Sung in Shadow, page 34
The tears of agony threatened to become the deluge of lamentation. Saffiro visualized himself, half lying in the dirt by the wall, the jape of harlots, ineffectual and afraid. There were Florias roaming the Bhorgabba in a pack tonight. And Malaghelas, too. And he alone, sent here by that witch of the Cat Tower. Yes, fool, fool as his brothers constantly assured him. Even if the Montargo were to come this very hour, how would Saffiro cope with him? Romulan had killed Leopardo—that had been a feat. To kill Mercurio no less, except it had been managed with steel against a man armed simply and unknowingly with bronze.
With bronze.
Like a shadow, Saffiro moved himself upward and leaned by the wall. Above him, a shutter slammed open and broken pieces of light fell on the street A girl laughed, frivolously, falsely.
He heard the sound with contempt dismissed it. He would wait. He would spy. Shame did not matter, nor his enemies on the streets, nor Romulan’s prowess as a swordsman, nor who had asked him to do this and told him the means. Bronze—this must pay for that.
Susina, looking through the chink in the shutter of an un-lighted room, noted the leaning shadow. Then she turned and made her way to the mezzanine. The courtyard was once more vacant, save for the peaceful sleeper, and knocking mildly on the locked door, she named herself and was let inside.
The situation within remained as she had previously left it No hours seemed to have elapsed. Cornelia with the key, and clucking over a cup of wine. Iuletta straight-backed as a pin on her chair.
There were pointless preliminaries. One felt one must insert them, for the girl’s sake. Her strength was appalling, it would not break or melt, she clearly could not give way.
The stupid chattering of courtesies done, Susina announced,
“There is one I’ve had put out on the street, who knows you are here, Donna Iuletta. This is not a servant, or anyone’s hireling. He’s a lord of the Higher Town, and I hazard from the device I glimpsed, a Vespelli. His grudge against you I cannot surmise. Perhaps he’s a friend of Troian Belmorio’s. I’m assured he wishes you harm. And he watches, I believe, to keep track of what you do.”
Iuletta said tonelessly, “My mother promised me this. He will be awaiting my flight with Romulan. But he will need to wait until time’s ending.”
“There,” said Cornelia automatically, and hiccupped.
“So soon,” Iuletta said to Susina. “My stay here brings you inconvenience.”
“It is you, lady, I fear for,” said Susina. “This world is cruel, as you’ve said. This world bites.”
“I have thought of a method,” said Iuletta. (One wished she would sob or shriek or fly into a passion—those tantrums Cornelia had described of her charge’s childhood and recent adolescence. This other thing, this death that lived—) “I’ll send word to that priest, Fra Laurus. He’s disinterested. He has no care for the woes and status of the towers—this is all I have ever heard of him, that he treats men and women like game pieces, either he or God to move them, and they mean as little to him. But I think he will advise me on how I may present myself to a sheltering and concealing sisterhood, and how I may journey there privately. I must beg a favor of you.”
“What would it be?” said Susina with caution.
“Someone must take the priest a letter. Someone who goes in and out, that the man who watches will not notice him particularly. And, if you will grant me this too, one who cannot read.”
“Easily done. I’m the only one in the house can read, and am no scholar. But to be extra sure, you may send it by Balshaza.”
“That is the pagan boy,” said Cornelia. “The brown boy from the spice lands. No, he’ll not read it. Magnificent Christ. But you should not consider this. A nunnery? A poppy like my Iulet to be a nun?”
Iuletta paid no heed. And Cornelia fell suddenly dumb, and drank more wine.
Iuletta said, “If it were written tonight, he might take it tomorrow?”
“If written tonight, he might take it tonight. There is a stable nearby which will supply a mule, and we can gift the gate guards. Like my girls, hermit priests rarely sleep, they pray all through the dark.”
“I have no money.”
“The ring you gave me will see to it, my donna. There’s another way from the house also. A cellar, and a route I’ll describe no further, but the boy knows it. It’s been a fortunate road for one or two whose unfriends sat down at the door.”
“It seems I put you to too much use.”
“None at all. But lady, I’d ask you to consider. You were meant, you’ll pardon me, to be neither bawd nor vestal.”
“Then,” said Iuletta, “you must tell God this is the case. The error in this is not mine.”
Susina shut her lips together. The slap was restrained but decided. The stiff-backed fifteen-year-old woman on the chair was older far than Susina’s twenty-three years, and sense was not to be wheedled or shaken into her. She would make a horribly correct suora, in the living death of piety. And with every orison, she would curse God.
“Come, guzzler,” said Susina to her mother, laying a kind keen hand on her arm. “Bring your wine and come and talk with me. Let your lady be to pen her letter. I’ll send a girl with ink and paper and fresh candles.”
Iuletta thanked her, and Cornelia mumbled and was taken away.
Soon the girl came in with the ink-horn from Susina’s wayward accountings, and with some sheets of grainy yellow paper. When the girl had gone, Iuletta rose and once more locked the door.
Through the sturdy walls about her came dim noises. They, and their derivation, did not offend her. Creature of spirit and physical essence that she was, only the imposed law of others had formed her moral code, and that with surprising superficiality. Iuletta had a capacity for great liberation. She might have committed acts of enormous immoderation, even crimes of extreme violence—if her life had led her in the way of them. She was, basically, a child of the wood, one of those maidens who in mythos, wreathed with ivy and bearing a staff crowned by a pinecone, had danced over mountains and seas after a god both beautiful and mad. Able to love beyond reason, able to slay, to tear in fragments, with the panther and the she-wolf, perhaps not her lover or her children, but decidedly herself.
She wrote with little hesitation, neatly and prettily as she had been tutored to do. Romulan had spoken to her of Laurus, during their solitary night of privacy and joining. Of the dove messenger, of the magician’s insularium with its forbidden treasures, and its alembics, potions, spell books. And Cornelia’s words had also lodged: A strange man. Will take no payment. He takes no care of what we do—we may do anything. Yet, more than all this, it was the child of the wood in her that instinctively approached the weird priest. Oblique recognized oblique. And all her shrinking, and any inclination in her to preserve, these had perished. In some respects, she had forced herself to a train of thought, and could no longer get free. But in others, she only proceeded now as always, precipitate, yet with a true and proper motion, like that of a falling star.
About half an hour later, another delicate rap on the door. The letter was ready and was given over to the girl, and then, at the foot of the pitted stairway among the apricots, to the Indian boy.
No one was abroad, the thrifty customers away, the generous or lusty ensconced for the night. She should beware of thirsty wanderers, but did not. She stood at the balustrade, from which position she had first looked down and seen Romulan borne to her on the arms of a man now dead.
His skin seeming almost blue, the phantasmal boy flickered, now lit, now snuffed, between the lamps and the garden trees, and was gone. Thankfully illiterate Cornelia would have supplied directions. The boy, who appeared like a jewel of the night, could not fear the night, or that he might be lost in it, and had no doubt often traversed darkness and even countryside. (She wondered suddenly, inconsequently, that he had never used such a jaunt to run away. Perhaps now—No.) No. Before midnight, Laurus would have her question in his hands. Perhaps he would send an answer with the boy. Perhaps a dove would bring it. Or a crow.
The letter read:
Pious Father, grant me the blessing of your attention for the length of this. I would speak to you of a woman who has lost all her substance in the world. Her family have disowned her, she is penniless and must live upon the charity of acquaintances. All this, due to her marrying the only one who, in this world, or in any world, she might love, as love is. As may be believed, the man, her husband, has grown impatient at the toils their hasty marriage has entailed, and has abandoned her. She places on him no censure in this, but would wish him to be free of her, if only in freedom can he regain his happiness. Lastly, his enemies steal about her, spying upon her, thinking that he will return to her and so fall in their vengeful hands. Thus, even the hope of his arrival she may not entertain, nor thinks it likely to occur. But it is to her an unwarranted burden. It is salt in the wounds she bears. She therefore would beg from you a way to her release from prison. By prison, I mean her life. This is counted a sin, mystic father, but it seems to her there is no other formula. She must live a wasted span in misery, a trial and danger to those about her and a cause of anguish to the one she loves before all others, including even God. Or she may leave the earthly state at once, and this she purposes. Her only reason, therefore, in writing to you, sir, is to ask that in your pity you will condone and facilitate her sin. You are wise with herbs and medicines. Will you prepare for this woman, and send to her through one—the best able to effect the matter—a draught to end her unhappiness without further pain? This she entreats, partly that her death may appear ordinary and her friends be protected from false accusation. But also since, being a woman, she is much afraid of being hurt. Should you, in your magnitude, comply, pray send the elixir in a packet as if with a letter—for both your safety and her own. If you should refuse your help, which may well be your disposition (as she can offer neither a fee, nor a reward for your work in Heaven), she assures you your abstinence will not prevent her death. She will utilize what other means there may be, and swiftly. Again, at the finish as throughout, she begs your indulgence of this dismal request. She has ceased to credit damnation, and seeks only peace. Therefore, regard any help you may give her as only that. For she does not believe she shall be damned, but only dead, and that is what she most wishes for.
So much she swears then, upon her own soul, if such she has, and if not then upon her life while she lives and while she is
Iuletta Montargo de Chenti.
* * *
• • •
Cornelia, carousing below, did not come back to the chamber, and Iuletta lay down unsleeping on the wide bed, and began to nerve herself already for the refusal. Having sworn to die, and refused her means, she must go quickly, or perhaps be prevented. There were other modes. She did not think of them quite yet.
That the priest would deny her departure seemed one instant definite, and the next insupportable. But, by his leave or without it, depart she would.
She pictured Romulan sometimes. Her death would be broadcast, and he would hear of it. There would be guilt in that, maybe, but not for long. He would know himself unfettered. The stigma fate had cast on them would be done. She beheld his face bending to hers in the dark, the face of an angel, the beautiful god she had followed, over hills, over seas.
And then perhaps she slept, for all at once the knock came on the door, light now almost as air, yet her awareness sounding at it like a chord of music inside her.
When she opened the door, no one was there. But lying on this threshold, as once a broken dove had lain on another, there was a packet sealed by wax. She took it up, looking as she did so across the garden-court. Only the statuary regarded her. It was very dark, and early—cool and aromatic, and for a moment she felt life surge up inside her, but then she went in and shut the door, no longer turning the key.
Cornelia would mourn, would run with tears. But that must not dissuade her. No other would mourn at all, and that must not dissuade her, either.
She broke the seal and thought: It is empty—and then the tiny opaque phial lay in her hand.
That her death should be so small she might hold it in her hand—
There was nothing written on the paper, no reassurance, no avowal. Of course, how should he incriminate himself. But then, finding the paper, they would think he had refused that other help she had pretended to ask of him—her way to a sisterhood—and this would reflect poorly on him. But she must no longer care for the living she would leave behind.
She touched the phial. It felt very cold. Could it be it was not poison, but some eccentric potion or drug, or even water suitably tinctured? But no. She would wake, or vomit, or merely tremble and remain, and then she would cry out against him. There was no cunning in that. Either send, or refuse to send. He had sent. Unless—suppose there were dreadful pain in the phial? Suppose he sought to punish her for her blasphemy of suicide? Or suppose only he had no way to ensure the bane was bland. . . . Once more, no. He was a magician and could create magic. At worst, it would be a fast agent, or else she would have space to scream, perhaps reveal in her distress his hand in her death—yes, even if hurtful it would fly, it would race. She in its jaws.
She shut her eyes and saw Romulan inside her lids, clear as if painted there. She would never see him in the flesh again, and she had known it, somehow, the very morning that they parted at Marivero. Truly, she had known it then.
She drew the stopper from the phial. There was no odor, but she grew dizzy, which might be the potency of its fumes, or only her nervousness.
She would have died for him. Did die for him. It was this simple. While she could procrastinate, she had been able to face her empty life. As a vision it was bearable. But the spy had forced her hand too soon. She could no longer put off tomorrow. And coming to it, she found she could not bear it at all. Her childish avowals—“I will die if he does not love me”—they had come true.
She heard then, suddenly, as once Romulan has heard it, the bright plain note of a footstep on the stair. And so it must be now, at once.
She flung wide the window and put the phial to her mouth and drank the liquid in a gasp that left her breathless and afraid. But she threw the phial away into the dark, to safeguard the magician, before she moved her hands to her throat, her breast; waiting, listening for pain to begin.
But there was no pain. She felt an innocent faint numbness, not unpleasant, like the serene detachment that came prior to sleep, and she walked slowly to the bed once more, and lay down on it.
The steps had ended on the stair. After all, it was probably only one of the lovers strayed from his couch to ease himself or to fetch more wine. Or a late visitor, dallying. There came a far-off mutter of voices. She heard them, understanding nothing of what they said, uncaring, for they were no longer of her world.
Abruptly then, but without discomfort, her soul rose out of her body. She felt it lift and hover. A sensation of utter quietness, the very sensation she had desired, came to her. Death approached, not black, but of the most variable flowing whiteness, like a cloud, and she rose into it and he took her in his arms. “Sleep well, my child,” he said.
It seemed to her she knew the voice from long ago, that of one who had been gentle to her. And she smiled as she died.
This was how she was found, less than a minute after, by those who came into the chamber, already icy cold and her limbs stiffening, but her face smiling and beautiful. It was for this reason that so many attempts were made to rouse her. It was difficult to accept something so lovely and so gladsome could be dead.
Doro, who had only glimpsed her, was of this mind. But presently, when they left off their ministrations, he did not want to look at her again.
He had come on a page near one of the Chenti lodges, Pieto by name, who had told him, between upset, spite, and a well-advanced cupidity, all one might need to know. Even the location of Susina’s house came out, for though never having visited, Pieto had overheard a great deal in his short years with Cornelia.
Coming into the brothel with other guests, Doro had paid out coins in order to get good will. But before Susina should be free enough of her patrons for him to speak to her in a way not guaranteed to make a spectacle, he had fallen inevitably asleep. Nothing had penetrated to him then, until hours later someone slipping like a ghost through the courtyard had somehow woken him as a louder noise would not have done. Then had come an astonishing stroke of what he took to be luck.
The boy flitted up to the mezzanine floor, rapped on a door, left something by it, and stole away. Not long after, the door was opened and out came a girl to take the package up, and then to stand for a moment, before returning inside the room.
The most obvious thing about the girl, seen over distance and between the foliage which had also handily masked him, was her glory of black hair, shining and shimmering from the light behind her. Romulan, and not only in fever, had described Iuletta. From that hair alone, Doro became convinced that this was the lady he sought, seeming at first never to be found, and yet here before him, close as the sweet fruit on the trees.
He meant not to startle her, and went up stealthily, considering his approach. Then another girl, one of the furnishings of the house, appeared as he reached the top step and asked him his needs. He had requested Susina, then, rather than explain superfluously to the wrong ears.
When Susina came, clad in a robe of flames and sunsets, her hair a nest wanting only unhouse-proud birds, she heard him through and nodded, without protest, as if indeed she had expected him momently.
