A Dancer in Darkness

by David Stacton

  “Go tonight,” he said hastily, and pressed her hand re-assuringly. “Do not tell Cariola unless you have to. I must find the woman. The gipsies trust her. Try not to be too frightened. I’ll come if I can.”

  She let him out the private stair, and when he had gone, all the gratitude and warmth drained out of her. For no man could help her. She was alone with it. There was no escape.

  They were not children any more. Much more than the ordeal she had to face, that was the empty terror that made her want to cry out. They had aged so soon.

  She dimly understood. Youth is a garden, where for a while we are allowed to play. But when a sudden storm forces us indoors and we stand on the threshold of maturity, we see for the first time those shadowy corridors that only lead one way. Even if we have someone with us, they only lead one way. The corridors are lined with identical doors on identical death. It does not matter which one we open, for each one opens on an ultimate empty room. We move among the furniture warily. We dare not face those rooms alone. But the doors are tall and narrow. We can go through them only singly, even if we do not lose our companion on the way. And we are careful not to lose that companion, for once out of sight, and he or she may be gone for good. Sor Juana no doubt would have put the matter more subtly, and felt it much less. But the Duchess was not intellectual. She was caught alone in the full blast of the truth.

  II

  Bosola was bored, and the reason why he was bored, he ironically realized, was because he was content. If he could be content with so little, then surely that must prove that he was not equal to his own ambitions, and that was a truth he would not face. He despised himself for being happy where he was, for Amalfi was insignificant. He could not understand why the Cardinal should want to bother himself with it.

  His duties were not enough to keep him occupied. That is the way of small courts surrounded by too much pomp; and a court ruled by a woman is no court at all. For women cannot rule without some tincture of the masculine, and the Duchess had none of that. He thought her ornamental, and therefore useless, and so he raged against her, and never thought that it might be because he was attracted to her. He had lived in a hard world. He could not understand the tyranny of something soft, and had no patience with it. Women wear men away gently, as water does a stone, so that they do not notice their enfeeblement until it is too late.

  Had he been born a hundred years before he would have been one of the condottieri, those great clanking nobodies who sacked whole countrysides, murdered princes, and were high and mighty men until an arrow pierced their corselets. What he longed for was a civilization of mad dogs. But that age was long gone. Now the world had separated out into a wilderness of masters, servants, and spies. That maddened him. He could not bear to be a menial. Yet even Antonio was a menial. Everyone was a menial but the great ones, and a cage of chirruping mouldy birds called sculptors, artists, painters, scientists. Their chirruping meant nothing, but it got them attention, and they liked their cage. Or there was his sister, that downy one, who rose imperceptibly, by a kind of sacerdotal seepage, from the bottom of an ecclesiastical well, smug in the assurance that one day her fame would overflow.

  But he was none of those things.

  He was only an attendant on Antonio. What hurt him was that Antonio had made a friend of him. If that had been done with some purpose, Bosola would have been able to forgive it. But now honour and gratitude confused his mind, and he did not know how he was going to betray him, should the need arise. To betray most men gave him a thrill of superiority. That was why he was a spy. But he shrank from the knowledge that with Antonio he would betray himself.

  He would never forgive Antonio for having made a friend of him. It is dreadful to know oneself wicked, and then to find oneself liked. It totters everything that one believed about the world, and knew to be true.

  With Cariola he felt much the same.

  In the beginning Cariola came to him disdainfully, and that had filled him with a savage joy. It had made it possible for him to be brutal with her, with an animal ferocity that freed him from his own miserable body. She had loved that. She moaned and twisted and shrieked like a mandrake, and was a very different person from the starched, proud, haughty lady-in-waiting she outwardly seemed to be. That gave him pleasure. It showed how venal and rotten was even the most staid world. When he enjoyed himself with her, he delighted in the idea that that porcelain figure, the Duchess, if one but knew the truth, was as corruptible as they. If the good and beautiful were only an appearance and a sham, then the good and the beautiful were bearable after all, and even Antonio, who seemed so prim, no doubt had pleasures just as wild. In the midst of a sweaty night, hurting Cariola until her skin turned blue, he could avenge himself on the whole world, and rise superior to it. After all, human dignity is not much. Strip it of money, and crack it on the rack or wheel, and it soon shows it is as filthy as the rest of us.

  But then even Cariola began to change. Their appointments became more regular, and she even condescended to be seen with him by day. She began to mother him. He resented that. Yet it was pleasant to be provided with better wine, or have someone stitch up his shirts. She became timid about it, and then placid. She would sit in his room and sew.

  They might just as well have been married. She made little jokes at him, but they had lost their edge. And the more familiar she became, the harder it was to turn savage by night. Familiarity made brutality seem silly, and he became self-conscious. He would suddenly collapse and lie in the warm bed next to her, and then she would treat him like a baby.

  She came now usually on Tuesdays and Thursdays. He found himself thinking of her in a different way. It was as though energy and resentment had flowed out of him into a puddle, and left him someone else, the way we feel someone other than ourselves after a fever has left us, and we are still weak. Their life became matter of course, and silted up with small private events. It is impossible to become violent when life is matter of course. There is no channel down which our energies can rush. Instead the flood sinks harmlessly away.

  On Tuesday she did not come. As soon as he missed her he knew how trapped he was. He was sinking into the mediocrity of other men. It was a warning. Yet here it was Thursday, and he sat alone in his room, well past the hour at which she generally came, and could not sleep. He had become as foppish as Antonio, and as useless and as foolish. After all, he was forty. It was no age at which to dawdle with women. No doubt the whole court knew their affair, and laughed behind his back.

  Cariola never knocked. It was one of the things that annoyed him, as though she took it for granted that he would be alone and waiting for her. Now she slipped into the room, bearing in her arms a white bundle.

  Cariola had also changed. She seemed happier and more assured. Her face now had a rested look, and her skin was healthier than it had been for years. Her voice had a kindlier authority, a tone that otherwise only the Duchess heard.

  He was cross with her for being late, even while he felt relief at seeing her. He made no move towards her.

  “I only came to say I cannot stay,” she said. “I’m sorry. The Duchess is going to Ravello.”

  He was acutely disappointed, and refused to show it. “At this hour?”

  “She has her whims.” Cariola came no closer. They were both too old not to feel physically ill at ease with each other. But if he had bothered to look, he would have seen that she, too, was disappointed. She wanted so much to be motherly.

  She held out her arms. “I brought your new doublet,” she said. “I’ve been working on it all week.” She smiled at him uncertainly, put it on the table, and turned to go. He could still be difficult at times, but she liked him none the less for that. It was like having a child, and that is what a woman generally likes a man to be.

  Against his will he said: “Can’t you stay for a minute?” She smiled at him uncertainly, wishing he could be outwardly more affectionate, and then slipped out of the room.

  Half an hour after s
he had gone, he got up and put on the doublet. It was white with gold trim, and with it was a pair of white fleshings, to be worn with half-boots, a fancy riding costume for the countryside. He did not quite know why he did so, unless it was because she had made them for him, and to put them on made him feel less lonely. He heard the horses jingle away, and then went for a walk alone. So much had six months done for him that it never even occurred to him to be curious as to why the Duchess should suddenly depart for Ravello in the middle of the night.

  As he wandered about the deserted palace, his leather heels echoed against the cold, lonely stone. He saw from a light across the court that Antonio was still up, but felt too wretched to disturb him.

  III

  The night ride to Ravello took three hours. Cariola wished her mistress was not so capricious. She did not like this journey. It had something to do with the scene she had interrupted that morning, of that she was sure, and though she refused to give the thought a name, she sensed obscurely what was wrong. But it was not her place to say anything, and there were many things it would be better for her not to know. She reassured herself with the thought that the Duchess was often like this.

  Cariola did not like Ravello, and liked it far less after having been privy to what happened there. She knew how ruthless those could be who wished to get at great persons through their attendants. She neither wanted to betray her mistress nor to be tortured into doing so. Nor did she like the gipsies. It was her opinion that Ravello was a diseased and haunted place, from which no good could ever come. Worse, this was bandit country. It was both unsafe and unseemly for two women to wander about in it alone.

  The Duchess did not like this journey either, but this she had not the courage to confide in anyone.

  It seemed to her she was fleeing Amalfi. Something was happening to her she was impotent to stop. It was like standing in the surf of events, and being sucked out to sea, even though one did not move. The night was dark. The stars were like moth-holes in the fabric of a dusty black wool tent. The trail was narrow, and the horses oddly frisky. As they rose above the countryside they could not see a light anywhere, except for the fishing boats offshore. Whatever happened, the fishermen would always be out there with their flares and nets, totally oblivious of their betters. It was a lonely thought.

  At last they came out on the plateau. The higher hills loomed in the distance. In the darkness Ravello glowered vacantly upon its flanks. It was totally friendless. They rode on to the palace, where Cariola unlocked the gate. It creaked open unwillingly, and the darkness of the garden swallowed them up. In this light it was not a real garden any more. It looked as though it were built of steel and semi-precious stones, like that garden Pluto made for the solace of Persephone, where everything glittered with life, yet had none. The Duchess went into the palace alone, filled with an unbearable sadness. Not even an insect chirped, and yet once she and Antonio had been happy here. It was strange to realize that was less than six months ago. It was not only strange, it was unbearable.

  She would not even let Cariola show her to her room. “There will be a woman here in the morning,” she said wearily. “Show her in. Good night.”

  She trailed forlornly off down the dusty corridor, while Cariola looked after her open-mouthed. She did not even raise her dress, as she walked, to keep it clean, and the wax from the taper she held ran over her hand unnoticed. In a few hours Cariola would know everything. How would they face each other then?

  She was awakened by a great jangling clamour, and lay huddled in the bed. It was only just after dawn. She should get up, but she had not the strength to rise. She had perhaps fifteen minutes left to herself, and the sound of the bell twisted in her ear. She felt too apathetic to care. It was as though her body did not belong to her any more.

  She was a devout Catholic, without ever having given the matter any thought, but what was about to be done to her was wicked in a way that had nothing to do with God.

  Cariola knocked on the door and then entered. Her face was a mask. “The woman is here,” she said.

  The Duchess did not stir in the bed. “Show her in and then go,” she said.

  Cariola seemed to hesitate. “I think she wants hot water brought.”

  “Then bring it.”

  Cariola went out. The Duchess did not turn her head. She heard someone come in and move towards the bed. She sat up. The old woman was indescribably filthy, and carried something done up in a neckcloth. She looked down at the Duchess, her black eyes snapping in her wrinkled face, her horny, lizard-like hands folded across her waist, and burst into a flood of sibilant gibberish. No doubt it was meant to be comforting, but she spoke only Romany. The Duchess gazed at her blankly.

  The old woman shrugged, patted her with a hot, crackly hand, and moved over to the window, where there was a low table. The Duchess sat up in bed to watch her, but the old woman’s back was turned. She was unwrapping her bundle and muttering again. Whether it was a complaint or an incantation would be hard to say, but certainly there seemed to be devils in the room.

  The Duchess did not move. The old woman’s eyebrows went up, as though she found the gentry very foolish. She cast down some small instruments on the bed. One was a long hooked wire of the sort one plunges down drains, and the others were even more curious. They were made of iron, but though she had washed them, she had not been able to wash the rust off. They clanked against each other dully as they fell upon the bed.

  The Duchess clutched the covers to her neck. Her head began to shake from side to side. The old woman grinned cheerfully and patted her shoulder. Then, with a sudden deft movement she ripped down the coverlets.

  The Duchess huddled against the headboard and screamed for Cariola. The old woman frowned. Cariola burst into the room.

  “She shall not put those things in me,” sobbed the Duchess. “She shall not.”

  Cariola took in the situation at a glance. She stepped rapidly to the head of the bed, and put her arms around the Duchess.

  The old woman stood passively at the foot of the bed, her taut little eyes looking from one to the other of them.

  “My poor lamb,” said Cariola. “My poor lamb.” The Duchess began to shudder less. She watched the old woman at the foot of the bed out of the corners of her eye.

  “There must be another way,” she said. “There must.”

  “Where did you get this woman?”

  “Antonio.”

  At mention of Antonio the old woman beamed, and nodded her head significantly. Her attitude seemed to say that some people were overly nice, but it was not her place to ask questions.

  Cariola gathered up the instruments, handed them to her, and made some sort of dumb show with her fingers. The old woman went off into a torrent of explanations. Neither of them could understand her. She looked disappointed, brightened, and began to act something out. She pounded something in an invisible mortar, put it on a stove, poured it into what seemed to be a syringe, and pumped away with her fingers. The sun would set three times, or the Duchess would take it three times, it was difficult to tell which.

  “Tell her no,” said the Duchess. She was more sober now, but she still clung to Cariola.

  “What else can you do, my poor lady?” Now that she had grasped the situation, Cariola was practical.

  It was true, there was nothing else for her to do. “I want Antonio.”

  Cariola was stern. “He could not come. He has done the best he could. Perhaps the old woman knows her business after all.”

  The old woman was undoing her bundle again, and brought it to the bedside. She held up various dried leaves and bits of twig, talking and gesturing. The Duchess recognized male fern, rue, and ergot of rye. Then Cariola took her off to the kitchens downstairs.

  The Duchess had never felt unclean before. She lay there alone, plucking at the coverlet. One of the leaves had fallen there. It was blue-grey, and twisted into the shape of a screw. She had ridden over the bracken and gorse of this country often, and f
ound them sinister, but had not thought much about them. Now she realized that the landscape was full of poisons. They must lurk in every leaf and twig, and there were those who knew how to use them. The whole fair world was poisoned, and plants had a venom as powerful as snakes. They would dissolve the life in her the way quicklime dissolved the bodies of the poor, cast into a common pit.

  She clenched her teeth, and only hoped Cariola and the old woman would come back, and have the matter done. She listened for their footsteps down the corridor. She was determined not to cry out. But when the rough pewter syringe was inserted in her flesh it hurt her cruelly, and the liquid flooded her like burning pitch. It made her feel silly and weak. Not daring to cry out, she giggled and could not stop, until Cariola slapped her.

  Towards evening she fell into a fever. She felt suffocated, as though the room were full of burning wool.

  Ferdinand stood glowering in all the dark corners of the room. When she burned with thirst, he had his fingers round her throat, and what she saw in his distended eyes was not passion, but animal lust.

  The treatment lasted three days. The old woman came and went, and the syringe became a great scaly snake. The lake of pitch seemed to eat her whole body away. She could eat only fruit, without knowing what kind of fruit it was, and drink only water, which did not slake her thirst, and tasted dusty. She thought she heard her brother the Cardinal’s robes swishing in the corridor. He often smiled. The swish turned into an immense wave, crashing down on her, on whose crest lay the dead white body of Antonio, like Leander, wearing one white sock and nothing else. He struggled to live, but Ferdinand, writhing with brown kelp, pulled him down and squeezed his eyeballs out. They exploded like the balls of seaweed on a childhood beach.

  She slept and woke and slept again. She felt she was hovering outside her body, and could not raise it up enough to enter it. Indeed she did not want to. It disgusted her. Then she was trapped inside it again. The wave crashed down, and Antonio’s head lolled limply in the foam of it.