A Dancer in Darkness (26 page)

Night had fallen over the bay and blocked it out. The moon
was delusive and the peaks shadowy. The Duchess left the window and walked up and down the room.

“Is death so bad?” She watched Cariola narrowly and saw she was on the verge of hysterics. That would be too much. Her nerves were too frayed to deal with hysterics.

“Oh no,” said Cariola, and drew back against a wall. She looked up at the Duchess beseechingly. “Do I have to die?”

“Antonio will save us if he can.”

“Antonio is in Milan.”

The Duchess started to speak, and then thought better of it. “He will save us if he can.”

“But how do we know he is alive?” asked Cariola. Her eyes seemed to see something the Duchess could not see.

“What do you mean by that?” The Duchess whirled around and advanced towards her. “What have you and that miserable man talked about? What does he know?”

“Nothing,” sobbed Cariola. “I don’t know. What are we to do?”

The Duchess sighed. As gently as she could she drew Cariola into the next room and saw her to bed. The woman was shivering, and fear was not pretty. She stayed with her until she fell asleep. Then she left the room.

What Cariola had said had bothered her. She knew the
confines
of her prison now. Without bothering to take a light, she let herself out into the corridors. At the far end they were ruinous. There she stood in a cold breeze that had sprung up, gazing towards the mainland again. He was there somewhere. He must be.

But Cariola had only spoken her own doubt, and now it was spoken she knew she could not sleep. She went down the shallow stone stairs, and let herself out into the night. There was no one up at this hour to challenge her.

She walked down the stepped path that wound towards the chapel.

The chapel roof had fallen in. Frescoes flaked off into the rubble. In the cloister was a graveyard. The stones were set as flagstones. Disconsolately she walked over the effaced names of the nuns. Brambles and weeds overgrew the abandoned fountain in the middle.

What Cariola had said had upset her. She was confronted with the thought of death, and did not like it. For when we think of death, it is not really death we think of. Really to think of death requires a mental effort too great for us. We think only of our attitude towards it. It is the same with love, or hate, or rage. Once experienced, they make a mockery of our thoughts about them. Well, she had been in love. But no one who has died can think about death afterwards. Death has no afterwards. And though we know we have to die, few of us believe it.

Death was voluptuous. Death was erotic. Death was the ultimate embrace. The music of the age confirmed it.
Lasciate
mi
morire
sang the aristocracy, burst into tears, and took an orange girl to bed with them.
Io
moro.
O come, come, come, come, I love you, my sunshine, my light, sang the Venetian nun Philomela Angelica. Whether she meant death, Jesus, or desire, no one could say. She gasps. She sighs. She heaves and tosses in a rumpled bed. God, Jesus, love and death were all the same.

But pacing up and down the cloister, the Duchess wondered if they were. In adolescence death rears up before us like a public monument, a lover’s tomb, like that of Romeo and Juliet, the final testimony of how wonderful we were. Once dead and the world shall know.

Antonio could not be dead. But dead or alive, he beckoned to her from the farther shore, he stretched out his hands. She must join him. But maturity is more cautious. If death is the utter extinction of consciousness, how could she join him then? God has no right to take our bodies away from us. In Heaven, they say, we find another kind of joy. But why should we have to purchase it with the extinction of the only pleasure we can know? God, they said, was love, but He was also a eunuch. Love was not God. Love was Antonio.

So she paced in the darkness. She came to an opening in the wall. She went within. The darkness was three steps down. She was in a narrow crypt. Along each wall stood a series of stone chairs. Here, in past times, when the nuns were about to die, they were carried down, and sat on the chairs until they were dead. Here they mummified.

Each chair had a drain-hole drilled in it. This was to catch the post-mortem ichors, which then drained away through the rock into the sea. She had often heard of that. Now she saw it. She fled back into the light.

If this was death, she would not die this way. She was a Duchess. She had dignity. She would die with dignity. Death is the extinction of consciousness. So is the act of love. But in the act of love we die in each other’s arms. Why should death not be so?

If he was dead, he was waiting. Then why should she not go to him? She looked around her with a smile. He was here. He would be there. She was calm. She had got back her dignity.

And besides, he was not dead. He was safe in those hills. She looked up. The stars are not constant. Man is not constant. Nothing is constant. Only the heart conceives of constancy

In Naples Ferdinand had himself announced to the
Cardinal
. It had taken him some time to ferret his brother out, but he could not move up and down impotently along the shore. He was driven from within. He had to act. He had followed the Duchess across Italy and had seen her embark. He knew that his brother’s hand was in this. He knew his brother had cheated him. Antonio, they said, was in Milan. Now it was his turn to cheat the Cardinal. Physical insanity is a tyrannous thing. It led him to confront his brother as otherwise he would not have done, for the body has its own cunning.

But as always he waited until night. Then, with Marcantonio and two guards, he stormed the
palazzo
the Cardinal occupied, made his way angrily up the stairs, and burst through the doors leading to the Cardinal’s apartments.

The Cardinal was writing at a desk, by the light of a
five-branch
candelabrum. He looked up irritably. His ambitions had scooped him out like a melon. There was no one left inside him to be taken by surprise. But he could be annoyed.

“What have you done with her?” demanded Ferdinand.

The Cardinal saw Marcantonio and did not like him. Marcantonio had a sick swagger and big ears. He was stupid
enough to be dangerous, and violence sweated his hands like a fever. “Send them away,” he said.

Ferdinand told his guard to wait in the anteroom. They clomped out. Then he strode forward and planted one
enormous
soft-booted foot on a chair, glowering down at the
Cardinal
. The foot was like the paw of a St. Bernard, but a St. Bernard foaming at the mouth. The Cardinal looked at it and then at Ferdinand.

“I have not done anything with her.”

“Then where is she?”

“I see no reason why I should tell you that.”

“So.” Ferdinand kicked aside the chair. “Do you think I don’t know what you are up to? Do you think you are the only one with spies? You want Amalfi for yourself.”

For a moment the Cardinal wondered if this was quite true. He did not think it was. It was merely that events had all moved one way, and he meant to have it. He had not thought of the matter personally at all. But he knew that Ferdinand was capable of irrevocable acts, and the Cardinal squirmed away from irrevocable acts. He wondered if he dare temporize.

Ferdinand smashed his fists down on the desk. “Where
is
she?” he screamed.

“She is on Ischia, at the Castello.”

“And her paramour?”

“At Milan, but I do not believe it. Perhaps he is trying to rescue her.” He eyed Ferdinand speculatively. Surely the man was mad. So now the thing must happen. Nor would he have Ferdinand interfere in Amalfi. Fastidiously he laid his
conscience
aside, took up new instruments, and looked at
Ferdinand
much as a surgeon would look at a patient with the stone.

“And if he succeeded, what then?” he asked softly.

“She shall not lie with him again. She shall not lie with anyone.”

“Why not? She has conceived by him. She is married to him, so they say.”

“Where is he?”

“I do not know.”

Ferdinand prowled up and down the room. The Cardinal shifted in his chair. Ferdinand returned to the desk.

“Write me a pass to the Citadel.”

“I cannot do that. You have no business there.”

“Write.”

“No.”

A shudder came over Ferdinand. He snatched across the desk, and took the Cardinal’s hand. He would not let it go. The Cardinal’s eyes widened. He exerted his strength. So did Ferdinand. He tugged and twisted at the hand, bending the fingers back. He wrenched the apostolic ring off its finger, and shoved the Cardinal back into his chair. For a moment they eyed each other, suspended. Then, shouting for Marcantonio, Ferdinand hurled himself out of the room, leaving the doors flapping and ajar.

Left to himself the Cardinal rubbed his hand. He blinked. No one had dared unbidden to touch him in his life, not even his mistresses. He touched them. He looked at his finger with disbelief. He knew now what must be done with Ferdinand, and for once he would have such an act done gladly.

Suddenly, irrationally, he screamed for lights.

On the Bay of Naples it was dark. An hour later a low skiff put out towards the islands, its sails furled, its oars creeping along the water like a wounded centipede. No one aboard that vessel spoke. Marcantonio lolled on a pile of canvas, whittling at the gunnel with his knife. The moon was down. Ferdinand sat in the prow, and watched the slightly phosphorescent, green-tinged water. The apostolic ring would get him in.

Towards four the rock of the castello rose abruptly before them. The light running surf was restless. The sky was mackerel. There was no sign of life. The boat bumped against the
causeway
and was still.

Those in the castle rose early. They were too bored to stay in bed, and the Duchess and Cariola were too anxious.

The days of a prisoner soon become indistinguishable from each other. So do the days of a guard. Bosola found it difficult to keep busy, and longed for instructions from the mainland. No instructions came.

The Duchess’s apartments he avoided. He knew he was not
welcome there, and could not bear the thought of seeing either one of them. Cariola was merely pitiable. But the Duchess upset him. He was used to being despised, but disdain was even worse. He did not sleep well. The earlier he awoke the more empty were the days. He had nothing to do until it was time to drink in the evening with the Commandant. Nor could he watch that bay on which the fishing boats hovered like
predatory
moths. A life without events is the worst kind of life. He had seen too much of prisons to be at ease in them.

For days now he had had the feeling that something was waiting to overtake him. Perhaps he was overtired. When he was alone, someone seemed to stand behind him. Such things cannot be dismissed merely by being named. Hallucinations are the shadows cast by strangers walking through our mind, on errands of their own.

It made him jumpy. It also made him take long walks.

Along one side of the cliff there was a narrow path. To the right the drop was sheer. To the left was a low bluff. At the end of the path was a small hexagonal chapel dedicated to St. Peter. He found himself there. Usually he did not go to such narrow places. He had a fearful impulse not to look behind him. In front of him was the closed door of the church. Irritated with himself, he looked around, and started violently.

A figure stood on the path, boldly and suddenly. It blocked the way, and ground its knuckles together, smiling hungrily. He recognized it at once. It was Marcantonio. It advanced towards him.

Bosola whirled towards the church. The door opened.
Ferdinand
beckoned him in. Bosola stood still. But Marcantonio came behind him and prodded him in the kidneys. He
half-stumbled
, and went into the church.

Marcantonio clanged the door shut behind him.

The church was small, close, and heavy with dust. Ferdinand wasted no time. Marcantonio kicked him and sent him
sprawling
back against the altar. Ferdinand grasped him by his doublet and shook him like a terrier, slapping him repeatedly in the face. Then he flung him back to Marcantonio.
Marcantonio
was clever at this sort of thing. Bosola fell chattering to the ground.

“Lock him in,” snapped Ferdinand. The two of them went out of the church, and the key turned in the lock. Bosola was sure his ankle had been broken. He lost consciousness.

When he came to it was late morning. The light hurt his eyes. From the floor he looked around the chapel. He knew he must get out before they returned. He did not know how. He dragged himself to the ledge of the unglazed window, pulled himself up, and looked down. His ankle hurt painfully, but was only sprained. The drop was five hundred feet to the sea. He looked left and right. The building was hexagonal, so
between
the ledge and the end of the cliff wall was a space of about two feet. If he was careful he might be able to reach it. Half an hour later he fell in a heap on the ground next the chapel door. Urgency gave him strength. Leaning against the bluff, he reached the end of the path, and left the cul-de-sac. He was in the shadows of the castello itself now.

The light made him blink. It was so bright in that sun that it dazzled him with the effect of darkness. Lean, naked shapes seemed to flit through the trees, and there was a peculiar, sick restlessness in the air. There were murmurs, and groans, and screams, but all muted and unreal. It was as though someone had released a flock of ravenous parrots. Bosola wondered where the guards could be.

He knew that he must reach the castello. He did not know why. The impulse was irrational. Skirting the shadows, he toiled painfully uphill.

The forecourt of the castello had been elaborated fifty years before, in a Spanish taste. It was a narrow open place
surmounted
by an enormous Churriguerresque gateway of stone swags, ropes, rosettes, angels, and shields. Bosola slid rapidly across the open space and inside.