by Sarah Rayne
They all congregated in the Campo Santo, which was a good central point, and waited to discover what Cosimo Amati was going to do. Stories circulated. He was going to cast the plague out by means of an ancient Druidic ceremony handed down by his ancestors. No, he was going to call up the half-man, half-skeletal creature, the Maccaber, who lived in a windowless doorless black tower in the heart of the mountains, and possessed power over all pestilence. One rumour which ran amongst the more literate members of the population suggested that Amati had been dabbling in the art of alchemy and had uncovered the secrets of the Greek philosophers. Ah, people might laugh, but stranger things had been known, said these wise souls, and removed themselves to the far end of the square where it was easier to look as if you were discussing learned and weighty matters, instead of speculating on whether Isabella Amati’s bed-hopping might be due to her husband’s impotence.
The sun was bathing the old part of Cremona in a fiery glow and streaking the western sky with great swathes of gold and lilac and rose, when Cosimo Amati together with his lady and the young English monk, Brother Simon, walked up from the Contrada dei Coltellai and took their places in the centre of the Campo Santo.
Isabella had chosen a gown of palest ivory lawn, threaded with silver and scattered with tiny seed pearls. Her coppery hair was loose, but she had twined a thin silver thread in it, with a narrow headband at the front. Every woman present would know that she was overdressed for the occasion, which of course she was, and most women would speculate on who had paid for the seed pearls and the silver thread, and more to the point, why.
She was aware of the eyes upon her as she entered the Campo Santo. It was always a good moment when you came into a gathering – any gathering – and felt everyone turn to watch you. People spoke of her as beautiful, but she knew that she was very far from beautiful. What she had was something quite different from beauty. When the stranger said last night, ‘The rats will follow me because I know they will follow me,’ Isabella had had a blinding flare of understanding. That is how I feel! People will admire me because I know they will admire me. How remarkable.
Her whole body was strung as tightly as the strings on Cosimo’s lyres. I am waiting for him . . . The time until he is here is running away like sand trickling between my fingers. It’s getting nearer. He is getting nearer.
Her heart was racing and she felt as if huge weights were pressing down on her. Supposing he did not come? Supposing it had been a dream?
There was tension in the watchers now. Isabella could feel the waves of anticipation, laced with nervous fear and she thought that if you could reach out and pluck the atmosphere, it would be like plucking a musical instrument and the sound would vibrate on the air long after you had ceased to hear it. They aren’t precisely afraid but they know that something very strange is going to happen, thought Isabella, looking around. They know that something powerful and something outside their comprehension is drawing near. Coming through the deserted old town with scraps of mosaic pavements left by the Romans . . . Coming along the town outskirts where the city wall still stood . . . Through the dying day he was coming . . .
Yes, but supposing he did not?
He would come. He would come because she knew he would. In another few minutes he would be here. In a very short time – perhaps no more than an hour – she would be keeping the tryst. Would he come to her, or would he summon her with that extraordinary blend of arrogance and directness? Isabella thought she would refuse to go obediently to him like a supplicant, and then she thought she would walk across white-hot cinders to get to him if she had to.
In just another minute the sun would be below the horizon and the silhouette of the old Roman wall built hundreds of years ago would be nothing more than a black outline. Her heart was beating so fast she thought it would burst from her breast and she was finding it difficult to breathe – it would be the final irony if she died from passion now! thought Isabella wryly. At her side, Cosimo and Simon were both scanning the darkening square, not speaking. Isabella thought that of the two of them it was Simon who was the more tense and she sent him a covert look. Rather attractive, this monk, but then celibates could be immensely attractive; you had the impression of passion consciously banked down, and Simon gave that impression very strongly indeed. He’s had to do battle with his appetites, thought Isabella. Would it be amusing to lure him into bed? She considered this and came to the conclusion that it would be very amusing indeed. But it would have to be after tonight was over. She could not think beyond tonight.
She had been straining her eyes to see every corner of the old square, and she had thought she would feel his presence before she saw him, but without any warning at all he was there, walking softly towards them, coming from between the two buildings at the far end of the Campo Santo. The cloak was still drawn about him, and there was the same indefinable air of other-worldliness.
He paid her no attention. He walked up to Cosimo and wordlessly held out his hand for the bone lyre.
Turning his back on the silent watchers, he began to play. It was certain that out of all the people present, aside from Cosimo only Isabella recognised the music. Isabella had grown up with the legend of the devil’s music, the diabolus in musica; it had been part of her childhood, handed down by her grandmother and her grandmother’s grandmother, and back and back through the women of her family.
She knew the music and once or twice, just for fun, she had sung it softly. But it was something to be very wary of, she understood that. She had sung it to Cosimo on their wedding night, poorest Cosimo, with his fat, uncomely body and his drooping manhood. He had heaved and grunted between her thighs for what had felt like an eternity, red-faced and sweaty and he had been so soft that he had not even been able to enter her. Three times he had rolled off and turning his back had frantically manipulated his wilting body to a semblance of stiffness with his hand. It had been unspeakably embarrassing but it had also been rather sad and at last, Isabella, by then wanting nothing more than to be left in peace to sleep, had started to sing the sweet soft music. Her grandmother, smiling the slant-eyed smile, had once said that it never failed. Burnt-out lovers, wrung-dry husbands always responded, said her grandmother. Cosimo had responded, grateful and delighted, and for days after achieving his puny trickling climax, he had gone about with his chest puffed out like a pouter pigeon.
The music was filling the square now, and Isabella thought every single person must hear its promise and its lure.
Follow me into the fire-drenched caverns of hell and beyond . . . Follow me through the frozen mountains and across the baked deserts and into the fast flowing rivers of the world . . .
Come out and follow me . . . Come out and obey me . . . COME OUT AND DIE . . .
But the strong sexual pull was there as well, like a dark swirling undertow. Isabella saw with faint amusement that several people were reaching for others’ hands; that cheeks were becoming flushed and eyes bright. Men slid their arms about the waists of the serving girls from the tavern and the wine shop, pressing against them, thrusting their hands furtively into the low bodices. Does Ahasuerus see that? thought Isabella. Does he know about the music’s fierce passionate side. Yes, of course he knows, fool!
But Ahasuerus paid no attention to anything other than the pouring out of the music. He was beginning to walk through the ancient city, the fiery glow of the setting sun directly behind him, so that the watchers saw him illuminated against the light: a black lone figure. But he is deflecting the light, thought Isabella, unable to look away. The light is not touching him, it is streaming off him like a blazing cloak, like a river of molten fire.
But behind him, the light fell in little sprinklings, as if quicksilver had been scattered, as if the music had taken on substance and then splintered . . . For an incredible moment, Isabella actually saw it: a thin silvery trail, a sticky spider’s web, a narrow glistening ribbon unwinding over the cobbled streets . . .
Follow me . . .
From beyond the city centre they came, like a sable river erupting from out of the sewers and the cellars and the river banks. Cremona’s dark underside vomiting forth its filth. Rats streaming down to fall into the musician’s wake; no longer repulsive, corpse-fattened things bloated with their grisly battenings, but sleek furry creatures; pattering, woodland animals with pricked ears and twitching whiskers and bright, intelligent eyes . . .
Ahasuerus walked into the dimming glow of the sunset, towards the catacomb entrance, the light still streaming from him, the music pouring effortlessly out of the lyre.
And the rats following him unquestioningly.
Chapter Eighteen
The sun had disappeared beneath the western horizon and a silvery radiance was illuminating the countryside when Isabella reached the entrance to the catacombs. So after all, I was obedient to his summoning. The catacombs at dusk, he had said. And here I am, as subservient and as grateful as if I had never taken a lover before.
He had watched her approach, standing motionless at the catacomb entrance, and now that she was actually alone with him, Isabella was bereft of speech. As a rule on these occasions you knew where you were, but this could hardly be described as a normal occasion. What on earth did you say when you were about to spend the night with one of hell’s emissaries? Perhaps it would be better to let him speak first. They had agreed in Cosimo’s workroom that the devil was a gentleman. Or had they?
In the end she said, ‘Well, stranger, as you see, I keep my word. You did what we asked. You delivered us from all evil—’
Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil—Oh no, I didn’t mean that bit!
‘You purged the city of the plague-rats,’ said Isabella. ‘And so I am here as you requested.’ But even then she was unable to resist the frivolous touch. ‘I am your payment,’ said Isabella demurely, although to her credit managed not to say: and so take me.
‘My payment,’ said Ahasuerus softly, looking at her.
His voice was precisely as Isabella remembered it: soft and very beautiful. Like thin silk being drawn over your naked skin. She forgot about being frivolous and she forgot about attempting to make polite conversation. Polite was the last thing she wanted to be. I could drown in his voice. I could sink fathoms deep in it and never want to surface . . .
Ahasuerus raised his hands and very slowly folded back the deep hood. The moonlight fell across his face. Every shred of half-bravado and half-fearful flippancy vanished at once; because of all the things Isabella had been expecting to see – fleshless features, horned head, red glaring eyes; anything had seemed possible – she had not expected to see this.
Pure, unspoiled beauty. Pure. Beauty so dazzling, so remarkable that you could not stop looking at it, and once you had looked you would never want to look away.
He is the most beautiful creature I have ever seen . . . The fear came uppermost again, because wasn’t the devil said to be fair: the fairest of all the angels, bright as the sun, until he over-reached and under-estimated, and fell . . . This is how he might have looked, thought Isabella, half tranced, half frightened. Lucifer before the Fall. Satan riding out against God and His armies . . .
He was paler than the Cremona men, with a thin, translucent pallor, so that you could almost believe that if you looked closely, you would see the bones beneath the skin and the warm coursing blood . . . His hair was black and silky, worn longer than Isabella was used to seeing, and for some reason this, more than anything, heightened his air of having come from another world. His lips had the paradoxical quality of being thin and at the same time sensual, and the bone structure of his face formed a perfect oval, the cheek-bones slightly slanting. And his eyes are grey, thought Isabella: clear and cool and rimmed with black. Eyes to drown in. A voice to die to . . .
And then Ahasuerus reached out and pulled her against him, and he might be a devil or a demon, but his body’s response was that of an ordinary human man: he was hard and aroused and burning with sexual heat. The dark night blurred and Isabella felt consciousness waver and self-control slip its leash. As if I had been drinking poppy syrup, or mandragora, the sleep juice, the love juice . . .
She had half expected violence and she certainly knew the stories, half ribald, half believed, that the devil’s phallus was icy cold and fletched like an arrow. Supposing . . . No, I can’t think like that. If he doesn’t do something in a minute I shall die of wanting.
Ahasuerus peeled the thin silver gown from her body and stood looking down at her, his eyes unreadable. At last his hands came out to caress her skin – like silk, like warm wine – and he sank to his knees before her, the soft black hair brushing the inside of her thighs. Oh God, this is indescribable. I have never felt like this before. I shall never feel like this again. I think I might faint from desire.
Isabella knelt as well then, so that they were on a level, their bodies so close they felt as if they were blurring into one. She cupped his face between her hands, and saw the black-rimmed eyes darken with passion. A low groan broke from him and he tightened his hold and said very softly, ‘Susannah.’
The catacombs were cool and dry and there was a faint sad drift of dust and age. Bone-dust, thought Isabella, looking about her. I’m in here with corpses – probably hundreds of them. Through the shadows she could just make out the shelves of rock, and on the shelves, the gleam of fleshless bones . . . Empty eyeless skulls . . . Here and there was the outline of something shrivelled and yellow.
Ahasuerus pulled her back into his arms, and the poor shrunken bodies and the grinning skeletal heads faded. The surroundings no longer mattered because the two of them were clutching and clawing at one another in helpless need, and there was a whirling tumble of sensations: tongues and hands and lips, tasting his mouth, feeling the desperate longing, no longer able to tell who was who . . . Rolling in the bone-dust on the floor – sorry, sorry, sorry, poor dead, crumbled things . . . Forgive me . . . Blending into one, yes of course, this was the real meaning of being one.
When he entered her his groan was that of a creature driven beyond its farthest limits, and Isabella cried out and could not tell whether it was with pain because this could only be transient, or whether it was with delight because there had been nothing like it anywhere in the world, ever . . . She was sobbing with emotion, and as she pulled him deeper and as he began to move against her, hard, insistent, barely able to contain his passion, the world began to tilt and then to turn upside-down in a maelstrom of burning stars and erupting sunbursts, and there was a fusion somewhere – his mind into mine . . . Beyond the bursting stars in her vision, there was the impression of something like a deep, dark velvety curtain tearing . . . The walls of Time rupturing so that you could see through and you could see beyond and you were in a place you had never been to, only that you knew it very well . . .
I’m lying on the sacred altar with the High Priest of the Temple, thought Isabella, her mind snapping its restraints and soaring up and beyond the torn blue skies. I’m there with him and there is such white-hot passion raging through him, that he can no longer control it.
When your wife was being taken in blatant and wanton adultery, there was only one thing that would alleviate your anger and restore your loss of face.
Revenge. The death of the offender.
Cosimo Amati, speechless with indignation and beside himself with righteous rage, absolved Isabella from all guilt. Isabella was an innocent unaware soul who had had absolutely no idea of what she had agreed to do, but anyone of any experience – Cosimo himself, for instance – could see with half an eye that the stranger’s talk about learning Cremona’s ways was so much eyewash. What was even worse was that all of Cremona appeared to have seen it as well, and was now sniggering behind Cosimo’s back about it.
Isabella was such an innocent. Cosimo liked this quality and had tried to preserve it. But of course, the dear child had no idea of the kind of raging lusts that men could harbour. Cosimo did not himself harbour particularly
raging lusts but if he had he would not have dreamed of venting them on Isabella. A once-a-week indulgence in Isabella’s bed was all Cosimo permitted himself and he only did that because the Church taught that a man should be one with his wife. Being one once a week was in fact as much as Cosimo could manage, and in fact he found even that a bit of a struggle but it was not the point.
Isabella had been bewitched and bemused by the creature who had answered the music: Cosimo had seen it instantly. His dear girl would have to be pampered and cosseted for a very long time to help her forget the terrible ordeal she was even now suffering. But for the creature who was so—so besmirching her, nothing was too severe. What should be done?
The use of the word ordeal struck a chord. Cosimo dug into his memory and remembered that a very long time ago, certainly as far back as the ancient Greeks, there had been something called the per Dei judicium, which even people of minor learning knew meant judgement by God. Trial by ordeal. If the miscreant survived the ordeal he could be judged innocent.
Cosimo Amati thought he was an amiable, reasonable man, but even amiable, reasonable men had their limits. He remembered that he was an important member of the community in Cremona – yes, and the one who had found a way to rid them of plague-rats! – and he clenched his fists and thought he would have his vengeance and by God it would be a public vengeance at that! He began to feel very much better, and he betook himself to the tavern, where a hasty discussion was going on as to what should be done with the stranger in the morning.
Cosimo, listening, was shocked to his toes to hear several people actually suggesting that the stranger should be let go, or at least handed over to the monks, and he was appalled when an unruly contingent led by the two carters spoke out in favour of reviving the ancient practice of stoning an adulteress and driving her from the town to the sound of rough music. This could certainly not be permitted: Isabella was not an adulteress, or not in the true sense of the word. In any case, the people of Cremona had not stoned an adulteress to death for years and if they were going to resurrect the nasty practice now, they were not going to resurrect it with Isabella.
