Moral Question

Is the use of a Philther of Love an inherently evil act?

If not, when is it OK to use one?

Cheryl

Elias found Cheryl down at the stables where Christine had said. She had riding pants and high cowboy boots on and her riding helmet was hanging behind her head by the chinstrap. She had the same heavy denim shirt she always worked in, whether it was fifty degrees or a hundred. Her short platinum hair caught highlights from light coming in the open door. She was tacking up a Palomino, tall at the shoulder as Elias. The gelding was on crossties. Didn’t take his eye off Elias. Sometimes horses get a vibe from senses people don’t know.

Cher looked down behind her at Elias approaching and nodded to him, talking low to the horse and scratching him at the shoulder as she worked the halter over his muzzle.

“How are you, Cher?” asked Elias.

“Hot today, Eli.” She didn’t look up from her hands. Come to think Elias was sweating just from the walk over from the house. “But the horses gotta get their work in.” She attached the breastplate.

“Christine said you wanted to see me,” said Elias.

“Let me tell you a story,” she said. “Maybe six years ago. It was wintertime. Had a horse named Kindred. He gave us a scare.”

“Oh?” asked Elias.

“He hadn’t eaten or drank or made for a couple days and his gums had gone white. It’s bad when they go white. But the vet came up, took a look and when she was here his bowel turned again and he seemed okay. She left, and I had a school board meeting, so I went and soon as I hit the 10, got a call from Christine, said he’d turned again. So I called the chairman and told him I had a sick horse, couldn’t make it.” Cher turned and picked up the saddle and put it over the pad on the gelding’s back. 

“I called the vet back in and she was there almost as soon as I was. Vet said it was fine and that he’d be fine. I didn’t know much back then but I knew if they turned twice it was real bad, you know? So I walked him and walked him and he would walk, but as soon as we stopped, he wanted to get down on his knees. Ohh, no you don’t! So I’d walk him some more. It was full nighttime and we’re out in the second ring and I’m talking to him and leading him around the edges of the ring. If a horse’ll graze then he’s okay, but Kindred put his muzzle down and sniffed; he didn’t want any. So that was two strikes. 

“I called Jim and he came home and by then Christine had the trailer hooked up to the Dodge and we trailered him in to Tucson. They put him in the stall where they check for colic, and he was already so bloated they had to squish him in sorta. They did the rectal and the ultrasound but we all knew he needed surgery. 

“They took him to the other stall to prep and they put the IV in and I started crying because, you know, you never know when it’s coming. That last day. He was only twelve.”

“That young for a horse?” asked Elias.

“Oh, getting on toward middle age maybe,” said Cher, tightening the girth. “He was a young twelve.” Elias saw maybe a tear in Cheryl’s eye.

“Well, he was laboring now. Probably more from nerves than pain. We walked him in to surgery. They know, Elias. They know. And he looked at me. Right in the eye he looked at me, and right through me. He looked at me as if to say, “Don’t worry, Mama. I’m coming back.” Not a hint of fear to him. Stoic, maybe. 

“So he’s in there and one of the ladies from the PTO, Edie Bowman came down. She has the Cross Beau Farm, up on North Cascabel Road north of Pomerene, to be with us, me and Kindred.

She was asking me about my presentation for the new field house and trying to keep my mind occupied.” She put her hand out to Elias to help her up into the saddle. 

“And I just stopped, and I put my hand on her arm to stop her. And I knew he would be okay. In a moment I just knew.” 

She braced on Elias’ shoulder and one stirrup. “Not 90 seconds later the surgeon called saying they were gonna sew him back up. There was no necropsy, which is when they start to die, and it was just a blockage. They cleared it and they were sewing him back up good as new.”

“Close call,” said Elias.

Cher mounted the gelding and made a clicking sound in his ear, spurring him right up to a trot. She called back to Elias, “Closer than anything this family’d ever had before Jim met you.”

I Stabbed Him In the Leg

Late on that languid afternoontime, Nesta sat against the curtain wall aside the gate, with knees drawn up and head bowed down, the seabreeze cooling her. Uncomfortable was she, inside and out. Her mistress then approached and was atop of her position ere ‘fore Nesta saw she had appearethed. Imogene sat down before her.

“Never trust a man of God when acting as a man of flesh,” she coolly said.

“Me never did and never will,” did Nesta then reply, but never raised her head to meet her master’s eye.

“It’s time to make your homage to the Duke.”

“And over that, my homage given ere direct to him, a priest will minister to that transaction, I suppose?”

“He will.”

She looked at Imogene, “Then what’s it mean? This homage? If between my Lord and me, there’s God’s own man to make a mockery of freely given hand?”

“Now perish!” Imogene then said, for second time this day. But here, in earnest did she grant. “These ways are the ways it’s done. Your insolence will cost me. And cost you, of course. But when you spend your reputation of your own, it’s yours to spend. Ask not for usury against my own supply, you wouldn’t mind!”

“I mind you, Imogene. I’m sorry for the folly me of questioning it.”

Imogene said, “Every man has place within the World. Tis God put down the order of the Firmament,” she said, looking up at skies unrestful now. “Some have man makes himself the order from ere Chaos where before the Gods firm hand. I mean to say, they said it in Antiquity like that. You knowest this from history, my charge?”

“Me aye, since I were very small, Cael Morth and some the tutors back at Wolvesey taught me this and other things from back in ancient times.

The girl continued thus, “My favorite is Juno, wife of Jupiter, and patron of the peacock, of all women and of Rome. For she was clever, and she loved us, Imogene. She gives us of our agency deliver out a babe, and gives us the ability to learn and grow our intellect – whacht men may scoff! But also did she have the failings of a woman, stark reminder to us always to be guarded ‘gainst our own weak failings, inspext[1] to our sex.”

“My favorite,” said Imogene, “is Leda and the swan. For Leda, she seduced by Zeus when in disguise, bore him two children: Helen and Polydeuces; but also did she bear for Tyndarus two children: Castor and the girl named Clytemnestra. Four children, each a hero or a consort to a hero be. Two men: One the king of mighty Sparta, and the other God to Greeks. She changed the ancient world through holding good fidelity to motherhood, and thought she highly now, despite her virtue take’d in subterfuge.

Came tears now from the Dame. “And now upon my afternoon in daydream wrought, and contemplating Odo and my heart, I feel a greater sistership to Leda than before.

“Now come with me and be presented to the Duke.”

And so she did. “Don’t you wish to know what thence transpired? When he came upon me, Imogene?”

She sighed. “…Non. Perhaps? I do not know!”

She spoke now not to Nesta, but herself. “For there is peace in letting that which will not change be also something one will never know. It’s done. There is no second act to play.

“But curious is she whose heart is twain: one side spurned by vile comedy, and one side t’ward his heart it doth remain. It’s worse to know than not to know, for half a heart beats firmer in our breast than none at all; however, God hast made from Adam woman to betray. And ere, within the matter of her heart, betray herself. It is our lot and pain.

“When men make feast of lamb, they are like wolves. They hunger, slaver, famished they of flesh. ‘Tis true of them, whichever were the lamb be food for stomachs or for loins. They have no high civility when the hunger in their case they feel for thee. They’re wolves.

“The lamb is slaughtered, dressed, and fed unto the wolf; the skin of her is tanned. The glover makes then iv’ry colored gloves from her, to separate the skin of precious youth from raunch and nast and slime. Tell me now, what purpose is the glove?”

Her Nesta tried to answer her, but Imogene was speaking to her naught.

“The glove protects the hands from fraudulence and base, and keeps good virtue good and whole, against poor custom and some down acclivities. But also from the touch of something greater: ere, good passion. Good passion dost it cloister off a woman from her wedded master.”

In daydreams then, did Imogene continue thus to speak now to herself: “Why then, do we wish ours to keep the glover’s wrought between ourselves and hands most gentle, Imogene? Ah, Genny! Would but thought this raptor would take to us and together make a roost! And so dazzled by him, Sunna in the Eastern morningtide, mistook his claws for plumage of the crest. He rent me, Leda! Ach! He rent me!

“But were this child here before me, Leda, gloved before she were in hand? Or were she now made shewn the fallen world, the foul fallen dignity, and gobbled up her virtue by a predatory swan? Were she made a roustabout by artisan of basest infidelities? Woulds’t she be Medusa, laid to rape, and then admonished for her fall? And he, Bayeux of deviltry, there residing up within the girl ere now?  She pregnant? What to say! Oh, Imogene, would William think of me, should bring him up an ingénue, when lioness the promised be?”

At this her squire shook her with great vigor. “Odo didn’t take my virtue, marm. I stabbed him in the leg.”

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[1] Inherent.