The Secret Book of Paradys

by Tanith Lee

  “He can dance for us,” said Jehan. “Can’t you?” She raised the torch and looked intently in the robbed man’s face. “Let me bring you light. Aren’t you glad to obey Christ’s command? Look, you’ve given all you have to the poor.” How the thieves giggled. Then Jehan put the torch down to the young man’s garment, and up again into his hair. He was wet enough that there was a great smoulder, but also enough flame to send him hopping and screaming over the bridge, and Jehan pranced after him, clapping her hands and singing in a quire boy’s voice, to an Eastern rhythm of the Spice Lands. Conrad and one or two more abetted the macabre fun, picking up the song, which had been born of some hot night’s Crossade. The rest of the gang paused uneasily, the lower side of the water, not chancing the bridge. Halfway along it, Jehan pushed the youth into the river. Swollen with rain, it would not be happy swimming. Jehan seemed content, and at once returned along the bridge, with Conrad and the others at his heels.

  “What shall I do?” said Conrad. “You want me to go over there? Hang the watch, I will, if you want it. Up the hills. I’ll go to Hell with you.”

  “That door-boy at the rich man’s house,” said Jehan.

  “He’s a half-wit now. No need to slaughter every one of them.”

  But Jehan seemed to wish only deaths stacked methodically in the chest of deeds. Glancing in the river, one noticed the blond young man was not swimming at all, had gone down.

  “Let me have you,” said Conrad.

  “No. Don’t try.”

  “One time you’ll let me.”

  “I’ll kill you first.”

  Conrad laughed into the face of night. Much bigger and heavier than this boy, he could pin him now to the stone over the tumult of water. But did not dare.

  “You love another,” jested Conrad.

  “A lovely nun,” said Jehan.

  “A nun? Where could you see such a thing?”

  “I have seen. One night you’ll get her for me. Skin like cream and eyes like deep thoughts. A young nun. You can take her, I’ll let you.”

  Conrad licked his lips. He was superstitious. Satan protected his own, and so did the other One.

  It thundered overhead, and Conrad winced. The rain resumed. It was cold, it was winter.

  They went back to the Imago to drink and Jehan to sit watching the dwarf count coins.

  Seven o’clock in the frosty morning, not yet light nor yet still dark. The office of Prima Hora was done and Jhane stood at the church door as the nuns stole drifting out, to allow Marie-Lis to witness her there. But Marie-Lis passed by with the sisterhood, not seeming to see her, her countenance remote as ivory.

  When the nuns were gone, Jhane went into the church.

  A cold iron heaviness hung there. Smudges of light faltered on meagre candles, but nothing was given from the great window, which had become a whorl of leaden quarter-tones. The form of the Angel – Lucefiel – was mostly indistinguishable.

  Was it that they worshipped the Devil here, or that Jhane had seen through a mask even they were unaware of?

  As she moved along the nave, she saw the pale figure in the quire. It was not Osanne, for the spectral figment – or decoy – that had seemed to be Osanne, had ended its manifestations with the discovery in the well. This apparition was the original, a nun in a pale robe, tall and gracious, her face unseen since lifted in reverence to the blinded window. Jhane walked on, making no sound. The figure did not alter, only the hood or veil slipped back from its head. This nun did not effect either scarf or coif. A lion-like mane of gold hair burst out against the dimness, raying over the shoulders and down the spine.

  Was this hair like the hair of Marie-Lis? Was this she? Had she turned into the side passage or the cloister, and re-entered via one of the smaller doors …

  Perhaps not. The young nun was not so tall, and much slighter, surely –

  Jhane halted. Something made her unable to approach any closer to the vision. Now the glowing quality of the figure seemed to be flowing upwards into the window – it warmed and waxed lambent. Suddenly colour shot into the glass and it came alive. The sun was rising and had pierced abruptly through the cloud. As the window quickened, Jhane saw that the image of white robe and lion hair was gone.

  Kneeling before the Great Light, Jhane bowed her head and slowly touched her hands to brow and breast. A peculiar sensation went over her as she did this, an exquisite intimation, both carnal and spiritual. But getting to her feet, she soon turned her back on radiant Lucifer and all his works.

  In the black icicle of the night, some young men coming out of the Cockatrice met with a sauntering blond youth. There were exclamations. And a pause.

  “Stop! You –”

  “What have I done?” said the youth, turning on them two beautiful lynx’s eyes.

  “No – but you’re like –”

  “It is, I tell you.”

  “No, not the height or muscle. But a double, certainly.”

  “Oh,” said the youth, not unnaturally curious, “whose?”

  The young men from the studio of Motius looked at one another. One of them said, “Well, he’s in the sewers –” and was commanded to silence.

  “Then I’m like someone,” said the youth. “Where are you bound?”

  “Come with us, where we’re bound,” they said, and went off into the icicle with him, to a lower tavern behind a stable.

  “Look at his hands, so delicate, and his face. What a model he’ll make, our Jehan – you did say to us that was your name?”

  “Come to the studio tomorrow. Present yourself to the Master. He’ll take a fit, seeing how like – well. Do it anyway.”

  They petted him, far gone in ale.

  “Where is his house then?” he said, lolling there sober.

  They explained with care the location of the house, and its appearance, and drew maps of the way upon the table in spilled drink.

  O winter is, the poor birds sing

  And hide each head beneath a wing.

  So cruel to me my lady is

  Like winter snow that gives no ease,

  My heart its head beneath its wing,

  And winter is, my heart must sing.

  Winter rode through Paradys on a grey horse, a lord in mail and armour, with a vizored helm, and his train behind him. The sky and the bare trees groaned and the honed winds blew. Branches, slates and birds fell down. The snow began to fall. The City blanched. The river froze for vast stretches, and all the wells. Love-songs listed cold hearts, but in the nunnery the nuns wrapped their feet and hands in cloth, the hearths were lit in the refectory and the infirmary, and braziers carried into the church, and quantities of blankets lugged to the sleeping cells. Two of the sick nuns perished, and were put underground. The matriarchal Mother took cold and kept to her chamber where a fire roared day and night. The novices slept two by two for warmth, which was not allowed. (On such freezing nights at the farm, even the unloving sisters of Jehanine had clasped her close.) But Jhane lay alone, cold as a stone, and deep within her body she coiled asleep. She did not fear the winter, it had no jurisdiction over her. And now and then Jehan went out across the wall and reviewed the City of Ice, its turrets and points sewing up an enamel moon, on the surface of which there now showed absolutely a Madonna’s mournful face. Over the thick glass of the river by night, muffled shapes dragged secret wares on rough sleds. The ships lay dead at anchor.

  And the lovely young nun read in the refectory, above the coughs and snuffles of winter. “In the Book of Esrafel it says this: ‘Thus the man who was sent to the Angel asked him, “Were it not better that we should not live at all, since we live in wickedness, and suffer, and know not why?” And I, the Angel, answered him; “Weigh you the height of fire, and measure the tower of the wind, and call here to me yesterday.” But the man said, “I cannot.” “Believe then,” said the Angel Esrafel, “in this manner also you cannot know the guiding intent of the Creator, cannot weigh or measure it, or call it here before you. Yet it is.’”
The young nun waited as two or three of her sisters sneezed and wiped their noses sadly. Then she read, “ ‘Hear, my beloved, says the Lord: be not afraid, nor let your sins weigh you down as the briars cover the field, that no man may travel it. Your sins are finished, tear up the thought of them by the roots. For the field choked by briars is put to the fire to be consumed.’”

  The thieves, wrapped fast, and sometimes snuffling like the nuns, came from their bolt-holes to the Imago to toast and steam. Once in, they did not incline to go out again. Gold burnt the fingers in such a temperature, the dwarf said so. There he sat, slit-eyed and brooding, saying not a syllable now. But Jehan prowled and some followed. Where there were no pickings to be had, Jehan would crack some costly window with a ball of packed snow, or scratch on doors with his dagger obscene symbols of the alleys learnt instead of letters. Jehan would inaugurate sliding games, which slides might break legs in the morning. And sometimes they would find a vacant house to get into.

  On the far side of the river, a weird gleam went up by night, where the torches reflected back from the snow into the wild and chiming air. But it was forbidden, that upper bank. The great market, the great borning church, the house of murders, the enclosing arm of City Wall that held in it slabs the legions had laid there.

  “I’ll go with you. Up the hills. Who cares,” said Conrad. Scar-Nose added, “For what?” The thin man said, “It’s cosier there.”

  Jehan ran over the bridge, through the palings of ice-crystals, gliding where there was the horizontal ice, arms outflung graceful and demoniac.

  “Come,” said Conrad.

  Yet not one of them moved.

  The well lit, climbing streets about the market were nearly bright as day, but black mud lay around the houses and torch-poles where the heat had melted the snow.

  For Jehan, creature of darkness, it was early, not yet eleven o’clock. With the advent of winter when night began to come down in the afternoon, he sometimes took the risk of evolving during Complies, the completion of the nunnery’s diurnal.

  As she entered the street of the statue-well, Jehan gave her nothing to feel. She glanced at the house where the fat woman had died, the rich man, the servant. No watch was any longer kept on it. Meanwhile, across the way, stood the other more important house, the studio and dwelling of Motius the Artisan. Seven nights before, solitary outside the Cockatrice, Jehan had identified other students of the Master. She had fallen into chat with them. They had seemed stunned by Jehan’s resemblance to someone they had known but would not coherently speak of. One had suggested Jehan might model for the studio as a young Patroklos or Dionysos. Jehan had not seemed averse, and so learned the house at which he should present himself.

  Through the shutters light showed in the upper storey. Jehan knocked at the door. After a time, a shutter opened. A young man’s face, unknown, peered down. “Who’s there?”

  “Jehan.”

  “Who is Jehan?”

  Jehan shrugged, standing out in the pool of light to be seen. “I was told to come. The Master might employ me as a model, they said. Perhaps not.”

  Then the youth in the window gave a startled sound.

  He withdrew. Voices came together.

  (It is one like Pierre Belnard. Oh me, oh my!)

  Feet bounded down a stair and hands unbarred the door.

  A second youth drew Jehan in, shut the door to keep him there, stared at him unblinkingly in the flame of a flinching candle, then said something very fast, a sentence of Latin, unrecognised. “So,” added the youth huskily, “you don’t vanish.”

  “Shall I try?”

  “Don’t mock. Don’t speak. Stay there, exactly where I have put you. Wait.” And the student rushed away, up the stair once more, the panic-splayed light borne with him.

  Jehan stayed, unmocking, or speaking, and seemed to be waiting. Then he moved, went to the stair-foot, and looked up the dark funnel of it. In a moment more he began noiselessly to ascend.

  There was now not a twitter, not a mumble, above.

  Jehan entered a passage and came to a door, closed, with a keyhole of shouting light. Tickled by such aptness, he knelt to the hole at once, and looked through.

  There before him was a morsel of fire-lit chamber, and in it a man stood, lean and old and bearded, stooping a fraction. One hand clutched at his breast, and the other held a chalice of wine, which he was pouring evenly into the flames on the hearth. The sizzling splishery intrigued Jehan, so much so that when it ended, and the man moved from the sphere of vision, Jehan did not react. Then came a motion across the light that indicated someone was returning to spring the door. Jehan was up in an instant, standing aside. As the second student burst out toward the stair, Jehan stepped directly in the doorway and said, “Here I am.” Which brought the other back cursing foolishly.

  The fine fiery chamber, opened out, was opulent. A hearty meal had been eaten in it at the white-clad table, not long before, and still positioned there were a gilt wine-jug and cups, a dish of yellow plums and apples – in winter Paradys – and two branches of candles that stintlessly burned. Through a part-closed curtain beyond lay the studio, darkened and asleep, but smelling yet of paint grindings, clay, oil and marble-dust. Here Pierre would have been wont to work late, and dine afterwards with the Master, a favourite pupil, as these, too, must be.

  But Pierre had evaporated from their lives. Drinking and whoring had undone him in the alleys. Now on the threshold, his double, more exact after an interval, and so more miraculous.

  Master Motius now sat in his carved chair by the hearth and stared as the young men did. He was, as keyhole-seen, old, bearded and wore besides a cap to warm his head and a fur-lined mantle in the hot room. And three rings on his fingers.

  “You are the brother of Pierre,” he said.

  Jehan smiled.

  “Brother of who?”

  The artisan sighed.

  “Not,” said Master Motius.

  “There was some gossip one of his brothers sought him out,” said the student who had looked from the window. “That’s why he went off without a word.”

  The second student said, “And this one was at the door, peeping through it, I’ll bet. What did he see?”

  Jehan looked down at his feet modestly.

  “There was nothing to see,” said Master Motius.

  “Except, you pour wine on your fire,” said Jehan.

  The artisan said, “That’s a Roman custom. We keep the classic formula here. Otherwise, what do you say?”

  “To what?”

  “To our talk of Pierre Belnard.”

  “Who is that?”

  “You have never met such a young man.”

  “I?”

  “Do you know of whom we speak?”

  “Is it possible?”

  “He was my pupil and apprentice. He was well-liked everywhere, and well-known.”

  “For what?”

  “Uncivil, gutless, pig-souled dog –” cried the second student.

  Master Motius held up his hand. Leaning on the arms of his chair, he rose.

  “I will show you,” said he. He took a candle-branch from the table.

  The first student hurried to open the curtain into the studio, and the Master passed through.

  “Go in,” said the second student to Jehan, threateningly.

  Jehan smiled again. He went after the artisan leisurely and the students followed.

  The studio was a big vault, where the candlelight collided with angles, drapes and shapes, was smashed and fell down. A peculiar being – a whole, if idealised, skeleton of wood – posed on a plinth, making a mad gesture. There were benches and cold braziers, long tables with parchment, canvas, jars and alembics. Things stood propped or lay prone; things sweated under wet cloth.

  The artisan moved through this forest and stopped before the far wall. A small panel of wood had been fastened on it. He raised the candles, though his arm shook a little, from age or feeling.

  “This he pa
inted, in his third month with me. It is flawed, he had much to learn. But ah, so perfect also. What he would have been.”

  Jehan looked at the painting.

  Jehanine had never been shown anything the mature Pierre had fashioned, though he had performed some work for the lord of the estate. She could not properly understand the painting, however, for it was not real, not flesh and blood, and did not move. A girl sat under a flowering tree, her fair hair falling round her, and birds fed from her hands, and a faun, and a she-wolf with a cub … But Jehan was distracted somewhat by some strange scuffed marks along the lower wall and the floor. Did the students of Motius also draw on the ground?

  “He called this painting The Madonna of the Innocents,” said Master Motius. He wept. “Marie the Mother, but also the goddess Venus. Sacred and profane. But all beauty is sacred.” The tears ran down into his beard like flames, catching the light. “Boy, if you know where he might be – no matter what depths he may have fallen into – whatever sink or vice – I beg you, you must tell me.”

  “Who?” said Jehan.

  One of the students said hoarsely, “He knows, Master.” He moved towards Jehan. “Shall we make him? I can do it.”

  “No – no – no violence here. Perhaps he doesn’t know. The likeness isn’t so marked as I thought at first. We see what we wish to. I have studied men’s faces.”

  Jehan felt the topaz cross slide between his girl’s breasts under the binding. He toed the chalky lines on the floor. He smiled and he smiled, and reached out to take the candles from the artisan.

  Master Motius seemed surprised but not reluctant to let go of the light. Conceivably, he thought his guest wanted to gaze more closely at the painting, and that this might augur well.

  Jehan, clasping the candle-branch, leaned forward carefully, and touched the fire to the wooden panel. A black line ran along the edge of it, and the paint bubbled. She seemed not inclined to burn, the Madonna –

  “Oh God!” shrieked the artisan. His old voice splintered, he tottered against Jehan, striking at him, clutching now for the fire, now for the painted panel. Jehan turned and smote downward with the candle-branch. It cut the old man’s temple and most of the candles showered upon him, catching webbed in his hair, beard and mantle. As he began to burn, so did the panel on the wall. Jehan stepped back, face composed and serious, the eyes very pale.