by Tanith Lee
“No, no doubt not. There’s some superstition, concerning that house. An old curse. I’m surprised my girl knows of it.”
Abruptly the blonde harlot raised her raw voice in another spewing of screams.
“Be silent!” cried the Mother. And the screams went to weeping again.
“Let him be,” she added to her roughs. And to Raoulin himself, with all the casualness of cunning unease, “And you, sieur, had best get off.”
As the slabby hands released him, Raoulin caught in the doorway now the wink of Joseph’s humiliated and resentful spectacles.
Crossing the bridge in the torchlight, between one dark bank and the other, Joseph lamented, “I can never go back there now.”
“Do you want to? We find it’s a hospital for lunatics not a bawdy,” said Raoulin, obscurely embarrassed.
“Frightening a silly trollop with your foul story –”
“I told no story. I said that name – d’Uscaret – and all the hordes of Hell broke loose. I can tell you, any fun I had wasn’t worth that.”
They parted unaffectionately on the upper bank. Laude was ringing softly from Our Lady of Ashes. The river flexed its gleaming muscles. Raoulin was sorry to have lost Joseph’s regard. Probably tomorrow, or in a few days, they would laugh about the affair.
Yet somewhere inside his head as he climbed the hills, the awful screams of the harlot rang on and on. One believed she might have seen and heard and done a thing or two. Whatever had made her afraid was something proportionally horrible.
Going under the Sacrifice, beneath the winged cliffs of its buttresses, he considered his lodging. He considered the ghost he might only have dreamed. Was it that?
Some late revellers from a tavern roiled by with lanterns. They seemed to have come from another world than the darkness in which he moved, through which he climbed, and to which he went.
And then, as he entered the twisting alley that led up to the back walls of the house, he saw the black tower-tops, and the one black turreted tower with a faint greenish firefly-light flickering in it.
Raoulin stopped as if he had met the Medusa’s petrifying head. For a moment he could not breathe.
The tower was that which looked north, towards the Temple-Church – the tower into which he had penetrated the first day, trying its one door that would not open. The tower whose stair gave on the weedy garden and the tomb.
How ominous the light looked there, dim and shifting behind its pane of corrupt glass. Did someone move in the room, up and down?
Had he the spirit now to go in and seek the chamber, to push wide the door and maybe find there a young woman in a chair, her hand upon a skull …
Raoulin broke into a chill sweat. To his dismay he realised he too was frightened. He remembered the porcelain face of his dream and the cat’s-eyes of perfect emerald hovering above him – and marked himself with the sign of the cross. “The Lord is my keeper. The sun shall not smite me by day, nor the moon by night –” And, at the side door, unlocking it, whispered: “Be not afraid for the terror by night, nor for the arrow that flieth …”
To the kitchen he went, and lit there two of the candles and stuck them on the spikes of a branch. This he carried before him. Somewhere the hag and the groom snored in aged sleep. They were not juicy enough for demons to chew –
He crowded such ideas from him, and crept like a scared child up through thick night to his apartment. And there he locked the door, and there, by the shine of many extravagant wicks, he opened the reliquary his pious mother had sent with him, and took out the bones and the nails of the saint, and kissed them.
And in bed he recalled that to go with a whore was a sin and if he died tonight, the Devil would get him.
So at length he slept and had nightmares, but nothing else of the quick or the dead approached.
In the morning came summer sunlight, and the now familiar sounds and stenches of the summer city. Birds chimed past the window. Raoulin lay in the warm brightness of the reborn earth and called himself a dunce.
Too timid to go to the tower by night. Well, he would go there presently and smash in the door if he must.
It was even a Holy Day, God watchful.
In the kitchen, where he broke his fast, the hag pottered about. An evil grey cat, thin as a string and kept for the mice, hissed at him from the hearth like an adder.
“Well, puss,” said Raoulin to the cat, “I’m off to watch the priests and processions. Is it a fact, granny,” he added for the hag’s full benefit, “they carry a Christ out of the Sacrifice made all of alabaster and silver, with wounds of malachite?”
“Go see,” said the hag.
He promised he would, but instead of course made straight for the yard stair and the rooms of the hinder house.
Again, he had difficulty locating the exact spot. Then on the proper steps, up in the correct passage, confronting the solitary door, in the dark, doubt wormed under his skin, his flesh crawled. Until, turning, he saw – as if he had reinvented it – the slit of window above the garden stair, and day and daytime Paradys (in which reverential bells were ringing, to encourage him). He went and drank in the vista, like a draught of medicine. Then returned up into the passageway. Here he tried the door again, courteously. As before, it was immovable. It was a formidable bastion, too, looked at with an eye to damage. The timbers were heavy, and thewed with iron.
Dunce again. He had brought no implement to help him.
But then there was the adjacent garden, some handy bough or up-levered stone would do the job.
He was on the garden stair, descending, past the window and into shadow, when he heard a noise above.
Raoulin clamped himself against the wall. His lips formed a prayer. He thrust it off angrily. This was broad day. No non-existent fiend had power now –
What he had heard was the sigh of a woman’s skirt, sweeping along the corridor. Then his heart roared loudly enough he could scarcely hear anything else – until the rasp of a turning key somehow reached him.
The big obdurate door was being breached, and Raoulin could no longer cower there in ignorance. He went back up the stair, crouching like a toad, and peered above the top step.
The doorway gaped. It was a gap of paleness, not dark, a chamber lit by a window. That was, from this quirky vantage, all he could see.
And then, out of the door walked the hag.
Over one arm she bore some bed-linen, and in her other hand a platter on which there balanced a costly goblet of glass. There were some dregs of murky fluid in it, some brackish wine.
Not looking about, the hag proceeded along the corridor, and as she did this the door swung suddenly shut, and again he heard the note of a key turning in a lock.
Raoulin sat himself on the stair. He was grinning, bemused, disturbed, but no longer afraid. Did a ghost require wine and food and fresh linen? Did a ghost lock itself in by hand?
A voluntary prisoner lurked within the tower. The lady of d’Uscaret was a recluse. They had said no one lived here, to confound the lodger. But, by the Mass, it was his own father’s coin went to feed her now. He had some say in her doings.
He half resolved at once to burst upon her. The hag must have a secret knock. He would have to batter in the door, explain the act as a notion of rescue in ignorance. After all, she could not have reported or complained of his previous attempts.
In a moment he thought better of this idiocy. There were other ways to come at her. Whoever she was, she was not Helise, the dead bride. He had only glimpsed her, for that dream, he saw now, was only a dream. Perhaps the reality was old, toothless and ugly. Be careful. He would spy, and woo her slowly, to see if she was worth the effort.
With an abrupt easing of the heart, Raoulin ran up the stair, along the corridor, and off through the house, which he left inside another half-hour. He went to join the throng of the City, the religious processions, the hucksters, players, taverns.
It was as if he had been reprieved from a severe sentence, but thi
s did not occur to him.
There was a summer storm, the sky the colour of cinders, and the rain falling in remote leaden drops. In the tavern called the Surprise, Joseph tapped Raoulin’s shoulder, and Raoulin, turning with some pleasure to pick up their friendship, was only surprised when Joseph said, straight out like a cough or swear word: “That girl’s dead.”
The sentence shocked in several ways. Raoulin could not sort them.
“Eh? Which girl?” he blurted.
“The little blonde harlot. Shall I say how?” Joseph’s spectacles enlarged his eyes like two monstrous tears.
“How then?”
Joseph sighed. “She filled a bladder with some corrosive tincture and squirted it up inside herself.”
There was a nothingness then, rather than a silence, between them, while the normal racket of the Surprise went on all about. At last Raoulin murmured, “How did she come by such a thing?”
“Oh, there is a physician for the girls. He practises with the alchemical arts and keeps a cupboard of ointments and mixtures. She visited him on a pretext, and stole the essence. It may be she didn’t understand its strength … They heard her cries but couldn’t save her. A ghastly death.”
Raoulin had turned deathly sick, as though he himself had been poisoned. His genitals burned. The room trembled as if under water. “And do you blame me for this?”
“No! Blame you? No. And yet.”
To his absolute confusion, Raoulin felt the pressure of grief mounting up his senses into his eyes like a wave. He rose suddenly, pushing away from the bench, thrusting by Joseph as if he hated him – he did hate him and was sure the sentiment was shared – and got out into the alley by the wine-shop. Here, leaning on the masonry, he vomited his drink. Good. Good. He should suffer some penance. Where to run? Into a church? Oh God – what had she reckoned, that stupid little trull, with her sweet face and silly mouth, and eyes wise to everything except what she would work on herself.
He had not even now been able to vomit away the question – Why? — or the cause – himself.
It was a truth, he had been spared much distress. He was young, and lucky. Death and illness, misery and want, the ancient degree of panic itself, were matters apart from Raoulin. He had read of states and afflictions, in books. But until this hour the wing of night had not brushed him. Scratched by its metallic feathers, he quailed.
The lead sky leaned on Paradys. Her heights pressed up against it in luminescent stabs. Still the whole impact of the thunder and the rain was not released.
He beheld above him the cliffs of the Temple-Church. He had gone over much ground, had crossed the river, without seeing. A cruel olivine glare glittered on the holy windows. The processions were done. Christ had gone in again and left the world to sin and savagery, and to all the inexplicable shades.
Raoulin stood a minute on that runnel of path nicknamed, by some, “Satan’s Way,” and did not know it.
Then continued his dreary ascent towards the house called d’Uscaret.
The storm broke loose on the City at midnight, and roused several thousand sleepers, of whom Raoulin was only one.
His last thoughts had been of a childish running away. He had wanted to leave it all, the City, the university, the fever of learning, to escape back into the dull safe farm where nothing bad had ever happened to him, or been told to him in any way he had to credit.
But waking at the blast of the thunder and the shattering rain flung through the windows, he knew at once what he must do instead.
There was after all one here in this house who could tell him what had made the name of d’Uscaret so vile it killed.
Raoulin got up and secured the shutters of his two rooms. He had slept in his clothes and now tidied himself, and drank the ale left with his untouched supper.
Then, with two candles lit on the branch, and his knife in his belt, he took himself from the chamber and went to seek the recluse in her tower. No longer in the spirit of romance or unchastity. But with a grim purpose; as a right.
On the stair to the upper corridor, something checked him. He had the thought to put out the candles. Thunder bellowed and the stone-work seemed to whine. What use two feeble flames? He quenched them. And then, entering the corridor there was candleshine enough soaking out from the hidden chamber, whose door was standing wide. A figure came from it, slender, high-waisted, hers.
The light she carried dipped, swooped up and formed an arch, a funnel. The dark centre of the light, she flowed away and seemed drawn down into the earth – she was descending the stair towards the garden.
With the stealth of a starving hunter, Raoulin followed.
From the stair-head he glimpsed her below, a spectral creature still, on the threshold of the garden and the tempest. Then with one blow the howling night quaffed her candle. A rushing filled the doorway – rain and noise. She was gone into the weather.
On the edge of night, his civilised self held him back half a moment. Then he too was plunged in wet and chaos.
The water gushed upon his head and shoulders. It beat him, and slapped his face over and over, and he could not see.
On all sides the trees of the garden groaned and foamed like rivers.
The quick-growing weeds which, if trodden down and broken, in a day or night of fecund summer would reweave themselves, had formerly concealed any other excursions through the garden. It had seemed unvisited for years. But perhaps she walked here often, under sun and moon, under downpour, in the winter snow –
He had continued forcing himself forward through the night, and now he glimpsed the great yew ahead, where the mausoleum gaped from the foliage, the little house of Helise the dead bride.
The rain all at once slackened, and was lifted up like a swag of heavy curtaining. He heard the fountain breath of the drenched trees, and the individual notes of oval glass beads falling from branch to branch. The moon struck suddenly from a cloud like a spear. In the entry of the tomb stood a woman in a black gown, with dead-white hands clasped upon a dead candle, a white stalk of throat and a white face in a powdery bloom of hair.
In those instants she was uncanny, the dead one risen from her grave.
Because of this, he could not make himself move or speak.
And then, the shadowy features of her face (like the smudged shadows on the face of the moon itself) realigned themselves. It was she who spoke to him.
“Who are you? What do you want?”
A fundamental inquiry, perhaps a fearful one, given the time and place, and since she was not a phantom.
Raoulin took some random steps nearer. There was no explanation he could offer that would in any way humanly excuse his action.
Thus he said, “And you, lady, why did you come here in the rain?”
She leaned out of the porch of the tomb at him, her face tilted upward. He saw it was the face of the dream and that, even in the moon’s colourless ray, the discs of her eyes, lent only a hint of proper light, would flood with greenness, like the trees.
“Who are you?” she said again.
“My name is Raoulin,” he said, wondering if she had been told of him. That must be so. For she had come seeking him that first night, and stared into his sleep when he dreamed. “And you, demoiselle?” he added, for it appeared she was young, after all the speculation, and yet, being moon-like, ageless and old, under her surfaces.
“I?” she said. “Who am I?” She lowered her lunar-emerald eyes. “You may read my name above me.”
He looked irresistibly above her head, and there on the stone banner ran the letters, as he had seen before: Helise d’Uscaret.
“A namesake of the dead girl,” he said.
“Oh no. This tomb is mine, which naturally is why I visit here. I’m long dead, Sieur Raoulin. And therefore why should a storm deter me?”
For all her reality, her body, her shadow going away from her on the path, again the skin crawled over his bones.
Harshly he said, “The rain wets your gown. You drink
wine from a glass and need a candle in the dark.”
“Do I? You mean to say I’m flesh and blood. Yes. But yet, I died. I died and was awarded this black box. I went down to the court of death as they so prettily describe it, or so I take the Latin to mean, and perhaps I decipher wrongly. You are the scholar, Sieur Raoulin. Do I have the message right?”
He said, “You questioned the old woman about me.”
Then she smiled.
“It’s been many years,” she replied, “since there was any life in the house. And suddenly, a young man from the provinces. I confess the fault of curiosity.”
“Do you confess, too, stealing into the room and watching me as I slept?”
“You are unchivalrous, sieur. Asking that I admit such a thing.”
“The dead can’t expect much courtesy,” he answered boldly.
Her glancing conversation irked, but also flattered him. She was very beautiful. It was very strange.
“Perhaps,” she said then, “perhaps I shall resolve this riddle for you. If you have the will and wish to listen.”
“What else,” he said.
Her eyes fixed upon his. Even in the darkness now he saw that they were green.
“You may not believe the story I tell you. It’s incredible and utterly exact. I can’t lie. That is my – atonement.”
“I’m all impatience,” he said.
“Then, I invite you to my chamber. With me, no codes of propriety remain, to be upheld or sullied. As you say, the dead can hope for slight courtesy.”
“I won’t harm you,” he said.
She smiled again. “Don’t trouble. It’s understood.”
She went before him through the garden, the skirts of her gown brushing off rain-opals from the bushes. Such jewels were strewn in her hair, grey gems in a white web, for she wore it quite loosely, carelessly.
He followed her back into the house and up the stair. His pulses beat, insisting on carnal matters; but his brain stayed wholly clear. It was not for a tryst he companioned this one.
The room that she led him into was unlike the rest of the house. Eight candles burned and lit a painted floor of squares, and showed the ceiling too was figured with scrolls and smouldery fruit. The posted bed stood partially away behind a curtain, and guarded by a chest of carved ebony. There was the window, to glow its marsh-light on the City. There, a broad fireplace bordered by columns, with a pale fire frisking in it. This, after the rain, was solacing. Two black chairs, with footstools, faced each other across the hearth, a table between with a book upon it, and also a silver pitcher and two glass goblets of the valuable kind he had seen before.