half woman and half fish. He could not bear what she was, and could not help what she was. So he left her, because in her heart he feared that she was a woman with a divided nature – and he did not realise that all woman are creatures of divided nature. He could not stand to think of her secrecy, that she had a life hidden from him. He could not, in fact, tolerate the truth that Melusina was a woman who knew the unknown depths, who swam in them.

Poor Melusina, who tried so hard to be a good wife, had to leave the man who loved her and go back to the water, finding the earth too hard. Like many woman, she was unable to fit exactly with her husband’s view. Her feet hurt: she could not walk the path of her husband’s choosing. She tried to dance to please him, but she could not deny the pain. She is the ancestress of the royal house of Burgundy, and we, her descendants, still try to walk in the paths of men, and sometimes we too find the way unbearably hard.   

When he saw her, the water lapping on her scales, head down in the bath he had built especially for her, thinking that she would like to wash – not to revert to fish – he had that instant revulsion that some men feel when they understand, perhaps  for the first time, that a woman is truly ‘other’.

She is not a boy though she is weak like a boy, nor a fool though he has seen her tremble with feeling like a fool. She is not a villain in her capacity to hold a grudge, nor a saint in her flashes of generosity. She is not any of these male qualities. She is a woman. A thing quite different to a man. When he saw she was half-fish, but what frightened him to his soul was the being that was a woman.