Faces Under Water

  Shaachen let the magpie loose. It flew round the clearing, with claps of its ink and paper feathers, gleaming with fire, sheened red now, not blue.

  AS THEY WALKED THE NIGHT Island, Furian swore at the ground, bombarding his shoeless feet. Shaachen muttered. Finally, “Give me back the paper I sent you.”

  “That letter is porridge.”

  “Scrape it out. I want it.”

  Furian did as Shaachen said, scooping up the glutinous, crumbling mess from a pocket. Shaachen took it and stowed it in his coat.

  “You think I won’t need your magic symbols of protection any more? Why didn’t you bring boots?”

  “You’ll need only Doctor Shaachen.”

  “Oh well. I can’t argue with that.”

  The hills coursed up, whorled with the tiny, circling graves. They passed a monument to some great family of Venus. The goddess herself mourned them in marble. Pines and cypress pointed at the black sky, where stars were hung out like sparkling masks. (Too far off to see their eyes.) A nightingale sang.

  Furian thought, I said I’d go to her, because of what he said to me. Why is he here? He experiments on the dead and on the living. One more experiment?

  The wine-bloom of the burning chimneys had lessened. They went east towards the Mask Guild chapel.

  It was, in any event, a lost cause. And probably she was as base as he had thought. But if not, if not—

  DAWN TURNED THE SMOKES of San Fumo violet. Birds spurted their music, and it was possible to sense the lagoon’s lapping, as if only darkness had muffled it. There were groves of trees, and then an open slope, the autumn grass turned to the sun, tobacco brown. Above, a walled garden with acacia and cypresses. From these, a golden dome rose like a sun’s egg.

  “The Mask Chapel,” said Shaachen, complacently.

  “How do you mean to proceed?”

  “Limping. Look about. Do you know anything?”

  “The chapel will be difficult of access. Your best means are to go knock on the door.”

  “You think so?”

  “It will save you time.”

  Furian said, “My one advantage was, I thought, they believed me dead.”

  “Don’t be too sure,” said Shaachen. “Maybe not.”

  They went up the slope, carelessly. There was little cover, some small groups of parched trees turned towards the lagoon, which now they saw far off. The water was blue and the City lay over it, a transparent vertical map of towers, floating, as ever, like a flock of ships.

  Beyond the dome of the chapel, one smoke rose. Shaachen spoke unintelligibly to the magpie. It lifted straight up, and flew back among the trees.

  There was no gate in the wall. An arch showed a flat path, set with mosaic chariots racing—they were chariots of Death with sable horses. The building at the path’s end was simple but ornate, a windowless box. But there were windows sliced narrowly in the dome. Behind, buildings clustered in the garden.

  A woman was coming down the path, unexpected and incongruous. She wore a festive blood-red dress, and her face was hidden by a black fan mask.

  She hurried, and as she came closer, Shaachen stood away behind Furian. Furian glanced at him and saw the Doctor had put on a comic mask, a rabbit with tall ears.

  “What are you playing at?”

  “I’m now your servant, a poor old fool. Call me Diano.”

  Calypso reached them. She put out her hand and lightly prodded at Furian’s breast.

  “Is it you?”

  “Who?” he said.

  “You must come in quickly. I don’t like it outside.”

  She took his arm, and snuggled against him. As she pulled on him, they began to walk, and rabbity Shaachen crept behind.

  The black and gilded door of the chapel had opened and Lunario Moon-Mask was there, with a couple of men behind him. These men carried staves, but Lunario’s hands were empty.

  “What a long while you were,” he said.

  Calypso made a scratching movement at her mask, as if it itched. She kept hold of Furian.

  “I made haste,” she said. “There—are creatures in the garden. Was that why you sent me?”

  “Hush. I refer to our guest, who dallied.”

  Furian said, as they came to the door, “I had to return from the dead.”

  Lunario laughed. “But I know that’s a lie, Signore Furian.”

  Furian eased Calypso off his arm. She turned abruptly and slapped his face a hard, stinging blow, then stalked into the chapel, past the grinning half-masked men.

  Lunario said, “She’s got a strong arm. Did you feel the slap? Does it prove to you you’re alive?”

  “I supposed I was meant to be drowned.”

  “Not at all. The divers rescued you as they were paid to do. You came ashore at the old tomb. Then you might have run away, or run here, but you delayed. Now you’ve arrived at last. Who’s this one?” Lunario gestured at Shaachen, who was hopping and twittering at Furian’s back.

  “A servant. Somehow he followed me. Senile, as you see.”

  “Senile but clever. Well, he can come in.” Lunario stood aside. The men with staves stood aside. How welcoming.

  Beyond them, a black stone vestibule gave on a second massive door, shut fast.

  Lunario turned and moved into a narrow passage. Calypso went after him, ignoring Furian now, and the men with staves gave him one friendly urging. He followed, and Shaachen, gibbering, perhaps dribbling in an excess of theatricality, scuttled at his back.

  They ascended steps. A lamp burned dully on the wall.

  “Wait here. Your servant may wait, too.”

  Lunario crossed the space they had entered, and was gone into another corridor. Only one of the men with staves remained. But Calypso slunk against Furian. “I see things. They’re there. Only I can see them. There’s something black clinging to you. It has claws, but no face.”

  “Go after you master,” Furian said.

  Calypso bridled. “This mask,” she said, “sees better than I do.” In the eyeplaces, her own eyes darted, inflamed and congested, seeming half blind.

  Furian sat on a stone bench by the wall. He smiled down at the floor. In a few more moments she scudded away, her bloody skirts sweeping up the old rank dusts off the paving.

  Diano, the insane servant, crouched on the floor.

  He had taken out some dice and was throwing them, grunting and giggling at the results.

  “I’d have them put down,” said the man with the stave. “Once they get like that.”

  “You’re right,” said Furian.

  “You wouldn’t keep a dog like it.”

  “No.”

  “How did he manage to follow you?”

  “He comes over to the graves sometimes. He has relatives buried here. It was just bad luck we met.”

  The man with the stave approached and bent over Shaachen. “Eh, rabbit. I’d wring your scrawny neck.” Shaachen Diano looked up at him. The rabbit mask leered. “And he’s a Jew. Shit-scum. I’d burn the lot.”

  Furian got up. He had nothing to lose, it was mostly all gone. He hit the man with considerable force, and in a shower of gore and broken teeth he went over and lay there. Furian picked up the stave, and at that moment another man came in from the corridor. This one laughed luxuriantly. “I can’t leave you alone for one moment, can I? Didn’t the wetting cool you down?”

  “Evidently not.”

  Furian observed this newcomer. A stocky man, with the mask of a wolf. Its maned fur passed over his head and down his broad back, concealing hair and throat. The voice nagged, for it was known—and the mask known too. It came in a flash of seconds. The reveler in the Groves of Diana, who had seized Messalina off the altar, nearly nude, and galloped her away into the wild park.

  “You’re here, I think, for her,” he said now, the wolf, in his rich, known voice.

  “Who’s that?”

  “Your girl with blue eyes.”

  “But I was meant to be here,” said Furian.
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  “If you cared a lot for her, you’d come after her. Simple enough. And you haven’t disappointed.”

  “Or drowned.”

  “You were previously warned, Furian, an ordeal lay before you, your initiation into the Guild. So far, you’ve come through the testing well.”

  Furian took a breath. “The drowning was—an initiation?”

  “A part of it. There’s more. For now, you should take rest. There are things you must be told.”

  “Which I shan’t credit.”

  “I think you may.”

  He made a short, dismissive motion. On his hand a black ring blazed like a living eye. It was the ring of Lepidus. He had, too, the wolf, the voice of Lepidus. Furian said nothing.

  The wolf said to him, “Come with me now. No tricks or snares. My daughter’s waiting for you in a little room.”

  As they walked, crazy Diano rattling in their wake, Furian said bleakly, “Who was the man you killed, the man whose face you cut away?”

  “A custom of the Orichalci,” said the wolf.

  “I know. You told me once.”

  “I didn’t think you listened.”

  Furian was trembling at a numb and somber distance from himself. Had she known it too, all along? That her father lived, that Furian would be saved. The lagoon was only a test, the sorcerous alchemical element of water.

  “But the man,” he said.

  “Someone who resembled me bodily, somewhat,” said Lepidus the wolf. “A ruffian, of no great use. We gave him a good dinner and drugged his wine. He was peacefully dead before I took off his face.”

  “Oh, then, it was inoffensive. As with Juseppi, too, I trust. A good dinner and some wine, before the torture and the Death of Osiris, the cutting in ten or eleven segments,

  “Eleven, of course. It served only one most urgent purpose, to terrify, to close up doors and seal them. But it was done ritualistically because, for us, ritual has importance.”

  “And the faceless man I took for you, why that? Why not you aboard the boat, and throw me in yourself?”

  “To come at you, Furian. To play upon you.”

  “Consider me come at and played on.”

  “I see you underestimate yourself. The hub of alchemy is the changing of lead into gold. But first the lead, which is so dark and set and strong, must be softened.”

  There was a door.

  Behind it, apparently, she was. But was he ready for her?

  The wolf put a key into the lock. And that might be one more illusion, a pretense that she was her father’s prisoner here.

  “There’s so much to tell you, Furian. You’ll marvel at it.”

  “I’m already overwhelmed.”

  “And now, the love of your heart.”

  The door folded wide.

  It was a little side room of prayer, with an icon of Beautiful Maria.

  She—Eurydiche—sat in a wooden chair. She wore still the black gown from the charon, and the opals dressed her hair. Her face was unmasked, but turned away. Perhaps she had turned it even as the door opened, as a normal woman might, to hide what, in her, was always anyway quite hidden.

  She appeared untouched. Like the icon on the wall. “Now, Doctor Shaachen,” said Lepidus mildly, “let’s leave these lovers to their reunion. There’s much to do, and I can allow the eager young man only one hour in her company. But it should be private.”

  Mad Diano babbled.

  Lepidus said, “Or, if you prefer to be senile, Doctor,

  I can put you into a sewage pit we have here, for just such emergencies.”

  Shaachen straightened. He said, “Why join the Mask Guild and not my own, the Guild of Alchemists?”

  “I was too modest, Doctor, to essay your guild.”

  “But you’re easily wise enough,” said Shaachen.

  “Some join us who can do nothing. And you can do so much.”

  “I shall have to see to your death,” said Lepidus.

  “All men come to death,” said Shaachen, “I’ve been shown, it’s nothing. Only let me see the ritual through. The spell. I’d like to witness your skill to its full.”

  “Since you ask so nicely, perhaps. Meanwhile, someone must take away your satchel.”

  The door shut and the key turned in the lock. Shaachen and his death, Lepidus and his life, were gone. There was only the small room, and Eurydiche sitting there, her face turned away.

  Furian looked levelly around and into every corner.

  It was an instinct. There was no method for her to write. Someone had been very sure of that. Or else she had not asked. For what could she say to him?

  Shaachen, the idiot, had sold himself to a murderer for nothing. And it was Shaachen who had persuaded Furian to this spot. The word of an idiot was worth what his death had cost—nothing.

  Yes, there had been one chance she was innocent and in despair. But she had known it all, and been accomplice to it all. This now, was simply to be more softening of the lead.

  He walked to her chair and stood looking down at her. “I’ll ask you my questions, and you must nod or shake your head. If you won’t, then so be it. Of course, what you indicate will doubtless be a lie. But even so, I want it from you. I want to see you tell me the truth or the falsehood. Because you are the reason for all my woes, and for all the woes of all this story, aren’t you, my little stone doll?”

  4

  EURYDICHE RAISED HER HEAD. She rose, and he drew back. Only the edge of her dress brushed over his hand, and at the touch of it, he shivered.

  She made no other gesture. Her arms hung at her sides. Eyes. Face. Doll indeed.

  “Very well,” he said, “Yes or No, then. When he lay on the floor of your room, I mean the man they killed and defaced, did you know this wasn’t Lepidus, your father?”

  Her head moved instantly, side to side. No.

  So, it was a game she wanted.

  Furian said, “Thank you, Madama, for your first delightful lie.” But she did not move. He had already explained he would not believe denials. Perhaps this enhanced her clandestine amusement. (Had she always laughed at him? Even flat on her back? But no—her physical heart and her loins could not lie. There at least she had told the truth. A slut who would take pleasure from any able man.) “Tell me then, when they threw me over, did you know I was to live?” Her head, side to side. Obviously, deliriously, No. He said, smiling, “Why then, if you didn’t know, did you show no sign of alarm? Let me suggest—you’d lost consciousness from shock and pain.” But her head went side to side. He said, “You were quite helpless and didn’t dare to move? Overcome by your enormous grief, you sat mourning the two deaths—his and mine.”

  At this, her hands did come up. It was a strange almost involuntary movement, as if she wished to grasp at something. But nothing was there. Her hands fell. She nodded very slowly. Yes.

  “Poor girl,” he said. “And not even able to weep at your hurt. Losing me, your great love.”

  A tumult rose in him and he gripped his brain and blood and held them down. He wanted to strike her face as he had struck the sneering globule of the Jew-hater. He wished to smash the porcelain of her. And he clenched his hands upon his arms as if he froze, to keep from killing her.

  “What a bitch you are,” he said. “You’ve known it all. That he slaughters for hire, and for his fun. Now a rich patron cretinous enough to order a mask from his artisans, and now a fellow off the street, solely in order to upset little Furian the dupe. And you, you were at the Revels of Diana, to watch as he prepared some filthy plan for that woman there, poor bloody Messalina. In some way he works through you—How? What does he do? But you can’t tell me without your pen and paper, and anyway, I doubt you would.”

  She shied from him all at once. She sank back in the chair, and put one arm over its wooden side, and put her head down on her arm.

  “I’ve distressed you. I’m so sorry. We were such friends, weren’t we. And I came back here for you. Or could I even have escaped? Perhaps not. Th
e plot’s as thick as a stew, as the idiot said. Could I even trust the trees of the Island?”

  In turn he put his back to her. He stood before the door, to wait out the hour.

  As his breathing calmed, he heard her breathing, then. It was throaty, stifled.

  Furian knew a moment’s terror at what they had come down to. He could not harm her. Her beauty was more dear to him that his life. God knew why. The beauty of her inner self, the being that had looked out at him through blind-blue windows. The being he had held and loved.

  He said, harshly, “Don’t be frightened, Eurydiche. I won’t assault you. You’ve been more cunning than I thought. I’m still in thrall to you. I’m yours. A worthless gift, I know.”

  Some while after, she came to him so softly he did not realize, lost in his thoughts of nothing, until he heard her gown on the floor.

  She moved about him and took his hand. As once before, she let her head droop on his chest. He said, “Let’s not, Eurydiche. It’s enough I’m enslaved. I won’t play your game any more. Go back and sit in the chair.” At this she left him. Her warmth, her perfume, and her self. He did not look.

  In the furnace, the lead melted down. But Furian was not a substance to be changed to gold. He knew as much. He knew they would fail with him, and then he must die. He did not quite see how it was to be, but that it must be.

  All his life among the dark had led him here. At eighteen, when he left his father’s house, he had been on the road to this.

  He could have ended a hundred ways. Of some knife. Of some sickness in the warrens of the City. Even, once or twice, of starvation. But no, fate brought him to the Isle of the Dead to die. Fate was a poetess.

  * * *

  WHEN, SEEMINGLY, THE HOUR was up, the door was unlocked. The man masked as the bull loomed there, with two unknown others.

  Furian went out, and the bull conducted him downstairs and out of the chapel building, across the guild burial garden whose markers showed large and pale between the acacias and the stiff sculpted yews.

  Stoically, almost sleepily, Furian made no attempts at action or evasion. He was taken into another building with a lesser dome, this of lapid blue, and so to a chamber with hospitable appurtenances, a couch, a bath, even some books laid by.