by Rice, Anne
“And why didn’t they kill him, for the love of God,” I said disgustedly.
He looked most worried and sympathetic.
“I think they count on our Master to do it,” he said, “as it is you that the man wants. How can you be certain the Master means to stay away for four nights? When has he ever said such things? He comes, he goes, he warns no one.”
“Hmmm, don’t argue with me,” I answered patiently. “Riccardo, he isn’t coming home for four nights, and I will not stay cooped up in this house, and not while Lord Harlech stirs up dirt.”
“You’d better stay here!” Riccardo answered. “Amadeo, this Englishman is famous with his sword. He practices with a fencing master. He’s the terror of the taverns. You knew that when you picked up with him, Amadeo. Think on what you do! He’s famous for everything bad and nothing good.”
“So then come with me. You need only distract him and I’ll take him.”
“No, you’re good with your sword, true enough, but you can’t take a man who’s been practicing with the blade since before you were born.”
I lay back down on the pillow. What should I do? I was on fire to go out into the world, on fire to gaze at things with my great sense of the drama and significance of my last days among the living, and now this! And the man who had been worth a few nights’ riotous roughhouse pleasure was no doubt advertising far and wide his discontent.
It was bitter, but it seemed I had to stay at home. There was nothing to do. I wanted very much to kill this man, kill him with my own dagger and sword, and even thought I had a good chance of it, but what was this petty adventure to what lay before me when my Master returned?
The fact was, I had already left the world of regular things, the world of regular scores to be settled, and could not be drawn now into a foolish blunder that might be my forfeit of the strange destiny towards which I moved.
“All right, and Bianca is safe from this man?” I asked Riccardo.
“Quite safe. She has more admirers than can fit in the door of her house, and she’s marshaled all against this man and for you. Now write her something of gratitude and common sense, and swear to me as well that you’ll remain indoors.”
I got up and went to the Master’s writing desk. I picked up the pen.
I was stopped by an awful clatter, and then a series of piercing irritaring cries. They echoed through the stone rooms of the house. I heard people running. Riccardo leapt to attention and put his hand on the hilt of his sword.
I gathered up my own weapons, unsheathing my light rapier and my dagger, both.
“Good Lord Jesus, the man can’t be in the house.”
A horrid scream drowned out the others.
The smallest of us all, Giuseppe, appeared in the door, his face a luminous white, and his eyes big and round.
“What the hell’s the matter,” Riccardo demanded, catching hold of him.
“He’s been stabbed. Look, he’s bleeding!” I said.
“Amadeo, Amadeo!” It rang loudly from the stone stairwell. It was the Englishman’s voice.
The boy doubled over in his pain. The wound was in the pit of his stomach, utterly cruel.
Riccardo was beside himself.
“Shut the doors!” he shouted.
“How can I,” I cried, “when the other boys may blunder right into his path?”
I ran out and into the big salon and into the portego, the great room of the house.
Another boy, Jacope, lay crumpled on the floor, pushing at it with his knees. I saw the blood running on the stones.
“Oh, this is beyond all fairness; this is a slaughter of innocents!” I shouted. “Lord Harlech, show yourself. You’re about to die.”
I heard Riccardo cry out behind me. The little boy was obviously dead.
I ran towards the stairs. “Lord Harlech, I’m here!” I called out. “Come out, you brutish coward, you slayer of children! I have a millstone ready for your neck!”
Riccardo spun me around. “There, Amadeo,” he whispered. “I’m with you.” His blade sang out as he drew it. He was much better than me with the sword, but this battle was mine.
The man was at the far end of the portego. I had hoped he would be staggering drunk, but no such luck. I saw in a moment that any dream he might have had of taking me away by force was now gone; he had slain two boys, and he knew his lust had led him to a final stand. This was hardly an enemy crippled by love.
“Jesus in Heaven, help us!” whispered Riccardo.
“Lord Harlech,” I cried. “You dare make a shambles of my Master’s house!” I stepped aside from Riccardo to give us both room, as I motioned Riccardo to come forward, away from the head of the steps. I felt the weight of the rapier. Not heavy enough. I wished to God I had practiced with it more.
The Englishman came towards me, a taller man than I had ever noted, with a great reach to his arm that would be a powerful advantage, his cape flapping, his feet sheathed in heavy boots, his rapier raised and his long Italian dagger ready in the other hand. At least he didn’t have a true and heavy sword.
Dwarfed by the great room, he was nevertheless big of stature and had a head of roaring British copper hair. His blue eyes were stewed in blood, but he was steady in his walk and in his murderous gaze. His face was wet with bitter tears.
“Amadeo,” he called out over the vast room as he came on. “You cut my heart out of my chest while I lived and breathed, and you took it with you! We shall be together this night in Hell.”
6
The high long portego of our house, the entrance hall, was a perfectly wonderful place to die. There was nothing in it to mar its gorgeous mosaic floors with their circles of colored marble stones, and their festive pattern of winding flowers and tiny wild birds.
We had the entire field upon which to fight, with not a chair in the way to stop us from killing each other.
I advanced on the Englishman before I had time to really admit that I wasn’t very good with the sword yet, had never shown an instinct for it, and I had no inkling of just what my Master would have me do just now, that is, what he would advise if he were here.
I made several bold thrusts at Lord Harlech, which he parried so easily that I should have lost heart. But just when I thought I’d catch my breath and maybe even run, he swept in with his dagger and slashed my left arm. The cut stung me and infuriated me.
I went after him again, this time managing with considerable luck to get him across the throat. It was just a scratch, but it bled furiously down his tunic, and he was as angry as I was to be cut.
“You horrid damnable little devil,” he said. “You made me adore you so you could draw and quarter me at your pleasure. You promised me you’d come back!”
In fact, he kept up this sort of verbal barrage the entire time we fought. He seemed to need it, rather like a goading battle drum and fife.
“Come on, you despicable little angel, I’ll tear your wings off!” he said.
He drove me back with a fast volley of thrusts. I stumbled, lost my balance and fell but managed to scramble up again, using the low position to stab dangerously close to his scrotum as I did so, which gave him a start. I ran at him, knowing now there was nothing to be gained by drawing this out.
He dodged my blade, laughed at me and caught me with the dagger, this time on the face.
“Pig!” I growled before I could stop myself. I hadn’t known I was so completely vain. My face, no less. He’d cut it. My face. I felt the blood gushing as it does from face wounds, and I rushed at him again, this time forgetting all the rules of the encounter and thrashing the air with my sword in a fierce crazy series of circles. Then as he parried frantically left and right, I ducked and caught him with the dagger in the belly and ripped upward, stopped by the thick gold-encrusted leather of his belt.
I backed up as he sought to slaughter me with both his weapons, and then he dropped them and grabbed, as men do, for the belching wound.
He fell down on his knees.
I lifted my sword.
The man suddenly grabbed up his own with his bloody hand and flashed it at me, even as he groaned and winced with his pain. He rose up and ran at me in one gesture. I jumped back. He fell to his knees. He was sick and shivering. He dropped the sword, feeling again for his wounded belly. He didn’t die, but he couldn’t fight on.
“Oh, God,” said Riccardo. He clutched his dagger. But he obviously couldn’t bring himself to hack away at the unarmed man.
The Englishman went over on his side. He drew his knees up. He grimaced and he laid his head down on the stone, his face formal as he took a deep breath. He fought terrible pain and the certainty that he would die.
Riccardo stepped forward and laid the tip of his sword on Lord Harlech’s cheek.
“He’s dying, let him die,” I said. But the man continued to breathe.
I wanted to kill him, I really wanted to, but it was impossible to kill someone who lay there so placid and so brave.
His eyes took on a wise, poetical expression. “And so it ends here,” he said in a small voice that perhaps Riccardo didn’t even hear.
“Yes, it ends,” I said. “End it nobly.”
“Amadeo, he slew the two children!” said Riccardo.
“Pick up your dagger, Lord Harlech!” I said. I kicked the weapon at him. I pushed it right at his hand. “Pick it up, Lord Harlech,” I said. The blood was running down my face and down my neck, tickling and sticky. I couldn’t stand it. I wanted more to wipe my own wounds than to bother with him.
He turned over on his back. The blood came out of his mouth and out of his gut. His face was wet and shiny, and his breathing became very labored. He seemed young again, young as he had when he threatened me, an overgrown boy with a big mop of flaming curls.
“Think about me when you begin to sweat, Amadeo,” he said, his voice still small, and now hoarse. “Think about me when you realize that your life, too, is finished.”
“Run him through,” said Riccardo in a whisper. “He could take two days to die with that wound.”
“And you won’t have two days,” said Lord Harlech from the floor, panting, “with the poisoned cuts I gave you. Feel it in your eyes? Your eyes burn, don’t they, Amadeo? The poison goes into the blood, and it strikes the eyes first. Are you dizzy?”
“You bastard,” said Riccardo. He stabbed the man with his rapier right through his tunic, once, twice, then three times. Lord Harlech grimaced. His eyelids fluttered, and out of his mouth came a final gout of blood. He was dead.
“Poison?” I whispered. “Poison on the blade?” Instinctively, I felt my arm where he had cut me. My face, however, bore the deeper wound. “Don’t touch his sword or dagger. Poison!”
“He was lying, come, let me wash you,” said Riccardo. “There’s no time to waste.”
He tried to pull me from the room.
“What are we going to do with him, Riccardo! What can we do! We’re here alone without the Master. There are three dead in this house, maybe more.”
As I spoke I heard steps at both ends of the great room. The little boys were coming out of their hiding places, and I saw one of the teachers with them, who had apparently been keeping them out of the way.
I had mixed feelings on this score. But these were all children, and the teacher an unarmed man, a helpless scholar. The older boys had all gone out, as was the custom in the morning. Or so I thought.
“Come on, we have to get them all to a decent place,” I said. “Don’t touch the weapons.” I signaled for the little ones to come. “We’ll carry him to the best bedchamber, come on. And the boys as well.”
As the little ones struggled to obey, some of them began to cry.
“You, give us a hand!” I said to the teacher. “Watch out for the poisoned weapons.” He stared at me wildly. “I mean it. It’s poison.”
“Amadeo, you’re bleeding all over!” he cried shrilly in a panic. “What poisoned weapons? Dear God save us all!”
“Oh, stop it!” I said. But I could stand this situation no longer, and as Riccardo took charge of the moving of the bodies, I rushed into my Master’s bedroom to attend to my wounds.
I dumped the whole pitcherful of water into the basin in my haste, and grabbed up a napkin with which to catch the blood that was flowing down my neck and into my shirt. Sticky, sticky mess, I cursed. My head swam, and I almost fell. Grabbing the edge of the table, I told myself not to be Lord Harlech’s fool. Riccardo had been right. Lord Harlech had made up that lie about the poison! Poison the blade, indeed!
But as I told myself this story, I looked down and saw for the first time a scratch, apparently made by his rapier on the back of my right hand. My hand was swelling as if this were an insect’s venomous work.
I felt my arm and my face. The wounds there were swelling, great welts forming behind the cuts. Again, there came the dizziness. The sweat dripped off me right into the basin, which was now full of red water that looked like wine.
“Oh, my God, the Devil’s done this to me,” I said. I turned and the entire room began to tilt and then to float. I rocked on my feet.
Someone caught me. I didn’t even see who it was. I tried to say Riccardo’s name, but my tongue was thick in my mouth.
Sounds and colors mingled in a hot, pulsing blur. Then with astonishing clarity I saw the embroidered baldaquin of the Master’s bed, over my head. Riccardo stood over me.
He spoke to me rapidly and somewhat desperately, but I couldn’t make out what he said. Indeed, it seemed he spoke a foreign tongue, a pretty one, very melodious and sweet, but I couldn’t understand a word of it.
“I’m hot,” I said. “I’m burning, I’m so hot that I can’t bear it. I have to have water. Put me in the Master’s bath.”
He didn’t seem to have heard me at all. On and on he went with his obvious pleading. I felt his hand on my forehead and it burned me, positively burned me. I begged him not to touch me, but this he didn’t hear, and neither did I! I wasn’t even speaking. I wanted to speak, but my tongue was too heavy and too big. You’ll get the poison, I wanted to cry. I could not.
I closed my eyes. Mercifully I drifted. I saw a great sparkling sea, the waters off the island of the Lido, crenelated and beautiful beneath the noonday sun. I floated on this sea, perhaps in a small bark, or maybe just on my back. I couldn’t feel the water itself, but there seemed nothing between me and its gentle tossing waves that were big and slow and easy and carried me up and then down. Far off, a great city gleamed on the shore. At first I thought it was Torcello, or even Venice, and that I had been turned around somehow and was floating towards the land. Then I saw it was much bigger than Venice, with great piercing reflective towers, as if it had been made entirely of brilliant glass. Oh, it was so lovely.
“Am I going there?” I asked.
The waves seemed then to fold over me, not with a suffocating wetness, but merely a quiet blanket of heavy light. I opened my eyes. I saw the red of the taffeta baldaquin above. I saw the golden fringe sewn on the velvet bed curtains, and then I saw Bianca Solderini there above me. She had a cloth in her hand.
“There wasn’t enough poison on those blades to kill you,” she said. “It’s merely made you sick. Now, listen to me, Amadeo, you must take each breath with quiet force and resolve to fight this sickness and to get well. You must ask the very air itself to make you strong, and be confident of it, that’s it, you must breathe deeply and slowly, yes, exactly, and you must realize that this poison is being sweated out of you, and you must not believe in this poison, and you must not fear.”
“The Master will know,” said Riccardo. He looked drawn and miserable, and his lips quivered. His eyes were flooded with his tears. Oh, ominous sign, certainly. “The Master will know somehow. He knows all things. The Master will break his journey and come home.”
; “Wash his face,” said Bianca calmly. “Wash his face and be quiet.” How brave she was.
I moved my tongue but I couldn’t form words. I wanted to say that they must tell me when the sun sank, for then and only then might the Master come. There was surely a chance. Then and only then. He might appear.
I turned my head to the side, away from them. The cloth was burning me.
“Softly, quietly,” said Bianca. “Take in the air, yes, and do not be afraid.”
A long time passed as I lay there, hovering just below perfect consciousness, and thankful that their voices were not sharp, and their touch was not so terrible, but the sweating was awful, and I despaired utterly of being cool.
I tossed and tried to get up once, only to feel terribly sick, sick unto vomiting. With a great relief I realized they had laid me back down.
“Hold on to my hands,” said Bianca, and I felt her fingers grasping mine, so small and too hot, hot like everything else, hot like Hell, I thought, but I was too sick to think of Hell, too sick to think of anything but vomiting up my insides into a basin, and getting to somewhere cool. Oh, just open the windows, open them on the winter; I don’t care, open them!
It seemed quite a nuisance that I might die, and nothing more. Feeling better was of far greater importance, and nothing troubled me as to my soul or any world to come.
Then abruptly all things changed.
I felt myself rise upwards, as if someone had yanked me by my head out of the bed and sought to pull me up through the red cloth baldaquin and through the ceiling of the room. Indeed, I looked down, and to my utter amazement I saw myself lying on the bed. I saw myself as if there were no baldaquin above my body to block the view.
I looked far more beautiful than I ever imagined myself to be. Understand, it was utterly dispassionate. I did not feel an exultation in my own beauty. I only thought, What a beautiful young boy. How gifted he has been by God. Look at his long delicate hands, how they lie beside him, and look at the deep russet of his hair. And that was me all the time, and I didn’t know it or think of it, or think what effect it had on those who saw me as I moved through life. I didn’t believe their blandishments. I had only scorn for their passion. Indeed, even the Master had seemed before to be a weak and deluded being for ever desiring me. But I understood now why people had somewhat taken leave of their senses. The boy there, dying on the bed, the boy who was the cause of weeping all around in this large chamber, the boy seemed the very embodiment of purity and the very embodiment of youth on the verge of life.