Sung in shadow, p.31
Sung in Shadow, page 31
Iuletta sat, straightbacked and tearless, on a small brocade stool. In the corner, a pile of heaving clothes, the nurse rocked and cried and patted herself. Chenti was suspicious of Cornelia. He had been asking questions, his voice, the petrified voices of others, surging up and down the Tower like winds. He perceived now the damned marriage had been effected on the night Cornelia and her charge strayed afield to a priest’s oratory and did not return till morning. That anyone would countenance such a pack of nonsense—if he had been home, things would have been ordered differently. But was a man to have no pleasure? He had thought them obedient and virtuous. And his fish-jelly of a wife—He had thought her at least vigilant.
Part of the matter had already been dissected, and found lamentably sound. The priest at Marivero was real, and not some excommunicate or stooge procured by the Montargos.
“And now you’ll tell me,” Lord Chenti said, “whether or not we may send to his Holiness at Roma for an annulment.”
In the corner bawdy Cornelia choked on her tears, gazing at him aghast.
Iuletta did not even blush, though her eyes never left the ground.
“If you ask me, sir, if we are man and wife, we are.”
“He had you then. Consummation. And no doubt the lock’s broken wide.”
“Oh!” Cornelia said.
“And since you’re broken,” went on Chenti, loudly, “are you filled? Are you bulging with his monster?”
“My lord!” Cornelia cried.
“Hold your tongue you bloody gossiping meddler. Do you think I will have missed who aided the fool in her foolery? Count your hours in this house, you splattering hag. They’re done.”
Cornelia collapsed.
Iuletta said softly and distinctly:
“You’re mistaken, my lord. My nurse knew nothing of what I did.”
“And the sun sets in the east. Her daughter’s a whore. She’d make you another, and has done it. Be silent!” he thundered, and Cornelia was silent. Chenti dropped the edge of his anger again. Breathing like an engine, through his mouth, he said, “Look up, you slattern, and answer yes or no to what I asked.”
And Iuletta raised her eyes, which seemed pale now, but steady, as steady as the eyes of one blind.
“No, my lord.”
Chenti breathed. “You’d swear that?”
“I will swear to it.”
Chenti took a turn between the park of painted trees, swiveled and faced her again. “This husband who is unable to prime you with child, this slayer of your kindred. Where is he?”
“I do not know.”
“Your mother thinks you do.”
“My mother hopes I do, so she may find him through me and have him killed.”
“And what do you dream I want him for? To smack kisses on his forehead? I will have him—accommodated. Your marriage shall be annulled, one way or another.”
“I know nothing of where he is.”
“A charming knight. Takes your treasure then leaves you, worthless to me, on my hands. Well. A search can be made. And when he’s found, he’s dead, Think him so from this instant. And now, attend to me. You have brought a rain of mud on this House, on the name and emblem of the Chentis. When I heard you speak in the chapel, I wished the earth had swallowed you and I’d never had a daughter. Do you listen?”
“Yes, my lord. I am sorry that I grieved you.”
“Grief. Grief, you say?” The rage was lifted and shaken, incarnadine, smoking. “Shut your mouth and keep it so. Do as you’re bid if you would be mine and no grief—grief by the howling stars—no grief to me. I’ll tell you what you will do. You will write to Troian Belmorio. You will say you lied in the capella. That you lied from shame and terror, and out of the great love you bear for him, for Troian, that you could not contemplate his wrath, and his dishonor. You will explain the cause: that the Montargo devil forced you. Forced you, lady. No wedding, no consummation. A rape,” Chenti straightened himself, glaring into his daughter’s white and slowly comprehending dismay. “The letter will be conveyed secretly. A bribe will ensure Red-hair alone gets hold of it. The ninny is besotted with you. By the Christ, I thought he’d drop in a swound when you refused him. He will, like the numbskull he is, choose to overlook your defilement, and will persuade Belmorio Primo to back him. Doubtless, they’ll want proof you’ll not saddle them with a bastard, but you say you can supply them that. We shall have the wedding over again, and you, my lady, will go to it consenting. Forget the sin. By the time the ring’s on your finger, Romulan Montargo will be dead.” Chenti balanced, his thumbs hooked in his jeweled belt. Now a certain smugness augmented the interrogator. His own cleverness pleased him. Finally he said to her staring blind eyes, “Get on your knees, then, and thank me. You’ll cost me a fortune in bribes. Even bloody Chesarius must be gifted. You slut, you should be rejoicing your father is so careful of you.”
Iuletta rose.
“My lord,” she said. “I cannot—do this.”
“Cannot?” he said, and his red face solidified and filled with darker red, though still his voice was human. “You’ll do as I tell you.”
She took in one long breath and the golden necklace that was yet on her breast fanned and glittered. So much breath for one small word.
“No.”
And Chenti drew back to him the garment of fury and swathed himself therein. His voice ascended, shaking and foaming, and the spit flew from his lips.
“No? No?”
Cornelia, her hand to her mouth, stumbled up from her corner and her collapse. She saw fresh homicide, Iuletta its victim.
“No? What use then are you? For what have I nurtured you all these years, you parasite?” Chenti began to move forward in slow terrible strides, his hands two swollen fists. “To be the sport of my enemies? Ah? Ah? Do you reckon I must support another man’s wife? Feed the beast, clothe it? Keep another man’s heifer in grazing, eh? I am to do that?” Iuletta stood motionless before him. She did not look afraid, though probably she was. And her lack of fear inflamed him further. “You’ve had your share of my bounty,” he shouted. “I fed you up to be a present for my friend. But you prefer to carve for yourself. Carve then, you damnable little whore—” and one great hand whirled upward.
Cornelia rushed and caught the hand, and hung on it.
Chenti’s voice was now that of a beast. Braying, he tried to heave her away, but her bulk anchored her, could not be budged.
“No, my lord. My lord! She’s sick, sir. She’s stupid, sir. No sir! Pardon her—be gentle—”
“Off, you fat mutton,” he cried, and the other hand came down on Cornelia, in a thud of heavy flesh and heavy materials and with one tiny wounded cry.
Iuletta came alive. She ran to him and stood between her father and the nurse, just as the nurse had come between herself and him.
Her eyes were frightened, at last, confused and afraid, the eyes of the child who, scarcely more than a month ago, she had been. Perhaps it was this that saved her from his fists, this sign and homage of fear. Or maybe the sheer murder of the bestial force had spent itself. Nevertheless, he turned from his daughter, and reaching up he ripped down the gleaming curtains of her bed. And next, walking steadfastly from place to place, he attended to her woman’s playthings; her books were flung about, her mandolin taken down and smashed, her jewels scattered and trodden on. “So,” he ranted methodically, smiling, the sweat and the spit bubbling from him, “thus,” he said. “All this I lavished on you. No more.”
Iuletta stooped to the nurse, who nodded and sat up huffing and puffing, trying to reassure her. And Lord Chenti, like a mischievous, malevolent small boy, flung a vial of scent at them which, breaking on the tessellations a foot away, strewed the skirts of both the women’s gowns and Iuletta’s hair with chips of pottery and drops of heady perfume.
When he was done, he stood, shredding the parchment of one last book in his hands.
“Well,” he said. “Where will you go now?”
Iuletta, kneeling by her nurse, dropped her head, and the black splashed tresses hid her.
“You’ll not stay in this house,” Lord Chenti said. “What is mine obeys me and stays here. You’re different. Out, then. Out with the whore-spawner on the floor. In the clothes you stand in, nothing more. You may both go free of the Chenti Tower.”
Cornelia made a sound, and he bayed at her a long salivating jumble of profanities. Then, satisfied in his rank dissatisfaction, Lord Chenti turned and went to the inner door.
“Be away before sunset,” he said. “Go,” he said, “dirty hag, to your daughter’s nunnery. And take your new little nun with you.”
After the door had crashed shut, Cornelia and Iuletta remained for some minutes as they were, seated and kneeling amid the carnage and the reeking scent.
Eventually Cornelia spoke.
“He has a powerful arm, your father. But I’m not badly maimed. A bruise or two. It will mend. But you. . . . Give him an hour to cool, and then go to him, on your hands and knees, crawling on your belly if you must.”
Iuletta came to her feet. She walked away through the rubble, and glancing down, the pools of perfume reminded her of rain water spilled there from a young man’s mantle.
“I would rather,” Iuletta said, “die than give in to him.”
“But you needs must. Oh, dear Lord, what else can you do?”
“As he said.”
“But he meant nothing of that.”
“Do you think not?”
“For myself—why, I believe he did mean it. Despite the years I’ve served this House. But if you—”
“Even to save your place in the Tower, I could not. I am sorry. Truly so.”
Iuletta had reached the window of colored panes. She leaned on it. The heat of afternoon glowed in it, it was not refreshing, but she could not now move away. For some reason, the window had always been her refuge. The symbol of an exit, closed by glass.
“You’re a fool, girl,” Cornelia said. There was no spring to her scolding. Her voice was a flat instrument “What will become of you?”
“Am I to care for that? I had my day and my night of joy. Some do not get so much.”
Cornelia, unseen, touched at her shoulder. It was quite numb from the blow. If it had reached her heart, it might have killed her. But no, her heart had been reached.
For her era, she was old. Old and cumbersome and fat, used to sweet living and soft beds, to a boy carrying her parasol, and a guard to ride behind her when she stirred far abroad. Used to good wine, and a provision for the unthinkable unavoidable future. If Iuletta had gone to the Belmorio Tower, Cornelia would have kept her place here, honored, at least not spurned. And when Iuletta was brought to childbirth, perhaps she would have sent for her canny nurse, asked her advice again, begged her sympathy. And the children, why they might have been as fair as—
But now, disgrace and poverty. And for sure, as the tyrant said, nowhere to fall save in the Bhorgabba, and on the hard daughter, kind enough when the visits were infrequent, but now, a provider?
Cornelia did not weep any more. So life was, and the world. And mortals, poor worms, slithering hopelessly toward the fiery pit in an effort to keep warm.
Now, at the window glass, Iuletta did weep. A strange and dreadful elation moved within her, like broken ice. She had lost everything, but not, in the end, the value of her love. That, even though Romulan had betrayed it, she had kept. And now, in despairing triumph, she knew she would have died indeed rather than leave go.
* * *
• • •
In the hour before sunset Susina’s merry house of boys and girls was generally tight-shut and bolted, its shutters clamped, baking like sugared bread in the sun. On the far side of it, the market tirelessly unwound its noises raucous and enterprising, its aromas delicious and repulsive, until dusk put paid to another day’s commerce. Then, beneath the light of torches, or in pure shadow, other creatures plied their business there, more softly, while the pleasure houses all about flung wide their windows and put out their banners of lampshine and enticement. There were, of course, those of the trade who worked by day, and those who worked both by day and by night. Susina’s house, being of high repute and buoyant with good custom, kept to its limited hours diligently and with pride. Susina’s charges, well-fed, well-clad, well-doctored, lived often quite long enough to retire in comfort, if no longer in faultless beauty.
This late afternoon, the mistress of the establishment was seated in her garden-courtyard, already in a puce regalia with flauntings of vermilion, but her feet in battered slippers propped on the low table in company with the dish of figs and apricots and the wine jar. On Susina’s right, a faun of dull marble leaned to her solicitously, offering marble grapes. On her left stood the cinnamon-skinned male child, slave from the East and great curiosity of the house, who fanned her with an oriental plume. The sumptuous odor of the courtyard trees was a decided protection against market smells. The trees also caught the sunlight in their net and hung it between their branches like an awning, tinting everything below with golden shade, the dish of fruit, the woman’s hair, the boy, the marble faun. The other statuary glimpsed amber through the leaves, and the old walls glowed almost red. Here and there a stone or a leaf seemed burning, and in the wine jar a gold fish blazed as it drowned, until the sun should shift again.
From the market, over the roof and down the wall, came the distant difficult sounds of a bullock cart. Susina, recalled, raised her eyes and duly noted that behind the inward-facing glass of the upper floor there were now vague stirrings like those of insects in honey. Her protegees were waking and preparing themselves. Lazily, time was in hand.
And when the girl came running out to say the street door was knocked upon, she was imperiously instructed that the too-early guest be sent away.
“But it is two ladies, Maestra!”
The Maestra knew at once, by some unexplained inner means, that one of these was her mother. Uneasily, Susina took her feet from the table and arose.
“Let them come through,” she said, and drained her cup.
The two women, who had stood gazing at the naughty frescoes in the anteroom (based upon hardly naughtier ones at Pompeia), presently arrived in the outdoors balm of screened sunlight, and halted. The girl who had let them in hurried away at her mistress’s nod to fetch more wine cups. The Eastern boy and the marble faun remained unmoved.
Susina widened charcoaled eyes.
She had expected Cornelia, on this unlooked-for visit, to be accompanied by some serving-maid, who perhaps wished to exchange service of one sort for service of another—Cornelia had once or twice brought the willing who had asked to be interviewed here. But, under the sepia outer vestments and the smoky veil, Susina perceived, for the second time, Iuletta Chenti.
The first occasion Iuletta had been sprung on her, the worldly daughter had quailed at her mother’s stupidity. To bring a virgin of high-birth to the stew-house . . . ! The mother’s motives—that her charge must go with her at that time, and she craved to meet her daughter. . . . Susina doubted, even somewhat divined some other inner reason of Cornelia’s that had to do with showing true daughter to surrogate daughter and vice versa. Yet none of this had angered, even it had intrigued. Susina, who had learned to be respectfully and cordially easy with the aristocracy, had managed well enough. Now she was frankly shocked. Once was intriguement and risk sufficient. However, rather than burst out in irritated remonstrance, the young woman bowed, after the Eastern fashion, rather aware as she did so of her breast tips, peeping over their ledge like eager birds. For this end her gown was designed, but in the sight of the pure, one thought of such things.
Through the syrupy light, she had not properly taken in the color of her mother’s face, even out of its veiling. Then Cornelia, not approaching her, said flatly:
“I’m cast forth, and my nurseling with me. Let me sit down. My heart is bleeding or weeping, I know not which.”
“Sit,” said the Maestra, and herself also sat, somewhat suddenly, again on her bench, under the bending of the faun.
Iuletta, in her disguise, stood on like a ghost.
“Pardon me, my lady. Please be seated,” Susina said.
“You are kind,” the girl replied. It had a strange wealth of meaning, that little phrase, as if to be shown any such kindness was astonishing at this season. But she sat and removed her veil, and Susina was put in mind of a dancer. The grace was exquisite, just like the girl herself. Susina had heeded as much before. She had no envy, the whore-mistress. To her, Iuletta was like a star, rarefied and alien, the denizen of another world, foreign as the pretty boy from Inde. (Who had himself taken notice. Susina sent him on an errand at once.) Thankfully, the servant came back then with the wine cups, which were soon disposed and seen to.
Cornelia gulped, her throat parched by the daunting journey they had undertaken from the Higher Town to the Lower in the westering glare of day. Pinched, prodded-at, awarded cat-calls every inch of the way—so it had seemed to her. They had no man to protect them, no litter to shield them, no servant to show their rank and repel casual boarders. In their chameleon drapes, alone, they might be anyone’s prey. (“The clothes you stand in, nothing more,” the devil had said to them—not even the rich bridal gown at that, for it had been changed. Even the concealment of cloaks he would have denied. And Iuletta would have obeyed, scorning to take any further charity from the Chenti Tower. Cornelia had insisted.) In her soul, she knew all they did was insanity. They should have waited. He would have cooled, the old pig, the hog, the brute. But no. Iuletta, proud and white, stalked from the house. Away from her childhood and her help and her hope, and the nurse must follow. And as they crossed the edge of the square under the Basilica, Iuletta had paused, pointed at the fountain, and remarked: “See, a grey cat. My sorrow’s omen.” Reaching the door of the bawdy-house, Cornelia was ready to sink. Heat and distress, dejection and frustrated choler. And now here, what?
