Vibidia, the priestess of the Vestals, an aged and venerable woman to whom Messalina had rendered a few services, came to the Palatine to intercede on her behalf and to ask that she not be condemned without being heard. Narcissus did not let her see Claudius and assured her that the Empress would have every facility to defend herself. He also turned away Britannicus and Octavia, brought by Lepida, who would have implored mercy for their mother.
Toward evening the Emperor sat down at table, having rediscovered a certain tranquility of soul. He began to eat with abundance, as was his custom, and the first warmth of the wine caused him to regret Messalina. He turned to Narcissus and said to him: “Have the unfortunate Messalina come tomorrow to justify herself to me.”
Narcissus knew that that word was his own condemnation if he did not act with the utmost rapidity. He went out and told the tribune of the guard and the centurion that the Emperor had ordered them to go and kill Messalina immediately. He summoned the freedman Evodus, a vile individual who was devoted to him and of whose hatred for Messalina he was aware, and he charged him with following the tribune and making sure of the execution of his orders.
Messalina had installed her mother Lepida in the house of Valerius Asiaticus, confiscated on the latter’s death and now imperial property. It was with her that she had sought refuge. She had spent the afternoon in the garden, lying on the grass, awaiting news of events. Lepida tried to remind her that, according to the old wisdom bequeathed as a heritage in Roman families, it was necessary to look death in the face if it presented itself, but Messalina breathed in the autumnal freshness that came from the gardens of Lucullus and shivered, having never felt the sweetness of life so much. She was not yet in despair.
She thought she had heard a noise from the direction of the house. She got up and perceived a man running toward her. It was Evodus. He had come on ahead of the tribune and the soldiers, who were searching for Messalina in the rooms, and, having learned from a slave where she was, he had launched forth to insult her before her death.
When she recognized him she understood her destiny. Evodus had always hated her beauty, because he was dirty and ugly and had been unable to aspire to possess her. He served as Claudius’ scribe and had rendered himself indispensable by his erudition and is faculty of writing quickly. He was literate and base of soul, which often go together.
Hatred made him snigger and prevented him from speaking. He arrived close to Messalina, and as her stola had slipped and uncovered her breast, he struck that breast, whose beauty had outraged him for a long time, with the back of his hand, with all his might.
Messalina could not retain a cry of pain, and fainted. Evodus grabbed her by the hair and shook her, shouting: “Bitch! Harlot of the Suburra!” and, trying to rip her tunic from top to bottom, he said to her: “Show us your body before dying.”
But the tribune, followed by his soldiers, had just arrived. He thrust Evodus aside violently, making the observation that the justice of Caesar ought to be more measured and more silent. As Lepida had handed her daughter a dagger that she had under her garments, he stood some distance away and turned his eyes away in order not to be embarrassed by that supreme second. He made a sign to his soldiers to drag Evodus further away.
But it requires great courage to strike oneself with a pointed weapon. When one has sought pleasure all one’s life, one is not prepared to give oneself pain. Messalina attempted several times to deliver a mortal blow, but only scratched herself lightly. The sight of her blood frightened her and, dropping the weapon, half-collapsed on the ground, she hid her head in her hands.
Then the tribune, full of pity, advanced stealthily behind her drew his sword, braced himself and struck her a mighty blow under the armpit, which traversed her clean through and killed her instantly.
Then, having made sure of her death, he drew way with his soldiers.
In the meantime, darkness fell.
Lepida had remained alone next to her daughter’s body. There was a rustle in the trees of the garden of Lucullus, in the dense spindle-trees and the mortuary box-trees, and a dead leaf, which seemed to be carried by a light breath, fell on to the ardent heart that was no longer beating.
THE ANGEL OF LUST
I. The First Appearance of Lust
Almazan admitted it to himself, with astonishment: he was afraid. He did not know why. He experienced an anguish without any apparent cause, the expectation of an unforeseen event of a terrible nature.
He lifted the canvas door-curtain of the room where he was walking, traversed with firm tread the Andalusian patio where the moonlight put gleams over the multicolored azulejos and opened the narrow window that overlooked the quay.
He leaned out, with the sensation that a form sprung from the shadows was about to seized him by the neck.
Everything was calm. The suburb of Triana was at rest. Almazan could see the mass of the Golden Tower on the other side of the Guadalquivir, and the great ocher-colored rampart that linked it to the Alcazar.
The tranquil strength of the stones reassured him. The minarets that some houses had retained from the Moorish epoch were outlined in the sky like young women exalted by the warm night. To his life were the illuminated lamps of the ghetto of Santa Cruz, and further away the Moorish quarter, where the carders and weavers lived. The landscape that Almazan had before his eyes was familiar and peaceful.
In any case, what did he have to fear? Several years ago, the militia of Saint Hermandad had organized a nocturnal police, which rendered armed attacks more difficult. Was he not known throughout Seville? Since the Jewish physician Aboulfedia had ceased, by an inexplicable eccentricity, to practice medicine, he was the one, in spite of his youth, whom everyone came to consult. He was loved by the poor people of Triana, whom he treated gratuitously. It was true that the Holy Office suspected him of heresy. He knew that he was hated by Doctor Juan Ruiz, the queen’s counselor, one of the two Dominicans appointed by the Pope, who was directing in Seville the initial investigations against conversos and Jews. But he had powerful friends who would warn him in case of real danger. His soul was well-tempered and, until now, inaccessible to fear.
He closed the shutter of his window. The sound made him shiver.
He shrugged his shoulders. He was irritated by his weakness, He talked to himself aloud.
“Come on! Am I losing my mind?”
His voice resonated with an unexpected tone in the little stairway that rose up to his bedroom.
He was about to cry “Guzman!” but he remembered that his servant, who slept above the gallery overlooking the patio, had asked him for permission to go and see his mother a few leagues from Seville, and would not return until the next day.
In any case, what would Guzman be able to do for him? It was the excessive heat that was agitating his nerves. Perhaps he had read too much of the guide to the ramblings of Maimonides, of which a large folio manuscript written in Arabic was open on his table.
He traversed the patio again and stopped, open-mouthed, holding his breath.
Like a blade traversing him, like a cold sweat covering his body, palpable and mute, hallucinatory and invisible, terror had just gripped him.
Everything was silent. A leaf from one of the laurel trees surrounding the pool placed in the middle of the patio was detached with a small sad sound and fell into the water. Almazan had a desire to utter a howl in order to break the spell of fear that enveloped him. But his voice caught in his throat.
It is in such cases that prayer is useful to those who believe, he thought.
His reason rebelled. He made a great effort of will. He remembered the words of his master and benefactor, the Archbishop of Toledo, Alfonso Carrillo:13 “There are sometimes hidden powers that deliver themselves to great combats around us, without our being aware of it. Fortunately, a dense material form covers our understanding and veils our perception, for we would go mad in contemplating them.”
Archbishop Carrillo was right. There were a thousand liv
ing forms around him. Some were beneficent, but others were full of hatred and terrible to humans. Had not that old insensate Aboulfedia given him a description of gray larvae that floated above certain evil places, deformed ephialtes that physical eyes could not see because they were composed of a matter more subtle than that of our bodies. All the alchemists and scholars with whom he had conversed were unanimous regarding the existence of the world that populated the ether. At certain moments of great intellectual exaltation, had he not glimpsed himself the ideal contours of ravishing but immaterial young women?
He raised his eyes and looked at the somber blue sky, dotted with stars. Was not the end-point of all reason, the ultimate wisdom of the Greek, Hebrew and Arabic books that filled his house, the cult of the human will? He had the greatest strength possible within him.
That thought rendered him calmer.
Come on! The best thing I can do is sleep, he thought.
It was then that he perceived the sound of light footsteps on the quay and the presence of a human being behind the entrance door of his house. Someone was now pressed against the wood of the door, someone who had come through the streets of Seville to spy on him by night.
Quietly, he traversed the vestibule, and thought he distinguished a friction on the wood, as if a hand were groping for the bronze knocker in order to lift it.
He waited, but the knocker did not resonate. An absolute silence followed. Almazan drew nearer to the door. He listened with all the force of his attention, but he did not know whether he could hear the breath of a halting respiration or whether it was his imagination that made him think that someone was breathing close by.
He had put his ear to the lock. He could stand it no longer. With all his might he shouted: “Who’s there?”
No one replied. Presumably, a thief coming to assure himself of the solitude of his house, or a spy of the Holy Office, would have fled at that appeal. He would have heard footfalls on the quay. A sick or wounded man desirous of his cares would have knocked and shouted.
All the forces of his attention were alert. Fear had placed a passionate curiosity in his heart. The danger, if there was one, was of a human order and did not frighten him. A weapon was unnecessary; he had confidence in his strength. Slowly, he turned the key. He listened again. This time, the silence seemed absolute—there was no longer the slightest breath.
Then he leaned on the catch and opened the door slightly. A light push made itself felt, as if someone were trying to make the batten swing faster. Almazan maintained it momentarily, and then decided to open it abruptly.
“There’s no need to push, you can see I’m opening up…,” he began to say.
But at that moment he had the vision of a blanched and contorted face, with immeasurably wide eyes, of which he could only see the white, with a wide mouth stretched on the right all the way to the ear as if by a monstrous hilarity, a face of ceruse or chalk, singularly dappled by gray patches.
He did not have time to be astonished by that spectral apparition. The bearer of the frightfully livid face, who was a man of tall stature, let all his weight fall upon him.
Instinctively, Almazan extended his arms and seized the unknown man by the neck, but he did not have to fight. The man collapsed heavily, as if his feet were made of lead and were dragging him down. Almazan contemplated him with amazement, lying on the mosaic tiles of the vestibule. Tics were still running over his revulsed features. His mouth stretched immeasurably, almost climbing as far as his eyes. The expression of laughter become demonic, and froze.
Almazan put his hand over his heart and made sure that he was dead.
He closed the door. He lifted up the recumbent body and dragged it across the patio as far as the room where his books were. He meditated profoundly.
He had just recognized the man, who must have expired behind his door at the very second that he opened it. It was Pablo, the confidential servant of his master Alfonso Carrillo. By the white foam on his lips, the torment of his features and the milky whiteness of his face and hands, Almazan saw that he had succumbed to a mineral poison of rapid effect, which had disorganized his nerves and abruptly decomposed his blood.
But why had the Archbishop of Toledo sent his servant to him at this late hour of the night? Why had the messenger crossed the few leagues that separated Seville from the dwelling to which Alfonso Carrillo had retired on foot and not on horseback?
Almazan had announced his visit for the next day. He wanted to consult his master about the propositions he had received from the Moorish king Abul Hacen,14 who was attracting to Granada the poets and scholars of Morocco and Spain to be installed in the Alhambra. The Archbishop must have had a very powerful reason to see Almazan to want to bring his visit forward by a few hours.
What could that reason be? What had happened?
Almazan searched the dead man’s pockets. There was nothing in them. The message was doubtless oral.
He had to leave immediately. It was necessary to inform the Archbishop of his servant’s death. But could he leave the corpse alone in his house? When his domestic Guzman returned in the morning, would he not be struck by terror on finding it? Who could tell what unforeseen steps terror might drive him to take? Then again, the nearest hirer off horses in Triana was in bed and would not open the doors of his stables until sunrise.
Almazan sat down in his armchair and tried to reconstitute the sequence of events that might have brought that cadaver to him.
Almazan had not known his father and could scarcely recover the image of his mother in the earliest memories of his childhood.
He saw once again, confusedly, a bronzed face framed with long dark tresses, with ardent eyes, and heard an Arabic song that she sang at sunset along the ramparts of Almazan, which was inexpressibly sad. He bore the name of the city of his birth. He had quit Almazan when his mother died, never to return.
“It’s a pity; he’s too handsome!” Archbishop Carrillo had said, when he had seen him for the first time in Toledo, where he had been confided, in order to be brought up, to a poor family of laborers. He had never been able to obtain exact information about his birth. Inigo, who worked steel for an armorer, hardly ever spoke to him, and his wife Juliana was a gossip who scarcely recounted anything but lies. He only knew that is mother was a Moorish captive and his father a foreign scholar who only stayed in Almazan for a few days after having gone to visit the Archbishop of Toledo.
The esteem that he had for the father had earned the son, on the part of Alfonso Carrillo, a protection that had never been belied. First he had given the order that he be taught the métier of arms, which was done. Inigo’s brother, an old soldier who had made war against the Moors, the Portuguese and the French, taught him to handle the sword and the lance, and to make use of an arbalest. But Almazan, who had shown a precocious love of study, was sent to the University of Salamanca, where he followed the course of the Trivium and Quadrivium, which comprised the education of all the known sciences.
The Archbishop of Toledo’s protégé seemed destined to follow the ecclesiastical path and to succeed rapidly therein, but to everyone’s surprise, he was distanced from it by the Archbishop himself, who encouraged him to neglect theology and go to study medicine with Abiatar in Cordova,15 and then Abouldefia in Seville, who was more alchemist than physician, was reputed to be a heretic, and whom the protection of Jewish bankers had difficulty preserving from the pyre.
Almazan followed his master’s advice. He settled in Seville and had a rapid success there.
It was then that the Archbishop of Toledo, the violent, capricious and extravagant Alfonso Carrillo, henceforth neglecting war, the Church and women, which he had loved equally, underwent a singular evolution. Abruptly, he shut himself away in his palace at Alcala de Henares, no longer to emerge therefrom. Faith had withdrawn from his soul like a tide leaving a limitless strand uncovered. He had glimpsed a new world.
He had cartloads of Arabic manuscripts brought from Cordova and set about deci
phering them feverishly. He discovered the extent of the heavens. Quickly, one of is envoys departed for Malaga and bought from the Emir of that city the largest astronomical telescope in the world, which came from the times of the Almobade caliphs and had once been on the Giralda of Seville.16 He had a special furnace brought from Fez, of a considerable weight, for the cooking of metals. He chartered a ship in Valencia and charged a cleric to go and search for a college of Syrian Sufis in the Orient, which possessed, it was said, engraved on a copper plate, a copy of the Emerald Tablet of Hermes.17 He gave money to all-comers for chimerical secrets and insensate discoveries.
His servants had orders never to go into the rooms where he worked and where he was sometimes perceived clad in a white robe and crowned with a strange miter that did not resemble that of the Church.
The inhabitants of Alcala murmured dully. In the evenings, they went to throw stones at his windows. There was talk of sorcery and necromancy. Cardinal de Mendoza, his personal enemy, had written to the Pope about him. In spite of that, his situation at Court was as powerful as ever. He had once been Queen Isabella’s confessor. She manifested several times the desire to have the Archbishop of Toledo beside her again, for whom she retained her affection. He had not responded to her advances.
One night, without informing anyone, accompanied by his only servant Pablo, he had quit Alcala, his books, his telescopes and furnaces. He had come to reside a few leagues from Seville, in a dilapidated Moorish dwelling that he had bought secretly some time before. It was in that dwelling that rabbi Aben Hezra18 had lived, the translator of Alfergan, the author of a mysterious book about the origin of the world, which his contemporaries had mentioned but which had never been rediscovered. A vague legend claimed that the book had been hidden in his house for three centuries.
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