Sung in Shadow, page 28
In the first darkness, therefore, Gulio left the house of his ancestors (in this way, missing also a messenger from Padova to announce Lord Chenti’s further delay), and rambled through the thoroughfares toward the mansion of the Montargos. As with several of the older towers, the outer doors were not externally guarded. Tonight, the lamps on their posts were also dead.
Gulio’s scheme was uncomplex. Taking his dagger, he would scratch up a message on those ancient doors, perhaps in rhyme. He had been struggling with his poetry all the way; it concerned fornication, the stabbing of friends one way and maidens another, and Gulio wished to have it right before he began work.
To consider, he leaned in a nearby doorway, his bleared eyes on the black sky and slipping constantly off it.
When the horse and rider came leisurely clopping along the street, Gulio was no more than temporarily irritated—until a window shutter, thrown open suddenly in an adjacent building, tossed a bolt of rekindled day across the night. The mounted man passed through it, and Gulio clutched the hilt of his dagger to his mouth to keep from crying out. Cloaked in dun color, the rider might not be known, but the horse Gulio well remembered, the black gelding Romulan Montargo had ridden into the square. Was it conceivable? The murderer had flown Verensa and returned. Why not? Maybe, the most clever ruse of all, for who would think of it? Gulio drew himself together, ready to totter back to Chenti with these tidings, when a memory of all he had been named for smote him. It was so, he had left Leopardo alone with the Montargo, and ‘Pardo had been decimated and the decimator escaped. And now—
The man had dismounted, a little heavily, exhausted no doubt, as the horse seemed to be. Leading it, he turned aside toward the stable gate, and in a moment would be knocking there for the grooms.
—And now the coward might become the avenger.
Drunken and brave and unable to plan this any better than his poetry, Gulio floundered from the shade of the doormouth. He did not ponder on this act, which, at midnight, would pull him down with all its weight of terror and responsibility. No. The dagger was ready in his hand, and the back of Romulan Montargo before him. To bring these two entities together was but too simple.
With a silly little squeak, Gulio struck.
He had, at least, the wit to pull the dagger free as the man, without a sound, sank away from him. That, and the wit, now, to run. And later the wit to keep his own counsel. Although it was not until midnight that Gulio learned, from various uproars, that it was not the son but the father he had slain.
Valentius had been musing as he walked the horse toward the walls of home, on his wife, and on his son. Above, up-stretched, the grim and glorious stones of the past. But his reverie was not with these. Nor was it gladsome, yet sufficiently sweet, and lit by a strange wonderment. So it was the youth left in him and not increeping age, and not death, that filled his mind as the short blade slammed against his heart. By mere chance, Gulio’s stroke was pristine and exact. To Valentius, the night came sudden and kind. There was time only for the puzzled whisper: what is this? And then only the soft hair of night to fold and to catch him. He was dead, like a leaf, before his body reached the ground.
* * *
• • •
Having kept by, but not on, the Padova road, to avoid unwelcome meetings, next cutting across it where the track led southwest that would take them, at length, to the Lombardhi highway, the two riders made fair speed, the pack horse running ably behind.
The sunset gradually went out before and to the left of them; a Hellish afterglow persisted two or three miles and then was raked away. About half an hour after, Romulan felt a sensation like a blow upon his back, and turned to see what might have caused it, discovering nothing had. Another mile went by, and he brought his horse to a standstill without explanation, dismounted, and going to the roadside, threw up. When this happened again half a mile farther on, having crawled aside a little, he found himself too weak to return to the road.
Presently the servant, Doro, also dismounted and came over to him.
“I asked the priest for poison,” Romulan said. “It seems he gave it me.”
Doro bent and touched his forehead. Then straightened up and stood there looking down at him, the stars fiercely enameled behind his head. Doro, a few years Romulan’s senior, had the face of a skinny clever baby, which now mildly frowned.
“Not poison,” he said. “I think you have the plague.”
Galvanized by incoherent automatic fear, Romulan came after all unevenly to his feet. “What?”
“The Summer Sickness. No, sir. There’s no call for undue misgiving. You’re young and healthy and can cheat the thing, with proper care. But we must get to Lombardhia quickly. Your hours in a saddle are rationed.”
“Plague,” said Romulan. He looked at Doro, who had reached out to steady him. “Are you not afraid to take it, too?”
“No, sir. I caught the ailment four years ago, and lived. And so will you.”
Romulan half smiled as, his head reeling, he pulled himself back on to the horse, knowing, as Doro had told him, there was no margin in this land to be ill. At some point he had been ready, it seemed, for any death. But not this one, this loathsome devil for centuries on the back of man, not this.
The night began to come and go, but he clung grimly to the horse. When he vomited again, he somehow kept in the saddle to do it.
By the time they reached the highway, he did not care very much any more if he died or not.
Somewhere after that, under the overhang of a cypress tree whose echoing scent briefly refreshed him, Doro got him off the horse one way and loaded him back across it another, and tied him there. This was a punishment beyond any he had foretold, but the fever was already high, and soon he was meshed in it, and all things else were gone.
SEVENTEEN
Within half a day of each other, inside the shadows of the Basilica, candles had flickered on an unlocking of two fragile gilded gates, and on the opening of two tall architectural tombs. Twice, men had gone up and a long shape had been offered, and had been devoured. Each tomb closed its jaws upon its dead, possessively. The banners were thrown like a coverlet across the marble, blue, and brass: Montargo, Estemba. The two gilded gates were locked again, the two separate groups of the living stole away. Later, a sleet-white Eros would come to mourn above Flavian Estemba, a pagan boy tactfully ignored, since he had wings and might well be only an angel. Above Valentius Montargo merely the dusts of the Basilica to gather, and to lie, and by his side the grey petals of the woman he had loved. But, what do the dead care for these things, the couch, the monument, the requiem? These are the toys by which the quick may comfort themselves. Clad for death as if for a wedding, they lay, unseen, the finery withering, the tactile flesh becoming nothing but foul air. Only the bones remaining, which could not any more see or think or laugh or sing or love.
Relinquish to the dark what the dark has taken. It will have all.
* * *
• • •
Outside, in the down-sloping death-garden, amid the trees of death, the mausoleum of the Chentis, delayed for Lord Chenti’s order, had also cracked wide, to take Leopardo in. Thereafter they would mount guard for him three nights, encrimsoned men standing with their black linen and spurling torches.
Lord Chenti had come home behind a message, lagging either on his business at Padova, or his other business, come home some days late and so into discomfort. And sanctioning the opening of the vault, ordered the mounting of the guard, post internment, for Leopardo. Burial must be hasty in summer, and this was no show of honor to the dead, but of a Tower’s strength and pride. Besides, in the tumult which had progressed, in all things but this, apparently beyond the House’s master, Chenti had required to do something. Or be left behind.
Rumors ran in Verensa, lay down exhausted, started up again. Montargo had persuaded the Duca, by means of a bribe, to permit the escape of the heir, Romulan, from under the very hooves of the ducal guards. Ten Chentis had, in return, awaited Valentius at his own gate and cut him down. The old man who ruled the Estemba Tower, bereft now of his only surviving son, had resorted to witchcraft, and a woman in grey weeds stalked a cauldron, so the plague stole into Montargo. Many were sick of it there. But then, there were other Houses of the Higher Town which had also let that enemy inside their doors. It was no great mystery or magic, when their sons had so often frequented the Bhorgabba, where now plague ran like the hunted thing it was, biting as it passed.
Sana Verensa’s Summer Sickness, not one of the mighty pestilences, but a little sister. High fever, an inflammation of glands and intestines, which produced vomiting, cramps, muscular anguish, and sometimes spasms resembling a fit. But these things would, having ascended to a crisis on the second, third or fourth day, die suddenly down. The fever broke and reason came back, hobbling and very tired. To survive the crisis strength was needful, though not always health. Sometimes the chronically sick recovered, their bodies accustomed to the long battle with illness, fighting as a matter of course, and shook off the ailment swiftly. It was often the sound whose constitutions, unused to war, surrendered the flesh in despair. Indeed, despair was the worst aspect of the disease, for it seemed intrinsic, a physical rather than a spiritual symptom. In the debility of the aftermath, when the dangerous fever had broken and the pain left behind begun to lessen, all wish for life seemed to have been burned away. The victim, who now had every hope of recovery, would refuse to take nourishment, would weep, would rise and stumble mindlessly about, as if searching for some exit. Some even forced the door, running after Death and catching his sleeve, by means of knives unwisely left out, and high windows.
It was rumored, with speculation, that the solitary, legal, fair and nubile daughter of Lord Chenti had herself contracted the plague, and was set to die of it.
The morning after her mother had walked barefoot and terrible as a Fury to the Chitadella, Iuletta was found by one of her frightened maids, neither waking nor sleeping but wracked by heat and delirium in her narrow bed.
By the time Lord Chenti had ridden in through his gate and found the house to be not his own, but a variety of Purgatory, suitably peopled by wailing lunatics and shrieking demons, a physician from the Basilica college was in attendance. And by the time Chenti, in some horror, had cornered the physician, the man was able to say, “No, my lord, it’s not plague. The fever is already diminishing and will demand no crisis. There are none of the other tendencies which we observe with the sickness.” And pausing, noted the father’s great concern, largely, one supposed, bound up with his hopes for the Belmorio match—already shaking from the slur of feud-murder following Valentius Montargo’s death. “She will live, sir, I promise you,” said the physician. “It is some maiden’s humor. Perhaps brought on by fear for her marriage. Probably she is already attached to the young man and overly concerned, misunderstanding your own finesse, sir, in dealing with foolish gossip.” And then, since Chenti lowered, “I myself will attend her, my lord, and see her returned to the full bloom of her health and beauty.” (There would be gold in this if one were provident.)
A full hour after, having visited his nephew’s corpse, now due for burial on the morrow, and already tinged by the unmistakable evidence of souring preservatives, its features subtly altered, its form heavy as dough, Chenti went to his wife.
She sat bolt upright in the anteroom of their chamber, not a hair today out of place. Her red gown was frankly as black as her linen. Her face bore no marks of tears, only the fading scratches her nails had made there. Her hands were crossed together in her lap.
“Did you not know, mistress,” he said to her as he came in, “your daughter was sick?”
“I knew. It has been seen to.”
“And you. What am I to think of you?”
“Whatever most pleases you, my lord.”
“Please me? I’m not pleased to hear you walked the length of the town, screeching like a trull.”
“There was no screeching done. Some thirty of our kin walked with me. I went to ask the Duke for justice, for the death of the Montargo who slew my brother’s son.”
“Why should that trouble you? You never liked the boy.”
“I was,” she said, “disturbed for your honor, my lord. The honor of the Chenti Tower.”
“It seems to me, Wife,” he said, “you take more care for the dead than the living. Some word must be sent to Belmorio. What did the Duca say to you?”
“What you have already been told he said. He promised us the Montargo’s death.”
Chenti crossed the room. He caught Electra by her arm, with the added roughness of unfamiliarity, for he did not often touch her. “Was it your fancy to have Valentius killed on the street?”
She looked at him with her reptilian eyes.
“Mine?” The contempt in her white face, under its delicate embroidery of wounds, infuriated and dismayed him. “Valentius was nothing to me. It is the son’s blood I would have.”
“And why this damned tearing at your skin, woman?”
“To mark my grief,” she said. “You know from past experience, gentle husband, I am unable to shed tears.”
* * *
• • •
“God pardon me. Jesus and the Host of Heaven, forgive me,” said Cornelia, over and over. “My baby’s young and blameless. I should have restrained her, poor willful girl. My fault, Lord, mine. And,” Cornelia added, with a sad slyness, “rather you should strike down me, in my sins, than this lovely child.” Hoping by this means to suggest her virtue, and so gain reprieve for both.
A reprieve was gained. Whether due to Cornelia’s prayers and exclamations, or to the physician’s interesting physic—myrrh and saffron mixed with beeswax and burning day long in the room, at which one sneezed, vinegar dashed on the floor, in which one slid, plasters of powdered jacinth and thin honey applied to the patient’s forehead and heart, through which one grew sticky. A few drops of blood were also let. The doctor, anxious to obtain his fee, gave of his money’s worth.
Beyond the chamber, the Tower arose to bury its dead with brazen noises, then sank to its mourning, modestly. Word was sent to the Rocca, and to the Belmorio Tower. In each instance forbearing answers had come back. Satisfied, if not content, Chenti visited his daughter’s sick room daily, determined on bludgeoning her toward health. The fever had passed, leaving only a weakness behind it. In reply to his jolly tirades there came her dutiful, “Yes, sir,” soft as a feather stirring in the pillows. Pale and still though she was, Chenti was pleased to see she had not lost her looks. Cornelia he roused with verbal thumpings. “Cheer up! Let her see smiling faces! We’ll have her wed presently, and then more of these fadings. Tell her, nurse, if she rallies, she shall yet have her ginger-haired knight. That will liven her.”
When the master of the house was gone and the physician, and the scared maid—one of two Cornelia had sworn, by hideous vows, to secrecy—Cornelia leaned over the narrow bed. Iuletta, stranded on the sheets, gazed at her.
“You see how it is,” the nurse said, bracingly. “He will have you wed.”
Iuletta sighed. She gazed away and at her own hands, empty now of all rings, and lightly entwined on a small wooden doll. She had cried for the doll by name in her illness—“Ginevra! Bring me Ginevra!” and then cried over the doll and hugged it when, unearthed from a box, much the worse for neglect, it had been brought. Now the doll again meant nothing, only somewhere to rest her weary woman’s hands which had clasped and comforted a living man.
“I dreamed,” Iuletta said, in her faint clear voice. “I saw my love, and he was dead.”
Cornelia crossed herself. She also sighed, and a minor gale gathered the bed hangings and let them go.
“Kitten, you dreamed very well. He is dead. To you, forever, he is. He must dwell in exile. If any of this House came on him, they’d murder him for sure. To slay that fine young gentleman your cousin—”
“It was a dark place,” Iuletta said. “Or else it was night. I saw him. I remember how he lay, with his head turned on his shoulder, and his beautiful hair spreading.”
“Think him dead,” said Cornelia. “How can you live, otherwise? Look at what hedges you round. Your family, your father’s adamant will—a girl is only goods for market. And your Troian, it seems, is still eager enough to buy. Hot as his hair, to have you. All this, and are you to stand against it, one hapless maid? Give in, and prettily accept What else can you do?”
“To accept,” said Iuletta slowly, her lids downcast, “is to be damned. I am already married.”
“Perhaps not. Dreams may be true auguries. And will not God forgive you, placed as you are? Does his canon not order you to obey your parents? Obey, then, think yourself a widow, marry a second time. Belmorio will make you a fine husband. Better than this other wretch, who brings you only misery.”
“He sent me no word.”
“No, he dared not. Nor will he. Think him dead, my catling. And take the other.”
“If not one, then another,” Iuletta said. Tears moved quietly down her cheeks.
Cornelia snuffled. Speaking harshly of Romulan to galvanize her charge, she felt a pang of guilt. Romulan had been charitable to her. She did not any more believe he had killed his friend, some nagging doubt informed her the magnificent Leopardo was to blame, for everything. But, expediently loyal to the Chentis, she would not house this thought, and certainly never give it voice. Iuletta must learn similar tactics. With a heavy blitheness, Cornelia began to describe the joys of a wife in the Belmorio Tower. As she did so, she saw her child, this daughter of her love if not her womb, burdened by the dark, dull Belmorio green (like cabbages), hung with glittering chains, swollen big with infants, or shrinking shallow and mean without, as Electra did. Here was a wife’s lot. How was it that, seeing Iuletta with Romulan Montargo, nothing of this had suggested itself? A red rose and a blue sky meeting in laughter and sweet pain. The nurse felt again the strange stabbing in her breast that had come as she watched them together, like two severed halves of a perfect whole, mending.
