The Duke In His Castle

by Vera Nazarian

  “And then you would have one insane but beautiful Nairis on your hands,” Izelle snaps. She is getting more and more irritated for a reason known only to herself. “Such a relationship just might promise pleasures, isn’t it true, my Duke? Idyllic sensual pleasures for a man—are you the man I am supposing you to be?”

  He straightens abruptly, his form still and inscrutable. “What? What in Heaven? You, my Lady, suggest things that are offensive.”

  But then, it’s as if he is deflated, wrung out, and the cold energy of anger leaves his eyes, leaves him with the hollow place just below his lungs, and apathy. Now he deliberately ignores the Duchess, that little gadfly with a foul sting, and stands leaning over his creature Nairis—for yes, she has become his, hasn’t she?

  There is a never-before-seen kindness in his eyes. Inside, he feels a warm slow blooming of joy, a strange after-effect of creation. This is what the Deity must feel when the Deity creates the Universe; the scale is different yet the parallel remains.

  The Duke then reaches out gently (his hands are trembling) to help the “new-born” one to sit up. His strong, expert fingers have lost their ruthless aplomb and are suddenly hesitating, for he is unsure where it is appropriate to touch her. And so he places them lightly underneath her shoulders, fingertips to skin which is feeling cool to the touch, for the night has its effect upon the living exposed flesh. He presses his fingers; they dig into her shoulders, soft, resilient; he lifts her up into a sitting position.

  The creature Nairis obeys the directed pressure of his hands automatically, making small animal-infant sounds as she exhales, and her skin is covered with goose bumps from the compounded moments of chill. He tries not to look now, but her small plump breasts slide down her delicate ribcage while their roundness becomes pronounced on their underside; at the same time they are suddenly sharp-pointed.

  The Duke looks away, then learns how to look without looking, to see her with his peripheral vision in order not to see lower, the smooth slender stomach, the oval depression of the navel, and continuing below—no. Her glassy eyes remain wide open, and he focuses there, so that it is easier to think of her as still unreal, an animated doll.

  For, in those moments now that he is fully aware of this incarnate responsibility before him, the Duke is cold with terror and with the choices piling up, the temptations that are presented. And in thought he continues to blaspheme, as notions race past him, Does a creator feel lust for his own creation, does Deity desire what is most innocent and unadulterated in the first instant of engendering, just before mortal corruption takes over?

  Izelle watches him. If she suspects what goes through him at that point, she is never to be sure. It is easier, instead, to let him be, and simply feel pity.

  In that moment, Harmion, somehow knowing exactly what is required of him, returns to the open-sky chamber with maid-servants, with additional candles, and with a strange fixed look in his eyes. One maid brings with her a freshly laundered sheet to wrap about the nude woman-child. Their intrusion into this place of ritual is somehow peculiar and breaks the concentrated tension; the sheet is unfolded and its sharp revitalizing scent of lavender soap wafts on the cold air. Another maid brings soft fabric slippers, and a stack of additional linen.

  The Duke stands back, torn out of a personal reverie, and allows the nude innocent to be concealed from his view and from the night by the generous sheet.

  Nairis accepts the covering and shivers, her posture slumping as she withdraws into the sheet and herself. They gather around her and ever-so-gently, with the help of many hands, they teach the body of Nairis to get up.

  She stands. Lovely and limber, yet she totters on her feet newly-shod in the satin slippers. She has to be led away, helped along like a rag doll. As she turns her back, her hair is glorious, a brown and red illusion of flow, nearly to her waist, shimmering in the candlelight. . . .

  Izelle is watching, oddly frozen, unmoved by the sight. Impossibly, she is allowing them to take the woman-child away. It’s as if some new emotion is tearing the Duchess in twain, so that it’s easier simply to do nothing.

  “Where should she be taken, M’Lord?” says Harmion, clearing his throat, pausing just barely at the doorway. And then he adds, “I recommend the Mad Queens Tower, if it’s all the same with Your Grace. The quarters there are sufficiently presentable and ready for accommodation.”

  The Duke stares at him uncomprehending, it seems. Then, he comes to himself. “What? Oh . . . yes, that will be fine, Harmion. Please take her there. Help her . . . ready for the night.”

  When all are gone, all but the candle-lit table, the empty former box of death, and looming night-shadows, Rossian remains standing, immobilized, watching the night. His gaze slithers along the walls, averted from Izelle, and he takes deep breaths of the cold air.

  “I am . . . sorry,” she says. “I’ve implied things that are unworthy.”

  He remains as he is, never turning her way.

  “Rossian? My Lord Duke?”

  “You, my dear, have a malicious bent. Yes, I see it now. You called me truly cruel, but what do you call yourself?” He speaks unexpectedly in a hard voice, stronger than she imagines him to be capable of, and she is startled.

  And then he turns, and she sees the truth—receptive wounded eyes, gleaming dark with moisture.

  “Do you really think I am—like that?” he asks, and his voice fluctuates; is cracking. “That I would think of her with such filth? Her, whom I perceive only as a dear thing I have somehow wrought? To desire such sacrilege?”

  Desiring sacrilege. Being profane. Do you really think that I—Mad inconclusive thought fragments begin to race in him, driven by fever. . . .

  “I am sorry,” she says again. “Forgive me, for I am indeed quite offensive, often intentionally, but sometimes not. Only—there is something about you, Lord, that touches me peculiarly—” She cuts off abruptly. Then, just as abruptly, she changes the subject. As she speaks, her voice rings bright, sending echoes against stone.

  “Well, now that you presumably know your secret, would you care to test the castle boundary once more?”

  Could it be that everything stills then, is suspended. The night air pauses in its flow. The stars stop their infinitesimal journey across the tiny patch of boundlessness overhead.

  The Duchess holds her breath, watching him with unflinching eyes.

  But the hurt-transfigured gaze of the Duke remains grim, and there is no new hopeful resolve in his voice, only weariness. “No,” he says. “Not now—tomorrow. As I am now, I have no more strength for acts of power. . . .” And he throws back his head and glances with a shudder at the open sky overhead.

  The Duchess of White averts her eyes, allowing him the privacy of weakness. He has earned it in full, tonight.

  IV: A Dream of Falling

  It is three past midnight. The Mad Queens Tower stands on the northernmost end of the castle grounds, as thick and squat a cylinder as any, one of the many rounded turrets that protrude in ancient tumescence from the baseline of the castle foundation.

  The top of the tower does not narrow into a point. Rather, it has a flat roof which serves as an observation point, with thick crenellated parapets rising in a brim of protection. Wind hums through the crenels between the merlons and disappears into the gaping absolute darkness of the descending stairwell, in a twister, a whirlpool of aerial force. There it races down, down, down, falling without end, like a nightmare-dream.

  Until it hits bottom, full force.

  If wind were a man, it might be expected to die, as such things be told in the proverbial way of things.

  They say, always wake up before you hit bottom.

  Only, the bottom is no end, and the end is not the bottom. The base of the stairwell opens like a curling snake into a courtyard area, and here the wind and the clamoring air currents have the chance to continue their mad rush, onward and out into the world. The sky of the world is wrought of only a few degrees lesser darkness than
the interior of the stairwell and other places hidden by stone walls, on account of a sprinkling of stars that lend a diffused glow to the heavens—throw a spoon of milk into a cauldron of pitch, stir to smoothness, and the dark remains, yet its nature has been altered just a degree beyond overt perception.

  On such a night as this, with no moon, it is said that in the ancient days the noblewomen who reside in the tower would receive lovers. If the lover does not come, the high-born woman walks out onto the roof and waits for him, sometimes with a single flickering candle to signify her presence; its light can be seen for miles, a cry in the void. She waits, standing in the chill air of many nights, and eventually she becomes unbalanced. So many blue blood females wither with longing, with neglect or betrayal, with unrequited or simply forgotten love, that the tower, burdened with history, bears their woeful name.

  Queens, Princesses, Duchesses, Countesses and lesser Ladies of various rank—wives and maidens, daughters and sisters—all are equal in the eyes of anguish, all are royalty of unfulfilled desire. In the moment of their emotional nadir they are all Mad Queens, tearing out their hair and gouging eyeballs, screaming and foaming, if only within the recesses of their broken minds. Meanwhile, their outsides often remain composed and placid till the end, numb hollow shells over roiling death inside.

  The tower stands, has stood for decades unto centuries unto stretches of time unaccounted, for the Dukedom of Violet is one of the oldest in the realm, and this place, the castle grounds, is older yet. There is a bit of irony that most recently the Mad Queens Tower houses neither Queens nor madwomen, nor any other tormented souls, but occasional guests of the living Duke.

  Such as tonight.

  The Duchess of White and the strange creature Nairis are both given elegant accommodations in the tower—as elegant as the crumbling castle permits. While the Duchess enjoys the services of a maid for the night, a change of clothing, a warm fire in the hearth, much perfumed linen and warm coverlets, a sleeping cap and gown of the softest fabric, a tray of sweet pastries and a hot tea service, Nairis—not much more cognizant than a newborn—is unveiled by three maids no less, dressed in a sleeping gown, placed on the chamberpot to no effect then finally success, cleaned up, spoon-fed a hot soup, scrubbed around the neck, face and ears, hair brushed till it crackles and gleams, and finally laid upon a feather bed upon which the slender body of Nairis sinks.

  Nairis lies thus, listening with the precise awareness of a wild animal to each snapping twig and hissing spark of the fireplace, to each rustle and creak of settling stone (for even after all these centuries, the castle moves, breathing like an ancient legendary wyrm). She is warmed by a thick quilted coverlet and a hot brick wrapped in several layers of cotton. One maid has gone but two maids still hover over her even now, watching her motionless form, her gently flickering eyelids as they become groggy with the need for sleep.

  But apparently, as many newborns, Nairis has the curious inability to fall asleep even when exhausted. And thus they come to rock her; one older buxom maid draws Nairis up to her motherly chest and moves to and fro, making soothing hum-noises of a lullaby, while the very young one runs her fingers kindly over the forehead and tender filaments of auburn hair.

  It must be noted that the buxom maid has been selected for this task because she is a nursing mother with a steady and reliable supply of milk. Before coming to attend Nairis she is told of the possibility that the strange young woman—who is explained to be suffering from a malady and is unable to understand or look after herself—might require a breast to suckle, just as a newborn, in which case the maid is ready to accommodate her.

  Eventually all three become drowsy. Nairis is soothed and lies back against the feather bed, is covered and cosseted, and her eyes, overcast with languor, are finally closed.

  Since she appears to be asleep, the two maids pull the draperies nearly closed around the great bed leaving just a small space to observe her, then make themselves comfortable in two large upholstered chairs. They have been told to stay with her overnight, to watch for any peculiarities, to handle any of her needs. And so they do as they are told for the most part, watching with one eye, as the common saying goes. The older maid is already snoring softly, chin sunken down toward the deep shadowed space between two fat bulging breasts, while the younger maid goes to bank the flames in the fireplace, stirs the coals, then clambers up into the other chair, feet curled up underneath her apron for extra warmth.

  A single tallow candle remains lit on the side table.

  By three o’clock past midnight, the candle is nearly down to one third of its column, with the rest of it pooling in the dish.

  It is then the door of the chamber opens and a gaunt tall man enters the room.

  The Duke makes no sound as he steps inside. It’s an uncanny ability that he has attained as a side-effect of his arcane learning—he can move in absolute silence and, if he desires, can make himself dissolve into abstract non-presence with nothing more than a subtle shift of focus. He employs this craft upon occasion to test himself, by passing within inches of oblivious servants in the hallways and listening to private conversations.

  And now he uses his ability to stand and observe and then approach. He moves toward the bed and is undetected by the maids. The younger whimpers like a pup in her sleep and shifts her cramped position in the chair in restless slumber, while the older breathes heavily in a deep rumble; her bonnet has shifted slightly to expose wisps of corn-yellow hair.

  The Duke moves past them both and draws part of the bed curtain aside so that the waning candle casts a clean radius of illumination over the sleeping Nairis. She is lying on her back, one slender arm thrown up on the pillow, coverlets bunched to one side exposing the shape of her waist and hips covered by the linen nightgown. Her long hair fans out along the pillow and coverlet, meanders in curling tendrils along the neckline of the gown and her chest, and obscures half her face in a natural tangle. The portions of her face that show are defined by clean lines, a slender angled chin that continues into an elegant neck, a delicate pulse at the throat.

  He watches that pulse, mesmerized. What has drawn him here, but this? The pulse of her life flickering in and out of being, her rhythmic movement of lungs that he hears several floors away in a remote different tower as though they are grand bellows of a smithy, working in his mind.

  He considers, Does the Deity feel this urge toward the Creation, this pull to be with the offspring and observe?

  Indeed, is there a pang of terror that comes to grip his own lungs in a fist, fear that the creature left to fend for itself cannot be thus, cannot exist in stand-alone condition without the parent, maker, progenitor?

  Or is he merely insane within his permanent condition of solitude? Is his reaction akin to that of a natural parent watching his newborn child, but he does not know it is thus?

  Rossian looks at her and thinks, No. It is not the same thing at all. And he does not feel fatherly in the least, nor divine . . .

  He feels profane.

  The Duke knows of the function of sex, and is familiar with the cycle of procreation and the mechanics of the act involved for the human animal. Yet he never engages in such intimacy, for there is no one and nothing that can overcome the defenses of his inner reserve. Not even the internal urges of his body, the pulsing alchemical humours that course through his blood with regularity and bring him erotic dreams and nightly swellings of his genitals, not even this chronic restless longing for unknown release has sufficient influence over his aloof state.

  Maybe it’s that the Duke knows so well how to curtail one kind of longing—that for freedom—and as a result finds it easier to rule himself in all other things. Or maybe yet again, this is but a side-effect of his proficiency in the arcane arts.

  Whatever the reason, the Duke is virgin in body; in his mind he has allowed himself the full range of debauchery known to the imagination, and it seems to be enough to sustain him.

  Until now.

  The Du
ke watches Nairis, the living one, and thinks how she is thus because of him. Only hours ago, she is not—she is nothing, death, a bit of dust and desiccated bones. And now she moves; he has bestowed upon her automation, existence, life.

  He is god to her mortality, the maker to her flesh.

  And he feels a profound need to reach out and despoil what he has brought into being. Far from being the sculptor of legend who creates a statue of a beauty, falls in love with her, and in the course of love brings marble to life, no—he is an artist locked in his studio with an intricate finished canvas over which he suddenly pours random globs of pigments in an elemental burst of creation-fury.

  The maids continue sleeping and the candle burns lower still, while the Duke stands in atrophy of the senses and movement, watching the living canvas before him as she slumbers, innocent. She is his, this creature. So easy to take a fistful of that soft hair, and pull. . . . To maul her slender arms. To rip the linen cloth from her and see her center, her solar plexus, and what lies below.

  And the Duke leans down and reaches out with his hand to run his fingers like a whisper upon the inside of her upturned arm. He feels a cool place on her skin, followed by a sudden warming, and, as his fingers continue slithering toward more tepid places, a deep heat—in sleep her living body burns.

  And his own body responds, so that suddenly he is burning too, as though dreaming in sensual pleasure. He leans over Nairis, and feels himself growing, as his penis fills with the blood-humour and hardens, prodding at the confines of his clothing.

  The maid stops her rhythmic snoring and coughs, without waking up; he glances her way to make sure, notes the rolling of her breasts engorged with milk as they pool sideways in her bodice while she lies draped against the padded armrests of the chair. The peculiarity of this arrangement affects him—the fact that all these other women are in the room, no matter how oblivious—and he feels an unexpected additional pang of desire; desire is misdirected and he has no conscious way of curbing it in this odd moment in particular.