The Book of the Damned

by Tanith Lee

  Processions were going up and down, men with donkey masks, and donkey phalluses strapped to them, ran about shaking rattles, and fake priests in patchwork gave bawdy blessings, while pretend-doctors, carrying jars of leeches and enormous pincers for the pulling of teeth, lunged to and fro.

  At Our Lady, over the river, the whores' penance would be enacted, and the thieves went, as if idly, across a bridge with Jehan. A country boy, he had never seen such a thing. "Oh, it's worth your while!"

  The City squealed and banged and sang and shouted.

  Our Lady was a minor church near the quays, but on the open stretch before, slippery with fish-oil, a mass was being held, with an ass-bishop in a mitre with holes cut for his ears. At each snort and asinine trumpet, the crowd acclaimed the sagacity of the remark.

  The whores came from the church presently, in chains, drawing metal balls behind them, but these things were of dented tin and skittered about as the whores screamed with mirth, flinging up their skirts, ribbons in their hair, bare-breasted, some of them.

  A cavalcade was coming along the streets, going up towards the market and the Temple-Church.

  Jehan pushed towards it, with Conrad and a few others who had not gone after the whores and the tin chains.

  Men-devils, next to naked in the muggy day, horned and tailed, and armed with torturer's forks, pranced about a platform, dragging it up-hill. On a gaudily painted throne sat the festival's king. The crowds bayed and boomed about him, and he nodded at them his head in its diadem of gilded spokes, feathers and bells. His little feet were stuck in pointed shoes, a wooden sword hung at his side painted with the words: Rex Urbi. The wig of flaxen straw framed the handsome, unkind and deformed face of a child. It was Fero, the dwarf.

  Jehan laughed with derision.

  The dwarf heard him.

  "Stop. Your king commands you. I have heard a beautiful sound. It must have been a lark singing."

  The platform waddled, tilted, subsided to a halt.

  "Every woman turn to your king your face. I'm about to choose a consort."

  In the uproar, Jehan stood sneering, and the dwarf pointed at him. "There. That one."

  "But, Sire, it's not a woman."

  "My command is law."

  As he was seized, Jehan did not fight. He hung, contemptuous of them, on the boisterous arms, and was lovingly hoisted aloft. The dwarf caught Jehan and smacked a kiss on to his mouth. "Garments for my queen. You, you. Strip yourselves."

  Shrieking, various girls were made to give up various examples of apparel. They trooped in person on to the platform, twining the handsome youth, adorning him in cast-offs and embraces. When they were shooed away again, there was a sudden relevation. Draped in a mantle, a striped sash, and with a knot of ribbons caught through his yellow hair, Jehan was abruptly a girl.

  "Sweetest Jesus," said Conrad. He seemed stricken, white-faced, his desire bulging before him. But Jehan did not apparently care. He leaned on the dwarfs shoulder, looking arrogantly about. The glances were unmistakably male, in that young girl's face.

  "Will my queen sit?"

  "On your head, pig-dwarf."

  The crowd applauded with zeal.

  "On my lap, dear queen."

  "And be got with another babe?" ranted the queen in his high melodious damsel's voice, playing the part now.

  "I'll give you another!" offered a male in the crowd. Offers fell fast upon the boy-girl queen. She shook her hair, "I came to Paradys to make my fortune. I came to be apprenticed to a trade."

  "Ohh-ho!" volunteered the crowd.

  "I meant," shouted Jehan. "to paint pictures of the saints in the great new church. Not sit in a cart and be dighted by a dwarf."

  The dwarf caught Jehan and pulled him down across his knees. Jehan laughed, this time lightly and boyishly.

  "On, slaves, you vermin. To the Temple. My queen shall paint it."

  They careered up the hill, the wineskins jumping through the crowd as if alive. Striving to get one, and to keep up, Conrad lost his brothers. He strove beside the dwarf, took hold of an edge of the platform to help it heave along. He stared at Jehan, who ignored or did not see him, with coals for eyes.

  So they poured through the market-place, gathered converts, drove up a hump in the world and into a stone alley, crushed against the walls, the platform tumbling and righting itself in a storm of flesh and confusion.

  The outer yards of the Temple-Church, when they got into them, were piled with stones, rubble, bales, ballasts, work-shops, sheds. Architects and menials alike were gone. It was to be their gift to God, the ornament of Paradys, what did it need of protection, the Temple-Church of the Sacrifice of the Redeemer?

  Huge and hollow the walls arose: the window-places, finned with iron, gaped. The bones of the scaffolding stood waiting for embodiment, like the Word itself, once. But it had no life, no soul, only its sensed, unborn suspension. The cavalcade swirled about the ankles of future history, and asses defecated there.

  "Come now," said King Fero.

  "Not I," said Queen Jehan.

  "It's a fact," said the dwarf, "my queen here has borne me thirty babes. We must be wed at last."

  The crowd brought censers filled with old shoes, and lit them, and the reeking smoke lifted to heaven. The donkey in the mitre was led up, and Jehan and the dwarf were married by it, the crowd itself suggesting the proper words.

  "And so to bed," said the dwarf.

  "A favour," said Jehan.

  "More delay. What is it?"

  "Give me the donkey."

  "I promise I'm better than the donkey."

  "Well, I'll take him anyway."

  Jehan, garbed in maiden's robes, intercepted the donkey, tore off its mitre - to yowls of sacrilege - and lifting his skirts, got up on the beast's back. Mildly clocking heels to its sides, Jehan persuaded the animal to a walk. They rode forward, past the king-dwarf, to where Conrad stood in ecstatic petrification. "Wake up. Get up behind me' said Jehan.

  "Rebellion," crowed Fero. He drank from a wineskin and toppled over sideways from his seat.

  Conrad flung himself aboard the donkey. He gripped Jehan by the waist. "The Devil, the Devil, Satan, Lucifer, death, night," he cursed and moaned, clinging.

  They rode off with scant hindrance, the crowd separating to let them by, only cawing commiserations to the dwarf. At its edges, unattended, a pair of drunken men lay on the road.

  The donkey trotted now, glad to be out of the press.

  They went up a street with an artistic well and a burned house in it.

  "Oh Christ, Jehan, Jehan."

  Beyond the walled park, some open land ascended. Presently one could see the wave-head of the City Wall above and to the east.

  The donkey cantered. Conrad groaned and fumbled at Jehan, who shifted off the thief's hands from the area they sought. Conrad mouthed the smooth neck under the ribboned hair. He sobbed, and spasmed suddenly, giving the ass an unintentional kick that almost unseated both riders.

  Having run its length, the donkey pulled up under some trees.

  "You've had your pleasure," said Jehan. "Now where are the others?"

  "No pleasure. You bastard son of Hell. They were at their own business."

  "Just you then, creep-thief. Spraying your lust on an ass's back."

  "Shut your damned mouth. I'll kill you."

  "No you won't. Now I want that nun."

  "I should slit your throat."

  Jehan swung from the back of the donkey and hesitated, finding himself sore and stiff. Had he never ridden before? The physical sensation seemed familiar, but he associated it with fear, trouble - putting the thought aside, he pulled off himself in a skein the girls' clothes and the ribbons. Conrad had also left the animal. He sat in the grass under the leafless, untimely-budding trees. He was crying.

  "What a fine, brave, bold man," said Jehan. "The artisan cried. Don't burn my house! Don't burn my precious painting!"

  Conrad seemed not to listen. "That boy," he said. "I
never should have. That boy, your brother. All my life. Sins, sins. I'll burn in Hell. The Devil sent you. We'll be punished, every one. God's wrath. God help me."

  "Do you have a home?" said Jehan casually, straightening his tunic.

  Conrad wept.

  Jehan left him there, and the ass feeding on a crocus. But as he went down across the rough land, towards the wall of the garden-park where once some palace had vaunted, Conrad stumbled after.

  "A hut's my home," he said, "in Smith's Lane."

  "Good. Then we'll take her there."

  "Take who?"

  "Christ's Bride. My young nun with the holy face."

  "I won't. Don't you fear yourself, Jehan? I won't do it."

  "Then take yourself off."

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

  "To Hell then," said Conrad. "Noli vade retro, Satanusl 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 / 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 brou
ght 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 was 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 ghasdy 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.