by Tarr, Judith
If you put it that way, he admitted, and once more she heard him in Italian, no. He sank to one knee, bundles and all. Beautiful lady, may I please come in? My solemn vow on it: I’ll preach no heresies, play no tricks, and make no—unwilling—conquests.
“And cast no spells?”
No spells, he agreed.
She nodded, gracious as a queen. “Very well. You may come in.”
oOo
Unappealing though the passage had been, the house proper was very pleasant. There were two stories to it above the scrivener’s shop. “Uncle Gregorios doesn’t sell parchment,” she explained. “He sells what’s written on it. He’s a public scribe, a notary; he works here when he can, but elsewhere most often, writing letters and witnessing deeds and the like.”
She did not show her guest into the upper story, where were the bedchambers and a storeroom. Not merely for the danger of letting a man see where she slept; Bianca was there, mercifully oblivious to what passed in the room below.
That was a large one with windows on a courtyard, the shutters flung wide in the warmth. Behind it lay the kitchen in which, at Stefania’s command, Nikki had deposited most of his burdens. In it stood a table and a chair or two, a bench, a chest and a cabinet, and a high slanted table such as he had seen in the scriptorium of San Girolamo.
A stool was drawn up to the table; a book lay open on it and a heap of parchment beside that, folded and ruled and ready to write on. Nikki craned to see. The book to be copied was Greek. He moved closer.
Greek indeed, marked as verse, and a fine ringing sound to the line or two that met his eye. “Pindar,” Stefania said. “A pagan poet, very great my uncle says, and very difficult.”
He’s copying the book for a client?
“No,” she answered almost sharply. “I am.”
Nikki smiled his warmest smile. She looked defiant, and surprised. He should have been dismayed, if not appalled, to have encountered a woman who could write. More, a woman who could write Greek.
So can I, he pointed out, which makes me a strange animal, too.
“You’re a man. You can do as you like. A learned woman, however,” said Stefania with more than a hint of bitterness, “is an affront to the vast majority of learned manhood.”
Of course she is. She’s usually so much better at it. Nikki perched on the window ledge between Arlecchina and a great fragrant bowl of herbs, green and growing in the sunlight; he folded his arms and considered Stefania with distinct pleasure. I’m inured to such blows. My sister is no mere scholar; she’s a philosopher.
“No,” Stefania said.
Yes, he shot back. She’d be a theologian, too, except that there’s not much call for the Greek variety on this side of the world. Besides which, she likes to add, there’s always room for another natural philosopher; and the world is all too full of bickering theologians.
Stefania laughed. “There’s a woman after my own heart!”
She had put aside her veil and hung up her cloak. Her dress was plain to severity, but it was the same deep blue as her eyes; her body in it was lissome and yet richly curved.
She was very much smaller than himself. When they had stood face to face, her head came just above his chin. Even little Anna was taller than that. Yet how tall she stood in the plain comfortable room, her feet firm on the woven mat, her dress glowing against the whitewashed wall. There was no doubt of it, she was perfectly to his taste.
In the silence under his steady stare, her assurance wavered. She moved a little too quickly, spoke in a rush. “Would you like a cup of wine? It’s very good. One of Uncle’s clients trades in it; we get a cask every year for wages. It’s Falernian, as in the poets.”
It was strong and red and heavenly fine, served in a glass cup that must have been the best one, because Stefania herself had one of plain wood.
She only pretended to drink from it. After a sip or two of his own, Nikki cradled the goblet in his hands and said, I’m keeping you from your work.
She did not try to deny it. “I have a page to copy, and the housekeeping—”
I know how to sweep, he ventured. I could learn to scrub.
She stared and laughed, amazed. “You are a natural wonder. And generous, too, though for nothing. I swept and scrubbed this morning; it’s our supper I have to think of, and there’s all my plunder to put away, and if I don’t pay my respects to Bianca soon, she’ll know I’ve been waylaid in the street.”
He nodded slowly. May I come again? Tomorrow, maybe? You shouldn’t go to market alone; and you know how handy I am at carrying things.
The sparkle had come back to her eyes. “You are persistent, Messer Nikephoros.”
Do you mind?
She thought about it. “No,” she decided. “I suppose I don’t.”
He gave her the full court salutation as if she had been the Queen of Rhiyana, yet his eyes danced. She accepted his obeisance in the same mirthful earnest. “Why, sir! Have I overstepped myself? Are you after all a prince in disguise?”
Alas, no. Only a very minor nobleman and a very callow squire.
She was not at all dismayed to find him even as close to royalty as that. “Tomorrow,” she said, light and brisk, both promise and dismissal.
His answer was a smile, swift, joyous, and deadly to her hard-won composure.
17.
They were torturing Thea. Herself Anna never thought of; she was fed, she was reasonably warm, she was ignored. Thea was the one who suffered, bound in alien shape, battling for her will and her sanity, holding high the shields between her enemy and her children.
That was evil enough. But as the slow hours passed, Simon began to haunt his prisoners.
The more Anna saw of his face, the less like Alf’s it seemed. It was heavier; it was coarser; now it was shaven smooth, now it was stubbled with beard.
Every time she woke, it seemed that he was there, at first only peering through the grille, but advancing after a time or two into the room. He was always alone, always habited in white and grey. He always stood still, staring at Thea or at the children, flat-eyed, expressionless.
Sometimes he left her to her mind’s freedom. Often he looked and raised his hand, and she sat or stood or lay mute in mind as in body, able only to curse him with her eyes.
After a moment or an hour, he would turn his back on her and leave her. She could move then, speak from mind to mind, join in the children’s playing.
She seemed undaunted, but Anna was afraid for her. Her eyes burned with a fierce dry heat; her ribs sharpened under the taut hide. When she was silent, Anna knew she fought the power that held her prisoner. When she spoke, it was only a new battle in the war, each word calculated to cut her jailer to the quick. When she slept, which was seldom, she slept like the dead.
During one such sleep, while Anna sat by her, watching over her, the air in the room changed. Simon stood over them both.
For an instant Anna knew the absolute purity of hate. “Sathanas!” she hissed. “Get thee behind us.”
He did not move. For him she did not exist. Only Thea was real, Thea and the children who stared from the shelter of her side.
Slowly he sank to one knee. Anna tensed to leap at him. But she could not stir. Could barely even breathe for the mighty and unseen hand that held her fast.
With one tentative finger he touched Thea’s flank. She flowed; she melted and changed; she lay a woman, unconscious, cradling twin alaunts.
His eyes were flat no longer, but flint and steel. “Evil,” he murmured. “Daughter of evil, Lilith, beautiful and damned.”
The same finger traced her cheek, almost stroking it. In her sleep she stirred, turning toward the touch as to her lover’s caress.
His fist knotted on his thigh. “Beautiful, oh, God in heaven, you are beautiful, and cursed in your beauty. Dreaming of abominations, the creatures you bore, begotten in foulness, brought forth in black sorcery by that one, the son of Hell, the white demon. Monk he was, he, priest of God, mocker, bl
asphemer—”
The mask had fallen; his eyes had caught fire. His face was contorted with hate. “A priest he dared to be, standing before the very altar of the Lord, mouthing the holy words. Oh, horror, horror…”
He tossed his head, tearing at it with clawed fingers, raking it, opening long weals. Yet as each opened, it closed again, miraculous, terrible.
Suddenly he was still. His hands lowered, clasped. His face calmed. Anna knew then that he was truly and irredeemably mad.
“I am not a priest,” he said. “God’s servant, I; God’s slave. In His mercy He suffers me. I do not tempt Him by laying hands on the body of His son.”
“No. Only by slaughtering innocents.” Thea was awake with all her wits about her, and a fire in her eyes to match that which smoldered behind his.
“I work God’s will,” he said.
“No doubt King Herod thought he did the same.”
His face tightened. Thea’s body blurred, yet it did not melt. She was white with strain.
He shook his head as if to clear it. With a sharp cry Thea crumpled, shifting, struggling, woman to hound to white wolf to golden lioness. Out of the fading gold battled a great gyrfalcon, stretching gull’s wings, blooming into such a white beauty as the world had never known outside of a dream. But the beauty raged, and the horn was edged bronze, lunging toward the enemy.
Simon smote his hands together. Thea fell without grace as if to grovel at his feet, all naked save for the cloud of her hair.
He regarded her with cold contempt. “Why do you persist in opposing me? I cannot be overcome. No power on earth is greater than mine.”
She levered herself up on her stiffened arms. “So you admit it. You are the Lord of the World. Mere mortals are encouraged to do battle against you; should I do any less?”
“Your tongue,” he said, “would not shame a viper. Be one, then. Match your seeming to the truth of you.”
Thea laughed in his face, a little loudly perhaps, ending it as a hound’s bark. She crouched thus, braced for combat. But he only looked at her without expression.
At length he said, “So would Brother Paul have you be. Remember that you chose it of your own free will.”
oOo
He went away for a merciful while. But he came back as if he could not help himself, standing and staring, his fists clenching and unclenching at his sides.
Anna was telling a tale to the children; none of them would give him the satisfaction of acknowledging his presence, though Anna’s voice faltered now and then. She was in the midst of the tale of the pagan wanderer Odysseus, in its own age-old Greek, which no doubt outraged his fanatical soul.
The beautiful ancient words rolled on and on. Anna’s mouth had gone dry. Simon stood like a shadow of death.
Her throat closed in mid-word, nor would it open for all her striving. Rage swelled, too great by far to let in fear. How dared he thrust his power upon her as if she had been no more than a buzzing insect? He did not even look at her as he did it. She doubted that he thought of her, except as an annoyance, like a crow cawing.
She could stand. She could, she discovered, raise her hand and make a fist. The absurdity of it flashed through her mind, a small brown mouse raging and striking at the Devil himself.
She struck as hard as she could, as high as she could. Not very hard and not very high, but it did its work. He looked down amazed.
It was well past time for her to be afraid. While he ignored her she had been safe from the direct lash of his power. She had sacrificed that. He saw her now; she watched him take her into account: wrath, impotence, and all. She braced herself for the lightning’s fall.
His brows knit in puzzlement, in a little pain. “Why, child,” he said in a voice so gentle it froze her where she stood, “what’s the trouble? Has someone hurt you?”
She blinked. Her mouth gaped open; she forced it shut. She had to remember that he was mad. Yet he looked so sane, so kind and so kindly, lowering himself to one knee to gaze into her face. “What is your name?” he asked her.
He had killed Alun, tried to enslave Liahan and Cynan. He was tormenting Thea. Anna hated him with an enduring and deadly hate.
Tried to. This too was a spell. A spell of gentleness worthy of Alf himself.
She stiffened her spine. “You know what my name is, you devil. Just pick it out of my mind.”
Pain tautened the lines of his face. “You hate me. You, too. They all hate me, all of them. Why? I never want to hurt anyone. But they hurt me so much. They tear at me. Why? God loves. God commands that we love not only Him, but each other, too. Why do you hate me?”
He had seized her hand. Her skin crawled at the touch, but she had no strength to pull free. She barely had the strength to answer him. “Because you hurt. Because you destroy. Because you kill.”
His head tossed in denial. “It’s not I,” he cried. “Not I! It’s the other, the one who lives in me, behind my eyes. The rioting fire. It has its own will, and strength—dear Lord God, strength to rend worlds. But no soul; no intelligence to rule it. Mine is not enough, has never been enough. I try—I fight it. Sometimes it yields. Sometimes it rages without me, working its will as it chooses. Making. More often destroying. It is the one who kills. I am left to suffer for it.”
He spoke as if it were the truth. Maybe for him, in that instant, it was.
“There is only one of you,” Anna said, cold now and quiet. “You can’t separate power and conscience. Obviously you’ve never learned to control either, and that is more than a tragedy. It’s a deadly danger.”
The grey eyes were like a child’s, wide and luminous with tears. “I know. Sweet saints, I know. All my life I’ve fought, I fight, but whenever I think I’ve gained the mastery, the power swells and grows and escapes. It’s a monster in me, like the hideous thing, the affliction the doctors call the crab, that devours all it touches. O child with the beautiful eyes, if you have any wisdom at all, tell me what I can do to conquer it!”
Anna had gone beyond astonishment as beyond fear. She regarded him. Kneeling, he was not quite as tall as she, his fair face drawn with anguish.
His grip was like a vise, just short of pain; his whole body beseeched her. He was so like Alf, not the splendid joyous Lord of Broceliande nor even the beloved guest of Byzantium, but the Alf Anna knew only in stories, the monk of Anglia with all his doubts and torments.
Once more she stiffened her back. This was not Alf, unless it were an Alf lacking some vital part. A strength, a resilience. A core of steel. This one had only stone, flint that could chip and shatter, with a heart of deadly and uncontrollable fire.
“I can’t master your power for you,” she said. “Only you can do that.”
“I’m not strong enough.”
She glared. “Of course you aren’t, if you keep saying so. Whining so, I should say. You’re not human, that you can afford either laziness or cowardice. Get rid of them and you’ll have what you’re begging me for.”
“No,” he said. “Maybe once—before— No. It’s grown too great. I haven’t grown with it. It’s my master now, and I its slave.”
“Because you let yourself be.”
His eyes darkened as if a veil had fallen across them. He let go her hand. “Perhaps. Perhaps it is God Who is master. He speaks to me like thunder, like the whisper of wind in the grass. He commands me: ‘Go forth, be strong, conquer in My name. Let no man stand against Me.’” He rose in the mantle of his madness. “No man, no woman, no creature of night’s creation. I have been shaped in the forge. I am the hammer of God.”
“You are a madman.”
“Yes,” he agreed willingly. “It’s God, you see. He’s too strong for flesh to endure. The old heathens knew. They said it, and I know it for truth. Whom the gods would take, they first drive mad.” His hand rested lightly, briefly, on her shoulder. “I would regret it if I could. I don’t like to cause pain, even in God’s name.”
Anna shook her head. She could not—would not—d
ebate with lunacy.
He smiled the first smile she had ever seen on his face. It was sad and very sweet. She turned her back on it. Well before she moved again, he had gone.
To her surprise and much to her dismay, she found that she was crying. For anger. For weariness. For simple pity.
18.
“Anna. Anna Chrysolora.”
She opened her eyes, squinting in the changeless light. Almost she groaned aloud. Simon sat by her, saying her name with a soft and almost witless pleasure.
She snapped at him, cross with sleep and with the compassion he forced on her. Hate was so much simpler, so much more satisfying. “Don’t you have anything better to do with yourself?”
“No,” he answered, unruffled.
“No Masses? No Offices to sing? No other prisoners to torture?”
“It’s after Prime. You know there are no other prisoners here. Only you and yonder whelps and that other who crouches in a corner and tries to find a chink in my power. She won’t find one.”
“You are arrogant.”
“I tell the plain truth.”
Anna sat up, knuckling the last grains of sleep from her eyes. She felt filthy; she ached. Her courses were on her at last. God’s own curse in this place, in front of this monster.
He clasped his knees. It was a most unmonstrous posture, boylike indeed with his clear young face atop it. “Brother Paul is coming,” he said. “He grows impatient. We gain nothing while yon witch defies me.”
“I should think you’d hold us for ransom. Then you’d have a chance of gaining something.”
“We have asked. The price, it seems, is too high.”
Anna swallowed. Suddenly her throat was dust-dry.
He heard the silent question. “We ask no mere treasure of mint or mine. We will have the witches, all of them, subject to the justice of the Church, and Rhiyana ours to lay under the rule of God.”
