Nightshades

by Tanith Lee

  One by one, in the yellow candlelight, they took it up and peered at it.

  And one by one they set it down; and their faces, also oddly lit, their eyes en-embered, turned strange, unearthly, and lawless.

  There was no likelihood the woman in the painting was not kindred of the Scorpion house. Evident in her, as in the young man at the table, was that same unequivocal hair falling about and upon that same succulent skin. The contour of the eyes and of all the features were so similar to Valore's own that it could have been modelled on himself, save for some almost indefinable yet general difference, and a female delicacy absent from the masculine lines of the one who - in the flesh and to the life - sat before them, indisputably a man.

  'But,' Stephano murmured eventually, 'she might be your sister.'

  'My sisters, as you are aware, Stephano, do not so much resemble me.

  They are besides raven-haired. Therefore, the lady's not my sister.

  Nor, to forestall you, my cousin, my mother, any sister of my mother's or my sire's, or even, per Dio, any forward daughter of my own. Yet she is kin to me. Yet this key is the key to her chamber. Yet she will not turn away whoever of you may win it at the dice. If any win, save I. If not it is mine, as now mine. I have done.'

  The fox-lit faces angled to each other.

  'An enigma.'

  'If you wish.'

  At that moment, one of Andrea Trarra's servants came out into the garden like a ghost. Bending to the master of the feast, the man whispered. Andrea's face underwent a subtle fortuitous alteration. He spoke in assent to the servant, who moved away. Then turning to the company, he dazzled them with the words: 'A fourth guest has just now arrived.'

  There followed a popular demand as to who this guest might be, formerly unexpected, conceivably unwelcome. Valore did not join in the outcry. He sat, toying with the key, and only stilled his fingers when Andrea announced: 'It is one you know of. Di Giudea.'

  'What do you say?' protested Cesco, flushing. 'We must sit at table with a Jew?'

  'Not at all,' said Andrea placidly, and with a little soft sneer. 'Being a Jew, as you note, Olivio di Giudea will not eat with anyone, since the way we prepare our meat and wine is contrary to his religion.'

  'And even so,' said Stephano, 'it's not at all certain he's a Jew by blood. He has travelled widely in the East, and is perhaps titled for that. No one, it seems, credits this his real name - I cite "Olivio" - that does not strike the Judean note.'

  'I, for one,' said Cesco, 'resent your act, Andrea, bringing the man upon us in this way. Did you invite him?'

  'My house was open to him on his return to Roma. He is an alchemist and a painter of some worth, who has been recognized by the Holy Father himself. Am I to put myself above such social judgements?

  Besides, I have business with him.'

  'To cheat money from your countrymen - ever a Jew's business.'

  'Actually to debate the repair of some frescoes in my villa at Ostia.

  There is no craftsman like Olivio for such things. The man's a genius.'

  'He is a Jew,' said Cesco, and he rose magnificently to his feet, bowing in anger to the table. 'Thanks for the pleasant supper, Andrea.

  I hope to see you again at a more amenable hour.'

  With a flurry of snatched mantle he strode from the garden and passed in the very doorway a tall straight darkness, to which he paid no heed at all.

  'I trust,' Andrea said, 'no other will take flight.'

  'Why,' said Stephano, 'my nicest whore is a Hebrew. It's nothing to me.'

  'And we should recall, perhaps,' added Valore della Scorpioni gently,

  'that the Christ Himself-'

  'No, no, an Egyptian, I do assure you -'

  Someone laughed, a quiet and peculiarly sombre laugh, from the shadow beyond the vines. A man stepped out of the shadow a moment later, and stood before them in the candlelight for their inspection. He was yet smiling faintly, without a trace of bitterness, rage, or shame. It might be true he was of the Judean line, for though he had no mark of what a Roman would deem Semitic, yet he had all the arrogance of the Jew. He carried himself like a prince, and looked back at them across a vast distance through the black centres of his eyes. His hair, long and sable, fell below his wide shoulders; he was in all respects of apparel and appurtenance a man of fashion, the swarthy red cloth and snow-white linen hung and moulded on an excellent frame. Nor was there anything vulgar, or even anything simply challenging in his dress. He had not sought to rival the splendours of the aristocracy, rather he seemed uninterested, beyond all such concerns, having perhaps precociously outgrown them, for he appeared not much older than Andrea's twenty years. But there was in Olivio called di Giudea that unforgivable air of superiority, whether religious or secular, genuine, or false, which had from the time of the Herods - and indeed long before - been the root cause of the hatred towards and the endlessly attempted ruin of the Jewish race.

  It was Andrea who was momentarily ill at ease, Stephano who donned an almost servile smirk of condescension. Valore delta Scorpioni merely watched.

  'Good evening to you, 'ser Olivio,' said Andrea. 'Be seated. Is there anything I may offer you?'

  'I think not, as you will have explained to your guests.' The voice of the Judean, if so he was, was firm and clear, and of the same dark

  flavour as his looks. 'Had I known you entertained these gentlemen, my lord, I should not have intruded.'

  'It's nothing, 'ser Olivio. We had just foundered on the serious matter of a dice-game, and you have saved me from it.'

  'Not at all.' It was Valore who spoke. 'Escape is impossible.' Valore himself smiled then, into the face of the newcomer, a smile of the most dangerous and luminous seduction imaginable. 'And perhaps your friend will join the game, since Cesco was so suddenly called away. Or do you also, sir, omit to gamble, along with all these other omissions?'

  Di Giudea moved around the table and sat calmly down in Cesco's emptied place. Another servant had come during the interchange, with more wine. As the jar approached, not glancing at it, the man placed one hand over the vacant cup.

  'I gamble,' he said quietly, returning the golden regard, seemingly quite resistant to it. 'Who can say he lives, and does not?'

  Stephano grunted. 'But your laws do not bar you from the dice?'

  'Which laws are these?'

  'The laws of your god.'

  The Jew seemed partly amused, but with great courtesy he replied,

  'The god to whom you refer, my lord, is I believe the father of your own.'

  There was a small clatter. Valore had tossed the dice on to the table, and now held up the iron key before them all.

  'We are playing for this,' he said, 'and this.' And he reached for the portrait of the girl, shifting it till it lay directly in front of di Giudea.

  'The first gives access to the second.'

  Stephano swore by the Antichrist. Even Andrea Trarra was provoked and protested.

  'The play is open to all your guests,' said Valore. 'This gentleman is rich; I will accept his bond. And you, sir, do you understand what is offered?'

  'Such games were current in this city in the time of the Caesars,' di Giudea said, without a hint of excitement or alarm.

  'And even then,' Valore softly remarked, 'my forebears had their

  booted feet upon the necks of yours.'

  Di Giudea looked from the portrait back to its owner. The foreigner's face was grave. 'There,' he said, 'is your booted foot. And here, my neck. Should you try to bring them closer, you might find some inconvenience.'

  Valore said smoothly, 'Am I threatened? Do you know me, sir, or my family?'

  'The banner of the Scorpion,' said the Jew, with a most insulting politeness, 'is widely recognized.'

  'Scorpions,' said Valore, 'sting.'

  'And when surrounded by fire,' the Jew appended mercilessly, 'sting also themselves to death.'

  Valore gazed under l
ong lids.

  'Where is the fire?'

  'It's well known, though all its other faculties are acute, the power of observation is, in the scorpion, very poor.'

  Valore widened his eyes, and now offered no riposte. Andrea and Stephano, who had sat transfixed, broke into a surge of motion. They had been stones a second before, and all the life of the table concentrated at its further end.

  'Come,' Stephano almost shouted, 'if we are to play, let's do it.'

  'No, no,' said Andrea. 'I shall abstain. 'Ser Olivio -'

  'He plays,' said Valore. 'Do you not?'

  Andrea wriggled like a boy. Olivio di Giudea was immobile, save for the hand that took up the pair of dice.

  'I have,' he said, 'examined your frescoes, my lord Andrea. I regret they are beyond my help, or anyone's.'

  Andrea's face fell heavily.

  Presently, the dice also fell.

  The game, now common, next subject to certain innovations of a pattern more complex and more irritant, grew dependently more heated. The dice rang, chattered, scattered, and gave up their fortunes. The wine ran as the dice ran, in every cup save that adjacent to the chair of the Judean. Stephano waxed drunken and

  argumentative, Andrea Trarra, as was his way, became withdrawn.

  On Valore, the wine and the game made no decided impression, though he lost consistently; and it came upon them all, perhaps even upon the sombre and dispassionate intellect of the Jew, that Valore meant this night to lose and to do nothing else. Only the frenzy of the dice went on and on, and then finally and suddenly stopped, as if tired out.

  It was almost midnight. The city lay below and about the garden, nearly black as nothingness, touched only here and there by lights of watch or revelry. There was no breeze at all; and far away a bell was ringing, sonorous and dreadful in the silence.

  Valore offered the key. Andrea turned from it with a grimace, and Stephano with a curse.

  'Well, sir. My noble familiars reject their prize. I must spew ducats for them, it seems. But you, I owe you more now than all the rest. Do you accept the key, and allow its promise to cancel my debt? Or will you be my usurer?'

  Olivio di Giudea extended that same strong graceful hand which had sealed off the wine cup and plucked up the dice.

  'I will accept the key.'

  Stephano rounded on him, striking at his arm.

  'You forget yourself. Per Dio! If he speaks the truth, a lady's honour is at stake - and to be yours, you damned infidel dog!'

  The Jew laughed, as once before in the shadow beyond the candlelight, mild and cruel, unhuman as the bell.

  It was Valore who leaned across the table, caught Stephano's shirt in his grip and shook the assemblage, linen and man. And Valore's eyes which spat fire, and Valore's lips which said: 'You would not take it.

  If he will, he shall.'

  And Stephano fell back, grudging and shivering.

  Valore got to his feet and gestured to the alien who, rising up, was noticed as some inches the taller.

  'I am your guide,' Valore said. 'Think me the gods' messenger and

  follow.' He put away the portrait in his doublet, and -catching up his mantle - turned without another word to leave Andrea's garden. It was di Giudea who bowed and murmured a farewell. Neither of the remaining men answered him. Only their eyes went after, and lost their quarry as the low-burning candles guttered on their spikes.

  While in the heart of the city the bell died, and the melancholy of the ebbing night sank down upon the earth.

  It appeared the lordly Valore had not brought with him any attendant, and that di Giudea had been of like mind. No torch walked before them; therefore, they traversed the scrambling streets like shadows in that black hour of new-born morning. A leaden moisture seemed to have fallen from the sky, dank but hardly cold; and the stench of the narrower thoroughfares might have disgusted even men well used to it. Both, however, in the customary manner, were armed, and went unmolested by any mortal thing. So they turned at length on to broader streets, and thus towards a pile of masonry, unlit, its sentinel flambeaux out, that nevertheless proclaimed itself by the escutcheon over its gate as the palace now in the possession of the Scorpioni.

  Having gone by the gate, they sought a subsidiary entrance and there passed through into an aisle of fragrant bushes. Another garden, spread under the walls of the palace, lacking form in the moonlessness.

  'Keep close, or you may stumble,' Valore said with the solicitousness of a perfect host: the first words he had uttered since their setting out.

  Di Giudea did not, even now, reply. Yet, moving a few steps behind Valore across the unfamiliar land, it seemed his own sense of sight was more acute than that of the scorpion he had mentioned.

  Suddenly, under a lingering, extending tree, Valore paused. The second shadow paused also, saying nothing.

  'You do not anxiously question me,' Valore said, 'on where we are going, how soon we shall arrive, if I mean to dupe you, if you are to be set on by my kinsmen - are such things inconsequent to you, Olivio of Judea? Or can it be you trust me?'

  After a moment, the other answered him succinctly.

  'Your family have left Roma to avoid the heat. A few servants only remain. As to our destination, already I behold it.'

  'Sanguigno,' swore Valore softly. 'Do you so?'

  Some hundred paces away, amid a tangle of myrtles, a paler darkness rose from black foliage to black sky. To one who knew, its shape was evident, for memory filled in what the eyes mislaid. Yet it transpired the foreigner, too, had some knowledge, not only of the departure of the household, but of its environs and architecture left behind.

  What stood in the myrtle grove of the Scorpioni garden, long untended, a haunted, eerie place even by day, was an old mausoleum.

  Such an edifice was not bizarre. In the tradition of the city, many a powerful house retained its dead. The age of the tomb, however, implied it had preceded the advent of the noble bastardy which lifted the Scorpioni to possession of this ground -or, more strange, that the sepulchre had been brought with them from some other spot, a brooding heirloom.

  'Come on, then, good follower,' said Valore, and led the way over the steep roots of trees, among the sweet-scented myrtles, and so right up to a door bound with black ironwork. A great lock hung there like a spider. It was but too obvious that the mysterious key belonged to this, and to this alone.

  The foreigner did not baulk. He came on, as requested, and stood with Valore, whose fire and gold were gone to soot and silver in the dark.

  'A lady's bedchamber,' said di Giudea, from which it appeared he divined rather more of the conversation at Andrea's table than supposed.

  Valore was not inclined to debate on this.

  'So it is. A woman lies sleeping within, as you shall witness, have you but the courage to employ the key. A being as beautiful as her picture, and my kin, as I have said. Nor will she deny you entry to the room, or think herself dishonoured. You will be fascinated, I assure you. It is a marvel of my family, not frequently revealed to strangers.'

  'Which you yourself,' said Olivio di Giudea, 'have never ventured to inspect.'

  'Ah! You have me, messer Jew. But then, I happened upon the key only yesterday. Why deny some friend, also, a chance to see the wonder, which is surely most wonderful if as the parchment describes it.'

  Di Giudea raised the key and pierced the heavy lock. The awful spider did not resist him, its mechanism grated and surrendered at the insistence of that strong hand. His composure hung about him yet; it was Valore's breath which quickened.

  The door swung wide, its iron thorns outstretched to tear the leaves from the myrtles. Beyond, a fearful opening gaped, black past blackness, repellent to any who had ever dreamed of death.

  Valore leaned to the earth, arose, and there came the scrape of kindled flame. Candles had been left lying in readiness, and now burst into flower. Colour struck against the void of the mausoleum's mouth, and
did it no great harm.

  'Take this light. You may hereafter lead the way, caro. It is not far.'

  Di Giudea's eyes, polished by the candle as he received it, seemed without depth or soul; he in his turn had now absorbed a wicked semblance from the slanted glow. It was a season for such things. He did not move.

  'Afraid to enter?' Valore mocked, himself brightly gilded again on the night. 'Follow me still, then.' And with this, walked directly into the slot of the tomb.

  It was quite true, he had not previously entered this place. Nor was it fear that had kept him out, though a kind of fear was mingled in his thoughts with other swirlings of diverse sort. Neither pure nor simple were the desires of Valore della Scorpioni, and to some extent, even as he revelled in himself, he remained to himself a mystery. What he asked of this adventure he could not precisely have confessed, but that the advent of the infamous magnetic Jew had quickened everything, of that he was in no doubt.

  So, he came into the tomb of which the brown parchment had, in its concise Latin, informed him.

  It was a spot immediately conjurable, dressed stone of the antique mode, the light barely dispelling the gloom, yet falling out from his hand upon a slab, and so impelling the young man to advance, to search, to find the curious miracle which the paper had foretold.

  'Ah, by the Mass. Ipsissima verba.'

  And thus Olivio di Giudea came on him an instant later, his words still whispering in the breathless air and the candlelight richening as

  it was doubled on the stone and the face of what lay on that stone.

  She was as the portrait had given her, the hair like rose mahogany shining its rays on the unloving pillow, the creamy skin defiled only by the gauzy webs that had clustered too upon her gown of topaz silk, now fragile as a web itself, and all its golden sequins tarnished into green. Her face, her throat, her breast, the long stemmed fingers sheared of rings - these marked her as a girl not more than nineteen years of age, a woman at the fullness and bloom of her nubility.