A Bed of Earth

by Tanith Lee

  “Oh, I beg you—don’t shed tears for me. Who are you, that you have such a gentle heart?”

  But Silvio drew back. He said, “Forgive me and excuse me, madam. I must intrude on you no longer.”

  And he turned for the door, to walk out of the room like a proper human man, and not add fear to her wretchedness.

  But she called softly after him, “But tell me your name, sir, if you will.”

  “I have no name,” he said, going out, “I am no one.”

  PART FIVE

  The World

  HAMLET: Whose grave’s this, sirrah?

  GRAVEDIGGER: Mine, sir …

  HAMLET: I think it be thine indeed, for thou liest in it.

  WILLLIAM SHAKESPEARE

  Hamlet

  DIONYSSA

  THE STUDY ON THE SECOND FLOOR had a window that faced that courtyard like a well.

  Although the day was not sunny, it was hot; the window had been opened. The acacia, which had been slightly damaged, perhaps by the previous winter’s blasts, had yet put on all its intricate foliage, and two pigeons were sitting there.

  Como stood by his window, watching them. Marveling, as sometimes he did now, at animals, or the very young—at the careless, smug emptiness of their lives.

  How quickly that could change, however, even for the young. How quickly and how horribly. Como was thinking now of his nephew, Dario, who lay screaming and part-mad in the priestly care to which he had been removed. It was the disease they called Franchian—the Siphilusic ailment, named from a poem, and passed during the sexual act, which destroyed first skin and muscle, then bone and brain, in unstoppable progression. How unlucky Dario had been. Como recalled ruefully his own excessive youthful dalliances—and here he stood, aging and uncomely—yet whole, alive. But, no more of that.

  He looked back into the chamber then, and saw the woman had seated herself as she had been invited to, in the velvet chair. He thought, oddly, She has more presence than I recalled.

  “So, Dionyssa, I imagine you’re here on the same errand as your mother. Am I to infer you have already noted someone?”

  She appeared composed and, if she was pale, that seemed natural to her; she had always been so. Besides, something had brought up a slight color in her cheeks.

  “My lord,” she said, “do you mean you think I wish, as my mother wishes it for me, to wed again?”

  “Well. Would it be a crime?”

  “No, my lord.”

  “Of course, in the eyes of the world, more time should elapse. Your first husband is dead … how long?” “A year and approaching two months, my lord.” “You are exact.”

  “No, my lord,” she said. “Did you wish me to be? I can tell you the precise amount in days, if you’d prefer.”

  Como reflected.

  “Then it’s taxing for you, Dionyssa, to be a widow this long a while. You yearn to be a wife instead.”

  She flinched. He saw it.

  “Come,” he said, “we agree, there’s nothing sinful in that. You’re young. And you must want children, too.”

  Then he saw her frown. It was a deep-cut and intent frown. She did not bend it on him, but on the row of books behind his table. Her finely made mouth tightened, not sulky but fastidious. Intrigued, he thought, Willful too, in her way.

  “My lord, for a woman who wished for it, it would be the most natural thing on earth. I wish for anything but.”

  “I see.”

  “I say anything, my lord. I mean it. If my choice is marriage or to be sent away to some poverty-house of beggar nuns—which I think is quite usual in the case of a difficult woman such as myself—then I’ll go. I’ll go gladly. I will go,” she said, and her eyes came up and fixed on his, defiant yet removed, “singing.”

  Como shook his head. He seated himself, too, and eased his stiff leg, which had become damnably stiffer with time, even on a summer’s morning.

  “Dissa—my dear girl—I won’t force you to that. Nor to marry if you won’t have it.” Her face flooded with color. She seemed to take a breath that she had been without some while. “Oh, your donna-mother would like it, I know. To have everyone at their correct station, like a troop of soldiers. The men tailored and swaggering about at the Ducem’s court, the women clutched in influential nuptuals, each pouring forth babies like a bee-queen.” (He saw her eyebrows go up, and was not sorry. Como still liked women, he always would, and liked to tease and to amaze them even now. Even his relatives, and with a bad leg under the table, and his face giving way—God have pity!—like a wet dough—but God had had pity: whole, alive.) “No, no, my girl. If you don’t want to wed, we will keep you here instead, to brighten our lives.

  Then she lowered her eyes and sighed, and he saw her hands were shaking.

  “I would have come to see you sooner, my lord. If I’d known. I’ve been so unhappy, thinking I would be made to marry.

  “You went obediently to it the first time.”

  “Yes. I was afraid, but I was obedient.”

  “Was he cruel to you?”

  She said, “No—he was—”

  “He made you love him. Even though you had been afraid, and he was a Franchian.”

  “To love him very much.”

  “You should have come to me sooner. You should, Dissa.”

  “Yes. I would not have come today, but …” she paused, then said, “But my lord, I don’t think, even with your approval, I can stay in the palazzo, if—if I refuse eventually to wed.”

  “The Lady Caterina will nag at you.”

  “My mother, yes.”

  “Dear God. I’ll speak to her—”

  “No—no. Let’s have peace. She will only say one thing to you, and another to me.”

  “She, then, is not obedient.”

  Dionyssa smiled faintly. “Only to God and Jesu Christ.”

  “Well, it is a beginning, I suppose.”

  She stared at him, then broke out into a laugh. It was a pretty ripple of sound. She sang well, too. As her husband had done; even the Borja had remarked that.

  Como said, “Where do you wish to go then, Dissa? Back to your lands in Franchia?”

  “No. I would loath my life there, without Yves.”

  “What are we to do then?”

  He saw she had something under her hands, something she had been crumpling up, and now smoothed. It was the old penon-flag that her husband’s men had carried into war. She had been given it, along with the greater banner, on his death, and now brought it with her as a child brings its toy: one ally.

  She said, though, firmly enough, “There is, if I may choose, the religious house at Santa Maria Sta’ Bianca. I might live there, if you allow it. A secular life. I don’t want to take the veil. But I should be more content in a … in a quieter home. There are gardens there, and private land. I could go about as I wanted and be a hermitess when I wished. I could have my music and other things I like.”

  “And in all comfort,” he said.

  “I think I can obtain funds from my Frankish lands—it may take a short while, his cousins never wanted me to get the revenues—”

  “That must be dealt with at once,” said Como. “Confound them, what are they, jackals? I’ll see to it your husband’s legacy comes to you, Dissa. And meanwhile, you shall have all you need from the della Scorpia coffers. We’ll gift Maria Sta’ Bianca generously too, it does no harm. Then you can go there as you wish. But now and then, you must come here to visit me.”

  She rose to her feet and, going across to him, took his hand and kissed it. “Signore-donno patrone.”

  “There, there. Now you’re crying again.

  “I’m happy.”

  “No, not yet. But it will come. Time runs away, and the knives in our sides hurt less. We have rheumatics instead, some of us.”

  But he thought presently, what a pleasure it had been to assist her. In this at least, he had been able to make some difference.

  As she went back along the corridor, her husband’s wa
r-blazon in her hand, Dionyssa de Mars was already planning what should be packed up for her, and whom she would have to help her in that—her escape.

  Indeed, she did yearn to be gone, though she had not insulted Como by saying it. To leave this dreary house with its dusts and sickness, its slow decay, enlivened only by feuds and jealousy, and a sense of unquiet specters.

  The sisterhood of Sta’ Bianca was not itself unduly rigorous, and though she would not now have to join it Dionyssa was glad to be going there. She did not like the idea that hardship was the only road to God. Why would she? She had suffered, and thought the condition without value.

  Now, however, everything was simplified, lightened. And all that, how strangely, because of her words with the young man in the sala this morning, which had given her courage at last to seek out Lord Como herself.

  Why had this happened? Who had he been, the well-dressed della Scorpia noble, who had then left, gray-faced and his eyes full of tears; so young and made for pleasure he had seemed, and yet, and yet—

  He had not tempted her, not even once (erotically, strategically) to look at her life as an available woman. It was not that. Maybe only like had called to like. And seeing his pain that her own, evidently, had stirred, she was made angry. So she took her stand. It was a fact, which she would never know, that not only had the de Mars blazon gone with her into Como’s study, but a ghost. Even while her meeting with him gave her new strength, Silvio della Scorpia, unseen by either other occupant of the room, had stood behind her chair. Silent … as the grave.

  BEATRIXA

  “YES, WHAT DO YOU WANT?”

  How impatient he could be. How intolerant. What else?” And his voice would most probably change, when he heard her speak.

  “My lord.”

  “Beatrixa—Triche—”

  His voice had changed. Friendly now, and welcoming. He had gotten up, the papers and the cup of wine left on the table. In the candlelight, his reddened, sweating face, the malt-brown hair fell around it but left the dome of his head unoccupied. She had always thought his forehead broad and intelligent above the porker’s face—and it was. Andrea was a clever and a knowledgeable man. And he smiled on her, showing that he loved her best, even if he did not properly admit it. And all that made it so much more terrible—what he, who could think and who could love, had once done, from some abstraction of petty revenge—worse, from mere petty expediency.

  “Do I disturb you, sir?”

  “No, Triche. I’ve been studying the reports of our traders in the East, and I’ve had more than enough. God send us soon some other continent to feed on. I’m glad to be diverted.”

  This will be more than diversion, Father.

  Here she waited, the sword drawn in her hands.

  “My lord,” she said, “I have to tell you something of a very serious nature.”

  He will go mad. He will strike you. You’re brave, what do you care—that’s nothing to you—

  It is perfectly true. I don’t care. It is nothing. Not now. Not any more.

  “What is it you’ve brought me? Is it for me?” Jovial again. Like Jove himself, god of thunders and lusts, another smasher of lives.

  Oh, it is the sword, Father, that’s what I’ve brought—

  Beatrixa set the Casket down on his table, and drew away the cover she had put over it.

  “Gold?”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  “You’re not often so formal, when we’re alone, Triche. And yet, what an expensive present.”

  “There’s a heart in it.”

  “Eh?”

  “It’s the relic of a saint. An unrecognized saint. Beatifica, Saint Fire.”

  “Bea-tifica. Wait. The witch who brought God’s wrath down on the Jurneian infidel. Ah, yes. The Council of the Lamb waxed scared and had her burned. But this relic was stolen from La’Lacrima, was it not? How did you get it? Have you looked at it?”

  “The lid won’t open,” she said. This was now also true.

  Andrea tried. He was powerful, his hands could bend iron, as they said Chesare Borja could. But the lid stayed shut, as if fused to the metal of the box.

  “Are you sure it’s the reliquary?”

  “Yes. It works miracles. It still does that.”

  “You haven’t told me how you have it?”

  “My lover.” she said, “gave it me, before we parted. He fished it up from the Laguna Silvia, where it had been thrown.”

  “Your lover, eh. Who’s that? Who’s been making eyes at you? Better say, I know you’re a sensible woman, but—”

  “No, I’ve not been sensible, my lord.”

  Andrea stopped. His face became static. He was puzzled, like a bull, she thought, that suddenly sees the door of the pen is open, and yet something stands there, sword in hand.

  “What do you mean, Triche?”

  “I mean I have made a secret marriage, sir. And he and I have consumated it. We have lain together, I and my lover, and danced the dance which is performed on the belly or the back—”

  “Don’t speak in that way—”

  “You’d have me not speak, but I tell you I have done more than speak. I have been, if you will then, well wed.”

  “You say to me—”

  “I’m no longer a virgin, or even in the single state. In the market of marriages, I’ll be useless to you from this day on.”

  He grunted. He turned, swung about the room, came back a short distance and halted.

  His big fists were clenched. His face was swollen, bloodied from within. Yet not angry.

  “You fool, if it’s a fact—”

  “I have said. Send a doctor to me. He’ll soon tell you.”

  “Triche—Beatrixa—why, in the name—”

  “Why? Why do you think?”

  He opened his eyes. He said. “I don’t know why. Tell me why.”

  “Because I have renounced my Barbaron honor, and yours, since our honor, Father, was despoiled long, long ago. Oh, come, sir. Have you never before heard a story of a young woman who lay down with her lover in spite of her House? I think you have. She ran away with him, it seems, but someone learned of it, and took them up in his grasp, and delivered them to the justice of the young lady’s spurned betrothed, whose name was Ciara. He was a monster of the pit.”

  Andrea said, “Yes, I know the tale. He killed them both and flung the bodies in the lagoon—”

  “You should know the tale, but you don’t, it seems. I will tell you, Andrea Barbaron, I will tell you—”

  She seemed to float in the air before him, shining with her hideous victory, her feet off the floor, come from some other world too dark, too full of light.

  “Beatrixa—”

  “My lover, you see, has told me what happened to Meralda della Scorpia. I can’t remember when he told me. But what he knew, I do, too. And now so shall you. Ciara slew Lorenzo by cutting from him his male member, which was then cooked and given, in disguise as a dinner dish, to Meralda to eat. Then Ciara informed her of what he had done, and showed her Lorenzo’s body, to prove the case. After this he sent her back to the della Scorpias, but on the lagoon, she threw herself in and drowned.”

  “Christ’s love.”

  “What has love to do with that? I will say what is to do with it. Wickedness. Evil. You. That is what is to do with it.”

  Andrea clapped his hand across his mouth. He retched once, violently, turned from her and spat into the empty hearth. Then he walked to the table, refilled his cup and drained it. His back to her, he said, “I have never known.”

  “Now you do. If you believe me.”

  “I believe you. On both counts.”

  “Then, my lord, why don’t you chastize me. You saw fit to give Meralda over to Hell-on-earth for her single transgression, which had nothing to do with your house. You think women who fall must be treated so. I am your daughter. You own me. What will you do to me?”

  “Beatrixa—”

  “Perhaps only run me through with a da
gger. My lover is gone and I was never yet betrothed. This will limit your retribution.”

  “Be quiet,” he said. His voice was quieter than the word. But it stayed her at last. “You have said enough.”

  She had.

  She sank down in a chair and closed her eyes.

  Silvio—she thought, my love—my love—

  But there was no love in the world, not now.

  This was the fee for Heaven. Death while alive. Loss until the Final Day. Beyond? She knew, oh she knew.

  In the end, she became aware of him, the man who had been her father, moving about. Heavy, rustling movements of mantle and booted feet. The bull-pig, scuffing at the straw.

  When she raised her lids, she was dully astonished to see the candles had almost burned down—they had mostly been fresh when she came in. Time here too, it seemed, did not always follow its own pattern.

  Andrea had now sat down in a chair, some way across from her. He looked into the wall as he said, “I regret very much that you’ve come to hate me, Beatrixa.”

  “I, also,” she murmured.

  “What I did—was then.”

  “No,” she said. But now she had no strength. She could never forgive, but to continue to insist aloud was not possible.

  “Then,” he said, “I accept I may not excuse myself to you. Although even to God I might.”

  “If you believe in God.”

  “I wonder if I do. Perhaps. I did, when young. In all of it. But then, God would condemn me too. More thoroughly than Ciara, even. I held the key, and put it there in the lock under his hand.”

  She could not talk to him any more.

  He seemed to see this, and he said, “Know, at least, I learn now I was always stupid, in what I thought to be my task, my honor—my duty. For that, none of it—I can’t apply that to you. I couldn’t harm you, Beatrixa. If you had been Meralda, or she you, she would have been safe with me. And if any man had done for her what I did, then I would dismantle him with my bare hands. That told, I must send you away.”