A Bed of Earth

by Tanith Lee

Up and up. Until in the end, the mound broke out of the surface of the lagoon. Even then, Silvio made it a little higher, and a little more wide.

  When he was done, the winter moon was all that was there to watch him, and one black streamer of gulls blown by their wings across the sky.

  This now, his mother’s island.

  He named the grave, standing on its summit under the moon. “Meralda, Filia della Scorpia.”

  In the air, supernaturally, the name remained. But like so much, grew altered.

  For it was the island the City came to call Filia Caesini—Chesare’s Daughter.

  And at its core, that pair of secret things, sleeping on for ever.

  That night, too, Silvio returned to the Palazzo della Scorpia.

  To start with, he only strolled about. He picked at the flaking murals and rattled the rings of curtains. Then he went to the sala and looked into the chest, the one where the battle banners had lain. The penon-flag he had been shown was no longer inside. And he remembered that the woman, too, had meant to go away.

  Beatrixa, had he known—surely he might have done—was at Veronavera. Between himself and her, however, was an angel with a flaming sword.

  Silvio turned his mind, his senses, through the winding corridors of night and time, and saw instead Dionyssa de Mars lying in her bed at Sta’ Bianca, on her yellow hair.

  Now there began a new thing.

  It had nothing to do with love or revenge, and very little to do with death or Heaven. It was born of the world, and the world’s vast desire for survival, justice, and happiness.

  Like all those dread ghost-beings of ancient stories, precisely so Silvio must have traveled across the dark, and manifested, unseen, there in Dionyssa’s room in the house of nuns.

  And also like one of those dire spirits, just in that way, he must have leaned over Dionyssa, gazing as if feeding on her. But the food he absorbed was her sorrow and her yearning. And everything she knew of one man.

  This was to be a schooling of many nights. Of some years, in fact, actual years, spent on the earth.

  Accompanying her as she worked by day, sitting beside her as she read and sang. Lying by her as she slept and dreamed. Listening, and learning it all. All of her, and all of her love.

  Even that other language of the Franks was to be learned in such a mode, by one such as Silvio, who might learn anything, anything but one thing—which none, it seemed, could learn, who had not first come from it, the light beyond the light.

  Learning, Silvio gave up himself. He became another self. A form and a personality that was not Silvio della Scorpia. But that was Yves de Mars.

  He did it for Dionyssa. Not because he was infatuated with her, but because he was alone, and so was she. And because, in marriages such as this too, sometimes love will come.

  That he would be lying to her, he did not even see. He could make her happy, prove to her that death was nothing, provide justice in a world of wreck and dislocation.

  Not every deceit is to be condemned. Not every truth is good.

  And anyway, he had not usurped the soul of Yves—that was gone. Only Yves’ personality, which Dionyssa’s mind had kept so well.

  The dog was afraid of him, though. Animals, when they saw him—which often they did—always were.

  As Silvio became more unlike himself, more like his reborn self—Yves—the dog called Beaumal (Fair Badness) grew less certain that it distrusted and feared him.

  It still ran off, nevertheless.

  Somehow, he was concerned at this. Probably because it disturbed Dionyssa, and his whole aim—Yves’ once, now his, therefore Yves’ once more—was to protect and cherish this woman.

  That eventual night, when he made love to Dionyssa, he lulled her after to sleep with caresses, and left her in peace.

  He had determined everything must be gradual, now. As for the love-making, it was as fundamental, as marvelous, for him, as anything he had experienced with Beatrixa. While for Dionyssa too, he had unmistakably seen the anticipated quiet violence of her pleasure. That he could touch her physically, and she, him, he did not trouble with. (That was still his knack, not to waste thought on such slight problems.) But of course, he had learned touch also, and (with Beatrixa) the ability to transcend his own unmatter, to meet, where he would, flesh with—flesh. As if he were as real as his partner. One more needful, benificent lie.

  It would take more time. Many years, even, perhaps, to win Dionyssa to himself-as-Yves, and so make her truly “glad.”

  Tomorrow, and for several tomorrows, she would think it still a dream. Then she would think her reason, maybe, was at fault, and he would need strategies, which he was already preparing, to ensure her belief in his—in Yves’—presence, and that her brain was sound. Then they would learn to communicate, clandestinely, even in daylight when others were there. In the end, they would be content. They would be happy.

  He did not, as Yves might have, think either of the future hour when her death would rob him again. Or of what would become of him then—for her, he knew she would be safe, since death was an insurmountable wall only to Silvio’s kind.

  He did not once, not once, wish ill to God or anyone, because he might never get free of this world, or the second magician’s world of divine illusions. For sure, he never thought that, by what he did and would do, he too had begun for himself a process of chameleonism, body to body, persona to persona, which was the lot of souls. Or that he, not a soul, but only the memory of one who might have lived, behaved now as a soul did.

  It did not occur to him to ask of what material a soul was composed, which made it so entirely not like himself. Or if the difference were truly unnegotiable for all eternity. …

  In the gardens of Santa Maria Sta’ Bianca, Yves de Mars (who had been Silvio della Scorpia) met, as if by another eccentric appointment, Beaumal. Who was indeed part wolf, and would soon enough show it by his grown size, if nothing else.

  Yves spoke to Beaumal in Franchian, giving the dog’s name its proper accent.

  Beaumal lifted his nose and stared with his innocent, feral, human eyes.

  Then, for a short time, he allowed Yves to walk beside him, before suddenly running off again into the fascinating wood that smelled of pigs.

  There would be a night, not so far away, when Yves would be throwing sticks for Beaumal. Also smoothing his head, or rolling with him fiercely on the ground, impervious, of course, to bites or scratching claws.

  And there would come a morning, too, when Dionyssa would wake up to find her husband sitting by her, with Beaumal stretched at his feet, his black and by then very wolfish head settled easily on his boot. It would be that morning too, naturally, when all doubt would leave her for ever.

  VALENTE

  FOUR DAYS AGO, I saw my son.

  Let me gather my wits and sentences together, and tell you how that came about.

  One wet autumnal morning, the Guild Master sent for me. Seeing I was by now one of the Settera, the Seven under-Masters who serve him and the guild most closely, to be called was no great surprise.

  “Bartolome,” he said, when I came in. “be seated, if you will. This is not all guild business, though partly. Some of it is your private business too. I am sorry to grieve you, but it may chafe either way, most, I thought, if I did not speak to you at all.”

  Then I was surprised. I wondered what was coming, and then if Pia’s elderly father, the stonemason, had died, and news of it come here first.

  But the Master said, putting all other thought to flight, “This concerns Flavia Tressi.”

  Stupidly I said to him, he, the Master of the Grave Guild, “But she’s dead.”

  “Yes, Bartolome, I know that she died. It will be two years since, won’t it, in the Capricorn month.”

  “Yes.”

  We won’t speak of the past, perhaps. But something has been brought to me, and I am to choose an upper guildsman to see to it. When you’ve heard what it is, you may want to be that man. Or if you do not, t
hat’s well enough. But it seemed to me you should be the one to decide.”

  Now I did not know what to say, and sat there. We, he and I, had never spoken her name between us, until now. I knew that he had been aware she was my mistress, these things do get known, here and there, within a guild. I knew too he must have prevented the stonemason from also hearing about it. The guilds also know how to keep their secrets. The Master had seemed to guess too, something of what she had meant to me, for I remembered, after I lost her, when he sent the barrel of Roman wine, there was a verse in Latin with it:

  Nobis miseris

  vinum donum

  dei dederunt,

  cum lacrimis.

  Curis levandis

  quas per ipsos

  deos patimur

  cum lacrimis,

  Usque adeo

  vinum curae

  exsiccentur

  cum lacrimis.

  ‘To man the gods gave wine, to ease those cares they must let us suffer, till wine and tears are done.’

  I have never known the source; at the time I did not notice who had written it. But the words, as you see, remained.

  The Master now said this, “I have been sent a letter from the Palazzo Barbaron. The Lord there, Andrea wants two things from us. Firstly he tell me plainly enough, he wishes to give back to the della Scorpias that burial land they have always claimed for themselves on the Isle. He says he has no idea whether it be theirs or Barbaron’s. But he asserts they may have the ground without argument, and hereafter Barbaron will respect and uphold their rights to it. That is the first matter. The second is the one which concerns the Tressi family. Here I’m not certain what you know, Bartolome. Perhaps the lady herself told you that she had always been accounted a child of Andrea Barbaron’s youth, though born inside the wedlock of another.”

  I got my voice and said that I did know this.

  “Now it seems Andrea wishes to place in stone on her tomb, alongside the Tressi insignias, that of Barbaron. The Tower, and its motto: Joy in life, fearlessness in death.”

  I said, “That would be true of her, at least.”

  The Master knew I had not seen to her burial. Others had done that. It had never shamed me I could not do it. She would have understood. And if she was elsewhere, as she had reckoned to be, I knew also she did not mind.

  Neither had I ever visited her grave. It was not on the Isle of the Dead, but at Veronavera, by the Tressi vault there, close to her husband Franchesco’s ashes, that she had so honorably seen re-housed.

  For a while we sat in silence, the Master and I. I drank some of the wine he had put by for me.

  “Well,” he said, “it’s a strange circumstance. I would have thought Andrea Barbaron himself near death, to be so urgent for these affairs, but it seems he’s hale.

  A man over sixty, I believe. Perhaps he realizes it must still come.”

  “It does come,” I said. I rose and thanked him for his care of me. “I will see to it, sir. Both matters, if you wish. My earliest experience of the Isle was the della Scorpias, ranting over their burial-ground, while one of their number went into the earth. As for Flavia—I think she’d smile. And the old lady at Tressi, her sister-in-law—does she live? Then she must be in her eighties. She’ll be as proud as if it were Tressi’s own armorial.”

  When I went to call on Como della Scorpia, I thought the palazzo looked dreary and wan in the rain. The years had not been friendly with it, they never had.

  I was shown into his study, but he was not quite alone there. A group of the family’s old people were present, and among them the stiff and black-wigged Caterina—the very woman I recalled from when I was thirteen, at my first earth burial.

  The message had already been delivered, it seemed. They had gathered like birds of prey to seize up the dead thing and swallow it down.

  Only Como, sagging and ugly, had any look of normalcy in his face. He was very courteous to me, as he had been at our other meeting, all those years before, when he told me I must be a bastard of his house, I looked so like his kin, and that because of this, if ever I had need of it, he would be my patron.

  “Well, Messer da Loura, is it true, this Barbaron change of heart?”

  I told him it was.

  “It is a stroke of great good fortune, and says much for Andrea Barbaron, that he will do it, and unprompted. For generations his family have been our enemies over this, and we theirs.

  “They fear us still,” rasped Caterina, in her cracked and loveless voice.

  “No, madam,” he said, glancing at her. “Let’s be intelligent. They have no requirement to fear us any more. Particularly now that they enjoy the friendship of the Borjas. This is Barbaron’s kindness.”

  “Then I spit on it,” she flared. She was like a dusty crow on a fence, fussily cawing and flapping, an omen of discord and shadows.

  But Como said, “You may do as you please, Caterina, providing you do it privately and alone. For my part, and I am the lord here, I welcome the generosity of Lord Barbaron. I shall write to him this very day. I think it only sensible we meet, we two old men, who were at daggers drawn in youth. There’s no longer anything to fight about.”

  When the documents I had brought had been accepted and put in the clerk’s hands, Como took me aside. He thanked me for coming personally, and asked how I did. Some days later I heard, he did meet Andrea, and the City marvels now that this feud is going out like damp fire, after a hundred years or more of sparks and flame. Barbaron and della Scorpia exchanged gifts, and it seems there may be a marriage soon between the houses, one of Andrea’s sons, of whom he has several, some youngish, and a granddaughter of Como’s.

  To me Como also very graciously sent a gift. It was a set of goblets, twenty of them, of the precious Venus glass which is called Empyrean. They are like blue air with golden stars caught in them, the colors of Heaven. Pia is always very taken with them, washing and drying them herself, having them every day on display, but, “No, Bartolo, how can you even think of drinking from them.”

  Going to Veronavera, especially in rainy blowing weather, was no holiday for me. I could not help but recall how she and I had gone that first time to her house in the hills. We had been back there only twice together, and counted ourselves lucky to have had the occasions, when I had been sent to the town on other guild matters.

  It was not possible to see the house or the vineyard from the road. I was thankful for that. The most horrible part of my journey had been at its start, of course, just beyond the Porta Vene, where the woods approach the roadway… but I had sometimes traveled some of the route before, since her death. The horror never lessened, but I was used to the horror.

  There was a storm beating over Veronavera when I reached the hills. Everything else, near or far, was lost in cloud and lashing rain.

  Gaining the town, I went immediately to the Tressi house, where the old lady, Franchesco’s sister, received me as though we had met only yesterday. I was thankful to find her looking so fit and spry, and much as I remembered her. But I thought too how curious it is, how we the living age, while those that die in youth, or when they are yet young, stay always as they were, immortal in the mind.

  Flavia had told me so very much before she died, and I had come to believe it—and still I doubted, of course I did. Even then.

  And I knew when I had to go and regard the tomb in which she lay, my Flavia, then I would doubt it more than ever. For if ever she came back to me after death, it was in such a subtle way I could neither see nor feel it. While the tomb was made of stone.

  The weather changed during my hour with Franchesco Tressi’s sister.

  When I came out on the street, the sun shone, and Veronavera’s wet, red walls were glowing like ripe fruit.

  As I stepped from the door, I had half noticed a little. Calvalcade passing across the street’s end, where it gave on another, only some two or three houses off from the Tressis’.

  There were outriders, and a woman in a somber rich gow
n, all riding excellent horses. And a mule was there, with, I thought, a servant on it.

  Then there began to be a commotion. I looked to discover what went on, and saw the servant struggling with something very agile and slippery, which turned out to be a child. Next moment the child was down from the mule, landed in a puddle and paid no attention to it, then came racing up the street where I stood.

  He was a very wonderful-looking child, I saw swiftly, a boy about five or six, with gold hair, and a face mothers often believe their sons to have, although generally they are wrong.

  Then, I realized this golden child was running straight at me.

  Only when he reached me, did he stop.

  He stared up smiling at me, and his eyes were alight with excitement and pleasure. Before I could speak, he spoke to me. “Dadda,” was what he said.

  Poor lad, I thought, He’s mistaken me for another. In a minute he will begin to cry.

  But the child did not cry. He went on gazing up at me, alive with joyous finding. And had he been my son, no father could wish for a sweeter greeting, so content was he to see me, and so obviously satisfied, in every particular, with me and what I was. And I in my Master guildsman’s grey clothes, with the badges of office and the crossed circle of death—the very image certain fools use to distress their children with, so on the canals and in the alleys of Venus, sometimes they turn screaming from such men as I.

  After an interval I collected myself. I bent down and said, “Well, I’m honored to meet you. Will you let me pick you up now and take you back to the lady over there?” For I knew they were all halted there, although peculiarly none of them had come over.

  “Mumma,” said the boy, and then, very proud too of this, “My mother, Lady Veyatripsa Barbron.”

  I was unable to move a second, reaching out, but then my arms went on, and I had him, and lifted him up.

  He made no objection, assisted me even, and sat there in my grasp, beaming on at me, and then back at them, delighted with all of us.