Nightshades

by Tanith Lee

  There was about her, too, that indefinable ghastliness associated with recent death. It would have seemed, but for the decay of her garments, that she had been brought here only yesterday. Yet, from her dress, the gathering cobwebs, it had been considerably longer.

  'You see,' Valore said, very low, 'she is as I promised you. Beautiful and rare. Laid out upon her couch. Not chiding, but quiescent. To be enjoyed.'

  'And you would wake her with a kiss?'

  Valore shuddered. 'Perhaps. My reverie is not lawful as I look at her.

  No holy musings come to me. Her flesh is wholesome, lovely. I would ask her if she went to her bed a virgin. Alas, unpardonable sin.'

  'You have lain with your sisters. What's one sin more?'

  Valore turned to study his companion, but that face had become a shadow upon shadows.

  'Caro, she is too old to tempt me, after all. Let me tell you what the parchment said of her. Aurena della Scorpioni, for that was her name, unknown in the days of our modesty, lived unwed in her father's house until that year the Eastern Plague fell upon Roma as upon all the world. And before the merciful, if dilatory, angel stood upon the Castel San Angelo to sheathe his dripping sword, shut up in that house, Aurena took the fever of the peste and life passed from her.

  Having no mark upon her, it was said she had died the needle-death -

  for they believed, caro, that certain Jews had gone about scratching the citizens with poisoned needles… And the year of her death is graven there, beneath her feet. You see the candle shine upon it?'

  Di Giudea did not speak, but that he had noted the carving was quite likely. It revealed clearly enough that the pestilence to which the younger man referred was that which would come to be known uniquely as The Death, or the Black Death, and that Aurena della

  Scorpioni, lying like a fresh-cut rose, had died and been interred almost a century and a half before.

  Valore leaned now to the dead girl, close enough for sure to have embraced her. And to her very lips he said, 'And are we to believe it?'

  The Jew had set his candle in a little niche in the wall, where once maybe a sacred image had been placed, now vanished. As the young man flirted with the corpse, bending close, his long hair mingling with hers and of the self-same shade as hers, di Giudea stood in silence, his tall straight figure partly shrouded in the dark, his arms folded. There was about him a curious air of patience, that and some inexorable and powerful quality having no name. The tomb, with its pledge of death, the miracle that lay there, if miracle it was and not some alchemical trick, each seemed to have left him undisturbed. The younger man sparkled on the dark like a jewel; the Judean was, in some extraordinary way, an emissary and partner of that dark. So that, looking up once more, Valore very nearly started, and might be forgiven for it, as if he had glimpsed the figure of Death himself.

  But, 'Well,' said Valore then, regaining himself in a moment, 'what shall we do? Shall we withdraw? I for one am loath to desert her.

  How long she has endured alone here, unvisited save by beetles, unwooed save by worms. If I could wake her, as you postulate, with a loving kiss - shall I try it, noble pagan? Will you act my brother at this wedding, stay and kiss her, too… ?' Olivio di Giudea did not respond, standing on, the shadows like black wings against his back.

  And Valore offered him again that glorious smile, and put down his beautiful face towards the beautiful face of the dead. The lips met, one pair eager with heat, one passive and cool. Valore della Scorpioni kissed his kindred with great insistence, his mouth fastened on hers as if never to be lifted, his fingers straying, clasping, the smooth flesh of her throat, the loose knot of her fingers on her breast.

  The Jew watched him.

  Valore raised his head, staring now only at the woman. 'Divine madonna,' he exclaimed, 'beloved, can I not warm you? I must court you further, then -' And now he half lay against the body, taking it in his arms, his eyes blazing like gold coins -

  And for the third occasion of that darkness, the Jew laughed.

  Valore acknowledged this only by the merest sound, his lips active,

  his hands at work, his pulses louder in his ears than any laughter.

  But in another instant, di Giudea left his post by the wall, breaking the shadows in pieces, and striding to the slab. Here he set a grip like iron on the young man's shoulder and prized him from his employment. With a slitted gaze, now, breathing as if in a race, Valore looked at him perforce, and found him laughing still, mainly the two eyes glittering like black stones with laughter.

  'Your kisses after all, I fear, leave her but too cold,' said the Judean.

  'Oh, you will do better? Do it. I shall observe you closely and take instruction.'

  'Firstly,' said di Giudea, holding him yet in that awesome iron grip, 'I will tell you this much. You rightly suppose she is not dead. She only sleeps. Should she rouse, will you run away?'

  'I? I have seen many things done, and stayed to see others. Things even you may never have looked on.'

  'That I doubt. I am older than you, and much-travelled.'

  Valore attempted to dislodge the iron vice, and failed. He relaxed, trembling with excitement, anger, a whole host of emotions that charged him with some delicious sense of imminence. Even the punishing hand that held him was, in that moment, not displeasing.

  'Do as you wish, and all you wish,' said Valore hoarsely. 'And you will find me here, obedient.'

  The Jew showed his white teeth and with a casual violence quite unlooked-for, flung the young man from him and simultaneously from the couch. Valore rolled on the floor and came to rest against the worn stones of one wall. Dazed, he lay there, and from this vantage saw the tall figure of the Judean stoop as he himself had done towards the slab. 'You will learn now,' the voice said above him,

  'which kiss it is that wakens.' But there was no meeting of the lips.

  Instead the dark head bent, black hair fell upon white skin, yellow silk. It was the throat di Giudea kissed, and that only for a space of seconds. Then the dark head was lifted, strong and slowly as some preying beast's from a kill, and there, a mark, a blush left behind on the skin, the silk.

  Valore ordered himself. He came to his feet and stole back across the tomb, and so beheld, with an elated astonishment, how his shadowy

  companion milked the broken vessel of the throat with his fingers, smearing them, then pressed these fingers to the lips of the dead.

  Which quietly, and apparently of their own accord, parted to receive them.

  'Take,' said di Giudea, the one word a sound like smoke. And the parted lips widened and there came a savage glint of teeth. So Valore had seen a dog maul the hand of its master! Yet the Judean was impassive as this terrible thing occurred, still as the night, until he spoke again, a second word: 'Enough.' And the mouth slackened, and he drew his fingers away, bloody and appalling, seeming bitten through - The sight of all this sent Valore reeling. He fell against the couch again, full finally of a sensation that prompted him to hilarity or screaming, he was not sure which.

  'What now?' he cried. 'What now?' Swaying over her, his Aurena, supported by one hand against the slab, the other fixed on the Jew's wrist. But the question required no answer. Fed by that elixir of blood the Jew had given her, her own, and his, the being that lay before them both began, unconscionably, to awaken. The signs of it were swift, and lacking all complexity. The parted lips drew a breath, the eyelids tensed and unfurled. Two eyes looked out into the world, upon the vault, upon the form of Valore. She had seemed in all else very like him, but those eyes of hers were not his eyes. They were like burnished jets; the eyes, in fact, of Olivio di Giudea.

  'She is more beautiful than truth,' Valore remarked, staring down at her. 'Is it a part of your spell, o Mago, to set your own demoniac optics in her head?' But then he began to murmur to her, caressing her face, smiling on her; and she, as if lessoned in sueh gestures by him, smiled in return.

  It was a
joy to Valore, a joy founded upon exquisite fear, to feel her hands steal to his waist and seek to pull him to her. His hold on the other man he relinquished, and taking hold instead once more of her, sank down.

  The Jew spoke quietly at his back.

  'It would seem, locked in her father's house against the coming of the plague, she could not find escape, nor would she prey on her kindred.

  But she has been hungry a great while and forgotten all such nepotism.'

  His face buried in Aurena's breast, Valore muttered. It was a name, the name of one who, a legend and a sorcerer, cursed by the Christ to an eternal wandering until Doomsday, when and if it should ever come, was also a Jew; and this persona he awarded Olivio di Giudea now. 'Ahasuere.'

  Di Giudea stood at the door of the tomb, looking upon blackness and a faint threat of greyness in the east, where all the stars went out, and from which all the plagues of the world had come - sickness, sorcery, and religion.

  'Ahasuerus? But if I am he, and immortal,' the Judean replied, 'there must be some reason for it, and some means. Say then, perhaps, my presence at your side tonight also had some reason and some means.

  You will come to understand, there are other kindred than those of the flesh. And only one race which may safely spurn all the rest.'

  Valore did not hear this. There was a roaring like a river in his ears, a burning that ran from his neck into his heart. As he lay in her arms Valore knew it was his blood now she drank. And first it was an intolerable ecstasy, so he clung to her, but soon it passed into a wonderful and spiritual state wherein he floated, free of all heaviness.

  But at length this too was changed, and he was invaded by a dreadful languor and an iciness and a raging thirst and a searing agony of the limbs and nerves, so that he would have pulled himself away from her. However, by then it was too late, and helplessly he sprawled upon her till she had drained him.

  An emptied wine-skin he lay then, void and dry. The doorway was long-empty also of any other companion, and the door rightly shut against the impending dawn.

  Aurena della Scorpioni reclined beneath the coverlet of her victim, her head flung back, her eyes enlarged, her lips curved, smiling still.

  Beyond the tomb, the garden and the wall, the city was wakening also, throwing off its stygian sleep.

  By noon, some would have asked aloud for Valore, the Scorpion's child, and found him not. It was the same with the clever Judean, he and all his arts and skills and sciences, vanished with and in like manner to the darkness. From those who had supped at Andrea's table and remained, uneasy fancies sprang. As days went by thereafter without clue, there began to be a certain hideous curiosity concerning

  corpses dredged from the yellow river. But twenty days later the veiled person of plague entered the Interiore, and thence the forums, and the markets, and the churches, and the proliferation of the dead ended such speculation.

  It was not until the winter came to cleanse the ancient thoroughfares with blades that Andrea Trarra, going one evening into his garden to inspect the frost-crippled vines, was shocked to find a figure there before him.

  After a moment, recovering somewhat, Andrea stepped briskly forward.

  'Valore - where in God's name -'

  'Ah,' said Valore, his face deadly white in the dusk, but beautiful and charming as ever, 'I have countless secrets. Do you, for example, remember when we diced for this?' And held up before the other a great key of iron, now no blacker than the centres of his eyes.

  A Room With A Vie

  I have myself, and have met others who have, heard particular rooms breathing. Whether this is some freak temporary noise in the ears, or due to another more mysterious, more fundamental cause - electric wiring, some murmur of the Earth itself - I can't say. It provided the germ of the idea, and the rest of the story developed from it with a horrible inevitability.

  'This is it, then.'

  'Oh, yes.'

  'As you can see, it's in quite nice condition.'

  'Yes it is.'

  'Clothes there, on the bed. Cutlery in the box. Basin. Cooker. The meter's the same as the one you had last year. And you saw the bathroom across the corridor.'

  'Yes. Thank you. It's all fine.'

  'Well, as I said. I was sorry we couldn't let you have your other room.

  But you didn't give us much notice. And right now, August, and such good weather, we're booked right up.'

  'I understand. It was kind of you to find me this room. I was lucky, wasn't I? The very last one.'

  'It's usually the last to go, this one.'

  'How odd. It's got such a lovely view of the sea and the bay.'

  'Well, I didn't mean there was anything wrong with the room.'

  'Of course not.'

  'Mr Tinker always used to have this room. Every year, four months, June to September.'

  'Oh, yes.'

  'It was quite a shock last year, when his daughter rang to cancel. He died, just the night before he meant to take the train to come down.

  Heart attack. What a shame.'

  'Yes, it was.'

  'Well, I'll leave you to get settled in. You know where we are if you want anything.'

  'Thank you very much, Mrs Rice.'

  Mr Tinker, she thought, leaning on the closed door. Tinker. Like a dog, with one black ear. Here, Tinker! Don't be silly, she thought. It's just nerves. Arrival nerves. By the sea nerves. By yourself nerves.

  Caroline crossed to the window. She stared out at the esplanade where the brightly coloured summer people were walking about in the late afternoon sun. Beyond, the bay opened its arms to the, sea.

  The little boats in the harbour lay stranded by an outgoing tide. The water was cornflower blue.

  If David had been here, she would have told him that his eyes were exactly as blue as that sea, which wasn't at all the case. How many lies there had been between them. Even lies about eye colour. But she wasn't going to think of David. She had come here alone, as she had come here last season, to sketch, to paint, to meditate.

  It was a pity, about not being able to have the other room. It had been

  larger, and the bathroom had been 'contained' rather than shared and across the hall. But then she hadn't been going to take the holiday flat this year. She had been trying to patch things up with David. Until finally, all the patching had come undone, and she'd grasped at this remembered place in a panic - I must get away.

  Caroline turned her back to the window. She glanced about. Yes. Of course it was quite all right. If anything, the view was better because the flat was higher up. As for the actual room, it was like all the rooms. Chintz curtains, cream walls, brown rugs and jolly cushions.

  And Mr Tinker had taken good care of it. There was only one cigarette burn in the table. And probably that wasn't Mr Tinker at all.

  Somehow, she couldn't imagine Mr Tinker doing a thing like that. It must be the result of the other tenants, those people who had accepted the room as their last choice.

  Well now. Make up the bed, and then go out for a meal. No, she was too tired for that. She'd get sandwiches from the little café downstairs, perhaps some wine from the off-licence. It would be a chance to swallow some sea air. Those first breaths that always made her giddy and unsure, like too much oxygen.

  She made the bed up carefully, as if for two. When she moved it away from the wall to negotiate the sheets, she saw something scratched in the cream plaster.

  'Oh, Mr Tinker, you naughty dog,' she said aloud, and then felt foolish.

  Anyway, Mr Tinker wouldn't do such a thing. Scratch with a penknife, or even some of Mrs Rice's loaned cutlery. Black ink had been smeared into the scratches. Caroline peered down into the gloom behind the bed. A room with a view, the scratching said. Well, almost. Whoever it was had forgotten to put in the ultimate double-u: A room with a vie. Either illiterate or careless. Or smitten with guilt nine-tenths through.

  She pushed the bed back again. She'd
better tell the Rices sometime.

  God forbid they should suppose she was the vandal.

  She was asleep, when she heard the room breathing. She woke gradually, as if to a familiar and reassuring sound. Then, as gradually,

  a confused fear stole upon her. Presently she located the breathing sound as the noise of her own blood-rhythm in her ears. Then, with another shock of relief, as the sea. But, in the end, it was not the sea either. It was the room, breathing.

  A kind of itching void of pure terror sent her plunging upward from the bed. She scrabbled at the switch and the bedside light flared on.

  Blinded and gasping, she heard the sound seep away.

  Out at sea, a ship mooed plaintively. She looked at the window and began to detect stars over the water, and the pink lamps glowing along the esplanade. The world was normal.

  Too much wine after too much train travel. Nightmare.

  She lay down. Though her eyes watered, she left the light on.

  'I'm afraid so, Mrs Rice. Someone's scratched and inked it on the wall. A nostalgia freak: "A room with a view." '

  'Funny,' said Mrs Rice. She was a homely woman with jet black gypsy hair that didn't seem to fit. 'Of course, there's been two or three had that room. No one for very long. Disgusting. Still, the damage is done.'

  Caroline walked along the bay. The beach that spread from the south side was packed by holiday makers. Everyone was paired, as if they meant to be ready for the ark. Some had a great luggage of children as well. The gulls and the children screamed.

  Caroline sat drawing and the children raced screaming by. People stopped to ask her questions about her drawing. Some stared a long while over her shoulder. Some gave advice on perspective and subject matter. The glare of sun on the blue water hurt her eyes.

  She put the sketchbook away. After lunch she'd go farther along, to Jaynes Bay, which she recollected had been very quiet last year. This year, it wasn't.

  After about four o'clock, gangs of local youth began to gather on the esplanade and the beach. Their hair was greased and their legs were like storks' legs in tight trousers. They whistled. They spoke in an impenetrable mumble which often flowered into four-letter words uttered in contrastingly clear diction.