by James Reese
The dining room was perhaps twice the size of the studio. And the furnishings! At subsequent meals I would count twenty-eight chairs (and ten fauteuils for after-dinner lounging) lined up against the walls. The walls were so densely adorned with art that I’d only later realize they were painted a deep, deep red.
Sebastiana, seeing me staring openmouthed at the art, asked, “Are you an admirer or an adept?”
I stared at her stupidly.
“Of art, dear,” she added. “Are you an admirer or an adept?”
“Oh,” said I. “An admirer only.” I’d essayed a few sketches in the past, the best of which evinced not the least bit of talent; I did not hesitate to say as much. “Pardon me,” I added, encouraged, “but these…surely these aren’t…”
“Real? Oh yes. Most of them. Some are copies, of course, or the works of some lesser member of a school. Still others are—”
“Still others are stolen,” said Asmodei.
Sebastiana, as if the man hadn’t spoken at all, finished her sentence. “Still others were traded for, or accepted as payment for…services rendered.”
“‘Services rendered,’” echoed Asmodei. “Indeed.”
“The Watteau?” I asked, pointing up at it.
“Real,” said Sebastiana. “Signed and dated—1718, I think. The sketches too are Watteau, though they are unsigned.”
“And that?” I pointed to a small and wonderfully grotesque work. It was a dark-hued vase of dead flowers, which I did not yet know was in the style of the Dutchwoman, Rachel Ruysch.
“Ah, a copy that one. Down to the worms on the buds. Exquisite though, don’t you think? I may sneak that off someday to be sold, just to see what happens.”
“Just to fuel the fire of your ever-waning self-regard,” countered Asmodei. Had Sebastiana painted it herself? I assumed so.
Summarily, pointing to the wall behind Asmodei, and ignoring him with practiced ease, Sebastiana said, “As for all those Italians down there, they are all real, all Neapolitan, a few from the holdings of the d’Este in Ferrara.” Asmodei said something which I did not catch; from his tone I knew it to be rude. His words drew from Sebastiana a withering look; still she did not succeed in wiping from his face a sly and somewhat menacing smile. The silence that ensued was thick with enmity, and I sat waiting for whatever would result from Sebastiana’s having just rung the small brass bell that sat on the table at her right. As my hosts were distracted, glowering at each other, I was able to take them each in. Indeed, they too had dressed for dinner.
Asmodei sported a wrap-rascal, a greatcoat cut from black Genoa velvet. Beneath it he did not wear a waistcoat, but rather a simple mantle of white linen, high-collared and edged with lace. As he sat with his long legs extended out to his side, and crossed at the ankle, I can report that he was unstockinged; too, his black breeches were unbuttoned at the knee. His legs, bare between ankle and knee, were hugely muscled. No downy calves for him! On his feet were simple wooden clogs—sabots, as the Bretons call them—which he would later kick off. His yellow-white hair was loose, with just a dab of orange-butter applied to slick the sides. He wore three large rings on his left hand, two seeming to bear inscriptions; the third was a square-cut sapphire. He wore no rings on his right hand. At his side, propped against his chair, was a cane woven from the fronds of the dragon palm. Asmodei had no difficulty walking, at least none that I’d noticed; the cane was an affectation, or a weapon.
As for Sebastiana, she wore a sort of undress, a simple shift of her favored bright blue. It was the addition of a fichu of Antwerp lace (its vase motif identified it as the lace of Antwerp), which barely concealed her ample bosom, and a long silk scarf of that same startling blue silk that bespoke her delight in fancy dress and fine things. Her dark hair was down, unbraided and held back from her face by her combs of red coral. Red too were her jewels: rings and bracelets, earrings and necklaces set with jasper, carnelian, agate, heliotrope—“enablers” all, stones said to assist in bringing about the wishes of the wearer.
In response to a second ringing of that brass bell, a paneled corner of the wall fell away. It was a concealed door, of course; its sudden swinging open startled me. There appeared in the dining room a boy of roughly my own age, bearing a huge silver tureen and a crystal decanter. A boy of striking beauty, whose perfect pale skin showed a flush of anger as he said, in an admixture of Breton and French, “Madame need never ring twice, eh?” He set down the wine and proceeded to serve the soup—turtle soup it was, heavy with sherry, as spiced and steamy as his admonition. It was the server, not the soup, I’d drink deeply down.
A few inches taller than myself. Fine-featured, with pale blue eyes. Wavy black hair hanging down to his broad shoulders. He wore a simple work shirt, kitchen-stained, of white linen, and loosely belted blue half-trousers. He’d been perspiring in the kitchen (could it be he was the cook?) and that thin shirt clung to his skin, so wonderfully hale and tanned. Having ladled out the soup, the server disappeared into that same corner door from which he’d come. With each slap of his sabots I’d fought not to call him back. What would I have said, had I dared to speak?
I didn’t dare. Instead, I ate and drank. And longed for more—more food, more drink, and more of the boy who brought both.
18
Origins, Part I
IT WAS AFTER the Blinis Demidoff, just as this Roméo came from the kitchen with the cailles en sarcophage, that Sebastiana said, summarily, “So then, your questions.”
At Sebastiana’s direction, Roméo approached me holding out a small silver salver on which I was to place my questions. I marveled at the simple strength of the boy’s hands, so much broader than mine, shorter too. Sparse dark hairs curled on his knuckles, and his palms (too quick a glance!) were scarred, showed callus upon callus. Yes, he was a servant at Ravndal: with those hands he’d never be able to hide the fact. Most probably he tended the animals—surely there were animals, in addition to Maluenda?—and the gardens, which I already knew to be complicated and vast…. Roméo placed the tray beside Sebastiana, and there the questions lay, undisturbed, for the duration of the meal. (The questions: I burned to change them! To ask five others, mais non…. It was too late.)
Finally, that delicious quail eaten—Sebastiana had explained the tiny silver scissors, plate-side: the baked birds’ wings and tiny talons were to be shorn, the head snipped off—Roméo came to clear away our plates. He soon returned from the kitchen with four small baskets and an undusted bottle of Amontillado. Surprising me, quite happily, he took a seat across the table from me; he had his own basket, identical to mine, piled high with plums, apples, a wedge of white cheese, grapes in several shades…. Odd that the servant would join us at table; but there sat Roméo, slick with perspiration, fairly glistening under that brilliant chandelier.
Asmodei ate from his dessert basket, littering his end of the table with apple cores, the pits of olives—which he spat into his fist before scattering them like dice over the tabletop—and the remains of other fruits I’d never seen before. These same fruits I discovered in my basket too, of course, but I stupidly didn’t dare to taste them. The cheeses I ate, washing them down with the wine.
Sebastiana seemed to prefer the Spanish sherry; she sipped her Amontillado from a tiny flute of etched crystal. Occasionally, she’d place a grape into her mouth, quite delicately.
Roméo, who spoke hardly at all, who seemed at times disinterested in what was said, would slip from his seat to refill our glasses, see to the candles, or clear away the detritus of dessert. As Roméo moved, I—despite whatever was being said, words on which my fate depended—I would stare at the boy, dazed, dumb, and delighted as a puppy. I couldn’t help myself. The low collar of his shift, its top buttons undone, revealed his thick neck, hinted at the muscled plane of his chest. His collarbone fanned out so gracefully; rather like the base of angels’ wings, or so I fancied. His black hair caught the candlelight and gleamed; it seemed threaded through with silver, silver that p
erfected the blackness, rendered it that absolute black that is nearly blue. And to see those rough, tanned hands handle that silver and china and crystal with such care. I watched his now-bare feet, dark with dirt, crude from use, so practical, so perfect, as he walked the length of the table toward me, passing from Asmodei to Sebastiana, stopping to fill my glass and—yes! yes!—press his hip against me, against my upper arm. Innocently? I cannot say.
Dinner and dessert done, our baskets overflowing with rinds and pits and skins, our glasses full…finally, the answering began.
That tray of questions lay beside Sebastiana, the five folded sheets at her fingertips. I thought then of all the hopeful pilgrims down the ages who’d prayed at the mouths of caves, or at the base of large and strangely shaped stones, attendant upon the oracle who would or would not speak, sealing their fate either way. There sat my oracle at table’s end, dressed in bright blue robes, adorned with red jewels, sipping the sherry and smiling my way, about to speak:
“Sadly,” sighed Sebastiana, “I must preface this game of ours by saying that none of us knows anything, not really.” Her thin shoulders rose up and fell. As did my heart; yes, at her words—this game?—my heart fell like a rock from a height, dropped soundlessly down, down, down. A game? I’m embarrassed to say my eyes teared and I started to perspire. Just then Asmodei spoke:
“Sebastiana exaggerates,” he said. And to the chatelaine herself, in a voice measured and low, he added, “This witch knows nothing. Our knowledge—nothing to us perhaps—will be welcome. Is in fact needed, no?” His words were weighty with implication.
“Yes. Yes, of course. You’re right,” answered Sebastiana. “I meant only to warn her that there are no answers. No absolutes. Merely ideas, beliefs, suppositions, and—”
“And it’s just these things that mold every age, every sad and stupid age.” It was a quite different Asmodei from the one I’d seen who went on: “I say, first, that you underestimate this new witch. Second, that the world we have to offer stands—none too steadily, it’s true—on such ideas, such beliefs and suppositions.” He sat back in his chair, heavily; he seemed disgusted at having to speak at all. Impatiently, he added, “Move on. Without further qualification.”
“Yes,” agreed Sebastiana. “It’s just that the young”—and here she looked sadly, sweetly, at first Roméo and then me—“the young are always so hopeful.”
Asmodei bit heavily into a green apple—bit it in two, in fact; I’d only ever seen horses do that—and sat back resignedly. “Sorceress,” he warned, “the night wears on.”
“We will tell you what we know,” resumed Sebastiana, “but it will not be enough. It will never be enough.” She was apologizing for all she’d not yet said.
With a nod I accepted her apology. “Please,” I said, “go on.”
In response, Sebastiana rang the brass bell again. Rang it long and loud, insistently. I watched that corner panel, waiting for it to fall away and show a second servant. None arrived. She rang that bell for well-nigh a minute, without cease, without explanation. When finally she stopped, satisfied, it was to say, “Yes, we may begin now”; and we did.
In the blessed, welcome silence that followed the ringing of the brass bell, I’d heard something: a fire crackling, spitting to life in the large fireplace behind me. I’d felt its heat, too, and I all but turned to see its flames. I knew that there’d not been a fire when first I’d entered the dining room. I would have noticed it.
I watched as Sebastiana read each of my questions to herself. She said not a word. Her face was free of expression. She’d read each sheet, refold it, and set it back on the tray, arranging them in an order known only to her. The crisp white sheets lay on the silver salver like gulls on the wing.
When it seemed I could not suffer her silence any longer, Sebastiana spoke: “The first question is this,” said she, not looking up, her eyes on the three simple words I’d written, which were these: Will I die?
Her eyes rose up slowly. Training their marvelous blue on me, she said, “Yes, of course you will.”
“Fool,” spat Asmodei. “Did you think you’d live forever?” He motioned roughly to Roméo and the boy stood, walked the length of the table to refill Asmodei’s glass from a decanter that sat well within the older man’s reach.
I flushed at Asmodei’s words. I was embarrassed, and angry. Why had I wasted one of my questions so? Immortal, indeed! But there’d been that fleeting thought, the hope that…well, simply, I had wondered if witches lived forever. Now I knew. They didn’t: they died.
“I know of few immortal beings,” said Sebastiana. She would answer the question, though it seemed to me she thought it a silly one, too. “There do exist some, yes; but we witches are not among them. More’s the pity,” she concluded with a simple shrug.
“Yes, dear, you will die. As will I. No method of divination with which I am familiar can tell us when we are to die. Indeed, I tried once, long ago, to divine the date of my death, and I came up with nothing. I read the flight of birds, as our Roman sisters did. I pondered the illegible dregs of countless teacups. I scribbled all sorts of nonsense on mirrors. I even”—at this Asmodei laughed—“yes, I even split the belly of a pig to seek some sign in its entrails. All for naught. Of course, I could teach you how to do this, if you insisted; but I’d be teaching you little more than ancient history. And besides, divination has always seemed to me a secondary talent.”
“Alors, vite, vite, vite! Aren’t there four questions more?” asked Asmodei.
Sebastiana hushed him and said, “Now, though I cannot tell you when you will die, I can tell you how.” The meaning of her words was slow to reach me, overwhelmed as I was by the image of her sifting through a sow’s spilled, still-steaming guts.
What I finally managed was this: “Please do.” My reaction to this talk of divination must have been plain, for Asmodei then let go that laugh of his and Sebastiana said:
“I know, I know, dear. This is difficult. But I know no other way to prepare you, to preface these things.” She gestured that I should take a bit more wine, and my hand went toward the decanter as though shot from a bow. As I was about to ascertain the details of my own death, I allowed myself a nice long draft of wine.
“Your mother…” began Sebastiana.
“She died,” I said. “Some time ago.”
“Yes. Of course,” said Sebastiana.
“You knew that?” I asked.
“What I know is that every witch is born of a witch. And every witch dies a witch’s death.”
“No,” I said. I simply said, “No.”
“I am sorry, heart,” said Sebastiana. Roméo played at corking and uncorking the Amontillado, the squat bottle coated with cellar dust and grime. Even Asmodei offered what seemed a respectful silence.
“Do you mean…” I began. I raised and drained my glass, and did not need to go on, for Sebastiana said again:
“Every witch is born of a witch.”
And every witch dies a witch’s death.
Was it a vision or mere memory I suffered then? Regardless, I shut my eyes and saw again my mother’s blood seeping from her eyes, her nose, her ears, her mouth…. The choke of blood bubbling from her mouth, trickling from her ears and nose to slide down her long slender neck. However did she manage to speak, to point, and send me “to the Stone,” doubtless the only kindly refuge (or so she’d have thought) within walking distance of our home? Afraid to leave her, afraid too to stay, I ran away. Left her. Never to see her again. Never hear of her again. Oh, I’d asked the nuns—asked till they forbade it—but all I’d ever been told was that no body lay beside the brook. All there’d been was a note, pinned inside my dress, that said, “Keep and save this child of God.”
What stunned me then, I wonder? Was it learning that my mother had been a witch, or learning that I would die as she had, suffocating, suffering the throes of that same red death? What stunned me and precluded my asking anything more than this: “Did she know?”
“That she was a witch? Probably not. That she was about to die? Probably so. On neither point am I certain. I did not know your mother. But few witches ever learn of their true natures. If they are not told, as you were…well, often they do not discover the truth on their own.”
“Why.” I repeated that single word. It was not quite a question; an utterance. Finally: “Why do we die like that?”
“The Blood has always been the Craft’s great mystery.” Of course, Sebastiana spoke of her own death as well; she’d die by the Blood as I would, as had our mothers and theirs before them. Perhaps that explains the somewhat distant tone she then adopted to say, “It has long been held that a witch’s power resides in the blood. So it was that they first began to burn us—rather, burn the accused, few of whom were witches; for it was believed that the boiling of a heretic’s blood was the only way to save her soul. This according to Augustine, who—”
Sebastiana’s exposition was interrupted by the awful coming-down of Asmodei’s fist on the marble table, sending each piece of flatware skittering from its place. “Ah! Augustine, le bâtard! He had entirely too much to say on matters quite beyond his ken. Would that the sainted one were here to hear it from me! Would that all those death-dealing deities—Aristotle, Augustine, and Aquinas…Let A stand for ass, I say!”
“This from Asmodei,” said Sebastiana to me, “whose A stands for arrogance.”
Roméo stifled a laugh, as did I. Asmodei cursed us both with words I’d never heard—the meanings of which were nonetheless clear. Only slightly calmer, he explained:
Aquinas, said he, had seen fit to side with Augustine, championing flame as the only way to win the heretical soul to heaven. Worse, he—Aquinas—had refuted the Canon Episcopi, which held that witchcraft was illusory and recommended that its practitioners be ignored, by stating his absolute belief in witchcraft, transvection, shape-shifting, storm-raising, and miscellaneous maleficia, and concluding that witches had pacts with the Devil that fire alone could annul.