by David Waid
Last came two smaller items: a cross of gold on a thin chain that he kissed and hung around his neck, and his misericorde, a thin stiletto sharpened only at the point, which he shoved in a boot. Its main use was to end the suffering of the mortally wounded on a battlefield. He thought of the villagers, so many his friends, and his head slumped forward. The weapon would see terrible use today.
8. Visitation
Genoa
To the extent that people moved through the semi-gloom of the de Borja house, it was without thought to lighting a taper. Soft weeping came from the upstairs corridor where the family rooms lay. All else was silent, except for whatever numb, muted conversations were necessary to accomplish basic functions of the house. Teresa’s lessons were canceled, though she took no joy in it. Everything she knew about the world, every expectation, had been upended. There was no safe harbor.
The dark humors that swept the house had a physical effect on her as the day wore on. Teresa became sick and some of the servants said it was no wonder, although Maria studied her with a thoughtful frown.
The girl’s infirmity began with faint dizziness, quickly growing worse. When Maria recognized its seriousness, she responded with an unusually solicitous attention. Where before she’d been curt and quick to anger, now she was the only soul in the house who showed concern. She tucked Teresa into bed, beguiling food into her mouth along with a foul broth she claimed was medicinal. Maria kept a close watch on the girl as if expecting her to leap like a goat from the mattress, climb out the window and vault the garden wall.
The onset of the illness was fast and its symptoms like none Teresa had experienced. Waves of fever followed waves of chill and her thinking grew unclear. Strangest of all, she experienced a tingling through her body, exactly like she had while standing on the Maestro’s doorstep preparing to knock. Now, however, the sensation was not in her arm, but everywhere, and no premonition or foreboding accompanied it.
It washed across her like the fever and chills did: sporadic, dizzying, with a long, lingering touch. Teresa lost all sense of time. At one point, she woke to find an empty chair pulled up next to her bed. A plate of cheese and bread sat on a side table along with a basin of water and several neatly folded cloths.
Later still, she woke from a doze and the room was dark. No light came through the shutters. She couldn’t see, yet she could tell that someone sat beside her. A woman’s voice spoke but the words were muffled as though spoken through a door.
“Your father was frightened when you ran off as you did,” said the voice. “If he had lost you, too, it might have killed him.” She felt sure it was the voice of her mother. Who else would talk to her so? A strong hand enfolded her own and she smiled. Her eyelids were heavy and she didn’t turn to look. The woman leaned forward and brushed hair from her forehead.
“Mama…” Teresa whispered.
The hand she clung to went rigid and the hand on her head withdrew, though Teresa barely noticed. She held tight to the one she had. Pressing that hand close, she repeated, “Mama.” The hand pressed back, tentative at first, and then more firmly.
The voice spoke again. “Your father is imprisoned, yet there is hope. His friend, Signore Favaretto, has roused the Nobile. They are angry a man of proud blood should be imprisoned at the word of the Maestro. That one is respected, but a commoner, nonetheless.”
Teresa heard a cloth being dipped in the basin and squeezed so that water trickled into the bowl. A moment later, blessed coolness touched her forehead.
“I am sorry I ran off after Ignacio,” said Teresa.
“Don’t say that. If Ignacio is rescued it will be because of you. If not, we will know his murderer.” The cloth dipped again, then pressed to her neck as the voice continued. “Your father and Sando will be released, I think, yet you will need your strength and courage.” A hand squeezed Teresa’s and she caught the scent of lye soap and sweat. “Show courage. It is not just your father and brothers who are in this fight. Not only they who must be strong.”
“Maria?”
“You must sleep now, Querida. Close your eyes and heal.”
The hand brushed her brow once more and then withdrew just as the other slipped from her palm. Floorboards creaked, the door to her bedchamber opened and shut, and Teresa rested alone in her room once again. She lay in the haze of illness, and after a time, she slept.
The speed with which the strange sickness came upon Teresa was matched only by its speed of departure. In the night, she woke feeling stronger, yet unsure if it was the same night or another. Her head had cleared and her muscles ached to be used. Pulling back the covers, she swung her legs over the side of the mattress. When her feet hit the cold floor and she stood, her thin legs wobbled but bore her up. With cautious steps, she crossed to the window casement and drew back the shutters.
Wan light from the moon shone in, providing dim illumination. Teresa spotted the stool by the bed. On the table beyond it lay food and a damp, crumpled cloth. She crossed the room and stood recalling the visitation that had seemed like a dream. Then she took the cheese and bread from the plate and ate in large ravenous bites, crumbs falling to the floor between her feet.
She felt better. Just standing and moving helped. Thinking about climbing back into bed, she imagined the cold damp of the linens, the disheveled sheets almost eager to cling. She thought of slipping between them and shook her head, turning for the door.
The house was deathly quiet, the upstairs hallway empty. As she slipped through the door, easing it shut, something rubbed her ankle. She jumped, almost shrieking, only to find her cat, Pilar, looking calmly up. The cat’s sleek grey coat blended with the gloom of the hallway. Not so, her eyes. In Pilar’s eyes, lamplight reflected like green-flecked gold.
“You frightened me, you bad puss,” she whispered. Bending down, she pet the cat and Pilar lifted her back. After a time, Teresa straightened and stepped along the hallway, taking care to keep the wide floorboards from groaning. Tall, unlit candelabras stood at either end of the hall, yet on a thin side table at the hallway’s mid-point rested a shallow oil lamp with a tiny flame, and by its dim light she could see.
She stole along the corridor, trailing the fingers of one hand on the wall, as if its solidity might keep her own substance in place, keep her from simply being blown away, so impermanent did things seem. Passing her parents’ bedchamber, she came to the hall table, picked up the lamp and continued on. At Ignacio’s door, she stopped, holding her breath, hand hovering over the latch. Pilar looked up from Teresa’s feet and mewed. Letting out a long breath, the girl entered.
The darkness of Ignacio’s room leapt back. A draft of air escaped through the door behind her as the lamp flame guttered. At the flicker of light, shadows trembled in dark corners and on shelves. But no, the room held nothing unusual; it was as it had always been.
Shutting the door behind her, Teresa searched the chamber with her gaze. Ignacio possessed an active mind and had filled the room with objects that caught his fancy. The floor and several wooden shelves were cluttered with painted tiles, lumps of misshapen black metal he’d bought from a blacksmith, little drums, reed pipes, hunting knives, his own crude wood carvings, clever wooden puzzles, a miniature bust Father Hugh had presented him when Ignacio first won his apprenticeship, and many other things besides.
She crossed the room to the wooden stilts she and Ignacio had mastered one summer, her bare feet padding silently across the floorboards. In another place, she examined a pair of wrought iron candlesticks that sat on a shelf and ran her finger along the neck of a dusty twelve-string lute.
Against the wall stood the chest Ignacio had brought home shortly after he’d begun working for the Maestro. It was a cassone, constructed of dark wood, raised on four short legs and inlaid with brass designs of men in robes and curious animals behaving as people. A loop of chain hung at each end with a wide ring in it so that a pole could be slipped through both and the chest carried dangling between two men.
It was an impressive piece of furniture — the very first thing Ignacio had owned entirely of his own right. He was deeply protective of it and had forbidden anyone, even the servants, to handle it except under his watchful eye. His clothes he kept in a massive, painted chest on the other side of the room so no one had a reason to be near the thing.
This admonition about Ignacio’s cassone was so ingrained that when Teresa touched it, she half expected to be struck down. Trying to lift the lid, she found it locked. She had always been curious about the contents, but had no way to open it. Only Ignacio possessed the key.
Continuing around the room, she came to her brother’s bed, the mattress of which stood higher from the floor than her own. She placed the lamp on a table by the window and lifted herself up to sit. There she watched her feet dangle above the floor, scribing circles with her toes. It was a comfort to just let her mind go numb and follow the dancing shadows of her feet. Pilar prowled the far wall, making a silent inspection of things on the floor, putting her nose to them, ears twitching to the small night-sounds of the sleeping house.
Tired as she felt, Teresa didn’t want to go back to her room. Outside, the wind rose and a patter of rain blew against the shutters. She fell back on the mattress and stretched her arms wide. Eyes closed, she felt the texture of the coverlet under her fingertips, rubbing her open palms across it like the time she and Ignacio made snow angels in Torino.
Her hands stopped when she heard a small, furtive noise. Still as death she lay, listening for the sound to repeat, eyes open now and flitting from side to side. She squinted as she listened. Pilar? Whatever sounds there might have been were drowned out by a sudden surge in the wind. A loud clap of thunder broke overhead and rolled into the distance.
She strained to hear, but there was nothing else. The plaster ceiling reflected a warm glow from the little lamp, yet dimly, and as if it were the ceiling’s own light emanating out. It seemed to her as though the ceiling itself was a kind of corpse candle, lighting her brother’s way home. At the morbid thought, Teresa’s skin crawled with awful premonition. She propped herself up on one elbow and looked where her feet dangled over the mattress edge.
Ignacio stood by the bed, not two feet away.
He stood perfectly still, head bent forward, body half oriented to the window. He wore only a long, off-white undertunic that came down to his thighs, lace undone at the neck. Against the fabric of his garment, the skin of Ignacio’s chest looked waxy and cadaverous. Thick locks of black hair tumbled over his face so Teresa couldn’t see his eyes.
She was so frightened, her scream came out as a squeak. Teresa half scrambled, half rolled to the far side of the bed. There she spun, kneeling in a tangle of bedding, her breath coming fast, a fistful of blanket clutched in each hand.
“Ignacio is that you?”
The figure made no response although it swiveled to face her.
“Are you a ghost?”
Rain rattled against the shutters in bursts, like tossed gravel. Ignacio remained silent.
“Madonna! Please say something.”
He spoke no word, yet the cassone that stood against the wall behind him began to move. It lurched forward with a grinding scrape. Making the sign of the cross, Teresa clasped her hands together in prayer.
Lifting one hand from his side, her brother pointed toward a shelf. As he did, Ignacio’s sleeve slipped back and Teresa saw with horror that the skin had been peeled away and all the muscles and veins of his wrist were exposed.
A painted tile toppled from the shelf, shattering on the floor in an explosion of colored shards and white ceramic dust. From behind where it had been, there emerged a red, wooden rattle, a child’s plaything, stippled with bright, cheery designs in green and yellow. The rattle floated free of the shelf and crossed the space toward Ignacio. The gaily painted toy seemed an abomination as it neared the wreckage of her brother’s wrist and slick, pink muscles twitched and pulled as his fingers opened to receive it.
Outside, a storm was erupting. Nearly lost in its abrupt violence, Teresa thought she heard the distant baying of hounds. The apparition went still and Teresa’s wide eyes were pinned to it. The air roared and the shutters shook as wind threw itself on the building. The storm gathered force, rising faster, louder. Extricating herself from the blankets, Teresa backed off the bed.
Ignacio turned to the window as the shutters crashed open. Wind raged into the chamber, snuffing the flame of the oil lamp, sending the pewter vessel spinning to the floor. Smaller items whipped around in the light from outside. Rain blew sideways through the window, showering table, floor and bed. Stark, white flashes of lightning illuminated the yard. Her body shook with the power of a massive thunderclap booming in the night while, high in the heavens, a suet moon stared down.
Teresa braced herself on a corner post of Ignacio’s bed while her own long hair lashed her face. Against the window she saw Ignacio’s silhouette. A flash of lightning lit the room. In that moment, that bleached, bone-white moment, Teresa thought she glimpsed three impossibly large dogs. They stood in a crescent around Ignacio, who had turned his back to both her and the bed. The image was there, then gone. All that was left were colored lights swimming in her eyes.
The roar of the wind rose higher, impossibly high, until it became a mindless shriek. Teresa held to the bed by the crook of her elbow and clapped hands over both ears. It stopped nothing. Lancing pain and a thunderous roar consumed Teresa as if she stood at the heart of God’s own apocalypse. She closed her eyes and screamed.
Teresa bolted upright in Ignacio’s bed with her heart pounding and a wail ready to break from her lips. She held the blankets beneath her chin, turning from one corner of the room to the next, eyes wide and searching. It took several terrifying heartbeats for it to penetrate that what she’d experienced was not real.
The room was quiet. The bedclothes around her were tangled, yet dry and warm. The shutters were closed and the lamp remained lit on the little table by the casement. Mild wind blew rain against the shutters in a gentle patter. From the silence of the house, it seemed everyone slept on, undisturbed.
Still in the sea of blankets on Ignacio’s bed, Teresa’s breathing gradually calmed and the muscles that had been so rigid, relaxed. The dream had been horrifying, as if every childhood fear had let slip at once. Now with that fear past, fatigue washed over her. She needed the warmth of Pilar against her as she slept, yet the cat was nowhere to be seen. And Pilar could not have left: the door to Ignacio’s room remained closed.
“Pilar?”
She listened close, but heard nothing.
“Pilar?”
Teresa thought she caught a noise under the bed. Slipping down, she took the lamp and knelt, lifting bedskirts so she could see. Towards the head of the wooden frame, against the wall, she spotted the reflection of Pilar’s golden eyes.
“What are you playing at there, puss? Come sleep with me.”
The cat did not move.
She stretched an arm beneath the bed to beckon the cat, pausing when Pilar gave a long, drawn-out caterwaul.
“What is it? Are you alright?”
She reached again and the caterwaul became a terrible, angry hiss.
Yanking her hand back, Teresa sat up, startled.
When she did, she spotted streaks of white dust across the floor, just beyond the foot of the bed, partially blocked from view. Entirely blocked from where she’d sat up on the bed. Leaning out for a better look, she saw the broken, colored shards of a tile. Teresa sucked in her breath. She straightened, and slowly, carefully, lifted her head until her eyes were level with the tousled blankets of the bed. Eventually she found what she sought. Half hidden in a fold of bedding next to her pillow lay a child’s red rattle. It was the same one from her dream: happy, stippled designs running in bands around its width like rows of teeth.
With a yelp, Teresa sprang up and away from the bed, backing across the floor. Something struck behind her legs so that she tripped, hit the
wall and fell on top of the strange, disturbing cassone. She gave a strangled cry as if bitten and scrambled off it. Backing to the door, she kept an eye on the rattle and chest as if they were dangerous, unpredictable animals.
She opened the door and, immediately, Pilar darted between her legs and into the hallway. Standing in the doorframe, Teresa vacillated. Staying in this haunted room was impossible. Leaving was no less so. She loved Ignacio and wanted him to be alive, but if he was dead, she wanted him to remain dead.
And if Ignacio was trying to tell her something, what then?
He would never hurt her, of that she was certain.
Looking from cassone to rattle, she knew she could be standing there all night, though soon the lamp would be extinguished, its oil spent. Never would she enter this room in the dark. If she were going to do something, it must be now.
Teresa bit her lip and crossed to the bed, eyeing the rattle before snatching it up. When she lifted the toy, it shook and something heavier, larger than seeds or dried beans, rattled inside. Where bulb and handle joined, she glimpsed the faint line of a seam. Teresa pulled and twisted, trying to muffle the noise, until at last the head came free. She tipped its contents on the bed, scattering tiny seeds among the covers. Shaking the bulb, she brought the thing inside it into alignment with the small opening and an item of cold metal fell into her palm. A key.
Teresa looked at the cassone and shivered. There could be no doubt that Ignacio’s ghost had been talking to her. That meant Ignacio was dead. No, she would not think that until the last possible hope extinguished, when she saw his lifeless body with her own eyes.
The chest stood against the wall, seeming now to be an innocent thing, not the animate cassone of her dream, which had scraped and lurched its way across the floor. She looked down to the key in her hand and then over at the lamp. Please, God, don’t let the light go out now.
Setting her shoulders, Teresa walked to the chest where she knelt and examined the lock. Its brass fittings did indeed look like a match for the key. Her fingers trembled while she inserted it. With a turn of her wrist and a snick of the lock, the thing came undone. She sat before the cassone with both palms pressed to the lid, summoning the nerve to open it.