Sung in shadow, p.16
Sung in Shadow, page 16
“No, but for the sake of God—”
“Point three (or four) being the marriage. In time-honored tradition, it must be a secret one. Do you agree? Wed first and, the damage done, declare yourselves to both your families. You’ll need witnesses.”
“Can you provide—”
“I can. I think.”
“Mercuric—”
“I can. I can. Now, not merely a secret match, but a swift one.”
“Tomorrow?”
“By stars and whirling comets. He is in earnest.”
“Never more so.” Romulan caught him by the shoulder and held him still.
“You look like death,” Mercurio said. “Trust me. If you wish it, we’ll get it done. Someone must take word to the maid. And you’re disqualified from the work. Old Chenti is from home with some doxy, a useful departure. I’ll play my name then, act messenger, while sweet Leopardo is out at the Basilica mousehole. There’s a winning notion. And she’ll say ‘yes’ to all this, will she, your Iuletta?”
Romulan’s face tightened on its bones, as suddenly as he saw the gulf before her feet, knowing she would throw herself into it for him. He said, very low, “I have no right to ask it of her.”
But, “Every right,” Mercurio said gently, placing one arm around his shoulders. “All rights. Love’s rights. But, good lover, stay away yourself from the Basilica and the orange cat-gentleman. You must live, to love.”
* * *
• • •
The moon withered like a pale yellow flower and the last windows of the Higher Town faded in darkness. A great white owl circled the campanile like a ghost in love with the voice of the bell. In the Bhorga, blood-red lights sank into dead scarlet; sad cries of pleasure or despair fell from slits of windows. Music turned from ribaldry and dance to songs of dead lovers, and the night turned toward the morning to be comforted.
Beyond the town, the hills waited for the sun to climb them, striking their tops with solar winds and rays.
The stars dried to opacity, like tears.
The sky opened, one enormous window.
The towers began to harden on the dawn, their crenelations, slopes, angles, balconies, overhangs, ornaments, emblems, banners. Those terrible towers, the quills of a porcupine, the spines of a dragon—
Birds flew out of the sun into the town, and off the roofs of Verensa into the sun, passing each other with contemptuous cries: This way is the better way. Until the heat of the morning quelled them. And in the Chenti orchard Cornelia’s page, Pieto, had tossed one dead bird, a dove, under a peach tree to manure the soil.
At a fraction after nine, Cornelia, pummeling through the orchard, trod on the corpse and crossed herself.
She had not slept, not a wink. She was worn by the memory that, had she not scandalously taken Iuletta with her to daughter Susina’s house, Iuletta would not have had thrust before her the heartless youth who now caused so much upheaval. It was true, Cornelia had been unable to pry from her nurseling—at the Basilica unweeping and abruptly adamant in her privacy—what had passed between the two in the capella. But Cornelia herself had beheld the young man leaving with a hard marble face (like Iuletta’s own). No joy had come of the interview, so much was evident. Cornelia took this slight on her charge personally. Was not Iuletta a gem, a rose, a Venus? (And had she perhaps supped some of this radiance from the nourishing nipple of Cornelia, who at Iulet’s age had been well-manned three years and more and pretty as could be? Cold Electra had no looks at all, thin stick that she was.) How dared the fellow make light of all this loveliness of Iulet’s? Poor girl. Yes, indeed, Cornelia knew what it was to suffer from the faithlessness of the bold and carefree male. How did the song go? You might break a maid’s chink but once, her heart a thousand times. Tut, for shame to think of that, and the poor baby crying hour by hour all night, those tears she would no longer shed before the nurse. And opening the bed-chamber door, what an icy little tune had issued from the bed: “Go out, nurse. I am well.” Like Electra herself, who had never dropped a tear that Cornelia could recall, and as few loving words. But: “How can I think you well, when you lie crying like a hare in a trap all night?” had protested Cornelia. “You can think me well since I tell you that I am.” “And am I to suppose day is night if I’m told so?” Victory? No. Back came the little tune, remorseful now, but still unbreached: “Kind nurse, be kind and leave me. I’ll be better tomorrow.”
Cornelia, the expected tantrum, the wails, the torrent, withheld from her, had gone away perplexed. Like many who tend and worship a child, thriving on the beneficent power this function gifts them, she saw the onset of the adult with misgiving. Partly for this reason the recurring corpse of the dove, sigil of destroyed innocence, unnerved her. It reminded her too, that in the excitement, she herself had never prayed; nor, she suspected, had Iuletta.
“Donna Cornelia,” a boy’s voice yelped.
Life-giving annoyance. Cornelia recognized the vocality of her page. A moment more and the cherubic pest had sprung out on her from a stand of mulberries.
“Donna!”
“Do not bark at me, you hound. What’s to do?”
“In the house is a gentleman who asks for you.”
“Is it that spice-merchant again?”
“Not at all.” Pieto was disposed to tantalize.
Cornelia, generally indisposed, boxed his ears.
“Did I not instruct you to bury that dove?”
“Indeed—I gave it Christian burial,” muttered Pieto, sourly. “A cat must have dug it up.”
“Such lies. You nasty fragment. What a monster you’ll be when you’re a man, Lord bless us.”
“It’s a prince of Estemba Tower,” said Pieto hastily, now earnest to distract Cornelia was distracted.
“Who Estemba?” she demanded, as if she knew them all.
“The one they call Mercurio. He that sang at the banquet and danced with Lady Iuletta and whose friend drew dagger on Leopardo and—”
“What a gossip I As if you’d seen it with your own eyes, and you in the kitchen making yourself sick on comfits the whole while.” Mightily curious, Cornelia was already swirling toward the house. Pieto, long-practiced, skedaddled from her path. (I on comfits, you on wine, massive madama.) Pieto, boxed ears and all, was not out of sorts. The glamorous Mercurio had bribed him with coins in the lobby to do this service of Cornelia-getting. Though what any man could want with this vast puffing pudding—
The visitor had been let into a tiny antechamber off the entrance lobby, whose only virtue was the white glass of its windows. This he was apparently admiring.
Cornelia, bustling in, looked at the fellow’s back shrewdly. Yes, she recalled this one, from the brief perambulation of the betrothal banquet she had been allowed to make. And, more to the point, this was the devil-masked devil who had first carried Romulan Montargo into her young lady’s sight. Cornelia recognized the body in its fashionable closeness of garments, and certainly it would be a pity, with so many young men of such excellent shape, if the fashion should be altered. . . . Cheered by his style, she almost forgave him. Then he turned, swept her a bow as if she were an empress, strode over, calmly took her hand and kissed it.
“Most beautiful Donna Cornelia,” said Mercurio, in a voice like a caress, “I come to you in jeopardy, anxiety and great puzzlement Only you can help me. Will you take pity?”
“Go on with you, you wretch,” said Cornelia. “Give me back my hand.”
“Not till you answer with a charitable ‘yes’ or a killing ‘no’.”
“I’ll promise nothing till I know what you want.”
“Beautiful lady—”
“Who is beautiful? Is your sight to blame, or your lying tongue?”
“Why,” said Mercurio seriously, looking at her with great attention, “I would call you beautiful. Lustrous eyes, a skin like a pale pink rose, a fine full figure to delight any man who likes to travel in comfort—”
“Oh! You villain, you!” shrieked Cornelia and burst into ear-splitting merriment, radiating joy in this game to the extremes of her person.
Mercurio, laughing at her laughter, waited till she had stopped, gazed at him, and so restarted, holding her ribs. When her mirth ran out, leaving her beaming and beaming, and wiping her eyes (which were indeed as estimable as he had described them), Mercurio regained her hand and vowed: “I take you prisoner, lady, till I’m answered.”
“You demon. You’ve no business here at all. Be thankful Lord Chenti is away. And our fiery Leopardo, too.”
“Why else am I here at this hour?”
“Hah. Well, speak up.”
“Do I at least get a favorable hearing, fair lady?”
Cornelia grinned importantly. She had forgiven him everything.
Meeting each other’s eyes in that instant, both of them were suddenly aware of a streak of pure niceness running through the characteristic flesh of the other, like a backbone.
“I’m predisposed,” said Cornelia. “But I’m not the mistress here. I assume you want time with my young Iuletta.”
“Time indeed, but for another than myself. All the time there is.”
“What’s this? Can it be red-headed Belmorio sent you?”
“No. Black-haired Montargo sent me.”
“Oh God!” cried Cornelia, clapping her hands to her bosom, smitten (vicariously) to the heart by the words as she knew Iuletta would be. “What for? What does he want of her, having almost slain her with liking and grief.”
“To slay her all over again with love. In a bed.”
“Oh Jesus and Maria!”
“A lawful bed.”
“Oh, my stars.”
“He wishes to marry her, madama.”
Cornelia tottered. Mercurio supported her. With pleasure in the acting, she courteously did not throw her weight upon him, he courteously pretended she was weightless. They were confederates.
“Your friend is belated,” Cornelia said at length. “He should have spoken before Belmorio did.”
“My friend had not seen her then.”
“Nor she your friend. Oh my. What is to be done?”
“Let them wed in secret and then declare the match. Montargo is a noble House, and very rich. Belmorio can be persuaded to lie quiet if it has no choice.”
“Yes, Red-Hair lusts for her, but it’s the fathers arranged it. He’ll find another. And if Romulan Montargo pines for her as she for him—”
“Oh, nearly dead, I assure you.”
“Then.” Cornelia sank in romance until it reached her chin. All but her sense was submerged.
“Then, it rests with you.”
“Me, sir?”
“You tell Lady Chenti you will accompany her daughter to seek further consolation from the priests. Girls betrothed suffer humors—some holy father must reassure her. Embroider. The larger the excuse for a delayed return the better. Does her mother know anything bad yet of Fra Laurus, the sorcerer-priest?”
“No, the Donna concerns herself with nothing.”
“Then tell her Iulet goes to visit him, outside the walls. Some account him a sage, kissed by the saints.”
“So I tell a pack of lies. What then?”
“Take Iuletta, and a couple of her maids only, and bring them to the south gate. We’ll meet you there, on the Padova road. There’s a priest in Marivero can cope with a marriage.”
“A village not fit to keep hens?”
“What else? Would you have trumpets and a bridal procession and the bridegroom butchered on the Basilica steps? Can you be on the road today?”
“Mercy, no.”
“Sunset, then?”
“Why, what a thought—”
“It must be done while her lordly father’s from home. If they wed this evening, we can let them have at least one night to imagine themselves in Paradise, before the walls of Montargo and Chenti come smashing round their poor little ears and they know themselves in Hell instead. Consider, if Iulet is missed that night and her father home, he’ll have his household and his men out searching before midnight Are you with me now, wise Cornelia?”
“With you, you spicy ruffian? We shall burn together, no doubt.”
“Let’s earn burning, then. An hour before sunset, by the south gate.”
“A secret marriage,” said Cornelia. “I dare not tell her. She’ll die of love and happiness.” Romance had now closed over Cornelia’s head.
Mercurio took her hand again. As Romulan had, Mercurio pressed gold into it. As with Romulan, “No,” she said, shifting her fist on the money.
Mercurio, extravagantly not noting this, was shocked.
“But you must. For luck.”
“Oh,” she said. “Get off then. I’ll do what I can. I’ll swear you’re a fine dancer, with such legs. I would I had my fifteenth year back again.”
“To me,” said Mercurio in the doorway, “you are perfection now. We’ll dance at their wedding.”
Cornelia hastened in the opposite direction. She massively bolted, in a wallow of gown and poundage, to the inner door of Iuletta’s apartment. As she threw the door open, some shadowy idea of subtlety suggested itself. But Cornelia had no time for this shady character. Circumstances had given her back power over her darling.
Iuletta lay on the bed. Her face was blank and she looked dead, but the nurse felt no premonition and no need for caution.
“Wake, catling,” she said. She pushed shut the door with a thud and came to the bedside. “Such news I have for you.”
Iuletta’s eyes opened. They were a thousand years of age. She spoke serenely, almost sympathetically. “What is it?”
In some two or three ecstatic sentences, Cornelia told her what it was.
The nurse was prepared for almost any reaction, save the reaction which was the reward of her efforts.
Iuletta leapt from the bed and away. In a wilderness of hair, she backed to the very wall, and pressed herself to the pink trees on it. Her hands were clenched, her eyes insane. She screamed: “No! No! No!”
* * *
• • •
At some twenty minutes past the hour of nine o’clock, the Leopard, lying in wait in the Basilica cloister, raised his apricot head with a soft growl of satisfaction.
Iulet he had obviously scared, and he had begun to think she had somehow got word of danger to her dove-sending Montargo lover, or else the lover had grown tired of her—possibilities which had been a source of frustration to Leopardo. However, he had just perceived the sunlit funnel of the cloister’s entrance broken by the shape of a slim dark youth swathed in black-blue, which apparition now strode boldly on into the colonnade.
Leopardo reclined in concealment on a pillar, listening and smiling while the brave and swinging steps approached. As the long shadow of Romulan Montargo fell before him into Leopardo’s sight, the Chenti sprang out, slapped first at a glimpse of appalled countenance, and next offered a mighty shove which sent the slim body sprawling backward on the paving. Over this prone and gasping form Leopardo now leaned with a friendly: “Good morning, sweet love—” To meet the aggrieved and horrified glare transfixing the face of Saffiro Vespelli.
“Ah!” Leopardo shouted, and jumping away, burst into furious hilarity.
The error was not illogical. The very black hair, the cloak—now also visible as black, not blue, and plainly marked on the shoulders with the Vespelli Wasp badge—plus the correct impression of good looks. Leopardo was prepared to enjoy the joke even while he abhorred the disappointment. But faint scrambling noises caused him to desist, and mockingly solicitous, to aid Saffiro to his feet.
“A thousand pardons, gentle sir. I reckoned you another.”
“God help him then,” muttered Saffiro.
“God has helped him indeed. God has kept him out of my way.”
Saffiro, nonplussed, vaguely touched at his sword hilt, and thought better of it. If his blood had been up he would have fought, as he would have fought that damned Estemba, in the garden yesterday. Saffiro’s brothers had prevented him then, and cooling, he too had thought somewhat differently on the affair, for Estemba Uno had a reputation as a swordsman that in some ways rivalled mad Leopardo Chenti’s. Nevertheless, since the quarrel in the garden, Saffiro had become obsessed with Estemba Uno—who was called Flavian or Mercurio, depending on who spoke. All last night, indeed, Saffiro had been dreaming of Flavian or Mercurio, and of a prolonged and curiously stimulating duel, which neither won, and during which both displayed great skill, while an increasing fascination and respect grew between them, to the point of their exchanging poetic couplets or cunning puns over the snick and glitter of the blades.
Saffiro did not wish for a new disagreement to muddy the odd interest the first had afforded him. In fact, he had elected to patrol this area of the town with some random notion of coming on Estemba, who apparently frequented the Basilica Library, and therefore, conceivably, the chapel.
Besides all this, Leopardo Chenti alarmed Saffiro in a way Estemba had not. (One of Leopardo’s trademarks was his knack for instilling such alarm.) The idea of combat with Estemba was exciting, a challenge. But combat with Leopardo. . . . Another item altogether. And in any case the shock of being so abruptly felled had dislocated Saffiro’s spirits. He was shaken and disturbed, and wished on the whole to escape.
