by Tanith Lee
Both the Apollo and Silvio had risen out of the depths of that water. She knew it well, looking at them.
The two children began screaming suddenly, and to fight. They tore away along one of the paths, a flummoxed servant erupting from his doze to pursue them.
“There we are,” said Silvio, lightly, “you and I, those babies. Our first quarrel at our first meeting. You are my enemy, you said to me. Get out, you said, or I’ll call my father’s men to hack you in bits.”
“I remember what I said. But you went away, certainly.”
“You’re cold to me this evening.
“Well, it will turn cooler presently.”
He laughed.
She stood there, listening to the music of it. How beautiful his voice. Everything about him. This demon.
“I thought,” he said, “you’d say to me, Silvio, why did you prevent my demanding of my father that awful question you had required me to ask him.”
“Did you think that?” She shook her head. “No. I won’t bandy words with you any more. Never.” And turning from him, she began to go away along another path.
Instantly he was beside her. Strolling as if for innocuous chat, at her side.
“You are angry with me, madam.”
She said nothing.
Silvio said, “Have you sought a priest, to exorcise you of my fiendish presence?”
“Well said. I will do it.”
“Do. It will make no difference to me.”
She stopped and turned again to him. They had entered the shadow of a topiary walk. Through tiny chinks in the dark hedges, the low sun glinted like watching eyes. It was in her eyes, too, so they gleamed with a quick, red shiver on their own blackness.
“Let me alone.”
“Beatrixa—”
“If you are some devilish thing, which I think you must be, then I won’t implore you for any mercy, since mercy must be like blasphemy to your kind. But this I will say. Hound me as you have done, and I’ll find a way to be rid of you—yes, I promise you that. I swear it by God and by His kind angels, and by the Blood of the Christ. If it comes to it, even, I will die rather than be played with any more, as those children played with their toys. Do you hear? Do you believe? Kill me or be done. And be advised, if I am dead, I will come after you—yes, even to your master’s stenchful bloody Hell-gate. The soul must have great power. And I will even damn mine, to come at you and tear you into pieces.”
Silvio stepped back.
If, through her concentrated fury, she saw anything, it was how his wonderful face grew still and white, its own center seeming to fall away from it; the eyes wide, shocked, and old suddenly, older than the eyes of any man she had ever seen.
“My God, Beatrixa, my God, my heart’s darling—what can I say to you to make this right?”
She had moved him unbearably, her rage and contempt, her controlled yet boiling passion, as human tears perhaps never could. He beheld all her pain and loss, her horror and wretchedness, and how she had fashioned them into a sword and cut him through. He had known he was hers, in any case, by now. And now he saw she perhaps was no longer his—
They stood frozen, changed to marble like the Apollo.
They stared into each other’s eyes.
“In God’s name, Beatrixa—if I were a man of your kind, I could take hold of you, I could kiss your lovely mouth and drink the poison you utter from it and die of it, if you wanted—but I can barely even touch you as I am, as you are—I’m like Christ in that one way, when He went about between two worlds, the countries of the spirit and the flesh—and said to them Noli me tangere—don’t touch me—because he did not want to fill them with terror or break their hearts—but Beatrixa, I am not a Christ—not even the magician I must seem—no devil either—my only sorcery perhaps—is deception. What in the name of God can I do?”
He heard how she breathed, as if she had half perished in water.
“You can leave me alone.”
“No, Beatrixa. No.”
“Yes. I’ve told you what I will have. You are seductive, and I was lulled by it. You’re some phantom of the Scorpion house, you make no bones of that. You have used me to persecute my own father. Oh, did you think you stopped me in time? Did you think I had not seen it—” she faltered. “I saw. In his face. As you told me I should. What he had done.”
“I tried to prevent that.”
“You tried too late. What do you care? Be glad, you damnable thing of Hell, to have unmasked him to me. What more lies do we need now? I am hurt. Good, you’ll like that. Why pretend it is not so?”
“I’ve said to you before I want no fear or unhappiness for you.”
“So you have said.”
“I could never have harmed you. I wanted to come at him.”
“Him? Andrea Barbaron—why? Oh yes, you indicate you are some ghostly friend of dead Meralda’s—”
“Her son.”
Again, the steel of her anger veered away.
“Is such a thing credible?”
“None of it,” he said, “or all. I was in her womb when she died, unborn. She brought me forth on an island in some place I’ve thought of as Heaven, but it surely is not. No one else is there. Only she is, and I. I ventured out, as the son of a high family does. To learn and look about. And to achieve justice. But with you, there was no justice to be had. No. I’ll spare your father, Beatrixa, for your sake.”
The sun leveled like an arrow through a slot in the topiary. Beatrixa blazed with its red and carnal light.
“Spare him? Don’t dare anything against him. I, too, have said. I will die and come after you.”
“That would be worth killing him, then,” Silvio murmured. “To have you with me.”
“To rip your loose soul into fragments.”
“Even for that. I’d let you, Beatrixa. If it were possible. Perhaps it is. But, my love, it’s better that you live. You are so beautiful, alive. I never saw anything like you, alive, in this world or the other one.”
She laughed once, hard, as if barking—or choking.
“Give it up. I told you, you needn’t lie any more.”
“I’ve never lied to you, as I have since seen.”
The energy ran out of her as the sun drained away into the hedge.
She sank down on her knees and covered her face with her hands, and he heard her praying in the shadow as the darkness came.
Silvio knelt beside her. He spoke softly into her ear. And though she did not cease her prayer, she spoke more quietly (perhaps not knowing what she did) to hear him.
“Let me come to you one more time. Only one. There’s something I want to bring you. Something of your world, not mine. Something that should be in your keeping, and no other’s.”
Still whispering the orison, Beatrixa became aware he had left her. It was as if the sun had gone down a second time.
Deep in the Laguna Silvia …
Foul rotted lights and mantles of obscurity.
Here and again, the leprous statues, pillars, ancient streets which the sea had devoured. Ships lying upside down. The skeletons of men. None of it concerned him. Or, only one thing.
There, below the rubble of civilizations and tragedies, lodged in the sticky mud: the Casket.
It was gold. He knew this, having once rubbed part of it clean.
He had read, Silvio, in the books, the libraries of Venus, all kinds of stories and legends. He had known about the box which held the Heart of the unrecognized saint, Beatifica, who once rode, they said, clothed only in her own hair, to the rescue of the City.
Why was it he had found the Casket, though? He could not recall. Could not even think, now, when it was that he had.
Stooping, he prized it free.
Disturbed, fish swam in the upswirl of murk and muck.
There at the bottom of the lagoon, among the sunken things, Silvio peered at the gold figures progressing around the Casket’s sides. Each one was praying, he saw, hands upheld and heads bowed. As sh
e had done, in the garden.
He hovered there in the water. He had never, in all his magical existence of joy and indulgences, known any pain. Now he did. The agony was like a sound heard deep in his mind, and like the sword that her words had thrust through him.
He had finally seen in her fury itself that she loved him, or why would she hate him in such a way? He had seen how she meant to destroy her love, and that she was stalwart enough to do it, and at what cost to herself. And by the glare of that, he saw clearly his own love for her.
Until today, love, too, had been a pastime and a joy, and easy. No more.
Now it was a love of the real world. It ate him up and had the taste—of death.
He had told her he would come back.
She could not want this.
Beatrixa became afraid to be alone. She was not often afraid, and it offended her.
But, pacing her chamber, every moment—she looked for him. It was the same as it had been when she was six, before she had sent him away. She had searched the palazzo—no, it was more like the time after she sent him from her. When she had resolutely never looked for him—and everywhere she had.
Twice they had come to this, then. The omen had been there from the start. You are my enemy.
Love your enemies, Beatrixa. Do good to those that hurt you.
She went to dine in the Little Sala. These dinners mainly involved only the higher women of Barbaron, and not even all of those. Andrea was seldom there, and tonight was no exception, which she was glad of. She had been avoiding her father, too.
There, she saw few of the males of the house. A scatter of the elder children, and younger cousins who giggled. An aunt, and two or three old ladies who all of Beatrixa’s life had never been young. Then, Beatrixa’s mother swept in, fanning herself with a flamingo-feather fan the Ducem had sent some years before.
“What a hot, oppressive night. We shall have a storm.”
Everyone had risen, made various obeisances. A chorus of agreement.
“Ah, Triche. Come and sit here, by me.”
To Beatrixa, her mother was a well-known stranger.
The young woman took her seat by the older, and their gowns rustled together, in a weird harmony, as if to say, see, you are both female—and besides, this one bore the other, so they must get on.
“You are browner than ever,” said Beatrixa’s mother.
She herself was old now, or thought of in that way, at forty-seven. Her pale complexion had withered like a dried petal, and her hair was streamered with white; she disdained hennas or wigs.
“Yes, madam.”
“Oh, why you won’t wear your sun-hat in the gardens …? But then you’re brown as a hazelnut, whatever we do. Like a native of the East, from Candisi, or the Africas.”
Beatrixa, when a child, would have retorted something and perhaps earned a beating. Now she said nothing.
Her mother said, “But you have the finest eyes. I have always said so. And your hair is a splendor, when dressed.”
Beatrixa glanced at her mother. The compliments upset her. She could hardly bear them. The battle with the other one had done this to her, stripped her of some essential upper skin.
Roasts of chicken had been brought in, with spiceries and rice, and round loaves of chopped meats. There were grapes and peaches, and a honeycomb.
Between the candlelight and the movement of servants, who stirred the hangings, there were flutterings all about, like half-glimpsed presences, ghosts—but none of them Silvio.
“Your father dines with the Strotsis tonight. There! When is he at home?” Beatrixa’s mother lowered her voice. “He has a woman, on the Canal of Ancient Saints. It’s best you know. We do not speak of it.”
“No, mother.
This, her mother’s life. Growing old in the house of Andrea, who kept one woman here, another there. Andrea who once, years ago—surely when little older than Beatrixa now—had delivered Meralda della Scorpia to torture and to murder. What had he felt? Indifference? Pleasure?
“What is it?”
“Nothing, Mother.” Am I so transparent tonight? She can see through me?
“You’re fidgety. It’s the storm that is coming.”
“Yes, madam. The storm.”
Yes, the storm –
When she re-entered the bedchamber, it was in darkness. She carried her candle quickly to the others. The light soaked up. She thought, Am I now always to be afraid of the dark? Afraid of what the dark might hide in it—or that it was empty?
Then the light showed her something gleaming gold, there on the inlaid table by the window.
It was not hers. She had never before seen it.
Beatrixa recalled how he had said to her, ten years ago, that his own servants were invisible. Perhaps for a long while, visiting the City, he had not identified servants, even slaves, because he did not realize domestic and other tasks were performed by people, here.
Now Beatrixa, too, had an invisible slave.
For no one else could, or would have, come into this room tonight, without her orders, in her absence.
She walked slowly towards the Casket.
She knew what it must be.
They burned her … her heart would not burn … it was saved in a golden box … probably stolen … under Silvia, in the mud … I know where the Box of the Heart is.
In the candleglow it shone, cleaned of the dirt and debris of the lagoon. A small, attractive reliquary, with tiny saints praying all around it, who in the flicker of the light seemed to take little steps—
He had said he would come back, one time only. To bring her something. He had done so. He had left this for her.
Once, it had worked miracles, this box, or what lay inside it.
Beatrixa touched the golden lid with the tip of her finger. She withdrew her hand.
Then a leaden curiosity filled her, and she put both hands on the box and tried to raise its lid, thinking it would not open.
But it did.
Within the Casket, on a bed of damask that had faded and stained, lay the Relic itself.
Beatrixa stared down.
The Heart was black and shriveled and wizened. It had shrunk, and curled together as if for sleep, then changed to a black stone.
Even so Beatrixa, who had read widely, and had access to a great many books and treatises that young women did not often see, had studied among the works of such as Leonido Vinchi, and Plendar, called the Surgeon. She knew, from the descriptions, and the diagrams, too, that this was not a human heart. Had it ever been, in the box? It was the heart, or so she thought, of a dog of medium size.
She laughed.
She flung back her head, and felt the heavy, leafy shower of her own hair striking her, slapping the backs of her knees even through the silk of her gown.
So this was what had worked the miracles, and been stolen as a mighty treasure—and been perhaps discovered and so thrown away. Had he known, Silvio?
A dog’s heart, not a saint’s. Was nothing ever as it seemed? Nothing, in the world of men or in the worlds beyond life?
Beatrixa laughed. Then she wept.
Then, she was still.
What did anything matter, if the heart of a dog had worked miracles? What extremity was there in a father who was as base and terrible as other men, or a lover who was dead?
The storm that her mother had predicted broke on the house.
Lightning, and then, nearly at once, a blow of thunder that shook the palazzo to its roots.
All through the masonry, Beatrixa heard and felt the scurrying and short cries, the fright of mankind under the ever-aiming onslaught of all things—weather, time, Fate—
“Am I done with you then?” she asked the chamber. “You won’t come any more to play your games and twist my inferior mortal existence? No? Can I be sure?”
She put her hand again on the box, on the rim of the box. And then, she touched the mummified little Heart.
How dry and hard it felt. How could it ev
er have beaten?
“Why didn’t you burn?” she whispered to the Heart. “Oh, but of course, you weren’t in any fire. This was done after. But then, still—how could you work your miracles—for I think you did. There are so many I’ve read of, the healings through Beatifica. Belief in her, that made the miracles happen, belief in her—and in you. Faith. As we are told it will.” She prayed to the Heart, which was still the Heart, her hand upon it, so it seemed to grow warm, and in it there seemed to wake the pulse which came from her own fingers’ ends. “Give me back myself.” Beatrixa raised her head. Her face was calm and her eyes shut fast. “You have. Now I know what I want. Then give him back to me. Bring him back—for I belong only to him and he to me. Nothing else. I don’t know why it can be, or how. Bring Silvio back, my beloved.”
So she stood praying.
She must have known he might be, anyway, in the room. Listening to her, seeing what she would do.
If he heard her, that, too, was as she wished.
She had always been brave.
But when she opened her eyes, the room was only filled with candlelight and the rushes of the storm.
She saw then her life, as it was. Its unimportant worthlessness. She saw how it would be. Her status (a Barbaron), some dynastic marriage, children born, at length her death.
Beatrixa looked firmly at all this, this dust.
She had always been brave.
He was gone from her for ever, as she had demanded. He was somewhere in his other world, not hearing her. Maybe he had only played with her love, too, her willingness a valued accessory, but only that, no more. And now he lost all interest in her.
Perhaps he would, after all, destroy her.
“Only be patient, Silvio,” she said. “I am already dead. Though I walk about the world for another fifty years.”
Against the lightning blast in the window, Silvio was standing.
Thinking she had only visualized this, she closed her eyes, opened her eyes, looked again. Now he knelt at her feet, and his head was bowed. He said, “Then, you are willing to love me.”
“Yes,” she said. “Who else have you left me to love?”
“I am ashamed.”
“I too.”
She kneeled down also, as she had when she had prayed in the garden.