Night of Fire

by Barbara Samuel

  Cassandra met Basilio's eye as he approached, and then looked at his wife. No more than five feet tall, she looked like a doll made of china. Her hair was darkest black, her skin honey, her eyes large and blue and terrified. A beauty by any standard. "Good afternoon," Cassandra said to them both, clutching Julian's arm for strength.

  In Italian, Basilio said, "Lady Cassandra, I would like you to meet Countess Montevarchi, Analise.

  Analise, this is a friend of mine, a scholar who is very fond of Boccaccio."

  The girl smiled, extending her hand, and against her will, Cassandra was captured. There was an old, old wisdom in those fine eyes, and an unmistakable sweetness in her smile. "I am so relieved to meet someone with whom I might converse," she said.

  Cassandra clasped the small hand in her own. "I can imagine how bewildering it must all seem to you."

  She gestured to her brother, who was very still beside her. "Allow me to present my brother, Lord Albury." She switched to English. "Julien, this is the Countess of Montevarchi. The poet's wife."

  With a very courtly gesture, Julian bent over her gloved hand. "Delighted."

  A knot of fops descended upon them, clasping Basilio around the shoulders, noisily—and a little drunkenly—greeting him. Cassandra watched them attempt to drag him away, and he pushed back, laughing, but his face flushed with consternation. He took back his sleeve and put them off, "A moment, please."

  But they were not to be so easily dissuaded.

  "Everywhere we go," Analise said quietly, "this is how it is. They are all very eager to—" She frowned. "It is more than talk. I almost think they want to bite him, take away a little piece of his flesh."

  Startled by the insight, Cassandra looked at her. "You are closer than you know. They cannot do what he does, but some part of them hopes they might if they tear a bit of him away."

  "Yes," Analise said. "Very sad, that they do not look within."

  Basilio fought his way back to them, brushing a loosened lock of hair from his face. Looking at Cassandra, he took her hand and Analise's hand, and pressed them together. Cassandra's hand was shaking slightly. She hoped neither of them noticed.

  What was he doing? She gave him a fierce look, but he appeared not to notice. In English, he said very quietly, "They think her quaint and are unkind. Please."

  The absurdity of the situation should have made her scream, but Cassandra sensed there was honor in his request. She found herself nodding, bringing the girl's tiny hand into her elbow. "We will find a quiet corner, shall we?" she said in Italian, so Analise would understand. "Go bow to your audience," she said to Basilio.

  He gave a quick nod, one hand touching Analise's shoulder lightly, and rejoined the impatient group.

  Julian watched the interchange without a word, his gray eyes going the silvery shade that made them unreadable. Now he looked at his sister. "Are you all right?"

  She nodded. "I'm fine."

  He turned his attention to Analise, a gentle-ness and warmth in his manner that surprised Cassandra. For a moment, he only looked at her, then abruptly said, "I must have a word with a man. Excuse me."

  Which left the two women, linked more deeply than Analise could dream, standing arm in arm in the crowded room. Cassandra knew a moment of panic. What if Analise guessed that Cassandra's feelings were less than pure toward Basilio? What if Analise made some remark that roused Cassandra's well-squelched jealousy?

  As if the girl sensed her discomfort, she raised her head. "It is very kind of you to take me under your wing, but if you have appointments to keep, please do not worry too much." A simple, self-mocking smile. "I have learned to be invisible in these places."

  She could not be more than sixteen, Cassandra thought. There was that radiance to her skin, the unformed blankness about her mouth. "I shall consider it a pleasure to entertain you while the fops steal your husband. I can't imagine being adrift in a setting like this. It would be terrible."

  "My husband allows me to avoid it most of the time," she said. "He only thought I might like coming to meet the king and queen."

  "And did you?"

  She laughed, bell-like and quiet. "A little, though I could not understand a word."

  Out of the corner of her eye, Cassandra saw

  Basilio watching them. That she could not bear. Gesturing toward the open doors, she said, "Let's walk in the garden. It is quite beautiful, though very unlike the gardens in your country."

  "Have you visited?"

  Cassandra frowned, berating herself for this misstep. "Only a little of it. Venice. Have you been there?"

  "Yes, when I was a little girl. I thought it was beautiful, like a fairy tale. And you? Did you like it?"

  "I did. I was…" she paused, choosing her words carefully, "grieving, and went there to forget. It reminded me of the reasons we live—how precious beauty is, and how rare, and how worth celebrating."

  Surprised at this sudden gush of words, she glanced at the girl. "Forgive me. That was more than I intended to say."

  "No, no! Do not apologize. It was beautiful." Her head inclined softly. "You are a widow?"

  "Yes." She did not say it had not been her husband she grieved in Venice. "How long have you been married?"

  "Six months," she said, without elaboration.

  "Ah, newlyweds." They settled on a stone bench beneath the spreading branches of an enormous oak tree. "A very blissful time."

  "I suppose. He is a very kind man." Her smile was sad as she looked toward the horizon. "He—" She shook her head, raised those innocent eyes.

  "Forgive me. Women talk freely in my country. I sometimes forget it is not that way here."

  It was very, very wicked of her, but Cassandra could not quell her desperate wish for information. "I have four sisters," she said with a smile. "In such a world, we did not take the same vow of stoic silence as many of the women in my class."

  "Four! How wonderful! That is what I liked best about the cloister—being so constantly in the company of other women. They were my sisters, and I miss them terribly."

  "A cloister?"

  "Yes." A soft radiance, most extraordinary, came over her face. "I went there when I was six. It was Basilio's mother, actually, who fought with my father to let me go there. I thought, all my life, that I would be a nun, you see." That sad smile. "But my father felt my beauty would bring him more in the world."

  Cassandra had known these basic facts, but it pierced her to hear the story from Analise's own lips. "So you did not wish to be wed."

  "No." A slight shrug. "At least the saints saw me delivered to a man who is kind enough to understand my wish to remain bound to God. It is most extraordinary."

  "Remain bound to God? Do you mean you are still a virgin?"

  Analise gave a bright laugh. "You are so shocked! I suppose I should not have confessed it, since my father and all believe the marriage to be consummated. But yes, I remain pure, because he has never insisted I join him in that way."

  Cassandra swallowed. A queer heat crept up her cheeks to her ears, and even she heard the hush in her voice as she replied. "I had heard that he is honorable," she said. "But you are correct: that is most extraordinary. How can you help but fall in love with such a man?"

  "Because I love God," she said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. "I do not wish to love a man."

  "I see."

  "No, you do not." Analise smiled, that benevolent, somehow old, smile. "But I sense you are a very passionate sort of woman, and I do not mind that you cannot understand that my passion is for God.

  Few do." She paused, a puzzled smile on the flawless brow. "In truth, I do not think even Basilio grasps it. He is very much of the world."

  As if her speaking his name conjured him, he appeared at the doors to the garden, looking concerned.

  "There, see? He will not abandon us for too long."

  Cassandra's heart squeezed. An unwelcome rush of memories poured through her, memories that made her feel evil as sh
e sat next to this sweet child. How incredible that he had been so careful of her.

  In despair, she realized it made her love him even more. She held her back very straight as he approached them.

  "I think," Analise confessed quietly, "that his heart belongs to another woman. He has not said, and he has never shown the slightest interest that I can see, so he is discreet. But I sometimes think he has been weeping over his poetry."

  Cassandra did not trust herself to speak.

  "Is it not a tragedy, that we should both be so devoted elsewhere and chained by money and family?"

  "Yes," Cassandra whispered. Forcing herself to look at Analise, she took her hand. "But you must trust that all will be well. God has given you a kind, good husband. You will learn to love him, in time."

  "Will I?"

  Cassandra forced herself to smile. "Of course." She gestured toward his muscular figure, moving gracefully over the lawns. His hair shone in the light, and women turned to watch him. "Look at him, Analise. Every woman here is wishing she could be you."

  Blinking, the girl looked around, and said, softly, "Oh!"

  "Poet! Sir Poet!" The cry came from a matron, squeezed tightly into her gown, an abundance of powdered bosom spilling out above. "You must read for us!"

  Cassandra automatically translated, and Analise gave a laugh. "I do not think it is exactly his poetry she is longing for, do you?"

  Surprised, Cassandra laughed with her. It felt good, the shaking loose of laughter. It had been too long.

  She knew she should stand, take her leave, escape while it was still possible, but something held her there. A strange protectiveness engendered by the girl's small hand in her own, perhaps. The bevy of women descending on Basilio could be a cruel lot, and Cassandra could not abandon Analise to them.

  Or perhaps it was only the need, however wrong it was, that Cassandra felt to simply look at him. It amazed her, sitting there in the late warm sun, what an enormous tide of emotion he could rouse in her. It never waned, not even a little. Every detail of him seemed dear. The lobes of ears and the cut of his mouth, and his thickly fringed and beautiful eyes that fixed on her, clear and direct. You see? his eyes said to her.

  And Cassandra nodded, as if they spoke without words.

  The bevy of women surrounded him but Basilio kept walking toward Cassandra and Analise, listening, laughing, donning a charmer's guise. He knew these were the women who would increase his fame, and did not take it lightly. One pressed a copy of the book into his hands.

  "Have you read it, his book?" Analise asked.

  "No. I have not yet had the opportunity. Have you?"

  "I have heard him read, but he composes in English."

  Basilio reached the bench, the ladies in their bright gowns crying out for him to read, leaning on his arm, fawning around him.

  Cassandra repressed a smile, and he caught it. "What say you, madam?" he said to her. "Shall I read?"

  And it was, suddenly, impossible that she could pretend that what had passed between them had never been. She smiled, very slightly. "As you wish."

  "Will you translate for my wife?" he asked in Italian.

  Caught by the entreaty in his eyes, she nodded. Fear made her hands clammy. In a voice that was more breathless than she would have liked, she told Analise, "I cannot promise to make the Italian as beautiful as his English."

  "At least I will understand the spirit."

  Basilio opened the book, seemingly at random. The whispers and rustles settled until there was only the sound of the birds in the background, twittering and calling, and the distant sound of the musicians playing Handel.

  The world narrowed for Cassandra—narrowed to his hands, loosely clasping the book, to his throat, to the place above his upper lip where he'd shaved so cleanly, to the fan of his lashes over his cheekbones.

  At last he began to read, his voice lilting. Cassandra listened, unsure she could capture the rhyme scheme he used, and decided suddenly that it was not necessary.

  Quietly, earnestly, she began to translate:

  "How to capture the magic of moments? How to capture the perfection when the sunlight falls, just so, across the gray branch of an olive?"

  He raised his eyes, speaking to Cassandra alone. Captured by his eyes, by the burning in them, she dropped her voice even lower.

  " I am driven to it," she said quietly in Italian, " again and again, like the painters who try to capture the light here, driven to the attempt to capture God in some small way. The soft brown swell of the sea swirling over bare white feet, the way a woman bends her head and shows the soft, clean place on the back of her neck…"

  Cassandra translated faithfully, her heart shattering a little more with each word, each image, all of it drenched with Tuscan sunlight and the taste of Basilio's kisses. He spoke of olives and plums and the smell of a woman's mouth.

  Around him, the women's eyes filled with tears of appreciation, their mouths going soft in wonder and yearning. It was his passion they responded to, the reflection of a side of man they wished they could taste for more than a moment of playacting during seduction. Cassandra ached with the recognition that he was truly rare in this, that his passion was not illusion.

  Cassandra closed her eyes, whispering to Analise in Italian, letting the pictures he roused float through her mind, so bittersweet and beautiful that she could do naught but let them fill her.

  " 'And always,' " he finished softly, " 'I labor imperfectly. Always imperfectly.'"

  Cassandra translated the last words in a whisper, feeling the tight clutch of Analise's fingers around her own. She opened her eyes and Basilio stood there, his mouth sober, his eyes fixed purely on Cassandra.

  "Thank you," he said, bowing, and turned away. "No more today, ladies. I have suddenly got a headache."

  Without waiting for Analise or for release from the bevy of ladies, he swiftly moved away, nearly running by the time he made the doors.

  The women drifted away, fans fluttering, their voices circling in sighs.

  Analise and Cassandra sat without speaking for a long time. At last, Analise said, "Do you hear that music of love in his voice? I thought it was the love of a woman, but perhaps he simply loves the world and everything in it."

  Cassandra's throat was tight with guilt and love and unshed tears. "Perhaps," she said quietly.

  "I have never thought of the world in that way before—that it is the hand of God on everything.

  It makes it far less wicked." She stood, a faint frown on her brow. "It is all God's creation."

  "As you are," Cassandra said, reminding herself.

  "Perhaps I should go to him now." She rose. "Many thanks, Lady Cassandra. It was a pleasure to meet you. Perhaps you will visit me."

  "I would like that." She rose and kissed both cheeks in the Italian way, then stepped back. "Go to him now."

  Chapter 16

  Basilio burned. A good rain at suppertime had washed the air clean, leaving behind a taste of summer in the mild wind. It reminded him unbearably of Cassandra and August and plums, and he feared he might go mad within the walls of the townhouse.

  So he had seen Analise home, and murmured an excuse and left again immediately. He had been walking for hours in the London streets, walking past pubs and dress shops and homes and churches, through squares and along parkways. Walking and walking and walking, to give himself what little peace there was to be found in movement.

  It had been a terrible mistake to come to London, even for the benefit of his work. He had not thought what he would do when he arrived here, only let the force of his passion carry him here like a stormy sea.

  And now he gasped on the beach like a dying fish, unable to breathe or think or act in his own behalf.

  His sin had ever been too much emotion; even his indulgent mother had worried over it. Too much love for the look and taste and feeling of things, too much sorrow for the sadness in the world, too much passion for the pleasure of food and women and drink. Excessiven
ess would lead to ruin, she admonished him, many times.

  And what could this feeling in him be called if it not excessive? It was beyond excessive. It was the excess of excessiveness.

  He had not felt like himself in weeks, his mind unbalanced by his yearning for one kiss from Cassandra's mouth, one moment in her arms. Day and night his mind was filled with a wilderness of images—her hair and her eyes and her laughter. When he slept, he dreamed of their limbs entwined; he awakened to the taste of ashes that it was not real. In the dark of night, he entertained a host of fantasies—all of them impossible. His duty, her duty, Analise, even their writing, stood between them.

  Everything stood between them.

  And nothing.

  It did not seem to matter what stood between them; the passion remained. A pain went through him as he thought again of her eyes this afternoon, so sober and steady, sheened with tears as she listened to him read, translating the words back to Analise.

  Only their eyes met, and they spoke in the secret language that was contained in his poetry—symbols none but she would know. He had not missed the hurried rise of her breasts as she gazed at him steadily, and he thought it was the first time she had ever heard the poem.

  His feet inevitably carried him to her tall house on Piccadilly Street. It was full dark, finally—he could not believe how late the light lingered here—and growing quiet. A dog barked distantly and Basilio heard the clopping of horses followed by the rocking of a carriage not far away. It did not turn his direction, and he looked back to Cassandra's house. He saw no lights in the front.

  He stood there, wondering if he ought to simply go to the door and rouse her servant and insist that he be allowed in to speak with her. But no well-trained servant would let him in. And what could he say even if he were allowed in?

  In sudden, mad inspiration, he walked to the garden gate and looked at the tree with branches leading to her balcony. He thought of Boccaccio, the story of a man who climbed a tree to his lover's room in the darkness, the first thing Cassandra had read to him that night in his villa.

  He tried the gate and found it shamelessly unlocked. Then he was in the dark and cool of her private garden, smelling wallflowers and roses on the night. There was no light from her room, and he imagined himself creeping into the dark to her bed, like Anichino, the lover from Boccaccio—but he would frighten her.