Sung in Shadow, page 15
“Donna Cornelia,” Romulan said. He dropped one of Iulet’s hands and grabbed up one of Cornelia’s. “Let me take her into the chapel. Privacy, for the love of God. I mean nothing dishonorable.”
Cornelia smirked.
Was he supposed to bribe her, in full sight of her servant and the guard? She seemed to catch his mental drift, and half shook her head at him. The bribe must be awarded later, then.
“I will follow you,” she said. Seeing his displeasure, she protested, “You must allow me that, sir. She’s in my charge.”
Which must be for the watchers. Inside then, the bribery. Or did she insist on being their witness?
He looked at the guard sternly, and thankfully found Cornelia doing the same. The man, expressionless, turned his back, looking away along the colonnade.
Romulan placed his arm about Iuletta. An indistinct but wonderful perfume rose from her hair or skin, like no aroma he had ever scented. Would she now refuse?
But she said nothing, and let him draw her toward the dexter door of the chapel, the nurse trundling in their wake.
A moment or so to tip the porter-priest, and they passed through.
Inside the chapel entrance, Romulan rounded on Cornelia and put a gold coin in her hand. Cornelia jumped in her fat Her fingers curled fast about the gold.
“No, sir. Truly.”
“Truly, yes.”
“You are a noble gentleman,” she said. “I can trust you with my girl. You were with her before and never did her wrong. You celibate, you,” she added, winking.
His renewed embarrassment was all at once offset by seeing the kindness that underpinned her greedy smile. Startled, he could only turn and seize Iuletta’s arm—unchivalrous gesture to which she responded by pulling away—so he seized her hand again instead and dragged her along the chapel, as far as the altar. Here the ranks of pillars hid Cornelia.
Romulan and Iuletta, hands falling apart, regarded each other.
“Well,” he said, “you think me a rogue, an imbecile and a liar, to say one thing and do another.”
“I think you a man, therefore faithless and cruel.”
It was flattery of a subtle clever sort. She did not even know she flattered, nor he that he was flattered.
Romulan walked to the altar and laid his palm on it.
“I swear by this, I sent you word to meet me here—” a second inspiration, he lifted his hand—“this evening. When you came, I concluded you’d come in answer to that request.”
Haughtily she said, “Had I had such a message I would certainly not have come.”
All about, angels, devils, the blessed and the damned looked on. An audience persisted. Romulan walked from the altar to the girl. He took her head between his hands. The veil sank, the ocean of her hair filled his fingers. He leaned to her mouth and kissed her, before God and Hell, and felt her yield to him, give way to him, melt into his body. He drew back at length, and said breathlessly to her closed lids, “Now say you would not.”
Her eyes opened, swimming as if after a faint.
“Is it true—you sent—”
“How not?”
“How?”
“By my lady Venus, how else. A dove.”
He sought her mouth again, but she stayed him, her fingers, now warm, pressed to his lips.
“What?” he said.
“A dove was lying by my window, its neck broken—poor messenger—”
“And a paper tied to its leg.”
“No.”
The implication was too obvious to voice. After a moment, recalling as if from a century ago the riot of knocking on the glass door, Iuletta said,
“Leopardo.”
Romulan paled. It was not fear, but sheer horror that Leopardo had read his florid phrases.
Iuletta misinterpreting, herself afraid, tried to push him from her.
“Go swiftly. He is not yet here—something has delayed him—”
“Oh no,” Romulan said, “it’s tomorrow morning that the cat will be in wait at the mouse-hole. Perhaps the mouse will surprise him.”
“Tomorrow—but—”
“I confess one lie. Our assignation was for tomorrow, but on finding you here—”
“Oh, my beloved and my only love,” she said. She laid her head on his breast. “Leopardo is a madman. If he has set his heart on harming you, he’ll strive and strive—Go from Verensa. Run. Fly.”
“Run, fly? Do you love cowardice, Iuletta?”
“I would love the living not the dead.”
“Then you wish me gone to see me no more.”
She lifted her head again at the laughter in his voice.
“Do not mock me. To save you death, I’d die.”
The capella was cold, and abruptly the cold grew absolute.
“Do not,” he said. He could say nothing else. He gazed at her and knew, as before, that what she said was truth, and now at last the shadow of death’s wings spread over him as over all men. He beheld death, a new tinting, which had mingled with the color of everything about him, and only she, this woman—this child—stood bravely between him and the abyss. And in some strange and unreasonable manner he trusted her to save him.
It was only a moment. Then gone. But like all wounds, it left its scar behind it.
Now and utterly, the facts reared before him, the everyday facts, every impediment, desired or otherwise. Now, in the wake of that other thing, mightier than all. And, “Iuletta,” he said, “in four days I must go to Lombardhia. Until the winter. My father’s command.”
“Lombardhia,” she said, her voice far away at least as Lombardhia. “Till winter?” Her hands slipped from him. Her eyes on his, she said, “I shall be married when you return.”
“Long married,” he said. “A beautiful, celebrated wife, the glory of the Belmorio Tower.”
“And you will be safe,” she said. “Even Leopardo could not hold one spite so long. He will have some other quarrel by then. Yes, go. I’m glad you will go.”
“If they had not betrothed you,” Romulan said.
“I care nothing for Troian,” she said, softly now, with ludicrous, admirable dignity. “I was born to love you.”
“How can I leave you when you say these things?”
“Then I’ll tell you I abhor you, hate you.”
Romulan remembered how he had visualized her seduction. But death had brushed him, the knowledge of death. He could not use her or profane her, this mirror image of his life.
“If there were some way,” he said.
“There is no way. Go now.”
A dreadful thing had happened also to Iuletta. She had seen herself just as he had seen her, his only hope of safety. There was no logic in the sight, nor her sudden total awareness of her cousin’s enmity, she only knew she must display no sign which could detain Romulan. An hour ago she would have wept, swooned, torn at herself, gone mad—anything to keep him with her. But not now. At fifteen she had assumed all the frightful responsibility of love; at fifteen she had grown old.
There were twelve inches of space between them, and the gap was wider than infinity. They no longer tried to touch each other, for it would have been hopeless, across infinity, to touch.
He turned and left her without any further ornament, but with her image carried before him all the way into the night.
Outside, he looked about and saw enormous stars, and the tall forest of towers above the square, starred with their windows. He could not recall the passage through the chapel, the colonnade, down the steps. If he had gone by the porter-priest, or Cornelia, he did not know. The lamp-boy and the guard he might have walked through.
He went at a heavy pace, like one drugged, to the public fountain where he had noted the grey cat.
He leaned there a long time, and eventually he saw the pink light bob down the Basilica stair and the incoherent group surrounding it like moths. But he could not see her, not to be sure, only glimpses—a sequin’s flash like a firefly, the hint of her body moving like a ghost.
When he saw her again she would be Troian Belmorio’s wife.
“My felicitations,” he said to himself aloud, and in Mercurio’s tones. “You have got away.”
There was an ache in him somewhere he could not trace or name.
The square was empty, though maybe not for long. He should seek friendly company, or go home.
The moon was rising, rosy yellow as a peach, and not far off a dulcimer began to mourn some poet’s imaginings. Romulan’s sight and hearing attended these familiar things with a bizarre sense of novelty. The smell of vines from some garden, conifers and lilies from another. The silken plash of the fountain. . . . Like symptoms of some wondrous illness, the figments of the earth overpowered him.
Having sent him away to live, she would cry for him all night. And how many nights hereafter? Troian could never comfort her. Only he, Romulan, lying at her side or in her arms, could do that. Only he.
TEN
The tall trees which sometimes brushed the half-closed window had their own intrinsic sound. This was unlike the sharp and irritating rattle which had now happened thrice. Such a noise, however, belonged some three or four years in the past. They had been boys then and Romulan, arriving unlawfully in the Estemba grounds at dawn, would hurl stones with dread accuracy at Mercurio’s shutters, producing hideous rattlings on the slats, rousing the sleeper to cursing, elegantly nauseated wakefulness.
The Estemba Tower, one of the most ancient of the town, older even than Rocca and Chitadella, was in portions ruined. It had always been untaxing to get in at the broken wall when once Mercurio had shown the way. The Montargo-Estemba feud had been cooling in those days, but still warm enough to make such traffic hazardous, therefore doubly acceptable.
But now. Why now? For sure the Estemba porter; elderly Marchello, would be snoring, but a lusty thump or two on the doors would have raised him—and few others, Estemba being now as it was. Mercurio, who had been miles from sleep, discerned in this choice of approach some search for reassuring adolescence. Alerted, he crossed to the shutter, pushed it, and snatched back his hand as another stone shot by, actually clinking on the metal of a ring.
“Oh, God,” called Mercurio, voice exactly pitched to carry without loudness, “my nose is broken by a careless pebble. Blinded in one eye, my looks wrecked. What decent girl will wed me now?” And was rewarded by wild muffled laughter from the walk twenty feet below. “Dear Heaven,” said Mercurio, leaning out, “a lunatic is in the garden.”
“A lunatic is also in the house,” Romulan called back at the same quiet carrying pitch. “Shall we compare delusions?”
“It is, by my reckoning, past midnight.”
“Sorcery! My misfortuned friend has been witched into a clock. Do I come up, or rent here all night?”
“It’s late.”
“Late enough to be early. And when did you concern yourself with the lateness of an hour?”
“I see I’ll get no peace. Come up then.”
“How?”
“In the old way, I imagine, employing the creeper. If it will bear you, great strapping giant that you’ve become.”
“We’ll see.”
Romulan took a flying leap at the black lion’s mane of plant which mantled the ancient wall, and began to draw himself up it, with much tearing of foliage and tearing of the air with curses. Mercurio leaned in the embrasure, occasionally making an unfavorable comment on method. When Romulan had drawn near enough, Mercurio deigned to offer him a hand. Romulan negotiated the window and swung into the room.
Mercurio’s apartment, located in the northern quarter of the Estemba Tower, was masculine yet beautiful. White-walled and patternless, it was hung in many places with antique swords of bronze and iron, historic prizes most Houses retained for their banquet-halls. There were also two down-hanging Persian carpets, and a strange commissioned painting of the Adoration of the Magi which, among other marvels, depicted a pure blue oliphant with gold-tipped tusks and wing-like ears, and a serpent for a nose. There was something of the Grechian fashion to the room, the bed of which was broad yet low and lean, finely yet sparsely draped, the corners of which held no clutter of any sort. A wooden panel in the tall chest showed the god Mars, youthfully and nakedly asleep amid a shoal of armor. Two books, old as the Tower, rested together on the chest. On a table stood a beaker of wine and a cup. The mandolin, that element of Flavian, Estemba’s soul, sat on the bed like a peg dog of unorthodox shape, awaiting her master.
Romulan observed the room with detached interest. Here, they had talked, argued, drunk, sung, discussed Plato, Virgil and Petronius, and remade the world, on several nights, in seven minutes. Romulan had not visited in it for more than a year, yet it was barely altered from the era of their boyhood. It came to him to wonder, though only for a second, why mercurial Mercurio kept about him such a symbol of order and changelessness.
“Wine?” Mercurio inquired.
“Thanks, no. Yes. No. I need no wine.”
“Something has confused you. Can it be you’ve met with Iulet?”
“The weird hermit sent her my message. Which message the cat-cousin intercepted.”
“Leopardo?”
“Who but. He means to keep tryst with me, I suppose, at nine tomorrow by the Basilica.”
“How disappointing for him you’ll be absent.”
“I may not be absent.”
“Be absent. Oh, be absent.”
“Well, but I’m not here to discuss that orange gentleman.”
Mercurio laughed, liking the title, poured wine and passed the cup to Romulan. Despite his protestations, Romulan drank thirstily.
“Then why, child, are you here?”
Romulan set down the empty cup and walked away from Mercurio to inspect the oliphant picture minutely.
“As it turned out, I met her by chance, at Sana Vera. I told her,” he said, “I was to go to Manta.”
“And she bawled and begged you to remain.”
“She allowed I should go.”
“So soon bored? Ah, Woman. So young, so fickle—”
“To save me from Leopardo, who she dreads almost as much as you do.”
Mercurio poured wine for himself.
“Creditable Iuletta.”
“Mercurio,” Romulan said, “I told her I’d make no claim on her and I left her in the chapel. But Mercurio—she’s with me still.”
Mercurio drank. His face, which Romulan deliberately could not see, was enigmatic and unreadable. At such moments, Mercurio was at his most transparent, for enigma was his mask, as was frivolity. One might look closely and perceive trouble somewhere in the eyes, and some conceit of age. He was twenty-two, his spirit far older. And this spirit, with a sure psychic awareness, had now tensed within him. Aloud, he said nothing. When Romulan, emerging from his self-consciousness in the heat of self-revelation, should be ready to turn and face him, Mercurio was ready to meet him with the open wicked regard collusion might desire.
“I find I want her,” Romulan told the oliphant sternly. “I mean to have her. It cannot be helped.” He turned then, and Mercurio’s face sent away its inner self. Mercurio smiled.
“I take it, by wanting and having, you intend to assay such deeds without disgracing her.”
“She’s not to be harmed through me. Through anyone.”
“Well. There’s this little business with Troian.”
“She cares nothing for Troian.”
“She told you so.”
“In words. In how she looked at me. The touch of her—” Romulan glanced away again, again confounded by his own body and its emotions.
“You could do this: Be gone, come back when she’s wed. Wait till she’s truly sick of Troian, then woo her again. If you’re circumspect there need be—”
“No!”
“No?”
“No, by God and Lucifer and all the fiends of the Pit. No.”
“She must not have him then.”
“Only me.”
“Only you. Then you have no other course than to marry her yourself.”
“That I knew.”
“But do you know your own mind on this?” Mercurio said. “Yes, she’s gloriously fair, she puts out the eyes. Yes, your blood drums and your head roars and Adam’s Rod grows large as a tree and draws you after it like a goat on a tether. Yes, yes. Marriages are made on less than all this. But will you marry on it? God joins and death sunders. Once in the water you must swim till you go down.”
Flushed and angry and hardly pausing to take note of either state, Romulan said:
“I’ll wed her. There’s no other prospect, except she weds Troian and dies of grief.”
“Oh, she’ll not die of grief, even for you, dear angel.”
“Or I’ll go mad,” Romulan said, distressed by his vehemence, not believing it, unable to avoid the words. “Truly, I think of her with him and I could take a sword and kill him, and myself after. I must have her. Lawfully and before God. Mercurio, I must.”
“Then, my dear, you must.”
“You’ll help me.”
“You won’t manage such an intrigue alone.” Mercurio, appearing now brilliant and demoniacal, took a turn about his room, raising his hand and patting Romulan on the head, lightly, as he went by. “Point one, the ruined Belmorio match. Belmorio can be paid, and will need to be, to prevent a feud. Will your stony father take on that?”
“By Christ, I do not know—”
“He may. He may be charmed his idiot son is bound to a girl of noble family, become responsible and lead-heavy like himself. I think, at his most sullen, your father has thought you whore’s meat only and due to be ruined as such. Well, but if he will not pay the dark green family, I might. Belmorio and your damned father settled, point two (or three) is Chenti. Chenti Primo will gripe and growl. Montargo’s equal to Belmorio in trade and ships—your connections in the Levant are worth the girl’s dowry alone. But you’ve no blood-tie with the Rocca Tower. Old Chenti will bellyache over that, you may be sure. Still, you and I are comrades, and Estemba has its own links with the Duke. Maybe we can mist the red fool’s eyes a little. Now, child. Do not grow agitated. These things must be considered. Or do you want to straddle your girl atop a hill of corpses?”
