Leporello on the Lam

by William Stafford

  ”Every year my order joins the pilgrimage to Santiago. It’s a long way to go but worth the blisters on your feet, or so I’m told. We stopped off here for provisions and couldn’t help hearing of your trial. I had to see if it was the same Leporello.”

  ”So, it was coincidence, then, that brought you to me?”

  She stepped closer, a kind of light in her eyes. “There is a power unseen that shapes our ends,” she whispered. Behind her, Don Giovanni laughed scornfully.

  ”Leporello shapes his own end every night,” he sniggered. I sent him a dark look. Donna Elvira’s eyes were searching my face. She tried to follow my gaze.

  ”Donna Elvira, it is good to see you again but please don’t try to fill my final minutes with some kind of recruitment drive. You were there at the trial. You heard what a godless, blasphemous, possessed-by-the-devil kind of villain I am. Go, I pray you. And please don’t come to my burning. I would hate any ashes of me to sully that lovely white habit of yours.”

  She laughed at this. I frowned. Were nuns allowed to laugh? Wasn’t laughter some kind of sinful indulgence?

  ”I won’t be there for your burning,” she smiled. She spoke in that patronising tone of voice that is supposed to calm the hearer but only infuriates him instead. “And neither will you.”

  ”What? What mean you? Without me there will be no burning. They won’t do it without me. I’m the guest of honour.”

  ”Exactly! There will be no burning. I’ve come to rescue you.”

  ”I wouldn’t bother if I were you. My soul is beyond saving.”

  ”Well, that’s a matter for another day. For the moment I have come to rescue your body.” She blushed momentarily and her former beauty was suddenly restored. My master may not have been picky – “Any cavity for depravity” was one of his well-worn mottos – but he had certainly shown good taste when he picked this one to be his wife.

  She read my puzzled expression for what it was. She seized my hand again, her big brown eyes searching mine.

  ”All is well, Leporello,” she smiled. “I know you see him too.”

  ***

  I knew at once she was not referring to Our Lord or his Boy who came among us. She meant my master. That old fire was back in her eyes, the eagerness and determination to claim her errant husband whenever she knew he was close. I wanted to back away but within the confines of the cell there wasn’t the luxury of space to do so. I had to settle for leaning my head back on my neck.

  ”I – I don’t know what you mean,” I lied. Great. On top of everything else, I had just lied to a nun. I was damned, damned and doubly damned. People at the lowest circle of Hell would pity me. Or laugh and point and beat me up, like everyone else tends to.

  ”Your master! My husband! Don Giovanni!”

  ”He’s dead.”

  She shook her head. “You and I both know that is not the case.” Her eyes darted around the cell. “Tell me, is he with us? Is he here right now?”

  I glanced around. There he was, cringing in the corner. He pantomimed quite clearly that I was to deny everything.

  ”He’s over there,” I said, flatly. My master shook his fist. Donna Elvira looked around eagerly. She approached the corner.

  ”Here, you say?”

  My master flinched but then he realised he was invisible to her. He poked out his tongue and thumbed his nose. Donna Elvira smiled, looking beyond him and through him. “Hello, my love,” she cooed to a slimy stone at roughly my master’s eye level.

  Still barking bloody mad, then.

  ”Get her away from me,” my master growled through gritted teeth. I laughed to see his discomfort. He walked right through her, sent me a dirty look and vanished.

  ”You mentioned something about a rescue?” I said. Damned if I was going to let my only visitor spend her time talking to someone else, someone who wasn’t there. (Well, I was damned already, but you know what I mean.)

  She tore her gaze from the wet wall and it took her some considerable effort. It was as though she had forgotten I was there. Then she seemed to snap out of her trance. “Oh, yes, yes, of course. I’m going to get you out of here.”

  ”Come on then, let’s hear it. How?” I reckoned it might be an amusing way to pass these last remaining minutes before I went up in smoke. “What’s the plan, sister?”

  ***

  A few moments later, I was laughing. Donna Elvira flapped at me to keep the noise down.

  ”Ssh! I’m supposed to be here to help you in quiet reflection.”

  ”Well, you’ve cheered me up in any case. Tell me another!”

  ”I’m serious, Leporello! It will work! It must!”

  There was nothing but sincerity in her tone, and earnestness in her eyes. I shook my head.

  ”You seriously want me to exchange garments with you, so I can just walk out of here?”

  ”Is that so difficult to understand? It will work! I know it will. And come off it – it’s not the first time you’ve donned a disguise. And look what you’re wearing now! It will work.”

  ”It’s ridiculous!”

  My master appeared behind her. He was nodding fervently.

  ”What have you got to lose?” They both said this together, my master and his crazy nun-wife. I sighed, I shrugged, and I scratched my head.

  ”Come on then!” I began to wriggle from my dead old lady dress.

  ”Wait!” Donna Elvira was aghast. “Turn your back, sirrah!”

  It was tricky in those close quarters for two people to undress without seeing each other or anything touching anything else but somehow we managed it. My master stood beside me, enjoying the show.

  ”She’s still shapely,” he mused, providing a running commentary on her undressing. “For a nun. Did I ever do a nun, can you recall? I must have done.”

  ”Nun that I remember,” I offered. His finger flicked my forehead.

  ”A resurgence in your sense of merriment, Leporello, is a good sign however deplorable your jests. Try to bear in mind that nuns are not supposed to cut a caper as you make your way out of here.”

  ”I don’t need advice from you in how to save my skin, thank you very much. You always left me to shift for myself before.”

  ”And look where it’s brought you!”

  ”Oh, shush.” I pulled the habit over my head and shoulders. The heavy, rough fabric cascaded down as far as my ankles. I would have to keep my knees bent as I walked in order to keep my feet hidden as Donna Elvira’s had been.

  ”You can turn around now,” said Donna Elvira. There she was, looking like a dowdier version of her former self in the dead duenna’s dress. She reached up and made adjustments to my wimple and head-dress. “You will have to keep your head bowed and your chin down,” she instructed. “Can’t have people thinking I have suddenly sprouted a beard.”

  ”You will be all right?”

  ”I will be just fine,” she smiled, reassuringly. “You concentrate on getting away from here. I will meet you at the agreed rendezvous point. “

  ”I’m so grateful to you, really. I was awful to you, before. Fooling you. Lying to you.”

  ”It matters not,” she smiled and I felt stirred by her forgiveness. “You were doing what your master willed. I understand your devotion. Now, get ready.” She called for the gaoler, who appeared in the doorway a second or two later. He glanced at the seated figure on the floor, with head bowed in penance, then nodded to the figure in white and ushered me from the cell. I waited while he locked the door and he guided me along the corridor. I kept my pace very slow – this was made easier by having to stoop to hide my feet and also by having to place my steps with care in order not to make the chain that still shackled my feet jangle and give the game away.

  ”Sticking around for the fireworks?” Dear Lord, the man was trying
to engage me in idle chatter. Thankfully my disguise allowed me to offer no reply and still be credible. I shook my head, slowly. “Ah,” he said. “Bit gruesome for the likes of you, I suppose.” He fell silent. Until we reached the top of the first staircase, that is. “So...,” he tried another gambit, “are there many more like you at home?”

  I chose not to dignify this with a response of any kind. Realising he had overstepped the mark, the gaoler bit his lip to prevent any further words getting out.

  He relinquished me to the care of the second turnkey and so it was that I gradually made my way from the dungeons up to the ground floor and out into the open air, the blessed, god-given open air. How I wanted to throw back my head and fill my lungs to bursting! Luckily I had presence enough of mind to stay in character.

  There was the second nun I had seen in the court room. I ambled over to her, keeping my gaze downcast and my knees bent. She glanced over and looked away. She probably thought Sister Immaculata had shat herself.

  I let her lead the way through the main gates. Every step away from that dungeon, from that courtyard on which a pyre had been assembled especially for me – a shiver ran through me and I had to cough to mask the jangle of my chain – and also with every step I expected the hue and cry to begin, for a hand to clasp my shoulder and drag me back to the fire.

  No hand came. We were through the gates. Only then did my companion (my sister, I suppose she was) speak. Clearly she was in breach of some vow or regulation because she whispered from the corner of her mouth.

  ”What was it like?” she hissed. “Being so close to a devil!”

  I kept my face averted and made no response. She took this as my adherence to the rules but this only served as an admonishment for a few seconds. She was brimming with questions and they must spill out.

  ”Was he sorry? Did he repent? Did his breath reek of brimstone?”

  Again, I kept my head down and my feet moving with care.

  ”Oh come on,” she nudged my side, “you can tell me. No one will hear.”

  At this, I raised a single finger, shrouded by a sleeve, skywards. She took this to mean I was indicating Our Lord would indeed hear, because He hears all, and she fell silent. That hadn’t been quite my meaning but it did the job.

  I wanted to ditch this inquisitive pest – I’d had more than enough of Inquisitions, thank you – and run from the city, abandoning Donna Elvira’s plan, which, to her credit and my surprise, had worked like a charm so far.

  I could see my master’s buckled boots. He was walking alongside us. I ventured a glance. He was making lascivious gestures at my holy sister. I willed him not to make me laugh and expose myself – oh, you know what I mean!

  I wondered how far we would have to walk; I was not confident I could keep up this ungainly gait much longer. I must have looked like an ape in a habit (a Primate of the Church! Ha!) - but, of course, I couldn’t ask my corporeal companion because she would know at once I wasn’t Donna Elvira.

  Ah, Donna Elvira! I wondered how she was getting on. The hour of my execution was approaching. Had they been down to the dungeons to fetch me, only to discover the exchange? I hoped she would be all right. She might have been a bottle or two short of a jeroboam but she had displayed extraordinary courage and self-sacrifice and what for? Because she believed I was still in contact with her good-for-nothing but adored husband, that’s why. Perhaps she wanted to keep me around so she could communicate directly with the Don. This could not end well, I reasoned, and I didn’t fancy the idea of being used as someone’s mouthpiece.

  I resolved at that point to get away from the woman who had saved me from my fiery fate at the earliest opportunity. I know that makes me an ingrate but I wanted less contact (none, in fact) with my dead master not more.

  ”Sister Immaculata!”

  I walked a few more steps.

  ”That’s you, you plum!” Don Giovanni laughed. Oh! Oh, yes. I came to a stop. My shackles fell heavily with a dull clang to the ground. Cringing, I turned around, keeping my face down. The real nun was a few paces away. We had reached our destination a moment ago. Well, I wasn’t to know, was I?

  I shuffled my way back to her. Luckily, patience was just one of her virtues – that, or her vow of silence prevented her from commentary. It struck me that I was ignorant of the rules of this order. And indeed, of the order of their rules. When was speaking allowed? Would I be expected to keep my wimple on at all times? I hoped this was the case. If I revealed myself to be a fugitive from justice (Injustice!) they would raise the alarum at once and I would be recaptured right away – I wasn’t in the best position to leg it, still shackled as I was.

  Or...if the cat came out of the bag and found itself among these particular pigeons, would the apple cart be upset, or might the cat be able to claim the ancient right of sanctuary? How did that work?

  I couldn’t tip my head back to have a proper look at the gateway as we passed through it, for fear of exposure, but my heart sank, for probably the first time in its existence, from disappointment that I was not about to go into a church. It had to be a sanctified place for sanctuary to work – that much I knew. This place was most definitely not sanctified. The un-cleared patches of horseshit told me that much.

  ”We were lucky,” my companion spoke softly. “The last two rooms in the place. It is pilgrimage season, after all.”

  I nodded in an exaggerated way so she would perceive the gesture beneath the folds of my headwear.

  She led me through a foyer. The floor was dirt, strewn with straw. This was no high-class hotel. A pair of dirty shoes with the toes threatening to wear right through appeared in my field of vision. Black stockings, also threadbare, rose from those shoes like spindly stalks.

  ”Ah, sisters,” a man’s voice, as thin and reedy as his legs, addressed us. “Back from the court, are you? Terrible business all told. They do say as how he was demonically possessed, the poor fellow. Still, nothing a bit of fire won’t put right. Get that demon right out of him.”

  I realised he was talking about me! I wanted to protest. Demonic possession, my arse! Luckily for me, my prudence was at that moment stronger than my pride.

  The feet turned and showed me their heels, downtrodden and worn as they were. We followed the thin man up a wooden staircase – it was one of those all treads and no risers kind of thing and proved very tricky for me with my present encumbrances. The thin man and the nun waited patiently for me at the top; perhaps they assumed Sister Immaculata was an elderly member of the order, crippled by age and infirmity. Whatever they thought, I was in no position to contradict them.

  As we followed the thin man along a corridor – the floor was rough planks but cleanly swept – he explained how lucky we were to get the last two rooms he had, this being the only dry hostel in the city. It was pilgrimage season after all, but then, being holy sisters and brides of Our Lord, we would know that wouldn’t we? He laughed down his nose, producing a sound like a child messing around with an oboe.

  ”Prick,” said my master. “You do realise that ‘dry’ means there’s no booze, don’t you? I say we burn the place down at once.”

  The other nun, the real nun, was shown into a room at the end of the corridor but on the right, then the thin man opened the door opposite and ushered me inside.

  ”If there’s anything I can get you, anything at all, do not be reticent. Send down for Giacomo and Giacomo, for that’s my name, will come running. Of course, the best thing about having nuns for guests is you travel light, don’t you, ladies? And your requirements are few! Heh!”

  He shuffled away, laughing his broken woodwind laugh. My master waved him off with a range of obscene gestures, which, amusing though they were, went unseen by anyone but me.

  ”We have a couple of hours before departure, Sister Immaculata,” the nun announced from her doorway. “I suggest we spend t
hat time in contemplation and prayer.”

  Before I could ask her what all this was about departure, she had closed her door. I heard her lock it from within. I closed my own door – buggered if I was going to lock it after all those weeks in the dungeon.

  ”What a dump!” My master was running his gloved finger across surfaces. He found no dust but this only served to disappoint him. He was clearly in that mood when he seeks something to complain about. Such a mood would inevitably lead to something being broken, and usually across my head.

  I looked around at my latest accommodation. It was far from palatial but, compared to the dank confines of that dark dungeon, this modest room was the Vatican. There was a table with legs of uneven length, on top of which stood a cracked ewer of water in a chipped bowl. I threw off my wimple, poured the water into the bowl and thrust my face into it.

  On all this Earth, is there anything more miraculous than water? I doubt it and have no desire to debate the point.

  There was a chair, with a seat worn by countless buttocks, but better than that there was a bed. A bed! An actual bed! I couldn’t tell you how long it had been since I had seen a bed never mind lie on one.

  I took a running jump and landed flat out on the mattress. I rolled onto my back and laughed. I spread my arms and legs, luxuriating in the comparative comfort.

  In all of human history, has there ever been an invention to surpass the miracle of the simple bed? I doubt that as well.

  ”You look ridiculous,” my master sneered from the window. The window! I had a window! I would avail myself of that particular wonder in a little while; for now the bed was commanding all my attention. “Revelling in such squalor.”

  I sighed. I wasn’t going to argue with him. He was in a foul temper and spoiling for a row.

  ”It’s a dry hostel, Leporello. This is worse than Hell and I should know.”

  I rolled onto my side and pulled the flat pillow over my head. I wasn’t going to enter into any discussion about whether he was still able to partake of actual wine. I just wanted to rest, to stretch out my poor limbs and relax.