Sung in Shadow, page 8
The boy blushed. His voice had recently broken to a true silver tenor, cunning accessory to Mercurio’s darker range. He was, besides, in love with Mercurio. Half Verensa had been, was, would be. Filled with terror and joy, the boy waited, trembling.
But it was like Mercurio to have brought four musicians out in the rain with him and to use none of them.
At the announcing chord, the room grew quiet. Quiet enough a second chord, of thunder, but muted, mellowed, as if it too had been drinking wine, strummed through the Tower, the first which had been audible since the eating began.
Then the song flowed in, and gathered like somber petals above the candlelight.
On the quiet, an overlay of quiet. Into which the petals of song fell.
Romulan had lifted his head. It was the song Mercurio had sung in the old garden, he remembered it at once. For some reason, probably that of following events, it disturbed him. The aloof Rosalena at his side had half shut her eyes, gazing through the lashes at Mercurio as he sang.
Iuletta, who knew only one presence in her father’s hall, and that presence far off, unreachable, perhaps an illusion, or a ghost, brushed by strange intimations of ecstasy and fear, closed her eyes entirely. The wonderful voice did not soothe her. It penetrated to every artery, pierced, injured her. She surrendered herself to the unfathomable pain of incorporeal things.
And Leopardo, with the clarity of his own drunkenness, leaning on a wall-hung oriental carpet behind Electra Chenti’s chair, close enough to brush, with his fingertips, the center of her webby veil, heard the voice and the song with an untranslatable tension, also a scorn of love songs, a loathing of any other man who could express the heat and the irony he felt was inexpressibly blazing within himself.
“Who can tell where love will lead us,
Love the color of a rose—
Love the ever-sounding bell—
Does she summon to a close,
To the bitter of farewell?
To the gorgeous gate of Hell?
Ah, who knows, who knows?”
Like Iuletta, the page brought down his lids, locking himself in candle-printed dark, with only Mercurio’s voice to guide him—and introduced the upper line narrow and exquisite as a bird.
“Who can say what love may teach us,
She may teach us how to mourn,
She may teach us laughter fades
And that the Fair, foresworn,
Is not fair in how it trades—
And how eyes may wound like blades—
But, who’ll learn, who’ll learn?”
The last notes dripped from the mandolin and melted like magic coinage, into nothing. The nothing contained the hall, the limbo that was blind as Cupid, did not breathe, held to its own fancies, its own hidden wants and musings.
The thunder offered plaudits first. Then Chenti’s guests, rising and roaring to outdo the thunder.
The Estemba page blinked two long tears of nerves and emotion.
“Clever child.” Mercurio, dry-eyed, stroked the boy’s hair, once, returned him the mandolin, moved away and left him, going straight through the praise and the cries to place a hand each on the shoulders of grunting affable Chenti and earnest laughing Troian.
“Have I justified a reward?”
“You have,” said Chenti. “I’d invite you to sing here every night. The ladies swoon. Come, what’s on your mind to have?”
“Let the first dance of the evening be the Turcanda.”
“Such energy next after supper. But why not? Granted, Estemba Uno.”
“One other thing,” said Mercurio.
“Oh, name it, name it.”
“Noble lord, noble bridegroom-to-be, the Turcanda, and myself to lead, with Iuletta Chenti.”
Chenti scowled. He was, in fact, very drunk. He did not approve of such conduct, sensing jibes, connivings. But Belmorio, also extremely tipsy, flung one arm round Mercurio and with the other lightly pummelled Chenti in the ribs.
“Ah, let the poor man have her for the dance. The measure will part them often enough. And a Mercurio consumed by hopeless love is a rare vision for the rest of us.”
It was the league of youth against middle age. Chenti did not care for it, but neither did he care, publically and under these circumstances, to stand in its way. He therefore lifted Iuletta out of her seat and put her hand in Mercurio’s, just as he had given it to Belmorio before. She had had no say in the affair, had perhaps not been listening, for she gave the startled impression of one shaken abruptly from sleep.
Chenti was vocalizing fresh orders, the musicians tuning up, guests scrambling for the open floor, others subsiding to glean the litter of the tables.
“Cheer him,” said Troian to Iuletta. “For a little, little while, my dearest almost-wife.”
Mercurio bowed to Iulet. He kissed her chill and immaculate hand, then drew her on to the mosaic.
As the drums began, the column of dancers formed. They took the five initial steps, Estemba caught Chenti’s daughter by the waist and lifted her. She went up lightly as a sawdust doll raised by strings between his hands, pleasing him. Her palms rose and met in the florid clap the dance stipulated. Automatically she was performing, for she still looked dazed.
He let her down, they took a step. In seven further steps he must relinquish her to the man at his back, for the dance was obdurate. Softly, and with great tenderness, Mercurio said to her as they went forward:
“And may I hope to see you again at Susina’s brothel?”
* * *
• • •
As the Turcanda—a dance intended to mimic certain raids and abductions carried out by the Islamite Turci on neighboring lands, and by some considered degenerate—escalated through lifts, leaps, stampings, whirlings, mock fights and quite dangerous running exchanges of partners, individuals, intimidated, fled from the glittering melee, while others, aroused, scurried to replace them.
Electra, watching as her daughter spun through each measure with the brass and white young man, had unwarily taken on the cruel engrossment of Venus’ cats when doves were released over their heads. But the solitary finger which touched her shoulder was immediately identified, and immediately evoked response. She turned and stared into the flushed face of her nephew.
“What is it that you want, Leopardo?”
“I want you to match me in the Turcanda.”
“Alas, you must go wanting.”
“Wanting and burning.” Grinning, glorious, he leaned over her. “Why do you torture me in this Way? Do you enjoy it?”
“You are drunk,” she said, jerking her head aside from the wine fumes which, on his clean young breath, were not remotely offensive.
“Drunk. Drunk on wine. Drunk on—”
“I am tired of your insults.”
For a second, her eyes flashed with bright anger.
Leopardo saw the pulse quicken in her throat and longed to seize it. He put his lips to her ear and said, “I’d like to strangle you, my aunt.”
One seat away, Chenti, discussing some mercantile interest sluggishly with a sluggish Belmorio Primo, paid no heed, did not notice.
Electra gathered herself into stone.
“You are my flesh and blood,” she hissed to Leopardo (both whispered like lovers or murderers together), “therefore I restrain myself. One word to my lord—”
“We’ll see.” Leopardo raised his voice, leaning across her to catch Chenti’s sleeve. “Lordly Uncle? Sir? My lord?”
“What?” Pig-eyed with drink, Chenti blearily gawped over his shoulder.
“Give me leave to dance with my aunt.”
“Oh, take her.” Chenti turned back to business.
Leopardo lowered his lips once more to Electra’s ear. Her proximity, so easily achieved in the midst of such a crowd, dizzied him. “He says ‘yes.’ You heard your lord and master. Get up, then, lady, and obey him.”
“No.” Two narrow fists of bone and rings lay on the table. Leopardo considered them. The urge to take them up and crush them was almost uncontrollable. He swayed against her chair, wanting to fall prostrate on top of her. “No,” she said again.
“Lord Uncle? My lord? Sir?”
“Oh, by God, what now?”
“She says she will not. Donna Electra refuses me, and your command.”
“Stars of fire. Get up, Electra. Do as you’re bid. How does this look to our guests?”
“My lord, please excuse me. I am faint.” Never had a woman sounded less near to fainting, her voice a thin steel dagger. It ran through Leopardo like an awl. He knew he could have done the same service for her, there on the strewn table. What, after all, was sin? The body’s life.
“Ah,” said Chenti. “Do not press her if she’s unwell.” Solicitous kindness, to impress Belmorio.
Adultery, incest. Leopardo drank more wine. It did not dull the ache of unrelieved lust that gathered in his belly, the sparks in his brain.
Electra, the ice-queen, unlike the ice statues on the tables, unmelted.
She had become aware of her nephew as a man only in the past year. Before that he had been a male child, out of her sphere; a child she heard much of from others, and now and then had unavoidably seen for herself. A nasty unruly thing, who had ridden a horse to death at twelve, beaten his dogs, gone away to the colleges of Padova and been renowned there for brilliant swordplay, drunkenness, orgies with Eastern drugs, arguments with creditors and usurers, and unlawful duels without number. When he had invaded the Tower, an adult just twenty years of age, she had avoided him with allergy, somehow, however, always managing to come on him accidentally. One day, after she had heard Leopardo engaged in a fierce quarrel with Lord Chenti, she had found her nephew in this accidental way, smashing with his sword hilt the faces of statues in the stone garden, and weeping with rage. A strange note had been struck within Electra at the sight. She had lived elsewhere until her marriage, hated all Lord Chenti’s property, and had liked to see it defaced—perhaps it was only that. She had set her hand on Leopardo’s bowed head and allowed herself a moment with the mass of apricot hair that felt like crisp wild grass to her. Then he had looked at her. Anything might have happened, but Electra elected to withdraw her caress and to say: “What’s this? Are you a baby or a man?” And at that he had stood straight, half a foot taller than she, his reddened eyes glaring down at her, and she had known him for a man indeed.
How he angered her, now, and always. She got no peace from him. Night-time disturbances when Chenti was from home, mocking rhymes made and carolled (disguised, still obviously about herself), gestures dramatic and suspect, the aura of him everywhere. Her anger was like a knot inside her. And when he was by, it became a knot of serpents. She did not know quite yet how she had come to rely, to feed upon this anger, her only appetite.
A crash behind her told her Leopardo had thrown his valuable glass wine cup to the floor.
“Oh, pardon me, lord Uncle. It slipped from my grasp.”
Like a spurl of flames he was gone, striding erratically yet powerfully to the next table.
“Donna Rosalena. May I persuade you to the Turcanda?”
Rosalena, one of the lesser kindred of the Chentis, smiled her arch smile at him, framed by white roses.
“The dance is too rough for me, sir. And since no others quit the floor, we’d need to hustle one pair away, or the sets would be out.”
“We’ll hustle then. Come with me. Who is there to stay for?”
The black-haired youth in unrecognized House colors moved between Leopardo and Rosalena.
“You are superfluous, sir,” said Romulan. He, too, smiled, most courteously.
“And you are rude, sir.”
“You are rude, sir, insisting a lady dance when she prefers other pastimes.”
“You being the pastime?” The third smile, Leopardo’s. A pause, both men drunk, smiling, waiting for each other. “And what are you,” Leopardo added, “a Master mariner?”
“A mariner?”
“I took you for one, covered all over by shipping as you seem to be.”
“Shipping, and a mariner? I might as well take you, sir, for an orange.”
“And how an orange?”
“By your colors, sir. On your clothes, and on your head.”
“Your wit, I fear, limps.”
“To keep pace with yours, sir,” said Romulan nicely.
Bystanders had gathered. The table, titillated, alert, had in patches risen and drawn closer to overhear.
Leopardo Chenti raised his voice with deliberation.
“Declare your House, sir. Unless you are ashamed of it.”
“No shame, I assure you. Montargo.”
“Ah, yes. Bloody Montargo, who kills its foes in dark alleyways with the paws of hired murderers. Montargo the House of money lenders, cheats and trulls. No shame at all.”
Romulan ceased smiling, and the bystanders tensed. This was too sharp. Rosalena, some noted, had slipped gracefully away from the center of the confrontation.
“You are one of my hosts,” said Romulan. “I’ll assume you entertain evil friends who misinform you. Or that you have some defect of the ears.”
“My ears are sound. My friends are sound, for I have no friend who’s a Montargo.”
Over the music and cries of the dance, this end of the hall was now extremely still. Lord Chenti was looking in their direction. Lady Chenti had been watching some while. Feeling her eyes like two stings on his back, Leopardo, excited in any number of interconnected ways, made an exaggerated bow to Romulan, whose first name he did not even know, but the measure of whose fires he had already taken.
“Villain,” said the bowing Leopardo. “Backstabber. Thief. Dog. Toad. Worm. True Montargo. Unless, bloody, backstabbing villain, I wrong you. Unless you are your mother’s bastard.”
As Leopardo straightened, a hand that was partly a fist caught him in the mouth. Leopardo staggered backward, steadied himself on the table and shook hair from his eyes, and ringing from his skull, grinning. A woman had screamed at the blow. Leopardo knew the sound, the nature of the scream: anticipatory and savage. It lifted him further. He stood up and let his hand fall in the most precise of gestures to the dagger in his belt. Swords had been left off for the occasion, or removed at the door. But daggers, reminder of earlier days when they served for cutlery, had not. The young man in blue who had become his showpiece, a theater for Leopardo’s passions, in an irresistible echoing move also set hand to hilt.
Leopardo grinned more delightedly, and whipped his own blade from its sheath. The shadowplay happened again and the blue fellow’s dagger was drawn. What price now Chenti’s etiquette, Iulet’s betrothal auspices? Let them all go hang and be damned. And Electra, the black-eyed insomniac, let her see. She would like it, he knew she would, though never admit she liked it. Disapproving, breathing through parted lips, her little breasts throbbing with her heart—he could, without turning, picture it all.
“A new dance,” said Leopardo. “I call it the Deathstep.”
Shouting and calling in alarm, the neighboring watchers had already pressed back instinctively to form a ring, as at a cock fight.
Leopardo tossed the dagger in the air, caught it again, prepared lion-like to spring forward—a dart of movement changed his plan. He checked, and found the Montargo’s friend, that Estemba with the brass-yellow shirt, who, having leapt straight over the table, stood before him where Montargo should have been.
“Now my dear sir, my best lord of cats,” said the Estemba, with the most sweet reasonableness. He blocked each of the fighters from the other with total effect. Leopardo blinked at him, retrieved a name-Flavian, called Mercurio, the singer of songs.
“The business with mandolins is done,” said Leopardo. “Move aside. Stay with what you are good at.”
Mercurio gazed at him with such innocent gentleness it was a pity to doubt it, but Estemba’s eyes were clear almost to transparency, dangerous enough Leopardo did not try for him in that moment.
Montargo had come up on Estemba’s left and was attempting to push by him.
“Peace,” Mercurio said to him. “This is no Fero you’d be aiming swipes at This one is the Prince of Swords, they tell me.”
“Oh, humbly thank you for your praise,” Leopardo snarled.
Romulan snarled: “Get out of my way.”
Mercurio clicked his tongue, and with the disparagement of an elderly monk rebuked them both: “What sort of behavior is this? Little children should love one another.”
Beyond them, the Turcanda had ended in disarray. The musicians were silent, the dancers staring, the rest of the crowd with them. Shambling like a great crimson ox, Lord Chenti was reeling over, thrusting friends and kin violently from his path, intent on putting an end to the brawl.
“You see,” Mercurio said to Romulan, looking at Leopardo, not taking his eyes from Leopardo, “he fights to get rid of his nine lives. Kill him but once and he will only be after you again. You would be killing him all evening.”
A wink of white light above, then a gigantic blow of thunder seemed to shake the Tower, knocking the last doves from the rafters. A storm without and within. Heads were involuntarily raised and a few women shrieked at the sky-riding thunderbolt—who had not thought to give tongue at the sight of drawn daggers three feet from their noses.
A second, less impressive, thunder was Lord Chenti’s incoherent roar, which shook nothing and no one, but which promised that he might. He had reached the second table. He was seizing Leopardo, turning him. One martial hand went up, prepared to strike. And there, in that awful besotted attitude of power, Chenti stayed himself. While Leopardo, before he could prevent it, cringed at the expected impact of a blow which never came.
