A Bed of Earth

by Tanith Lee

  There was another in the shop—a servant, I thought. Now he turned to me and said, “Are you a gravedigger, sir?”

  “I am of the Grave Guild.”

  “You’re a Master, I believe.”

  “Yes.”

  “Well then, might I make bold and ask if you will come with me to my lady. Her house is only up by the Diana Gardens.”

  This was once a choice area, now rather less so.

  “Is your mistress near death?” I asked sternly. I was not in my guild wear, and wondered how he knew me, and if some trick was afoot.

  “No! No, no, sir. She is very well.”

  “Why am I needed then?”

  He lowered his voice. “It is to do with a certain situation. She has written to your Gravemakers’ Guild, it’s true, but then no one has yet answered her letter. I know you, sir, from the day of the Borja wedding.”

  “How?”

  “I saw you, sir. I saw you with the men of the della Scorpias, crossing the Primo Square.”

  Again I thought this might be some curious ploy. But why should it be? It sounded like the sort of business I had supposed to be Como’s own—some matter of tombs or other grave arrangements.

  He looked honest enough, this fellow. And he had been buying a tincture, the kind a woman might use for her eyes, perhaps inflamed by weeping at a funeral.

  “What is your lady’s name?”

  “Flavia Tressi,” he said.

  No loud trumpet sounded, or bell rang out. I own I thought it a noble-sounding name, that was all.

  Maybe all this was, too, once my medical errand was done, an excuse to put off going home.

  The Tressi house stood on the south side of the Gardens, rising up from a narrow, weedy canal. We entered the door, and presently I was shown up to her private room.

  This caught the sun, and so did she. She had been sitting at a desk in a much-carven chair, on a silk cushion—but the silk was faded, like the painted walls. Still, it was an attractive room, a woman’s, but not cluttered or full of small fussy items. I saw mostly books, and pens.

  And she? She was no longer quite young, about nine and twenty, I thought (in fact, she was somewhat older), and of a lithe, full figure. She had an olive complexion, a quantity of hair the shade of dark honey, and showed no signs of tears or unhappiness.

  The instant I saw her, I knew. I can say nothing else. Indeed, I do not properly see how to explain myself, or what occurred. This meeting with a stranger was like meeting again someone well-known to me. And yet, at the same second, an excitement came with it, almost a fear. Later she told me, it had been the same for her.

  Of that she gave no sign, and nor did I. Practiced dissemblers, both.

  “Well, madam. Your man told me you need some service of my guild.”

  She said that she did. Her voice was low, and pleasing. I sat down, and I remember to this hour the bowl of winter-stored apples on a table, and the scent of them that mingled with her own.

  She told me what she required. It will do no harm to speak of it, now. Her husband had been a cloth merchant who had worked at his commerce in the City. He had been a good deal older than she—she was married to him at thirteen—and, two years before, he had died. His body had been duly cremated and placed in an ash-grave on the Isle. “But, you see, that hadn’t been his true desire. And he asked me that, should the other ever become possible, I would arrange matters for him.”

  There had been some family dispute—she did not tell me what—which had barred his remains from the family vault at Veronavera. Now her husband’s sister had written to say that the one dissenting member, who was getting on in years, had at last bethought him of pious charity, and withdrawn his veto.

  “Therefore, Messer da Loura, I should like the grave here opened so I can remove his ashes, and inter them where he had always wished.”

  I replied that there would be some formalities, but that I anticipated no obstacle at all, and I would take it on myself to see to everything for her.

  She thanked me very much, and then a little maid came in with a jug of bitter walnut-milk for us—which is the only sort of milk I have ever liked to drink.

  Well, I stayed a while, and we talked of other ordinary things, like old friends, or new ones who do not want to separate, and then I drew myself together and took my leave of her. I told her, at her room’s door, that her act was very worthy, and heard myself say it and felt a fool; and then, to my horror, I blurted like a very boy that not all widows would be so honorable, after the death of a husband so much the elder.

  But Flavia Tressi thanked me, as if I had paid her a compliment. Then she said, “He was very generous to me, you know. He taught me a vast amount about his trade, and he also taught me how to read and write. I never loved him, ’ser da Loura, in a romantic way, but I was fond of him, and I respected him greatly.”

  “Of course, madam. I spoke out of turn.”

  She went on, as if I had not said this, as if I had every right to know all her affairs: “Besides, we must surely honor the promises made to the dead. Oh, not in case they might take umbrage or grieve—I think, neither. But how could he have rested when alive, if he’d thought I would not keep my promise to him after he was dead? And, too …” she hesitated, then said, “though he may not now remember, or care—something may. Some part of him …”

  I was left speechless by this philosophy, so sensible, so kindly, so strange.

  Then I parted from her.

  And outside, as I was rowed across to the lagoons, my blood seemed full of the sunlight and I thought, in shame and wonderment, I am in love.

  My wooing of Flavia Tressi was not in the common way, then. I would visit her as I arranged for the opening of her dead husband’s grave. If our hands touched, it was over guild papers or the deeds of burial.

  But we talked of other things as well, though none concerned the two of us together. (I regret to say, when I mentioned my wife Pia’s improving health, I was sorry to catch no reaction in Flavia beyond polite solicitousness.) Our talk, though, told us a deal about each other. Of our lives, and what we knew. Flavia’s intelligence and learning quickly impressed me very much. She attributed them to her husband’s teaching, though they were evidently, too, the result of her own good mind. But unlike many who are clever, she was not chilly. Nor was she dustily dry.

  I do not know if she was then beautiful. Which is, of all of it, perhaps the oddest thing. I recognize, as the next man will, beauty or its lack, in others. But she—I could not take my eyes from her—even when we parted, I could not, for she moved constantly across the floors of my mind—and yet, if she was lovely or not I cannot say. I might exclaim, I should have loved her if she had been cruelly deformed or raving mad. How can I know? She was as she was. Yet, too, I think if I had first set eyes on her and she had been dead, even then, I would have loved her, and hopelessly then, but still, always.

  It began to be that the evening would come on as we spoke. Pia was well again, but my house stayed full of her friends—they all thought me off on guild business, as I had been. As the light went, candles were lit, and Flavia would invite me to a small supper alone with her. And then one evening, the night also came on, and she took me up to her roof. And there she showed me the stars through a series of ground lenses, which she said her husband had commissioned from the Glassmakers’ Guild. What a sight, those stars, blazing and huge, and luminous shadows near them, which she said were the ghosts of other stars, or so she thought. But also I saw the faces of the planets—Mercurius, and Jupiter, and even Venus—and they are not as we see them with the naked eye. But I will not say any more of that, for some of you may think such gazing blasphemous. Although neither she nor I thought so.

  Flavia said the ancient races had watched the stars as we did that night. And there on her roof, among the pots of herbs and flowers, I said, “Why do you put apothecary’s drops into your eyes?”

  She turned and looked at me, and said quietly, “I read a great amount,
and sometimes they’re tired.”

  “I don’t believe you,” I said. “Your eyes are brighter than the stars.”

  And in that moment I could have thrown myself off the roof. For who was I, a man past thirty-three years, to say such words to her? And what words, too, so false-sounding and worthless (though I had meant them): your eyes are brighter than the stars—

  But she said, “They are so bright then, because I have been looking at you.”

  I took her to me. And to me she came.

  After a pause I said, “You recall that I’m married?”

  “Of course. At our age, we must be married, or bereaved.”

  Then she led me down into the house again, and into another room, where her bed was.

  DIONYSSA

  BORN LATE TO HER MOTHER, she had also been wedded late. She had stood at the altar at nineteen years of age. And then her husband had taken her away with him, to the Frankish lands, and left her there for safety when he joined Borja’s armies. Yves de Mars had been slain only last summer. A year ago to this day.

  It had not even been war, only some plot of Borja’s enemies at Fensa; some fighting, a scatter of casualties, but one of them—him. Then she had come back to her own, the della Scorpia’s, in the City of Venus. She had not wanted to go on living in Frankish lands, an Italian noblewoman, a widow who—there—must wear white to mourn, like the Frankish queens.

  So. Late to birth, late to her wedding. Early to widowhood.

  She was yet young enough to miss a husband, they said. But had she loved him? Like all such marriages, it was made for policy. Or had been, then.

  Dionyssa de Mars sat in her chamber in the Palazzo Scorpia near Aquila, playing Franchian songs on her viola-lute painted with marigolds. She also sang in Franchian. What had she had to employ her all that while, left among the bluish, dripping woods which ringed Yves de Mars’s fortress-house, but to learn her husband’s language, and a few suitable songs.

  Sweetest, keep the promise

  That long before you made me,

  Since never will my heart seek

  A new love or another lord.

  “Is she sad?” the della Scorpias asked each other now and then.

  The whole house groaned under its misfortunes—the bastard son drowned, the hideous devouring by rats of an upper servant—life was well-endowed with horror. Not to mention inconvenience. Who was to chaperone the younger daughters, now that Euniche was gone? Who would be the butt of the young men s jokes, now that Grasotti lay under the water?

  And if I am blessed with anguish

  I shall be consoled by gentle thoughts,

  And only wish to honor

  And enoble you the more.

  Sweetest, keep the promise—

  “Dissa must feel the cold now at night.”

  Dionyssa wore a black gown, unrelieved by color, and her pastel yellow hair was today partly caught back under a stiffened velvet hood, in the Frankish manner. The melody faded in the otherwise silent room.

  Dionyssa laid aside the viola.

  A moment later, her door opened without a knock. It was her mother.

  Donna Caterina glanced about the chamber, and took in Dionyssa apparently as part of its furnishing. She had never approved of this child, visited on her so late (she had been thirty-six). Caterina approved of little anyway, except God.

  “I have spoken to Como,” said Caterina. She pursed her lips. One sensed, she approved least of all of him. “It is not the first time. One has to remind him always.”

  Dionyssa, who had risen from courtesy, looked at her mother.

  “I mean,” said Caterina della Scorpia, “I’ve spoken to him, again, on the subject of your remarriage.”

  Dionyssa lowered her eyes.

  “Why did you do that, Mother?”

  “Why? Because you’re young enough to wed again, and to bear the children which your last husband was unable to give you, being so seldom,” her lips now seemed quite hard, a curious thing, for lips, “at home.”

  “I don’t wish it, Mother.”

  “No, perhaps not. But it is wished for you.”

  “By whom?”

  “Your house. What else? You are marriageable. If not in your first bloom, now as a widow you have those estates de Mars gifted you in Franchia.”

  “Very well, the house of Scorpia wants me to remarry to secure another alliance. Is this necessary, Mother? Surely—”

  “Never more needful than now. You’ve seen how we are treated. How the beasts of Barbaron have used us, and this Ducem, whose father showed much favor to us, does nothing. Yes, we must ally with strong friends, Dissa. They are no longer afraid of us, those Barbarons. They think us old and toothless. But they’re mistaken!” Her eyes sparked, and she stood straight as an iron spear topped with a black wig.

  Dionyssa regarded this, then again she looked away.

  She had been brought to the attention of Borja, at the Palazzo Bene, and this had initially seemed only correct, for Yves de Mars had been one of his captains. But later Dionyssa had seen that, by doing this, too, general attention was drawn to her: to her comparative youngness; her widowhood, her ownership of Frankish land; her connections, however tenuous, with a conqueror.

  Caterina had lost her brief fire. She sat down in a chair and plucked at the scrolling relief on its arm.

  “You are absurd, Dissa. What was that man to you? He was not an Italian—he was a foreigner Como gave you to, to further some foolish aim. And here you sit about moping. Yes, it may give you an allure, and is a cunning way to show how faithful you are. But no one else is here now. No one else sees.”

  “No.”

  “You must put yourself into a prepared state of mind. You must be ready.”

  “What did Lord Como say to you?”

  “That he was agreeable. You were too young to be alone And I say, I won’t have you a burden to our house. You’re no parasite. You shall be useful.”

  Dionyssa thought, angrily, secretly, Why did I never conceive a child? That would have made me more awkward to sell again. And I might have argued for my freedom, with a child to tend. But here is my only choice now. Another marriage, or some nunnery.

  She had nothing left of him. There was a little portrait, painted on wood—but it did not look like Yves at all. She had the lands—they were so far way, even when she had been among them. His family had not liked her. She could not stay there. They hated it that he had left her land, and tried always to take it from her, and gladly she would have let them, but she was also a della Scorpia, and well-schooled. She must keep everything, in the interests of her own kind, her house.

  No, he had not been an Italian. Yet he had spoken her language fluently, and elegantly. He had taught her a little Franchian—she was later able to obtain more.

  When she had been with him, it did not concern her that they each talked the other’s tongue with an accent, or in what country they were. Now that he was dead, she sometimes wondered where she was, for pieces of her seemed to have been taken away with him, but he had left her with nothing.

  Caterina was saying something else. Ah, it was about the viola, that the pattern (Frankish) was not well-painted on it. But now she was getting up. Praise the Christ, she was going away again.

  It had never been possible to debate with her mother. Dionyssa’s mighty self-control had been learned in childhood, holding down her urge to rage and battle that resulted only in punishment. She had learned to speak without emotion, and to deceive.

  “Think of what I’ve said to you.”

  “Yes, mother. I will certainly think of it.”

  Como was slow, as a rule, about such arrangements as betrothals. He left them to others, as in the case of another daughter of this house, the pitiful, mysterious, lost Meralda. Como would be tardy. Nothing would happen immediately. Yet, probably now, it would happen.

  She had been frightened, meeting Yves on that first occasion, when they had put her hand into his. She had believed herself pl
ain, and that he might be vicious. But his eyes had been dark and full of humor, and his hand had been warm, and he had said, “They never told me you were so charming.” And she had believed he thought so, and been glad to be thought charming by him, and suddenly her fear had melted from her, and she knew herself happy. But it was not only his kin who had been jealous. God had been jealous too. He had seen them shining in their garden and plucked Yves like a flower and thrown him away, and left her behind to wither like the grass.

  BEATRIXA

  THERE EVEN IN THE BACK of her child’s chair, the Barbaron motto had been carved. Carved small, it was true, and between two birds. But the birds sat on a tower-top, and the motto ran from their beaks and read, Vita gaudemus, in morte nil timemus.

  Beatrixa lowered her candle.

  She stared about.

  The big room was unfamiliar, as if she had seldom seen it or any of its furniture, although she had slept here since her twelfth birthday; she could remember having them bring the little chair, despite being unable, any longer, to sit on it.

  Disgusted, she thought, why inscribe such words on a baby’s chair? Joyful in life, fearless in death. How could one be either, unless one was a fool?

  Beatrixa walked to her mirror, which was of Venus glass, and looked into it, and saw herself standing there. She wore her shift and an overgown of velvet for the night, and her hair was loosely plaited with a velvet cord, to save her from its violence. When she was a child, too, the nurse had threatened her that, if she were bad, her own mass of hair would come loose and strangle her during sleep. “I wish I could cut off my hair!” Beatrixa had announced, terrifying the would-be terrifier, who then tried to hide from her for weeks any sort of implement which might be used in cutting, including the supper knife.

  That tyranny, the nurse’s, was long gone. At least now, Beatrixa might do as she wanted behind the closed door of her bedchamber. Why, she had even brought her lovers here, and been possessed by them too, her own strong, narrow hands providing their unreal but vividly imagined love-making and the delirium of physical release.