The Book of the Damned

by Tanith Lee

  Then sight merged back into his eyes. Jehan saw. The knife slipped out of his fingers. Intuitively he reached after it, but unable to look, to look away, and he thought, What does a knife count for? And gave it up.

  That vast black openness was filled now only by one image.

  The man who had entered there wore the garments of a lord, a prince of the City of Paradys-Paradise, and everything was white, so white, while a kind of glowingness shone through it from his skin under the Eastern silk. For his skin had gold in it, and his hair was a rage of gold, a furnace. And his eyes were like the wide golden eyes of tigers in one of the novice's books, which Jhane had once been shown.

  Jhane had seen him before, of course. In the church of the nunnery, the white figure untrammelled between earth and air, sometimes static, sometimes moving before her with a woman's gait - or not - disguised as a woman - or perhaps not even that -in a white mantle. And he was a prince. Not a king. Not the world's King. Not Satan, not Lucifer. One of the captains of the fallen host.

  Jhane stepped away, Jehan sloughed, everything gone like the knife.

  It came to her that she underwent a vision, a religious experience of Hell, but no less holy for being profane.

  Jhane's body would no longer allow her to her knees, she seemed to have altered to wood, unbending but capable of splintering. She shut her eyes, but the burning flame of the angel remained imprinted under her lids.

  A wonderful aroma filled the void that had been the hut. Her head swam at it, in a moment she would lose consciousness and die, and fiends would bear her to the Pit -

  "Esrafel," she said.

  "You have called me," he said, "I am here with you."

  And no sooner did the voice touch her ears, like no other voice in the world, like music never heard there, than his hands also touched her. (The palms of his hands were golden, as were the soles of his feet in the silken shoes.) The caress seemed to find her forehead, but her whole body was laved in it, even to the tips of her nails and hair.

  "I never called you," said Jhane.

  "You called me. You did not see that I stood at your side. Which is common to mankind."

  "Who are you?" she said, not sure at all if she spoke to him.

  "You have named me."

  "Esrafel," she said again, "the Angel of the Lord."

  "You recognise me as Esrafel," he said. "Then I am Esrafel."

  He was winged. She felt the wings enclose her as his voice and hands had done, and the perfume of eternity.

  She began to cry quietly on the breast of the angel. Fires mounted through her. She clung to him and begged for release. Her whole flesh seemed sundered, and she too was winged, and as she rushed to the pinnacle of Heaven, she saw his heart blazing like a rose of gold beneath silk and skin, and on the heart of the angel was a scar of an old wound, wounded again, over and over. Then Heaven shattered. She fell. She fell and the stars were made and in the pit of the earth a light, to last until the last of the world, its ending, and beyond, for ever and for ever. So let it be. Amen.

  Bells were tolling, and only half-aware she counted the strokes. It would be Nonus, the ninth office, three in the afternoon, for there was daylight, but on and on clanged the bells, near and far. It was not an hour or a summons, but the death-bell, sounded from all the quarters of the City.

  Jhane sat up in the wretched hut. She bad-been lying on the flea-ridden bed of rags and itched to prove it. How much time had passed? There had been a wonderful dream…

  A man owned the hut; he might return. Jhane rose, and on impulse, shook the soil and twigs from the cloak, and wrapped it about herself. It hid the masculine dress by means of which she had sought protection.

  As she walked out into the sallow gloom of the alley, full memory returned to Jhane. It met her like a blow, so she dropped back against the wall, covering her face in shame and distress. But the enormity of what had happened, being insupportable, gushed^as suddenly from her. She regarded, in the distance, her days and nights in Paradys, their culmination, and the ultimate and terrible advent of revealing light. She was calm, and under her breath whispered a prayer of her infancy. Through all this, the bells churned on. Who had died? (She thought of the priest in the northern village, and wooden coffins lowered with scant ceremony. Once a son of the lord's house died. That had been different, a hundred mourners on the skyline and the bell at its crying all day.)

  At the end of the alley, by the forge - which had stayed silent -she saw a group of beggars sitting in the street, huddled together.

  She thought, for no reason she could divine, / slept too long.

  As she passed the beggars not one of them stirred, and looking at them she saw a single face, its mouth slack and black tongue protruding. The skin was molded, and there was a smell of bad meat. They were dead.

  Jhane went by, and came out into an open square of muddy earth where the houses crushed each other. Smoke went up from two or three chimneys, but otherwise there was no evidence of life. Under the bells a dog bayed ceaselessly. Premonition was total if unnamed. Moving over the square into another of the lanes, Jhane met an old woman and nearly started from her skin.

  Jhane said, "You're alive!" The old woman laughed. "Is the City dead?"

  "Pestilence," said the old woman. "After the Ass Feast. That's three days. Where have you been?"

  "Asleep."

  "Done better, you, to have stayed asleep. God sleeps." She craned away and pointed at Jhane. "A man goes to his bed well and at daybreak they find him dead and black. At the festival some were falling down, spewing black blood."

  / lay in the arms of a demon.

  "Don't come near," said the old woman. "You may have it on you. It comes from a touch, or a look."

  "Why?" said Jhane.

  "The wells are poisoned," said the old woman. "Full of bodies and piss and curses. It's God's punishment. Perhaps I have it," said the old woman. She licked her hand and smeared the spittle against Jhane's cheek. "There."

  Jhane ran away through the alleys of Paradys.

  As Jhane fled and wandered through the City, she found Death stalked ahead of her. She began to look out for him, too, personified, some hooded shape. One world had ended for her. Now she was in this other. She had left off dividing reality from dream.

  It seemed, soon enough, that the City was on fire. The winter pall from the chimneys and the alleys had lessened, and the wider streets were now full of smoke. Fires were burning on the cobbles, columns of black going up in the still air. Sometimes people darted from the houses to renew the kindling or to throw in aromatics or sulphur. They were plague fires, set to burn the contagion out of the atmosphere. A breath could kill as well as a touch or a look.

  Sometimes figures went by Jhane. Robed and cowled, their mouths and nostrils muffled and only the eyes visible, smudged around by smoke, they were like the Death she visualised. They might have been priests going to tend or bring comfort to the sick, or collectors of the dead, but they had a terrifying appearance, looming out suddenly from the smouldering vacuum, under the shadowy cliffs of higher buildings.

  The chorus of bells rang continually. Now and then one might fall off, but later it would resume.

  Jhane came to the river, which she had instinctively been seeking, though often in circles in the dark. The water had an aspect of stasis as complete as that of the sky. Not a ripple moved, and where any boat lay, it was lifeless as a fallen tree. The upper bank of the City too was lost in smoke, and a cloud rose from it, but without apparent movement.

  As she stood there a black procession evolved nearby, a priest with a lantern, many coffins, a flock of carrion-crow mourners.

  They passed away over a bridge, perhaps towards the burial ground of Our Lady.

  , From the houses Jhane began to hear sounds she had not heard before, cries and weeping, and sometimes screams. The dream world was becoming more real. Again she ran away. And having nowhere else, it was towards the Nunnery of the Angel that flight took her.

/>   In her mind, Jhane had a knowledge that she must get in again over the wall, the way the boy had done, the young man who had possessed her, he who was the symbol of all the evil of the masculine species. She felt the horror of casting off the cloak, (the thief Conrad's), and being revealed for herself as a male once more.

  On an open area between the houses, some carts were being loaded. This time, there were no mourners. All were dead except for the porters, who went about their task jeering and laughing, and sometimes drinking. Elected to such a duty, they did not reckon they could escape the pestilence. "Drink and be merry!" They shouted to Jhane, then two of them gave chase, reaching after her with hands that had just slung the bodies across each other in the carts. But Jhane evaded the men, and they did not pursue her far.

  The smoke was very thick beyond that spot, and at the end of an avenue of smoke, the gate of the nunnery suddenly appeared in front of her, and above, the ghost of the tower, the bell tongueless in it.

  At that moment, the doors of the gate both began to open. Jhane stood still. The sight of the opening black doors frightened her, making her think of the first night she had come there, and also of the houses in the upper city, the fat woman opening one door, and then the student of Master Motius opening another.

  But no one was to be let in this time. It was a group of nuns who were coming out. How strange they looked, their faces in the icon-like blankness with which they drifted into the church at every office. At their head moved the Mother. Her strong, fleshy countenance had altered, it was now gaunt and very pale, an icon like the rest. She glided out into the street, and the nuns of the Angel glided after her. A vague chanting, the note of bees, floated near but did not seem to emanate from them. They came on. They passed Jhane, not seeing her. And she looked at their Madonna faces in perplexity. When they were gone, had vanished into the vacuum of smoke, she realised she had not noticed among them the face and body of Marie-Lis.

  Jhane approached the gate and went in through one leaf of the unlocked doors.

  The smoke had barely got in here. Jhane could smell incense and herbs and tallow and women - familiar things. She sensed the bell should be ringing for an office - Nonus it would be truly now, perhaps. Her soul had memorised the times. But the tower was mute, and a great quiet lay everywhere - for all at once, all the bells in the City seemed to have stopped ringing.

  She went through the outer court, and under the arch into the churchyard. She half turned towards the hostel then. She could go to her cell and hide herself there. Soon it would grow properly dark. Wrapped in her female clothing and the covers of her pallet, and the night, she might be safe. But no, all these layers would only close her more surely inside her own head, where fear was.

  The nunnery was a desert. They had all gone out of it. Crossing over the south cloister, Jhane remembered sweeping there with the novices, and the phantom of Osanne with her rags and pail. What had it meant, the death of Osanne? Maybe the nuns had understood, for they had gone about disguising the death very swiftly. Jhane, before she knew what she did, sang aloud a snatch of song the novices had taught her: Oh winter is, Oh winter is. "No, no," said Jhane, and the cloister echoed. At its centre the stone child gripped the bowl of the dry fountain. Jhane hurried on. She entered the garden, and stopped immediately, for there was the young nun gathering up washing that had fallen to the ground.

  Jhane flew forward. She would cast herself at the feet of the young nun. She must say: I have seen. Save me now, tell me what to do. But at the last instant, the nun turned a little, and Jhane saw that it was not Marie-Lis, but one of the senile sisters from the infirmary. Her wizened face was not an icon. It looked on Jhane, and parting the seams of its mouth, plaintively said to her, "They left me here. Useless. Well, here you are then, too. I shan't die alone." And the elderly nun sat down on the stone kerb of the poisoned well, (in which Osanne had been burned and buried), holding the two or three habits, and the linen things in her lap.

  Jhane went to the old nun cautiously.

  "What is it?" said the nun. "Can you see me? I can see you."

  "Where have they gone?" said Jhane. "The sisters, the Mother?"

  "There's a plague," said the old nun. "Didn't anybody tell you? Poor girl. They've gone to nurse the sick and the dying, it's a part of the vows. Pay no heed to yourself, the Enemy strikes us down with his arrows by day and by night. But we must love one another. So the Mother prayed and took them all out, and most or all of them will catch the ailment and perish." The nun was disapproving. "They didn't think of me. I shall die, but it isn't plague, it doesn't matter. Come here, sit beside me. Did you know, this well can't be used any more? One of the novices drowned herself in it."

  Jhane went nearer. She said. "Where is Marie-Lis?"

  "Sister Marie? I must think. My old head… Three weeks since the plague came. The night of the Donkey Feast."

  Jhane crept close. She sat at the old nun's knee, trembling. Was it so? To sleep three days, or three weeks - she had seen an angel, he had put into her heart the searing light - a slumber of days, weeks, a hundred years, was nothing to that. She meant to say, I was granted a true vison: one of the Lord's winged knights came to me. But she said only, "She was the youngest of the nuns."

  The old nun said, "Alas, yes. Now it comes to me. It was like the other, the novice, Osanne. But Sister Marie hanged herself."

  Jhane now could say nothing.

  "In her cell," continued the old nun. "Suicide, a mighty sin. But the Lord understands and forgives. It is a sin only against oneself. Now I know you. You were sick with a fever and they tied you down on the bed beside mine. Well it was that night she hanged herself, for I heard the talk that it must be kept from you, she had been kind to you, and you loved her."

  "Never," said Jhane. She leaned her forehead on the old nun's knee and wept silently for some while. The old nun laid her hand gently on Jhane's hair. When Jhane's crying ended, the old nun said, "We have a special dispensation, all the City. The priests are dying, or afraid and run off. Any man, or woman, may hear another's confession. Now you must hear mine."

  "If you knew what I had done - ' cried Jhane. She kneeled up and burst out: 'I saw the Angel of the Lord. How can I bear it?"

  But the old nun only said. "Be merciful to me, for I have sinned." And then she recounted her confession softly, which amounted to some small jealousies and omissions. When she was done, she smiled at Jhane, then closed her eyes and began to sleep.

  She will die in her sleep and leave me alone here, thought Jhane, and had the urge to wake the old nun up. But she looked so peaceful, Jhane did not do it.

  Darkness stole over the garden. The fruit trees and the bare plots dissolved into the night. In a while there came up over the wall a straw-coloured moon.

  Jhane imagined going back to the church and entering it and flinging herself before the altar and the window. Osanne's ghost might reappear and tell her: 'It was your strength that slew me. I got between you and the light. You thrust me aside. It was like the lightning bolt." Or Marie-Lis might be there and say, "I came between you and the light. I removed myself." For Marie-Lis too had presented herself as a ghost, and to Conrad besides, for she had been dead by the Day of the Ass. (Or had Marie-Lis been the tempter, the evil one, the shadow mimicking the light - ) But after all, maybe Osanne had only drowned herself in the well and some element in the water had marked her body like burning, and some creature had got down to her and gnawed her belly wide - and possibly Marie-Lis had endured a secret sorrow which she had ended for herself without a notion of Jhane, Jhane's power, or Jehan's crimes. And onlyjehan's lust had summoned her back among the plum trees.

  The Angel Lucefiel would not descend from the window to comfort Jhane. The Angel Esrafel would not console her ever again. Yet she had seen him.

  Yes, she had seen a vision, and now her life must change. No, for it was changed already, she must only accept the change of it. Nor let your sins weigh you down - your sins are finished, tear up the
thought of them by the roots. It seemed the other inner part of her mind had again been formulating plans.

  There in the garden, by the sleeping, dying nun, Jhane pulled off

  Conrad's cloak, and all Jehan's male attire. She unbound her breasts, and did not even notice when the penis of cloth was sloughed into the shadows. Jhane took from the old nun's lap one of the habits, and articles of linen. Jhane clothed herself. She covered her head and neck with gorget and veil, her body with the robe of the order, when everything was in place on her, she drew up the topaz crucifix and wore it there openly on her breast.

  The old nun still slept.

  Jhane took her hand.

  Light as a husk, the old nun slipped forward and rested on her. Jhane lifted her in her strong arms and bore her back to the bed in the infirmary.

  An hour later, at the office of Hesperus, which was not rung, the old nun died.

  Jhane dug and buried her in a shallow grave, in the traditional area. She did not visit the church, before passing on into the City through the gate.

  They had forbidden the ringing of funeral bells; they had forbidden processions of mourners. Who had done so? None but the unseen Lords of Paradys, her Duke or Prince, (and Jhane did not know which), die authorities of the City - most of whom had fled the pest, and sent their orders back with doomed messengers. Almost all the function of the City had stopped, however, and so to cancel funeral rites was nothing. There were scarcely any priests remaining to speak above the bodies. The graveyards were full. Now they dug up any spare land, and piled in the corpses on top of each other, twenty, thirty persons deep. There was no commerce this side of die river. Men lived by what they could get, stealing and hoarding. On the upper bank, some forms were kept, this far, but for how long? The plague seemed fit to withstand them all. The plague was healthy and vital. The Death, they called it now, as if there were no other kind of death in the world, and maybe there was not. Cadavers lay in the thoroughfares, uncollected a great while. They were blotched with black, black boils, and black blood. The dogs, scavenging, refused to eat them. Smoke still rose, the warding fires, and a few vehicles still trundled back and forth. Sometimes there might be a woman at a well, but since the wells were supposedly poisoned, these women were reckoned mad, or already infected - or witches and actually the poisoners, and were liable to be stoned.