by Rice, Anne
It seemed a delirious blending of elements, the wet contracting secretive pocket between her legs and this great abundance of silent eloquence pouring from her gaze as she looked lovingly down at me.
Abruptly it stopped. I was dizzy. Her lips were against my neck.
I tried with all my might to throw her off.
“I will destroy you,” I said. “I will. I vow it. If I have to chase you into the mouth of Hell,” I whispered. I strained against her grasp so hard that my own flesh burned against hers. But she wouldn’t relent. I tried to clear my mind. No, no dreams of sweetness, no.
“Get away from me, witch.”
“Hush, be quiet,” she said sorrowfully. “You are so young and so stubborn, and so brave. I was young like you. Oh, yes, and so determined and such a fearless paragon.”
“Don’t talk your filth to me,” I said.
“Hush,” she said again. “You’ll wake the house. What good will that do?” How painful, earnest and enticing she sounded. Her voice itself could have seduced me from behind a curtain. “I cannot make you safe forever,” she said, “or even for very long. Vittorio, go.”
She drew back so that I could see her sincere and large yielding eyes all the better. She was a masterpiece. And such beauty, the perfect simulacrum of the fiend I’d seen in the firelight of my chapel, needed no potions or spells to advance her cause. She was flawless and intimately magnificent.
“Oh, yes,” she confessed, her half-visible eyes searching my face, “and I do find such beauty in you it pulls on my heart,” she said. “Unfairly, unjustly. How am I to suffer this as well as all else?”
I struggled. I wouldn’t answer. I wouldn’t feed this enigmatic and infernal blaze.
“Vittorio, get out of here,” she said, lowering her voice ever more delicately and ominously. “You have a few nights, maybe not even that. If I come to you again, I may lead them to you. Vittorio—. Don’t tell anyone in Florence. They’ll laugh at you.”
She was gone.
The bed creaked and rocked. I was on my back, and my wrists ached from the pressure of her hands, and above me the window gaped on the gray featureless light, the wall beside the Inn rising up towards a sky I couldn’t quite see from this helpless vantage point.
I was alone in the room. She was nowhere.
All of a sudden, I willed my limbs to action, but before I could so much as move, she appeared again, above in the window, visible from the waist to the top of her bowed head, peering down at me, and with her hands she tore loose the low embroidered border of her gown and bared her naked white breasts before me—tiny, rounded, very close together and with piquant nipples visible only in their darkness. With her right hand she scratched her left breast, just above the little nipple, made it bleed.
“Witch!”
I rose up to grab hold of her, to kill her, and instead felt her hand grasp my head, and there came the pressure of her left breast into my very mouth, irresistibly frail yet firm. Once again, all that was real melted and was swept away like so much idle smoke rising from a fire, and we were together in the meadow which belonged only to us, only to our diligent and indissoluble embraces. I sucked the milk from her, as if she was maiden and mother, virgin and queen, all the while I broke with my thrusts whatever flower remained inside of her to be torn open.
I was let go. I fell. Helpless, unable even to raise a hand to keep her from flying, I fell down, weak and stupid onto the bed, my face wet and my limbs trembling.
I couldn’t sit up. I could do nothing. I saw in flashes our field of tender white irises and red irises, the loveliest flowers of Tuscany, the wild irises of our land, blowing in the greenest grass, and I saw her running away from me. Yet all this was transparent, half-tinted, and could not mask the tiny cell of a room as it had done before, only linger, like a veil drawn across my face, to torment me with its tickling weightless silkiness.
“Spells!” I whispered. “My God, if you have ever committed me to guardian angels, will you spur them on now to cover me with their wings!” I sighed. “I need them.”
Finally, shakily and with dim vision, I sat up. I rubbed at my neck. Chills ran up and down my spine, and the backs of my arms. My body was still full of desire.
I squeezed my eyes shut, refusing to think of her yet wanting anything, any source of stimulation, that would soothe this awful need.
I lay back again, and was very still until this carnal madness had left me.
I was a man again then, for not having been, at random, a man.
I got up, ready for tears, and I took my candle down to the main room of the Inn, trying not to make a sound on the crooked winding stone stairs, and I got a light from a candle there on a hook on the wall, at the mouth of the passage, and I went back up, clinging to this comforting little light, shielding the shuddering flame with my cupped hand and praying still, and then I set down the candle.
I climbed up and tried to see what I could from the window.
Nothing, nothing but an impossible drop beneath me, a sloping wall up which a flesh-and-blood maiden could never have climbed, and higher, the mute, passive sky, in which the few stars had been covered by fleecy clouds as if not to acknowledge my prayers or my predicament.
It seemed absolutely certain I was going to die.
I was going to fall victim to these demons. She was right. How could I possibly exact the revenge they deserved? How in Hell could I do it! Yet I believed in my purpose utterly. I believed in my revenge as completely as I believed in her, this witch whom I had touched with my very own fingers, who had dared to kindle a wanton conflict in my soul, who had come with her comrades of the night to slaughter my family.
I couldn’t overmaster the images of the night before, of her standing bewildered in the chapel door. I couldn’t get the taste of her off my lips. All I had to do was think of her breasts, and my body would weaken as if she were feeding my desire from her nipple.
Make this subside, I prayed. You cannot run. You cannot go off to Florence, you cannot live forever with nothing but the memory of the slaughter you saw, that is impossible, unthinkable. You cannot.
I wept when I realized that I wouldn’t be alive now if it had not been for her.
It was she, the ashen-haired one I was cursing with every breath, who had stopped her hooded companion from killing me. It would have been a complete victory!
A calm came over me. Well, if I was going to die, there was no choice, really. I would get them first. I would somehow do it.
As soon as the sun was up, so was I, and walking around the town, my saddlebags over my shoulder casually, as if they didn’t contain a fortune, I sized up quite a portion of Santa Maddalana, with its treeless, narrow-stoned streets, built centuries before, perhaps some of its buildings with their wild patternless mortared stones going back even to Roman times.
It was a marvelously peaceful and prosperous town.
The forges were already at work, and so were the cabinetmakers and also the saddlemakers; there were several shoemakers dealing in some fine slippers as well as the workaday boots, and quite a cluster of jewelers and men who worked in a great variety of precious metals, as well as the usual swordmakers, men who made keys and the like and those who dealt in hides and furs.
I passed more fancy shops than I could count. One could buy fancy fabrics here, right from Florence, I supposed, and lace from north and south it seemed, and Oriental spices. The butchers were having a time of it with the abundance of fresh meat. And there were many wine shops, and I passed at least a couple of busy notaries, letter writers and the like, and several doctors or, rather, apothecaries.
Carts were rolling through the front gates, and there was even a little crush in the streets now and then before the sun was even high enough to come fiercely down over the close-tiled roofs and hit the bare stones on which I plodded uphill.
The churches rang their bells for Mass, and I saw plenty of schoolchildren rushing past me, all rather clean and neatly dressed, and then two
little crews being paraded by monks into the churches, both of which were quite antique and had no ornament on the front at all, save for statues deep in niches—saints who scarcely had any features left to them at all—the heavily patched stones of the facades obviously having weathered the frequent earthquakes of this region.
There were two rather ordinary bookshops that had almost nothing much, except the prayer books one would expect to find, and these at very high prices. Two merchants sold really fine wares from the East. And there was a cluster of carpet sellers, too, who dealt in an impressive variety of country-made goods and intricate carpets from Byzantium.
Lots of money was changing hands. There were well-dressed people showing off their fine clothes. It seemed a self-sufficient place, though there were travelers coming uphill with the clop of horses’ hooves echoing on the barren walls. And I think I spied one neglected and very much fortified convent.
I passed at least two more inns, and as I crisscrossed through the barely passable alleyways here and there, I ascertained that there were actually three basic streets to the town, all running parallel up and down the hill.
At the far deep end were the gates by which I had entered, and the huge farmers’ markets opened now in the piazza.
At the high end was the ruined fortress or castle where once the Lord had lived—a great cumbersome mass of old stones, of which only a part was visible from the street, and in the lower floors of this complex there were the town’s governing offices.
There were several small grottoes or piazzas, and old fountains almost crumbled away but still giving forth their gurgling water. Old women were busy, shuffling along with their market baskets and their shawls in spite of the warmth; and I saw beautiful young girls about giving me the eye, all of them very young.
I didn’t want any part of them.
As soon as Mass was over and school had begun, I went to the Dominican church—the largest and most impressive of the three I could readily see—and asked at the rectory for a priest. I had to go to Confession.
There came out a young priest, very handsome with well-formed limbs and a healthy look to his complexion and a truly devout manner to him, his black and white robes very clean-looking. He looked at my attire, and my sword, indeed he took me in very respectfully but quite comprehensively, and obviously presuming me to be a person of importance, invited me into a small room for the Confession.
He was gracious more than servile. He had no more than a crown of golden hair clipped very short around the top of his bald head, and large almost shy eyes.
He sat down, and I knelt close to him on the bare floor, and then out of me came the whole lurid tale.
With bowed head, I went on and on with it, rushing from one thing to another, from the first hideous happenings that had so stirred my curiosity and alarm, to my father’s fragmented and mysterious words and at last to the raid itself and the dreadful assassination of everyone in our compound. By the time I came to the death of my brother and sister, I was gesticulating madly, and all but shaping my brother’s head with my hands in the empty air, and gasping and unable to catch my breath.
Only when I was utterly finished with every last word did I look up and realize that the young priest was staring down at me in perfect distress and horror.
I didn’t know what to make of his expression. You could have seen the very same face on a man startled by an insect or an approaching battalion of bloody murderers.
What had I expected, for the love of God?
“Look, Father,” I said. “All you have to do is send someone up that mountain and see for yourself!” I shrugged, and implored him with my open hands. “That’s all! Send someone to look. Nothing’s stolen, Father, nothing’s taken, but what I took! Go look! I’ll wager nothing has been disturbed except by ravens and buzzards if such are like to go up there.”
He said nothing. The blood was palpitating in his young face, and his mouth was open and his eyes had a dazed, miserable look.
Oh, this was too marvelous. A silky boy of a priest, probably fresh out of the seminary, used to hearing nuns tell of evil thoughts, and men once a year muttering resentfully about vices of the flesh because their wives had dragged them to their duty.
I became incensed.
“You are under the Seal of the Confessional,” I said, trying to be patient with him, and not to play the Lord too much, because I could do that with priests if I wasn’t careful; they made me so mad when they were stupid. “But I will give you permission, under the Seal, to send a messenger up that mountain to see with your own eyes …”
“But son, don’t you see,” he said, speaking with surprising resolve and firmness in his low voice. “The Medici themselves may have sent this band of assassins.”
“No, no, no, Father,” I pleaded, shaking my head. “I saw her hand fall. I cut off the creature’s hand, I tell you. I saw her put it back. They were demons. Listen to me. These are witches, these are from Hell, these beings, and there’s too many of them for me to fight alone. I need help. There’s no time for disbelief. There’s no time for rational reservations. I need the Dominicans!”
He shook his head. He didn’t even hesitate.
“You are losing your mind, son,” he said. “Something dreadful has happened to you, there’s no doubt of that, and you believe all this, but it didn’t happen. You are imagining things. Look, there are old women around who claim they make charms …”
“I know all that,” I said. “I know an ordinary alchemist or witch when I see one. This was no side-street magic, Father, no country bunch of curses. I’m telling you, these demons slaughtered everyone in the castle, in the villages. Don’t you see?”
I went into the lurid particulars again. I told how she had come into the window of my room, but then when I was halfway through it, I realized how utterly worse I was making it by going on about Ursula.
Why, this man thought I’d woken in a hot dream, imagining a damned succubus. This was futile, this entire enterprise.
My heart was hurting me in my chest. I was sweating all over. This was a waste of time.
“Give me absolution, then,” I said.
“I want to ask something of you,” he said. He touched my hand. He was trembling. He looked more dazed and perplexed than even before, and very concerned, for my state of mind, I assumed.
“What is that?” I said coldly. I wanted to get away. I had to find a monastery! Or a damned alchemist. There were alchemists in this town. I could find someone, someone who had read the old works, the works of Hermes Trismegistus or Lactantius or St. Augustine, somebody who knew about demons.
“Have you read St. Thomas Aquinas?” I asked, choosing the most obvious demonologist of whom I could think. “Father, he talks all about demons. Look, you think I would have believed all this myself last year at this time? I thought all sorcery was for backdoor swindlers. These were demons!” I could not be deterred. I went at him.
“Father, in the Summa Theologica, the first book, St. Thomas talks of the fallen angels, that some of them are allowed to be here on earth, so that all of these fallen angels don’t just fall out of the natural scheme of things. They are here, allowed to be useful, to tempt men, and Father, they carry the fire of Hell about with them! It’s in St. Thomas. They are here. They have … have … bodies we can’t understand. The Summa says so. It says that angels have bodies which are beyond our understanding! That’s what this woman possesses.” I struggled to remember the actual argument. I struggled in Latin. “This is what she does, this being! It’s a form, it’s a limited form, but one that I can’t understand, but she was there, and I know it on account of her actions.”
He put up his hand for my patience.
“Son, please,” he said. “Allow me to confide what you have confessed to me to the Pastor,” he asked me. “You understand, if I do this, he too will be bound by the same Seal of Confession as I am bound. But let me ask him to come in and let me tell him what you have said, and let me ask that h
e speak to you. You understand, I cannot do any of this without your solemn permission.”
“Yes, I know all that,” I said. “What good will this do? Let me see this Pastor.”
Now I was being too haughty entirely, too impertinent. I was exhausted. I was doing the old Signore trick of treating a country priest like he was a servant. This was a man of God, and I had to get a grip on myself. Maybe the Pastor had read more, understood more. Oh, but who would understand who had not seen?
There came back to me a fleeting yet vivid and searing memory of my father’s anxious face on the night before the demons had struck. The pain was inexpressible.
“I’m sorry, Father,” I said to the priest. I winced, trying to contain this memory, this awful drench of misery and hopelessness. I wondered why any of us were alive, ever, for any reason!
And then the words of my exquisite tormentor came back, her own tortured voice of the last night saying that she had been young too, and such a paragon. What had she meant, speaking of herself with such sorrow?
My study of Aquinas came back to haunt me. Were not demons supposed to remain absolutely confirmed in their hatred of us? In the pride which had made them sin?
That was not the sinuous luscious creature who had come to me. But this was folly. I was feeling for her, which is what she had wanted me to do. I had only so many hours of daylight to plan her destruction and must be on with it.
“Please, yes, Father, as you wish,” I said. “But bless me first.”
This drew him out of his troubled ruminations. He looked at me as if I’d startled him.
At once he gave his blessing and his absolution.
“You can do what you wish with the Pastor,” I said. “Yes, please, ask the Pastor if he will see me. And here, for the church.” I gave him several ducats.
He stared at the money. But he didn’t touch it. He stared at this gold as if it were hot coals.
“Father, take it. This is a tidy little fortune. Take it.”
“No, you wait here—or I tell you what, you come out into the garden.”
The garden was lovely, a little old grotto, from which you could see the town sneaking up on the right all the way to the castle, and then you could see over the walls far out over the mountains. There was an antique statue of St. Dominic there, a fountain and a bench, and some old words carved into the stone about a miracle.