Haunted Castles (19 page)

I nodded eagerly, offering him a chair, pouring him more wine, urging him on.

He sipped the wine, and waxed ruminative. “A single cold misgiving yet I harbor,” he said, “although I will not let it stay me. It is this: my poor, stiff words, ungarlanded by malice or invention, will yet disclose a tale more crammed with cruelty, and vile device, and dark profundity of horror, than any silly falsehoods you have heard. You wish me to go on, Lord Stanton?”

Foolish question!
“Certo,”
I replied.

* * *

You will be relieved to know I have no intention of setting down the good old man's words verbatim, in their admittedly colourful but convoluted and meandering original, for few of us have time for such bedizened narratives in this modern world of “telephones” and “talking machines” (have you heard of this latter?—an American named Addison or Eddisohn has spawned a devilish device that will abolish every opera house and concert hall in the world within a decade, I predict. A frightening and barbaric race, these Yankees). No, I will paraphrase my ancient host's tale, which, I should guess, took place in the vicinity of 1790; at any rate, some time near the end of the last century.

Count Carlo lived in this palazzo with a carefully chosen minimum of servants and retainers, and no other kin but his sister Fiammetta, who was as fair as he was plain. His skin was raddled, hers was opalescent; his nose was large and shapeless, hers was a dainty, demure, delicately modelled masterpiece; his eyes were small and piggish; hers large and dark and luminous and clear and shaded by the fine fringed canopies of her lashes. Many were the swains who came here to the palazzo to win her; who came, I say, but who were discouraged, turned away, repulsed, every one of them, by her brother the Count.

“Why may not young men pay suit to me?” she often asked her brother. “Is it your plan to make of me a nun?”

At such times, he would emit his dry cackle of a laugh. “A nun! Ah no,
bella sorella
—” he would repeat the phrase in a singsong, a kind of daft liturgy “—
sorella bella, bella sorella
! You are too fair, too fine, too rare a wine, in cloistered convent walls to pine, o matchless little sister mine!”

“Matchless is well said, since you refuse to make a match for me!” And she would weep.

Then he would calm her, and soothe her, and assure her he was but saving her for a suitor worthy of her beauty, grace and station, a mate of the proper blood.

“What is this of blood?” she would wail. “These are no churls who have sung songs at my window, begging for my hand, swearing eternal love, but highborn fellows, all. Blood, indeed!”

“Blood,” repeated the Count, and the word seemed to spur his whirling mind, to spiral it into another shower of dotty doggerel:
“Sangue rosso, sangue caldo
 . . .” (Again I shall endeavour to render this into English.) “Blood is red and blood is hot; blood may seem what blood is not. Blood most innocent, if shed, hatred on that blood is fed . . .”

“Oh, brother, leave off with these riddling rhymes, I pray you. They are sour to my ear.”

“Sour?” And that would be enough to send him into another theme: “That which sweetest tastes of all may be changed to bitter gall. Adonis can a monster be, and songs of love—cacophony!” (Did you not tell me once, Bobbie, that there is a form of mental disorder in which the patient expresses himself exclusively in rhyme? Count Carlo seems to have been an early example.)

There came to the palazzo one fateful day a traveller from Spain, a handsome young man of good family who sued to see not Fiammetta but Carlo. The Count, apparently impressed by something in the young man's name or mode of approach, granted him audience.

“Honoured sir,” said the Spaniard, “you see before you one whose life is dedicated to beauty. The beauty of dappled hills, of horses, of guileless children, of gleaming ripe fruits, of draperies; the sad and humbling beauty of timeworn faces; the cold beauty of silver, the warm beauty of gold; the unadorned beauty of man and woman in their perfection—all these and more I have captured upon canvas. For some time now, I have dreamt of a great picture, my dear
conte
—Mother Eve, alone in the Garden, in the innocence before the Fall, the world a glowing quietude around her, unblemished, undefiled. This picture I have sketched and sketched again more times than I can say—the composition and much of the detail, the trees and flowers, gossamer insects, playful tame beasts, the soft sky and gentle clouds above them. I lack but one element, without which all is nought. Eve herself escapes me—nowhere have I found her, not among living models or in the realms of my mind, and it is not for want of searching.”

Carlo said, “You fascinate me, honoured guest. Pray go on and tell the rest.”

“It was a friend of mine and sometime teacher,” the young man continued, “who put me on the scent, as it were. He is himself an artist of no small gifts, recently appointed
pintor de cámara,
Francisco Goya by name, and one day he said to me, ‘Ramon, when a man has painter's ears as well as painter's eyes, he notes things other men pass by. That talk we heard in taverns a month or two ago, and again this past week, those stories, rumours, about a young Venetian maiden named Fiammetta, whose beauty is the theme of songs and sonnets in her own land—might there not be some truth behind them? Do you not recall the ardour, the passion of the song we heard that sailor sing?—

Divina Fiammetta,

Bellissima giovinetta . . .

—is it likely the subject of his song is but a fiction? Where there is smoke, is there not likewise fire? If I, like you, were searching for an Eve; and if I, like you, were unencumbered and not saddled with a court appointment, I would get me straightway to Venice!' So said my friend, and I am here, dear count.”

Carlo, who had thwarted all others seeking interviews with Fiammetta, seemed to succumb immediately to the Spaniard's blandishments. Even the thought that his sister, as Eve, would be obliged to pose
au naturel
did not perturb him. In his words: “Though men are ruled by lechery and lust, physician, priest and painter one may trust.”

One small step had yet to be taken, of course—obtaining the permission of the lady herself.

We have all heard that “Opposites attract,” but I have found this less true than the axiom that “Like speaks to like,” that beauty seeks beauty and grace calls out to grace—and surely this was the state of things when Fiammetta for the first time beheld Don Ramon José Villardos y Manadereña. For if she was a young goddess, he was a young god, a Grecian statue, a catalogue of perfections, reflecting her own beauty lustre for lustre, even to the opal glow that lit both his skin and hers. They were fated to fall immediately and furiously in love; lock and key seemed not more made to join together; and such elemental passions as theirs not hurricane nor holocaust, not puny Man nor Almighty God may tear in twain. Her permission, it is superfluous to say, was granted at once.

And so it was that Fiammetta was left behind closed doors with Don Ramon while he blocked out the main lineaments of the huge canvas, and painted the first brushstrokes. Days went by, and weeks, and on every day of this time save Sundays, Fiammetta spent hours under the eyes of Ramon, as innocent of raiment as the Eve she represented.

Are we to be surprised, then, that one morning Carlo stepped suddenly, unexpectedly into the room to find not only Eve, but also Adam, cleaving together not on canvas but in the living flesh? Behind them, like a fine theatrical cloth, stood the immense spectrum of colour that was the uncompleted canvas—the lush jungle of Eden, veiled in primordial mist, the leaves and grasses in every imaginable variety of green, the flowers a dazzling riot of vibrant scarlet, soft lavender, bright yellow, lush purple, the insects and birds almost audibly buzzing and chirping, the lion and the lamb asleep together; and, coiled sinuously in the branches of the focal Tree, the unblinking, watchful Serpent. The figure of Eve had hardly been touched—she remained a blurred charcoal outline—but this gaping cavity in the canvas was masked by the figures of the flesh-and-blood model and her painter who seemed to be part of the picture, but a part that stood out in breathtaking relief, like a masterly example of
trompe-l'oeil.

With a cry of shock, the young lovers drew apart and reached for draperies to cover themselves withal. Fiammetta trembled at the wrath she knew would come. Ramon, when his voice returned to him, gathered about himself as much dignity as the circumstances would permit, and said:

“Sir, I alone am blameworthy in this. Here is my breast: draw your sword and slay me, for I know that you must, but find forgiveness for your sister and spare her life, I beseech you.”

Carlo appeared to be confused by this speech, and asked for elucidation; whereupon Ramon replied, “In my country, you, as the lady's brother and only living relative, would be compelled by custom to observe the
pundonor,
the point of honour, and slay the woman as well as the man, even though the woman be raped. Blood alone, the blood of both, can wash out such a stain—”

“So may it be in Spain,” said Carlo. Then he laughed in a not unfriendly manner, and added: “Your ancient ways it ill becomes me to disparage, but all the punishment I plan for you—is marriage!”

Nothing could have pleased the two young people more than this. They joined Carlo in laughter, and then and there, under the most—shall we say informal?—of conditions, made plans for a quiet wedding, to take place in one week's time.

It was a simple ceremony, attended almost entirely by the servants, conducted in the chapel of the palazzo by a simple padre of the district.

Ramon took up residence in the palazzo, the old walls of which seemed to glow with the love of the newlyweds. Their life was an enchanted idyll, they lived in an Eden of bliss that paled the painted Eden of his canvas. The picture was at length finished: it hangs here now, in the main hall, where all may see and admire the beauty of Fiammetta-Eve, and the talent of her adoring husband.

Some nine months after that embarrassing interruption that precipitated the hasty marriage, Carlo planned a supper for the three of them. Fiammetta was great with child, the midwife expected the infant to arrive the following day, so the supper was in the way of a celebration. The finest wines and cheeses were brought forth from the cellar, roasted birds and baked meats were proffered, fantastic pastries decorated the table. There was much laughing and joking, a deal of kissing, and Carlo and Ramon exchanged a great many stories of chivalry and brave exploits, thus delighting Fiammetta, who liked a good tale. Carlo asked Ramon if he did not perhaps know a story concerning
pundonor,
which would help him understand this strange custom of the Spaniards.

“I do,” replied Ramon. “A story both true and terrible, a story close to me for reasons you will soon perceive. It is a story of a beautiful Spanish widow, the still-young mother of a boy not yet fifteen, who was seduced—nay, raped would be the more honest word—by a hidalgo of hot blood and cold cunning, grown bold by the recent death of the poor lady's husband and protector. But he did not reckon with her brother, who, as guardian of the family's good name, slew him—then slew the lady, too, his own sister, to satisfy the code of
pundonor
, which demands that both defiler and defiled must be slain.”

“How cruel!” said Fiammetta. “That the lady, too, should die! It is a heartless code, this
pundonor.”

Carlo, agreeing with her in his jingling, jangling way, said that the Italian
vendetta
was much more sensible and fair than
pundonor,
since it would demand the death of the traducer only, not of the wronged woman as well.

Placing a tender hand upon her husband's arm, Fiammetta cooed, “My love, you said this tale was close to you . . . was the poor widow your mother, and yourself the lad of fifteen years?”

“No, my sweet, I was ten at the time, but there is more to tell. The unhappy lady was my dear and saintly aunt; the brother who spilt her blood, my father. My cousin, the boy of fifteen, with whom I and my little sister were wont to play and gambol for hours together, so congenial were we—that dear cousin, that jolly companion, roiled by his mother's death and by the manner of it, wrought a horrible revenge upon us.” Ramon shuddered. “Even now, across the span of years, the picture of that vengeance poisons me . . .”

Count Carlo said, “But pray go on, although it chill your marrow—a half-told tale's a bow without an arrow.”

Ramon resumed: “One night, while we all slept, my cousin stole stealthily into our house, crept up to the bedchamber of my little sister, and then—with his father's saber, which we found all bloody on the floor—hacked her into unrecognizable pieces!”

Fiammetta sucked in her breath and recoiled. “Ah no!”

“Butchered that four-year-old! Butchered her tiny blameless form as if she were a suckling pig—nay, one would not even chop a pig so much, so madly!”

“Oh, my poor Ramon . . .” Fiammettta sought to solace him with tender kisses upon his cheek, so wrought was he with the reliving of the hideous event. “And your cousin?” she asked. “How did he fare? Was he caught and punished?”

Ramon shook his head. “He vanished. We searched for weeks, for months, a year, but he was never found.”

A silence had covered the table like a shroud. The setting sun cast a ruddiness upon the room that, at any other time, would have been lovely, but now looked like nothing more nor less than a film of blood. At length, Carlo rose from the table, stroking his chin reflectively, and paced, saying, “This haunted tale of hellish hate I might yet elaborate.”

“Elaborate?” said Ramon, wonderingly. “That story?”

Carlo nodded. “Suppose, by devilish design, indeed your cousin killed a swine, made of it a mincemeat mess, wrapped it in the silk nightdress of your sister and then fled, bearing her away not dead—not dead but very much alive, to such a place where she would thrive, and grow more beautiful each day, in a palazzo far away . . .” He turned suddenly to the puzzled Spaniard.