The Were-Raven, Part 2

In which the Lady Ermeline tells the Raven of her plight ... Part 1 was adapted from an ancient Danish ballad. Part 2 is my own invention of a back-story to the ballad's "Evil stepmother." Cormora is a were-cormorant, and her son Shagg is named after another common name for the cormorant.

by Brett Rutherford

2

Of the Coming of Cormora
& Of the Earl’s Bewitching

“Raven, I know not whence she came, but she it is
     who casts a dread shadow and brings us ill.
’T was but a month and a day, my father mourned
     that long and that long only, and then wed
the hideous crone that all must call “Milady.”
     He walked along, clothes rent, and bare of foot
from the moat to the high cliffs, to where the sea moans
     its own sad requiem on the skerry.
the one called “The Widower” up to its white neck
     in tide-blast, at low a solemn pillar
clad in sea-shells and limey foam. A second height
     he climbed that day, whose downward slope he knew
was to a soft stream spreading to a grassy mere,
     a place of peace and prayer his Lady
had cherished. But lo! his way was made barricade
     by a stalwart youth, dark-locked and smiling.

“Make way,” the Earl commanded, waving his hand
     which oft enough sufficed to make men kneel.

The boy moved not, and showed no sign of rising up
     from where he sat athwart the one footpath
the Earl was wont to climb. “Be thou defiant, deaf,
     or lookout for a band of villains, boy?”
“I hear ye well enough,” the young one answered then,
     and there be no thieves or bandits by me.”
The Earl remembered the elder lore and gazed
     anew at the dark, curled locks and fiery eye
of the stubborn lad. “The Old Gods come here no more,
     so be not Loki’s shade or Odin’s son.
If you be son of man and woman and here
     defy me without a cause, you may feel
how far my wrath can thrust you to the rocks below.

The black-haired languid boy, with neither shrug nor sigh,
     held eye to eye the Earl but raised one hand
as if it held a brazen shield. “Good Earl,
     I am but here to block the view of men
from where two beauteous ladies bathe in the lake,
     and it would be a grievous fault for thee
to come upon them in their naked frolicking.
     At this, indeed, the Earl heard voices twain,
Singing a round in time and eerie harmony.
     The words were not in any tongue he knew.
“Ha!” the Earl laughed. “And who are these naked ladies?”
“One, my mother, is lady-in-waiting
     to her sister, the Lady Cormora,
whose sorrowful life of exile she chaperones.” —
     “And you are called what, young black-eyed idler?”
“I am called Shagg. A homely name; I know not why.”
     “Your locks need shorn,” the Earl be-guessed, and laughed.

“Still I would pass through, “ the Earl demanded.
     There is no woman in my realm I may
not look at as nature made, if it is my wont.”
     “They would be much abashed to so be seen.”
“Tell me, thou Shagg, who art so dark and winsome made,
     if these two sisters do resemble thee?
Thou art so good to look upon that I would bed
     thee out of sport, were there no woman-kind
that bore the godly imprint of thy brow and eye.”
     The one named Shagg now laughed in his own turn

“If I be beauteous in thine eye, good Earl, then woe
     to you if you should view these ladies twain.
We three, they say, are from the same mint cast and stamped,
     while I am but a limping Faun, those two
would make the Greek forget his Helen, or rend
     both Roman lovers from their Egypt queen.”

“I will, I must, I shall regard them, then, the Earl
     declared, his grief for once forgotten.

Shagg stood, and to himself declared, “I have,
     alone, bewitched the Earl. Those singing
sirens will now complete the work.” And then, aloud:
     “Good Earl, if you will sheltered roof provide
to we three of good birth shipwrecked here, I’ll go
     before and announce your coming hither.”
The Earl, with wave of hand, gave his consent to this,
     and Shagg leaped up and bounding to the crest
of the hill, called down to those beyond: “Hail,
     Comora and mother mine, the Earl comes!” —

The Raven listened avidly. She saw him shake
     when she said the names “Cormora” and “Shagg.”
“You know them then?” she asked the harbinger of gloom.
     “I know their works, and thus have suffered much.” —
“What I have said so far was Father’s oft-told tale.
     Of how the two strange women dressed in haste,
and in strange robes that lured him more than naked flesh
     they offered him a drink that seemed nepenthe
from a silver goblet, and showed him other things
      in a cask they said had floated with them
with all the shattered scraps of a sunken galley.
     The rest was stuff of dreams, confused and dim.

“Of what transpired between my Father and these three,
     no one can say. But ere the day was done,
the Earl on foot led the Lady Cormora in
     to castle and chapel and a wedding
Aye, tremble for my lot, for they were wed that day
     and it was a day of horror for all.

“The Earl wed, to a shriveled crone in black tatters!
     His moon-eyed longing reflected in orbs
that swelled with ebony, his arms enveloping
     the skeletal ribs, the sagging bosom
of a Hell-spawn witch. Her servant crone hideous
     smelled of a morning-after battlefield
and spit teeth as she tore into the banqueting.
     Her wake was a trail of shed hair and finger nails.

“No one dared speak. More than one guest vomited.
     And with them, mincing and obsequious,
aflirt with Latin and Greek poetry, a lute
    in hand that made one shriek to hear it,
this hideous dwarf the bed-spawn of who knows which
     of the two crones, this pustulous beast Shagg!

“All day and every day the court was required
     to sing the praises of Lady Cormora.
Her sister rampaged through the treasury.
     Everything silk or silver went to them.
The Earl had banished three who tried to counsel him.
     He drank a strange wine and his eye grew dim.”

The Raven flapped angrily. “Sorrow enough
     for thy Father and all of thy sad court.
But what is thy sorrow in all this, Ermeline?

    She sighed. Head bowed, she told him all of it.

“I was betrothed, to one my equal, and a Prince.
     All was delayed by my mother’s passing.
He came at last to claim my hand, and was sent home
     with a grievous insult. He has gone East
on a crusade from which he may never return.
    My hand my Father would now give instead —
O God! I cannot say it!”

                                                  “I dare not think it
     but if the evil works as I know it —”

“O Raven, it is the worst! That I wed Shagg,
and call that foul mis-shapen imp my lord!