A Bed of Earth

by Tanith Lee

  In the City, tables were put out in many of the great squares for the populace generally, and loaded with roasts and cakes. There were also plaster fountains supplied at Borja’s expense, which would play wine. Some of these had been formed like cows, the liquid spurting from their udders, which caused glee. Years later, you would still hear people refer to this exotic day, not as a marriage, or the penetration of Venus by the warlord Borja, but as “the day we milked the cows for wine.”

  When the dinner ended, some hours later, the wedding party was rowed over into Fulvia, to the Primo, in the Ducem’s three barges. A train of other craft followed. In fact, only the nobles were obliged to attend Borja’s marriage, and of these only the men, and the Guild Masters and various Setteras. The rest of us might do as we pleased—which would be to attend, of course—but we must take our places in the crowd.

  Pia did not like this. She said her new dress would be dirtied by the rabble. But she would rather have jumped in a canal, I believe, than miss the spectacle.

  He was not to have his mystic wedding in the Primo, nor in any church. The ceremony, such as it was, would take place in the basilica square above the lagoon. Borja had himself determined all this, it seemed in order not to offend religious sensibility. But even so, the two cardinals were there, with the authority of a pope.

  The Primo Square was a solid wall of people, with just the area cleared, and held by guardsmen—Borja’s and the Ducem’s—before the doors of the basilica.

  We, Pia and I, found ourselves a spot on one of the platforms put up for the guilds, and so after all she did not have to rub sides with any slumdwellers.

  In the brilliant sunshine, the basilica seemed magnificent, picked out by its mosaic, gold, windows, and carvings, and with the huge pale dome above. The lagoon glittered, and a million jewels. The crimson and scarlet, ochre, gold, white, and plum-red of the devices and banners, the velvet cremisi of the carpet laid for the dignitaries, filled up one’s eye with splendor. Black gulls flew overhead, and white pigeons rose from the roofs, all catching the sun on their wings, every one with a flash like a sequin.

  The old story came to my mind, another flamboyant drama that had been enacted here, or so Rossa had insisted. It was the legend of the saint, Beatifica, whom Rome had never recognized. My uncle always dismissed Rossa’s version as a popular fantasy, but when young I had always liked it best. She had said that, once the invading Jurneians had got through into the lagoon, and their ships massed there a thousand vessels deep, the saint had come out of the basilica, riding into the square on a red horse, the Knights of God in their mail about her. (When I was older, Rossa had told me, too, that some said Beatifica had ridden naked, yet so luxuriant was her hair, it had clothed her modestly.) “And then,” Rossa had said, “she raised her hands to the sky, and begged fire from Heaven. And God sent His fire and the enemy ships were burned, everyone, to cinders.”

  Where, I thought, was Beatifica now, when Chesare Borja, conqueror of Italy, stood here, marrying himself to the City and State of Venus, while his troops prowled smiling in the garrison?

  Aut Caesar aut nihil. That is not a man who will stop at a little resistance.

  But anyway, the miraculous relic of the saint’s heart had disappeared some five or six years earlier.

  I saw, but did not hear very much of the marriage. The Primo Square is a sounding-stage, and things can be picked up far across it. But the crowd made a lot of noise, shouting for the Ducem, and for Borja, and for Venus, as if all this were the answer to our prayers.

  Though a spectacle, it was the oddest sight, too, of course. There were the groom, the functionaries, the witnesses, even the queenly maids of honor—and the cardinals—but no bride. The bride was all about.

  There seemed to be questions and responses, as is normal in a wedding. As the bride did not speak, however, her replies were assumed. All this the people of the City, and everyone, even Ducem Nicolo, who looked perfectly sanguine throughout, accepted with no qualm. He acted as the bride’s father indeed.

  Then the “couple” were blessed by the cardinals, and boys from the Primo paeaned out a beautiful Gloria as might be sung at such a high wedding, had it been one.

  When this had concluded, and also the cheering and cries of Borja! Borja!, the bridegroom spoke directly to the assembled crowd.

  For this, they grew quiet, and I heard his words.

  He thanked us, and said that Venus should have his protection and his particular love from this day on.

  “And to this end,” he said, in his fine, trained voice (he was to have been a priest, they said, in his youth), “I will now set upon the flesh of my wife, this ring.”

  Even from that distance I saw it blaze. It was, I have been told, a circlet about the size of a child’s bangle, but wider, heavy gold with a blood-red carbuncle large as a quail’s egg.

  Still, I wondered how he could put it on her hand. But Borja was a magician, and had thought of everything.

  Up the Tower of the Angel, which stands beside the Primo, up there they went, the Ducem and Borja and their immediate court. They were a while climbing the stairs.

  The Angel Tower looked all a structure of air and light that afternoon, the sun going over now behind it and the sky like gold leaf, and shining through all the galleries, and every pleat of stone or angle of brick limned too with gold. And then it grew flat and dark on the effulgence.

  On the topmost gallery the wedding-party presently appeared again.

  Borja was first. I heard someone say later, he had run up all the stairs like a boy, so fit he was, so eager and so sure.

  Emerging to stand upon the tower’s very top, against the flaming sky, he showed us again the ring. He was black now in silhouette, but once more the ring shot fire of its own.

  How small we must have seemed to him, if we had ever seemed anything else, a sea of tiny faceless creatures such as might be hauled in a net from the lagoon. But much of Venus he would see too, from such a height and the sun sinking, the courts and spires and walls of her, that ran, among the arteries of water, up on the land, and the other way to the lagoons and the sea, and those all clad in her ships, that have assayed the whole known world.

  Into that map of power, Borja cast his ring, away and away. The metal and the gem flashed fiercer than the sky now. And the people gasped at the magnificence of his wasteful, extravagant gesture. I have said, the Franchians call us vulgar.

  For months, years even, men searched for that Borja ring. It was worth a fortune. Now and then somebody claimed to have found it. No one who did so could prove as much, nor ever grew rich.

  The anecdote I liked best, and one worthy of Rossa, though I got the tale elsewhere, was that a magpie had caught it on the wing, and carried it to some nest in the heart of the City, where it still lies.

  But Borja had married Venus in the sight of men. He had given her his ring. She was his wife, and must obey him now.

  After this, the sunset began, and they rang the Venusium.

  There were to be other entertainments about the City until midnight, and still later. The Ducem had arranged these. We had heard of processions of demons and angels, jugglers and shows of peculiar beasts, and comedies played on stages in the squares. All that, and the tables were loaded up again with food, and the plaster fountains endlessly gushed wine. Pia was afraid it would grow rowdy, as it did. She wanted to go home. I could see she was in an odd mood, between an excitement at what had gone on and a sullenness that, for her, it was over. I felt rather sorry for her; she seemed such a child, and I intended to make her evening as comfortable as I might. Then, as we were getting off the platform, a man appeared before me, smartly clothed in the colors of the della Scorpias.

  “Sir, are you Messer da Loura, Master in the Grave Guild?”

  I said I was. As we do, on such occasions, I wore my guildsman’s finery, with the badge on my shoulder. He had hardly needed to inquire of my status.

  The man nodded, and asked me politely if I wo
uld come with him; the Lord Como della Scorpia wished a word with me.

  I raised my eyebrows. “Isn’t it the Master of the Guild he would rather see?”

  “No, ‘ser da Loura. You.”

  These things happen. Favors are wanted, where the Guild Master is not to be directly involved, to do with future burials, or long-shut tombs. Normally, they are seen to more discreetly.

  But argument, of course, was not in it. I sent wide-eyed Pia home with the family of Crespe, who would see she got safe to the house. Then I followed the della Scorpia steward over the square, one of the della Scorpia guards making our way for us.

  Some great palaces owned by the Primo, along the Blessed Maria Canal, had been given over today to the use of the noble houses, way stations, to save whole households going home before the feast that night on the Rivoalto.

  We crossed a courtyard and went up an outer stair to the second floor. The sala was full of people, servants and so on, and then we turned down a passage and came to a sitting room.

  I was let through the door, and next found myself alone in the small chamber with Como della Scorpia.

  He got up immediately, glaring at me, but some men behave curiously in such circumstances, when needing to ask help from an inferior. I bowed, lifted my head, and stood waiting.

  “You are Bartolome da Loura?”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  His glare sagged, like the rest of his face and body. His eyes were watery and bloodshot, and the last light from the broad, fretted window was not kind.

  “Well. Your name I found out simply enough. Now what I want to know, and so I’ve sent for you, is your father’s name. And your mother’s name.”

  I was jolted. After a brief hesitation, I told him.

  He shook his head.

  “No, you are wrong, I think. Somewhere or other.”

  I said, “My lord, my father was a butcher. It was my uncle who took care of me, however, and brought me up. I was apprenticed by him to my guild, which was also his, when I was seven.”

  Como looked impatient. His spoilt eyes fixed on me.

  “Your uncle and your father don’t count in this, ’ser Loura. Somewhere some other has been at work. Your mother was called as you say?”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  I had begun to see where we were going, but I could not think why.

  “You are not your father’s son, Messer. Not in a thousand years.

  At this, did he anticipate my anger? I almost grinned. I had often wished so myself. But not in the way this man meant, for he was telling me, it seemed, I was a bastard, the son of another man.

  “Does your mother still live?”

  “No, my lord.”

  “While living, did she tell you anything … interesting?”

  “No, my lord. She was not often—” I paused. “She was not often well.”

  He scowled now. He said, “I have heard only sensible things of you, Messer da Loura. So I will be plain with you. I saw you across the Ducem’s hall today. I had never seen you before. You bear a great resemblance to one of my uncles. Not only in your face, the color of your hair, but in some of your mannerisms. He, too, is dead now. An upright and abstemious man, as I hear you are thought, also. Shall I speak his name? It is, you understand, in confidence. But in your work, you’re used to keeping secrets, I believe.”

  “I will say nothing of it, if you wish to tell me, my lord.”

  So he told me the name.

  I must put it down here, now at last, for it has a bearing on my tale.

  The man that supposedly I so resembled was Justore della Scorpia, who, all those decades ago, had been the hard father of Meralda, she who drowned herself in the lagoon.

  “Justore had a mistress,” said Como then. “Being as he was, abstemious, as I told you, we took it that he had limited himself to her. But maybe not.”

  Then he fell silent.

  At length, I said, “My lord, I swear to you I’ve heard nothing of this ever. To my real knowledge my mother was, and now that she is elsewhere I shall speak frankly, a sotten drunk. She would have appealed to no man very much, and to an abstemious man less than to another. This was true at the time she conceived and bore me. Evidently my father, also a tosspot, was not particular. Besides, if he’d thought she strayed with any other, he would have killed her. He was jealous, usually half mad with drink, and generous with his fists.”

  It had seemed necessary to say this, as things stood, but I would rather I had not had to. I was a man young enough to be proud. To drag all that muck before him did not please me.

  This he seemed to see, despite his manner. He nodded to me and said. “Well. Master da Loura, I too can keep a still tongue. We have exchanged our secrets.”

  After which, again, a silence.

  It was getting dark now in the room and no one had brought candles. Outside there had begun to be some noise—shouts and other sounds—but one expected it on such a day. My mind was fully engaged with what he had said.

  We had, by then, one of those new mirrors in the house, of Venus glass. It was Pia’s, and if I had looked in it twice I doubt it. For my own self-examination, I used my uncle’s old looking glass, which was of polished silver. This gave back enough to see my doublet was properly laced and my face clean. What did I want with more? So, I had not ever really studied myself to know if I was like any other, let alone any man in a higher walk of life. Therefore what he said was probably a fact, that is, concerning the resemblance, or why else had he said it? He seemed to want nothing from me but discretion in this single matter he had broached.

  “I must tell you, sir,” he said now, “if you had made a claim on me, and on the house of Scorpia, at this point, I’d have thought you a more canny and less honorable man. But you have pushed me for nothing.”

  “Because I don’t think I am due anything from you, my lord. Nor do I go in want.”

  Como sighed. He said, “God keep you so. But if it should change, you may come and speak to me. I won’t forget what I say. I shall send it you, written down. You can read?

  “Most men in the Gravemakers’ Guild can read.”

  “Very well. Now I thank you for your time, Messer, on this unlikely day. What is that shouting out there all about, I wonder? Has someone murdered Borja?” He looked to see how I would take this. Seeing how I did take it, he smiled slightly, and so did I. “He is a handsome man, Borja, and accomplished. A great soldier. He is never revenged on anyone, only exacts justice. You’ll have heard his motto.”

  “I have.”

  “He quoted to the Ducem today, at dinner, ‘Severe circumstances and my kingdom’s newness, force me to act comparably, and to guard my frontiers far and wide.’ Perhaps you know the source of that in the Latin?”

  “Res dura, et regni novitis—I think it is from Virgil, my lord.”

  “Dido’s words, on essential cruelty. We are his friends now. Let’s hope he is never out of sorts with us.”

  Outside and below, the yells grew abruptly very loud, and now both of us made out the clash of swords.

  Then there came a hammering on the door.

  As I took my leave of him, he was dealing with urgent news.

  It was full dark by now, but torches and noise flared over the wall. Servants showed me out by a side way into an alley, to avoid the skirmish which had spread along the front of the building. It was with the Barbarons, of course.

  Despite the trouble, Como’s letter of pledge came for me two days after. I have it under my hand as I write this now.

  BEATRIXA

  “DO YOU WANT A QUARREL, ’SER?”

  “I? No.”

  “If you do, ’ser, like a quarrel—then I’m for you.”

  They were young men, beautifully got up, hair curled and in their best clothes, three in the yellow on chestnut of della Scorpia, and four others in Barbaron’s deep red and blue. Higher servants from both houses, no more. Yet they had steeped themselves in house honor, had been trained to it from in
fancy, and that meant, too, in its feuds. And now, meeting each other like this on the pavement above the Blessed Maria Canal, they had strutted, sneering, laughing behind their hands, until words had broken out. It was a fact, the three had come looking for trouble; the four had had no choice but to be where they were.

  Alongside lay the palace to which many of the Barbaron family had retired, until the feasting began on the Rivoalto. The building loaned to the della Scorpias was some distance along the canal. But even this had not prevented a collision, since the three della Scorpias seemed to desire one. They had been drinking—most of Venus had. They were full-blown with ceremony and pageant, mixed suspicions of Borja, water-monsters, and gorgeous sights. They were not themselves, or they might have weighed matters first.

  The Barbaron men, too.

  “How is the old Scorpion, your lord? A tippling old sot he is, yellow as his flag and your hair—” this from the most tipsy of the Barbaron pack.

  “Our lord does well enough,” came back, “not fat with sins like the Lord Andrea.

  “Sins? What sins? No one need sin; old Como sinned enough for all the City, once. Now that he can no longer lift his cock save in two hands, that doesn’t make him virtuous—only impotent!”

  “Lady, come inside,” said one of Beatrixa’s women, who was standing next to her on the broad step. They were low enough down the stair, they could see across the yard and straight out to the terrace where the young men had gathered in the dying sunlight. “Lady Triche—come away.”

  “Don’t be a fool,” said Beatrixa. “You go in and tell someone. Our guards should be there, by the gate, to stop this.”

  “They’re off drinking,” said the woman.

  “Never mind. Go fetch somebody.”

  The woman did as she was told at last, hurrying down the stair and away under the arches of the palace.

  Beatrixa, meanwhile, also gathered her skirts and descended the steps.

  She could see quite well the young men were spoiling for a fight. Sometimes it would happen, in the alleys of Venus, even once on the canals, where two Barbaron men had been drowned.