“After the wedding I had no scarcity of magnificent garments or beautiful jewels. Indeed, I was surprised at my husband’s generosity toward me, for he was notoriously tight-fisted with everyone else.
“Until one day he presented me with a large black pearl. That night at a dinner party, I failed to wear it. And when the tables were taken down and the guests were gone, I felt the weight of his hand. Then I understood. I wasn’t a wife to him or even a human being, but another of his possessions like his huge villa, his horses, or his dogs. I was there to crown his success. To provide the proper setting for his magnificence.
“When I picked myself up off the floor, I told him that I was sorry I hadn’t fulfilled my part of the bargain. I told him my omission of the pearl from my finery had been quite inadvertent. It simply didn’t go with the dress I planned to wear. He hit me again and said, ‘Wear a different dress.’ At that moment I understood my worth to him.
“Very well, I told him. I will make you the envy of Rome. Your house will be a showplace, floored with the finest marble. The wall paintings and furniture will evoke gasps of admiration. I will never fail to set myself as a showpiece for your wealth. My attire will always be impeccable. My behavior toward your sometimes dubious business associates will be anything you direct, from the cold to the cordial. But never, never touch me again … in any way … either in love or in hate, or I will leave on that very day, and no matter what you say or do, I’ll never return.
“Suffice it to say, I kept my part of the bargain even as he kept his, though I can’t think being deprived of my company was burdensome to him. I was a grown woman, a drawback where he was concerned. I noticed on those rare occasions when he chose to amuse himself he almost always picked something quite a bit younger than I, either boy or girl.”
Regeane saw that Dulcina froze for a second, her face stiff with revulsion; then she hugged her slender body tightly and her teeth embedded themselves in her lower lip.
“As for myself,” Cecelia continued, “my life became one long loneliness. I hid my misery behind a mask of wit and excruciatingly well-bred politeness. But most of the time, I felt as alone as that unchaste vestal must have, when the earth was sealed over her head and she was condemned to expire in her solitary living tomb. At least, until Rufus appeared at our table.
“He was not especially handsome, but he was strong, well-built, with an infectious grin. He was full of fun, always good humored, and ready with a jest at all times. Whenever I looked into his green eyes, I forgot my sorrows and my loneliness. From the moment we met, he paid close attention to me. At first, it was all very innocent. Small gifts, flowers, a book of poetry, short visits when my husband happened to be away attending to business. We were, you understand, closely chaperoned by my many servants.
“I wasn’t about to compromise myself for a barbarian. That’s what Rufus was—a Lombard lord—however wealthy or powerful he might be.
“But, as time passed, the visits became longer and longer. We spent whole afternoons together, lost in the fascination of each other’s company. You see, Rufus was not like my husband—interested only in increasing his wealth. The whole world was his province. I could be myself with him. He found amusement in the trivialities of running a large household. I often had my hands full with mine. We gossiped for hours about the tangled politics of this great city and the all-too-human personalities behind the politics.
“He had many correspondents in distant lands and never arrived without some new and engrossing tale of the doings of kings in Gaul or Britannia and the intrigues of their barbarian courts, of men made and unmade, and battles won and lost. For you must understand, my dears, when I spoke of these things to my husband, I met with either mockery or anger. But Rufus was never angry with me. And he never mocked me, even sometimes when I think I might have deserved it.
“His gifts, too, became more elaborate and expensive. Priceless, really. Yards of fancy lace made in Byzantium, normally unobtainable in Rome; a packet of some precious fragrant spice from the Far East never found on the spice seller’s table in the market here; a psalter illuminated with exquisite knot work made by those Celtic monks who sequester themselves in beehive cells by the stormy northern seas. He brought the world to my door. My shriveled, frightened soul began to open as a flower does to the morning. In short, I began to love him.
“Finally, in desperation, I asked my husband if he was completely indifferent to the connection between Rufus and myself. He answered me in a word: ‘Completely.’
“A week later, Rufus invited both of us to visit his villa in the country. The day after we arrived, we all rode out to hunt. My horse pulled up lame. Rufus remained behind with me.”
Cecelia paused, turned, and looked at a bouquet of roses in a glass vase at her elbow.
Her attention drawn to them for the first time, Regeane realized they must come from somewhere else than the garden below the window. The roses blooming in the convent garden were mostly single and either pink or white. These were double and so red they seemed almost black in the shadowed room. They showed their true colors only when medallions of broken sunlight found their way between the heavy shutters and brushed the soft petals. In its rays they smoldered like the scarlet coals of a dying fire, glowing as though illuminated from within.
Cecelia reached over and caressed a velvet-soft petal with her fingers. “I have often thought if one could impart the doings of humankind to a rose, the only thing it would understand would be the sweet, drawn-out lovemaking of a drowsy afternoon. The long grass is a bed draped in emerald velvet for lovers. Bees dance drunkenly through a peach orchard. The only clock is the sun moving silently across the sky … as it slips toward the cool, blue shadows of a summer twilight.
“When my husband returned from the hunt, I was an adulteress. Rufus and I were lovers. My husband continued to pursue wealth relentlessly. Rufus and I pursued each other. We were lovers by day, by night, under the moon and the stars, at dawn we found each other and at dusk. Whenever we could escape and spend a moment alone, we delighted in the mingling of our bodies and minds. For we were fast friends as well as lovers. The sight of his face and the touch of his hand were enough to fill me with an almost unimaginable joy.
“The years slipped away, one by one, very quickly it seemed then. Until one day I returned home one rainy afternoon and found a man waiting at my door. A supplicant. He begged me to receive him and listen to his plea. I listened at first willingly, and then only because he drew a knife from his sleeve and threatened to cut out his own heart in my presence if I didn’t hear him out. So, to my despair and my everlasting sorrow, I did.
“I can’t reproduce his speech here. It was rambling, incoherent at times, but the gist of what he told me was this. Many wealthy families draw their income from lands they lease from the church in the countryside around Rome. They pay their dues in kind to the church. The diocese of Rome uses the produce to feed pilgrims and the poor. If the Lombards raid across the border during the harvest, they could not pay in kind, and so must borrow to pay in cash. Should more raids occur, then the landowners go bankrupt and lose everything.
“Now, my husband was a great moneylender. Many important families were in debt to him. My lover was a Lombard count. Need I say more?”
“Your husband was using your lover to systematically ruin his creditors one by one,” Dulcina said.
“Just so,” Cecelia answered, “and I had been bought and sold like the lowest whore in Christendom and my happiness founded on a quagmire of misery and deceit.
“I can’t remember much of what happened in the few hours after this revelation, but the servants ended by hiding all the knives and sharp objects from me. When I tried to hang myself from the ceiling beams in my bedroom, they cut the rope and pulled me down. When I was calm enough to think, I knew what I had to do.
“I summoned all of my husband’s creditors I could find to the house and emptied the contents of his strongboxes into their hands. We had wonder
ful things at our villa. I had the discrimination and good taste to pick the very best. My husband had the money to assure acquisition of anything I desired. I piled everything in the atrium. Tapestries, rare and precious glass, antique statuary, illuminated manuscripts, sumptuous clothing, in short the lot and let them take their pick. When my husband returned home, well … there really is no more to be said.”
The sun was low now. Long rays were pouring through the louvered windows. The furniture in the room cast heavy shadows, thick and dark amidst the flares of orange brightness.
Regeane stared aghast at Cecelia, a grim suspicion forming in her mind. “You did it to yourself,” she accused and she saw the beautiful lips move in a smile under the veil.
Cecelia didn’t deny the accusation. “Why yes,” she said. “You are quite perceptive, my dear. Very few guess. May I ask how you knew?”
“Your husband wouldn’t have done it. Rufus really loved you. He’d have killed Maximus. He was too cold, too crafty to have mutilated you.”
“Yes,” Cecelia answered, “he was. All I had done had barely injured him. Most of his wealth was invested in his many enterprises in his broad lands, the produce of his vineyards and orchards.
“No, he laughed at me and said, ‘What! Tantrums! And from you of all people. Don’t be a fool. In the morning, you’ll return to him.’ But I didn’t. I couldn’t and I never will. You see, to do so would have made me their accomplice and that I couldn’t face.”
“So you had your revenge,” Dulcina said. “Who can say you were wrong?”
“Strange you should say that,” Cecelia said. “Abbess Hildegard used much the same words when I came here seeking shelter from a world that had in one awful day become so unkind. She said, ‘You will have a long time to meditate on your revenge.’ And I have.”
“What happened to your husband?” Regeane asked.
“Rufus saw to that. My husband’s estates were as combustible as his creditors. He died a beggar. He was found one morning beside the steps of the Lateran palace where the poor draw their ration of bread and meat for the day. He was dressed in rags, the rain falling into his open eyes.”
“And Rufus?” Regeane asked.
Cecelia turned to the roses at her elbow. “How strange,” she said. “The moment they go into bloom all over Rome in the spring, they come and keep on coming until the cold autumn wind finally sends their ragged brown petals fluttering to earth. Almost every day, bunches and bunches of them come to the convent door. At first, letters came with them. Of course, I always burned them unopened.”
“Of course?” Regeane exclaimed, tears pouring down her cheeks.
“Of course,” Cecelia repeated firmly, “but the letters stopped some years ago. Now there are only the roses. And I remember, as he remembers, I’m sure, that for six beautiful years I was the happiest woman on earth.”
“I hope to God,” Regeane whispered, her hands covering her eyes, “that I never love or hate anything as much as that.”
“You will, and I have,” Dulcina said thickly, raising the wine cup to her lips. “Only I haven’t Cecelia’s courage or perhaps I’m simply not sure my destructiveness would hurt the whore-master who raised me to sell myself in the streets, or the tavern keeper who starved me. My best and only revenge is success.”
“And mine,” Regeane sighed, “a victory over death.”
Cecelia turned to the roses on the table again. “Without love,” she said, “we are as the painted images on the glass windows of a church are without the sun, only shadows. Love illumines our lives. When its rays cease to shine into our days, we are nothing.
“Come … do we despise the rose because its beauty is fleeting? Some do, and seek comfort in glass or marble. But true love is close to the divine and, like all of God’s creations, its beauty unfolds from within. Glass shatters, marble is eaten away by the tides of time. But the rose has unfurled its banner every spring to the sun and will do so for God knows how many uncounted ages more.
“Dulcina, you have your Lucilla and your song. Regeane has something which she will not name and I … I have my roses.”
She tapped one gently with her finger. The scarlet petals fell, drifting down to lie like a pool of blood on the table beside her hand.
XXI
THE DINNER BELL WAS RINGING AS REGEANE SAW Dulcina to the door.
Dulcina embraced her once again, then drew back, but kept her hands on Regeane’s shoulders. Her thin face was somber, her lips set in a hard line. “Take care of yourself,” she said. “No, don’t worry. Lucilla didn’t tell me anything about you. God knows, she’s close-mouthed about any secrets she has. She has to be. She probably knows enough to ruin half of Rome. But there was much in her manner when she asked me to deliver her message. Don’t fear to take shelter with her if you must.”
“Thank you,” Regeane said.
“No thanks required. An afternoon with Cecelia is more precious than rubies. My fortune is made. No society dinner will be complete without me. My fees will double within a month.” She caught Regeane in a hard, almost crushing embrace, then hurried on her way.
Regeane joined Barbara to help set the table.
“How did you like Cecelia?” Barbara asked slyly.
“Oh, God!” Regeane said, almost dropping a serving platter.
“Don’t waste your sympathy on her, or my dishes,” Barbara snapped. “In her way I think she’s perfectly happy. She brought about her wretched husband’s death, and as for poor Rufus, he, I might add, is one of the few human beings I have met capable of life-long devotion. And she has successfully tormented him for over ten years. Those damned roses don’t arrive alone, you know. Every year he asks, and every year we return the same answer. Tell me, did she give you her famous speech about love?”
“Er, yes,” Regeane answered slowly.
“Humpf,” Barbara said. “If that’s love, I’d rather be an alley cat.”
Regeane had to duck into the corridor near the kitchen since tears of laughter were streaming down her cheeks. “Oh, Barbara, stop,” she pleaded, stifling her mirth with the apron.
“Not at all,” Barbara said. “Just what you need after Cecelia, a dose of sturdy common sense.”
The nuns had begun to file in and sit down. Regeane went to the kitchen and returned with a platter of bread. To her immediate dismay, she realized she hadn’t put enough place settings on the table because as the nuns seated themselves, an old woman limped into the room. She was bent with age, her body supported by a heavy, black thorn staff. She was dressed as the others in the same brown woolen cloth. She walked in the direction of the seat beneath the lectern across from Emilia.
As she passed Regeane, she turned. Regeane saw her face was as wrinkled and lined as a withered leaf, but the smile she gave Regeane was both benign and loving. It was so beautiful it lit up her worn features the way the fire in an alabaster lamp sifts through the translucent stone.
“Oh, dear,” Regeane said. She set the platter on the table and hurried to the sideboard for another set of eating utensils as the old nun seated herself at the table.
Regeane scurried back to set the plate and cup before her and because she was certain the old woman couldn’t be very strong, she poured some wine into the cup and set the jug of water close by her hand.
The old nun acknowledged her courtesy with another beautiful smile and blessed her gently, tracing a cross in the air.
Regeane curtsied politely as one does to a no-doubt-distinguished elder. She was sure the old woman must be someone important to deserve such a high seat at the table.
It wasn’t until she stood upright that she realized complete silence had fallen and that Emilia stared at her in something like horror.
“What’s wrong?” Regeane asked.
Emilia didn’t answer. Instead she jumped to her feet so quickly the bench crashed to the floor behind her and the other nuns on that side of the table who also rose rapidly only saved themselves from falling by clutching at
each other’s gowns. In a moment, every one of the nuns was across the room, their eyes wide with terror and fixed on Regeane’s face.
Regeane looked for the old nun, but there was nothing there, only the plate with the spoon neatly set in the center and a half cup of wine.
“No!” Regeane cried. “No!” She’d backed away from the table, her fists tightly clenched in her apron. “Sometimes I do see them,” she babbled, “but I almost always know. She wasn’t like the rest—so calm, so polite.”
“Who do you see, Regeane?”
The question came from the kitchen door where Barbara stood, a platter of pork roast in her hands.
“The dead,” Regeane answered wildly.
Barbara nodded. “What did this one look like?”
“She was old, dressed as the others here are. She limped and leaned heavily on a black thorn stick.”
“Abbess Hildegard,” Emilia gasped. Her eyes closed and she made the sign of the cross.
“Yes,” Barbara said. “That black thorn stick was seldom very far from her hand for the last ten years of her life. She never had a day’s sickness, but old bones creak and crack. Ah, well, it’s nice to know she still thinks of us and visits us from time to time. A bit unnerving, of course, but nice. Now, let’s sit down and have our supper.”
“Good heavens, Barbara,” Sister Angelica shouted. “How can you be so calm about it? Surely Hildegard didn’t visit us for nothing.”
It was apparent to Regeane that Sister Angelica was working up to a terrific bout of hysterics. She toppled over like a falling tree. Two of the younger nuns tried to catch her while a third fanned her vigorously.
“And what are we to do about this girl?” Angelica screeched, pointing at Regeane. “She can’t embroider and she sets places for the dead!”
“She can hardly be blamed for being polite,” Barbara said with a certain grim relish. “She didn’t know Hildegard was dead.”
“I wish you would stop using that word,” Emilia wailed.
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