The Crystal Crux: Blue Grotto

by Allen Werner

  Anthea was outraged, incensed, beyond placating. There was simply no gratuity compensable to the injustice and injury she had suffered. ‘Rugerius Fabbro is a swine.’ The Castellan had violated her and cheapened her, tainted her godly virtue. The crass way by which he had forced her wrists to massage his slimy testes made her skin crawl. No matter the number of scrubbings, the applications of oils and treatments, the stain remained. It was stamped in her mind, the shame eternal. ‘I touched it. I touched that horrible, disgusting, swollen …’ She couldn’t even finish the sentence although a clear image of the uncircumcision stared menacingly at her through the inner eye. She wanted to retch again but her stomach was empty. Vomiting was all she had been doing. She could only manage dry heaves now. The muscles in her abdomen were sore, exhausted.

  The day seemed to take forever to end. She spent most of the hours withered on a daybed on the patio, beneath the hot sun, whimpering and sobbing, occasionally lifting her heavy head to stare blankly towards the calm sea. The air was filled with birds and she found some comfort following the flight of gulls and the occasional ibis. The whole world was blue and white but it was all a lie, she told herself. She refused to respect the view. ‘It is all a fabrication. This city is evil and I’m in hell.’ She remembered her time on the Seppioline and the myths of this mysterious city that were told. ‘The siren Parthenope cast herself into troubled waters and drowned.’ Anthea knew she could never be that impetuous with her own life no matter the misery. ‘This city is filled with cheats and cowards. Nothing is at it seems. It is a beautiful falsehood. Not one man here has been honest with me. Not even Bergus.’ She forced her fair memory of him to turn black.

  As the sun began its descent into the Bay of Naples, Anthea could not help but remember Sounion and a thousand sunsets like this, equal or more magnificent than this one. For so many years, she wished to be somewhere else, anywhere else. Now she just wanted to be home, on the cliffs, overlooking the Saronic Gulf and Aegean Sea. ‘There are no better worlds.’

  Dysphoria poked at her and she knew what she must do. She reached into her dress pocket and removed a white ivory box that had not been packed with the other items. She opened the lid and removed the worn rosary. Falling slowly to her knees, her back and shoulders still tall and erect, she prayed in her native Greek tongue. The ceiling listened to her.

  “If this tragedy has been my fault and I have done something to displease you Lord, please forgive me. Did I misread the signs? Was this marriage doomed from the start? Was I too ambitious?” A single tear fell. “I have been proud and I don’t expect you to listen to me, not now. It is my fault, isn’t it? I know this. I should have known better. Father told me I could have stayed at home. There were eligible suitors who had called for me. I could have wed a Greek and stayed close to Sounion.’

  Anthea didn’t feel like kneeling anymore but she had no energy to rise either. She sat all the way down on her backside, her legs folded neatly next to her. It was a comfortable position, not a reverent one. She talked to the Lord as a friend, a father, a wise counselor.

  ‘Why did I resist my destiny to wed a Greek?’

  She knew why she resisted. She wanted to escape. She had grown restless, no longer content living amongst the rocks and empty fields. There were too many nights spent in fancy, staring out to sea, dreaming of faraway lands. ‘If only I had been wiser. If only I had thought this thing through, not allowed my emotions to get the better of me.’ A few flags and banners came to mind, nothing like the grandiose welcome she received in the harbor of Parthenope. Yet and still, the dock at Piraeus was grand when she left. And there were many familiar faces, good friends and cheerful acquaintances, all of them standing on the pier to see her off, some of them sporting sincere tears in their eyes.

  Frona Stavros stood out amongst the celebrants.

  ‘If only Frona were here now.’

  Of course, Anthea knew better. Frona could not come to Italy with her. It was a blessing that she even made it to Piraeus at all. The two women had been best of friends since early childhood. Life had changed and they had only seen one another but twice in the past three years. Frona was four years older than Anthea and had been married off by her father to a forty-something banker in Pharsala. They had a beautiful child together, a little girl called Reah now.

  Anthea remembered bursting into tears the day she received the letter and learned that Frona’s husband had granted her permission to journey south to Piraeus and see her off. Anthea knew as she bid them all goodbye, as the Seppoline caught hold of the wind and pulled gently away from the docks, it would be another year, maybe more, before she ever saw any of their friendly faces again.

  Anthea rubbed her hands together. A return home now, with all expectations crushed, left unwed and tainted by Rugerius Fabbros’ lecherous hocks, would cause untold, irreparable harm to her father’s reputation, perhaps even damage his business ventures for the future. Reputations were fickle things.

  ‘But Lord, what other choice do I have?’

  For quite some time, Anthea managed to sit there on the floor and float in a thoughtless void where nothing came to mind and she could embrace the empty numbness, let it overwhelm her and smother her.

  And then the darkest thought possible emerged from out of nowhere and she didn’t resist it. ‘It is time to grow up. I am a woman now and need to act like one. Those brazen, erotic statues in the garden should not intimidate me. They represent adulthood. Rugerius said he would take me beneath the bearskins and show me how people in this city behave.’ Anthea reflected on the white marbled skin of the naked woman sculpture, the delicate curves of her backside, the sloping arch of her back, the hands resting on the god-like man’s legs, her mouth open and poised to swallow him, pleasure him. And then she imagined Rugerius Fabbro standing over her again, his enormous hands squeezing her head, fingers wound tightly through her hair. The appendage was but a few minor inches from her mouth. She could have done it. She could have pleasured him and they would all be at a banquet right now, feasting and drinking and preparing for the wedding in the morning.

  Determined, Anthea stuffed the rosary back in her pocket forgetting all about the white ivory box. She got back on her feet and sidled over to the railing, swaying her hips, trying to duplicate the scandalous walk of women trying to attract men. Still she felt like a child, awkward.

  The erotic gardens were directly below her, three stories beneath her in the fading twilight. She couldn’t make out any of the statuary particularly well from here but she could imagine them still. ‘I’m a woman now,’ she kept telling herself. ‘Grow up. As a wife, I will be expected to perform certain duties towards my husband. Oral sex is just one of them.’ Trying to embolden her resolve, she formed a stern expression. ‘I should have grabbed it. I should have grabbed his vit in my hand and shoved it in my mouth. I should have shown everyone in that room that I could satisfy a man, my man, better than any whore.’ Anthea started to tremble. This line of thinking didn’t sit right with her. She felt the warm, pawing fingers of the nymphs groping her all over again, touching her shoulders, squeezing her thighs, brushing up against her breasts and pushing up inside her vagina. One even, just for a moment, pushed a finger right in her ass. She had never even imagined such things happening to her. She wanted to discover some sort of pleasure in what they were doing to her but her moral constitution had simply not been framed that way. It was a horrid feeling and she could not accept it.

  “Oh God, I cannot. I cannot do this. I cannot think like this.”

  Anthea rushed back to the daybed feeling wholly unclean and entirely sinful, unworthy of forgiveness and mercy. She spent another hour weeping uncontrollably.

  When the lamentation ceased and she raised her head to face the ocean again, the sun was completely gone. The horizon was purple or black with a few gray overcast clouds. Night had finally come. The day was done.

  Anthea thought to retreat inside the apartment and go quickly to bed but the top of her h
ead stung and made her dizzy. She touched the place where it hurt the most, the place where a large chunk of hair had been wrested away. When first she arrived in the room, she had bolted close the door and attended the injury herself. Rugerius had torn out so many strands from her head the scalp was bleeding profusely. The blood was running all down the side of her face. She washed it up and treated it with powerful medicines meant to dull the pain, placing a bandage over the wound. When she removed the bandage now, she found that the bleeding had ceased but the pain was returning. It required another treatment.

  Anthea Manikos went inside the apartment and sat at the vanity. She stared at herself in the mirror, carefully dabbing some tonic on the wound. It stung but she knew it would eventually feel better.

  The moment she completed her task, the Castellan’s misty image materialized in the glass, his deep-toned voice resonating clear and honest. “Stop fantasizing about love, girl. You’ll not find it here. In this world, it is all about sex.” Rugerius Fabbro faded.

  Anthea was tired of resisting. ‘I know my father. He loves me but this compact with Parthenope is too lucrative for him to terminate. His reputation is on the line. He will negotiate and compromise. His pride is hurt but he’ll recover. He always does. Do not move settled things.’ Anthea knew her father’s motto as plainly as he. She had heard it often enough. It was now a part of her.

  She turned back to the mirror and nearly shuddered. The face in the glass was swollen, redden by years, cheeks coated with tears and misery. She hardly recognized it. ‘That is not me. I don’t know her.’

  The silence of the night seemed to channel a familiar sound, a familiar voice. A pallid woman speaking her name as if both were in a dream but unable to reach the other, a wide gulf separating them.

  “Anthea. Pray for me.”

  “Mama.”

  Anthea inched closer to her reflection and discovered that the old woman in the mirror was no stranger after all. “I see you Mama.” The face evolved, becoming even more fragile, sullen and red, fissures and wrinkles, cracks and lines of old age running in all directions. She was turning to ash.

  Penelope Manikos had died years ago. An awful wasting disease slowly ate at her insides, progressing steadily outward. The pain, at times, was described as unbearable. The professionals in Sounion administered heavy tonics to aid her sleep, keep her nearly comatose near the end. The vitality and beauty was sapped. Penelope’s appearance became skeletal, gray, thin skin clinging miserably to the bone. Anthea remembered hardly recognizing her mother at times. She was wasted.

  “That is me,” Anthea whispered to the person in the mirror. “I am you, Mama.” That was a difficult admission for those were difficult times, the worst of her life, emotionally and spiritually. Anthea prayed day and night for a deliverance, a healing that never came.

  Something inside Anthea, nudged her. She whispered this unpleasant truth. “Fate has placed me here in Italy.” She knew better than that. She didn’t believe in fate. ‘What do I believe in?’ She closed her eyes and recovered the rosary from her pocket. She slowly counted the worn beads, praying and hoping some fruitful words would fill her mind. And then they did. She spoke the comforting words aloud to herself with only the narrowest smile appearing in the mirror. “Teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.”

  Anthea took a breath and waited. “This is me. This is who I am now. There is no going back. I have been injured. I have been wasted. But I am still alive.”

  Anthea thought considerately concerning her father. She recalled how Nikitas suffered when his wife grew ill and passed. Anthea couldn’t stand to see her father grieve like that again. ‘It is up to me. I must be strong. I must put my faith in the Lord. Rugerius is right. This marriage is not about love. It never was. It is a contract and I am an asset. I must fulfill the promise. My father sold me to these people and there were no guarantees I would ever find joy in it. I must content myself with that reality. So be it.’ She didn’t approve of this line of reasoning but was fighting to get through it.

  “I will do it. I will wed Rugerius Fabbro. I will do everything and anything my husband asks of me, even share our bed with those indecent young women.’

  She gave those fawning girls another thought, her right hand touching her long brown hair, flakes of dried blood falling off.

  ‘They are beautiful girls. There is no denying that. Most pleasing to any man who looks upon them, I suppose. And their hair, long and luscious, full of body, especially the black. Her mane was magnificent.’

  Anthea leaned in closer to the mirror and inspected the top of her head where all the damage had been done. Her hair had only been cut three times during her life. It was long and brown, trailing down to her shoulders, delicately managed, groomed every night with no less than a thousand strokes of a whale-bone comb, followed immediately by a balanced treatment of teas and herbs. Now it was caked with blood, ratty and tattered. Rugerius even had his semen coated hands in it.

  ‘Bishop Savvas used to say a woman’s hair was her glory.’

  Anthea remembered more about her time with Rugerius, how the powerful, naked Castellan had forced her down on her knees and weaved his fingers into her hair so he could pull her mouth nearer his throbbing organ. He seemed to take great satisfaction in that fact, that she had so much hair to grab, and that suddenly made her very angry.

  Without even thinking, Anthea slammed her right hand down on a pair of sheers. There was little hesitation as she lifted them and placed them next to her head. Snip. A lock of hair fell. Snip. Snip. Two more locks went down as well. Snip. Cut. Snip. Hair tumbled down off her shoulders. Cut. Cut. Cut. Within minutes, years of growth perished. The assault was reckless and wayward, the outcome hideous and ugly. Her head had never suffered such misguided passion. The longer Anthea dared to examine her new image in the mirror, confront the wasting, the more the spirit dwelling in her soul enflamed. The blaze raged on and on, intensifying to a point where the guilt burst into flames.

  “Oh Lord, what have I done?”

  She dropped the sheers and placed her hand over her mouth. She whispered through locked fingers at the stranger in the mirror. “I’ve lost my faith completely.” These were words she never thought she would utter. “I’ve lost my faith. I’ve lost my faith.” A series of tears began to fall. “Oh Lord, how can you ever forgive me now?” Her chest was heavy and heaving. “I didn’t trust you enough. I didn’t pray as I should. I’m so confused. I didn’t ask for direction. I just charged ahead recklessly. My soul is dirty.” She looked at the clumps of hair scattered across the vanity. “I deserve a man like Rugerius. No nobleman would want me. I will be the hideous wife who sits alone at home, growing fat, bearing Rugerius children. I’ll lose my teeth. My hair will never grow back. He’ll stay strong and sure, taking to the streets every night to fondle whores. He will loathe me always. I won’t even be allowed to stand at Court and pretend to play a role. No one will look upon me. I’m cursed.”

  Anthea realized she was still wearing the beautiful gown she had entered the city wearing.

  ‘This is not who I am, not anymore.’

  Knocking over the chair, she rose to her feet and pulled off the choker, spilling pearls everywhere. She tore off the dress, stomping on the fabric the moment it landed on the floor.

  Standing in her underthings, she appraised her figure in the mirror, shifting her narrow hips slightly to one side and then to the other. She tried to assess her own backside.

  ‘Look at the whore from Greece. That is what they will all say.’ She held back more tears yearning to spring forth and rain. “You’re going to be mistreated, Anthea. Rugerius Fabbro will never love you. He’s going to abuse you and hurt you. You know that, don’t you?”

  Snatching a fish-hook clasp made of gold from a box of jewelry on the vanity, Anthea dashed to the bed and frantically rummaged through a pile of neatly folded clothes. Nothing of hers had been put away for she thought to stay in this room only one n
ight before entering the bridal chamber.

  She lifted a long purple cape with icy silver trim from the stack and approved it. She tossed the fabric over her bare shoulders covering her body and underthings, securing the neckline with the golden clasp.

  ‘A vigil,’ she thought confidently. ‘I shall do as knights do before speaking their solemn oath. I will visit the chapel and recommit myself to the Lord.’ She stopped herself. She knew she was rushing yet again. ‘And then, when it is through, I will sacrifice myself. I will drink from the cup I can no longer pass. The dawn will be upon me. I will perform my absolutions and make a ready countenance, present myself before my father and consent to do his will. I shall wed and bed the devil himself.’

  Anthea reverently placed the purple hood over her marred head as if she were a noble ranger prepared to ride out on a quest. She dared herself to withstand her flawed image in the mirror from across the room. She could see everything but her face. It was hidden inside a shadow.

  ‘Tomorrow my life begins anew. I am a woman of Parthenope, the consort of the Castellan, the wife of Rugerius Fabbro.’

  At one time, just hours ago, those words would have sent shivers of exhilaration coursing through her body. Now they brought her only tears and terror. The repulsive memory of Rugerius Fabbro standing naked in Suadela, flared yet again, his swollen vit dancing about in his eager hands. It was a vision that would forever be a part of her psyche. It seemed worse than death.

  “Oh God, I can’t do this. I’m not strong enough. Help me Lord. Help me make peace with this.”

  Fast as wind, she unbolted the door and made for the chapel leaving all hope behind.

  Chapter 12 – Share The Victory

  Dressed from head to toe in a black wool cape, Sinibaldus glided silently through the already open door into Gherardus Fabbro’s study. The giant’s movements were so fluid, so stealthy and cloaked, the two guards posted at the door to protect the Lord Commander hardly noticed the magician come down the long hall before he was right on top of them, crossing over the threshold. They couldn’t have warned their lord if they wanted to.