Sung in Shadow, page 12
Mercurio stepped onto the path as the youngest Vespelli, black-haired to match his clothes, was sidling his horse over against the tethered mare, and Benevolo, white as washed linen, setting himself between.
The Vespellis, seeing who had now arrived, drew back, but did not ride away. They watched as Mercurio, apparently quite unaware of them, untied the horse and mounted her.
“Who is this?” they finally began to ask each other.
None laid hand to sword. In the upper walks of the town it was not merely unlawful but also usually considered base practice.
Mercurio turned the mare, and as he did so the boy at his stirrup demanded of him clearly, “Cousin, do I accept then that they call me bastard?”
Mercurio glanced down. Benevolo’s face was a wound growing cold.
“Cousin,” Mercurio said back to him, as clearly, stressing the family title so Benevolo should know the Vespellis heard him reckoned, “these gentlemen must be excused. They do not understand that to say a man’s a bastard is to insult him, for the Vespelli Tower is founded on bastardies.”
With his shoulder to them, Mercurio listened while the Vespellis grew still. With a fixed gaze of adoration, satisfaction and sheer worry, the boy studied the ground. A voice spoke to Mercurio’s spine.
“Sir. Will you be so gracious as to repeat what you said?”
Mercurio did not turn at all.
“Why repeat it when you heard?”
“You maligned the Vespelli Tower.”
It was the youngest black-haired Vespelli again who spoke, and who again urged his horse to move forward, but another man caught his arm.
“Wait, Saffiro. That is Flavian Estemba. Let him alone.”
“What do I care who he is? He who insults my House—”
“Be quiet, Saffiro.”
It was sufficiently reminiscent of the Leopardo-Romulan-Mercurio confrontation that Mercurio smiled a little as he waited for the Vespellis to decide on retreat. That he kept his unguarded back to them all the while was perhaps the most potent insult of all. And soon enough there was yelled at this back:
“All Estembas are fools. Who marks the utterance of a fool?”
A flurry of hooves and rattle of accoutrements followed and they were gone. The dust powdered the sky.
“They feared you,” Benevolo said with pride.
“They feared a breach of etiquette.”
“They guessed if you drew, they’d die.”
“Ah, reputation.”
EIGHT
The afternoon, as on the previous occasion, was hot, the sky blue. The landscape was still contained by its distant horizon of hills. The town as ever withdrew up its slope, the Padova road, a river of dust, fell away and fumed about him. And the bleached grassland went down, tipped and stippled by flowers, among the parasols of the stone pines, toward the invisible oratory. Even the scents were unaltered. A bird, even, was catapulted into flight as he breasted the tall grasses, just as before.
And yet, all was changed in some subtle, faintly inauspicious way.
He did not ride now, but had come on foot. Could the lowered perspective be responsible? Or was it due to some vagary of the weather or the light impossible for the mortal eye to interpret?
Or was it that a great deal was no longer as it had been? The emotional perspective and weather unlike that of the first such excursion, unadmitted or misunderstood as it might be, still re-coloring everything.
Or was it the memory of fear, face to face with the insecure world, that had beset him before in Lauras’ retreat?
The faded diptych of building stood totally silent as he came to it. The black old door stayed shut, and no phantasmal voice boomed out to demand his business and his name. Such things compounded the sense of difference.
In among the poppies the gilded sun-wheel, windless, did not move. So he put his hand on it and spun it round to catch its metallic sound.
He waited awhile, considering the place, wordlessly reiterating that he had no need for timidity. This hermit, despite his avowal, took money (how else the curios of the cell, the undoubted magical experiments?). Probably the rotund Cornelia had often come for eccentric preparations of various sorts, since amateur witches abounded and were never long unbusy.
Romulan went forward, struck the door with his fist, and raised his brows at it as it opened. Beyond, the dark curtain was already drawn back. The chapel lay bare and remote before him.
He went in, absently genuflected to the Christ on the wood cross, and looked toward that second curtained door which gave on the cell.
Five days, then exile. What could be accomplished anyway, in so short a time? Well, he could lie with her, if she would let him. At the thought, his whole body, even skin and bone, seemed to engorge. He felt a violent pleasure and a curious nameless quickening of the spirit, which he named at once as Urgency.
Before he knew what he did, he found himself at the second door, pushing the rough curtain aside, next pushing at the timbers—no longer an attempt to knock. This door opened just as the first had done. And once more he peered into that extraordinary space, the cell of the Fra-Magio.
This, too, was changed. What inevitably he noted at once was a totality of darkness; next that the totality was in one spot pierced by a muted ellipse of light. As he gazed at it, the voice of the priest—a most ordinary voice, neither harsh nor musical, yet for some reason entirely remembered—spoke to him from somewhere in the core of the chamber.
“Welcome, Romulan of House Montargo. If you wish, enter. That done, please close the door at your back. Move gently. Something is in progress.”
Even at the words the pallid ellipse seemed to move, to rise, and to elongate, curving inward at its lower edges by infinitesimal degrees, also swelling fractionally in size and brightness, unless this were some deception of the eyes. Surprised and reluctant, yet attentive, Romulan did as instructed. He closed the door in particular with great care, as if to avoid the blowing out of a candle.
But the light in the room’s center (all else, the priest included, was hidden) was certainly no candle. It did not flicker or tremble, and now, as Romulan leaned on the door, nonchalantly, crossing one ankle over the other, thumbs hooked in belt, an idler’s pose he displayed but did not feel, now the bow of light most definitely was strengthening.
In color, it was the purest and most translucent white, but as it intensified, the white shade came to resemble silver. In size the shape looked to be the width of his own shoulders, but he could not be sure in the dark how far or near it was. Also it was now most surely rising, and growing greater as it rose. When it lifted to its completeness, he saw it was in fact a crescent, the two diminishing cusps pointing directly down, the broad curve of its back forming the apex. By this descriptive means, Romulan came to realize that some other object of an impenetrable blackness, partly intervened, and that the moonlike crescent had ascended behind it.
In another moment this conclusion was borne out, as a second light began to evolve, some distance below the silver one. The second light, of a milky rose, itself commenced by forming a crescent shape with up-pointing cusps, but swiftly revealed itself as a being both smaller and more fiercely lit than the ghost above. As more and more appeared of it around the lightless base of the intervening object, the second light demonstrated itself as a whole disc, and its color metamorphosed from rose to copper and so to incandescent gold, from which Romulan was inclined to shield his eyes, but which, in actuality, seemed not to affect them at all.
As the disc passed free of the intervening darkness spokes or rays were hurled upward from it. Most expended themselves and went out, but the longest fired itself across the center of the silver crescent, and a melding and a stasis followed. A bizarre cross now hung in the blackness before Romulan. A golden upright streaming from a golden disc, the horizontal of silver with two down-curving arms.
Until this instant, there had been no sound Romulan had heard beyond his own breathing. Now, however, a turgid popping noise, like that described as being about the hot mud attendant to a volcano, was abruptly audible.
At the juncture of ray and crescent there began to be a sullen glow. Initially red, it pulsed in a few seconds to a ruby brilliance. The light of it extended, filling the area, catching things as the glow of the earlier lights had not. Yet nothing was distinct, a crystal net hung all about, like ice dashed with drops of blood . . . Inside the ruby furnace, which now looked the size of a man’s hand, Romulan discerned, or imagined, a most uncanny picture, made up of variations in the fire itself. Shadowy towers seemed to go up, and long vistas of streets, and a square, and skeletal staircases, while behind all else a sun of palest crimson burned in the Hellish sky—for yes, this was a vision of Lucifer’s domain, Hell in little.
“Do not approach any nearer.”
The priest’s voice startled Romulan, that he had moved at all startled him further. With dismay, he perceived he had begun to walk toward the tiny Hell.
A second after the priest had spoken there came the ferocious crack and skinkling of breaking glass.
The icy glints, the glints like blood, went out. The unholy gold and silver cross faded like smoke and in the quarter of a minute was no more. The vision of Hell was similarly gone, though a reddish smolder, dying and shrinking by degrees, remained awhile on the air.
A fresh light dazzled up. Romulan, stepping quickly back from it, beheld the silhouette of the priest now at the mundane task of lighting a stand of candles.
Romulan assumed a patronizing smile. He was in awe.
“I came at the right time, then, Father, to see some magic. It was very pretty.”
“You were witness, Romulan Montargo, to a most strange phenomenon, which is called The Marriage of Apollo and Selena.”
“Sun and Moon? Yes, excellent. What does it do?”
“It produces this.”
Laurus emerged from silhouette, one burning taper in his grasp, while at his breast the rich cross gleamed. A white hand pointed.
On the worktable had been mounted a peculiar acrobatic pyramid of crucibles, alembics and similar distillery apparatus, much of which was of cloudy glass. The noise of breakage was now explained, for the center of this arrangement had given way, presumably due to extreme heat. Left behind amid the crystal smashings a clay dish on a tripod held a heap of cooling embers—the red Hell Romulan had conjured for himself. And on these embers, no longer than the nail of his smallest finger, nestled a phoenix egg.
“Gold?” he blurted before he could contain it.
“No,” Laurus replied. His eyes, gazing from their faraway heights were, for a moment, almost compassionate. “The appearance of gold. Which appearance will soon vanish as the metal grows cold.” The unweathered hands folded. The remarkable, remarkably ordinary features composed themselves. “Like most human passion, deprived of heat.”
“So, you’re no magus after all. I’d thought at least you could turn lead to orichalcum.”
“It has been done. But not by myself. I am more interested in the attendant phenomena such experiments entail.”
“But since you cannot make gold by sorcery,” said Romulan, enjoying his own self-command, “perhaps you’d care to make it another way. By doing me one very small service.”
To provide the man with a pause to brood, Romulan glanced round the cell. Given illumination, the tortoise-turtle of brass had come back, the bones and books and scrolls and astrolabes, the charts, the mystic ciphers. The hive of the athanorus stood like an odd headless animal on its little legs. The stuffed dragon had been moved and seemed to sulk in a corner. There were three hideous fishes he had not noticed before, with terrible pointed teeth. He had a desire to steal one, attach it to some fellow’s line as he slept by a pond, tug the line, observe the reaction as such a beast was drawn forth—
Romulan became aware he had given the priest a great deal of space, and gotten no response. Looking away from the fanged fishes, Romulan observed Fra Laurus had gone to the table and commenced systematically to tidy it.
“Well, Father,” said Romulan briskly, beginning to be doubtful, “what do you say?”
“I do not take money,” said the priest. “As I have already explained to you.”
“Oh, you wish it in barter, do you?” A hint of desperation now: “Very well. What would you require?”
The priest went on tidying, gathering the broken glass.
Romulan strode over to the jars of parchments. He was uncomfortable and angry. He lifted a jar at random, opened it, pulled free one of the brown leaves on its gilded rollers; held it toward the priest. Romulan disliked the idea of a threat, of dishonorably and unjustly saying to this wretched man: See, I can destroy this and this. And then, before he could open his mouth, a strange sensation in the hand holding the reed-paper caused him to look down. Romulan swore and almost dropped the scroll, for something took place on it. Beside a chill tingling in his palm and fingers, a line of symbol-writing was appearing on the papyrus chiefly composed of eyes, with, in the midst of these, the green figure of a man, kilted, collared, and with an Eastern diadem on his head.
The priest had turned about and come quickly to Romulan. Laurus plucked the papyrus away deftly and gently, and bore it without a word back to its jar. Inserted therein and the stopper replaced, the figure and the hieroglyphs dematerialized.
“You should not,” said Laurus, “meddle in this room without my advice.”
Romulan flexed his hand, stubbornly refusing to question.
“A mild alchemical,” said Lauras, “which answers human tissue. Harmless. The pictures on the scroll appear from the same cause. It is a portion of the Osiraeum, the Egeptsi Book of the Dead. Faithfully copied and extremely old.”
“So you’re a necromancer as well?”
The priest had returned to his labors at the table, as if nothing at all had occurred.
“Calling up of spirits. Traffic with demons of light. The Duca,” said Romulan, “might be disturbed by what I’ve learned here today.”
“These attempted threats, these attempted bribes, they are all one and all nothing to me. Only your rashness attracts my attention. Perhaps you should tell me what it is you wish of me.”
“Why? Would you do it?”
“If it seems to me in accordance with the balance of this place and time, fitting to the character and essence of this moment, then yes. Providing it does not contravene any basic law. I am,” said Lauras, “an instrument of God’s design. It is my practice to flow with such streams as I’m directed must carry me.”
“I’ll direct you, then. The woman Cornelia, who serves the Chentis.”
“Who is this?”
“You deny her visits to you?” demanded Romulan haughtily.
“I merely ask a description.”
Romulan described Cornelia at some length, and most unflatteringly.
“She came for herbs. You purveyed her witchcraft.”
“No danger there. She will never make a witch. Her will is vapid, she is too much of the body. I recollect her now.”
“When will she come again?”
“I cannot say.”
“Oh say,” Romulan implored sarcastically. “I need her to bear a message for me.”
“Still I cannot say. A message to whom?”
“One in the Chenti House, where I’m not welcome.”
“A girl perhaps.”
“Perhaps, perhaps.” Romulan struck an attitude, feeling at a loss. (Some part of him now declared: You have tried and failed. Who can hold to a vow under such circumstances? You are free of her. And at the thought he was glad, and sorry, relieved and desolate.) “What if,” Romulan said, “you go visit the fat madama in the role of shriver. They’d not turn a priest from the door.”
“I am not your messenger,” said Fra Laurus, with neither reproach nor any hint of arrogance.
Romulan balefully regarded the stuffed dragon, not seeing it.
“If you will not go, and she does not come here, then I must get into Chenti again, by some means. And probably will be set on and cut to bits there. How will you like my death on your conscience, Father?”
Laurus looked at him. The beautiful young masculine face, so vivid in its theatre and its inner turmoil, its complexity of wanting and not wanting, might have evoked response in any other. But the priest, far beyond the world, concerned only with his balances of time and space and era, his alembics bubbling with human dreams and the guiding force of God, seemed impervious.
Then he moved about, crossing the chamber. He reached up and unshuttered a single narrow window, which till that instant Romulan had never been aware of, set as it was between charts and cartographies, and partially masked by a tall clepsydra fashioned as Noah’s Ark.
Judging himself—final humiliation—ignored, Romulan turned for the door.
“Wait,” said Laurus, as a blue slot of sky appeared between his hands like a spell.
