Dark Dance

by Lee, Tanith

  ‘I married Adam. Nothing happened to me.’

  ‘You’re not like us. Your mother was a stranger.’

  ‘Ruth, I need time with you. I want you to come back to London with me.’

  ‘No thank you,’ Ruth said, ‘Mummy.’

  Rachaela saw Ruth alter inside her flesh. She became concentrated, dangerous, as Rachaela had seen her once before. There was a light to the eyes, the teeth looked sharp and the fingernails long. Try to touch now, and this creature would bite and scratch. It would punch into a breast as it had when a baby, and wriggle away and get free. There was a demon in Ruth. The Scarabae demon, but given a fresh and hybrid life.

  A blot of darkness on the sunlight made Rachaela turn her head.

  Carlo had come out of the house and was standing, clear of the trees, without any pretence, watching them.

  He wore his outdoor things, his hat and scarf and sunglasses, in the broiling heat.

  Ruth turned too and jumped up.

  There’s Carlo. I’m going to make an apple-pie with Maria.’

  She ran towards the house, lifting up her long skirt.

  She passed Carlo, who continued a moment to stare down at Rachaela on the grass, before himself turning away and back into the pines.

  There was nothing else to do. She must stay. She must be their witness. That way there might be a chance. She must stay.

  He was no threat to her now.

  And she would see him again.

  In parting them, she would have dealings with him. The only dealings she might have.

  Anna turned the key in the door of the locked room. Unice held up the lamp.

  ‘It will be very dark.’

  ‘We must be careful.’

  The old women rustled like crisp paper.

  They were all there, the women but not the men. Rachaela stood behind them all, in her place as witness.

  Ruth was beside Anna.

  The lamp slid into the room and lit it crazily. It was a cave, without windows, full of stripes and bulbs of redness.

  Miriam and Teresa slipped ahead into the dark and there came the noise of struck matches, little spurts of flame.

  A row of candles had been ignited along the walls.

  It was a neglected room. A faded magenta wallpaper appeared to be in the design of pairs of bats hanging upside down—like the graphics of Escher, other shapes seemed formed by the pale-yellow interstices. Nothing was certain. Beams poked forth in the ceiling.

  The room was full of red dresses. They stood on dummies down the length and across the breadth of it.

  The reds were of every depth and shade, soft and dark, coarse and transparent, like fruits, some bruised and others unripe, some left too long in the sun.

  These dresses had never seen the sun.

  They were old, or antique, of the styles of other centuries and other lands. They looked frail as insect wings, most of them. A few were sturdy, stuck in time. There was dust on them all.

  A perfume rose from the dresses, memories of scent and flesh, through the dust.

  ‘Come, Ruth,’ said Anna. ‘Look about. Several will be too large. But there are many which fitted young girls like yourself.’

  Ruth went forward. In the candlelight her eyes glistened hard as jets.

  If Rachaela had stayed, if she had stayed, with the child in her womb, would the Scarabae have brought her here, to choose her betrothal or her wedding dress?

  Ruth paused beside a crinolined gown with huge sleeves and trailing bows, looked at it, passed on.

  There were dresses like sheaths, beaded with rosy crystal. There were dresses with corseted waists and trains, and dresses with long sleeves sewn with fake red gems. Or perhaps they were real.

  Ruth was half-way across the room, among the crimson pillars.

  She was choosing carefully for her big day, looking at everything.

  Anna had stood aside. Teresa, Unice and Miranda edged down the room after Ruth. Distracted by recollection or mere nostalgia, Alice, Anita, Sasha and Miriam wandered around the room, in their turn seeming to try to choose a gown, as maybe once they had.

  Livia remained near the door. Her face contorted. She said to Rachaela, ‘My Constantin,’ and pressed her dry old hands to her face. It was as if she wanted to cry and could not. The rictus of pain left her slowly, and she lowered her hands, and went to a red dress, beginning to smooth its stiff sheer folds with one ringed finger.

  Rachaela moved along an aisle of dresses.

  Ruth had come to a standstill.

  There was a rent in the ceiling above, a hole, and under it a dress posed almost alone.

  It was, like the bedroom, a dress of blood. It came from a period of make-believe. The shoulders of the dummy were bare. The waist of the dress pointed like an arrow, with a line of ruby buttons to the navel. The skirt flowed, embroidered in shiny bloody thread like grapes and flowers and foliage. The ruched sleeves fell from the shoulders to the floor, and under them were other sleeves of tight red lace.

  ‘This one,’ said Ruth.

  ‘Oh, she’s chosen that one!’ exclaimed Miranda. ‘How lovely.’

  ‘How beautiful she’ll look,’ said Teresa. ‘I remember —’ and fell silent.

  All the women susurrated, a chorus of grasshoppers.

  The skirt of the dress moved. It flaunted and bellied, as if an unseen leg had flexed beneath it.

  Ruth stepped away.

  She stared.

  All the women stared at the dress.

  And the skirt tossed again, rippled.

  What was happening? Was the dress coming to life?

  ‘No, no,’ said Anna, ‘no.’

  She went briskly up the room. Rachaela saw her reach the dress and take up the skirt and shake it.

  Suddenly a long seam burst in a puff of red smoke.

  A bird flew out.

  The dress had been pregnant with the bird.

  It flew straight past Anna and dipped over the heads of the old women so they cried out and called.

  Rachaela had never seen the Scarabae so discomposed before.

  The bird rushed from wall to wall and the women screamed shrilly, warding it off with their hands which flashed with rings.

  Then the bird shot suddenly upwards. It vanished into the hole in the ceiling and the beating of its wings was gone.

  ‘The attic,’ said Anna, pointing up after the bird. ‘Uncle Camillo leaves the window open.’

  ‘Will it fly out?’ cried Unice.

  ‘Will it fly away?’ they asked.

  ‘I expect it will,’ said Anna. She looked at Rachaela. ‘Perhaps Rachaela will go up sometime today, and see.’

  ‘It’s bad luck, a bird in the house,’ said Unice.

  Miranda said, ‘Not for sixty years.’

  ‘Hush,’ said Anna. The bird’s gone. Ruth. Have you chosen this one? It’s just the right size.’

  ‘There was a bird in it,’ said Ruth.

  The panic of the old ones had not afflicted her, but she was influenced.

  ‘The bird has gone,’ said Anna.

  ‘I don’t want it now,’ said Ruth.

  The old women blew towards her, statically like rags on a bush. They whispered, conceivably without words.

  ‘Choose another,’ said Anna.

  ‘But I wanted that one.’

  ‘Then forget the bird,’ Anna was smiling and patient.

  ‘No,’ said Ruth.

  Anna spread her hands and waited.

  They all waited on the child-woman who was their future.

  Ruth stood with her head to one side.

  At last she said, ‘All right, I will. This one. But the seam’s torn.’

  Alice said, ‘I’ll attend to all the seams. And Cheta will clean the dress very carefully. Especially the lace. Lace is so becoming.’

  Ruth said, ‘What about the veil? Will I have a veil?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Miriam, ‘like a bride. A beautiful red veil.’

  ‘And Carlo will
cut red roses,’ said Miranda.

  ‘Such a special day,’ said Teresa.

  Ruth stood at their core, like the hub of a gradually turning wheel. She had put her back to the dress. She did not look at Rachaela.

  When the candles had been blown out, they retreated from the room, to which Michael and Maria would presently come to remove the selected dummy.

  Outside in the corridor the cloud of old women bore Ruth away.

  Later Rachaela went up to the attic.

  Within, among the chests and stands, one red dress had been stranded—the dress of Alice’s mother.

  She could not see the hole that led to the room below, but the window stood wide on the fierce sunlight.

  Of course, they were vampires, they could not come here.

  But Camillo had risen from his bed and come here and flung the window wide to attract a bird to fly into Ruth’s red betrothal dress.

  The bird had gone.

  Rachaela stood at the window, looking across the roofs to the tower.

  The sun blazed on its cone, the window glinted.

  Adamus.

  He had drunk her blood but he walked in the daylight. Would Ruth be disappointed when she found, after her night of metamorphosis, that the sun did not shrivel her up?

  Chapter Seventeen

  Just before midnight Scarabae’s betrothed came downstairs, She looked like a bride in Hell, in her dress of blood and the veil like melon-heart, wing-spread from its little coronet, and with two scarlet roses in her hand.

  Rachaela’s watch had ascertained the time, but really it was only night, the last summer lightness compressed from the sky, the house doors open.

  Lighted candles everywhere, beaded ranks of fire giving off a dense and wavering heat.

  The old people had gathered in their dinner clothes, their dust and spangles. Only Rachaela in her skirt and T-shirt did not fit. She stood apart, she was only the witness.

  Ruth’s made-up face looked totally contained, but she shone with electricity. She was the glowing centre of the fires.

  Another room had been opened up, cleaned by the servants and filled with candles and red roses on tall wooden stands.

  At the far end was a table draped in red velvet, and on it a huge old book lying open. Behind the table stood Dorian in his dinner clothes and starched shirt.

  In front of the table was Adamus.

  To her horror, Rachaela saw that he too wore a tuxedo, a white shirt and black bow tie. He too had dressed himself as a figment of the farce. His face showed nothing and the eyes were as she recalled, dull lacquer pools without light or depth. But it was true, he was their puppet.

  The Scarabae had made an aisle and Ruth walked down it and into the room.

  The Scarabae moved in after her, taking up their places behind the betrothal pair, the man and the small woman-child.

  Rachaela stood at the back of the room, looking across the heads of strong wire hair, and one helmed head, for Uncle Camillo had come in his armour. She and Adamus were the tallest in the room, which added to the sense of ridiculous beastliness.

  Dorian unseamed his withered mouth.

  ‘The house has come together on this night, to oversee the promising of its two children, Adamus and Ruth, to one another. This is done in the spirit of an old tradition. It is done in pledge for the house of Scarabae, in the hope that it may continue and flourish with generations.’

  Rachaela’s eyes dazzled from the candles. She could not follow what Dorian said, it was too distorted and nonsensical. And now he spoke in a foreign language, and after that in what was perhaps Latin.

  Then Dorian put Ruth’s hand into the hand of Adamus and tied them together with a white silk ribbon, an old ribbon stained along its clarity with age.

  ‘Remember now, whatever comes, you are promised to each other before witnesses. You may take no other to you, but must keep faith until the hour of marriage and union. So are you bound.’

  Ruth looked up into Adamus’s face.

  She smiled, cunningly.

  ‘You must say now whether you are agreeable and will remain true to this binding. Ruth, answer first.’

  ‘I am agreeable and will remain true,’ said Ruth.

  ‘And Adamus.’

  ‘I am agreeable,’ Adamus said, ‘and will remain true.’

  Dorian untied the white stained ribbon.

  ‘Though the tie is undone, the vow is not undone. Let all here witness this.’

  I witness it, Rachaela thought, they will stay bound to one another. She will be taller when she marries him. It won’t look so perverse then. Or worse perhaps.

  She thought: What is he thinking? Is his mind a blank?

  Adamus bent and kissed Ruth on the lips, lightly. She did not close her eyes, she kept them open and drank him in.

  Cheta came forward in her brooch. She carried a small cake on a plate. Adamus broke it in half and Ruth ate one half and he the other.

  Michael came up with a glass of red wine. They each took a mouthful from the glass.

  ‘Write your names in the book.’

  Adamus dipped the pen and wrote, Ruth took the pen and wrote after him.

  Has she put Ruth Day from force of habit?

  But Dorian did not query the entry.

  Adamus and Ruth, hand in hand, turned away from the table. Ruth gave Adamus the second rose; he put it in his buttonhole.

  How terrifying they looked, like erroneous models on a wedding cake, the cold sheer bridegroom and his tiny sprite of a scarlet bride.

  Anna stepped up to Ruth and gave her a small package.

  Adamus released Ruth’s hand.

  She undid the gift in her usual neat, greedy way.

  A rhinestone locket—it surely could not be diamonds. Ruth held out the locket to Adamus, and he fastened it around her throat.

  The others approached Ruth. They gave her gifts: earrings, and books, and lengths of material, ornaments and objects of coloured glass.

  Only I have nothing to give. Rachaela imagined herself as the thirteenth fairy godmother, stepping forward to present the gift of death.

  Did she want Ruth dead in this moment? Was it really so bad, this idiotic ceremony and the little girl dressed like a bride?

  The little girl piled the table with her trophies. Now and then she showed them to Adamus, the best trophy of all. He gravely assented.

  Now Camillo was going forward. His present too was wrapped. Ruth tore off the wrapping eagerly. She was acquisitive. She ignored his figure in its armour.

  Out of the wrapping came a strange metal-and-wood contraption.

  Adamus said, ‘Be careful,’ and leaning forward took the thing away from her. It was a mousetrap.

  Camillo giggled.

  Anna said clearly, ‘Uncle Camillo is very naughty, Ruth. Don’t mind him.’

  ‘Uncle Camillo,’ said Ruth.

  She looked at him with her jet stone eyes. Her face was pinched a little. He had tried to spoil the betrothal.

  Anita came to Ruth and gave her an embroidered cushion of red flowers.

  When the presentation was over, the Scarabae and their betrothed went into the dining room.

  There had been no dinner earlier, now the table was laden like a medieval feast, with pies and roasts, chickens and joints gained no doubt from the supermarket in the village.

  The candles filled this room too, and the roses fumed.

  Ruth sat at one end of the table, Adamus at the other. Rachaela found herself seated between Stephan and Dorian. A place had been laid for Camillo, but he had absented himself. There were more women than men, and they filled Adamus’s end of the table.

  Selections were taken from the ready-carved joints and from the pies and dishes of vegetables.

  The Scarabae ate with good appetite. Rachaela glanced to see what Adamus did, but he was eating too. She had never seen the phenomenon before. He ate slowly and indifferently, yet the food vanished from his plate. And Ruth ate carnally.

  Repel
led, Rachaela picked at her dish. She would not celebrate by eating.

  Would there be speeches and an old champagne? Wine was served, and no one got up to speak. Yet it was the betrothal banquet. What did Ruth expect as its end? Now and then her eyes would go to Adamus. Her eyes were gluttonous. She anticipated something, and there would be nothing. Perhaps it had not been made clear to her. This was the climax of the night.

  When Adamus rose, Ruth looked up expectantly.

  ‘Good night,’ Adamus said. ‘Good night, Anna. Good night, Ruth.’

  ‘Must you go so early?’ Anna said.

  ‘I’ve stayed two hours,’ he said.

  Anna bowed her head, and Adamus left the table of the fairytale feast and walked out of the room.

  Ruth half got to her feet.

  ‘Shall I—’

  ‘No, Ruth. Stay and finish your supper.’

  Ruth sank back with a peculiar glimmer in her eyes. She forked up her chicken, but some of the vibrancy had gone from her.

  The meal went on for a long time.

  Rachaela was heartily sick of it, longing to escape as he had, but knowing she must stay, to watch.

  Finally the fruits and sweetmeats had been picked bare to stones and crusts. The company rose.

  Ruth poised like a scarlet mayfly.

  ‘Am I to go up now?’

  ‘No,’ said Anna. ‘It’s very late. I’m sure that soon you’ll want to sleep.’

  Ruth’s face was heavy, shadows under the eyes.

  ‘No.’

  ‘You don’t feel it yet, but you will. After all this excitement.’

  ‘And the dress,’ said Alice, ‘the dress must be taken off and put back on its dummy.’

  ‘I want to keep the dress,’ said Ruth. ‘I want to wear it.’

  ‘Oh no, no. Whoever heard of such a thing? Such dresses are kept only for the special day, You wouldn’t want to spoil the lovely dress?’ AUce fluttered in astonishment.

  Ruth looked at Alice and abruptly radiated a beam of pure hatred.

  Of course, she had been baulked. No Adamus, and now no dress. They were stripping her role from her. Another child would have thrown a tantrum, but this child had learned early that to make a fuss gained nothing.

  Whatever else, Alice cringed before Ruth’s eyes. She turned to Peter and besought him, ‘It’s always been done. She doesn’t know. Do you remember when Jessica tore her dress and it had to be stitched as she wore it, sewn on around her, and then cut again to get it off.’