Haunted Castles (20 page)
“In a . . . palazzo?” said Ramon. “You mean in Italy?”
Carlo nodded.
“Strewed the gory pieces of a pig in her crib and left the saber there . . .”
Carlo bowed.
Ramon tried to smile. “It is an ingenious conceit, I grant, but . . .” His voice trailed off, uncertainly.
Said Carlo: “That cousin of such horrid fame: tell me, may we know his name?”
Ramon opened his mouth, then closed it again without replying, as if the requested name had frozen in his throat. His eyes flickered from Carlo to Fiammetta and back again.
She, who had been silent through this, now said, “Ramonâwhat was your cousin's name?”
Ramon did not look at her. In a chilled voice, he said, “Carlos.”
Carlo laughed.
Fiammetta laughed, too, at what she knew not. Her laughter faded and died as her mind called back a line from one of Carlo's past nonsense verses:
Blood may seem what blood is not.
Did it have a meaning? And:
Blood most innocent, if shed, hatred on that blood is fed.
What of that? Was it mere foolery, or something much worse? She turned to regard her husbandâunspeakable suspicions were beginning to distort the sweetness of his face (or was it something in her own thoughts that was making his beauty ugly to her eyes?).
That which sweetest tastes of all may be changed to bitter gall. Adonis can a monster be, and songs of loveâcacophony . . .
Giggling hollowly, she plucked her husband's sleeve and said to him, “This is but a mad jest, it is his peculiar way.” Turning desperately to Carlo, she cried, “Tell him it is only a foolish verse, brother!”
Carlo was no longer laughing. He looked icily down upon her. “Nevermore call
me
your brother.” He pointed to Ramon. “Use that name upon this other.”
“No!” she shouted, hoarse with disbelief. “Ramon my brother? This is your silly fancy!”
Ramon howled, “It cannot be!” But he had grown pale. Now, rising, staggering under the full implication of Carlo's words, he upset the table, sending chalices of wine clanging to the marble floor, their crimson contents gushing like sanguinary floods. “I am here of my own volition!” he cried to Carlo. “You could never have foreseen my coming!” His eyes glazed with a new thought and he reeled away from Carlo, saying, “And yet . . .”
Fiammetta now spoke, her voice blanched by dawning horror. “And yet, did you not say that tales reached your ears of a maiden whose beauty . . .” She broke off, her voice strangled in her throat, her ivory bosom heaving with the pound of her heart. “Oh God! Those who spread the talesâthey must have been his accursed minions!”
Ramon's whole frame was shaking. He took Fiammetta's terror-stricken face in his hands, and studied it, and looked into her eyes as he said, in a voice all groan and whimper: “You do not resemble him . . . you are closer to
me
in likeness . . . to
me
!”
Carlo had wandered out, onto the parapet, and was now standing with his head thrown back and arms outspread, looking aloft into the blood-red sky. In a frenzied, declamatory voice, he addressed an apostrophe presumably to the spirit of his hated uncle:
“Slayer of my mother, seeâI avenge that infamy! See your son and daughter wed, sharing a corrupted bed; see her swollen by his seed, soon to spawn a loathly breed! Thus Ramon and Fiammetta consummate my sworn vendetta!”
His insane laughter echoed along the canals . . .
But I must bring this to a close, Bobbie, for my eye-lids grow heavy. I was kept awake last night by these confounded bells of Venice: the tolling of the enormous Campanile bell first, followed by that pair of sledge-hammermen on the Orologio, one of them always two minutes behind the other ever since 1497, I am told. In that two minutes there is no silence, however, for there is another, unidentifiable, bell in the vicinity of St. Mark's to fill the vacuum. Promptly at six in the morning, the Campanile again shakes the town as its great bell calls the faithful to worship. And yet I love this glorious clangour! What is mere sleep compared to such a symphony? There will be sleep and to spare, for all of us, when we are laid in the earth.
The rest of my story you can guess, or most of it. Ramon, driven by justified rage as well as by the dictates of
pundonor
, killed Carlo (or Carlos) and Fiammetta, and, finally, himself.
This treble tragedy grows even starker when we consider the distinct possibility that Carlo's little disclosure may have been a figment, made up out of whole cloth, just as Fiammetta fleetingly had hoped. His mad mind may have fabricated the whole thing for the first time when he heard Ramon's account of those childhood horrors.
And certain convenient facts relating to the resemblance between Ramon and Fiammetta may have seemed to corroborate Carlo's story. But have you not seen two strangers more alike in looks than some siblings you have known? Have you not seen brother and sister quite unlike each other in appearance? As for the seeming prophecy of the earlier verses, which so terrified Fiammetta when she recalled them, did they really contain secret knowledge or were they no more than crazy Carlo's cryptic word-juggling, meaningless jingles with obligatory classical allusions? I fear we will never know whether Carlo's mischief was a fiendish plot stretching over many years, or merely a tall tale concocted that fatal night.
My venerable host offers no opinion on this matter. When he left me yesterday, he merely added that Fiammetta's child did not die (as one would assume) but was born at the moment of his mother's death. You, Bobbie, are a physician, and will know if such a thing is possible. He further claims that this child is still alive. And he hints, rather broadly, that this offspring of a possibly unnatural, possibly quite natural union is none other than himself. I will admit he is old enough to be.
Before I close, I must tell you that the great diva, Maria Waldmann, is here in Venice, preparing what will be her last opera season (she is retiring to marry Count Galeazzo Massari) and she has promised to write me a letter of introduction to her friend Signor Verdi, whom I hope to visit soon at his home, Sant' Agata. He is searching for a subject for his next opera, and I propose to recount the above story and perhaps undertake the writing of the librettoâ
Ramon e Fiammetta,
or possibly
Carlo, Conte di Venezia,
or better still:
La Vendetta, un dramma di Enrico Stanton, musica di Giuseppe Verdi.
What do you think? Please write, a good long letter, whenever you are not chattering on your “telephone.” And when you do write, please tell me if it is true what I have heard: that the Empress of Brazil has sent our dear Victoria a gown woven entirely of spider web. I prefer to believe it, but my preferences, as you know, have always been for the baroque.
Your friend,
Harry
“They say,” said the Countess, absently fondling the brooch at her young throat, “that he's the devil.”
Her husband snorted. “Who says that? Fools and gossips. That boy is a good overseer. He manages my lands well. He may be a littleâruthless? cold?âbut I doubt very much that he is the Enemy Incarnate.”
“Ruthless, yes,” said the Countess, gazing at the departing black-cowled, black-hosed, black-gloved figure. “But cold? He seems to be a favorite with the women. His conquests, they say, are legion.”
“âThey' say. Gossips again. But there you areâwould the angel Lucifer bed women?” The Count snorted again, pleased at his logical triumph.
“He might,” replied his wife. “To walk the earth, he must take the shape of a man. Might not the appetites of a man go with it?”
“I am sure I do not know. These are delicate points of theology. I suggest you discuss them with a holy father.”
The Countess smiled. “What did he want?”
“Nothing. Business. Shall we go in to dinner?”
“Yes.” The Count proffered his arm and they walked slowly through the tapestried halls of the castle. “He seemed most insistent about something,” the Countess said after a moment.
“Who did?”
“Your efficient overseer.”
“He was urging more stringent measures with the serfs. He said his authority had no teeth if he could not back it up with the threat of severe punishment. In my father's day, he said, the thought of the castle's torture chamber kept them in line.”
“Your father's day? But does he know of your father?”
“My father's harshness, my dear, has ever been a blight on our family's escutcheon. It has created enemies on many sides. That is why I am especially careful to be lenient. History shall not call us tyrants if I can help it.”
“I still believe he is the devil.”
“You are a goose,” said the Count, chuckling. “A beautiful goose.”
“That makes you a gander, my lord.”
“An old gander.”
They sat at table. “My lordâ” said the Countess.
“Yes?”
“That old torture chamber. How strange I've never seen it.”
“In a mere three months,” said the Count, “you could not possibly have seen the entire castle. Besides, it can be reached only by descending a hidden stairwell with a disguised door. We'll go down after dinner, if you like, although there's really nothing there to interest a sweet young goose.”
“Three months . . .” said the Countess, almost inaudibly, fingering the brooch again.
“Does it seem longer since our marriage?” asked the Count.
“Longer?” She smiled, too brightly. “My lord, it seems like yesterday.”
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“They say,” said the Countess, brushing her hair, “that you're the devil.”
“Do you mind?”
“Should I mind? Will you drag me down to the Pit?”
“In one way or another.”
“You speak in metaphor?”
“Perhaps.”
“You are equivocal.”
“Like the devil.”
“And, like him, very naughty.”
“Why? Because I am here in your boudoir and you are dressed in hardly anything at all?”
“Because of that, yes; and because you counsel my dear husband to be a tyrant, like his father.”
“Did he tell you that?”
“Yes. And he showed me the torture chamber you advised him to reopen. How wicked of you! It is a terrible place. So dark and damp, and so deep undergroundâwhy, a poor wretch could split his lungs screaming and never be heard in the castle proper.”
“Your eyes are shining. I assume you found it fascinating.”
“Fascinating! Of course not! It was disgusting. That horrible rack . . . ugh! to think of the limbs stretching, the tendons tearing! . . .”
“You shudder deliciously. It becomes you.”
“And that dreadful wheel, and the iron boot . . . I have a pretty foot, don't you think?”
“Perfect.”
“Such a high arch; and the toes so short and even. I hate long toes. You don't have long toes, do you?”
“You forgetâI have no toes at all. Only hooves.”
“Careful, I may believe you. And where are your horns?”
“They are invisible. Like those your husband will be wearing very soon.”
“Indeed. You think highly of your charms.”
“As do you. Of yours.”
“Do you know what struck me as most horrible?”
“Eh? Horrible about what?”
“The torture chamber, of course.”
“Oh, of course. What struck you as most horrible?”
“There was a cage. A little cage. It looked like something you might keep a monkey in. It was too small for anything larger. And do you know what my husband said they kept in it?”
“What?”
“People!”
“No!”
“They kept people in it, he said. They could not stand up straight, or lie down; they could not even sit, for there were only spikes to sit on. And they kept them crouching there for days. Sometimes weeks. Until they screamed to be let out. Until they went mad. I would rather be torn apart on the rack . . .”
“Or have that pretty foot crushed in the boot?”
“Don't. That tickles . . .”
“It was meant to.”
“You must leave. The Count might walk in at any moment.”
“Until tomorrow then, my lady . . .”
Alone, smiling to herself, the Countess abstractedly rubbed the tops of her toes where he had kissed them. She had heard of burning kisses, they were a commonplace of bad troubadours, but until this evening she had thought the term a poetic extravagance. He wanted herâoh, how he wanted her! And he would have her. But not right away. Let him wait. Let him smoulder. Let him gaze at her in her diaphanous nightdress; let him, as she lifted her arms to brush her hair, admire the high beauty of her breasts. Allow him a kiss now and then. Oh, not on the mouth, not yetâon the feet, the fingertips, the forehead. Those burning kisses of his. Let him plead and groan. Let him suffer. She sighed happily as she turned down her bed. It was fine to be a woman and to be beautiful, to dole out little favors like little crumbs and to watch men lick them up and pant and beg for more and then to laugh in their faces and let them starve. This one was already panting. Soon he would beg. And he would starve for a long, long time. Then, some night when she thought he had suffered long enough, she would allow him to feast. What a glutton he would make of himself! He would try to make up for lost time, for all the weeks of starvation, and he would feast too rapidly and it would all be over too soon and she would have to make him hungry again very quickly so he could gorge himself again. It would all be very amusing . . .
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“If I
am
the devil, as you say they say, then why do I not over-whelm you with my infernal magic? Why do I grovel here at your feet, sick and stiff with love?”
“Perhaps it entertains you, my Dark Prince. Here: Kiss.”
“No. I want your lips.”
“Oh? You grow presumptuous. Perhaps you would rather leave.”
“No . . . no . . .”
“That's better. I may yet grant you a promotion.”
“Ah! my love! Thenâ”
“Oh, sit down. Not what you call my âfavor.' Just a
little
promotion. Though I don't know if you deserve even that. You want everything but you give nothing.”
“Anything. Anything.”
“What a large word! But perhaps
you
could indeed give me anything . . .”
“Anything.”
“But they say you demand fearful things in return. I would suffer torment without end, through eternity . . . Ah, I see you do not deny this. I do believe you
are
the devil.”
“I'll give you anything you desire. You have but to ask.”
“I am young. Men tell meâand so does my mirrorâthat I am beautiful, a delight from head to toe. Do you want all this?”
“Yes! Yes!”
“Then make this beauty never fade. Make it withstand the onslaught of time and violence. Make meâno matter what may befallâ
live forever.
”
“
Forever
 . . .”
“Haha! I've got you haven't I? If I never die, then what of that eternal torment? Do you grant me this boon, Evil One?”
“I cannot.”
“Wonderful! Oh, what an actor you are! I begin to admire you! Other men, impersonating the Adversary, would have said Yes. But you . . . how clever you are.”
“I cannot grant that.”
“StopâI'm weak with laughing! This game amuses me
so
much! It lends such spice to this dalliance! I would play it to the end. Satan, look here: you really cannot grant my wish, even if I give you in returnâ
all this?
”
“Tormentress!”
“All this, my demon? In return for that one thing I desire? All this?”
“The Powers of Night will swirl and seethe, butâyes, yes, anything!”
“Ah! You disarming rogue, come take these lips, come take it all!”
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“You said he was the devil and now I am inclined to believe you. The treacherous whelp! To bed my own wife in my own castle!”
“My lord, how can you think that
I
â”
“Silence! Stupid goose, do you still dissemble? He left without a word, under cover of night. Why? And your broochâthe brooch of my mother!âwas found in his empty room; in your bedchamber, one of his black gloves. Wretched woman!”
“Indeed, indeed I am wretched . . .”
“Tears will avail you nothing. You must be humbled and you will be humbled. Give thanks that I am not my father.
He
would have left you crammed naked in this little cage until your mind rotted and your body after it. But I am no tyrant. All night long, without your supper, you will shiver and squirm down here in repentence, but in the morning I will release you. I hope with sincerity you will have learned your lesson by then. Now I am going. In a few hours, you will probably start screaming to be let out. Save your breath. I will not be able to hear you. Think on your sins! Repent!”
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“They said he was the devil, but I place no stock in such talk. All I know is that he came to me directly from the old Count's castle where he had been overseer or something, and gave me complete plans for the storming of the battlements: information about the placement of the cannon, the least securely barricaded doors, the weakest walls, measurements, location of rooms, the exact strength of the castle guard and a schedule of its watch . . . everything I needed. My forces had been on a one-hour alert for months. I attacked that very night. Thanks to my informant, the battle was over before dawn.”
“You are to be congratulated, Duke. And where is he now?”
“Gone. Vanished. I paid him handsomely, and just between the two of us, Baron, I was beginning to make plans for his disposal. A dangerous man to have near one. But the rascal was smart. He disappeared soon after my victory.”
“And that head on the pike up there, with the gray beard fluttering in the windâit belonged to the late Count?”
“Yes. To this end may
all
enemies of my family come.”
“I'll drink to that. And what disposition was made of the old fool's wife?”
“The Countess? Ah. That is the only sourness in my triumph. I'd have enjoyed invading that pretty body before severing it from its pretty head. But she must have been warned. We searched and searched the castle that night. She was nowhere to be seen. She had escaped. Well . . . wherever she may be, I hope she gets wind of what I'm doing to her husband's castle.”
“Razing it, aren't you?”
“Down to its foundation blocksâleaving only enough to identify itâand building on that foundation an edifice of solid stone that will be a monument to its downfall and to my victory.
Forever.”
“Where do you suppose the Countess is now?”
“The devil only knows. May the wench scream in torment for eternity.”