Weird Women

by Leslie S. Klinger

  “What, then, was your meaning?”

  “Ten years ago you would not have asked; no man would have asked. I am old. Lucrezia old!–ah, Gods above!”

  “You are beautiful,” he repeated. “But how should I dare to touch you with my mouth?”

  “You would have dared, if you had thought me desirable,” she answered hoarsely. “You cannot guess how beautiful I was—before you were born, Orsini.”

  He felt a sudden pity for her; the glamour of her fame clung round her and gilded her. Was not this a woman who had been the fairest in Italy seated beside him?

  He raised her hand and kissed the palm, the only part that was not hidden with jewels.

  “You are sorry for me,” she said.

  Orsini started at her quick reading of his thoughts.

  “I am the last of my family,” she added. “And sick. Did you know that I was sick, Orsini?”

  “Nay, Madonna.”

  “For weeks I have been sick. And wearying for Rome.”

  “Rome,” he ventured, “is different now, Madonna.”

  “Ahè!” she wailed. “And I am different also.”

  Her hand lay on his knee; he looked at it and wondered if the things he had heard of her were true. She had been the beloved child of her father, the old Pope, rotten with bitter wickedness; she had been the friend of her brother, the dreadful Cesare—her other brother, Francesco, and her second husband—was it not supposed that she knew how both had died?V

  But for twenty-one years she had lived in Ferrara, patroness of poet and painter, companion of such as the courteous gentle Venetian, Pietro Bembo.VI

  And Alfonso d’Este, her husband, had found no fault with her; as far as the world could see, there had been no fault to find.

  Ormfredo Orsini stared at the hand sparkling on his knee and wondered.

  “Suppose that I was to make you my father confessor?” she said. The white mantle had fallen apart and the bosom of her gown glittered, even in the twilight.

  “What sins have you to confess, Madonna?” he questioned.

  She peered at him sideways.

  “A Pope’s daughter should not be afraid of the Judgment of God,” she answered. “And I am not. I shall relate my sins at the bar of Heaven and say I have repented—Ahè—if I was young again!”

  “Your Highness has enjoyed the world,” said Orsini.

  “Yea, the sun,” she replied, “but not the twilight.”

  “The twilight?”

  “It has been twilight now for many years,” she said, “ever since I came to Ferrara.”

  The moon was rising behind the cypress trees, a slip of glowing light. Lucrezia took her chin in her hand and stared before her; a soft breeze stirred the tall reeds in the pool behind her and gently ruffled the surface of the water.

  The breath of the night-smelling flowers pierced the slumbrous air; the palace showed a faint shape, a marvellous tint; remote it looked and uncertain in outline.

  Lucrezia was motionless; her garments were dim, yet glittering, her face a blur; she seemed the ruin of beauty and graciousness, a fair thing dropped suddenly into decay.

  Orsini rose and stepped away from her; the perfume of her unguents offended him. He found something horrible in the memory of former allurement that clung to her; ghosts seemed to crowd round her and pluck at her, like fierce birds at carrion.

  He caught the glitter of her eyes through the dusk; she was surely evil, bad to the inmost core of her heart; her stale beauty reeked of dead abomination.… Why had he never noticed it before?

  The ready wit of his rank and blood failed him; he turned away towards the cypress trees.

  The Duchess made no attempt to detain him; she did not move from her crouching, watchful attitude.

  When he reached the belt of laurels he looked back and saw her dark shape still against the waters of the pool that were beginning to be touched with the argent glimmer of the rising moon. He hurried on, continually catching the strings of his lute against the boughs of the flowering shrubs; he tried to laugh at himself for being afraid of an old, sick woman; he tried to ridicule himself for believing that the admired Duchess, for so long a decorous great lady, could in truth be a creature of evil.

  But the conviction flashed into his heart was too deep to be uprooted.

  She had not spoken to him like a Duchess of Ferrara, but rather as the wanton Spaniard whose excesses had bewildered and sickened Rome.

  A notable misgiving was upon him; he had heard great men praise her, Ludovico Ariosto,VII Cardinal Ippolito’s secretary and the noble Venetian Bembo; he had himself admired her remote and refined splendour. Yet, because of these few moments of close talk with her, because of a near gaze into her face, he felt that she was something horrible, the poisoned offshoot of a bad race.

  He thought that there was death on her glistening painted lips, and that if he had kissed them he would have died, as so many of her lovers were reputed to have died.

  He parted the cool leaves and blossoms and came on to the borders of a lake that lay placid under the darkling sky.

  It was very lonely; bats twinkled past with a black flap of wings; the moon had burnt the heavens clear of stars; her pure light began to fill the dusk. Orsini moved softly, with no comfort in his heart.

  The stillness was intense; he could hear his own footfall, the soft leather on the soft grass. He looked up and down the silence of the lake.

  Then suddenly he glanced over his shoulder. Lucrezia Borgia was standing close behind him; when he turned her face looked straight into his.

  He moaned with terror and stood rigid; awful it seemed to him that she should track him so stealthily and be so near to him in this silence and he never know of her presence.

  “Eh, Madonna!” he said.

  “Eh, Orsini,” she answered in a thin voice, and at the sound of it he stepped away, till his foot was almost in the lake.

  His unwarrantable horror of her increased, as he found that the glowing twilight had confused him; for, whereas at first he had thought she was the same as when he had left her seated by the pool, royal in dress and bearing, he saw now that she was leaning on a stick, that her figure had fallen together, that her face was yellow as a church candle, and that her head was bound with plasters, from the under edge of which her eyes twinkled, small and lurid.

  She wore a loose gown of scarlet brocade that hung open on her arms that showed lean and dry; the round bones at her wrist gleamed white under the tight skin, and she wore no rings.

  “Madonna, you are ill,” muttered Ormfredo Orsini. He wondered how long he had been wandering in the garden.

  “Very ill,” she said. “But talk to me of Rome. You are the only Roman at the Court, Orsini.”

  “Madonna, I know nothing of Rome,” he answered, “save our palace there and sundry streets—”

  She raised one hand from the stick and clutched his arm.

  “Will you hear me confess?” she asked. “All my beautiful sins that I cannot tell the priest? All we did in those days of youth before this dimness at Ferrara?”

  “Confess to God,” he answered, trembling violently.

  Lucrezia drew nearer.

  “All the secrets Cesare taught me,” she whispered. “Shall I make you heir to them?”

  “Christ save me,” he said, “from the Duke of Valentinois’VIII secrets!”

  “Who taught you to fear my family?” she questioned with a cunning accent. “Will you hear how the Pope feasted with his Hebes and Ganymedes?IX Will you hear how we lived in the Vatican?”

  Orsini tried to shake her arm off; anger rose to equal his fear.

  “Weed without root or flower, fruitless uselessness!” he said hoarsely. “Let me free of your spells!”

  She loosed his arm and seemed to recede from him without movement; the plasters round her head showed ghastly white, and he saw all the wrinkles round her drooped lips and the bleached ugliness of her bare throat.

  “Will you not hear of Rome?�
�� she insisted in a wailing whisper. He fled from her, crashing through the bushes.

  Swiftly and desperately he ran across the lawns and groves, up the winding steps to the terraces before the palace, beating the twilight with his outstretched hands as if it was an obstacle in his way.

  Stumbling and breathless, he gained the painted corridors that were lit with a hasty blaze of wax light. Women were running to and fro, and he saw a priest carrying the Holy Eucharist cross a distant door.

  One of these women he stopped.

  “The Duchess—” he began, panting.

  She laid her finger on her lip.

  “They carried her in from the garden an hour ago; they bled and plastered her, but she died—before she could swallow the wafer—(hush! she was not thinking of holy things, Orsini!)—ten minutes ago—”

  I. Lucrezia Borgia (1480–1519) was the daughter of Pope Alexander VI (born Rodrigo de Borja in Spain); she was an educated woman, skilled at administration, who would become (in)famous for her rumored involvement in a number of murders (using poison that she supposedly kept in a ring) and for her numerous affairs. She died at the age of 39, ten days after giving birth to her seventh child (although some biographers argue it was actually her tenth), so Bowen is taking literary license in this story by suggesting she was elderly.

  II. Lucrezia’s third and final marriage, in 1502, was to Alfonso d’Este, Duke of Ferrara, a province and city in Northern Italy.

  III. From the 12th century on, the Orsinis were a renowned Italian family. In 1502, several members of the family participated in a failed plot against Cesare Borgia, Lucrezia’s brother.

  IV. Lucrezia actually lived in Ferrara for 17 years.

  V. Francesco II Gonzaga was Lucrezia’s brother-in-law, with whom she had a long affair that was discontinued after he contracted syphilis. However, Bowen may be thinking of Lucrezia’s brother Giovanni, who was murdered in 1497, possibly by her brother Gioffre. Her second husband, Alfonso d’Aragon, was murdered in 1500, and the killer was rumored to be her brother Cesare.

  VI. Bembo was known for reintroducing the works of Petrarch and the development of the madrigal, but he also had an affair with Lucrezia Borgia beginning in 1502.

  VII. The author of the 1516 Italian masterpiece Orlando Furioso and the creator of the term “humanism,” he also served as secretary to Cardinal Ippolito, who was Lucrezia’s brother-in-law.

  VIII. Louis XII of France appointed Cesare Borgia Duke of Valentinois in 1498, one of the reasons behind Cesare’s nickname “Il Valentino.”

  IX. Hebe was the Greek goddess of youth, who also served the gods nectar and ambrosia; the Church of England later created a story that she had fallen during her service and exposed her body. Ganymede was a beautiful youth who was taken by Zeus to Mount Olympus to serve as cup-bearer to the gods. His legend is associated with pederasty and homosexuality.

  Regina Miriam Bloch (1889–1938) is surely one of the most enigmatic female authors from the turn of the last century. She was born in Germany, but at some point moved to London, where she initially found success as a poet. She released two collections, The Swine-Gods and Other Visions (1917) and The Book of Strange Loves (1918). Although both books were well-received, she never published another work of fiction and fell into obscurity for unknown reasons. To add to the mystery, it was sometimes claimed that she was also the famed author Rebecca West, although West—after first seeming to confirm the fact in a 1921 magazine interview—denied it in 1922. Bloch, who never married, was also interested in eastern philosophy and spiritualism. In fact, most of what she wrote during the last twenty years of her life were book reviews for occult and spiritualist journals. The story chosen for this book—“The Swine-Gods”—marks the first time Bloch’s fiction has seen print in over a century.

  The Swine-Gods by Regina Miriam Bloch

  In my dream I wandered along an endless lane, gray as the smoke of twilight ere night hath kindled the fires of her stars upon God’s hearth-place. It wound ceaselessly on and on as a grey serpent uncoiling; the trees were lean and dismal, and gloomed like clouds through the besetting mists.

  I grew weary wandering its arid space; my feet saddened and my heart sank within me.

  And there came by a little child whose face was peaked with sobbing, and whose hair was wild, and that had a broken wing upon its shoulder.

  I said: “Where am I?”

  It said: “This is the Long Lane of the Lost, and I am a Lost Love.”

  And it passed on.

  And there came another child, with an elfin face that held a ruined laughter, and whose rose-red robe was tattered.

  I said: “Who art thou?”

  She said: “I am a lost Hour of Delight and there is mud upon my feet.”

  And she went on.

  She was followed by a third child in a gown that had once been skyey-blue, but was faded to drabness by wind and weather. She bare withered lilies in her arm and at her kirtleI hung a broken lute.

  I said: “Who art thou?”

  And she looked at me with eyes wherein the violets had paled and said: “I am a Lost Illusion, for all things lost wander along this Lane.”

  I said: “Is there no house within it? For I am weary of my bitter wayfaring, and it hath no end.”

  She made answer: “There is no rest-house but one.”

  I said: “Where?”

  Then she pointed, saying: “Yonder,” and passed by also.

  I looked where she had shewn to me and saw, beyond the mist, a palace with mighty walls frowning on high and pinnaces and towers that were fashioned curiously.

  I went on towards it and lo! the bridge fell clashing from invisible hands above a river that ran murk and drear about it. The gates and doorways of bronze stood wide and nowhere was there a keeper and straightway I entered in.

  As I passed I heard from afar, a moaning as of one in pain and the baying of a distant pack. I wondered who it was that hunted a-down the Long Lane of the Lost.

  And I went marveling into the silent palace.

  I found myself within a hall greater than any dreamed of by men, and built entirely with pillars and walls of black porphyry and basalt.

  The heavy columns frowned stupendously; a sable dome seemed to soar above me in its giddy heights, where beasts and bats with harpy faces and dusk wings, circled without cess,II flapping and screaming. The floors were of black jade that shimmered like a haunted mere.III And from the pillars hung pendants of black crystal shining frostily, while in the crevices of the flags, the pediments and colonnades, raven flowers like creatures of death moved and spread their petals until they seemed as greedy, voracious mouths. At either end of the hall there was a furnace of red fire, in the midst whereof, beyond steps of black marble, loomed a terrific BaalIV of iron to which many acolytes were sacrificing.

  I went towards the Baal at the right end of the hall.

  The glow of the fires in all that surrounding opaqueness dazzled me. For a time I stood deafened by the crackle and roar of the flames from the core of the furnace. Then as my sight cleared, I saw a huge Moloch,V with wide-open jaws and molten flaring hands and a head fashioned in the image of a Swine, whose snout belched fire.

  Before him were priests with shaven heads and leering faces, attired also in black. And each one bare a little silent flame of blue or white or red or green towards a High-Priest, who stood in the centre of the uppermost step before the Baal.

  The High-Priest towered above the others and his robes shone with black jade. I could not see his face, but upon his head there were eagle-feathers and his foot was cloven.VI

  And the High-Priest chanted, saying: “Master Mammon,VII O God Mammon, always we find thy fuel and thy eternal fires never die, although thy hands are burnt unto white embers. O God above the other Gods of whom the world craves grace, since the dawning hath thy house been set upon sure foundations. Thy lures are deeper than the sockets of the sea; thy pride is ever fed, thy tents spread out their mighty camps in mockery
of the Lord.

  “Behold! begetter of men, we do thine ancient service.”

  And one of the priests came forward and the little flame that burnt upon the platter in his hands was white.

  And he gave it to him of the cloven foot, droning: “Arch-Flamen,VIII this is the soul of a very young maid. Her limbs and body are as folded flowers, but her parents have sold her to an old man who hath much gold in his coffers. His lips are froreIX and blue, his breath is as the odour of death and his heart is as a satyr’s.”

  Then the Arch-Priest lifted the white flame high, so that it lay close beneath the searing fire of the Swine-Baal’s snout.

  And crying: “O Mammon, the sweet savour of thy Virgin-bride!” he cast it down into the molten hands.

  The fire hissed up once and crackled and burnt on.

  Now there came a second priest, with a little blue flame, saying: “This is the soul of a poet who dreamt exquisite dreams and went hungerful and there were very few to hearken.

  “Yet desire came to him, so he cast away his dreams and sang of vileness and abominable things. But the people flocked to hear and cried: ‘More! More!’

  “He said: ‘Verily, I will give ye more of my obscenities, if ye will give me your gold.’

  “Then they laughed, and stripped the coins from their hair and the bracelets from their arms.

  “And he sang on.”

  And the High-Priest cast the blue flame in, saying: “All the dreams and songs, the ideals and quests of the world are thine, O Master Mammon.”

  Next there came one bearing a red flame, who said: “This is the heart of a man who loved a maiden dearly.

  “She had only one gown and no jewels for her anklets, but her soul was pure as the dews of the dawn.

  “And he came unto a house wherein there dwelt a harlot, who had been the dancing-woman of the Caliphs. Her bed was hung with silk, her tables were of chalcedony, her ewers of silver and she had pearls upon her kirtle-zone.

  “And she said: ‘I lust for thy youth and strength. Thou art as an oak and I as a palm that is broken. Abide with me!’