A Bed of Earth

by Tanith Lee

  No longer, presumably.

  Lanto had told the story quickly, as if to get rid of it.

  “He was standing at the landing-stage, soon after dawn. He’d been drinking and playing at—something—and come out for some air, they said. He was looking at the water, and he complained that, despite the island’s reputation for netting large eels, he had never seen nor eaten one of them.”

  And then apparently, one arrived.

  “They said it was eighteen feet in length. They thought it the mythic snake from under the lagoons. First just a running ripple they took for fish—then the water exploded and out it thrust. It seized on Ciara at once, and before any could help, it tore into him.”

  The Eel had taken off Ciara’s male member entire, and with it bitten out parts of the belly, bladder, and entrails. Then, in a spray of water and blood, the beast was gone.

  “There’s nothing can be done for him. He lies shrieking.”

  “Not dead?” Andrea had exclaimed.

  “No. No, they said—because of his transgressions he would not be allowed to die. Well, you know how they talk.”

  “He needs a kind friend,” had said Andrea, “to see him through into the Better World.” He had thought, He’ll have none of those.

  As Andrea was coming from the Castello that dusk, he heard a voice on the canal, a wanderlier, saying that Ciara still lived. Only days after did Andrea catch the rumor that the injured man had died at last. Could such things happen?

  When she stopped searching for him, he came back to her.

  She had sensed him everywhere, perhaps mistakenly, and gone looking day and night. A shadow beyond a column or a door—and she would hurry there, but it was only a shadow. Once, the Little Sala, a decorative, formal room, unlit after midnight, luminous with reflected tremblings of canal water, had seemed to conceal him. But he concealed himself. She took it to be a game he was offering her, both an invitation and a challenge. Then she supposed, not that she had invented him, but that he was no longer concerned with her, and had gone away. That had made her arrogant. She smarted.

  Not for a second did Beatrixa think the boy from the deep of the canal was a ghost. Nor, for a second, did she think him human, or meant for any person save herself.

  A child’s world, always peopled by miracles and inexplicable laws, gave full rein to this. And she had never been timid.

  After she had promised her father not to night-walk, Beatrixa, alert to the honor of Barbaron, ceased her roamings. Three nights later, waking in the black of a moonless dark, she saw the boy standing across the room, by her chair. It was a lavish chair, made small especially for her, upholstered in brocade and with lions’ heads carved on the arms. The boy was examining it. And then he turned and gazed at her.

  Though the room was virtually lightless, Beatrixa could see him, and things close to him, easily. His hair seemed itself to give off a sort of candleshine, silvery now rather than gold. His eyes were like that too, though they were dark.

  Beatrixa sat up. She glanced across to the corner where the nurse slept behind a screen. Her heavy-sleeper’s breathing told all was well.

  Beatrixa stepped out on the tesselated floor. In her shift and severely tied hair, she was regal. She stood, but would not go closer to him.

  After a moment, the boy approached her.

  Something had changed slightly. He was no longer quite her age, but somewhat older, perhaps eight. He was taller than she, and slender, and his velvet doublet was embroidered with seed-pearls. Obviously, he also was of a great and wealthy house, like her own.

  For a while they stayed still, looking at each other. He seemed curious, and she returned his stare level-eyed and queen-like.

  He said, “Who is that big woman who sleeps behind the screen?”

  “My nurse.”

  “What is a nurse?” he strangely asked.

  “She gave me her milk when I was a baby. Now she takes care of me,” said Beatrixa, flatly.

  “Oh,” he said. “A servant.” Then he said, “I have never seen one before.”

  “But you’re from a high house. Don’t you have servants?”

  “Of course.” He added lightly, in passing, “But they’re not visible.”

  Beatrixa thought about this. She digested it mentally finding it rather tricky. But he could walk under water, so she could not expect his realm to be like her own.

  However, she said, “It is gracious of you to call on me. What shall we do?”

  “Why must we do anything?”

  “Tell me about your own house then.”

  “Why should I?”

  She saw from this, not that he did not like her, but that he was willful, contrary. He must perhaps be humored, as Beatrixa had heard women say all men must.

  But she was not inclined to humor him. Though he was a creature of otherness, fascinating and magical, she was still the daughter of Lord Barbaron.

  “I am Beatrixa Barbaron,” she announced, and again she had the pronunciation of her name exact.

  The boy did not bow to her, or seem put out or impressed. He smiled. His smile was marvelous. It was like a brilliant star breaking from a pale cloud.

  She said, slowly, “And who are you?”

  “Silvio,” he said, “della Scorpia.”

  The words dropped into her stomach like lead.

  Presently she murmured, “You are my enemy. “ (For even the children of a house knew who were their foes.)

  “Yes,” he said. But with no malice. It was simply a fact. He seemed to imply they could ignore it now.

  But Beatrixa took a step back from him.

  “I won’t talk to you any more. It was dishonorable of you to come into my bedroom.

  He looked faintly surprised.

  Beatrixa went on, “You must go at once. Then I swear by the Lord Jesus I won’t call my father’s men.”

  He laughed. A laugh like water.

  “Oh, call them. See what happens.”

  “What?” she said, doubtful and unnerved.

  “Why,” he said, “only this.” And he vanished.

  A minute or so later, Beatrixa began to cry. It was the reaction to some tension she had not known she felt. And to the supernatural suddenness of his departure.

  It was also bereavement. She knew she would never see the boy again, that she had, rightly, dismissed him, and so had given up any chance of their meeting a second time.

  The crying woke the nurse, who came fumbling out half asleep, and saw Beatrixa standing there in tears, wringing her shift between her hands.

  “What now? What is it?”

  Beatrixa sobbed.

  “Hush,” grumbled the nurse. “What is it, child?”

  Beatrixa climbed into her own bed. She gulped her tears away into herself and said, “I dreamed an animal was in the room.”

  “An animal? What animal?”

  “From the lagoons,” said Beatrixa. Not knowing what she said. Wanting only to be rid of the troublesome nurse intruding on her grief.

  “I do think,” said the woman the next day to another, “she must have heard some snatch of that gross tale about the Eel.”

  She was in error in this. And Beatrixa herself had made a mistake. For she would meet Silvio della Scorpia again, although it would not be for ten more years.

  BARTOLOME

  (The Marriage of Venus)

  TWO FURTHER THINGS HAPPENED late that year. One was of great moment, the other of note only to me. This was that I took a wife. I will make no bones about it, the match was suggested to me by my Guild Master. Like the houses of Venus, the guilds also promote their alliances. She was a stonemason’s daughter, good-looking and having her own mind. She liked my advancement to Master Minore, and my chance of becoming full Master over the next few years. To me, she behaved as if she liked me for myself. And I was not adverse to her, though she would not have been my choice, if I am honest—as long after, I regret, she one time drove me to say. Her name was Pia, and she and Strabica did
not get on. So after our wedding, Strabica went to another household, and Pia hired for us our cook. That woman was, in the matter of the kitchen, to Strabica as some dauber would be beside the great artisan-painter, Leonido Vinchi.

  I learned too, even after a month, that Pia liked me only when I let her have her own way. Otherwise she sulked or spurned me. Her liking of me was therefore a trophy she awarded me for allowing her to do as she wished. And so, for the most part, I let her do it. And in this manner, my house became no longer much mine. I mislaid old friends, and had to put up with new ones I cared for less. She was jealous, too. But there, I fared no more dreadfully than many another man.

  That winter the canals froze, and the lagoons in places, so there was skating on them. At this season, Pope Pietus (for whom my wife had been named) took it on himself to reform the calendar. That was, he made it regular in the Julian mode, so there were no longer weeks but other blocks of time. (Although few of us remembered this outside of Rome.) In order to have the calendar then in the shape he desired, Pietus found it also necessary to slough eleven days from every year.

  To the common man, which I (if not Pia) considered myself, this was nonsensical. Indeed to some it was unnatural, and superstitiously, the outlawed eleven days came to be called the Dies Manium. The larger omission of them was to happen in autumn, and a vast confusion it would have caused. The lesser omission, of one day only, was in summer, at the end of the Crab Month, which now had only twenty-nine days. And one day, to be sure, that had been the thirtieth, but now became a Ghost Day, and no longer existed.

  This eccentricity was reformed back to normalcy by the pope who succeeded Pietus. Yet not before all Italy had suffered one twenty-nine-day Crab month the following summer.

  I mention the Ghost Day with good reason. It would seem that, even though restored, once conjured, the single Dies Manium persisted. But we shall come to that.

  Having mutilated the calendar, Pietus expired. Many were not astounded.

  Ruy Borja became pope before Christ ’Mass.

  Much was said of him too, in Venus. That he kept his mistresses openly in the Vatican was one thing, though that seemed unlikely. That he had admitted to fathering—and maintaining—a family of three sons and one daughter was, however, soon well-known.

  Ruy was of Spanish blood, but had lived in Italy since childhood. He gained the papacy both through his enormous popularity and the equal amount of fear he had already inspired in Rome. Plus, evidently, several large bribes. The papal name he took was that of the world-conquering Alexander.

  Despite hearing so much of this pope, Alessandro VI, within another couple of years we began to hear far more of the second to eldest of his sons, Chesare.

  Pia said to me, “I’ve heard he is an incredibly handsome man. Handsome as a classical god, and not yet twenty. They say he murdered his elder brother, Juvanni,” she added, as if the last were another mark to his credit. To Pia perhaps it was; she had always implied she preferred strong and ruthless men—none of whom would have stood for her tantrums.

  Chesare Borja though was more than a handsome face and figure. His physical strength was said to be prodigious—he would bend iron horseshoes for exercise, and had once, before a colossal crowd, beheaded a full-grown bull with one stroke of a sword. More than this, we were to discover his was a military talent, and an ambitious one.

  During those next years, Venus took note of Borja as, with papal funds and backing, he swept up the littered bickering princedoms and dukeries of outer Italy. First he regained the Papal States for Rome; next, the whole breadth of the Italian earth rang to the tramp and roar of his armies, and to the blast of the innovative cannon Messer Vinchi had designed for him.

  Nowhere did Borja fail, let alone falter. His justice was remarkable. Tyrants he would hang, but to their peoples he was generally benign, providing they were obedient. When they were not, he was merciless. It seemed he should have had the name Alexander, rather than his father. But his own name, of course, meant Caesar.

  His goal soon became plain. He meant to conquer and amalgamate all Italy, entire, beneath one banner—the papal banner of the Keys—and one thumb: his own.

  The Franchians obviously had had to be dealt with meanwhile, and he had managed even this in the nicest fashion—he was known to have extremely good manners. First, he made an alliance with the Frankish king, then fought for him and his interests, bringing Italian troops into the field elsewhere. After that, Borja used Franchian troops to assist him with his own expeditions, weeding them out only little by little as the Italian strength grew firmer. Milano, he let them have (for now, one thought), but dissuaded them from Napolita. That was not too difficult, as the Napolitans were a riotous lot; they had been chasing the Franks out again and again for years. Nor did Borja himself make a move towards Napolita. There was the Spanish influence in the province, after all, and Chesare Borja, like his sire, was a Spaniard. Lastly, Borja had married a Franchian princess, said to be beautiful, although he had stayed apparently no more than three weeks with her. (Pia recounted this, too, with a sly gleam of approbation in her eye.)

  Between Napolita to the southeast and Milano in the northwest, inside the following seven years all Italy became Borja’s Italy. Only one other area remained outside: the serene city-state of Venus.

  “Well, if he were to govern Venus, we might see some order here.”

  “What order do we lack, Pia?”

  “Oh, the prices, for one thing. You never think of it; you are so much off on your man’s ventures. And the canals—their foulness and stink in summer—uh!”

  “You think Chesare Borja would clean the canals.”

  “Yes, laugh at me, Bartolo. What do I know.”

  “You don’t seem to know that there might be a war. Venus is too great and puissant in her own right to give in to Borja. And he wants everything, it seems, and may not be content to let her alone.”

  Borja was not precipitate, though. He was a cunning, clever man, prepared to wait, though still young. With the Franchians not totally dealt from the play, nor the Spanish, he did not seem to want the risk of threatening us outright.

  Then came a summer when there was plague in Rome. Alessandro took ill of it and was given up, and then Chesare also fell sick. It may not have been plague, either, for by then these two had adversaries and to spare, and for all the tales of the Borja family’s knack with poisons, there were plenty about those who had tried the remedy with them. In Rome, there was, instantly, factious rioting. Half the great houses there were out on the streets, intent on seizing power. But even from his sickbed, Chesare gave his orders. His men stayed loyal and the enemy retreated again. In Venus, too, we felt the echo of all this, for any giant edifice, falling, makes a sound heard for miles. If the banners of the Keys and the Bull went down, what would come of it might not be all good, nor all in our favor, either.

  At length, an amazing sequel filtered to us. Both the son and the father had survived, Alessandro from being let blood, Chesare from a bath of fever-cooling ice that would have killed a weaker man.

  If he had been ambitious before, no doubt this dance with death brought Borja into full wakefulness.

  That year ended, and spring came, and then fresh rumors started.

  Soon after Pascalis, I was called to a meeting of my guild. Now that I was a full Master, I must always take my place at any convened gathering. But this was to be behind closed doors, as these things are. I told Pia I was going to visit my old friend Simone. She sulked instantly. She had never cared for him.

  Simone was at the meeting, too, of course. He was one of the first to speak.

  “Can you tell us, Guild Master, what the Ducem proposes?”

  We were all dubious the Ducem would propose anything. He was like another that had been, in the time of the invading Jurneians, keen for ducal treats and slow to do much governing. That one had been young, and this one was old, but they were from the same mold in many ways. Their interests were not truly wit
h the City. Ducem Nicolo had even collected a menagerie on his island of the Rivoalto: unicorn-deer, lions, and horses strangely spotted like leopards. When I was a boy I had seen a barge waddling out through the lagoon, with huge cages on it for the menagerie. They were full of something that looked like the clouds of sunrise: extraordinary fowl brought from the Africas. Flame-birds, they were called.

  The Master cleared his throat.

  “It is less what the Ducem will do, than what the Borja has already done.”

  At this there was some noise.

  The more influential and potent guilds will always get the news before the rest of the City, since they will have a man in every ducal senate.

  “Is his army already marching on Venus?”

  “Not in the way you mean.

  “What other way does an army march?”

  The Master, a dry man, said, “It seems we’re to have a wedding.”

  Simone turned and said in an aside to me, “He will get to it, in a minute.”

  But one of the masons was already shouting excitedly “Has Venus allied with him, then? With the Italian Spaniard—is he to marry one of the Ducem’s daughters?”

  “There are none left young enough, let alone single,” said the Master. “No, it seems Borja has something else in mind, which he has outlined to Ducem Nicolo in writing.”

  We were fifteen in number, full Masters of the guild, from the ranks of the Settera, the stonemasons, the architects of mausoleums, the Cremaria assistants, the carriers, the makers of graves, and others. We stood listening in silence. Death is generally an easy business, we have all found, compared with life.