The Duke In His Castle

by Vera Nazarian

  She passes the knife on to Duke Rossian, who watches her in surprise. Up to this moment he does not believe in the reality of what’s unfolding, but the blood is so final; blood is always real—which makes him serious and solemn. If he pays attention he can hear the rush in his own veins and arteries, the circulation and the clockwork pump underlying all movement. While in the distance, above, below, he senses the echo of subterranean waters and sky waters. They comprise the outside world.

  The Duke takes the knife, pulls up his lace-trimmed sleeve, and proceeds to do the same to his own white flesh. There is a moment of dull unexpected pain, for the knife tip is more blunt than he thinks.

  And then his own blue blood comes forth crimson. He watches the inside of his wrist, strong and graceful, and stained with the red. He has been careful not to prick a vein, but the blood seems unwilling to be contained and now he is frightened for a moment of his own vigor, of what he has done—slit his own wrist, by heaven!—and for what?

  But before he has another moment to be consumed by doubt, Izelle moves her own bloodied wrist with its perfectly round globule specimen of life-juice, and with an odd beastlike cry (its nature is half-forgotten, but sends shivers through them both), she presses their hands together at eye level between them (he leans down from his height to meet her), wrist to wrist, controlled blood drop to exuberant blood smear.

  There is a mingling of pulse-beat. The Duke knows her own smaller, quicker, lighter clockwork mechanism through the contact of wrist to wrist, past the skin. In that mingling he also knows the bellows of her lungs and the churning of her bones in their sockets of tendon and flesh, the fierce glow in her womb, her odd corresponding fire of animus that sits in warm slow simmer at her solar plexus, her blazing other center past her throat and, higher up, the suddenly gaping twilight place in the maw of her skull—

  Something pulls him back violently, and he is made aware that he has seen too far inside her, must not know any more, and that she is dangerous. It happens in a blink, of course, or even a span less, a fractured space between heartbeats. And then the contact is broken, and he is himself, and now his wrist is stinging, stained with their common blood.

  She is breathing fast, watching him, and he can almost sense the bond drawn in a line between them, from her wrist to his, and the expectant pause, also strung in the air.

  “I swear,” he says in a faint voice.

  “I swear,” she echoes.

  “We are kin.” They complete the oath together.

  And for the duration of their deal, even if all this is nonsense, they are now bound.

  The Duke feels the peculiar urge to chortle and cry out, to hyperventilate, and something in the expression of her eyes tells him she is equally wound, although neither would admit to it. They are sudden children at the brink of engaging in a forbidden act.

  “And now,” Izelle exclaims, “we can play!” She claps her hands together, ignoring the wrist upon which the blood has already began to coagulate and heal, and the white linen shirtsleeve is lightly stained in sprinkles of red as it slips back down. . . .

  “What are the rules?” he asks, tense as a string. “Who’ll decide the rules? Shall I?”

  “I suppose it would only be fitting if you did,” she replies. “Considering you have graciously agreed to my idea.”

  Rossian thinks that grace has nothing to do with it. Why am I doing this anyway? Why, really? This is idiot insanity. His instinct of suspicion reaches out, nerves pulling at others in bundles individually it seems, a delicate agonized state of alertness, of tingling knowledge in every cell of his skin. But his blood is racing now, and he does not want to stop himself, because for the first time since he can remember, he is feeling fiercely alive. . . .

  “I can read your thoughts, you know,” she says, clearly taunting him.

  “Then the first rule is, you’ll do none of that!” he exclaims in a suddenly harsh voice without a blink of surprise and begins walking out of the hall. “And neither will I. I do not—pry. We, both of us, will not pry into minds.” Each word he speaks now is strongly punctuated, distinct, like a weapon thrown.

  His strides are long and she is startled into keeping up, half-running behind him as they move through the large open space via double doors of mahogany, into a smaller elongated chamber that has a number of chairs lining the walls and decrepit ancestral portraits hung above each, the oils having dulled and the varnish yellowed into an overall tone of funereal brown. The servants stand aside as the Duke passes, then light the tapers in the wall sconces and disappear discreetly, one after another, with the last closing the doors to the grand hall behind them.

  If you could read my mind, he thinks, we wouldn’t be doing this now, this pretense. Although, I myself am to blame. I want to do it, I now realize. My blood quickens . . . My blood. Maybe all of this is my doing.

  He stops in the middle of the chamber and she follows suit. She stands before him, hands clutched together, rubbing palms unconsciously, her forehead and brows moving in nervous reflex. “Agreed. What else, my Lord?”

  “What else? Why, the rest of the rules, of course,” Rossian says. In a peculiar reaction to his own outburst, his perfect face has loosened with sensuality and he is on the verge of smiling in anticipation. There is quirky pleasure to be gained by such word play as now, and he allows himself to take advantage of the moment. “How shall we go about it, my Lady Izelle? Do you recall Hide and Seek, that children’s game you might have played when you were a tot, or whatever the urchins call it? We will borrow the rules and make them our own. Our game will be identical. Except, acts of power are added.”

  She gasps, in equal semblance of pleasure. “Of course! How very silly and simple and clever of you, my Lord, a game with so many possibilities.”

  “I’ll do you the courtesy of allowing you the first move.”

  She smiles lightly inclining her head. “So generous.”

  The Duke decides there is an undertone of sarcasm. But he is so eager to begin that he is beyond fine analysis or regret.

  “Hide,” he says. “Hide anywhere within the grounds of my castle. In any way you can. And if, within the duration of ten minutes, according to this timepiece—” he points to a corner cabinet grandfather clock with carved molding and a small hourglass insert that floats in a recessed niche built precisely for it, an unusual one-of-a-kind piece—“I am unable to find you, then you win the round.”

  “Marvelous!” she exclaims. “When may I hide?”

  “Now,” he replies. He walks to the cabinet, reaches forward with his elegant hand and turns the tiny sand-filled glass within its niche. Then he inhales deeply and shuts his eyes for the sake of proper courtesy, knowing intuitively it is not quite necessary.

  For, the next second he opens them, she is gone.

  Rossian glances once about the hall of portraits, and there is resounding silence. The long runner carpet of Turkish wool covers the crude wooden slats of floor like a faded peacock’s tail. The slim candles flicker alongside the walls and cast parabolic effusions of light upon the oils; the deeply carved patterns on the old gilded frames are cast in sharp relief. He senses the breathing of ancestral ghosts as they reside in the walls between the slabs of granite, and fill the air with a permanent sense of someone else’s memory just out of reach.

  The clock in the corner reclaims his attention, for now it is the only source of movement in the room. In the niche the sand falls from one glass compartment to the other while above it the rounded face of the clock stares like a sleeping moon, and the hands move in stately microscopic precision. Just below, the brass pendulum swings with a clean rhythmic click to mark the seconds.

  The Duke watches the clockface and the polished wood of the cabinet and the pendulum and the thin stream of the flowing sand.

  And then he laughs, a patrician arrogant sound. “Oh, come now, you insult my capabilities. Come out, my dear. Come out of the little glass chamber, before you drown like a fly in the running sand�
�which might not be such a regrettable thing at all, considering it would rid me of you.”

  One blink of the eye, and the shapes of the room waver in his vision like objects seen through heated air before a furnace, a desert mirage, and Izelle again stands before him in her tasteless attire.

  “Really,” he says. “Couldn’t you be a little more ingenious? We’ve decided upon ten minutes, not ten seconds.”

  She smiles lightly, as though not hearing the sarcasm. “I was testing the deep waters. The depth of you.”

  He snorts. “More likely, deep sand. Shall we disregard this then and start again?” His tone is polite, even. Within, his blood pounds.

  “Oh, no, no. By all means count it as part of the round. Your turn.”

  “Very well, although I must say, an odd decision on your part to relinquish this opportunity. And now, don’t even bother to close your eyes, simply mark the time.”

  But she is already before the clock cabinet, turning the glass nodule with its sand in the other direction, allowing the few seconds of time that has elapsed in the first round to be returned back to origin. “It is done.”

  And then she turns the glass again, and time resumes.

  He responds by inclining his head in a mock bow, and then he is not there.

  Sorcery has unfurled, and it is now rampant in the castle. If one can only sense it, there is a clamor of force in the air, and the stones acquire lungs, pumping the breath of life to animate them. Everything resonates underneath the surface. Even the dust motes are primed to take off and swirl with more energy than normal, in secret opposition to the air currents.

  If one can sense it.

  Izelle gives a big sigh, whether in relief or resignation, is unclear. It is also unclear what, if anything, she can perceive happening in the metasphere around her. She shrugs to herself, then carelessly starts looking about.

  She does not tarry in the hall of portraits but quickly walks the length of the carpet to the great carved doors on the side opposite that of the Hall of Violet. She pushes against the smooth wood with one petite hand and is in the hallway. Here she stops the butler, Harmion who is waiting, and now exhibits the same sort of distaste for her presence as his master. He carries a single candle in a polished brass holder that has the odd shape simultaneously reminiscent of a Dutch clog shoe and an Arabian Evenings Aladdin’s lamp.

  “Where is my box?” she asks, staring at him with the intensity of a vulture.

  “M’Lady?” The man’s one greying brow artfully rises in a dissonant combination of barely concealed horror and civility as he attempts to edge away from her without dripping hot candle wax upon his gnarled fingers.

  “The box with the remains, I mean. Do you recall our conversation regarding a certain ancient beauty, possibly irrelevant to all of this, or possibly not? Nairis the Fabled One? My means of Ducal blackmail?”

  “How could one forget. . . .”

  “Where is my Lord the Duke, by the way?”

  “Most probably in his study. Would you like your—ahem—box, now? Would you, perchance be considering a departure?”

  “Almost, my good man. First, the box, and then our Duke. Or rather, first the Duke, and the box will ensue, reasserting itself.”

  “As you wish.”

  She follows Harmion and his solitary candle down several corridors, stopping before a somewhat familiar door.

  “His study,” says the butler. I believe the thing you inquire about is within.”

  “The Duke is within? Oh, good.”

  “His Grace is not a thing. I refer to the remains of Nairis. And His Grace might also be present. Shall I inquire—”

  “No, thank you. And—do you have a sense of play?” she suddenly adds, watching with amusement.

  “Only with my Lord I do. For others, only sarcasm,” Harmion responds with dignity, and turns away, disdaining another word.

  “Stop,” she says. “Come closer, yes, here. Now put that candle down on the side table here, yes. No, do not stare at me so, just do as I ask, please.”

  Frowning, the butler obeys. The candle holder is deposited with tremulous arthritic hands upon a narrow table in the corridor.

  “Now walk. Back and forth in the patch of candlelight.”

  Harmion stares at her for once as though she is genuinely addled. And then he slowly begins to pace where she indicates, while she in turn watches him.

  “That will be enough, Harmion, thank you.”

  “Anything else. . . ?” At this point he is prepared to be unsurprised if she requests him to stand on his head.

  “Yes,” she says. “Duke Rossian, come out of his shadow.” And without looking back, she enters the study. Rossian steps within immediately behind her.

  Inside the room, the single observation window with its well-worn elbow ledge shows the sun fading in a red coal sliver at the horizon. Air pours with cold into the chamber, while the sky is a mass of indigo twilight and splotches of rust. Soon, the shutters will need to be drawn for the night.

  “Not too bad,” he says. “Only four minutes and a dozen seconds. However, as a proxy of your Cousin, you have lost the round.”

  She stands with her back to him, a silhouette against the fading light. “I did, didn’t I.”

  It is the strangest thing she has said yet.

  For one instant Rossian almost feels sorry for her, but the feeling is supplanted by wary confusion. “My Lady, you are so very peculiar,” he says in a blank voice. “Why? What is this, all of this, really for you? What kind of game are you playing with me? You practically set yourself up for defeat, and I am unsure why. I don’t understand you—though, only moments ago I thought I did—and it’s making me disillusioned about our game. Is that what you want? Or have you been sent here by your Duchess to drive me insane with uncertainty?”

  He pauses, watching her for any reaction, but she still has not moved, standing with her back to him, which is unnerving.

  “Well, then,” he continues. “I say we call it a foul and start again. My sense of justice does not allow me to take such an advantage of you—even if you are an annoyance, or even a malicious Ducal toad.”

  Izelle turns at last, to look at him. Her mutable eyes are an unsolved puzzle in the semi-dark. “Don’t you want to find out my Cousin’s secret?” she asks earnestly. She does not blink, or at least he does not see a movement, for the room has grown too dark.

  “Not in particular . . . I would rather simply play.” His response is in turn more earnest than he wants to admit. It simply comes out of him as an exhalation of breath. Words laden with twilight.

  His manner is suddenly exhausted, apathetic in the usual way, and inside him the game is over. Out there, beyond the window, the sky has turned into a pit of darkness. The sun is gone. The room is now a morass thrown into interminable gloom.

  “Harmion!” he calls without using the bell pull, as though the old butler has preternatural senses and can hear him—mayhap he does, lurking patiently outside his door. “Harmion, some light here! A candle, please.”

  “That’s all you want, isn’t it, to play? Why don’t you care the same way as all the rest of them?” Izelle says. “I thought you were dying because you couldn’t be free.”

  “I am . . . tired. Of futility.”

  “But you never even tried! Not as the others try, constantly!”

  Harmion enters, his candle flickering, shadows swinging wildly. He does not need to be told and approaches the work table with its dust-strewn clutter of books, and finds the oil lamp. The candle dips precariously into the open neck, makes contact, and the wick inside catches on fire. With a spark the lamp ignites, and the glow it casts around the room is full and rich, unlike the small elemental flicker of the candle.

  Next, Harmion proceeds to close the shutters, and the cold from the outside is now kept out, contained.

  There is enough cold left within this room—cold expressions, cold words, cold beating clockwork of hearts, fueled with frustrated anger.<
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  “It is precisely why I stopped trying,” the Duke says. “Because I see them thus, so despicable and vulgar, so desperately selfish, coming here trying to wheedle this thing out of me. I am not like them. I may be selfish and wicked but at least I’m not a vulture.”

  Harmion exits, closing the door soundlessly behind him.

  Izelle sighs. She walks to the table where the infamous box with the remains of Nairis stands as it has been originally placed. She ignores it and instead watches the lamp, its steady orange glow that suffuses the room. It is the only source of warmth.

  She inhales deeply the air that has received a fragrant effusion of the lamp oil. The scent is a pleasing mixture of roses and wild sage.

  “Then—why don’t you simply tell them—tell me!—what the essence of your secret is, out of plain mercy?” she whispers. “You at least, could be noble where they would not.”

  “I don’t have mercy for them. They are obscene, dirt. Besides, it would make no difference.”

  “I suppose that makes me dirt also.”

  She looks at him, searches for any reaction.

  The Duke pulls up his chair and sits down. He puts one foot up over the other, folds his arms in a stubbornly comfortable pose. His beautiful face limned with golden glow is impassive.

  “Well, then,” she carries on. “I don’t think we should continue this game.”

  “I thought we were done playing some time ago.”

  But she ignores his matter-of-fact sarcasm, his veneer of boredom. “Since in the name of the Duchess I have lost, it would only be fair that I tell you her secret now, as we’ve agreed.”

  “You what?”

  The Duke is immobilized. Even his breath fades, and for a moment he is a dead thing bereft of existence. And then he allows his lungs to resume their cycle, to expand and billow with life-breath, while his heartbeat is marking time.