Mirror Mirror (28 page)

As she had grown and changed, so had he. A young man now, he was somewhat stooped of shoulder, as if practicing to be a codger. One leg seemed shorter than the other, or withered; anyway, it kept itself slightly arched behind, looking a bit like a high-spirited colt's rear leg. Without much success his cheeks and lips were trying to grow a beard. His chin was stronger than it had been, though his eyes were still jittery with caution.

“I am your friend,” she said.

“If I've learned anything from the kitchen tales that Primavera used to tell, it's that the likes of me are to beware of friends like you,” he answered. “Maidens of unusual friendliness, that sort of thing.”

“Don't be a fool,” she said. He flinched and retreated.

“I am only looking for my lost goose, nothing more.”

“I'm sorry. I didn't mean that. I merely mean this: don't you recognize me? I am your friend from long ago. Bianca, who played with you in the road below the house.”

His eyes looked more hooded than ever. “Bianca died years ago. Are you her spirit?”

“I didn't die,” she said. “I just—went away.”

“What do you want with me?”

She shrugged. “To help you find your goose, I suppose. What else does a friend want, but the same thing?”

“If you aren't going to ensnare me into your wicked bed,” he said, sounding faintly disappointed, “you may as well help me find my goose. Have you seen her? It's the one with the long neck.”

“Don't they all have long necks?”

“Well—yes, now that you mention it.”

“Where are the other geese, while you look for the lost goose?”

“With themselves, of course.”

“Safe?”

“As safe as geese can get. Which isn't very safe, I admit; after all, I keep them together and free of the fox only so they might end up roasting on the spit.”

She said, “I'll help you find her. Where are you looking?”

“Here and there.” He indicated to the left, to the right, broadly and without fuss. She looked around, and began to take in the world again.

Beyond the clearing, there was no correction to the world. The trees had a certain snap to them, a self-assurance, that was offensive at first. They didn't shrug themselves into more respectable shapes, more graceful curves; those limbs that were ragged with disease or hollowed by the boring of insects stayed ragged, insouciant. As she ventured a few steps farther, the rocks and stones jabbed her tender soles, and a fly pestered her about the ears. The air grew colder again by degrees and wouldn't warm as she might have preferred it to. It was, in short, the real world.

She took his hand and they walked together, he with his lopsided lope, she gingerly, to protect her feet. It was bizarre and even cruel, in a way, to see the world insist on being itself, with so little regard for them. Coming upon an ungainly promontory, they had to scramble around it, as it neither retreated nor developed convenient footholds for their use. Balsam pitch smeared against her gown, rubbing a gummy mark in it. Her breasts were cold and the tips of her breasts stiffened
uncomfortably. She ought to have willed herself some decent clothes, but she hadn't remembered the world to be so unaccommodating.

“I don't know your name,” she said.

“I am the gooseboy,” he told her fondly, as if to have heard that she could forget was proof enough that they had once known one another.

“But your other name,” she said. “I've a name. Bianca. Bianca de Nevada.” It felt odd in her mouth. “Didn't you have another name?”

“Michelotto,” he said. “Nothing more.”

“Michelotto.” She found herself smiling. “I think we were friends once.”

“I think so too.” He said it out of a passion to please, not from conviction.

They skirted a stand of slender trees with slender trunks like the legs of fawns, and bodices of white leaf.

“How many geese have you?” she asked.

“Seven,” he said, “or eight.”

“Seven when one is missing, eight when one is found?”

“Seven or eight.”

“Well, there they are, then.” They had come to a gentle dip from which a spring burbled; a vernal pool shimmered with the reflection of a gaggle of geese. White curvets upon green water. “Four, five, six—seven.”

“Seven!” he said. “That's the right number, I think. So she's come back.”

“She came back while you were looking the other way.”

“That's often the way you find someone who is lost,” he said. He smiled at her as if he were competent, just for a moment, and his gaze looked clear and friendly. In all her childhood she hadn't thought of him as much more than a goose himself, and the realization caused her grief.

“Come back with me,” he said. “They will be happy to see you.”

“Who is there?” she asked.

“Donna Borgia, for one.” He paused as if trying to remember the others.

Her fear was profound, though she didn't know why. She pulled back and said, “You are trying to lure me back!”

“I am looking for my goose, nothing more,” he said. “You must believe me.”

“Play with your geese, gooseboy,” she said, and pushed him on the shoulder. He stumbled and fell to one knee, and while he maneuvered and huffed to find his balance, she fled.

It wasn't hard to find the dwarves' cottage. While she was gone, while she had ventured into the world, it had solidified more. A rich moss adhered to one wall. The door was now lime-washed and opened in two segments, like the door of a byre. A concavity shaped like a shell at the top, perhaps a shrine, was set in the side wall. She went to look. Within stood no Virgin with open hands, no carpenter with a Child on his shoulders, as she might have expected to see. Instead, a crudely carved stone tree with a coil of serpent wrapped around its base. A single apple, outsize, weighed down one branch. The serpent ignored the apple. Though its head was turned toward Bianca, its fangs were weathered into stumps.

Interviews

V
ICENTE FOUND
Fra Ludovico in the little yard behind his cell, where he was keeping watch over a kettle. He was boiling up berries and bark, which Vicente remembered was the basis of some unsavory potion famous for the stupor it induced. The foul smell was comforting in its familiarity.

“Are you the mad priest or the quiet sage today? Be the coherent one, if you can; I have to hear someone making some sense.”

Fra Ludovico seemed less interested in conversing with Vicente than in governing the flame and making sure sediment didn't scorch on the bottom of the pot and ruin the batch. But he said, “Sit, sit, my friend,” and Vicente squatted, upwind of the drift of vapors.

“I left you in charge,” he began.

“You didn't leave
me
in
charge,
” said Fra Ludovico. “In charge of la Borgia? I can't even get up on a donkey anymore without a ladder,
a hoist, and a week of fasting. The notion of asking me to govern a Borgia! But I did my part nonetheless, you know.”

“Yes. You played the part of a blithering fool. What for?”

“A canny disguise. So I might be considered harmless, and not need to be disposed of. So I might protect my position and protect your daughter.”

“But you didn't protect her.”

“I did what I could. If you're going to blame me for the way things happen in human affairs, you're wasting your breath. Have a drink instead. It isn't ready but it'll burn your tongue and stop your nonsense.”

Vicente asked Fra Ludovico for more information about the disappearance of Bianca. He wanted a more certain sense of when the disaster had happened. The old priest—for by now he was old—shook his head and tried to remember. “It was close to the time that Primavera's grandson disappeared,” he said at last. “And she will know exactly when that was. She will know,” he added, “though she won't say, of course. She can't.”

“But how many years ago? Your cheek has gone hoary, and I can't escape the sad eyes of Primavera. I gather I've been away about a decade, but when in that span of years did Bianca disappear? And what prompted it?”

“I measure time by the seasons of the Church,” began Fra Ludovico, “and every year begins anew, with Advent; it's the same year, over and over, indistinguishable one from another—”

“I'll turn you out on your fat old behind, you pious fool—”

“About six years, more or less.”

This was clearer but hardly a comfort. “But why? What happened? How had she changed?”

“She changed only as every child changes, no more, no less. I appreciate your sorrow, but you must understand: Had I seen signs that she intended to flee I would have intercepted her. She was still docile enough, still a timid child in her way. Well, you'd never let her meander—”

Vicente gave him a look. “I'll say what I will,” said the priest. “I
blame you no more than I blame myself, Don Vicente; facts are as they are. You rarely took her as far as the village.”

“She was a
child.
”

“And she grew up while you were gone. Or began to, anyway.”

“Was she threatened here? Soldiers sniffing around?”

“We enjoyed the customary blight of daily life. We delighted in tedium.”

Vicente could sit no longer. He strode back and forth, stroking his beard. “Have you blessed what you can of her spirit? In the event she has died? Have you performed the offices of the dead?”

“She was blameless,” said Fra Ludovico. “About that you can rest assured. I'm no theologian, Don Vicente, but I can't bring myself to worry for the state of her soul in the afterlife. She was too pure a child to need serious pardoning.” He stirred more vigorously. “Besides, I used to note that you didn't take much stock in my feeble efforts.”

“Who are you to deny a child spiritual benefit because her father is a doubter?” Vicente overturned the pot, scalding the priest's bare toes. Fra Ludovico yipped in pain and irritation. “Are you a pope, to determine who deserves forgiveness for their sins? You have no right to deny my child sanctity. You have no way to see into her heart.”

“You've been changed by your adventures, I see. I suppose I might as well get used to it. Now look. I have my convictions. Maybe they are born of a little too much liqueur in the colder days, but they are convictions just the same. And I don't sense that Bianca has departed this life.”

“What are you saying?”

“Nothing more than what I've already said. No hunting dogs have found her body in the woods. Villagers, whose gossip and conjecture often signifies, have been as mystified as we at Montefiore are. Primavera insisted on augury after augury, trying to learn the truth, and she could read no sign of Bianca's demise in any entrails. That was when the old sow could still speak, of course, though her tongue became detached shortly thereafter.”

“For blasphemy?”

“If she'd been subject to that punishment for blasphemy, she'd have been mute since she was three.” He continued. “Maybe Bianca escaped over the hills to Ravenna. Maybe she found a little convent somewhere and offered herself to Christ. In any case, I've more to do than say the Mass of the Dead for a healthy young girl who lights out on her own.”

Vicente hugged his elbows. “You didn't go after her.”

“Maybe she went after you,” said Fra Ludovico, scowling at the hickory bark and sanguine berry slopped on the ground. “She was growing up, you know; she couldn't help it. You can't fix a child in time.”

“If I find her corpse, or hear word of her death, you will bless her spirit?”

“I bless her spirit daily. I'll bless yours too, if you take to wandering the woods and fields looking for evidence. And I'll not say the Mass of the Dead until I know one or the other of you have died.”

Vicente had to smile despite himself—weakly, affectionately. “You're as superstitious as Primavera, in your own way,” he said.

“Now that's blasphemy.”

Vicente wandered through the airy chapel and out into the stable yard. The gooseboy was settling his flock behind their brambly hedge, and fixing what passed for a gate with a twist of moldy rope.

“You never know which goose you will lose and which goose you will find,” he was muttering to himself.

“Fidelio,” said Vicente. “Fidelio, is it? Or Paolo? I can't remember.”

“Michelotto. Everyone seems to want to know today.”

“In your wanderings, lad, have you come across anyone who could tell me the whereabouts of Bianca? Your friend from those years back—you must remember her? With the skin so fair, and the black, black hair—”

The gooseboy twisted his face as if trying to remember. He opened his mouth to speak, but another voice cut through the air first, calling him away from Vicente. Lucrezia Borgia stood at a window,
her beautiful hair falling to one side, an ivory comb in her hand. “Michelotto,” she called. “Michelotto, my boy. It's time to brush my hair. Come and give your poor mother some attention.”