The Secret Book of Paradys

by Tanith Lee

  “Then take yourself off.”

  Conrad strode at Jehan’s side, head down, sweating.

  “To Hell then,” said Conrad. “Noli vade retro, Satanus! What else did I expect?”

  To travel back down through the City was slow going in the festival, particularly since Conrad’s sullen gloomy face, and Jehan’s purely intent one, urged others to assault them in many ways. The noon bell of the Sextus had rung itself out when they approached the nunnery. Conrad had forgotten it was unknown to him and therefore did not exist. He skirted the wall and the bell-tower, and went along with Jehan to the west side, and past the gate. By day, even while the alleys crouched and the houses stood with their backs to it, the clandestine nature of the place was gone. Anyone might appear, if only to deliver necessaries to the nunnery door. But the bakehouse made an angle in the wall, and beyond that the tree reached over. It had no premature buds, it had not been fooled. Only the rope still dangled from it, ever unseen, unfound – a sorcery of will-power or fate.

  “Climb then,” said Jehan.

  “What?” Into there?”

  “Where else?”

  Conrad baulked, so Jehan sprang first up the rope, and soon lay along a bough of the tree above, taunting him.

  “Is it an apple tree, you serpent?” snarled Conrad. But he grabbed the rope and did climb, getting up into the branches as Jehan uncoiled from them and down into the shrubbery below.

  This part of the garden was secluded, the bakehouse wall, the high bushes, screening it in. They crouched there.

  Jehan said, “You see that plot, with the plum trees? She’ll walk into it in a minute and you’ll see her.”

  “How do you know she’ll do just that?”

  “She’ll have missed me. She’ll be coming looking, after every one of the offices, to catch me climbing in again.”

  “What do you mean by that? Coming in again? Have you been having her here every night?”

  “Living here,” said Jehan. “They thought me a girl. You’ve seen what a fair girl I make, when I’m dressed for it.”

  Disbelieving, believing, Conrad swore.

  Then, between the plum trees, a slender nun walked out. She moved towards the wall. When she was less than ten paces away, Jehan stood up.

  “Here I am,” said Jehan.

  The young nun did not speak, her pale face perfect in her gorget and her hands in her sleeves.

  “Did you wonder where I was?” said Jehan. “Look, here’s a friend I’ve made in the City.” She kicked Conrad glancingly. “Get up and show her.” But Conrad would not. Jehan leaned down and pulled on him. He rose then reluctantly, looking at the young nun from the corners of his eyes. She did not appear afraid or angered. Conrad said, stupidly, “Excuse me, sister.”

  “Yes, excuse him,” said Jehan. “He’s about to lay harsh hands on you.” To Conrad, Jehan said, “Now do it.” But Conrad stayed rooted to the earth with the bushes, and now the young nun was turning away. As she went back into the plum trees, Jehan said, “Get her for me now. If she screams, hit her. Cover her head with your cloak. Do it. Or you’ll never see me again.”

  Conrad lumbered out of the shrubs, his mouth forming a protest even as he rushed to obey. The young nun was among the trees and now Conrad was among them – vanishing. The rest of the nunnery seemed long-dead – obviously the Feast had not been observed here. Jehan stood and waited for Conrad to come back over the bare winter plot with Marie-Lis slung across his shoulder, and after a handful of minutes he did so. He loped heavily under his burden, breathing noisily, broken twigs in his hair. His cloak wrapped all of Marie-Lis, but the hem of her habit, which trailed out meaninglessly. Her head and upper body hung over his back, smothered. “I hit her anyway. To be sure. And tied her hands with my belt. The blow wasn’t hard. She didn’t struggle. Maybe wanted to come.”

  It was with difficulty and toil that Conrad, unassisted, got the package of nun up into the tree and down again into the street under the wall, but he managed the feat, for it was similar to thief’s work, such removals. He was throughout industrious not to crack the skull of the prize, nor bruise its bones. Sometimes he inquired of it how it fared, chuckled when it did not answer. Conrad on the rope, put himself between it and the wall, Landed, he kissed it, adjusted it, remarked that it seemed weightier, perhaps the wench had taken on herself his sins. Remorse was plainly superfluous, now. He turned briskly and made towards the worst venues of the City, where lay Smith’s Alley, he said.

  Further along, they met crowds again, coming up from the river with a girl attired like a mermaid, and then in the long alleyways, which were stuffed with drinkers and fornicators. To the curious, Conrad presented his portable as a besotted comrade. So many strange articles went by in any case in the arms of others, what odds one more?

  A blacksmith’s forge dominated Conrad’s domiciliary alley, close and boarded on this day. Behind, sheds and huts leaned on each other the length of the route, and into the last of these Conrad ducked.

  It was a mere space, a sort of absence of anything good or comfortable, and it was foul. When the door was shut and tied with a cord, the only light came through a roof-hole. A stirring in one corner indicated a rat, but when Conrad had lit the single candle-stub, this ceased. Next he let down his bundle on the bed of rags and fleas. He bent over it solicitously, and began to fiddle with the folds of the cloak to come at its face.

  “No,” said Jehan. “Get out now.”

  Conrad this time definitely remonstrated. The walls shuddered.

  “When I’m finished,” said Jehan. He sauntered to Conrad and put in Conrad’s hand a coin thieved earlier amongst the crowds. “Go drinking.”

  “No, you damned imp. This is my house.”

  “Oh, your house. Your dung-heap, and stinks like it.”

  “I could have you down. I could cut off your ears, and the rest.”

  “Go away,” said Jehan. “Come back later.”

  Conrad ranted, and Jehan slapped him suddenly across the lips.

  “Go out, or stay and I go out. Do you think I’d want her after you’d been chewing on her? Good then. Farewell.”

  Conrad cursed the world as he left the hut.

  The light in the alley was thick and grey, with all the day’s yeasty heat panting in it. Jehan shut the door and re-tied it. Then he stood for a while, only looking down at the shape under Conrad’s cloak. It seemed not to breathe. It seemed also larger one moment, then to shrink. The candle-end sputtered and would soon go out. If there was gazing to be done, better be quick.

  Jehan found himself reluctant. He pictured himself beside the form of Marie-Lis, staring into her face, running his fingers over its sculpture, and then on into the loosened robe, along the statue of her body. And thinking of this, he felt himself swell erect, the weapon at his groin quite ready, having forgotten it was only a roll of cloth not even attached to him, as indeed at other instants of nature, it and he had forgotten.

  He strolled to her now, and began to peel away the robber’s cloak from the young body of the nun. Some earth fell out on to the floor, and then some broken branches. Then a white hand fell limp against his own and he saw it was not a hand but a piece of damp linen. Jehan stood back, then he fell to his knees and threw himself on the bundle, tearing it apart. Under Conrad’s cloak lay a roll of washing, seemingly found drying in the garden beyond the trees. There was a shift filled with soil and muck, finally pushed into a convenient habit, and so brought away as the nun Marie-Lis. Ah, carried with such care down the wall. Conrad smiling, Conrad kissing, Conrad ranting he must be first at the rape to ensure dismissal.

  A tumult of fury filled Jehan, so violent and tragic it was also true pain. He let out a cry, leapt upright, and was blinded by a rush of blood behind his eyes.

  It blotted out everything, and caused him to stumble. As he fought to regain himself, he heard the rat rustling again, widened his eyes – and saw – it was not a rat.

  No, it was not a rat at all. But it wa
s between him and the rickety door. Conrad … come back to gloat? The door had been secured. Not Conrad – Jehan clenched his fingers on his knife, which might be useless.

  The hut seemed to have dematerialised. It had gone to a vast, black openness. Then specks of light emerged out of the black.

  The thing against the door was straightening up, and Jehan beheld it was the young nun, Marie-Lis. But she was much changed. Her gorget and veil were gone and her dark hair veiled her instead. An Eastern drapery covered most of her body, but it was thin as water and her breasts were bare, and between them was a golden sign, like a dagger pointing down. Her naked arms were outflung, her feet were set one over the other, and nails of steaming white-hot steel went through her palms, her feet. Her face was serene. In the fingers of her left hand, though it was nailed, tilted a chalice which she now somehow upended fully, and black fluid fell from it, bubbling and smoking. Then she howled. As she made the ghastly ululation, her teeth came visible, and they were like the teeth of a boar.

  Jehan gibbered. He could not move, he could only watch.

  And now the host were riding, streaming through the black, astride their Hell-mounts, which as they rode, they used in other ways, squealing and whinnying, winged and tailed and clawed. Jehan felt the leathery wings clash and scrape about his head in the stench of rutting – and he too howled, in fear.

  There was a lightning. It tore everything. The beast-woman on her cross, the raucous riders, Jehan’s scream – and fixed them. Every atom hung in black, in bright, in black again. Jehan’s eyes died a second time – then he had a view of something – it was as fearful as the horror and ugliness which had gone before – yet it was beautiful, it was beautiful – and it was gone – oh what had it been? Some landscape, some palace, some gathering of a Heavenly populace with flesh of pearl and sun-drenched hair – Paradise, or Paradys itself no longer a parody of the parks of Heaven – translated.

  Then sight merged back into his eyes. Jehan saw. The knife slipped out of his fingers. Intuitively he reached after it, but unable to look, to look away, and he thought, What does a knife count for? And gave it up.

  That vast black openness was filled now only by one image.

  The man who had entered there wore the garments of a lord, a prince of the City of Paradys-Paradise, and everything was white, so white, while a kind of glowingness shone through it from his skin under the Eastern silk. For his skin had gold in it, and his hair was a rage of gold, a furnace. And his eyes were like the wide golden eyes of tigers in one of the novice’s books, which Jhane had once been shown.

  Jhane had seen him before, of course. In the church of the nunnery, the white figure untrammelled between earth and air, sometimes static, sometimes moving before her with a woman’s gait – or not – disguised as a woman – or perhaps not even that – in a white mantle. And he was a prince. Not a king. Not the world’s King. Not Satan, not Lucifer. One of the captains of the fallen host.

  Jhane stepped away, Jehan sloughed, everything gone like the knife.

  It came to her that she underwent a vision, a religious experience of Hell, but no less holy for being profane.

  Jhane’s body would no longer allow her to her knees, she seemed to have altered to wood, unbending but capable of splintering. She shut her eyes, but the burning flame of the angel remained imprinted under her lids.

  A wonderful aroma filled the void that had been the hut. Her head swam at it, in a moment she would lose consciousness and die, and fiends would bear her to the Pit –

  “Esrafel,” she said.

  “You have called me,” he said, “I am here with you.”

  And no sooner did the voice touch her ears, like no other voice in the world, like music never heard there, than his hands also touched her. (The palms of his hands were golden, as were the soles of his feet in the silken shoes.) The caress seemed to find her forehead, but her whole body was laved in it, even to the tips of her nails and hair.

  “I never called you,” said Jhane.

  “You called me. You did not see that I stood at your side. Which is common to mankind.”

  “Who are you?” she said, not sure at all if she spoke to him.

  “You have named me.”

  “Esrafel,” she said again, “the Angel of the Lord.”

  “You recognise me as Esrafel,” he said. “Then I am Esrafel.”

  He was winged. She felt the wings enclose her as his voice and hands had done, and the perfume of eternity.

  She began to cry quietly on the breast of the angel. Fires mounted through her. She clung to him and begged for release. Her whole flesh seemed sundered, and she too was winged, and as she rushed to the pinnacle of Heaven, she saw his heart blazing like a rose of gold beneath silk and skin, and on the heart of the angel was a scar of an old wound, wounded again, over and over. Then Heaven shattered. She fell. She fell and the stars were made and in the pit of the earth a light, to last until the last of the world, its ending, and beyond, for ever and for ever. So let it be. Amen.

  Bells were tolling, and only half-aware she counted the strokes. It would be Nonus, the ninth office, three in the afternoon, for there was daylight, but on and on clanged the bells, near and far. It was not an hour or a summons, but the death-bell, sounded from all the quarters of the City.

  Jhane sat up in the wretched hut. She had been lying on the flea-ridden bed of rags and itched to prove it. How much time had passed? There had been a wonderful dream …

  A man owned the hut; he might return. Jhane rose, and on impulse, shook the soil and twigs from the cloak, and wrapped it about herself. It hid the masculine dress by means of which she had sought protection.

  As she walked out into the sallow gloom of the alley, full memory returned to Jhane. It met her like a blow, so she dropped back against the wall, covering her face in shame and distress. But the enormity of what had happened, being insupportable, gushed as suddenly from her. She regarded, in the distance, her days and nights in Paradys, their culmination, and the ultimate and terrible advent of revealing light. She was calm, and under her breath whispered a prayer of her infancy. Through all this, the bells churned on. Who had died? (She thought of the priest in the northern village, and wooden coffins lowered with scant ceremony. Once a son of the lord’s house died. That had been different, a hundred mourners on the skyline and the bell at its crying all day.)

  At the end of the alley, by the forge – which had stayed silent – she saw a group of beggars sitting in the street, huddled together.

  She thought, for no reason she could divine, I slept too long.

  As she passed the beggars not one of them stirred, and looking at them she saw a single face, its mouth slack and black tongue protruding. The skin was mottled, and there was a smell of bad meat. They were dead.

  Jhane went by, and came out into an open square of muddy earth where the houses crushed each other. Smoke went up from two or three chimneys, but otherwise there was no evidence of life. Under the bells a dog bayed ceaselessly. Premonition was total if unnamed. Moving over the square into another of the lanes, Jhane met an old woman and nearly started from her skin.

  Jhane said, “You’re alive!” The old woman laughed. “Is the City dead?”

  “Pestilence,” said the old woman. “After the Ass Feast. That’s three days. Where have you been?”

  “Asleep.”

  “Done better, you, to have stayed asleep. God sleeps.” She craned away and pointed at Jhane. “A man goes to his bed well and at daybreak they find him dead and black. At the festival some were falling down, spewing black blood.”

  I lay in the arms of a demon.

  “Don’t come near,” said the old woman. “You may have it on you. It comes from a touch, or a look.”

  “Why?” said Jhane.

  “The wells are poisoned,” said the old woman. “Full of bodies and piss and curses. It’s God’s punishment. Perhaps I have it,” said the old woman. She licked her hand and smeared the spittle against Jhane�
�s cheek. “There.”

  Jhane ran away through the alleys of Paradys.

  As Jhane fled and wandered through the City, she found Death stalked ahead of her. She began to look out for him, too, personified, some hooded shape. One world had ended for her. Now she was in this other. She had left off dividing reality from dream.

  It seemed, soon enough, that the City was on fire. The winter pall from the chimneys and the alleys had lessened, and the wider streets were now full of smoke. Fires were burning on the cobbles, columns of black going up in the still air. Sometimes people darted from the houses to renew the kindling or to throw in aromatics or sulphur. They were plague fires, set to burn the contagion out of the atmosphere. A breath could kill as well as a touch or a look.

  Sometimes figures went by Jhane. Robed and cowled, their mouths and nostrils muffled and only the eyes visible, smudged around by smoke, they were like the Death she visualised. They might have been priests going to tend or bring comfort to the sick, or collectors of the dead, but they had a terrifying appearance, looming out suddenly from the smouldering vacuum, under the shadowy cliffs of higher buildings.

  The chorus of bells rang continually. Now and then one might fall off, but later it would resume.

  Jhane came to the river, which she had instinctively been seeking, though often in circles in the dark. The water had an aspect of stasis as complete as that of the sky. Not a ripple moved, and where any boat lay, it was lifeless as a fallen tree. The upper bank of the City too was lost in smoke, and a cloud rose from it, but without apparent movement.

  As she stood there a black procession evolved nearby, a priest with a lantern, many coffins, a flock of carrion-crow mourners.

  They passed away over a bridge, perhaps towards the burial ground of Our Lady.

  From the houses Jhane began to hear sounds she had not heard before, cries and weeping, and sometimes screams. The dream world was becoming more real. Again she ran away. And having nowhere else, it was towards the Nunnery of the Angel that flight took her.