A Bed of Earth

by Tanith Lee

  But—now he had a voice. This awful voice, so soft and mannered, so unlike the rough enamored tones of her lover.

  “Where—” she started. Her throat clenched.

  “Where, madonna?”

  “Where is Lorenzo?”

  “Ah,” said the Lord Ciara. “Where I have him.”

  “You must let him go,” she said. She did not know how, or why. It was no good.

  “But, madam, I can’t. How can I?”

  “Don’t … don’t—”

  “Yes, madam?”

  “Don’t harm him—”

  “Why should I harm him?” Ciara asked, reasonably. “Why should I want to? Is there any cause? What crime has he committed against me? Or what crime have you committed, for the matter of that?”

  Meralda shriveled. She closed and curled together like a scorched leaf, not only her spirit, but her body, too, and put her face into her hands. No tears came from her.

  “Come now, Meralda,” the first use of her name, “why this display? Rest assured, your father would entrust you to me, under such circumstances, since you’ve left his own defending walls.”

  To placate him, did she sip the wine, taste the peach or the candied nuts? Did she speak any more? Did he? Did someone come and conduct her from the room? They must have done, for here she lay now, in another room, very bare, yet with a bed. There was no light now, while beyond the narrow window, latticed over by iron, she heard the slipping of the Laguna Aquila, on which, though she did not know, lay the Isle of Eels. This island, currently the retreat of her betrothed.

  She cried eventually against the pillow, which was of the finest linen and smelled musty, unlike the coarse herb-scented pillows of Lorenzo’s bed.

  Then Meralda prayed. To God. Who else was left?

  Did she believe in God? Yes, but only as one more father, one more lord, the God of Laws and Thunders and Jealous Rage—and Christ, who suffered so and therefore did not grasp that others did not have His endurance and could not bear what He had borne.

  Yet, her need was limitless. It seemed to become a creature in the room, calling out to a Heaven that did not hear. But the night heard, and the night answered. It answered with the voice of a man. A voice that screamed once, and then was silent.

  Meralda turned to ice. Frozen, she lay, her dead prayers cold-burnt to her lips. And then a void like death came upwards from beneath the house, the ground, the water, the earth, and smothered her in a kind of sleep.

  The morning brought a woman, with a dish of bread sopped in milk, as if for a child. Meralda ate some of this, and then the woman indicated she would dress her, and arrange her hair.

  Meralda was accustomed to that, of course, but not here, and not to the woman, who had a leaning, warped shape. The room was hot already with sun, and the lagoon blistered outside. Through this window she could make out nothing but the water.

  Was it possible to escape? To what? Lorenzo was here. She must find Lorenzo.

  “The young man who was with me—”her new attendant glanced into Meralda’s face “—do you know where he is kept? He’s of good family and they may become angry—” Meralda stopped. Her own threats frightened her with their weakness and unsuitability. But the woman only grunted. Meralda tried again. “I heard a man … I heard a man … in the night … he cried out…”

  The woman’s hands were in Meralda’s hair, combing, braiding, looping and coiling, fastening strands with clasps set by beryls and two or three strings of pearls. Why was this done? Did Ciara want to see her so, as if for a festival?

  “Is … your master kind to you?”

  The woman looked full at her then and laughed, with a peculiar noise. As she did it, Meralda saw that she had no tongue, only a blackened stump.

  Oh God … please … sweet God—The prescribed words: Merciful Father, help me in my hour of night, when all men turn from me their faces. I shall not be afraid for the arrow of the sun, nor the pestilence that comes down from the moon. For You are with me, Lord, You are my guide and my only hope—

  She did not see Ciara again until sunset.

  Movement in the house, which was not large, alerted her to activity among the servants. Then a heavy smell of food and roses began to wash through the rooms. Apparently they were to have the feast he had promised.

  She had heard romances about feasts. Would he poison her?

  But when she went perforce (driven there almost, by the tongueless woman) to the dark-lit table, where the fragile goblets flamed softly and roses spilled about, only two meticulous servants waited on her. Ciara did not appear.

  “Where is … where is my lord, Signore-donno Ciara?”

  “At his studies, madonna. He has already dined.”

  She was young, her body hungry and thirsty despite her fear, the desert of her bewilderment. She drank wine, and when they served her things from the several dishes, she ate some, every mouthful perfumed from the flowers. She looked for Lorenzo in the room, in their faces, in vain.

  Nevertheless, the dinner revived her. Her revival was very sudden—perhaps due to spices in the meat, or some drug? Anything, anything.

  Meralda got to her feet and said, “Take me at once to my lord.”

  They hesitated. Then one said, “As you wish, M’donna.”

  She walked behind the man with the candle, up a narrow stair through night (in my hour of night, be with me, God …)

  Long ago, almost a century, this house was a place of secrets, true, but also one of delights and kindnesses, of love.

  Did the young girl feel them brushing at her as she went, those others who once had sported and been happy here? Their hands, no longer substantial, reaching out to soothe and anchor her?

  No, not that. It was only she had come to a conclusion, and thought it might save her, save Lorenzo even, thought it might bring him back from the dead somehow (for a part of her knew, she had heard his cries before—agony or orgasm—they could have a similar sound). She was mad, in this. She was a fool, naturally. But she was young, she was alone. Hope, which is both friend and foe, had not yet let her fall.

  There was a large chamber, curtained off by thick velvet. The servant went in, then returned and let her enter. Inside sat the lord they had betrothed her to, at a long table spread with huge, heavy books, some of them open, with pages illustrated in jewelry tints.

  The servant went out.

  Meralda stood and clasped her hands.

  “My lord …”

  “A moment, madam. If you’d be so good.”

  He was reading. Those yellow yolks of eyes fixed still on the page.

  Then, one of the hands picked itself up and beckoned to her. “Come here, and see.”

  She did what he said. That was her ploy, now. To do what he said, what he wished. All and everything. She did not understand, of course, what that might entail.

  Poised beside him, she looked and saw into the book. The words were in Latin, and she had no notion of what they said. Her eyes ran across one line that had a large letter of gold and brightest scarlet, showing something that arched backward, like some animal rearing … carnem illam maxime esurio quae adulta et sapida extra omnia ossa gignitur … and out of it a spray like garnets burst.

  “My lord—I’m your possession. We are to be married … will you take me to your bed?”

  He said, and perhaps he smiled, or he did not, certainly he did not lift his eyes, “Are we to be married, Meralda?”

  It had been her last throw of the dice.

  What else could she give him to appease him?

  Obviously, it was too late. Or it was meaningless.

  He said, “Do you know, however, what coming to my bed might ask of you? There are things I value, there, not always the ordinary things. Not the mundane things, for example, you will have sampled with your paramour, Lorenzo Vai.” He paused here, as if for her denial. She made none. Hope had let her go. “The arts of concupiscence are legion, Meralda. I should have wanted, possibly, to educate you in such
disciplines. But no longer. You’ve learned as you wanted. Your quim is undone and I no longer like it.”

  Still he had not looked at her.

  Meralda said, in a fading little voice, “Oh, let me go … please, I beg, let me go back to my father … he’ll see me punished.”

  “Yes, yes. So he will. But first I have had my say. Your loving enemy, Barbaron, did very well to bring you here. I wonder now, if you will learn anything from me?”

  Speech rushed out of her. “You killed Lorenzo! He’s dead … he’s dead …”

  “A fact, lady. Yes. He died last night. I found him scarcely interesting; his death was quick. At a stroke.”

  She wept. She fell to her knees and the tears seared her eyes—and yet, within the prison of her grief, she knew this was not all.

  Standing up now, he closed the book. Perhaps he smiled. Or he did not.

  Wrapped in despair, even now she did not see his eyes as he told her what he had done for her, to teach her the lesson of her sin against him.

  At first his words dropped on to her like a rain that made a great black tumult, but did not penetrate the casing of her mind.

  Then, then the words sank in.

  What did he say to her? Oh Christ in Heaven must it be told? It must, for it was done.

  He explained to her the Latin in the book she had seen him reading. The passage described the eating of a favorite food, after the carnal act had been completed. This food, the “flavorsome meat that ripened without bone,” was Adam’s rib. The human penis. There were instructions on the cooking, too, and seasoning. He recounted those. He said that in this one area he had been pleased with Lorenzo, for furnishing an adequate specimen. “I could hardly give you a lesser treat,” Ciara said, “for your little feast. I was informed, by one who watched, it was the dish you liked the most and ate most of.”

  Again, night.

  About an hour before, the mutilated body of a young man, stone-white from loss of blood, had been flung into the lagoon. (In three or four days more, it would rise again in a canal between Aquila and Fulvia, a foul, pallid fish. There would be jokes among some of the boatmen, that he had been on his way to the basilica, this corpse, to pray. The omission at his groin was put down to the greed of sea-life. He had no other wounds. Presently he was taken to the Isle of the Dead, decently cremated, and buried in one of the tiny ash-graves kept for those unknown. In the Artisans’ Quarter, Lorenzo’s uncle already thought the boy had run off with some girl. The mother thought so as well, and ever after it broke her heart that he had never told her, and never returned to see her, a thankless and unloving son.)

  Now, however, a boat came away from the Island of Eels, There were three men on it, bound up in their cloaks as if bandaged. And a girl.

  In the eerie light of the lantern, her hair, very fair and saffron yellow, was ragged and in parts seemed to have been torn out, leaving stripings of old blood. Her nails were torn and bloody too, and on her throat and face were scratches. Other blood, this still fluid and red, thinly trickled now and then from her mouth. Worse than this, her face was more blank than a carnival mask, and her eyes were like things trapped in caves.

  But she made no sound. Only now and then she would reach up, and then her hand would fall down again. It was that she had meant to claw her face or tear her hair again, and then forgot what she meant to do.

  The trickle of blood was from two small vessels breaking in her throat and nose, with her own screaming. This had happened, probably, when she was shown the naked body of her lover.

  Across Aquila, the walls of the night appeared. There seemed only one other landmark there, a strange luminescence rising out of the salt water.

  “Church has come up today,” said one of the men.

  The other only spat in the lagoon. What did he care for churches?

  Maria Maka Selena came and went with the tides of the lagoon. It was a phenomenon, standing sometimes only to its nave in the water, at others drowned, all but the tower with its clock and garland of silver maidens. Tonight, those girls were canted, a little out of true, but raised high above the boat, and phosphorescent from the sea.

  Meralda gazed up wildly. What had caught her eye, or the things which now passed for eyes?

  It was the girls on the tower, the phosphorescent girls with seaweed tangling their limbs, the girls who had drowned in the laguna and yet come up again to watch the moon.

  “Sit, you bitch,” said the second man, as Meralda rose to her feet. “Or do I thrash you?”

  “Let her be. He said not to touch her. She’s in enough of a state for when we leave her at the della Scorpias’ door.”

  Afraid of Ciara then, not wanting to go against him, they hesitated just long enough. And Meralda leaned slowly over and down into the lagoon, which silkenly parted and took her, and then she was gone, only one last loosened strand of hair left lying on the water. Finally so strong she was, so sensible, so brave, this child.

  BARTOLOME

  IT MAY NOT SURPRISE YOU to hear that I had bad dreams the night after Thimeo told me about Meralda della Scorpia.

  In later years, I thought it odd, myself, that the most coherent of these night-banes concerned her drowning. One might say, there had been far nastier things in the tale.

  To this hour, though, I recall that dream. The water closing over my head, my body—not stifling as you would expect, yet perishing, and feeling as much. I seemed to see through a bulb of obscure glass. And in that fashion I beheld the body of the church of Maka Selena pass, its corners and great door, drifting above and away, and then I saw the bottom of the lagoon, which was inky and cold. Still I remember the cold. And I thought I was crying, and speaking to Meralda, who in fact was invisible to me. To no avail.

  From such a vileness I would suppose I should have awakened bawling. No such thing. In the dream, all at once I felt that I need no longer suffer this, and felt myself let go of something, though I did not know of what. And then a warmth stole over me, and I was no longer afraid, and then I glimpsed a mild, green, shining brilliance, almost like a hill, more like an emerald—but in another second it was gone. It was not for me. And then I woke, with a sense more of resignation than anything. Next I got from my bed and said a prayer, as I began to shiver. I prayed that for her it had been in that way, with that gentleness, her end, after the horrors before. But now I think it was something else, something so curious I must come to it in its own season, and not now.

  My Uncle Thimeo’s house was my home for a further eight years. By which time I was a man grown, and a Master Minore of the guild. That year there was a deep winter, and Thimeo took a chill, and in three days he was dead. This was a blow beyond any other. He had been a father to me and a good friend, and I had not wanted to admit he was of an age to be on the lookout for death.

  Rossa and I mourned him, and there were many more to speak well of his name. I put off my doublet in the snow and attended to his grave myself. It was my privilege to see him safe to bed, after all he had done for me.

  After that I lived a while in his house by Silvia, but it did not feel as it had. Rossa was too sad and no longer young. In the end, she said she would like to go to her sister in the country. We parted regretfully, but even so I could tell she was glad to be leaving. Since the funeral, she had seen my uncle over and over sitting in his chair by the hearth, seen him with such acuity that she had once called his name, and then he was not there. Perhaps she sensed him sleeping by her in the bed, too. It was not that he haunted her, or perhaps only in her heart. But she was better away, and her sister was a cheery affectionate sort, Rossa would be comfortable. I knew I should not meet her again.

  After she left, I too took on a housekeeper, but only for the house, you understand. She was a squinty woman of unreliable temper, known as Strabica. But her batter-bread was the best I have ever tasted, and likewise all her cooking.

  Thimeo’s house, however, perhaps resentful for Rossa, did not take to Strabica. It shook down pots and shelv
es on her, and slammed the doors on her fingers—all of which made her temper worse. At last, I sold the place to a man of the guild and took Strabica, and a boy for the other work, to a new house, which stands distant from the City, in the lagoon, on a landspit at the very edge of the sea-wall of Silvia.

  Here the weather is often tumultuous, but awe-inspiring too. In calms, it is the most beautiful spot. Black gulls come down into the very garden, to offend the cat. On clear mornings, you can see over to the far island of Torchara. On misty days, it is the ghosts of isles you notice. The sea is like another being, and always murmuring, always talking, sighing, trying to persuade, like the woman you desire above all others.

  The waists of female gowns lifted higher two years later, to outline the breasts and leave the rest to one’s imagination. The garb of men grew closer to the body, and left the imagination little work. But I was young and fit from my trade, and was glad enough, in my holiday clothes, to be admired now and then. I had not yet taken a wife, or even a permanent mistress.

  The Franks or Franchians, who had annexed Milano in earlier years, were recently busy in Italy again, marching to interfere in the kingdom of the Napolitans. Talk predicted they would have all Italy in the end, if Italy did not rouse herself. But she was all a mess of little princedoms then, and even the pope in Rome, Pietus (a conniving but cowardly man), had reportedly bowed the knee to the Frankish king. Venus kept aloof as was her wont, feeling herself mighty enough, and separate. Napolita, after all, was the length of Italy away. (If Milano was much nearer.) Certainly you heard Frankish songs in Venus, sung in Franchian. And here and there, had been a Frankish marriage among the high families, for insurance, perhaps.

  That year, too, there would begin another scene for Italy. But also in the drama I would tell you of, though for my part, then, I knew nothing of it. Few did.

  PART TWO

  Revenge

  For as we have candles to light the darkness of the night, so the cypresses are candles to keep the darkness aflame in the full sunshine.