The Book of the Damned

by Tanith Lee

  He came to the table, but it was between us. From the tail of my eye I saw him now. He was no longer dressed in white. The fire sprang, he dazzled and sank.

  "An unexpected displeasure," he remarked. I heard the gentle clink of glass. From a decanter on the table he poured wine into a goblet - red wine, or white? "I would have thought," he said, "under such trying circumstances, you would have had a wish to go home."

  "Your domicile is haunted," I said. "Perhaps I'm another ghost."

  "There are no such things," he said. He raised the glass and drank.

  I turned, and looked at him. He wore black, like a priest. As she had done. The wine was itself blacker than ink, a black brandy or some unknown distillation. Some while since we had been so close.

  Not since the duel, the day he killed me - but we had been closer then. His eyes bore upon mine like a weight I could not bear. I lowered my gaze. And he said, "But you lack papers, I believe, mademoiselle, and cannot cross back over the border."

  "Who am I," I said, "do you think?"

  "I don't think about it. Your identity is your own business."

  "Your dog, von Aaron, will have given me a name."

  "Von Aaron's deductions are usually faulty."

  "And so you sloughed him. You would find that easy."

  "But you have proved more difficult," he said. "What is it that you want?"

  "My revenge on you," I said, "of course. Because you have made me suffer."

  "That was your choice."

  I raised my eyes and stared at him. I stared into his eyes which were her eyes, as, all along, her eyes had been his.

  "You are abusing me as she did," I said. "You're telling me that if nothing is given me I must try to take nothing. That I must starve."

  "Then take some drink by all means," he said. "You've a long journey before you."

  He moved from the table to the hearth, as I moved from the hearth to the table. I reached out to the wine and discovered it was after all a blackish red, it had been reflecting his clothing and his mood merely. It had the taste of wormwood, however, when I drank it.

  I smiled, and said, looking into the wine, "You have no husband to hide behind on this occasion. Or do you have some convenient wife stashed in an upper room? Is each assault to be different, or are all of them the same? A snake eating its own tail."

  "Mademoiselle," he said, "I give you the freedom of all the night. I request only that you leave me this small part of it, my privacy."

  "What will you do," I asked, "in your corner of the night? Lovingly dwell on the darkness?"

  I put down my glass. Fire filled it, and sank from it. Blood filled and sank from my heart.

  I moved around the table and stood quite near to him, though not quite near enough to touch. The flames burned, throwing their flimsy architectures to the roof, and dismantling them again.

  "Let me," I said, "enrage and unnerve and trouble you. Let me speak the truth to you, Anthony, to your face for once. No, don't look away. If I have the courage to meet your eyes, at least salute my courage, however little you value or desire it. Are we not, all of us, on a field of battle? I betray myself, I am my own enemy. She gives me to you, in chains, like the sword. You see, I offer you nothing at all any more, not a book, not a line of prose. You may think I have written this, but if I had or if I ever do, these are words drawn from air, magic, or a dream. Only think how strange it is, that I have formed a whole cathedral out of nothing, where for you the chance is only a pebble, a moment's acute annoyance. All the passionate song stemming from the same fount as your little indifference and dislike. It is you who have made the monster, where I invented beings with wings. Well, I love you. Nothing is changed. I have no more fame than ever I did, or I could offer you the bribe of making you immortal. You'd spurn it anyway, until it was too late to take. Then, perhaps. But who will remember me? And who will remember you?"

  At the end of this recital, each of us lowered our eyes. The fire too lowered itself. The night was very still.

  "Well," he said at last, "you have had your say."

  "And you have kept your silence."

  "Go home, mademoiselle," he said. "We are at variance."

  "Put me out," I said. Til lie across the doorway."

  "Oh, please," he said, "must we now have this?"

  "You may step over me as you choose, or on me. I would prefer not the latter, but can't quarrel with it if you do."

  "There are other measures I might take against you. You're very troublesome."

  "That is the nature of life. Risk and trouble. You may do as you want. And so shall I. To go away from you is, for me, to be annihilated. I've said before, command your own actions. You may not command mine."

  He lifted his glass, as I thought for a second to drink, but instead he cast it across the room with tremendous force. It struck some obstacle, perhaps a pillar, and shattered into a glittering spray.

  "This then is your notion of a revenge," he said.

  "Yours was, perhaps, more conventional."

  His hand flew upwards, as if to strike me, but he checked it. In turn, I caught his hand. It was so cold, what could I do but warm it a moment, before it should be snatched away.

  "Where is the ring?" I said.

  "You will never find that."

  "I shall find it. A drop of blood on all this palette of pallors and shadows, in a tower of shadows. Perhaps in the wine?"

  "Certainly, look."

  "Not there, then."

  I let go the cold hand, which withdrew itself.

  His eyes, since we had drawn so much nearer, seemed lost in the fiery dark.

  I said, "Have I made you hate me yet? That's better than uninterest. I'll give you something in exchange for the ruby scarab, shall I?" I put my hand to my breast and drew out that snub-nosed silver thing. He stared down at it. He did not ask me what it was, avoid or take it, and I did not say, See, even this failed. More lightly than he had thrown the glass, I cast the bullet into the dying hearth.

  The fire was hurt, there. It turned a curious red. As I gazed at it, he walked away from me, towards the inner door with the curtain. His footsteps echoed up from the stones. The clash of the rings, when he drew the curtain over after him, repeated itself in the air, the way ripples do in water.

  I listened to this noise for centuries.

  After the fire had died, I continued to sit on the stones of the hearth. I felt a deathly peace, only that. When the sun rose I must go away. I must choose unreality, for reality, going by the name of the Unreal, would no longer harbour me. But I was lost at last. Therefore, sit, and await the dawn.

  But the night stayed a great time, it was fond of this place.

  Having discarded my paper, I wrote with a piece of charcoal from the fire along the stone. All single lines. What I had said to him, and other things.

  Also, once I wept. If there was any alteration in Anna's weeping from the raging grief of Andre, I did not notice it. I wondered if the stones of that priestly hall would hold my pain long after I had gone.

  Then, dawn came. The spiderweb window changed to silver. Even down the chimney of the hearth the anaemic resin seeped. Suddenly, beneath the curtain of the inner door, there ran out a pool of blood.

  I came to my feet. I stared at the revelation. Slowly as if afraid, I went towards the bloody light, stepped into it and stood half a minute, wading. Next, I put my hand on the curtain and drew it aside.

  What had been a black funnel, the tower, was now the cavity of a burning rose.

  High, high above, just before the top of the tower had broken, hung the wound of a mighty sword, a window petalled by glass… magenta and maroon, crimson and carmine, blood, scarlet, madder and pomegranate - it bled, this glass, every petal, and as it fell down towards the east, the sunrise, it paled through every flushed nuance of roses. Tears of blood - I knew its name, had named it in the City when it formed inside my dreams. Beyond, a horizon of mountains, dim and fine as if drawn with a brush. The very land
about was a mountain, which I had climbed unknowingly, within its mantle of pines and water. One only sees such things as mountains for what they are when they are far off.

  My foot found the first step. I must approach the window. Through a gauze of crimson light, ascending - such a shaft it was, it too seemed made, the light, of glass. Birds of thin alabaster might have been set in it, or carven fish leaping. I moved upwards through the hollow core. It had a perfume, this colour, like the gardenia incense of some temple. And a sound, a low and sombre drone.

  Trembling, the air, the light - I had reached a stone landing, and a gallery. The window seemed suspended, and it was possible, turning here, to touch the glass. Huge drops, they rained, some transparent, some opaque, some translucent - they passed me and went on below. I was dizzy now, the tears seemed to fall in actuality - I put my hand against the panes. But they were not wet. They were cool and dry. And under my very fingers, a creamy stone, not glass at all. I had found the gem from Antonina's marriage rings. Yes, it was true. Still in its oval setting of silver, lacking the band, pushed now into the glass, a single pane. Then I looked up, up the window. And saw there a ruby tear with, incised in it, a beetle with folded wings.

  You could look a year and not see it. Or, staring only a second, see in a second. As with any mystery.

  I stretched myself, all my height and more. If I had had Andre's stature, it would not have been so difficult. At my back the uncertain railing of the gallery, the drop below. Before me the blood-jewel of the scarab. My fingers sought it and my nails prised at the rim. Let it come out. It was mine. It shifted. It twisted, paused, and fell into my hand. Still in its metal band, it remained a ring. It burned my hand, so cold it was. I slipped it on my finger, which, though more slender than that same finger of Andre's, it seemed to have shrunk itself to encircle.

  I turned and went along the gallery and in at a doorway.

  The first room was very bare. The piano stood in it. The lamps had burned out, and one tall candle frilled with wax. There was a table with large old books spread over it, a rack of pens, a chessboard with only two or three figures standing or lying on its spaces. The red light of the mighty window had come in. It lit the lettering on the page of a single book: Benedictus qui venit in nomine Domini.

  The second room, opening from the first, had light of its own, a round eastern window of plain glass. Here, morning was white.

  As white effigies lay on the marble of their tombs, so he lay, on the bed. The pillows of it, the covers, were heaped about him like sands, or foam from the sea. He was stranded in the wake of these things, hair spilled, lifeless. His sleep resembled death, was that so curious?

  I moved closer. It would be impossible to wake him. I need not be afraid of it. He might never wake again.

  The sheet would seem to have been dragged off him by some external agent, leaving the left shoulder and the left arm bare, outflung. The left hand rested, palm uppermost, and open, as if it awaited some gift or some caress. A vulnerable hand. He slept without his shirt.

  I stood above him now, and my shadow fell across his face. Without the open eyes, the face was like a mask. I leaned down and touched my lips to his cheekbone and his jaw - with some surprise I felt the rasp of new beard starting against my mouth. The orbs of the eyes moved under their white lids. These were smooth, as the lips were… The reserved kiss did not wake him. No, nothing could. Nothing, nothing.

  Like Psyche, who had searched for her love in hell, I leaned to his flesh. But the onus of the myth had been to dash aside unconsciousness. I was not Psyche, though he might be said to be Love.

  He was Love, and he was Antonina. He and Antonina were one thing, as Anna was Anfre. Vampires, shape-changers, incubus-succuba - such vacant names.

  I drew all the sheet away, and gazed at him as he lay there. He slept on. What might I not do?

  I put from me any clothing that impeded me, and slipped into the white bed with him as if into a bank of snow. My skin touched his skin. I fastened my lips to his. His mouth parted under mine. I drew the soul out of his mouth, and in his sleep, unwaking, he moved against me, as if we lay beneath the sea.

  Refuse me now. No? You will not do it. This you will do, and this.

  I lay over him, curved to his body. In sleep, his excitement had answered mine. We swam together now. So beautiful, my love, you are so beautiful. The strength of you, and all the pain and glamour of your body1, your bones, your silver spine arching - now, now -

  The white light was cloven, stayed, Not yet. As with the first kiss, my lips sought, closed, against his flesh.

  Yet, I am she and she is you and you are myself. I hold you and am held. You are my slave, and I am yours. You destroy me, and

  are destroyed. I give myself and receive myself. We are one thing and all things. And nothing. We are nothing.

  I felt and heard him catch his breath. I need not wait any more. I raised my head and cried aloud under the sword of death.

  And the cloven light burned, but only like a fire.

  As the interior of the coffin had borne her imprint, so the mattress had retained the shape of him. There was no other trace, save for two or three long and curling jet-black hairs.

  The interim might not have been sleep. Some blank omission from awareness following the summit and the fall. What had occurred? Ah, was it only that? I left the bed, and hesitantly went about the room.

  In the round casement, the landscape was framed, under a high sun. It was midday, perhaps.

  There had been some failure. Something amiss, or mistakenly done. Did I remember what it was? I wound the black hairs about my finger, around the scarab ring. I was depressed and weary. I left the bedroom, crossed the chamber with the piano - quiescent in the noon dusk. The great window beyond was a symphony of crimson by day, nothing else or more - I descended the tower with a strange sense of permanence, or memory - not my own, but others. The ghosts lay thick as the shadowy sunlight on everything. In the hall, a woman was busy at the dead hearth. She was scrubbing with her rag, erasing the words I had written there during the night.

  I stood and looked at her. What was she? Was she a creature of normal reality, or a phantasm, or had she crawled from some aperture between these states? Her rag made a husky noise. How dared she obliterate the ramblings of my heart's soul? An illiterate, she could not read them, she thought them only the marks of the soot.

  "What are you doing?" I said. "Leave that at once."

  To my gratification, she did stop immediately. She got up and observed me. She had a quiet, vegetable face.

  "Where is he?" I said. "Do you belong to him?" For some reason, I found it hard to speak his name, any part of it. But she nodded now. She was some villager, from some village, a servant. "Well," I said, "where has he gone?"

  She stared. He came and went as he pleased. How would she know.

  I sighed. What did I want?

  A dreadful lassitude, almost a revulsion, threatened me. I had possessed him and it was done. It was no more than a convention.

  There had been so much poignant drama, did it only end in this unoriginal deed of lust? The storm of orgasm was so soon over. What could one say after it but, Farewell, or, Again and then farewell. Or, for ever and ever, Amen, and God preserve all from that Amen. Passion is not self-begetting. It must burn up brighter and consume. It must always be in doubt, and in anguish, and perhaps even in agony - to this, carnal love was nothing. It would be better to die in the act. Such fireworks, and then to go out in the habitual dark behind the sordid roof-tops?

  The woman, relieving herself of any duty to make conversation with me, had turned and was going out of the door. I followed her, naturally. She went down the steps, which looked peeled in daylight, and walked along the shore. How was the rest of the scenery by day? I could not have said. It was a place I passed through. The huge tarn of water gleamed, hard as a gem. My eyes were hurt by so much truth-discovering light. I shielded them, and was glad when she went in at another entry in
one of the standing walls.

  I found us then to be in a sort of kitchen, with long ovens and a wide hearth, fireless now. By the hearth sat a girl with a snow-blonde chrysanthemum of hair. She did not glance at me, she was taking from a wicker bag a baby, only a few days old, and next a leather bottle with a teat. She fed the child from this as he sat naked on her lap. His fine floss of hair was paler even than hers, and one of his eyes was lighter than the other. They had a look of someone I had known, both the girl and the infant. I realised it was a decided resemblance to Philippe.

  The older woman now busied herself with lighting the hearth fire. That achieved, she took a broom, of the pastoral sort, a bunch of twigs tied together, and began to sweep the floor, up and down, back and forth, with an aimless determination.

  I sat down facing the girl, and pushed back the red hair from my face and shoulders. Hers, cotton-white, straggled all about her.

  "Is this child yours? When was he born?"

  She glanced at the woman who swept, but that one only went on sweeping. The girl pursed her lips, readied herself, and spoke to me.

  "Not mine. Another girl's. But he makes things happen, so I bring him away."

  "Makes things happen - what do you mean by that?"

  Her skin was lucent. Now she blushed.

  "Well, he does."

  The child turned then and stared at me. He could not be more than ten days old, less maybe, or a little more. But his odd eyes seemed to look upon me with knowledge and some sly amusement. I had known Philippe when not much older.

  "Do you mean," I said softly, clandestinely, leaning forward to the girl and endeavouring to catch her eye, "that things move about when he's in the room - that, say, a candle will blow itself out, or some hanging thing will be swung to and fro?"