The Secret Book of Paradys

by Tanith Lee

  And as she leaned there, her left hand getting its slow grip on the sheet, he stirred.

  Helise started away. Instinctual precaution made her thrust the candle aside to the length of her arm. The flame bent, flattened, sputtered – and the room reeled. But he, after all, did not wake. He had merely pressed his face further into the pillow, away from a light unconsciously perceived.

  The walls and ceiling settled, the candle-flame resumed its steady trembling. Helise looked down on the sleeping man, and saw the hair had been caught away now from the nape of his neck. A strange shadow emerged at this place, from the roots of the hair, coiling along the spine, to dissolve between his shoulder-blades.

  With caution, she brought the candle close again. The shadow dimmed but did not move. Helise leant nearer. She inhaled the clean maleness of his flesh and longed to brush her lips against the flax of hair, and saw the shadow on him was a scar, a curious plating, a trail of tarnished studs – she could not make them out. Like a lizard’s scales.

  It was a birthmark. (Had not her own maid had a raised discoloured nubbin on her knee, the shape of a star?) Helise put out her hand to finger the mark, the sweet flaw in his beauty – stayed herself, reached again for the edge of the sheet.

  She stripped the covers from him deftly, in a leisurely receding wave, inch by inch, her heart hammering in her breast.

  Would he wake now? No, he would not. His sorcerous sleep was like a breathing death.

  She had never seen a man’s nakedness, save in a statue or a painting, there never fully. He had the appearance of both statue and painting as he stretched there in the light amid the shores of darkness, adrift in the bed, his skin more swarthy than the linen, the smooth musculature carved and scarcely troubled with breath. Not stone, perhaps, but some strong ashen wood, tinted faintly to the hues of life, in order to deceive, and equipped with quiescent manhood, something at which the young girl had guessed, dismaying to her more in its first-seen familiarity than by anything alien, the tempter, the serpent of sex.

  Careless of the glimmering, burning tallow, Helise bowed over the body of her husband. Her kisses printed themselves along his arm, his side.

  But the hot wax did not drop upon him, and her mouth, the helpless small noise she could not now keep herself from making – these did not break in the membrane of his slumber.

  He was enchanted. And she dared do no more.

  Helise quenched the candle, and removed herself from his vicinity.

  He did not rouse even at that.

  The chamber seemed distended and tinderous with her solitary sins.

  It was because of his aversion to her that he made the opportunity to be gone. He did not want her. If she had been able to cause him desire, how could he have resisted? He would then have remained. He would have been her lover.

  But it was a witchcraft on him.

  Did a woman then have no skill in such magic? It was the most ancient sorcery, Eve’s art, practised at the foot of the apple tree in Eden, that which brought down the race of mankind.

  They said, at d’Uscaret, they muttered that Ysanne … that Ysanne was clever in women’s business.

  “Cherish,” had said fat old Ysanne, “she must overcome her blushes.”

  “I’m unsure what is meant. The lady should be plainer,” said Ysanne. Her beady eyes were cunning.

  Helise sat in her chair and her humiliation, clenching herself to endure.

  “My Lord Heros is tired of me. Now he departs the City. How shall I provide an heir if – if –”

  “If he doesn’t assist you. Yes. A woman’s lot is a rare fix.” Ysanne had changed her tune. Now she and Helise were co-conspirators against the masculine order, conceivably the masculine God.

  “They say –”

  “And what do they say?”

  “That you can make a potion that will – enhance –”

  “That will make a girl too good to be left alone. That will swell the male member so it must get busy. I can do that. And several other things.”

  “I think – he won’t visit me again.”

  “Ah, that’s tricky. I’ll give you a charm. It will call him. If he doesn’t arrive directly, then you must find some excuse to bid him. The charm will render him pliable. Then something for his wine, and an unction I’ll give you to rub in your skin, very fragrant. Leave it to me,” said Ysanne. “I’ve always relished that little chain you wear, with the pearl.”

  Helise removed the chain. She held it out to Ysanne.

  “No, no. Are you offering that to me? But lady, I serve the house. I’m your slave.” Then seeing the chain flutter, knowing Helise inept, Ysanne quickly added, “You’re too kind, madam. I thank you. It’s always safer to seal a bargain. Naturally, this is a secret.” And with the pearl in her bosom off she went, leaving Helise to pace about, between repentance and vaunting, dread and disbelief, praying with untame transgression for Heaven to grant her profane hope.

  She wore the charm, a mouse’s sack of herbs, under her shift. Not seeing Heros d’Uscaret by night, morning, afternoon, she sent him word. Through servants, she entreated he would speak to her before his journey. The servants said they had not found him. Further inquiry told her that her husband was dining at the house of this family and that. That her husband was dining at the palace with the Duke. That her husband was in his tower, where they did not venture to bother him except at the summons of his father, or his mother.

  Days ebbed. She stitched them into her embroidery, and picked them out again, but still they were lost.

  Ysanne’s herbal charm did not work. Her other mixtures would be as useless, the unction, the drug for the wine. She would not address herself to Ysanne again.

  Then, from a dry husk or two let fall by the voice of Lady d’Uscaret, Helise had made known to her that in three nights, Heros would leave the City. She did not even recall – perhaps they had never mentioned it to her – where he was bound. Whether by ship or overland route. The date of his return had not been coined.

  There was a page who sometimes waited on Helise when the household gathered. She supposed he had been designated hers. On the stair she beckoned him.

  “Where is my Lord Heros?”

  “In House Lyrecourt, across the City.”

  “You will follow me now and I will give you a letter for my lord. Then go with it to the door of d’Uscaret and wait for him. Wait all night if you must.”

  “He’ll be home at midnight,” said the page, perkily privy to the doings of her husband as she was not.

  “That’s as may be. Only behave as I tell you.”

  In the bedchamber by the void hearth, the great chimney-piece with its falcons either side, she wrote: “Call upon me tonight, my lord, or, such is my misery, I shall kill myself and damn my soul for ever.”

  What fashioned these words, succinct and awful, she could not decide. The Devil? It could not be her own desperate mind. She was a fool, but Satan was wise.

  But then, would Heros attend to her threat?

  It seemed Satan ascertained he would.

  She handed the letter to the page, folded in a scarf which she had smeared with Ysanne’s unction.

  Alone, she anointed her body, rubbing the spicy-smelling oil into her breasts, her thighs, her throat and belly. The friction maddened her. She sprinkled the powder into some wine. She wondered in alarm at all she did. But now, as if a bell had struck the hour, she knew that her prayers were heard in Hell.

  She heard too, finally, the midnight Matines tolled from the Sacrifice, and not many minutes after, a dog barked under the wall. It seemed then she felt the reverberation of the shutting of a door.

  Time passed, or else time was stilled. And in the midst of the candles’ shining, as if in a slab of crystal, Helise waited.

  Until the great door of the bedchamber was opened.

  On a frame of dark, her pale husband stood looking at her.

  “What is it, madam, that you want of me?”

  Some femini
ne slyness had kept her in her gown, her hair bound in its metal caul. The same slyness stayed her on the spot, staring at the floor, her hands clasped under her breast.

  “My letter to you,” she said, “told everything.”

  “No, nothing. Are you so desperate?” he said coldly. “You seem in command of yourself.”

  “I die of sadness,” she said. “But since you don’t care for me, I strive to hide the hurt. What do I want? Only courtesy. Not to be the mock of the house. That you should say farewell before you leave me for ever.”

  Ah, Satan, her tutor.

  Now Heros had closed the door and advanced into the room. Helise did not lift her eyes, although he was before her.

  “It isn’t to be helped,” he said quietly. “But since you wish it, I’m here to say farewell. And for this talk of death …”

  “To kill myself? Why not? What should I live for?”

  “You are God’s. What worse insult can you offer the Creator than to fling back His present in His face? Do you think He would ever forgive you? Through the endless centuries until Doomsday, He would not.”

  He spoke as sternly as any friar. She recalled the conversation between himself and his mother in the garden. To be a priest, his only chance. He was wrong. She was his chance. Her love, so strong and vital that it seared, this would set him free.

  “You must be my guide,” she whispered.

  “Then cancel every idea of self-destruction.”

  “I will remember your words. If you were here to guide me –”

  “Helise, I can’t remain. Sweet girl,” he said, suddenly very tenderly, “you must guide yourself. Let your own angel instruct you. You’re so young – not one iota of blame …” And he ceased speaking, and she knew that his concentration was centred wholly on her. Either her vehemence, or Ysanne’s ointment, possibly both together, had taken hold of him. She had come to life for Heros, with all that implied.

  Saying nothing she turned from him and poured the wine into a glass. She offered it to him, meekly, still her eyes lowered, afraid he would glimpse the fires in them.

  “The cup of parting,” said Helise. She employed the phrases of courtly songs, these came with facility, now she needed them, or Satan sent them, for how could she have a vocabulary to manage this?

  He accepted the wine slowly. He did not drink, but stood regarding her.

  Then, at last, at last, he raised the cup.

  She looked, and saw him swallow, once, twice.

  “What wine is this?” he said absently. His eyes were fixed on her. At their intensity a wonderful terror submerged her. Never, in any of their dealings, had he studied her in this way. It was the gaze of desire, or so it seemed. He drank again, not taking his eyes from her. And then he frowned, and said, “There’s something in the wine – did you mean to poison me?”

  “Oh no!” she cried. Her heart seemed cloven by its hammering.

  “But – what is it? What have you done to me?”

  “A love potion,” she said. The admission was safe now.

  “Then, there’s no choice.”

  He smiled, grinned with the deadly dead mirth she had witnessed once before, and tilting the glass he drained it, and let it go. It crashed in bits upon the floor.

  “Perhaps, Helise,” he said, “perhaps you haven’t been sensible. Come here.” And when she took a step, he took several more to meet her, and caught her between his hands. “Love potions,” he said. “Did you think I didn’t want you? For every night spent in bed with you, first a draught to make me sleep. So that I shouldn’t be tempted. For you’re adorable, my white wife. Better than any dream. But perhaps the dreams won’t matter now –”

  The earth gave way and the room broke off in shards. She clung to him and he kissed her, a kiss of serpents, his tongue in her mouth.

  His hands were those of a saviour, supporting, rescuing her in tumult, but also the hands of one who would destroy her, finding purchase on her body, ripping at the laces of her gown –

  She had unleashed desire, the carnal entity. His breath burned on her throat. He held her so tightly she herself could not breathe. He bore her backwards and the hard floor was harsh under her uncushioned slimness. His weight pushed her down. A sore sweetness shot through the core of her breasts as he drew on them with his lips. Almost delicious but partly horrible – almost a torment – and then a tickling and probing between her thighs so her instinct was to evade – but he would not allow her now to evade him, and then came a terrible pressure, like that of a thunderbolt trying to cleave her, and she felt she would be burst, but there was only a shrill tearing, like a broken string.

  She saw his face as he invaded her. She did not know him. He bore upon her, his skin engorged with lust and his eyes opaque and perhaps unseeing. There seemed no longer any contours to his face. He did not behold her and was unrecognisable. His hair tossed about him, shaggy as the mane of a beast, lank and dark with sweat as if with blood –

  The thrusting of his body within hers was a punishment, a horror that was nearly an ecstasy, and far worse for that.

  Helise heard herself moaning and pleading in pain. The fire-making action of his loins scorched her. She struggled, and the ghostly ecstasy surged in her again, and she no longer cared what had mounted on her, what killed her there on the ungiving ground. It was not Heros. It was some hideous thing, some creature of the Devil, torturing her in Hell for all her sins –

  She heard terrible sounds rising in her throat, and then the spasm hurled her apart. She was screaming. It would never end. In animal fear she let go her clutch upon the excruciating peak, and fell away.

  Only then was she revolted, finding herself on the floor, ground into the tiles under the weight of him, a hard mass of flesh that still moved upon her, still thrust mercilessly inside her.

  He was lifting himself up, his head thrown back –

  On the arch of his throat, the weltered light caught a dull sequin that all at once flashed, and then another, and another –

  Helise lay pinned under his racking body. She stared at the altering skin of his throat. It was coming out in tiny jewellery slates, which ran together. His neck was scaled now. It was all a perfect tesselation.

  Something scraped along her breast. Her head rolled and she saw a black claw retracting from her behind a thread of blood.

  She could not scream. Her screams had been spent. At that instant, the quake of his crisis rocked through her, and it was he that cried out. It was not the cry of a man.

  A whirling clotted the air, a fume of candles shaken by a gale.

  The sword of flesh unsheathed from her. She was filled only by pain.

  Something rose up, many miles high against the ceiling.

  She did not want to see. Her eyes refused to close.

  The shape of a man, but the face, the head …

  It must be a mask, a visor – it was a bird. A bird’s head, formed from a streaming mosaic of scales, but for the blackish carved beak, the thin black worm of the tongue … the eyes were green bulbs. There was no intelligence in them, yet there was being. They lived.

  Helise lay on the floor. She had no breath, no reason. Her heart had stopped, her blood was frozen cold. Yet she saw.

  The thing moved from her, left her. It lurched across the room. It came upon the fireplace and there it squatted, and then suddenly leapt. It was away up the chimney. It was gone.

  PART THREE

  The Jew

  I looked to Heaven, and tried to pray;

  But or ever a prayer had gusht,

  A wicked whisper came, and made

  My heart as dry as dust.

  Coleridge

  The Jew had laboured into the night, poring over the antique scrolls, the tablets of wood, the books bound in vellum or horn. Haninuh the Scholar, so they called him. The Jew’s House they called his dwelling near the corn market. There was no ghetto in Paradys. No Jewish area even. Those Hebrews who inhabited the City were of the travelled kind, accustomed t
o a gentile world. Some had committed themselves to the Christian faith, some had given over God entirely in their intellectual venturings. The Jew Haninuh was not precisely of these orders. Then, too, other than the Jewish mezuzah, his door was guarded by a Grecian head of Hermes. Called “Scholar,” Haninuh was reckoned to be versed in mysteries.

  It was not rare with him, to spend the hours of darkness in study. Tonight, however, he had felt restless, and was unable to keep his mind on his reading. The cause of this unease was not personal. Rather it was that kind of nervousness particular to certain animals before a storm.

  Haninuh neither sought to quell his discomfort nor explain it away.

  About two in the morning, he left his books, and went up through his house to a pavilion he had had built on the roof.

  Here he found, kneeling on a bench before one of the pavilion’s open shutters, a small girl-child of no more than eight years, arrayed in an embroidered shift and quantities of curling black hair.

  “Now, Ruquel,” said the Jew, “what are you doing there?”

  But Ruquel, who was his daughter by a slave woman long since laid asleep in the earth, only answered, “What a bad night it is. What shadows there are.”

  With these statements Haninuh could not argue. He had been aware for some while that his child seemed to have inherited a sensitivity to occult things; he had already, for her protection, in simple ways begun to prepare and train her.

  “Yes, my Ruquel,” he agreed therefore. “It is a night of some meaning. But perhaps you’ll trust me to keep watch in your stead?”

  At that the child nodded, and getting down from the bench yawning, kissed her father, and returned to her bed.

  Haninuh then took up his vigil in the dark, going slowly from one window to another of the six-sided pavilion. All the shutters hung wide on the close black night, and from this high vantage, at this unlit hour, one saw clearly the brightest stars caustic above Paradys. Below to the northeast wandered the river, coils of which, leadenly glimmering like a dragon, were partly visible between the roofs. Southwards on the heights stood the ghost of the great Church.