A Dancer in Darkness

by David Stacton

  The purple bulk of Vesuvius casts its ostrich plume against the sky, and the world seems swathed in gorgeous silk. Care slithers away like a scarf flowing off a table. If Naples is evil and grotesque, it is evil and grotesque in a singularly cheerful way.

  The Duchess decided to disarm her brother the Cardinal. He had some interest in that nun, Sor Juana. Very well, the Duchess would receive her. The more religion they had the better. Let her brothers think she had had a change of heart.

  When she discovered Sor Juana could not leave the convent, she shrugged her shoulders, and said that she would go to her. Why should she not? It might be amusing. She had never been to a convent before.

  Bosola did not like the idea. He had the feeling that they should not meet. Nor did he wish his sister to see him in that entourage. But there was nothing he could do. The Cardinal’s web was drawn too tight. They were all in it now.

  To the Duchess, however, it was merely amusing. She was interested now in everything.

  The Duchess had no idea that she was going to visit the guardian of her own child. She had come to patronize and to be gracious. She could not know that to Sor Juana she was not a gracious lady, but an inconvenience. She picked up her skirts and moved sedately up the convent stairs, with Bosola at her heels, Cariola behind, and other members of the court trailing behind her round the landing.

  The Duchess was neither literary nor pious. Therefore the usual preparations made to receive visitors did not impress her as they had been intended to do.

  Since she had no ceremony of her own, Sor Juana made use of her monastic circumstances. It suited her very well to have the world come to her, and she made the most of it. Such state may have been ridiculous, but scholars and great nobles are not noted for their sense of humour.

  The Duchess had come only to see the age’s leading curiosity, as in Venice people might visit the zoo and the convent on the same afternoon, pausing to marvel first at the rhinoceros, and then to gossip with the nuns. She was prepared to be condescending.

  The landing was deserted, except for a bevy of nuns hovering about some empty chairs set companionably to the cloister windows. The Abbess came forward to receive the Duchess, bending commendably low. They were seated and served light refreshments.

  Only after a dignified pause did Sor Juana see fit to put in her appearance. She hated to bow to anyone, and through the years had contrived to solve the problem in her own way. She would bustle forward busily, attended by her servant girls, as though just interrupted, drop a quick curtsy, and be seated as the girls fussed about her chair. Then, bright-eyed and amiable, she would turn to sparkle at the company. She swept in now.

  The Duchess was startled by this procedure. She was accustomed to the manners of the Court Poet, who worked diligently in order that poetry should salute rank, as was only proper. It had never occurred to her that poetry had its own pomps. Besides, there were bits of steel in this woman that she did not care for. Sor Juana looked too prosperous. She should have been more afraid of the world.

  She had expected a pretty and precocious nun, not a business woman whose hard eyes believed in nothing but herself, and whose skin was that of a court beauty beginning to lose her looks. By that time even Sor Juana realized how much her character had changed her face.

  “But she must be formidable,” the Duchess said. “She is a little nobody.” She sat back, waiting to be dazzled.

  But Sor Juana had decided not to dazzle. She was badly rattled. The presence of Bosola in that audience threw her off. She had not expected him. She did not want to see him smirk at her. And she felt cautious. If the Duchess did not know her son was here, why otherwise had she come?

  The complications her mind invented were not pleasant. She would have quailed if the Duchess had been older or less bland, or had more power. Sor Juana had not lived at the viceregal court for nothing. She had early learned that pomp is meaningless without a standing army.

  They discussed the theatre, the Cardinal, and the plans for a convent. On the subject of the convent the Duchess was vague. She said the matter was up to her brother, the Cardinal. In this she lost both Sor Juana’s attention and her respect. She had been vigilant. She thought the Duchess had come to bargain. Now she relaxed, seeing she had not.

  Watching his sister, Bosola hated her. For her attitude towards the Duchess diminished him. Sor Juana recited one of her keepsake sonnets, written for the occasion. The Duchess accepted a copy of it. Nobody listened to it. The company rose to leave. Bosola contrived to stay behind. A look in his sister’s eye had convinced him that he should. He loitered in Sor Juana’s cell, waiting for her to come to him.

  Now she had the Cardinal’s favour, he was quick to note, her manner was brusque. She was no saint. She was as bad as he was. She did the devil’s work for nothing.

  She came into the room rapidly, with a flurry of skirts, and dismissed her two maids. She wasted no words, but when she saw him dressed so properly, her lips tightened.

  “What is happening?” she demanded.

  “We are making a pilgrimage to Loreto.” He bowed mockingly. “Perhaps we have turned devout.”

  That merely made her impatient. She was very certain of herself. “Rumour has the matter differently. What has happened there?”

  Bosola shrugged. “Your convent will be quite safe.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  Her tone was sharp. Again that great weariness came over him which was always his reaction to her presence. A little gentleness would have done her no harm. She did wrong to show her hand so soon and so obviously.

  “How strange”, he said at last, “that we should both toady to the same man.” He was not angry with her. Only tired of her. Therefore he could choose the words best suited to hurt her with efficiency.

  “I toady to no one,” she said. But there was a guilty expression in her eyes that showed him that in some way she had realized what the Cardinal could do to her, if he chose. “She is fleeing, isn’t she?”

  “I don’t know what you are talking about.”

  Finally she came out with it. “She does not know the boy is here.”

  Bosola hesitated, but she did not give him the time to lie. She seemed much relieved. The boy clearly meant much to her, the Duchess nothing. Perhaps no one any longer meant anything to her. Like him she hurtled through life impelled by the impetus of an ambition she had long since left behind.

  He turned to leave.

  “I am not afraid of you,” she said. “You are only a great man now on the losing side. Enjoy it while you can.”

  He looked at her. Her face was cold as metal. So was her voice. So he knew that in some way he had shamed her, and that therefore she was now his implacable enemy. He had always wanted to pull her down. But he did not flatter himself that he had done so. The Cardinal had done so. He wondered how.

  He could know nothing of that nun walled up down in the darkness below her. Yet he had the curious feeling that he was seeing her for the last time. He lingered. He did not want to be sent away like a stranger. There must be warmth in her somewhere. For some reason he felt sorry for her, even when she made him angry. He saluted her mockingly and strode down the stairs.

  II

  Next day the caravan set out from the Rome gate. Bosola would accompany it until it was time for him to turn off for Rome.

  It was one of those crisp mornings when the world is full of music, and the air seems to tinkle against the trees. Flutes sound in all the gorges, and organs rumble like the wagons of the law. Birds chorused out of the grey cliffs and yellow hills of central Italy, and for a while they followed the coast of that magic Roman sea.

  Since they made the leisurely public progress of those days, the company did not go more than fifteen miles a day. As they approached each hamlet or small town little boys and beggars ran out to meet them. The spectacle was a noble one. The landscape would be empty. Then, over the nearest rise, the first outriders would appear, peaceable and imperturbab
le, in the Piccolomini livery, with standards resting in a stirrup strap, and very vain of their sinuous legs. Plumes on their bonnets ruffled in the breeze.

  By choice the Duchess rode next, side-saddle on a palfrey, surrounded by a small bodyguard, with Cariola respectfully half a length behind her, and others riding up to talk to her from time to time. Behind her, for a quarter of a mile, stretched out the heavy wagons and carriages which carried supplies, offerings, and household goods, both her own and those of the nobles who had come with her.

  Progress was so slow that it was possible to go hawking in the hills, and still rejoin the company at its destination. Bells jangled. The horses snorted. The carts lumbered uncertainly up and down the rutted roads.

  To the Duchess it was a new experience. She looked around her with delight. She had never travelled before, and she had a mind to take delight in new scenes, that special eagerness to see what is round the next bend which makes the traveller. She had sat in Castel del Mare and Amalfi all her life. Now she saw the world could be an endless series of next bends, with something round every one of them. And somewhere, far across these hills and valleys, was still another sea, the musky Adriatic, salt with shrimp, and a town called Ancona, which would make her free.

  She began to make a favourite of Bosola, and found him more pleasing than she had found him before. During that five days she forgot her suspicions and began to depend upon him. Nor was she entirely misguided, for Bosola had changed. Had that trip been endless, he would in truth have been dependable.

  For Bosola had relaxed. For five days he might do as he pleased, and enjoy favour. It was something he had never done before, to ride well dressed and respected at the head of a caravan, and have the confidence of a Duchess. She preferred him over her own nobles. That made the nobles both angry and uncomfortable.

  Only he knew that the situation was not permanent. Therefore he took pleasure in it for what it was. He liked the spectacle of these gentlemen forcing themselves to toady to him for nothing.

  Those five days were the happiest of his life. Only when he looked at Cariola, and remembered how easily she had betrayed Antonio to no purpose, did he become more solemn, and remember that this pageant was only a game. On the other hand, he saw no reason why he should not enjoy Cariola, too. When they paused at houses along the way, he did so. If she sensed something was wrong between them, that was her own affair. But she was subdued. She watched and said nothing. Only in bed did he feel how hysterical she was underneath. She lay in his arms like a rabbit straining to bolt.

  The Duchess, he thought, was better at this game. She seemed thoroughly unconcerned.

  Indeed, for a few days she was. Like him, but in a different way, she snatched at the pretended ease of a time between and managed to believe it real. It was a little like having a honeymoon alone.

  When they reached the cross-roads for Rome, and Bosola turned off down it, on the sleekest horse he had ever owned in his life, she looked after him with a sense of dis-ease that soon turned to panic. She did not quite know why, except that the cares she had managed to suppress now flooded back on her. She missed his ironic tone.

  She looked up into the sky and saw blackened hawks slowly circling over the only tree on the hill above her. As she rode along she kept glancing aside, until Bosola had disappeared.

  He had diverted her. Now he was gone, she was alone with her retinue, and if she flinched even once she knew it would turn upon her mercilessly. She longed to urge the company on, but did not dare to do so. That would be too obvious. But rather than seeming closer, Ancona seemed impossibly far away.

  The landscape now was not fresh, but dusty and dry. It was a landscape of rumour. It seemed to her that she moved like a dot across the face of one of those gold and azure political maps whose heraldic designs splashed the walls of the council rooms of palaces. There was nowhere for her to go but on, and therefore she had somehow to get there.

  She had not forgotten Ferdinand. By now Ferdinand must know that she had fled. When she saw two sentries talking at dusk, or interrupted the gossip of courtiers, she thought that it was on his errands that they looked at her.

  The countryside had changed. They were now in those ragged turbulent hills which stood between central Italy and the eastern coast. As they wound through dry arroyos, there was ample time for ambush here, and the region was poor. Brigands and banditti were everywhere. Ferdinand had used that disguise before. Or he might hire others to do the mischief. The rest of her company was wary here. They did not like it either. The pompous caravan tightened up, and seemed pathetic against the hills.

  It was here Antonio was to meet her. There was no sign of him.

  On the third week of the progress, they came out of a bastion of rocks, high up, and saw the Adriatic for the first time. The sunlight was mercilessly clear. So was the air. She drew rein and looked down.

  The hills fell away on either side. Between the cliffs and the ocean stretched a level plain, dotted with quincunxes of trees. Here and there in the plain rose a massive butte. They could see peasants and labourers going about their business in the fields. Out to the Adriatic stood little ships, which scarcely seemed to move. Not a bird hovered in the sky. And in the far distance sparkled the white walls, turrets, and campanile of Ancona, turning the pale breasts of its cathedral domes up to the sky.

  Loreto lay hidden in hills far to the right. She turned her horse in that direction, bitter to tears. Something, she knew, had gone wrong, and she had not the courage to go on. She ordered the caravan to halt, and went to rest in the tent soon pegged out for her.

  She had to hide, for she was trembling. For a little while she wanted a respite from being so perpetually watched, and the one thing she must not betray publicly was anxiety. Even Cariola did not know the real purpose of this journey.

  As she rested in her tent one of her guards came to announce that the company had fallen in with a troup of tumblers and strolling players. He thought that they might amuse her.

  The Duchess smiled wanly. She was touched.

  Cariola bustled into the tent. She was severely agitated, and stood behind the guard anxiously.

  “Very well,” said the Duchess. “Show them in.”

  “Oh Madam, don’t,” said Cariola.

  The Duchess’s eyes widened. “Why on earth shouldn’t I?” Again she smiled at the soldier.

  Cariola started to say something, and then thought better of it. Her face was pale and frightened. She left the tent.

  The Duchess hesitated. “Send them to me,” she ordered. The soldier smiled, saluted, and went out. The Duchess leaned back in a cushioned field chair, and prepared to be dutifully amused.

  It was a commedia del’ arte company. Rapid tumblers rushed into the tent, and there was even a dwarf, who played the viol. Then came Sganarelle, Bombard, and the others, all in grotesque masques and peaked caps. Despite herself the Duchess laughed. They were amusing. Their dialogue was very good. They had decided to mimic her company, as though they were themselves on a pilgrimage. Their vulgarity was soothing. She felt much better. She decided to send for the court. She could face her nobles again now.

  Sganarelle pirouetted madly, stumbled, and fell against the rug on which her chair stood. He let fall his masque and laughed at her.

  It was Antonio.

  III

  In Rome it was raining, with the quick, emphatic rain of ruptured summer. It turned the unfinished city into a sea of mud, in which cobblestones rocked down the rivulets of unpaved squares. The yellow poles of scaffolding stuck up like fractured bones. Water whipped capriciously round the interiors of unroofed naves, and poured over the waltzing statuary of a hundred false façades.

  In those quick August cloud-bursts the heavens open like a sluice. The Forum was a swamp. Rain freshened the stench of incense, which hung in the city like the miasma of a plague. The Forum cats huddled in acrimonious groups of three or four, sleek as rats and utterly miserable, staring out of niches and holes at the w
eather, their natural enemy. Even they were better off than the scuttling poor. The doors of the Pantheon stood open, quivering in a lashing gale. Rain poured down through the circular hole in its roof like a waterspout, and deluged the high altar with gusts of spray.

  Huddled in a sodden cloak, Bosola on his horse picked his way towards the Cardinal’s palace. The street before it was a river in spate, and there was no one in sight anywhere.

  Water coursed down his horse’s withers and his own legs. His shoes were pulp. His splendour was ruined, and he had not brought a change of clothes. He had every reason to be in a temper.

  Nobody disturbed him. The courtyard was deserted. In the loggias the rain whipped against the inner walls. Bosola went directly to the Cardinal’s apartments.

  The Cardinal was waiting for him with his usual patient, slightly defensive smile. It is a mistake to think that that which does not move us is therefore not moving, and he eyed Bosola narrowly. The man was not honest, but he was sentimental. Indeed, sentimental people are never honest. He wondered how much Bosola was keeping back from him. On the other hand the man was dripping wet, and his clothes were ruined. He would have to be soothed. The best way to soothe him was to ask him for advice.

  “Does my brother know they have fled?” he asked.

  “I do not think so.”

  The Cardinal looked at the box in Bosola’s hands. It had four lion legs, and was of wood with silver mounts. When the box was placed on the table, the Cardinal raised the lid. He had never seen the Piccolomini jewels. He looked inside with curiosity.

  “Is that all?” he asked.

  “She has much money with her. The rest she gave to …” Bosola stopped suddenly, “her paramour.”

  “You know his name, then. Have you known it long?” The Cardinal did not wait for an answer. He turned the box out on the desk, and looked at the little hoard, somewhat ruefully. “What a pity she should run such risk for so little.” He held up a sapphire. “How is she?”