A Dancer in Darkness

by David Stacton

  It was on this night that the Duchess commenced her labour. That afternoon a gipsy midwife had been smuggled in, but there was not much she could do. She and Cariola stood about the bed, looking down. Antonio came when he could, and found the sight terrible.

  It had been four years since the Duchess had last been delivered of a child, and that had been the Piccolomini heir. This child meant more to her. Therefore she would not let them force her labour, and for this reason she refused the midwife’s forceps and calipers.

  Cariola was grateful that the walls were thick, the windows closed, and the doors to the ante-room well bolted.

  The Duchess had become an animal. She sobbed and writhed and tore the sheets. It did not seem to help to hold her down. Her face was that of a desiccated albino fox, her hair was rimed with sweat, and her lips smiled with the horrible inhuman rictus of pain. She had given over all rational consciousness hours ago, for when pain takes us over, it nimbly flings open the hatches of the lower mind, which have their own systems of belief, and all the devils of doubt and self-betrayal come swarming up over us. There is no hope down there, begging softly to be let out. In the nocturnal devils we see the whole company.

  So though they tried to quiet her, she cursed Antonio and everyone, for having got her in this plight. Sometimes he was there to hear her. Sometimes he was not. But Cariola heard everything. It seemed to the Duchess that she was a peristaltic grotto imprisoning a thrashing whale. And then the sheer spasmodic pain made her giggle. For ten hours she was not a woman at all.

  Then the child was born, and the midwife cut the tangled cord and put the placenta in a basin. It was male and perfectly formed, but slap it and pummel it how they would, it was born dead. She was a woman again, but she had been an animal for nothing.

  Together, the four of them could only stare.

  However, even a dead child presents immediate problems. A live child may be concealed in another family. But bury a dead child, and who knows who may dig it up? Antonio set off promptly by the private stair.

  Bosola had lately found out the existence of that stair, and he was concealed, watching it. He saw Antonio leave, muffled in a cloak and carrying a bundle. He waited a moment and then followed him. It was a long journey. Bosola had not dared to follow closely behind; and only the whinnying of Antonio’s horse told him where they were. They were at Ravello. He concealed his own horse and walked to the deserted church.

  There, in shadow, on tiptoe, by the grille to the tomb-house, he could hear the fall of a marble slab. Then Antonio brushed past him, shaking, with tears streaming down his face, and Bosola knew his relation to the Duchess for what it was.

  It was high moonlight now. He waited until he heard the horse gallop off, and then slipped into the tomb-house himself. He had never been there before, and it bewildered him. There were so many tombs, all ominously alike, all glittering with shadows. Only the marks in the dust led him to the correct slab. He had not the strength to lift it, but he could push it aside far enough to peer within. He saw the dead child, wrapped in a rich shawl. It made him angry. It was for this futility they had walled themselves up in the consequences of their folly, and perhaps shut him in with them as well. He shoved the lid back and went as he had come.

  On the way back he passed the walls of that building which might be Sor Juana’s convent, if she had her way.

  IX

  As the first of her new dignities, perhaps as preparation for great affairs, perhaps for reasons somewhat more sinister and certainly very like him, the Cardinal had arranged for Sor Juana to be present at a somewhat unusual ceremony in the cellars of the convent of San Severo. He did not attend himself. It was not the sort of thing which he cared to see, for it was a side of religion not designed to please the fastidious.

  There was a nun at the convent who was a great nuisance to the authorities. Her transgressions had been slight, but there were a great many of them, and she was the sort of woman who naturally attracts enmity. The Abbess, in particular, detested her. Her name was Sister Serafina. She was prone to prickly heat, and had no true vocation. Boredom and prickly heat had turned into a possession by the Devil, and possession by the Devil had made her difficult. She was a gossip, too; broke her vows, and saw more than it was wise for her to see. The ceremony was that of the in pace. The Cardinal had made it his express wish to the Abbess that Sor Juana should attend. He was a man who believed in teaching by example, and if Sor Juana had any fault, it was that of disobedience to her superiors. For her own sake, he thought the occasion well chosen.

  At midnight Sor Serafina was conducted down into the cellars. She seemed docile. She may have been drugged, out of mercy, but that was unlikely. Sor Juana, the Abbess, and the bricklayers were already awaiting her.

  She was led forward and made to stand on a small flag projecting from an embrasure in the wall. It was perhaps five inches wide, six long, and two thick, and about a foot above the ground. She was told to place her arms at her sides, and two nuns held them there, which made it difficult for the bricklayers to work among the skirts. The cellar was damp and smelly. A tray of mixed mortar lay on the ground and the bricks were conveniently stacked. It was their business to wall her up.

  Sometimes nuns requested this penance voluntarily. More often, however, it was a punishment. Sor Juana watched and, despite herself, her eyes lost their twinkle, for it happened that Sor Juana suffered from claustrophobia, though she never mentioned it. So did Sister Serafina, and she had mentioned it often, for she had been put into the convent after a youthful escapade, by her embarrassed and eminent family. The bricks rose rapidly.

  The embrasure was two feet deep. As the bricklayers worked, they had to push back Sister Serafina’s habit, which became entangled with the mortar. Sister Serafina started convulsively, but the nuns held her firm, and once the bricks were up to the level of her chest, she could not stir anyway. The nuns moved away, and the bricklayers could therefore work faster. They reached the level of her chin.

  She would stay there as long as the whim of the Abbess kept her there, in her own stench, fed once a day on bread and water, in darkness unrelieved except by her gaoler’s torch. It was a medieval practice, which had almost fallen into disuse. Thus it was that the Inquisition treated possessed nuns.

  Something happened to Sister Serafina’s eyes, and her mouth contorted, but no sound would come out. Yet that unheard scream somehow echoed round the cellars. She tried to move, to raise her arms, but she could not. The bricklayers, having finished their work, wiped off their trowels.

  The others silently left the cellar, fastidiously lifting their skirts. Sor Juana understood perfectly. It was a parable. But for the first time in her life, inwardly she cursed, and was glad she need not face the Abbess for a day or two. It was a parable, however, which one might understand in several ways. That would not matter to the Cardinal, she knew, so long as it was understood at all. It was true: he was cleverer than she: but only because he had more power.

  SEVEN

  I

  Ferdinand conceived what he thought to be a clever plot, and hurried to put it into execution. The adroitness of it pleased him so much that it almost put him in a good humour, but he made no mention of it to his brother the Cardinal, for his brother would only have delayed and temporized and cheated him of his revenge. The Cardinal understood only profit, and this was a matter of honour.

  At Amalfi the Duchess was still listless. She needed to be amused. Antonio had gone to much effort to have put on an opera. The theatre was to be reopened with it tonight. The Duchess seemed almost eager, and the subject was well chosen.

  After all it was over, and nothing had happened to them. They could scarcely believe that. There had been no furtive gossiping. Imperceptibly they had begun to relax. They so desperately wanted to be young and together again.

  Now the child was lost, the Duchess seemed to feel that they no longer had anything to conceal, so she treated Antonio with too much public favour. That worried hi
m. Yet he himself felt much the same. If safety was a delusion, at least it was a congenial one, and why should a Duchess not have her harmless favourites?

  The theatre at Amalfi was one of the few happy thoughts of the late Duke Piccolomini. It was a large hall in the palace, fitted up after the Roman style, but in miniature. A semicircle of classic benches faced a marble scena with three arches, divided by pillars, and topped by elegant marble Gods, Goddesses, and Piccolomini, all white and all posturing. Through the arches architectural streets receded uphill. The hall was covered with an imitation sky across which pink horses galloped through clouds of Amoretti, and the walls were covered with pinnacled stucco Roman masonry and more statues. In the middle of the semicircle state chairs stood for the court on a raised dais, like those for the vestals and senators at the Roman theatres. The Duchess entered and sat Antonio beside her, though on a lower chair.

  The opera was Monteverdi’s Orféo. The work was said to be affecting. The Duchess and Antonio found it so. They were watching their own lives.

  There was a prologue. A muse appeared and sang of her powers to charm. She was a trifle breathless. Then Orféo came on stage. He had thin, vulnerable calves and a smudged face, but his voice and song were moving.

  At least the Duchess found it moving. Sometimes love dies of impatience. Now it woke up again. She reached out quietly and took Antonio’s hand.

  The orchestra alternately swooned and leapt. Preparations were in hand for the wedding of Orféo and Euridice. The chorus prayed that no misfortune might befall the lovers. Orféo sang a voluptuous aria. But Euridice was bitten by an envious serpent, died, and the lovers were forced to go their separate ways, which in this life is quite death enough. It was what had happened to them. Euridice felt lost for good, and condemned to live in the underworld, at Pluto’s court. But Orféo followed her. That was never to be expected, but it happened. The Duchess touched Antonio’s fingers. She was deeply moved. So was the court. For everyone has lost someone, and no one ever expects the lover one has left to seek one out again. That only occurs in art.

  “La tua dilétta spósa é mortà‚” the messenger had sung to Orféo. And it was true. Away from him she had died. She had withered away. But now Euridice would be allowed to return to earth with Orféo, on the condition that he should never look back. Not sure she was following, he did look back, and lost her for ever.

  It was an affecting moment. The audience wept. And looking down, the Duchess saw that Antonio had crossed his slim and shapely legs. She turned quickly to the stage.

  With Euridice lost, Orféo wandered heartbroken through the Thracian wilderness. He begged trees, rocks, and nature to lament with him. For this Monteverdi had provided one of his most pathetic arias. The orchestra grieved.

  The Duchess felt moved to tears. It would be agreeable to believe that when we die there actually is someone left behind to whom our death makes any difference. Monteverdi’s plucked strings made grief real. Again she glanced at Antonio, catching only a glimpse of his tangled hair.

  From the proscenium descended a rickety machine, a gilt pasteboard chariot drawn by white horses with ostrich plumes. Apollo stepped from his car in gorgeous armour, as Orféo, astonished, looked up on tiptoe from his grieving. Apollo sang the dénouement. Grief had made Orféo immortal. It had made Euridice immortal. It had made love immortal. He would rejoin her in the stars.

  Stage fire glowed red, blue, and green. Out of the orchestra spiralled a hushed and fervent music, cool and audacious as a wet tongue against the flesh. It was the music of the spheres, that sound heard only in the outer air. The stars danced. The orchestra became delightful. It was the climax, in which the company danced a celestial morisco. Suddenly the Duchess wished to see Antonio dance, and herself to dance with him, now together, now separated, and now turning gravely to the whistling of the stars.

  She got her wish. The opera was followed by a ball.

  She was still under the enchantment of the performance. So was the court, for the effects of art seldom wear off before an hour or two. From one end of the great hall she watched Antonio prance towards her. Indeed, he was Orféo.

  And she was Euridice. They were together, as they had been at first. For no one ever remembers all of a parable. He remembers only the part of it he likes best—which is unwise, for parables are inexorable, otherwise they would not be parables at all.

  It was in the middle of a courante that she looked up and saw who stood on the pillared steps leading down into the hall. She lost the measure, and something in her tightened up. She whispered to Antonio, and while the music went on, lifted up her skirts, and with him slightly behind her, moved gravely towards the stairs. There she curtsied slightly.

  Ferdinand looked at them both out of his little eyes. He seemed amiable, and only the Duchess knew that that was if anything his most dangerous mood.

  “Sister, I have come to visit you,” he said. He paused for a moment. “I have not come alone.”

  This was obvious. Two or three bravos hemmed him in. No matter who he had about him, Ferdinand’s companions always looked like executioners.

  There was nothing for the Duchess to do. She turned to Antonio, who bowed and withdrew to make arrangements for Ferdinand and his little host.

  “Who is he?” demanded Ferdinand. “He has a familiar look.”

  “Antonio di Bologna, my household steward. No doubt you met him in Rome.”

  Ferdinand grunted. The music ground to a stop. The court was watching now. Standing beside Ferdinand was a burly, sullen-faced blond youth with tow hair and heavy inert complexion. He shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot. He was a young brainless tough, who no doubt meant well, and fawned on Ferdinand like a spaniel.

  “Do you think it proper to dance with your household steward?”

  “I think it proper.”

  Ferdinand clapped his hands loudly at the musicians. They started up uncertainly. “This is Ciampino, dance with him.” He looked over her head at the hall, without making any effort to descend the few remaining steps. The Duchess watched him anxiously.

  “Well,” said Ferdinand.

  She allowed Ciampino to lead her forward, and for the rest of the evening Ferdinand would let her dance with no one else, except, once, with himself. He seemed to have nothing to say to her. When he touched her, as sometimes the dance demanded, his grip was hot and too firm. He merely seemed intent upon enjoying himself.

  The Duchess knew better. Ferdinand never enjoyed himself. And all evening long she was conscious of his eyes following her, as she moved back and forth across the hall.

  That night she slept alone. And for the next few nights as well. Ferdinand said nothing about his purpose, but he was everywhere. His servants were also everywhere.

  She could not stir without finding herself alone with Ciampino. He might almost have been called attentive. But though he plied her with stumbling compliments awkwardly delivered in a furry voice, he was one of those muscular young men who are at ease only when hawking or on top of a horse. It was comical to see the difference in him then. His awkwardness vanished. He was, in short, one of those truculent, successful young gallants with defensive eyes who understand everything but people, and expend their love on greyhounds, falcons, horses, and dumb animals. A total lack of imagination makes it possible for them to lead golden lives, and it is only when their muscles begin to grow flaccid that they become grumpy. The Duchess found him pathetic and a little dull. Having no brains of their own, such men do as they are told.

  It was on the fifth day that Ferdinand came to the point. People like Ferdinand are enormously cunning about things that other people take as a matter of course. It had taken him that long to devise some method of intercepting her casually.

  So, in the afternoon, when she went to the walled garden for her stroll, wanting to be alone, she found him sitting on the cope of the fountain, clearly waiting for her, and clearly pretending he was there by accident. She cast her eyes up to heaven, but she ha
d to discover just how much he knew.

  For a while he managed to talk of idle things. Then, looking at her curiously, he said: “Sister, it is not wise for you to rule here alone.”

  “Perhaps I prefer it.”

  That seemed to anger him. “The difference between a gentlewoman and a Venetian whore is only a husband,” he told her. “I would have you marry.”

  She was angry. She was also chilled. Ferdinand, she knew, would never have her marry, unless it was to some hollow shell such as Piccolomini, and then only on the Cardinal’s errands. So this must be his trap, and therefore he must know she was married already.

  “I have scarcely been a widow a year,” she said. Rumour might have told him the truth, but there was no one else who could but Cariola. She must find out, too, if Antonio’s identity were known.

  Having set forward his plot for weeks, Ferdinand was not to be hurried. She saw for the first time that his eyelids were red-rimmed, and that he was hectic with lack of sleep. She would have to humour him. Unconsciously she began to walk faster, as though to shake him off.

  This garden was a place of ill-omen. There was no life in it, but only clockwork. The gravel underfoot was little whitened skulls.

  “What do you think of Ciampino?” he asked blandly, but his voice was not bland. It was angry and urgent.

  “I think nothing of Ciampino.”

  “He is an excellent young man. I favour him.”

  “You cannot dispose of me now,” she said. “I rule here. The people are loyal.”

  “Are they?”

  “They are.”

  He lost control of himself. “Sister, I know what you are. I know what my brother is. I am not the fool you think me.”

  “I do not think you a fool.”

  “But you will have nothing to do with me.”