A Dancer in Darkness (15 page)

“She has her whims.” Cariola came no closer. They were both too old not to feel physically ill at ease with each other. But if he had bothered to look, he would have seen that she, too, was disappointed. She wanted so much to be motherly.

She held out her arms. “I brought your new doublet,” she
said. “I’ve been working on it all week.” She smiled at him uncertainly, put it on the table, and turned to go. He could still be difficult at times, but she liked him none the less for that. It was like having a child, and that is what a woman generally likes a man to be.

Against his will he said: “Can’t you stay for a minute?” She smiled at him uncertainly, wishing he could be outwardly more affectionate, and then slipped out of the room.

Half an hour after she had gone, he got up and put on the doublet. It was white with gold trim, and with it was a pair of white fleshings, to be worn with half-boots, a fancy riding
costume
for the countryside. He did not quite know why he did so, unless it was because she had made them for him, and to put them on made him feel less lonely. He heard the horses jingle away, and then went for a walk alone. So much had six months done for him that it never even occurred to him to be curious as to why the Duchess should suddenly depart for Ravello in the middle of the night.

As he wandered about the deserted palace, his leather heels echoed against the cold, lonely stone. He saw from a light across the court that Antonio was still up, but felt too wretched to disturb him.

The night ride to Ravello took three hours. Cariola wished her mistress was not so capricious. She did not like this journey. It had something to do with the scene she had interrupted that morning, of that she was sure, and though she refused to give the thought a name, she sensed obscurely what was wrong. But it was not her place to say anything, and there were many things it would be better for her not to know. She reassured herself with the thought that the Duchess was often like this.

Cariola did not like Ravello, and liked it far less after having been privy to what happened there. She knew how ruthless those could be who wished to get at great persons through their attendants. She neither wanted to betray her mistress nor to be tortured into doing so. Nor did she like the gipsies. It was her opinion that Ravello was a diseased and haunted place, from
which no good could ever come. Worse, this was bandit country. It was both unsafe and unseemly for two women to wander about in it alone.

The Duchess did not like this journey either, but this she had not the courage to confide in anyone.

It seemed to her she was fleeing Amalfi. Something was happening to her she was impotent to stop. It was like standing in the surf of events, and being sucked out to sea, even though one did not move. The night was dark. The stars were like moth-holes in the fabric of a dusty black wool tent. The trail was narrow, and the horses oddly frisky. As they rose above the countryside they could not see a light anywhere, except for the fishing boats offshore. Whatever happened, the fishermen would always be out there with their flares and nets, totally oblivious of their betters. It was a lonely thought.

At last they came out on the plateau. The higher hills loomed in the distance. In the darkness Ravello glowered vacantly upon its flanks. It was totally friendless. They rode on to the palace, where Cariola unlocked the gate. It creaked open unwillingly, and the darkness of the garden swallowed them up. In this light it was not a real garden any more. It looked as though it were built of steel and semi-precious stones, like that garden Pluto made for the solace of Persephone, where everything glittered with life, yet had none. The Duchess went into the palace alone, filled with an unbearable sadness. Not even an insect chirped, and yet once she and Antonio had been happy here. It was strange to realize that was less than six months ago. It was not only strange, it was unbearable.

She would not even let Cariola show her to her room. “There will be a woman here in the morning,” she said wearily. “Show her in. Good night.”

She trailed forlornly off down the dusty corridor, while Cariola looked after her open-mouthed. She did not even raise her dress, as she walked, to keep it clean, and the wax from the taper she held ran over her hand unnoticed. In a few hours Cariola would know everything. How would they face each other then?

She was awakened by a great jangling clamour, and lay huddled in the bed. It was only just after dawn. She should get
up, but she had not the strength to rise. She had perhaps fifteen minutes left to herself, and the sound of the bell twisted in her ear. She felt too apathetic to care. It was as though her body did not belong to her any more.

She was a devout Catholic, without ever having given the matter any thought, but what was about to be done to her was wicked in a way that had nothing to do with God.

Cariola knocked on the door and then entered. Her face was a mask. “The woman is here,” she said.

The Duchess did not stir in the bed. “Show her in and then go,” she said.

Cariola seemed to hesitate. “I think she wants hot water brought.”

“Then bring it.”

Cariola went out. The Duchess did not turn her head. She heard someone come in and move towards the bed. She sat up. The old woman was indescribably filthy, and carried
something
done up in a neckcloth. She looked down at the Duchess, her black eyes snapping in her wrinkled face, her horny,
lizard-like
hands folded across her waist, and burst into a flood of sibilant gibberish. No doubt it was meant to be comforting, but she spoke only Romany. The Duchess gazed at her blankly.

The old woman shrugged, patted her with a hot, crackly hand, and moved over to the window, where there was a low table. The Duchess sat up in bed to watch her, but the old woman’s back was turned. She was unwrapping her bundle and muttering again. Whether it was a complaint or an incantation would be hard to say, but certainly there seemed to be devils in the room.

The Duchess did not move. The old woman’s eyebrows went up, as though she found the gentry very foolish. She cast down some small instruments on the bed. One was a long hooked wire of the sort one plunges down drains, and the others were even more curious. They were made of iron, but though she had washed them, she had not been able to wash the rust off. They clanked against each other dully as they fell upon the bed.

The Duchess clutched the covers to her neck. Her head began to shake from side to side. The old woman grinned cheerfully
and patted her shoulder. Then, with a sudden deft movement she ripped down the coverlets.

The Duchess huddled against the headboard and screamed for Cariola. The old woman frowned. Cariola burst into the room.

“She shall not put those things in me,” sobbed the Duchess. “She shall not.”

Cariola took in the situation at a glance. She stepped rapidly to the head of the bed, and put her arms around the Duchess.

The old woman stood passively at the foot of the bed, her taut little eyes looking from one to the other of them.

“My poor lamb,” said Cariola. “My poor lamb.” The Duchess began to shudder less. She watched the old woman at the foot of the bed out of the corners of her eye.

“There must be another way,” she said. “There must.”

“Where did you get this woman?”

“Antonio.”

At mention of Antonio the old woman beamed, and nodded her head significantly. Her attitude seemed to say that some people were overly nice, but it was not her place to ask questions.

Cariola gathered up the instruments, handed them to her, and made some sort of dumb show with her fingers. The old woman went off into a torrent of explanations. Neither of them could understand her. She looked disappointed,
brightened
, and began to act something out. She pounded something in an invisible mortar, put it on a stove, poured it into what seemed to be a syringe, and pumped away with her fingers. The sun would set three times, or the Duchess would take it three times, it was difficult to tell which.

“Tell her no,” said the Duchess. She was more sober now, but she still clung to Cariola.

“What else can you do, my poor lady?” Now that she had grasped the situation, Cariola was practical.

It was true, there was nothing else for her to do. “I want Antonio.”

Cariola was stern. “He could not come. He has done the best he could. Perhaps the old woman knows her business after all.”

The old woman was undoing her bundle again, and brought it to the bedside. She held up various dried leaves and bits of twig, talking and gesturing. The Duchess recognized male fern, rue, and ergot of rye. Then Cariola took her off to the kitchens downstairs.

The Duchess had never felt unclean before. She lay there alone, plucking at the coverlet. One of the leaves had fallen there. It was blue-grey, and twisted into the shape of a screw. She had ridden over the bracken and gorse of this country often, and found them sinister, but had not thought much about them. Now she realized that the landscape was full of poisons. They must lurk in every leaf and twig, and there were those who knew how to use them. The whole fair world was poisoned, and plants had a venom as powerful as snakes. They would dissolve the life in her the way quicklime dissolved the bodies of the poor, cast into a common pit.

She clenched her teeth, and only hoped Cariola and the old woman would come back, and have the matter done. She listened for their footsteps down the corridor. She was
determined
not to cry out. But when the rough pewter syringe was inserted in her flesh it hurt her cruelly, and the liquid flooded her like burning pitch. It made her feel silly and weak. Not daring to cry out, she giggled and could not stop, until Cariola slapped her.

Towards evening she fell into a fever. She felt suffocated, as though the room were full of burning wool.

Ferdinand stood glowering in all the dark corners of the room. When she burned with thirst, he had his fingers round her throat, and what she saw in his distended eyes was not passion, but animal lust.

The treatment lasted three days. The old woman came and went, and the syringe became a great scaly snake. The lake of pitch seemed to eat her whole body away. She could eat only fruit, without knowing what kind of fruit it was, and drink only water, which did not slake her thirst, and tasted dusty. She thought she heard her brother the Cardinal’s robes swishing in the corridor. He often smiled. The swish turned into an immense wave, crashing down on her, on whose crest lay the dead white body of Antonio, like Leander, wearing one white
sock and nothing else. He struggled to live, but Ferdinand, writhing with brown kelp, pulled him down and squeezed his eyeballs out. They exploded like the balls of seaweed on a childhood beach.

She slept and woke and slept again. She felt she was
hovering
outside her body, and could not raise it up enough to enter it. Indeed she did not want to. It disgusted her. Then she was trapped inside it again. The wave crashed down, and Antonio’s head lolled limply in the foam of it.

She opened her eyes and he stood before her.

Cariola looked down at her, shook her head, and left the room. The Duchess shrank away.

“It didn’t work,” she said.

He made an indefinite gesture. “There are other ways.”

She shook her head. “No, I’m glad. I want to have it.”

“So do I. But the matter cannot be hidden long.”

“I do not want it hidden.”

“We have no choice.” He was grave, and his voice soothed her. But she was irritated and rebellious, too. He could not know what she had been through. He could not force her to go through the same again, or worse.

“I am ruler here,” she said. “Why did I marry that senile old man, if he had no power?”

He sat down on the edge of the bed. “We have no army. We cannot defend ourselves. Your brother the Cardinal covets your estate, and your brother Ferdinand is mad.”

“Why should we not have a son?”

“You know why.” He hesitated. “You have an heir. He could never inherit. So this child would be snuffed out and murdered.”

“I have not forgotten the boy,” she said. “They took him from me.”

“Then what would they not do to this child? Even if they did not use you in the same manner.”

“None the less. I am glad to have it, and I mean to have it. Why should we not live as other people do? We can conceal it somehow. I can transfer you funds and estates, and they can be settled on him. You can acknowledge a bastard. I
cannot
.”

“As soon as you show me favour, the world will know. Only the poor can live anonymously and do as they wish.”

“It can be done secretly,” she screamed. She was pushed to the limits of endurance.

He looked down at her poor frail body under the coverlet, and had not the courage to tell her that nothing could be done secretly. And besides, it was true, it was his child and hers. Why should it not live? The Cardinal might fall from power. Many things might happen. And Cariola had said that she had almost died. “Very well,” he said. “We will manage the matter somehow. The old woman is discreet. She will help us at the proper time.”

But he was apprehensive, more for her even than for
himself
, and as he entered the courtyard of the palace at Amalfi late that night, tired and dusty and depressed, it seemed to him that someone loitered in the shadows. He was deeply disturbed, and cried out to the man to step forward, but it was only Bosola. Try as he would, he could not quite conceal his relief, and took the man to have a drink with him.

On their side they had nothing but prudence, the loyalty of Cariola, which seemed secure, and the heavy dresses of the period. Great ladies are expected to have their whims, and if there were no fashion, women would have nothing to do. The court dressmakers therefore saw nothing strange in greater yards of stuff to a skirt and a plumper stomacher. These stomachers Cariola privately thinned down herself. The ladies of the court at first grumbled, but were delighted to have the excuse to purchase something new, and since difference is a kind of distinction, it was no great trouble to put the whole palace into camouflage. Indeed it was agreed that if one were young enough, the new matronly look was flattering.