I retreat farther, filled with fear and mortification. “Leave me be, Caliban!” When he hesitates, I flee.
In my chamber, I place my wash-basin on the tiled floor and fill it with water from the ewer. I strip off my robe and crouch over the basin, examining myself. My thighs are smeared with blood. I splash water on myself with a cupped hand. Thin strands of crimson swirl in the clear water in the basin.
“Miranda!” It is Caliban’s voice, Caliban’s face at the window. In my haste, I have forgotten to close the shutters, which I am accustomed to leave open in all manner of clement weather.
“Caliban!” My voice is high and shrill. I cover my breasts with one arm, reaching for my soiled robe to cover my nether region. I am naked and terrified and furious, crouching like a beast and bleeding. Humiliated tears stream down my face. My nose runs, and I can taste a sickening salty slick on my lips. “Go away!”
At last he obeys and vanishes from sight.
Clutching the robe to me, I fling myself across the chamber and yank the shutters closed. The wood is old and cracked and the intricate latticework would do little more to keep out a prying gaze than it does a chill wind, but the garden is empty.
I return to crouch over the basin, my back to the windows. The blood on my thighs is gone, but when I touch the place between them, my fingers come away bloody. With a scrap of cloth, I scrub furiously until the water in the basin is pink and there is no more blood on the cloth. I pray that that is the last of it. I cannot think why my body should bleed thusly, unless it means that the very organs within me are dissolving.
Mayhap what broke inside me years ago never truly healed after all.
I do not know.
My blue robe is in a sorry state. Its threadbare fabric already bears a myriad of faded stains amidst the years’ worth of wear and grime that washing will no longer remove, but there is something deeply shameful about this one. It is blood, only blood, but it seems as shameful to me as though I have soiled myself.
Kneeling naked on the tile floor, I scrub and scrub at the stain with a dollop of Papa’s soap. It lightens, but it is clear it will not go away.
I am weeping as I scrub.
My belly cramps, and I feel a fresh hot trickle of blood on the inside of my left thigh.
I weep harder.
“Miranda!” It is not Caliban’s voice at the door of my chamber, but Papa’s, deep and firm. He knocks, but does not enter unbidden. “Calm yourself, child. I would speak with you.”
“Oh, Papa!” I struggle to suppress my tears, but my voice is ragged. “I fear there’s something terribly wrong with me.”
“I promise you there is not.” Now Papa’s voice is gentle, more gentle than I recall hearing in years. “May I enter?”
I pluck a clean brown robe from my chest and don it in haste, then stand very straight, mindful of the slow blood seeping from the juncture of my thighs. “Yes, Papa. Of course.”
If I had a hundred years to guess, I do not think I would have guessed that Papa would enter my chamber smiling that day, a bundle of something tucked beneath one arm; and yet he does.
“Congratulations, my dearest daughter,” Papa says to me. Cupping my face in his free hand, he leans down to kiss my brow. The amulets around his neck rattle faintly and his long grey beard tickles my nose and chin. “Today at last you are a woman grown.”
I have never felt like aught less.
“I do not understand.” My voice sounds small. “Papa … I am bleeding from inside.”
He nods gravely. “Yes, I know. Caliban told me his concerns. Your woman’s courses are upon you.”
I stare at him in confusion. “I’m not ill?”
“Far from it,” Papa says. “Did you not hear me? You have flowered, Miranda. The day for which you have long yearned has arrived at last.”
“This?” I gesture at the blameless walls of my chamber, at the closed shutters, at the basin full of bloody pink water, at the sodden mass of my stained blue robe lying on the floor. Suddenly, I am outraged at the thought that this mess and discomfort is the harbinger of womanhood for which I’ve waited so long. “This?”
“It is a sign that your body is ready to bring new life into the world,” Papa says. “Your womb, which is the vessel of life within you, does but shed an excess of sanguine humor to make room for the possibility of a child.”
“A child?” I say in wonder and dismay.
Now Papa shakes his head, raising his hand to forestall me. “I speak only of the possibility, Miranda. Of course, you shall remain a virgin until you are wed in the eyes of God.”
I do not know what that means.
Do I?
A memory of Ariel’s voice whispers in the far recesses of my thoughts. She bade me to lie with her as a man lies with a woman … Dost thou know nothing of the ways of the world, and men and women in it?
I do not.
And yet …