Lady Cormora at the Tower of Gems

 by Brett Rutherford

A canto of my ongoing fairy-tale epic, "The Were-Raven," based on an ancient Danish ballad.
What has gone before: The Earl has been betwitched by a were-cormorant in human form, Lady Cormora, and her son, the dwarf Shagg, whom she passes off as her nephew. The Earl's daughter, Ermeline, has fled with the Were-Raven, rather than being forced to marry Shagg, whom Lady Cormora passes off as her nephew. Cormora, one of the last of the ancient Elds, appears to the Earl as a beautiful young woman: to everyone else she is a hideous crone. Cormora has turned to human form and wed the Earl because of her inordinate love of gems -- Ermeline's dowry is an enormous horde of gold and gems locked in a tower.

Of the Lady Cormora and the Tower of Gems


"The dowry is mine!” thus cried Cormora
as she rose at one dawn, at her table
scorning the dull amethysts and soft pearls
the Earl was wont to gift her, the least stones
in all the list of holy and magic
gems she craved to have around her. She rose,
and draping her black-feathered cloak around
her shriveled neck, her clawed and withered feet
crammed into velvet slippers, she walked
on rain-washed stepping-stones up to the base
of the well-guarded, high Tower of Gems.


Guards had a hundred times bowed down to her,
but would not let her pass. The barred-up door,
planks of broad oak studded with angry nails,
iron chains and adamantine locks no magic
could trick into falling away: these things,
and the Earl’s strong will in this one instance,
barred her from entering. Even the sight
of Lady Ermeline’s destined dowry — one glance! —
of the piled-high treasures wasting away
in total darkness, was denied to her. So it
ever was and is with a stepmother’s envy.


Oh! to bring light into the windowless tomb
where the many-faceted, rainbow-hued
gemstones languished! To bathe in them, their rays
a rainbow of light sparks renewing her;
to run her fingers along the facets, not touched
before except beneath the jeweler’s gaze;
to read, she could, the crystals’ calligraphy,
the angles that melded volcanic heat
into a cool geometry, the sun
itself captive as it mirrored itself
into an infinity of diamond rooms.

Last night, Cormora had implored the Earl,
“Now Ermeline has fled — I hear she sighs
in the arms of some unworthy lover;
and now that Shagg, my aggrieved young nephew,
as dear to both of us as an heir-son,
has been deprived of both bride and dowry.
Well might we open the Tower’s treasures
and add them to the general coffers.
Many defenses have languished undone,
and I conceive a hundred charities
that might endow our land with new-found fame.”

“It is yourself you think of,” the Earl charged,
his hair and beard a bramble of anger. —
“Dear husband, just as you say I am fair,
I would be counted fairer still, if but
a small portion of those gems adorned me.
The rest can find its way to greater good
through the hands of good and trusted stewards.

“Did many not come from some woman’s hand,
or some tiara’d head, some hoard that mother
held, to bless another’s generation?
Bereft as we might be, counting our days
sonless and daughterless, and without heirs,
doomed to our own gray mausoleums,
why should we not deck ourselves in splendor?”

The Earl mused long, for still the spell on him
made autumn crone into spring’s maidenhood,
not one hag begging for a shiny stone saw he,
but instead the blush of a new-found bride.
And though he knew he could not long refuse
her pleading, since in the bed’s canopy
she reigned with more force than an army,
still with his clenched jaw, and quivering,
he once again denied her wishes. “No,”
he uttered, “Cormora! The dowry stays.
The locks will yield to no one anyway.
Ermeline knows it not, but holds the key.”

Cormora raged. The Earl she left alone
in a half-bed to rue his stubbornness.

Now here she stood. The morning sun lit up
now every mortic’d stone, so tightly set
that not a toad could make an entrance there.
Around she walked, until she spied high up
one tiny niche — or hole — God! A window? —
just under the crenelated platform
that topped the ancient tower. A window!
So small it was, that even as cormorant
she could not pass in, or re-emerge therefrom.
(Though Eld she was, it was beyond her age
to be more than a crone or cormorant.)

And then, with mounting dread, she seemed to see
a tiny beak come out from the opening,
and then two minuscule wings — a sparrow.
“You drab brown flyer, what business yours
in the dark tomb of ownerless treasure?
Dare you to nest and soil my trove of gemstones
with twig and feather and broken eggshells?”

Off went the sparrow, and in its mouth
a rainbow gleam exploded. “A diamond!”
Cormora shrieked. “She has stolen a diamond!”
Soon came another sparrow in, then out
with ruby, red as pomegranate, held
and carried off. Cormora raged. One more
went darting in, and from some heap of gemstones
came out with one huge emerald embrooch’d
in gold. Comora shook her fists in rage,
raking her own dry face until it bled no less
a red than that of a fat carbuncle
another small bird dragged from out the hole
and lifted away in grasping talons.

Then came a topaz out like shining gold,
an azure-hinted sapphire, aquamarine,
a rare citrine with the blush of a peach,
again and again the diamonds hard as steel,
jasper and gold, agate and amethyst.
A hundred flew off with each her one stone;
a hundred more came down from flock on high
as sure as bees to their own hive and out
again with emerald and chalcedony,
sardonyx, cornelian, beryl, and chrysolite,
up to the hovering herd of sparrows
until the sky was rainbowed with color.
Pearls on a twine they carried off, armlets
and necklaces, ribbons of leaf of gold.

Cormora howled. She lay around and rolled
until the dust had covered her. The guards
did nothing — even he fiercest archer
could not have drawn one fleeting bird back down
from the wind-borne host. Some higher hawk hovered
above them, vast in wingspread, shepherding
the sparrow flock and urging them onward
in circled swoop and tilt of pinions, guide
and guardian against all other raptors.

The hundred small thieves became a thousand.
The sky grew dark with their beak and baggage,
and then in one great weave they were all gone.

Shagg came to comfort his groaning mother,
his broken mouth spat newly-minted Latin,
French proverbs, and bits of Cicero. Dust-mop
of flaxen hair, humped back and spindled legs
bent over her and told her, “All is not lost.
All bronze and brass, all gilded things, all swords
and knives, scepters and crowns are still inside.
Coins back to Rome and Egypt, Chaldean
idols all bloated with emeralds; so much
remains, and all of it our own. Weep not.”

But the madness of avarice consumed her.

“All those bright, shiny things — now all are gone,
taken by the most ignoble avians,
those pea-brain sparrows, mice of the heavens.
Ah! the bright, shiny things!” She would not rise,
and in her spite she willed herself to die.

The Keys to His Apartment

by Brett Rutherford

A dream journal entry, April 14, 2022.

Planning a trip to the city
with two young friends in tow,
I suddenly recall owning
the keys to his apartment.
My hands reached in and found,
in the least-used drawer, the ring
and keys, his name and phone
on a well-rubbed tag. “Use it,”
he had told me some years ago.
“I travel so much. You may come
and go as it pleases you. The plants
will enjoy the company. Lights coming on
will confuse the burglars who watch and count
how many days of dark, who comes and goes."

How along ago, I am no longer sure.
Something had soured after the last
embrace, when someone else
and younger had taken my place,
but cards had come, reminding me
from Paris and Bangkok, London
and some island whose name
I keep forgetting, saying always:
“When in New York, please use
my place. The bromeliads
will be glad to see you. Have your way
with the Bosendorfer.”

I phone to be certain: no answer.
No answer thrice, and I am sure
the apartment is empty. Why not?
We find our way by bus, my friends
wide-eyed at the Manhattan view
across from the Boulevard.
His name is on the mailbox, the key,
as always, works without effort,
and we are in. Soon we regard
the crimson-copper sunset flaming up
from every tower’s windows. Atlantis
it seems, and we will ferry over
to conquer museums and theaters,
a rent-free vacation for all of us.

There is a bed for the two of them,
or big enough for all three of us
if it should come to that,
the dust-free grand piano, huge ferns
and lurid red bromeliads
in a state of perpetual arousal,
still wet from watering, suggest
that he was here and gone again
on yet another European jaunt.

We sit, alarmed by TV reports
of yet another subway shooting,
hint of a hurricane, mask-on,
mask-off, mask-on debates,
and my uncertainty grows.
Will he walk in and find us,
a trio of unexpected visitors?

There is a knock. In comes
the building super. She nods,
I nod. She holds a small pile
of junk mail and offers it.
“I saw you come in. I thought
I should give you this. Nothing
but junk and coupons these days,
since all the magazines
and bills have stopped.”

I take them. “Coupons,”
she reminds me. “These you can use
at the corner grocery. There’s nothing here
to eat, you know. It’s been so long
since he left us.”

And from her tone it comes to me —
that he has died — she thinks I know —
as surely everyone must know —

“How long will this” — I wave my hands
around to the furniture, the plants,
the grand piano, the walls of books —
“When will they …”

“Who knows?” she answers. “The rent,
utilities, housekeeper, and cable
are auto-debited. The money comes.
Until the estate is settled,
or the account runs dry, it just
goes on like a little museum.
Maybe he left it all to you.”

I shake my head. “I doubt it.
I would have heard by now, I think.”

“His other friends have nearly all
died as well, you know. I read
the black-edged envelopes, and
saw their names in the news.
Year after year, no cure in sight.
I suppose you came back
to remember.”

“Yes,” I lie.
“To remember. I told my young friends
how wonderful he was.” They blush
and keep their silence. She makes
her exit and we sit mutely,
not opening our suitcases.

We wait until the sunset gives way
to the gleaming night skyline.
There is nothing we can say
that does not seem trivial, or wrong.
“I feel like a ghoul in a cemetery,”
my younger friend says. The other
looks into the darkened bedroom,
turns on its ceiling lights and says,
“I’m not sure I can sleep in here,
knowing it’s his bed and all.”

We make a plan to go for food,
and after that, a Boulevard walk
to take in the mighty island,
the cliff-edge and the Hudson.

Just then, another key is heard,
and again the door opens.
A lean youth, pale and angular,
steps in, regard us with alarm,
and steps back out
into the corridor. I follow,
wave him back in, and take
his arm gently.

“He gave me a key,” I assure him.
“I was his oldest friend in the city.
You are his new” —

“I am the last,” he utters hollowly.
“I was his last … friend. I saw
the lights go on, and I thought;
for a moment I thought …”

“I understand,” I say. “Come in.
Please stay. I want to know.”
Among us, he says little. He knows
who I am now. He has seen my books
on the shelf and even read one of them.
“Your writing frightened me,” he tells me.

The violin case he carried in
was so much part of him
that I barely noticed it.
I walk to the Bosendorfer
and see a score: Korngold’s Concerto
in a piano reduction. “We played
the first movement together,” says Eric,
for he was ever so much an Eric,
red hair and all. — “Play now,”
I command him. — “Oh, no,”
he protests, “not without him
to accompany me.” — “Imagine
he’s there. Just hear the notes
inside your head, and play.
Play Korngold’s concerto.”

He tunes, he shudders
as he gazes at the ebony wood,
the ivory keys, the shadow
in which a player might suddenly
emerge, a skeleton.

He plays. He pauses. He plays.
We all imagine the tutti, the rests
between, where the violin is still
and the piano pretends to be
an entire orchestra. He plays,
and weeps while playing.

From three of us, from each alone
in his chair in the darkness,
we punctuate with sobs, the arc
of his bow rising and falling
like the intake and jab of grief.

Though the kitchen is empty
we ask the violinist to stay
for the night. My friends make eyes
at him, he, them.
They will sort it out.

The bed will no longer frighten them.  

Knowing my place, I go out
to buy the makings for dinner.
The key to my friend’s apartment
weighs me down. Steps home,
with bags of groceries
weigh me down more until I move
like one in a dream who cannot
get one foot in front of another.

There is the door again.
Here in my hand, the key.
So many gone
in Love’s holocaust,
names and statistics,
a patchwork quilt
instead of a graveyard.

I suddenly know
that I have dreamt all this
and will awaken soon.
Did Eric, grieving, play
for us, or for no one?

Ask not for whom
the rent is paid:
for the dead,
or for the ghosts,
traipsing up stairs
from the Greyhound bus,
each holding the keys
to that apartment?