Sung in shadow, p.24
Sung in Shadow, page 24
Romulan knew nothing of this, or did not know it with his mind, even now. He saw images, but asked no questions of them. He revisited the countless warrens of the Bhorga, the room in the Estemba Tower with its arcane swords and the picture of the oliphant. He saw the streets, the broad marble-ice chambers of great Houses. Mercurio was in each, suitable and couth in whatever altitude, high or low. Romulan saw stars colliding, blowing out, and felt the arm which held him. He heard Mercurio say: “It seems I’m going, after all, where you sent me.”
Leopardo had dallied away, wiping his cheek on his inaccurately tied sleeve. He drew a line of fire over the sky with the sword as he did so. Romulan’s eyes followed it irresistibly, and almost missed the incoming thrust—
(“Now,” Mercurio said, “kill me for insulting your precious House.”)
—Which tore through the fabric of his wedding clothes. Romulan riposted, this time aiming for the dagger. But the thing was gone, plucked from range, and the Cat leapt with it, grinning.
(“My Lady Death, we are before you.”)
Romulan pursued him. His arm was heavier now. Leopardo, who bled, seemed to have grown lighter, made weightless and fey by the catharsis of mortal liquors. As Romulan turned, clapping sword once more to sword, he beheld faces streaming by. A small crowd had blossomed by the alleyway that led down into the Bhorgabba. How long before the Duca sent his men?
(“There has been an earthquake all along the road,” Mercurio said. “We’ve been nearly shaken to pieces by the thudding hearts of the bride and groom.”)
Iuletta. Romulan, his wrist singed by the maniac’s sword, swung back and felt the earth crack under him. Iuletta.
“Do you recall the nightingale?” she said to him. Her hair fell soft as scented water across his cheeks as he clung to her, his head on her breast, and wept.)
The swords struck each other, slewed, came away. Romulan staggered as he had when he rose from Mercurio’s side. And Chenti crowed, mocking him. All life, now, was the square. The taste of life was dust and bitter sunlight. The walls of life were watching avid faces.
(“A single kiss from your wife?” Mercurio said. He lifted his head from her lips, and was thrust forward to the length of the hard held sword until it came from his back. “I am going where you sent me.”)
Romulan cried out. The cry sounded loudly to him, in fact it was muted, nearly restrained. Gasping, and blinded by the tears that burst now from his eyes, seeming to shatter them, he stumbled, groaned, clutched at air, at reason, and relinquished them.
Then, because he could not see him, he ran at Leopardo blind. And, because he did not care what Leopardo might bring against him now, knife or fist or sword, he beat through the Chenti’s guard, no longer with finesse or wisdom or any of the swordsman’s trained and beautiful symmetry—which Mercurio had so rigorously taught him—but hammering, hacking, clawing, and screaming, a long soulless masculine breaking scream of pain and hunger.
Leopardo had paved the road to this. If he had wished to receive death at the end of it was uncertain, but now for sure he faced death, and he knew it. Whatever had been his urge, his motivation, the horror of the thrashing sword, mindless and already basted in another’s blood, appalled him. Romulan’s tears struck his cheek as he gave ground. Leopardo snarled, blocking off the butcher’s blows automatically but with an increasing weakness. Romulan sought to kill him, determined to kill him. Romulan, now, would rip his way through wood, through metal and through fire to come at him. This Leopardo understood. A man unmoved by such a passion, particularly one who lost blood for every feint and weave and twist he made, could not long resist this advance. While men who fought as Romulan now fought would fight on with their death-wound already deeply written in their flesh. They would tear, if the sword were gone, with hands and teeth. They would trample and gouge and rend, until only the silence under them released them from the spell of blood-lust. This, also, Leopardo understood. And Romulan, though he did not, had become the proof that such things were possible.
Slammed back against the Basilica steps, Leopardo lost footing suddenly. Now, he, too, stumbled. The dagger left him, skittered from his reach, and barely saving himself, his skill and his fighter’s appetite failed him for the first time, and utterly. It was not quite fear, not quite anything that was namable, that made the Leopard in that moment turn and run. As he did so, trailing his sword, up the incline of the street that led by the trees, the colonnades, to the Chenti Tower, he laughed raucously, and felt the blood erupt from his side. His legs, as when he had courted the woman who had brought him to this hour, were nerveless. Each racing step threatened to bring him down under the blade that rushed blue and black and ceaselessly calling, a cry like a starving beast’s, behind him.
No one was in the way of this side of the square. The lawns of the college and Basilica Library swirled past. Already, already, the slope of the home tower was visible, with its golden Cat upon the pinnacle.
Leopardo ran. His eyes were peeled open, and his mouth. He still laughed, when he found the breath for it.
He had reached, under the heavy boughs, the side-door that led into the orchard, when Romulan caught him.
The sword whipped across Leopardo’s back, shearing through everything but solid bone. He sprawled on his face, his lips blotted by dust his own sword gone. And there, he attempted to crawl away, and a hand came and dragged him over. He lay on his wounded spine then, and on the carpet of his blood, gazing up. Romulan’s face, a thing of incredible ugliness in its physical jewelry, swam and roiled against the canopied trees. Otherwise there was only the sun-splashed sword, lifted, about to come down. Leopardo swallowed dust and salt blood, and said quickly, “Iulet—I lessoned her, too. Thank me? Against a wall, beneath a bush. I had her in her juices before you—” And stopped as the sword broke in the shell of his throat.
The possession was ended; the hunger had been fed.
Romulan let go of the sword a second time, not concerned with it anymore. Turning, he set his hand against the wall, and dimly recollected this was her wall, and this the orchard of her kindred, through which he had been hunted into her arms. He walked a short distance beside it, and then dropped to his knees, the corpse of what he had killed not far behind him. The wall, hot from the sun, was so ordinary. It cradled his shoulder and balanced him against itself kindly. The leaves crisped over each other. His weeping now was like Benevolo’s, so strong it seemed to disintegrate him. He could scarcely breathe for weeping, certainly could not think for it. In some strange way, even the cause was lost.
And over the wall, she was. He could have gone to her. She would have held him, more sweetly than the wall, her hair, her voice, more subtle than the leaves. In all the world, there was only Iuletta now who could rescue him. And yet, even so soon he knew, he would never see her again.
Eventually, the great growing noise in the square below reached him, and then reached through to him. He got up then, slowly, and as he did so, the bell of the campanile began to toll, dulled iron strokes, and each passed through him and after it another passed.
When, in their expected turn, he heard fierce hoofbeats on the cobbles, he waited, mastering himself as best he could, which was no man’s best, and finally looked up to see the gold and scarlet of the Duca, the drawn blades and austere faces come to take him, and stood there witlessly because rather than these, Benevolo was on the street below the Tower of the Chentis. Benevolo mounted on his grey horse, the black Montargo gelding pulled with them by its reins.
“Romulan?” White-faced Benevolo, the first to smash, had now commanded himself as Romulan, now, could not.
“What?” Romulan said.
“The Duke is in the square, and the Estembas have been sent for. Chesarius took his body from me,” said Benevolo. He frowned, clenching his face and next his fists to keep from crying again. “Here’s your horse. Get from the town. The fools—” he stopped and stared at Romulan in a sort of terror. “They think you killed Mercurio. They would not listen to me.”
“I killed him? Yes—”
“No. No, Romulan. That bitch on the stair—she saw your sword had red on it, and Leopardo’s none, and Mercurio—” Benevolo suddenly arched his back, flung up his head and shouted at the sky a chain of blasphemies, clear as the notes of a bird, clear as when he had sung at the feast the descant to Mercurio’s song.
(Who can tell where love will lead us—I know. The bell, the gate. It seems, after all, I shall be going where you sent me.)
The bell of the campanile ground out Benevolo’s voice. Benevolo looked down again.
“Take the horse,” he said.
Romulan turned and put his face against the wall, and his hands against his face to hold the two substances, flesh and stone, together. Just so had Leopardo lain against the carving of the Basilica, if Romulan had seen it.
Benevolo looked aside and saw Leopardo’s corpse under the sprinkled shadow of the orchard trees. At length one noted the marks of him were not all shadows. Benevolo smiled, though partly the sight made him wish to vomit Then, turning back, Benevolo leaned from his horse, took Romulan’s long hair in his hand and wrenched at it. The head was forced back from the shelter of the wall, excruciatingly, cursing, not desiring to be separated.
“He did not want you dead,” Benevolo said, “and that was how he came to die. So live, now, Montargo. Live. Or it was for nothing.”
“Live to love,” Romulan said.
Weeping still, he went from the wall and pulled himself, with a helpless discounting grace, on to the horse, and sat there, his head hanging.
“Where, where on God’s earth am I to go?”
Benevolo studied his reins.
“Do you ask me? I’ll tell you, then. Go to the one above and beyond the law. The crazy priest in the field.”
Below in the square, the hubbub gathered itself. They had forgotten the plague. Conceivably the congregation of so many men would spread it. Everything, perhaps, was to be overturned.
“Laurus,” Romulan said.
“He, if so you call him. Go on, for the love of Jesus. Go. I’ll get word to Valentius.”
Romulan did not answer. He huddled on the horse. He sobbed now, his head in his hands, loudly and hoarsely, hating the sounds he made.
“You,” Benevolo suddenly said. “So much grief. But what did you ever give him, save your steel through his heart?” And heard the sobbing choke on itself, and stop. The blue eyes, like two raw sapphires in the reddened rims, came up and struck on his. Benevolo whispered, “But he asked you for nothing, did he? Go, Romulan. Go to the priest. I’ll tell Valentius and no other where you’ll be found.”
The bell tolled.
Romulan, straightening suddenly, wheeled the horse. Mount and rider galloped away and Benevolo ceased to watch them. Instead, he watched Leopardo’s corpse, watched and watched it, as if it might try to rise. The sword, Romulan’s, which lay beside the ill-tied sleeve, Benevolo did not see.
PART THREE:
The Bell
FIFTEEN
Since the shutters had been opened, the sunlight was dippered upon the polished mirror and on the polished face reflected in it. One of Electra’s maids, who feared her, dusted the face with powdered rice scented with the rind of oranges. Another, who feared her almost equally, brushed down and down the rope of hair, a spillage like black oil, and began to plait, to elevate and to pin with garnets, and next to torture out, with hot tongs spiced by ambergris, three spirals before each ear.
In Electra’s face no change was visible. In the body, the changes had shrunk and faded swiftly, altering as inevitably as the moon altered, from the full to the narrow crescent Now, nothing gave her away. Her hands were frigid, her eyes hard. Only the gown she had elected to wear, a costly robe of oriental silk, crimson merely where one could find it under the dragonflies of lilac and golden thread, was oddly festive. But then, her husband would return this evening. It might be a mark of her respect for him, to dress in this exquisite gift he had given her, years before. The present was allotted publicly, at a feast in the hall below. Whimsicality had again prevailed. The material was laid between boards of cedar-wood, like a book, which had perfumed it as the incense had also perfumed it in which it had been steeped, bolts of fabric stacked for weeks in the smoke of burners of musk and frankincense in some shed of the spice-lands. This assemblage had been brought to her by masked and spangled demi-gods with wings, to the sound of pipes, amid a deluge of roses. The guests had applauded. Later that night, Lord Chenti had mounted her for the last time, the very last. The gown was made and put away, worn on a handful of occasions, when he had demanded it. By the night of the betrothal feast, Chenti had forgotten it entirely.
Now as she rose, a bone knife in a sheath of colors, glitters and faded, dully dazzling aromas, she heard the bell begin to toll from the campanile, not the ninth hour of the morning, but the advent of death.
The two maids, one after the other, crossed themselves. Their eyes were large, for death was a dreadful commonplace, and only a truly dreadful death, notable and of significance, was so sounded for.
Electra Chenti did not mark herself with the cross.
She said, “Someone is to be buried today?”
“No, my donna. No one.”
“Then someone,” said Electra, “is newly dead.”
The maid who had spoken moved to the open window. She stood there, not looking out, but listening. Her face grew very still.
“There’s shouting somewhere, lady. From the Basilica square, I think.”
The other maid, the powder bowl in her hands, paled to rival the rice.
“Someone slain,” she said. “Oh God grant mercy.”
A month before, two of Suvio’s servants had mortally stabbed her brother. The bell had not rung for Gianotto, yet her brush with the shadow was near. She began to cry, hiding herself from Electra.
The three women in the room did not otherwise move for some moments, and then the girl at the window said, “I hear horses.” And then again, after a little while, “I think the shouting is closer. Madama, shall I send one to ask what has happened?”
“Yes,” Electra said, her small voice like a needle.
The two girls both ran gladly out and left her, and she turned to look at the opened bed beneath its thunderous canopy. Listen for a crash like cannon, he had said to her. She had lain and watched him leave her, knowing he must and would come back.
She did not move again for some minutes, but stood there, attendant. She heard the billowing noise the crowd made now, over and about the endless groan of the bell. Next she heard a banging of doors and a muffled shouting below her, in the house. For some reason then, briefly, her thought turned to Iuletta. Electra’s daughter, arriving whey-faced and fragile after her unseemly absence, beside a Cornelia flushed and puffing with anxiety, had been sent to her chamber and ordered to remain there. Cornelia’s account then taken—the priest’s holy benison delaying them, the night spent in the oratory in a cell kept for visitors, Electra had accepted as tiresomely adequate. Nevertheless, she berated the woman, in three or four succinct and vicious verbal carvings, which incidentally stripped from the nurse most of her self-esteem and left her puffing anew in necessarily inexpressible rage, and a frustration near to tears. Iuletta’s personal chastisement was to be saved for sunset, when the threat of the father’s bloodshot wrath might also be added. This cruelty was Electra’s efficiency rather than her pleasure. The lamb might not stray, so the law of this House ran, and so she would keep it. Thus Electra had been trained. That she herself had broken free of all contemporary morality in one long night, with the golden body of Leopardo’s youth nailed to her own, made the surface of her ethic, inevitably, the more rigid.
But as the notion of her daughter melted away, Electra felt, as it were, the edge of a knife against her nerves. She could not have said what it was, she had seldom debated with herself. Nor did she, even in the teeth of it, admit her premonition. Yet she turned again sharply, the oriental silk sizzling over the floor, and as she did so a terrible wail shocked through the house, a noise so horrible and so real that half the Chenti dogs began to bark and howl.
Across Electra’s face, then, something sprang. It was a wild and unconscionable anger.
Even as she stepped toward the antechamber and the outer door, hands beat on the panels and she heard the female voices summoning her.
When she appeared the woman fell back, sobbing in alarm and distress, not daring to speak to her, and not needing to. At last, the words came from elsewhere, borne up the staircase in shrieks, and in a sort of mortal terror that had nothing to do with sorrow: “Leopardo Chenti is dead!”
Flat-backed, her ringed hands clasped under her high bodice, unspeaking, unquestioning, Electra descended through the Tower. She came, at every lobby and landing and passageway into a storm of disturbance and noise that fell dumb at her advance. And then she came into the heart of the disturbance, which also fell dumb, and stole aside to let her see.
They had brought him, like a feast, into the banquet-hall.
He lay on a heap of cloaks, over the mosaic chariot of Pluto, the god of death, so inadvertently apposite was their placing of him.
A cloak had also been flung across his body, covering him from the calves to the lips.
