The Book of Shadows

by James Reese

  Later that evening, Roméo and I would sit in the dining room, just the two of us. I was disappointed to learn that we would not all dine together each night. But my disappointment was short-lived, for I entered the dining room to find the great table set for two, simply: two brass bowls, two mugs, and two tiny forks. There was a loaf of thick-crusted bread, a block of butter, and two bottles of wine, ordinary wine. Roméo, of course, was there. When I’d returned to the studio to change he’d gone I don’t know where—I would never see his rooms. He’d changed as well. Now he wore loose-fitting brown pants that ended just below the knee and a billowing white shirt, something akin to those famed pirates’ blouses. He wore a newer, cleaner pair of sabots. I wore the first thing that had come to hand when I reached into the armoire: two pieces of loosely tailored red silk, pants and a button-down blouse, gold-embroidered—pajamas in the Eastern style. I’d come barefoot over the cold stone of the corridor to arrive at the dining room, and so, entering that room, I proceeded to the warm stone near the hearth. There I stood, watching Roméo tend a boiling black pot.

  “I’ve boiled our take in seawater,” said he. Now he was stewing the mussels in the sauce he’d made—a white wine base, with garlic and fines herbes. “Are you ready for une fête aux moules?” he asked.

  Indeed I was. I ate my fill, and then ate some more. We talked and laughed lightly. I recollect precious little of what was said, but it was so wonderfully easy being in Roméo’s company. And all the while we drew mussels from a common pot, discarding the spent shells into a second. I scraped the sweet orange meat from the shells with my fork, with my fingers. The broth, the bread, the wine…. It was delicious.

  Within hours, I would be the sickest I’d ever been in all my life.

  A single mussel—“bad” by some definition I don’t care to contemplate—induced in me fits of nausea and diarrhea, cramps and spasms that I won’t describe further.

  Eventually, I managed to install myself on the divan in the studio. I sweated beneath the flimsiest sheets, then shivered under mounded cotton and wool. I could not ingest even the weak black tea that a distraught Roméo brewed for me, and the sight of the crackers he carried into the studio caused me to retch. The sheer violence that erupted within me was…Well, so sick was I, I did not, could not care that Roméo, my Roméo witnessed the whole episode. Yes, he was beside me the whole time, caring for me all that long, long night.

  At one point, fairly desperate—this was after the failure of the black tea and crackers—Roméo disappeared from the studio for a short while, returning with some concoction he’d gotten from Sebastiana. I drank it. She’d said too that there wasn’t much that could be done; such an illness—not at all uncommon—would run its course within twenty-four hours, at which time I would feel remarkably, wholly better. Still, by my quick calculation there remained many long hours of abject misery. Unable to sleep, and desperate for distraction, I would eventually ask Roméo to read to me from…

  Roméo knew of the existence of Sebastiana’s Book of Shadows, but he’d never read from it. That night—against all custom, as I’d learn—I asked him to read aloud to me from her Book. He did so, with a modicum of difficulty: I helped him with words he did not know, with others he recognized but had never pronounced. I remember the story well, for I listened intently to every word read in that deep, Breton-accented voice, the voice of the beautiful, beautiful boy I would have beside me but one day more.

  Roméo read to me all through that night, till finally sleep came. He sat on the floor, his back against that divan covered in yellow watered silk; on it I lay in those red pajamas, the perfect picture of some eastern Empress, or Emperor. (Our pose was that of Skavronksy and her serf.) There were two golden bowls on the floor within my easy reach; their purpose ought to be plain…. Enfin, I took in every word Roméo read, watching him—my Roméo—all the while. Such sweet distraction he was from my body’s betrayal.

  28

  Bufo Vulgaris

  WHEN I WOKE, having slept for I don’t know how long, it was to the sound of a slow-opening door.

  The room was dark, impossibly dark. Every muscle in my body was sore. And my head felt like a saturated sponge, too heavy to lift off the pillow. With what little strength and coordination I could summon, I reached up and found a cool and dampened cloth, folded lengthwise and laid over my eyes and brow. I pulled it away and the sun rose that day a second time.

  I’d lain on the divan all through the long, long night, chilled, variously uncovering and covering myself with the blankets Roméo brought me—and all that long night he, my Roméo, had stayed by my side. He felt guilty and apologized a thousand times for not warning me away from the shut mussels. All I cared about was his company. Sick as I was, I’d been so content to listen to him read. I’d thought of asking Roméo to read to me from the books I’d discovered in the studio: Confidences of a Beautiful Woman, Memoirs of a Young Virgin, Anecdotes of Conjugal Love…but of course I’d chosen instead Sebastiana’s Book.

  I felt a slight, slight return of my strength. It was as though I were slowly reoccupying my body, limb by limb. And as my eyes adjusted to the light, a certain shadow moving toward me took on a human aspect.

  There stood Asmodei, dressed as he’d been two nights prior at dinner: white blouse open to the plane of his chest, long sleeves falling unfastened and soiled over his wrists, black culottes cropped at the knee, dirt-darkened sabots. He stood at the end of the divan on which we lay; in truth, Roméo, still asleep, lay alongside it on the carpet.

  “Boy,” said Asmodei. He towered over the divan. Early light entering the studio through the tall windows behind him gave to his blond mane a golden cast; so bright did he seem, I had to look away, turning back only when he said again, “Boy! Wake up!” I saw with relief that he spoke to Roméo, whom he nudged now with his foot.

  “Talked the night away, did you, young lovers?” Asmo stood staring down at me, clad so splendidly, so incongruously in the red silk pajamas, which clung to my every contour. Damp too was the yellow silk of the divan, on which I’d sweated all through the long night. I drew myself up and curled into the divan, as far from Asmodei as possible—“cower” would be the word, had I not taken pains to sit straight-backed and hold, hold at all costs, that man’s appraising gaze. There he stood, hands joined behind his back, rocking up and down, heel to toe, in a contemplative pose—but Asmo, I know, was not given to contemplation.

  Roméo woke. He asked how I felt. “It has passed,” said I. “Thank you.” And turning to look up at Asmodei, Roméo added, smiling, “I dreamed of you.” This struck me.

  “A pleasant night’s work, I trust? Speaking of work, you’ve a great deal of it. The cocks have been crowing for more than an hour; so leave her crowing cock alone and see to them.”

  “Do you need anything?” asked a still sleepy Roméo of me. “Can I get—”

  “You can get yourself gone, boy!” Asmo kicked at Roméo’s bare foot. “The witch and I have some work of our own to do.”

  Doubtless it was fear, perhaps even panic Roméo read on my face as he rose from the floor. Don’t go, was my tacit plea; but he had no choice: in Sebastiana’s absence he answered to Asmodei.

  “See to the fire first,” commanded Asmo. “There’s a chill to be burned off; and it stinks in here. Take these away with you,” and Asmo gestured down with a nod to the bowls I’d put to sickly purpose all through the night.

  As Roméo passed him, Asmo let fly out an elbow, catching the younger man in the chest and causing a rush of air from his lungs. The boy cursed; the man smiled; and nothing more was said. Only when Roméo, having resuscitated the fire, eyed him from the door did Asmo feint a second strike. Oddly, Roméo’s suspicions—I know now that he had suspicions—dwindled to a simple smile, and he left us.

  It was in the course of that boyish jousting, as Asmodei turned, took two quick steps toward Roméo, that I saw he bore a gift, hidden behind his back: a square box wrapped in slick golden paper and
festooned with a great green ribbon.

  I asked, reflexively, rather boldly, “For me?”

  “Drink your tea,” said Asmodei, setting the box beside the silver tray he, presumably, had brought. I eyed the steaming green-black tea. I’d seen enough of this man to worry. “Oh, drink it down, for the love of Lucifer! Your Sebastiana sends it.”

  I sipped at the tea. I was feeling markedly better. The revolt of my innards was over; cramping was all that remained of the sea’s assault on my person. The tea, if somewhat brackish, seemed to help; soon I was wide awake. “And the present,” I ventured, “is that from Sebastiana as well?”

  “No,” said Asmo; he sat now on the far end of the divan. “Not directly.” He looked down at his hands, shyly, as if he’d an admission to make. “We men on the periphery of the sisterhood have our role, too, you know. Traditions and such.”

  I was glad for that; and I found myself unafraid. Had I forgotten the flaming cuffs, the insulting play of pronouns he’d used since first we’d met, the thinly veiled threats? Ah, but who, I ask, is not won over, however fleetingly, when one finds oneself in receipt of a gift? “Shall I open it?” I asked.

  “The tea. Finish the tea.”

  I did. It was pleasing—was that salt, that crystalline silt that swirled through the sea-green tea? It had just enough coffee-like bitterness to rouse me. We spoke as I drank, though I recall not a word of what was said, so distracted was I by the gift—I admit it, and add that I have received precious few gifts in my life—and by Asmodei’s presence…. Yes, I drank, and having done so, it was to the above-mentioned—the gift, its giver—that I attributed the quickening of my heart.

  “This tea, what is it?” I asked.

  “Do you feel its effect?”

  “I do.” The dregs of the tea had already dried to a dark scab in the cup’s bottom. Asmodei neared to spoon-feed me its silt—salt, yes, or perhaps sugar—which stung my tongue, just slightly.

  “Good,” smiled Asmo, “and now, my little gift.” He carefully, too carefully, took from me the cup and saucer, replacing them with the beribboned box. As I set to work, smiling, on the emerald bow, the embossed paper, I felt the sudden heat of Asmodei’s hands on my bare ankles. On raced my heart. I felt my face flush and to draw breath was suddenly difficult. Still I attributed it to the man, his mere proximity. “Yes,” said he, “something of a tradition, that I gift you with this. Not many men are allied to the sisters, you know…. You, of course, will be. Or would have been.” And at this riddle his hands rose from my ankles, up, up, under the wide-cut legs of the silken pants. His grip was tight and would have tightened had I tried to move. And so I hastened the strange ritual, and tore into the box; all the while the muscles of my throat contracted, as if in anguish. I was breathing now through my mouth, and my heart leapt about like—

  Like the two blue toads that bounded onto my chest from the opened box.

  Asmodei’s metallic laughter, ringing, ringing…. I drew back but was held, fixed in place by his hands, so near my knees. He settled closer. The toads sat fatly on my chest, as if to mock the twin weights of my breasts…. Dreadful, they were, the size of a child’s palm, blue- and black-speckled…. My pulse, racing. My heart about to burst.

  “But don’t you like toads,” asked Asmo, much nearer now, too near. “Toads to mirror your witch’s eyes?” His body, his weight pinioned me; and his face was less than an arm’s length from mine. “Pets,” said he, “that’s all. Sebastiana said I was to—”

  “Sebastiana,” I echoed, but the name did not calm me as I would have wished.

  “Yes, of course. She has sanctioned it all…. Take one up, witch. Do it…. Do it!”

  Scared, I soon had a toad in each hand. Asmo sat back, satisfied. “There’s a good girl, or boy, or whatever.” He was settled in the fork of my splayed legs…surely it was that which caused my heart to lurch?…Yes, painful now, that crazed pulsing; and every breath, too shallow, rattled my chest. I tried to move but couldn’t. I tried to speak but…my tongue seemed made of cloth; my whole body felt hollowed and packed with cloth, like a mummy bound for the Afterlife. Still, reasoning that if I did as I was told the whole bizarre ceremony would end all the sooner, I settled the toads in one palm—I hate such things—and I petted them with trembling fingers. “That’s it,” said Asmodei, whose own hands ranged over me now with far too much freedom. With shame I’d gone stiff, stiff and slick at his nearness, and the play of his powerful hands rendered me short of breath.

  “Please,” I begged, when it seemed I could not hold to the scaly weight of the toads a moment more, “please take them.” I held them out to him. “And please, take your hands from—”

  “I don’t want them,” said Asmo, standing fast, raising his hands in mock surrender. “No, no, no.” At least I was free of his crawling fingers. “Don’t you favor your new friends?”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, “but I do not.”

  “No matter,” said he. “You’ll not have to suffer them much longer. Indeed,” he added, looking to the clock on the mantel, “it has been some minutes since the tea. Your heart must feel like it’s fit to pop!”

  “It does,” I said through welling tears. “It does…. What have you…?” I could not complete the sentence. I put the toads back in the box, settled the lid tightly over them. Something clung to my hands like sap from a tree, like…like poison from a toad’s skin.

  “Bufo vulgaris, or some related species,” said a gloating Asmo from over near the fire. “Terrific little creature, deadly to the touch.” Lifting his shirt to show a pair of canvas gloves tucked into his belt, he added, “And requiring a quite dexterous handling…. Why, hours it took me to milk enough venom from the little beasts, to carefully, carefully raise the flames just so—no good cooking them, after all—and oh, what a game of patience, waiting, waiting for the slow dripping down of the toxin into that teacup…. I slept nary a wink!

  “Oh yes…you’ve been toaded, dear, from without and within.” That laugh like the striking of cold irons. “Not much longer now, and your heart will screech to a sudden—”

  “But…Sebastiana?” I managed. My throat was swelling. Soon speech would go. Then breath. Then life.

  “Your trusted sister sleeps, sleeps soundly in her rooms beside her den, from whence your sticky killers come…. But you’ve not seen her den, have you? Pity—now you never will. Fantastic, it is, with contents to rival the dens of the witches of Thessaly. Where she gets such things I’ll never know…. Chunks of salt-cured flesh. Beaks, sawed from birds of ill-omen. Briny bottles holding the noses of victims of crucifixion. ‘Holding the noses,’ get it?” He mimed the action, giddy as a boy until…

  “And antidotes too, you fool!” Sebastiana, sleep-disheveled, wild-seeming, stepped into the studio from behind the tapestry that covered the corridor door. “That studio has the antidote for any aspect of the Craft you dare attempt.” In her hands was a glass vial. She brought it to me, poured its thick black syrup into my cupped palms, instructed me to spread it on the thin skin of my wrists, behind my ears, and…and as far back on my tongue as I could manage without gagging.

  “You,” said Asmodei, flatly. “You.” And I saw that the unfinished accusation—of betrayal? of perfidy?—was directed at Roméo, standing half-hidden behind the tapestry. Sebastiana called Roméo forward and handed him a lidded porcelain bowl, which sat in his callused palm like a dove. “As I directed,” said she to the boy. “And quickly!”

  Roméo came up behind me and, with awkward apology, ripped open the red silk nightshirt. Dazed, I’d no strength to resist—from ever-increasing shame? from mere propriety?—as he opened the bowl, doused my chest, my neck, and my breasts with a powder that had the consistency of…of ground bone, and bore a quite indelicate smell.

  My heart slowed. My throat opened. And I heard Sebastiana say, “Devilish man!…I knew before the boy came to me. I need no mortal warning of sisterly danger!…What,” she went on, “what were you thinking?…I
should have known you’d try to—”

  “To what?” challenged Asmo. “To put down the witch like the monstrous anomaly she is? Yes, you should have known I’d not suffer such as that among us.” He waved dismissively at me. “In truth, all I hoped for was a quick going-over of the still-warm witch. The incubus, after all, spoke so admiringly of its attributes. And if it died, it died.” All the while Roméo worked upon me, and so perhaps Asmodei’s words did not fall before me with the desired effect.

  “Brute! I know you are capable of the most lowly mischief, but here, in my house, to attack one of our own?”

  “You’d have me accept that as one of our own?”

  “Oh, you are a brute, a beastly, jealous brute!” Sebastiana let fall her voice to a whisper, asking, “Do you forget what I have the power to do to you?”

  “I do not,” answered the man, coming nearer the divan. Sebastiana put herself between us. Cower is the word for what I did then. “Do you forget,” asked he, “the very earthly hold I have over you, my dear? You who have been dumb with love all these long years?”

  “You flatter yourself,” said Sebastiana. “You have become little more than a dog in my home, a once-favored pet that has no role now but to die. To obey until the day it slinks away to die!”

  “A dog, is it?…If it’s a dog I am, you are but my bitch.”

  “Arrête!” This from Roméo, who came nearer now. “Stop it, both of you. And you,” said he to Asmo, “you go now. Go!”

  “Go in shame,” added Sebastiana, “and before the succubus sees what it is you’ve attempted—to take from her the only hope she has of…”

  “I’ll go,” agreed Asmodei, “but I will return. And when I do, this had best be gone.” And with that he moved fast; leaning over the divan, taking my chin in hand, so that I could not turn from him, he lowered his face to mine and…and he made the croaking call of a toad. Much amused—his laughter exploded within the studio—he left through the garden door, and was gone among the roses.