Faces Under Water

“That’s because Eurydiche likes you. And it seems that you in turn like her quite well.”

  “Del Nero seemed to like her.”

  “He loved her. But she had no true feeling for him.”

  “A strange motive for murder.”

  Lepidus said, “As you guessed he was murdered for another reason. Someone was jealous and wished him away. A musician, you’ll understand.”

  “But you had him killed on this jealous musician’s behalf.”

  “I, and others.”

  “You had him set upon and thrown in the canal.”

  “Nothing so crude. It was wonderfully subtly done.”

  “How was it done?”

  Lepidus smiled, in the broad raconteur’s fashion that long ago had enchanted the supper tables. “That’s another story. We may come to it. But not yet.”

  “Have there been others your Guild—and you, Lepidus—killed?”

  “You know as much.”

  “Name them. Number them.”

  “Oh, five or so. Seven or so. The names might mean nothing.”

  “Messalina is one?”

  “Yes.”

  “But she’s gone mad. She’s beyond you.”

  “Never think that, Furian. Shall I call you Furian? Since you call yourself that now.”

  “Why do it—why murder? If not for yourself?” Lepidus drank his wine. He said, “But it has also been for me. And for the others who do as I do—also for them. We have our personal reasons, rages, thorns, for wanting this power over others, the God-Power of life and death. To toy—as we’ve been toyed with. It’s become—our art.” He paused. He said, “Let me tell you something about myself. That night of your dainty party, when you came home to your father’s house, when you were going to your bed, I was riding to my estate. I hadn’t been back to it for thirteen years. This is often the plight of the dedicated traveler. On your father’s ventures, and on my own, thirteen years away. I had a wife.

  Of course, you didn’t know. Why would you bother to know, I was only an occasional guest. But I hadn’t seen her, you perceive, for thirteen years, or the daughter she had borne me in my absence. Yes, my wife sent letters to me. She praised the little girl, said she was pretty and quick. And I, like any guilty parent, returned them gifts and money. The night when I came home, I found no daughter at all. All those years my wife had kept her with the nuns of Santa Dolora. I could not at first get from her why.”

  Furian waited, but Lepidus was silent.

  Furian said, “So you went to see.”

  “She was brought to my house. She came veiled over like a frosty flower.”

  “But you took off the veil.”

  Lepidus said, his voice no longer urbane, but rasping and very thick, “I didn’t lose my senses, as you did. But I crossed myself. I babbled to the Virgin. I broke out in a white sweat and had to void my bowels. They call it Fachia Pietra—Stone Face. It happens now and then, in every several million, million human things. The muscles are dead in the face. They may be moved manually, or how else could they feed, but in no spontaneous way. It never changes.”

  “She told me this.”

  “Stone Face,” said Lepidus. “My daughter. An only child, did I say? My wife hadn’t given her even a name. The nuns christened her Maria, as they did every foundling girl. Then a number. Maria Una and Maria Dua, and my daughter was Maria Setta. But the other Marias were afraid of her.”

  “However, you took her in.”

  “Did I? No. I gave her to paid servants to bring up.

  But as a lady. She wasn’t meant for a nun-house. In her first letter to me she wrote Dearest Father, I am quite happy now.”

  Furian’s belly turned like a snake. His heart twisted.

  He said only, “And the language you make with your hands?”

  “I learnt it in the Amarias. I learnt it for entertainment. The Orichalci invented it, for the speechless among them. She mastered it quickly. She’ll teach it to you.”

  “To me. Why to me?”

  Lepidus leant forward. He was heavy now, a tree at the fullness of its growth, stiffening. An angry raging tree. “You have a choice, Furian. She needs a protector, a man of her own age. A lover, a husband. I’ll give you this, if you want it.”

  “Del Nero wanted. He was a prince.”

  “I told you. She didn’t want him.”

  “But me she wants.”

  “You spoke to her in some garden. You were masked. But from that moment. You sang under her window. You were playing the love-game even then, though you may not think so. And you came with her here.”

  “That was perhaps unwise.”

  “Or sensible. If you won’t have her, you can still live. Either way, there’s only one course for you.”

  “Which is?”

  “To become an initiate of the guild. Once its oaths and terrors bind you, you’re safe to me, and to my comrades.”

  “I see that. Then I must. I don’t want to die.”

  “That’s new. You seemed half to want death a long while.”

  “But now I’m enslaved of your daughter.”

  “You were always perverse,” said Lepidus.

  Furian thought, Perverse to love her then, so he thinks, For he does not. He hates her. This is a duty or some earthly trial. (I am quite happy.) In God’s sweet name—

  “Well then,” said Lepidus, “take more wine. You’ll dine among us tonight. The rite that will place you in the Guild is a difficult and savage one. You must be prepared.”

  Trapped like a wasp in sugar. No way out. Not yet.

  “Whatever you say,” said Furian.

  And he’s pleased to see me so. Those days and nights at my father’s table, my family like lords, and Lepidus our actor, performing his life risked so often only an enthralling tale. And I with my eye on some girl, not properly attending. He does like it so, this. The poor wasp in the sugar of his daughter’s skirts. And what has he seen, spying on me? Flat drunk, sick, playing with knives—the men I’ve killed myself, the women I’ve had, depths to which I’ve sunk—my bloody dreams—I am a worthy punishment, he judges, for this daughter who shamed him with her beautiful deformity.

  7

  THE DINING CHAMBER WAS DARK. The somber silks were from the East, and sables hung from ceiling to floor. His father would have appreciated it.

  On the table the vessels gleamed. There were clams in a honey and garlic sauce, greens from the farms, peacock roasted and dressed with their feathers, calves livers, a dish of the peculiar floury Batata from the Amarias. Furian ate sparingly, just enough to confirm his (demanded?) respect.

  Eurydiche sat to his left, her mask obscuring her, eating, of course, nothing.

  There were five others.

  Lepidus, the blue glass mask hinged up to his nose. Three further men sat about the table, dressed richly enough, satins, lace, wigs, pins and rings and earrings. Each of these wore only an eye-mask, two quite plain, as was Furian’s, and one in the form of a gilt half moon. The fifth person was another woman, who sat beside Moon Mask. She wore a black velvet dress with decorations of tourmaline sea scorpions. Her mask was a fantasy of a black fan. Calypso?

  She gave no sign she had met with Furian. Unlike Eurydiche, she filled her plate and goblet, yet did not shift her mask to eat. She was restless, moving and rustling in her chair. Now and then she reached for her silver fork, or the glass, left them lying.

  Once she spoke, very low, to Moon Mask. “I must take it off.”

  “Do what you want, dear heart,” he responded.

  “Why not, Let me feast on your loveliness with the food.” But she did not even then remove her mask. Her fingers tapped the fan and fell away.

  Was it Furian she was afraid to reveal herself before? Did she recognize him? Had she been told the truth of anything? Whatever else, she had come a distance from Juseppi’s Osiris death in pieces and the open sunny rooms of the Bertro Palace.

  Lepidus smiled on and on, a short, graven smile.

 
The candles made rivulets on the rust brocade of his coat, as if he had come out of water. But that was not he. He had had, Furian thought, none of this aura—of weight, of biding malice—at the tables of long ago. Or had Furian only missed it?

  The men talked in a sort of code. The dialogue had the same antique ring as the phrases employed at the entry below. It was another new language, from which the uninitiated was excluded. He could not follow, could not enter, though he might hear every word.

  This too they did for him, he believed. To demonstrate the well-walled kingdom he was to try to enter. But he had been promised a rough passage. Acolytes of any guild underwent traditional rituals and ordeals, and were sworn not to speak of them. Enough leaked out to make one chary. But now there was no choice.

  Unless he and she might escape. Was that possible? Eurydiche relied upon Lepidus, her father. She had had to. If Furian proposed they should mislead and evade him, would she attend, or be able to disobey?

  “When we are midway up the mountain, the fire may be seen,” said one of the plain eye-masks. (No names had been given, not even Furian’s—but then, they would know of him.)

  “A ram caught in a thicket,” said another man, “We must praise God for the fairness of its eyes.”

  That was how the talk was. Furian did not really heed. Nothing was to be got from it.

  Calypso put her hand on her glass again, and again withdrew it.

  Did she know these men were the ones who had ordered Juseppi’s death, had had him tortured, then cut into bits and sent her in a basket? She must know. How else had she met her swain?

  “I can’t,” she said.

  No one gave her attention.

  The mask she wore, had worn in the Setapassa, was exceptional. Every tine of the fan was fluted by the lacquer of black lace. The eyeholes were in the shape of roses. Her eyes behind were opaque and wandering. “Four ships came to harbor,” said Lepidus. “Now a fifth ship comes. We honor it.” And he bowed to Furian, ironically. But the other men at the table also bowed. Furian at a loss, bowed back.

  They like a clever dog. They want it to beg for the bones. Calypso rose suddenly. She pointed past Furian into the shadows of sables. “Something’s there!”

  Her eyes were wide in the mask now. Furian could see their whites were inflamed, as if she had been in smoke.

  “Nothing’s there. Sit down,” said Moon Mask, offhandedly now.

  “It’s a monkey. I can see a monkey.”

  “Sit down. There’s no monkey.”

  Lepidus said, “Perhaps the ghost of some animal that haunts the room.” He touched Calypso’s arm. “The hour’s late. Our friend may wish for his bed. There are things to do tomorrow.”

  The men got up. Each nodded to Furian as he passed him, going out. Calypso walked behind the moon-masked man. She drew her skirts in close, away from invisible things which ran along the floor.

  The door did not quite shut. Lepidus said, “The man will show you to your apartment. A little cramped, I fear. Perhaps you’re used to that nowadays.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “My daughter will go to her own room, which I keep for her here. You see, the proprieties must be observed under this roof.”

  Furian said, “The lady in the black dress—”

  “Juseppi’s woman. Yes?”

  “She seemed uneasy.”

  “Of course she is. She’s a coarse woman and not fitted to be here. But one of our number lays claim to her, for the time being.”

  The servant had come to the doorway with a light.

  Furian must evidently now go. He turned to Eurydiche, and took up her hand. It was cold. He must go, and leave her with her hating father, but again, no choice. He leaned and kissed her hair. Her fragrance disturbed him utterly. So much license had been abounding. He had thought they would still share a bed.

  Lepidus took him to the door. He whispered, “At last, of them all, one you can rescue.”

  Outside in the corridor, the black-aproned man led him away, up a stair into a maze of twines and doors.

  The room was certainly small, and bare. The bed was hard and narrow. On a table lay a Bible bound in black leather and a Neptunium, the book of prayers to the god of the ocean. A silver cross hung on the wall. In each corner, high up, was the symbol of Venus, beside the trident.

  A barred window looked squinting on to darkness, but he heard the race of the mill along the canal.

  There was water in a decanter, but belatedly cautious, he did not drink it.

  He sat on the hard bed. With her, he had slept as mortal things are said to sleep. Alone, he did not think that sleep would come, nor wish to court it.

  Furian listened to the water-race. Below that sound, the noises of the Guild House were stifled.

  Despite what had been said, they might come up here to murder him—it had been admitted, power over life, to toy with it, appeased them. Or they begin their initiation ritual in the midst of the night, merely to unhinge him.

  Did she know how much Lepidus hated her, loathed her? Probably she thought it inevitable and natural that he should. Yet she was brim-full, a poured fountain, of love.

  His eyes clouded with fruitless fatigue. He would have given anything to have her here. He must speak to her tomorrow, if there were a moment’s space. They should be gone, Her father had seemed to say he killed to work out his rage at her, upon mankind, like an angry, maddened god. And had she never known?

  HE DREAMED OF A GREEN SALT-SWAN swimming alone along a night lagoon. The walls of ruins stood up, not a light showing. The swan parted its mouth, and screamed like a woman inside his head.

  Furian lurched off the bed. This fresh habit of sleeping—he had slept despite himself.

  He flung the door open and stared out. Feet were running, up and up. They became a boy in a black apron and plain black mask.

  “Signore—come—come—”

  “What?” he said. He caught the boy’s shoulder.

  “The lady—she’ll need you—” cried the boy.

  “Which lady?”

  “Madonna Eurydiche.”

  As they rushed downstairs, along the corridors, he thought that she could not scream, could make scarcely any noise. If he had truly heard it, perhaps it was not her?

  The boy was pulling him into a room. All the while, the boy choked and muttered in fear. No sooner was Furian inside than the boy ran away.

  All Furian could see at first was Eurydiche. She wore a long pale night-robe, and her hair was loose.

  Behind her, the things of a bedroom—it must be hers. A tapestry on the wall of Diana hunting with white hounds, shone oddly in the light of the lamp. He saw the tapestry was askew, and why. A man lay under it and had wrenched at it in falling, it seemed.

  The man was Lepidus. Still in his glamorous rusty coat, the ring on his hand which somehow yet clutched the edge of the hunt… A big, able body, and the hair, undone now, streaming out, but its grey discolored.

  Eurydiche stood with her hands loose at her sides.

  When he spoke her name, she moved at once. She came at him. He saw the unhidden disk of her fearsome loveliness, the glitter of her inhuman sapphire eyes. Then she was ripping at him, beating him, struggling.

  He caught her, held her still.

  “I know—I know. I heard you screaming. I can hear you weeping. I know, my love. I can hear.”

  At this she dropped against him. He held her as her body shook itself to quiet in his arms.

  She would tell him presently, writing erratically at the small table, how she had woken at a little noise, and seen the lamp alight, and then seen—this. Her father’s body under the tapestry, still dressed and jeweled, but the hair undone and stained with blood, and all the face, from the fore head to the chin, cut neatly away, skin and flesh, muscle and sinew, features, mouth, eyes, (brain), leaving only one more grinning, dull-white skull.

  PART THREE

  The Skull

  1

  “DON’T LEAVE ME,”
she cried, so desperately. “How can you leave me? Do you want to break my heart—kill me—how can you go—my son—my darling—”

  Furian lifted himself out of sleep. He was not used to sleep, for years it had been so evasive. Eurydiche had taught him how to slumber again, and how to eat if he were hungry, and how to drink more for pleasure than excess—But the dreams. Could she have kept the dreams away?

  He said aloud to the blank room, “I left you, Mother. I’m sorry. I expect you recovered.”

  Had she? He had never inquired. He had heard nothing of them. Presumably Lepidus had known, before he removed from their service to make masks, and murder. But Lepidus would have to be tongue-tied now. The room was long and low, and nets hung from hooks. One brown candle burned. The mattress was on the floor, and verminous.

  Was her chamber as gross? Possibly the one who had got them away had made sure it was not.

  He would never have placed Moon-Mask in the role of savior, but that was the one who had come in, as he held Eurydiche in the long silence.

  “It’s treachery. Enemies everywhere. Who knows who struck him? But you two must get away at once.”

  “Very well.”

  “Not by your own means. You must do what I say.

  Or you’ll die, and so may she.”

  They went down, cloaked, masked, two more of those secret wanderers by night for whom the slinking boats of Venus were named.

  Moon-Mask did not go with them, only his three men, their leader masked like a bull, as dead Juseppi had once tried to be.

  The boat stole between the dark stone curtains of the houses, over the stony mirror water. It was a journey of hours. At last they passed into the Laguna Silvia. Furian became aware, by the turns they took, they were going among the haunts of the fishers, the Divers Quarter.

  Nets hung from windows, in the dark like spider webs. The smell of fish was dense. On the tethering poles, Neptunes stood up, moving a little, some with Filmy pearls put into them. On the sides of houses, on broken shutters, the City Zodians were painted, Scorpio, Cancro, Pesci. From one greenishly lit window thin as a pin, a child’s voice fluted out, singing long cadences, being taught to breathe even by night.