The Book of the Damned

by Tanith Lee

  Jehanine, lying on the sacks, looked up through muffled lantern light, to a grinning face and two hands dangling a tunic, hose, a boot of sheer leather. It was a dream, like the other, and since dreams make their own laws, Jehanine got to her feet and grabbed the dwarf.

  "Hey, hey. You can even go back. We'll see to it, we will. But somewhere else first. Put these on. You can't travel as a maiden. I'll look the other way."

  Jehanine hit the dwarf across the face. This time, the blow met flesh and spun him. He dropped the samples of male attire, nearly the lantern. Jehanine bent to the clothes, found the complete set, and picked them up.

  They were not her half-brother's rubbish. These seemed unworn, garments of a lord of the alleys, gaudy, elegant - what a man might thieve who was clever at thieving.

  It was a dream.

  "Go over there," said Jehanine. She started to pull up the drawers and hose under her skirt even as the dwarf turned away. She thrust and hauled on the robber's clothes; they were a panoply. She made a bundle of her own, like a discarded skin, and left it rolled into the sacks. In a dream, who would discover it?

  "Good! Come then, this way," said the dwarf, skipping ahead.

  His lantern suddenly blared out. There was no longer any need of caution.

  Jehanine had forgotten the freedom of such clothing, how she had been a boy, a young man, but now her body itself remembered. She laughed suddenly, and the dwarf said, "This way, Jehan. Praise the Prince it's a fine night." They slipped between the alleys, down the long worm-burrows. They passed by loops of the river seen beyond black and rotting walls. Fires burned uncannily between some of the hovels, and now and then a weird-lit face peered at them. Up a cobbled lane two torches volleyed before a house with noisy windows. It was an inn with a swinging sign that showed a ghostly figure with wings -an apparition. The dwarf went through a side-entry and up a spine-broken stair, Jehanine following him. In the corridor, where her head, if not his, nearly brushed the sagging beams, he rapped on a door. It was opened from inside. They stepped into the hollow of a room, ringed by faces. Fat candles were blinking on jugs and blades.

  "Here's Fero."

  "Welcome to the Imago," said the dwarf. Then, to the room at large, "You see, my mates, I brought you him, as I said I'd do. What do you think?"

  Jehanine stood stock still. Was this another betrayal? Even in dreams, such might occur. She said, speaking low but loudly, "Who cares what they think. Who does the choosing here?"

  There were men in the room and boys. Each was a thief, you could tell at a glance. In every belt at least one knife, in every mask the eyes of wolverines; they wore the dress and ornaments of men who clawed and snatched above their station.

  The dream-dwarf, perverse and mad, had brought her to join them. Why should he? Well, he must have sniffed her criminal air.

  "We choose," said a man from the ring. "But you look agile and leery enough. The dwarfs generally right. He found me, didn't he?"

  "Then," said another, "we want the gift, the buying-in."

  "Do you know what he means, new lad?"

  "I'll tell him what I mean. I mean something precious from him to us. A Judas kiss. A game. Proof. So what's he going to offer up?"

  "His own self's enough," replied one.

  The dwarf, Fero, idled, sidled from Jehanine's side. Jehanine, Jehan, she-he stood alone, the door at her back, the rowdy inner inn and the black tunnels of night City beyond. She said, "You can have a gift." She felt herself whiten to a skull, they saw it and attended. (But it was a dream). "I've kindred in the City, one who wronged me. I'll give you him."

  "What use is that? Is he wealthy?"

  "Not much."

  One or two swore. A man came close and put his hand directly on her groin. She moved aside before he could tell he had touched only a cunning bulge of cloth - and bringing up her fist she mashed her knuckles into the base of his nose. As he left her, blinded by tears and roaring, the roomful laughed, commending her. She had seen her half-brothers and her step-father fight. She had learned their tricks, it seemed.

  As the blinded robber crouched on the floor, the tangle of his body reminded her of Osanne. Jehanine kicked him in the back, and he fell down.

  She said, "What I offer is my brother. I hate him. I can manage things so you'll have him alone. He drinks late at the Cockatrice, and perhaps he's there now. His clothes are good, strip him and leave him naked. He's handsome. Do what you like. From his neck hangs a gold crucifix. There's a gem in it."

  Her head whirled. She closed her eyes.

  Someone caught her by the shoulders, and a cup bumped against her lip. She drank bitter wine.

  "What is it, you boy, this vengeance?"

  It was the man who had spoken first, and who was also the dwarfs protege. He apparently liked the look of Jehan and might protect him, so her. She pushed his arm off.

  "My vengeance is your buying-in wanted gift. What more?"

  Because it was a dream, she knew that her brother, beautiful Pierre, would be at the other inn. She knew that if she led them there, they would find him.

  The dwarf sat on a table, drinking; he showed no inclination to make up the party, barely any interest, but six or seven of the fellowship were nudging at her now. Together they went down the twisted stair, with a clatter, and out. Jehanine did not know the way back to the Cockatrice, they did. They walked in a bunch, bravos, swaggering, not afraid. This was their holding, this trample of middens and slips along the river bank, these rat-holes. Sometimes they were challenged, from a wall-top or hovel's depths, passwords were exchanged, whistles or dog-barks, and once, two of the men made water in a well, to pay out an old score. Then some invisible border was crossed. The formation of the band altered. They were more wary, and walked two by two or three, knives to hand.

  "No knife of your own?"Jehan's champion put his free hand on her shoulder. "This brother - did he sour you for your birthright, maybe?" he asked, continuing the earlier dialogue. "My whoresons brothers did that on me."

  Abruptly the inn of the Cockatrice appeared, surprising Jehanine with recognition.

  "Wait here. I'll go to see."

  "No jokes," said one, but that was all. She might have known them all for years, grown with them from desperate infancy like flowers on the dunghills of Paradys.

  She went towards the serpent-cock, boy-walking as her brother's ungainly boots had taught her to. She spat, under the inn-sign. The inn was hardly awake, flickering with dying candles. All the drinkers seemed gone but for a sleeper at the hearth, and a man at his work with one of the wenches on a table.

  But it was a dream, and so Pierre must remain. Where had he sat before, that night she came to entreat him? She could not be certain of the place.

  Two men came down a stair. Brushing through the strings of onions, they yawned and grumbled. They had been with a girl, but she had turned them out before cockcrow. Old Motius would be aggrieved at their condition this morning. But old Motius was an intellectual dolt who conducted esoteric rituals, but thought mice ate the unground paint his pupils had stolen and sold. Motius was in love with Pierre. Oh, yes he was. One look from the lucent eyes, and the old fellow would probably pay for their harlots out of his own purse.

  As Pierre came by her, Jehanine took his sleeve between her fingers.

  He turned, gazed at her. His handsomeness, not spoiled by the debauch, turned her heart over. Seeing her, he seemed to see a spectre.

  He said nothing. His companion said, in wonder, "Your living shade, Pierre."

  Jehanine said to Pierre, "You must come with me."

  The other student said, "Ok no. Come on, Pierre. This is some rogue."

  Jehanine stepped in their path. She shoved the student away from her brother. Being tipsy and fatigued, nor having, either the strength of her hard life, he stumbled back and fell into the hearth, banging his head, landing among the bones and ashes. He lay there stunned, and presently threw up there, which caused discontent in several dark quarters
of the inn.

  While that went on, Jehanine drew her brother after her, staring in his eyes, beckoning to him but no longer touching. He followed, he did not seem to know why.

  As they went out through the door, he said. "Who are you?"

  "Your sister," said Jehanine. But not aloud.

  She led him almost listlessly to the alley where the Imago thieves waited. She pulled him by a leash of air. Then, in the alley, she took her brother's hand and drew him forward.

  "See," she said to the thieves. A light flared and went out. Three of them leapt at him and flung a sack over his head, shoulders and arms. Pierre struggled. They beat him and he fell and was scrambled away with. They dived and tore a route into a copse of gutted hovels, where ratlets swarmed from their advance.

  She stood by, she watched, lamped in the glow of a far-off light-cast - some brothel's beacon - as they removed the garments from Pierre's body, the dyed leather belt and fashionable shoes. At his throat, the topaz glared. They were leaving it till last. Pierre lay moaning, his head still furled in the sack.

  "Now what?" said one.

  They crowded grinning, and slowly unravelled the cloth from their captive's face.

  "Your kin, decidedly." They lifted him over on to his belly. "Do you want him?"

  "Incest," said Jehan. Jehan smiled. Then walked off and leaned on a post, not watching finally what was done to Pierre Belnard, turn by turn, by the gang.

  But Jehanine heard Pierre scream more than once, a hoarse masculine shriek. She had not cried out at her own rape. Nor had she been so appreciated, for his abusers spoke love-words to her brother.

  At length, there was silence, but for the heartbeat of the City, a strange noise Jehanine had begun to hear, compounded of every beating heart that inhabited Paradys. Uncovering her eyes, she noticed that the beacon light had grown in magnitude. Next a cockerel crew deep in the alleyways. Then one by one the bells sounded across the river, closer at hand, the tongue of Prima Hora, dawn.

  Jehan's protector, whose name she had picked out as Conrad, shook her shoulder now. He sweated, and his odour was ripe. She moved away from him. "You're proved," he said. "You're one of us. Sin for damnable sin." The others mumbled. "Now do it to him, too."

  "No," said Jehanine.

  She walked towards the heap of flesh that was her brother. He lay on his side now, senseless perhaps, breathing through his open mouth. He was naked, covered by blood and filth. She leaned down and drew up his head a little by the soaked silk of hair. The dawn was spilling on the world. His eyes spasmed open. He looked full at her, knowing her, if not who she was. It was a look so terrible, so agonised and ruined, so utterly devoid of any hope for help or pity, that it reminded her of the face of the crucified Christ, and she shuddered at it.

  "It never happened," she said to Pierre softly. "Such a disgusting thing." Then she said to the others, "I don't want him. I'll have something else." She ripped the crucifix from his throat, and let his face fall back into the dirt.

  The gang of robbers eyed her in the revelation of the light.

  One indicated Pierre. "Better kill him. Then scatter." To Jehanine he added, "You give that here."

  "It's mine," said Jehan.

  Turning, Jehan bounded out and up from the wreckage. A running male figure, sprinting westward from the sunrise, towards the note of a bell earlier identified as that of the Angel.

  Some of them dashed after Jehanine.

  It was a dream: she lost them easily.

  It was a dream, but in her hand she held the topaz cross.

  Well then, waken now. But waking was not to be had.

  She saw the nunnery ahead of her, rising from a tide of flotsam streets. The dwellings were of better quality here, and the river, a road of crystal cut by a ship's mast, was not far away - none of these things had she known before.

  She came below the wall where the old bakery was, and saw the tops of the tree she had climbed, two and a half times her height above her. The sacks were gone, but tucked against the stone her clothes lay in a bundle almost as she left them. And down the wall itself, from a bough of the trees, hung a hempen rope. The dwarf had returned again to aid her. For, after all, it was not a dream.

  She tied her female clothes to her body, and seizing the rope, climbed up the wall. In the tree, she undid and coiled the rope and took it down with her.

  She changed her garments amid the bushes under the tree, in the wetness of the dew, for the nuns would be coming from the church to breakfast, and in the refectory some of the aged lay-sisters would be making the porridge.

  As she went however to her cell, accessories bunched in her skirts and excuses ready, Jehanine met no one.

  Into the chest she laid all her new possessions. The rope, the male attire, a knife Conrad had awarded her during their trek to the Cockatrice. Lastly, she laid the topaz cross upon her pallet. The thong had been broken and lost. She would search out another cord, then she might wear it, under her dress.

  Paler than the dawn, the Eastern topaz shone for her. From desert lands by a sea of salt, under the mountains where God had walked, and from whose stones He had carved his devastating laws, from the tombs of prophets and messiahs, from the dazzling shrines of the Infidel, this jewel had come.

  She saw again her brother's appalling face. She put the crucifix away into the chest.

  Sister Marie-Lis paused in an arch of the south cloister, as Jehanine watched her. Presently, her hands folded in her sleeves, the young nun floated out on to the plot of grass. The dry fountain with the wild-haired stone child holding its bowl, had been garlanded again. The child had a kind of crown of thorns of twisted leafless creeper. Sister Marie-Lis seemed not to pay attention to these things. She came to the opposite arm of the cloister, where the northern girl and three of the novices were sweeping.

  "Come here, Jhane."

  Jehanine approached. Jehanine's hair was confined in its scarf from which tendrils escaped like rays of winter sun. Otherwise she was decorous, always excepting her looks.

  The young nun eyed her, then called the novices.

  "Where is the novice Osanne?"

  The girls looked about.

  "But she's here - '

  "She came out with us. She had no breakfast. She sets herself penances."

  "The Mother says Osanne is arrogant in her humility - '

  "Hush," said Sister Marie-Lis. "It was the duty of Osanne this morning to attend the infirmary."

  "Well, she'd be pleased to do it." The infirmary contained sick, senile nuns and vats for boiling soiled linen.

  Sister Marie-Lis said, "Our Lord himself had compassion on the sick. On all who call to him."

  Jehanine raised her eyes. She listened, and heard Sister Marie-Lis saying:

  "Did he not make the world against the will of his mighty father? Did he not risk all and forfeit all that mankind might live? And as he fell, his torch kindled the moon and stars, and the roots of mountains."

  Then one of the novices exclaimed, "Why, there is Osanne. She's on the flags on her knees, scrubbing and suffering."

  Along the length of the cloister, over the parti-stripes of shadow and sun, the mystic figure of Osanne rocked with its rags like a swaying serpent.

  "Osanne," cried the young nun sternly, "leave that work and go at once to the infirmary."

  Osanne seemed not to hear. Sister Marie-Lis took a step, smooth as if walking on water, towards the kneeling shape. And in that moment Osanne rose. Without a look or word, she went away, passing through the elbow of the cloister, and out of it into the garden. Her dress flashed very white as she vanished.

  "That wasn't Osanne, sister!" said one of the novices. "And see -the flags aren't even wet - '

  "Hush," said the young nun once again. She found a hand in her sleeves and touched it to her forehead and breast.

  Jehanine felt a desire to follow Osanne as Jehan. Or she might bring in one of the thieves, Conrad possibly, and give Osanne to him as she had given - that other -<
br />
  A dreadful pain tore through Jehanine, unseaming her. She sank suddenly to the ground and lay still. When the novices squeaked and came running, peering into her face, Jehanine covered her eyes with her hands. The young nun had gone away. Then the bell rang: Tiers. The novices fluttered. They must go to church at Tiers, and what of Jhane?

  Jehanine got up slowly. What had happened to her was nothing, she was at her monthly bleeding, it was only that.

  As the novices ran away, she realised she would not be able to return among the robbers for a few days, for at these times they might scent her, like a bitch, and so learn her true sex.

  As for Pierre, they would have killed him, by what they had done, or afterwards with their knives.

  She must think of him as dead, and of herself as his murderer. That was all it amounted to.

  Going over to Osanne's discarded pail and rags, Jehanine detected a curious but delicious fragrance. It fled in a moment. Kneeling down, she began to wash the stones carefully.

  In the succeeding days, Osanne was spied at her duties and devotions continuously, but not consistently. It appeared she must be sick, or that the passion of her faith drove her often to lonely prayer - for in the church they saw her most of all. But on their hurrying in she went away, was gone. She spoke to no one. They said the Mother had sent for Osanne, but it seemed Osanne did not attend the Mother.

  "See, look. There she goes, she," said one of the novices to Jehanine, as they passed together along the roofed passage between the church's north wall and the House of the Novitiate. The weather was turning chilly, but they carried between them a cask of candle stubs, due to be melted down for new, and this was heavy, heating work. The figure of Osanne flitting before them gave an excuse to hesitate and lower the cask. "Look how white her skirt is, and her scarf. She must bleach them over and over - ' the process of bleaching, which intimately involved mules' urine, was disliked; doubtless Osanne would revel in it.

  "Osanne!" cried the novice. "Let's run and catch her." They ran, but did not catch. Beyond the passageway, the hostel court was empty, and the churchyard beyond empty also.