A Dancer in Darkness

by David Stacton

  “Are you loyal to her?”

  Bosola was not loyal to anyone. But he was stubborn not to give in. A sort of voluptuous weakness fled through his body, untying all his nerves. It was like an orgasm and turned into one. Bosola felt nothing. He was beyond shame.

  Ferdinand looked puzzled, then put his hands on his hips, and laughed. The laugh echoed in and out of the shadows. Tears ran down his face.

  Marcantonio toyed with the winch. It creaked in the half-darkness.

  “Her lover is dead,” whispered Ferdinand. “Antonio is dead. Are you loyal to him too? Would you like to join him?”

  Something happened to Bosola’s face.

  Ferdinand spat. “You have too many masters. I am your master now.” He motioned to Marcantonio, and Bosola felt his body stretch out almost to the cracking point. Ferdinand struck the rigid legs.

  Bosola groaned despite himself. “Ah, now we see. Now we listen to the weakling.” Ferdinand put his finger to his nose, and peered down at Bosola. He swaggered. He posed. He laughed. “Nobody disobeys me,” he said.

  Bosola found it difficult to move his head. Yet in a way this was what he had always wanted, and even while he felt sick and trapped, and his mind rebelled, something inside him exulted. That made him feel more frightened than ever. If he turned his head, the pain in his arms and legs was terrible. He gazed straight up. Someone picked the torch from the floor. It was still burning. Marcantonio’s head came into his field of vision. He manned the double spoked wheel that tautened the rack. It was delicately balanced. It had only to be spun a notch. Bosola felt as though his body were being boned out through his arms and legs. There was no slack now for his body to bounce at all.

  “Ah,” said Marcantonio. “Now you look beautiful.” He gave another turn to the wheel.

  Bosola screamed. It made Marcantonio laugh. The scream was involuntary and that pleased them. Ferdinand giggled nervously and bent over him.

  Bosola’s tongue was already thick. “Very well,” he said. “I will do as you say.”

  They paid no attention to him. They had known he would do as they said. Now they were playing. Slowly Marcantonio turned the wheel again. Something inside Bosola cracked, not bone, but torn muscle.

  “No,” said Ferdinand. “We need him. Play with him later, if you like. But leave him there until we need him. Relax him a little bit. Not too much.”

  The slackening of the wheel was more sickening even than its tightening had been.

  They tramped off and left him, laughing and talking to each other hysterically. The torchlight faded. It was still. Only water dripped. Bosola was thirsty. He fainted.

  He came to when cold water splashed across his face. The edge of the dipper hit his chin. It was now dark.

  “Now you will do as you’re told,” said Ferdinand. He was tense.

  The bravos undid the ropes. Marcantonio hauled him up, and embraced him. “Yes, he’s a good boy now,” he said. For some reason he now seemed to like Bosola. He felt him all over and then handed him a knife. “He’ll do.”

  Bosola did not dare look at Ferdinand. He wanted to kill him. He would never forgive this. But Marcantonio whistled beside him and nudged him in the ribs, pushing him on. The rock tunnel echoed to their stride. Silent, they toiled upwards towards the night. Ferdinand drew a cloak around him, and so concealed his face. Even Marcantonio seemed grim and ashamed. Men grow bashful at such times.

  But if Antonio was dead, then nothing mattered. If Antonio was dead, the Duchess would want to die. So Bosola absolved his conscience. He was suffering from shock. He trembled violently. The others took it for excitement. It made him one of them. They grinned.

  VII

  Cariola was stunned. Though she might know better, still she believed that this imprisonment was only a mistake. Now she saw that it was not. It touched her.

  She lost her head. She burst into floods of tears. She could not bear the thought of being left alone. She knelt by her mistress’s chair. She gave way to a flood of self-indulgence. So birds deliberately fly into snares, too frightened of the hunters to want to save themselves.

  The two women were in the centre of the barren room which was the inner chamber of their apartments. All splendour had shrunk to this. Threadbare tapestries had been brought from somewhere, and hung up to keep the coldness out. Instead they merely moaned on the walls. In the centre of the room stood a state bed on a dais, with four posts but no canopy. There was a chest and the field chair on which the Duchess sat. Candles burned in a tall sconce. That was all. They had not even enough underlinen to last the week.

  “You must not cry,” said the Duchess softly. Her eyes were turned towards the window. She was waiting. Sorrento had already been engulfed by darkness. It was only a shape beneath the stars, inert, lifeless, and without meaning now.

  “But how can you forgive me?”

  “There is nothing to forgive.”

  “But I must be forgiven.” Cariola looked at her blankly. The Duchess sighed and pressed her closer. She felt very much alone.

  Both women were waiting for sounds in the silence. They did not know for what sounds. Death walks down an endless corridor, but since we hear it only once we cannot transmit our knowledge of that sound. Those who die in their beds are to be envied. They are too weak to run away. So they need not pretend to a dignity no less real for being a pretence, and perhaps the more so thereby. The Duchess sat in her chair. Her real dying had been done already. Now she merely waited on the event.

  Her only thought was of Antonio, a thought mixed up somehow with a landscape so real to her as to be visible. They had been happy once.

  Then they heard a creaking within the building, an odd shuffling, outside, on the stairs. They imagined footsteps, even though they could not hear them. They did hear the creaking of a door.

  Cariola started. “Let me die with you,” she said.

  “No. You must hide.”

  “But I must. What else would I do? I have always been with you. I cannot leave you now.”

  “Can’t you?” asked the Duchess. She was scarcely listening. Poor Cariola should live. She had nothing to die for. It was not yet her time.

  But Cariola was carried away. She took the Duchess’s hands in her own. She begged. She implored. She wanted to die. The Duchess was touched. If it came to that, what was left for her, once her mistress was gone?

  All of which Bosola heard from the anteroom. He glanced round at Marcantonio and the others, who had slipped masks over their faces. They wore Ferdinand’s habit, but they were not really trying to conceal their identity. They were only hiding their faces from themselves. Ferdinand remained in the anteroom, but called back Marcantonio, and gave him a special rope, ripping away the common one that Marcantonio held in his hands. “No,” he said. “She is a Duchess. Here.” Then he shuddered and turned his face to the wall.

  Bosola wore no mask. He scorned that. He stepped into the room, followed by the tall-booted guards, who shambled in awkwardly around him.

  Cariola saw him and screamed.

  “Shush,” said the Duchess. “There is nothing to be afraid of.” She looked at Bosola. “So, you have come to this.” Keeping an eye on them, she moved languidly towards the bed. “Well, are you ashamed? Have done with it. Or are you afraid?”

  Cariola began to shiver. She made no move to interfere. She shut her eyes.

  “Well?” demanded the Duchess. “Why do you hesitate?”

  Bosola could not move.

  Marcantonio leaped forward, kicking Bosola aside, and grabbed the Duchess. The bravos uneasily fell in behind him. The Duchess involuntarily made a movement. It was enough to urge him on. He threw the rope around her neck, and pulled both ends.

  When the Duchess could no longer breathe, she began to struggle. Marcantonio put his knee to her back, to steady himself, so that her body billowed outward, and pulled on each end of the rope with his coarse red fists. His face was angry and intent, and perspiration stood out on his forehead. H
is eyes were closed. It was impossible to tell where he was.

  The whole act took perhaps three minutes. They were utterly silent. Bosola strode forward towards Marcantonio, automatically, despite himself, but it was too late. The Duchess fell limp to the bed. The rope dangled in Marcantonio’s hand. It was of white silk woven with a blue thread. Such are the privileges of the aristocracy. Marcantonio opened his eyes and sighed, and looked down at the Duchess as though she had been a stranger. Then, lovingly, he began to lay her out on the bed.

  Ferdinand stood in the doorway. “Get out,” he cried. “Get out all of you.”

  Cariola screamed. Bosola turned on her savagely. She backed away. “No,” she muttered. “Oh no. I don’t want to die. I don’t. I want to live. I want to live.” She could not stop her scream. Someone had to stop it. Bosola felt his hands around her throat. They gripped tighter. She had betrayed her mistress. She had betrayed him. She had betrayed everyone. It was she who should die, not the Duchess. He lost control.

  Marcantonio was by him, trying to pry him loose. Bosola let go. Cariola fell at his feet, in a tousled heap. But it was too late. She was dead. It made her suddenly pathetic.

  “Now you understand,” said Marcantonio softly. Bosola did not understand. Marcantonio left him. The footsteps of the braves went away. The candle sconce had been overturned. It was dark where Bosola was. He went on staring down. Cariola was as meaningless as a dead bird found on a garden path. He backed against the wall. It was then, dimly, that he began to hear Ferdinand, choking and slobbering. Fascinated, he watched.

  The Duchess lay on her bed, as Marcantonio had left her. He had even smoothed out the rumples of her skirt. The candlelight flickered over her face, making it seem to smile. She was young again and free. Ferdinand cast himself over the body.

  “Amelia,” he shouted…. “Amelia.” He shook her, but she was beyond response. It was as though that puzzled him. He gave up. “I didn’t want to do it,” he shrieked. “I loved you. Why don’t you love me?” He squirmed and writhed on the bed. Great sobs tore out of him.

  “Come back,” he screamed. “I will be good. I promise.”

  He snuffled, and the body began to slither from the bed, almost on top of him. He cried out again, in terror, and backed away.

  “You can have him back. He is not dead. I lied. You can have him. That pearl I rifled from your baggage. Go back. Do not touch me. I will never touch you again.” He pushed the body back on the bed. He pleaded. He beseeched. He cried. He looked down at it, breathing heavily.

  Bosola came forward.

  “Close her eyes,” shouted Ferdinand. “Can you not see that she stares at me? Close her eyes!” He panted, and seemed doubled up with pain. He turned on Bosola. “You did this. You and the Cardinal. You did this. Why did you do this thing?” He picked up the sconce and flung it at Bosola.

  He began to shamble across the room, weeping and stumbling. Behind him lay the Duchess. “Marcantonio,” he screamed. “Kill him. He has murdered my sister.”

  Bosola fled.

  VIII

  The devil was after him, demanding to be paid. He did not stop to think. Assassins would be after him, too, and the one would put him in the power of the other, either way. He flung down the staircase and into the grounds. The cold air hit him like a wall of water. He reached, somehow, stumbling and falling, the lower parade ground. Ferdinand was rousing the citadel, but that would take time.

  He fled into the tunnel, past the astonished guards, but these had no time to stop him. Somewhere he heard the tolling of a bell. He saw a man on a horse, ambling up the tunnel, one of the guards, who had gone into town on his own errands. He leaped for him, tore him off the horse, and himself jumped on. He had no spurs and no whip. He wheeled the horse around and set it galloping by pinching its flesh. He dug his fingers in, desperately. The horse whinneyed and hurried downhill. He passed one of the portcullises in the roof. He was almost free. Then, behind him, with an enormous clatter, the portcullis came rattling down. The metallic sound shook the tunnel.

  It was another thirty yards to the exit. Dimly outlined against the night, he saw the entrance guards. One of them ran to the wall. He heard the ratchet disengage, and kneed the horse. Already startled, it jumped forward, just as the final portcullis clattered down above their heads. Bosola shinned himself forward. The sharpened points of the portcullis caught the horse’s rump. It shook convulsively, its front legs flying up, and screamed. Bosola tumbled down on to the rocky ground. As he leaped up he saw the guards peering through the portcullis. The horse writhed and screamed again. Bosola half-slid and half-fell into the water, over the edge of the ramp, sank, swallowed the ocean, rose, and swam off towards a gently rocking boat. There was a light in the stern of it. The owner was still aboard. Shouts came from the entrance to the castello, but were muffled by the rock. High on the crest of the rock lights began to break out. Bosola hauled himself aboard. He still had Marcantonio’s knife.

  He got away. The boat swung out into the deceptive mist-shrouded bay. Bosola had no conscience now. He was running for his life, and the sight of a little of his own blood drove the boatman on. Soon they were hidden by the mist. At night that bay is no restful place. It is thronged with three thousand years of ghosts. Shapes are not what they appear to be. There is an odd humming over the water. Sometimes it almost sounds like human voices. Sometimes it sounds like something far worse.

  They beached at dawn, the bottom of the boat grating sharply on the shingle of an abandoned section of the waterfront. Bosola leaped out of the boat and ran for the shadows. He headed instinctively for the convent of San Severo, hung on the nightbell, and got the porter up.

  But the porter would not let him in. Sor Juana had gone.

  “Gone? How could she be gone?”

  The porter glowered at him through the Judas window in the gate. “She was too good for us. She has gone to found a convent in Amalfi, so they say. And good riddance.” The Judas window slammed so hard that the bell jingled again.

  Bosola slunk back into the shadows. He had to get away. He could go to Amalfi through the hills. No one could save him now but the Cardinal. His sister would have to intercede for him. If she would not, then he would force her to.

  TEN

  I

  Sor Juana had got her wish. The Cardinal was seldom hesitant to reward those who might be of use to him later, and besides he looked upon Sor Juana as an experiment. Now she knew who was master, he was curious to see what she would do. Nor was he unmindful of his own fame. To found convents was a meritorious act.

  It was true that Amalfi made her uneasy. But she did not intend to remain there for ever. At least she was free of San Severo. Her new order was approved by the Pope. She was well pleased. The foundation itself was negligible, but it would grow. She rose even earlier than usual to inspect its quarters. She longed and begged for money. She would have her cloister frescoed with the best art. At last she had something to do. And never again, in the middle of the night, need she become aware of that walled-up nun beneath her.

  It was in this mood that Bosola found her.

  He had no way of knowing what had happened on the island, but he was still afraid. He was glad to be out of sight of it. Nor did Amalfi make him feel any easier. He was known here. He might be recognized. He had waited to slip down from the hills, and so came to Sor Juana at dawn.

  He knew it would be useless to appeal to her affection for him. She had no affections. As soon as he saw her convent, he felt it would be better to appeal to her sense of power. Others might found holy orders with two nuns and an empty room. Sor Juana’s plans were more immediate and more practical.

  The building lay at the back of the town. It had been abandoned for some time, but was solidly built of stone. It was now being remodelled, according to her own designs. The kitchens were to be stately, the reception rooms somewhat larger than the chapel. He flitted through the deserted building, leaving footprints behind him in the plaster dust, and saw h
er standing in the middle of what was to be the library. The stuccoists had already been at work. It would be a noble room, sixty by thirty feet, with huge baroque wooden cases billowing out into the middle of its floor. The ceilings were to be allegorical.

  She stood alone, while plaster dust danced around her, in the light from an open window. Her face was full of the wispy gloating joy of the truly bookish. It made her look young and innocent.

  He stepped forward, stumbling over a peeled pole the workmen had left on the floor. It clattered away. Sor Juana looked up, and her manner was abruptly far different. “Who’s there?” she called. She shielded her eyes with her hand and peered down the gallery. “Come forward.”

  He emerged into the patch of light.

  “I have come to ask your help,” he said.

  She looked over his shoulder. She would not meet his eye. “Where have you come from?”

  “Ischia.”

  For the first time she looked nervous. “What has happened?”

  “The Duchess is dead.”

  Her face abruptly became blank. She seemed to peer around his body at the room. Somewhere a bell tolled. “We cannot talk here. The workmen will be up soon. Follow me,” she said, and turned her back on him. The place was enormous. They climbed the state stairs, and came at last to the suite of rooms she had set aside for herself. He was impressed. They had the simplicity of great expense. She sat down on a chair and folded her hands.

  “Now then. How did she die?”

  “She was strangled.”

  “By you?” She looked up sharply.

  “By her brother’s guard.” He told her about it. She listened quietly. It did not seem to disturb her. Perhaps only a threat to her convent could disturb her.

  “And what do you want me to do?”

  “Speak to the Cardinal. If I am under his protection, Ferdinand cannot harm me.”

  Her eyes widened. She did not answer at once. Instead she toyed with the rosary in her lap. He did not want to hear her refuse him.