A Bed of Earth

by Tanith Lee

  She said nothing.

  He said, “You will be glad enough to go, of course. As things stand now. Far from me, and from my house. Far from honor, and the City and the lagoons, and all these dead.”

  After all she said, “Is there such a place, far from all these things? They aren’t to be eluded.” And then, “Oh, one place. But not there. Perhaps never again.”

  Then they sat in silence, and at a distance, he and she, while the candles burned right away, and the night once more filled the room.

  Leone, her white dog, had avoided her since that night Silvio had come to her chamber and given her the question she must ask her father—the question now so irrevocably answered. At first she had thought the dog had been lost, and had sent searchers after him about the palazzo. She had looked, herself, too. But her mind had been on other things, and perhaps she did not search thoroughly enough. At length Beatrixa did find Leone herself. He was in the garden; hiding, she reasoned, under a hedge. When he saw her, he got up, shook himself apologetically, and ran away again.

  She had known why.

  And now she knew why he had come back.

  While she rode to the outskirts of the City, first in the boat, under the hoop of the central cabin-house, next in the box-litter with its red and blue curtains down, lastly in the jolting carriage on the rutted road, Leone sat in her lap, or lay beside her on the cushion. Sometimes he would sit up, raise his white ears, and look about. He would look at her, inquiring, waiting.

  “No, my little lion.” Beatrixa said to him, “he isn’t with me now. You’re safe enough, Leone. Silvio will never return.”

  It was a tiresome, tiring journey, just as she recalled, to Veronavera. Three days it took, and half a morning, and then two horses of the escort cast shoes, and she was told she should not go on alone, and they did not reach the castle of the Barbarons until nightfall.

  Torches had been lit along the approach, to welcome her. Indoors, all the candles, she believed, must have been got out of store.

  The first thing that attracted her attention, or which made itself known to her, was the vastness of the mountains. An enormity not only of size, gargantuan, intangible, immanent. And later, going out on to the stone walk that led from her new room, the summer air was charged with their presence as if with invisible fires.

  And Beatrixa thought, I remember this. It was never here I felt it. It was—elsewhere.

  For it seemed the uplands and the mountains recalled her to the sharp nostalgia for heaven.

  Leone ran back to her up the steps from the vine-walk below, because he heard her crying. Others who heard her kept their own council. Gossip had come ahead of her. She was disgraced, their lady, unmarriageable and outcast. No wonder she wept. But she was still one they could be proud of, dignified and kind. She was yet theirs. And her own.

  As the summer months went by, Beatrixa took on the management of the rocca-castle, assisted by Omberto, the Barbaron steward. Finding her apt and astute, Omberto quickly gave over the reins of authority. “She is like her father.” he said. “She knows what she wants. Most unusual in a woman.” “It seems she was woman enough somewhere else,” said Omberto’s son. “And too much of one.” At which the steward said, “If we are to believe that. For my part, I doubt it. Look at her. Do you think her so light she’d flutter down at some man’s whim? No, this is some other thing that sent her here.” “What, then?” “God knows,” said Omberto.

  Beatrixa did not seem to pine for her home in the City, nor for her kin. And no one came to visit her. Letters came, it was true, from her mother, and two or three of her cousins, and later from her father. But Andrea Barbaron’s first letter arrived in response to one of Beatrixa’s own, in which she had asked him if she might, herself, have seen to certain repairs to the walls, and to several outbuildings.

  Andrea’s letter then was amiable and encouraging, but not effusive. He gave her good advice on workmen and on the repairs themselves, spoke of books that he had purchased for her and would be sending, along with other things for her ease, and generally of house affairs. He did not press for her affection, or any sign of contrition in her, or of her forgiveness. Beatrixa, reading the letter, beheld again, as if far off in fog, someone she recognized. She saw Andrea, too, had self-respect, and had kept his respect, such as it was, for her. She was relieved to find they could communicate without danger. She had been very afraid of what his first letter might reveal.

  By late summer, all the running of the castle was smoothly in Beatrixa’s hand. Everything seemed to have benefitted from her residence, and those who had actively professed their loyalty to her, whatever she might have done, now congratulated themselves. The rocca was far more of a house, as in ancient times, when a lord and lady were often domiciled there. It was not only in full repair but seemed sleeker, within and without, had grown more elegant and far more comfortable. The gardens flourished, pruned and trimmed and planted with successfully blooming experiments. The library swelled, and became impressive, with books arriving now almost monthly, not from Venus alone, but from the outer bounds of Italy, from Egypt even, and infidel lands. The servants went about, pleased that their virtues were now noticed and commended, and that any dead wood, as with the garden, had been removed. That now they had someone to go to for redress—Omberto had seldom been ready to make judgment in their quarrels. This, Lady Beatrixa did, however, and fairly. “Wise as Sheba,” they said, “after she had lain with Solomon.” By which maybe they meant sexual looseness could improve some women, providing it was gone about the right way.

  They did not even look askance at Beatrixa when she went riding with just one groom, her hair mostly down, otherwise in the garb of a man, and astride the horse.

  Let others mind their manners. Beatrixa Barbaron became a law to herself.

  The hills were putting on their foxy autumn coloring. In the orchards and gardens the fruit burned on the boughs, and particular lanes ran with the purple of bled grapes. A time of plenty. Before winter began.

  Beatrixa, on a black horse, galloped across the ridges of the hills, glimpsing now and then Veronavera (vera, for Truth) miles off below. That was to one side. Elsewhere the mountains rested in disembodiment, veiled in a blue fall mist.

  It was about ten in the morning. In Venus, the Primo Pegno would be sounding, and dimly she heard it start up too from the churches and duomo of the town. Those bells, so slender and unmeaningful in the hollow air—

  “Lady—M’donna, wait, if you will!”

  Beatrixa reined in and the horse, vigorous and young, well trained and responsive to her, came swiftly to a standstill.

  “What is it?”

  The groom pointed off up the next hill.

  “Other riders, M’donna. About ten or twelve of them. I don’t know their colors. I saw them as I came over the last slope.”

  Beatrixa thought for a moment. Farms and vineyards lay near enough, the castle itself was only half an hour’s ride off. But there was woodland between now.

  Sometimes there were riders, of course. The noble families of Veronavera also enjoyed sport; they and others hunted the woods regularly for exercise, and meat. The hills were, they said, good pork country.

  “Well, I expect they have their own business.”

  “Yes, lady, but they looked ruffianly, some of them, to me. And slovenly-dressed, all but one or two.”

  “We will turn down towards the town,” said Beatrixa.

  But at that moment the other riders rushed sweeping up from the dip in the hills, ran over the crest, and flew like arrows straight towards them.

  If they were not smartly turned out, these men, and they did mostly look a rough lot, their horses were of the best.

  “Ride back to the rocca,” said Beatrixa to the groom. “I will stay.”

  “And leave you here—no, lady—”

  “Do as I say. Get some of our own men and come back.” He hesitated, and she said, “If you disobey me in this, you may cause the deaths of both
of us. Go.”

  And he turned and galloped off, his face undone with panic. Afraid himself, she had reckoned he would not be much help. If both of them were to flee, they would invite pursuit. She would remain and use her wits—or the knife at her belt. She did not say to herself, as she had not said to her groom, that, whatever this encounter was, she did not much care.

  She was, as once before, in error.

  She would have cared, had she known.

  But the ruffianly band was already near enough that she could see their faces now, and hear the jingle of spurs and bridles. Two of the men had crossbows. A crew, indeed.

  How curious though, that one, there, he had a familiar look. He was bearded, in the Spanish or Frankish fashion. And that one as well; she had seen him once, surely. Their leader, who rode, she noted, superlatively well, and with a sort of negligence only possible in perfection, now shouted in a clear, carrying peal. At once the charge halted. Then he, by himself, came trotting over.

  His horse was worth a fortune, Beatrixa judged. And he was a handsome man, handsome to an extent that human things seldom are. Then she took in how his hair matched the autumn shades on the hills, and how despite his unprincely clothes, she knew him. How could she not? She had seen him quite close less than a year before.

  “Good day, my lord Duke,” said Beatrixa, as he drew up to her.

  At this, he raised his brows.

  “Can I go nowhere incognito? I did my very best.”

  “Certainly, your grace. My man thought you all a pack of bandits and I sent him to fetch assistance.”

  He said, idly, “Some would say he was correct, in any case.”

  She smiled. Since that must be a jest.

  Chesare Borja looked at her long and stilly. And at his regard, which was unmistakable, Beatrixa felt the blood come up in her cheeks. But this was reflexive only. Though it perhaps pleased him.

  “You must pardon me, madam, both for alarming you, and for staring at you. But I’ve not frequently seen a lady of good birth riding in such a manner. Of course, there was the Amazon, Caterina Svortsa, but I must confess, to count her as a woman, let alone an aristocrat, was usually beyond me.”

  “I find this way convenient, your grace. It’s not generally immodest, as I seldom meet strangers, or if I do, I do not stop to address them.”

  “And I have improperly addressed you, I fear. And anyway I, too, and they, “he indicated the other men, who sat about now grinning or blank-faced, watching the interchange, “are in deep disguise. We’re off hunting. Pork country this, I believe. We took you and your boy for two of our own party from the garrison, hence our precipitate advent. But tell me, how do you know me?”

  “I was present, your grace, when you wed my City.”

  “Ah. Then that castle in the distance is yours. You’re one of the Barbaron House, I think.” He had known her colors. They said, he forgot very little, and that fragment not worth remembering.

  “Yes, your grace.”

  “May I know your name?”

  “Beatrixa,” she said.

  “The Lord Andrea’s daughter.”

  Again, he looked very closely at her. Here she was, the sole legal female child (if he knew that—probably he did) of a high house in Venus, sluttishly galivanting on the hills in breeches, with the protection only of one groom.

  She said, “My father has made me the rocca’s Castellana.”

  “I see.”

  Yes, he doubtless did. Something, at any rate.

  His horse sidled, and he gentled it charmingly. On his bare hand, clean and shapely, a ruby and a pearl. Otherwise he wore the garments of a servant, which fitted his spare and well-made body like the raiment of a king. He knew all that, too.

  She thought, What am I doing now? He is the most lethal and trustless man in Italy, in a quarter of the world.

  But she did not care. Cared about so few things. And besides, something—what?—not attraction, not anything like that—yet something, something—

  He spoke now in a lower, more velvety tone. It was meant to touch her, and it did, like fingers flickering over her spine.

  “I hope you’ll forgive me, madam, but I must ask—where on God’s earth did you come by such quantities of hair?”

  “It grew, “she said, “upon me.”

  At that he laughed. Oh, his laugh. It was like Silvio’s laughter, almost, almost. Beautiful laughter, given to enchant. False, in this one, cultivated. As it had been indigenous in the other.

  “Well, you are to be congratulated,” he said. “On your sorceress’s locks, your horsemanship and your courage. Let me make amends for any worry I’ve put you to. Will you allow me to call on you at your Castello?”

  One did not say no. Not to this one.

  She did not, however, want to say no.

  “We should be honored, your grace

  “Oh, call me Chesare. Grace is for courts and churches. Who is at home, aside from you?”

  “No one,” she said. Guilelessly.

  Guileless also, the arch-deceiver added, “Then perhaps, it won’t be too inconvenient for you. It will just be myself, you understand. No need for ceremony. Anything will do for supper.”

  God’s Heart, she thought, he wanted to be fed, too.

  He rode a short way with her, off from his men, conversational, flirting now and then, to remind her what he was after, to show her he would be gallant providing she gave in.

  She had heard some rumors here, how he came and went in Venus now, disguised, slipping in and out of the City and its satellite places, recognized sometimes, or not. He had his own wanderer, they said, for the canals. And his own favorite hostelry. She had heard also, that the Rivoalto bored him, and Nicolo the Ducem.

  He had almost died, last year in Rome, and his father, the pope, Alessandro, who—if he had perished, would have dragged Chesare down with him, dead or alive. After that, you might do things differently. Playing, playing …

  But he was yet no one to be trifled with.

  What will happen? she thought. Oh, obviously. If he finds himself in the same mind, he’ll want a nice unceremonial bed, and to rig me in it. I suppose it will be a bed he wants? (she had heard other rumors too of his vices, that he preferred rape, but also that he remained the priest he had been meant to be, and had no feeling at all for women.) What does it matter? I am already well-dighted.

  He could destroy my father, if I anger him.

  Then she must care about that, at least, it seemed.

  “You’re very meditative, Beatrixa.”

  “Yes, your—yes, Chesare. I’m thinking what would be both simple and enjoyable for supper.”

  She told the house a nobleman was to dine with her. To no one did she say who he was. He had not said she might.

  It had already been an interesting task, explaining to the rescue party she met, issuing from her castle, that the pack of bandits had turned out to be friendly, and well-born.

  Not all of her people would know him. Some would, of course. Or might he arrive in an even more complex disguise, to catch all of them, and herself, out? (As Silvio had that time, as an old man?)

  Why did she think so much of Silvio now? He had always been there in her brain, inside her, inextricable—she was accustomed to that. But now, she thought of him not as this intrinsic element within her. She thought of him as her lover, she thought of him as one who had lived but was dead …

  She dressed in her most lavish gown, had her hair perfumed and arranged, and donned the cap of silver spangles she had worn to Borja’s “marriage,” when he had not noticed her. She put on rings, and a necklace of silver and gold. Not for allure, but to show herself his subject, and to flatter, as a subject must.

  Even so, as the evening filled the countryside, and the mountains drew backward from the hills into the sky, she stood on her stone terrace, under the great towers of the rocca, and found she was excited. It was not fear. Nor arousal. She realized she, too, then, must like—to play.

 
; She had never known this of herself. It had never been, she thought, till now, in her character.

  Beatrixa did not know what had taken possession of her, only that she could do no differently than she did and would do, and would be insane to do differently. But—she did not mind it, it galvanized her. She had woken, if not to a morning, then to an evening of the world. Twilight then, she would live in that. Twilight, with some stars.

  Only three men accompanied him. Everyone was finely dressed, and frivolous, one of them armed not with a crossbow, but a Spanish vighela, which from time to time he strummed. Even so, Beatrixa recognized the third of the men as Borja’s most constant, and feared, bodyguard, said to be consummate in the skills of murder, and the garrote.

  He and she, though, dined alone in the small sala off the great Hall.

  Omberto waited on them, and had chosen the serving girls himself. Although Beatrixa had omitted the nobleman’s name, Omberto was not slow.

  The dinner was comprised of roast kid, fish brought up from the Adza that morning and stuffed with eggs and capers, minestrone, braised tripe, peaches in wine and a gelatina with curdled cream—while plates lay about of olives, almonds, cheeses, and fruit from the castle orchards, to supply the air of artlessness.

  He ate well, but not over-heartily. His manners were flawless. He complimented her on the dishes, and discussed with her the wine (which was naturally the best). He had also brought her two presents. The richness of these was less shocking than the evidence they gave of his knowledge of her. For he had brought a printed book, impossibly tiny, not the size of one of his own hands, made, he said, not in Venus, but Franchia. Its cover was gilded, and set with three polished smoky topazes. It was love-poetry, of course (Petrarch’s), but quite seemly. This alone was probably priceless, and seemed to indicate he knew her a connoisseur well able to read Latin. The other gift, was, if anything, more disconcerting. A small, soft leather collar with gold-work and a pink tourmaline.

  “It’s for your little dog,” he said, seeing her look of bewilderment.