A Bed of Earth Read online

  “I dare, M’donna, because I wouldn’t see you so disgraced. Cast out to be a harlot in the sinks of the City. Or yet more awful—some stern punishment devised by your father, Lord Justore.”

  Meralda, despite her attempts not to, began to sob.

  Euniche did not smile at this, and did not know she smiled in her heart. Or, in the spot where a heart would normally have been; instead she kept a flint there, off which she sometimes struck silver sparks.

  “Please believe, lady, it isn’t my intention to bring you down. I only seek to warn you.”

  “What do you want?” choked Meralda.

  What indeed did Euniche want?

  Like a sleepwalker, Meralda slid towards her jewel-casket, thinking to take out her necklace of blue pearls (which would naturally have been missed) and offer them to the serpent.

  Euniche forestalled her, having quickly reasoned that she was about to be offered a bribe. She did not want that.

  “Put your trust in me, lady. I shall say nothing.”

  “Nothing?” quavered Meralda. She was fourteen, and in the house of enemies that she must treat as her family.

  “Be guided by me. Then you can continue a little with your holiday pleasures. I know you’d not do anything … base—that you would protect your virginity for your lawful husband—” (Euniche knew nothing of the sort) “—it’s only your good nature and your guilelessness that have brought you to this. He’s a fine young man—” (she hated Lorenzo) “—and you’re tempted. No, you’ll do nothing sinful. Of that I’m sure. But in future, let me accompany you to the church. I’ll stand guard for you, lady. And later, if needful, be a witness for your protection.”

  Meralda was astonished.

  Well she might be.

  She thought, or prayed, she had misjudged the Gorgon, who it seemed wanted to protect her.

  In any event, what else was she to do?

  “Very well,” she said. And softly, unwilling, “Thank you, Euniche.”

  On the flint heart, such great showerings of lights! Euniche did not even really understand herself. Only that, to get sheer power over her fool of a mistress was worth far more than to get her liking, or her jewels.

  The arrows that pinned Lorenzo Vai’s sleeves to his doublet were not gold, only painted to resemble it. But the arrow that had pierced his emotions, as he had begun to tell himself, the dart of love, was genuine.

  With this in mind, almost confusedly, he began to gather money. Some he stole from his uncle, the painter, out of the chest in the room behind the studio. No one would suspect Lorenzo, the outer chamber was always full of students, everyone went in and out, and thefts had happened before. (This act had seemed wrong to Lorenzo, but that did not prevent him. One day, he thought, when the della Scorpias came round to him, he would pay the cash back.) After this, he got coins from various people who owed them to the Vai studio for commissions. Of these he made an equal split, half to his uncle, for whom they had been intended, and half to himself. The painter was unworldly and never checked anything or pursued debts, his head full only of angels, naked Venuses, and clouds. Privately Lorenzo had long thought the colored pigments had fouled his uncle’s brain, and took care himself to handle them as rarely as possible.

  Then Lorenzo added the step of borrowing money openly, from his mother. This had taken place many times, and though so far he had never returned any of it to her, she had never pressed him in any way, except fondly in her arms.

  Meanwhile, the secret meetings continued.

  As for the harsh-faced della Scorpia maid who now accompanied Meralda into the church, Lorenzo did not care for her. When he questioned Meralda on the matter she was evasive, saying only she could no longer avoid Euniche’s presence. (Euniche had stressed to Meralda that she must on no account tell Lorenzo that the liaison had been discussed between the two women. It would make the poor young man nervous.)

  Euniche would sit down on a bench to one side of the church, while the lovers clung and mumbled their fears and unformed plans in the chapel.

  “Come away with me, Meralda. Come tomorrow. I’ve a bag full of duccas now—”

  “I mustn’t think of it. You must never speak of it—”

  “You don’t love me. You play with me—and I’m as easy to wind round your finger as a strand of your hair—”

  “I worship you, Lorenzo—you re my god—”

  “Then come with me to Silvia and let’s be wed.”

  “I’m afraid.”

  “Of what, when I’m with you to protect you?”

  “Of … of my betrothed lord—”

  “That one? He’s a wretch, but we’ll outwit him. He is nothing. And we could go far away from the City. Venus isn’t unfriendly to the Franchians, and they are mastering Milano and long for Italian troops. There’s brave work for a man in those armies—on either side—and high pay.” Seeing her bemused—what did she know of such warlike things—he added, “If you love me, you will let me decide what’s to be done, as a woman must.”

  But still she would not give in. Though this process was like milk resisting a club—so fluid and unhard was she, his assaults passed straight through her and did nothing but make a splash.

  Lorenzo next became aware, so he thought, that the only way to bend her to his wish was to hoist her. Once he had deflowered Meralda, she could not risk the evil Ciara discovering her lapse, and to save her very soul she would have to marry Lorenzo.

  It was a vast stride to take. He had enjoyed many girls, but they were not of Meralda’s sort, not the daughters of nobility. With the anticipated sexual reward would also come the achievement of plucking such a choice bloom, and the dismay of the deed’s enormity.

  But it was not to be managed in the church.

  The informative romances had seen to it that Meralda outfitted herself with a dark, plain cloak over her most ordinary garments, when she went to meet Lorenzo. Her hair, though, was always marvelously done, the long strands crimped from plaiting, sometimes ribbons threaded through. Only a thin veil ever concealed it. Now that Euniche was party to the deception, she had insisted on a thicker covering. One morning, this proved sensible.

  They had entered Maria Maesta as usual—the Mass of Prima Pegno was over and the church empty—Euniche prepared to take her station on the bench, while Meralda hastened to the chapel. Suddenly a boy of about nine appeared breathlessly before them.

  “Madonna Melda—here, for you.” He thrust a grimy paper into Meralda’s hand.

  “M’donna is not addressed in that way,” said the Gorgon, tartly, but the boy took no notice. He was from the slums, ragged and not clean, his face browned with summer and dirt.

  Meralda was no scholar, but she had learned to read well enough to apprehend the message on the paper.

  Come at once, Lorenzo had written, in his unwieldy script. I am sick and alone and cannot move from the house.

  Meralda did not ask herself how, if he were alone and unable to move, he had managed to fetch the boy to bring the paper.

  The boy now said, “He told me you would be generous.”

  This was a lie.

  Meralda was at a loss—she had little money of her own and had brought none with her. The journey to the church was short, that was why she had been allowed to make it with only her maid. (It lay through a short alley, over the bridge of a narrow canal, and into a small square, where Maria Maesta stood, crowded to one side.)

  At that moment the Gorgon moved into the breach.

  “Here,” thrusting a penny into the boy’s disappointed grip. “What’s the matter?” she added kindly to her mistress.

  Meralda had never heard a tone of kindness from her before.

  The boy too was taken in—Lorenzo had not thought to advise him.

  “He’s ill on his bed and no one to tend him.”

  “Messer Lorenzo?”

  “Lorenzo, yes.”

  Euniche glanced at her mistress. “Where does the poor young man live?”

  “H
e’s written it there,” said the boy.

  Indeed Lorenzo had. And Euniche could not read. But, after all, this was not a fundamental stumbling block.

  She gave the boy another penny with every appearance of ease (false ease, she had none to spare) and waved him off. To Meralda, Euniche said, now nearly tenderly, “Oh, lady. You must go to him.”

  At which Meralda stared at her, as anyone might have done.

  What was the Gorgon up to?

  Yes, she might wish for Meralda’s downfall, and definitely Euniche must have realized such an adventure might—must—spell her downfall. But the house of Scorpia knew Euniche was her lady’s chaperone. If some crisis was the result of this, would they not upbraid Euniche for her carelessness? It would not be enough for her to plead she was only the attendant of her mistress. Euniche had been chosen for the task because of her age and adamantine jailorishness.

  As before, Euniche did not know quite what her true motives were. She thought that she would just let the fool make more of a fool of herself, and that afterwards she, Euniche, would find some means to save the situation. And that through all that, she would gain yet more power over Meralda della Scorpia. But somewhere beneath even these layers of guile, the inner Euniche hankered, nebulously, for something else.

  Meralda said, “I cannot. How could I go?”

  “I’ll assist you, M’donna. How can you leave him there? He might die.’”

  Meralda gave a cry.

  It was settled.

  Euniche managed everything. She went to the canal and there hailed one of the meandering boats which, for some while now, had been named, in Venus, Wanderers. To the wanderlier, a grizzled man in striped hose, she promised a silver venus if he would take herself and her lady by the Wide Canal into the Artisans’ Quarter, behind the Temple of Art on Fulvia.

  Soon enough, Meralda, her servant, and the wanderlier were through the waterways of Aquila. They emerged on the vast, sun-smashed apron of the Fulvia Lagoon, whose depths were murky, with dragons stirring there.

  The alabaster dome of the Primo shone like polished mirror. While around the spire of the basilica, the seven brass mechanical horses (one for each of the City’s islands, and not ten years old) trotted, shaking their heads at the stroke of eleven.

  At these sights Meralda gazed. She had not seen them very often. Such was the cloistered life of a maiden of a great house. But also she was uneasy, more so at what she had done than the plight of her sick lover.

  The minarets of the Temples of Art and Justice (copied from fanes of the East) dazzled above as they went by below, turning from the lagoon into the canal called Wide. This, like the apron of water outside, was packed with craft of every sort. Boats loaded with goods roped beneath canvas, plowed heavily past. A ship with rose-colored sails shot down the channel like one of the Ducem’s greyhounds. The wanderlier guided their vessel between, while crystal spray burst from the glaucous water.

  Then, following the curve of the canal, they came slowly out of the glory of tall buildings and flame-flagged merchant shipping, into a hot and gloomy tunnel. Here the Wide Canal shrank, and tenements, nearly closing off the sky, overhung the banks, ochre and peeling like vegetables that had been mummified or gone rotten.

  “Where is this?” asked the ignorant girl.

  “The Artisans’ Quarter,” said Euniche, who was far from ignorant of the City.

  “Does he live here?”

  “Turn to the left bank,” said Euniche arrogantly to the wanderlier, “where the church of San Raphaelo is.”

  Once they were ashore, Euniche gave the boatman what she had offered, the silver venus, which represented very much to her. Then she led Meralda around San Raphaelo and into the clutch of alleys beyond.

  Lorenzo had been pacing about in the upper room. It belonged, this dwelling, to his mother, but she was out at Isole until the evening, with an aunt.

  His mother’s house, which had been also his when he was a child, and which he still sometimes visited when the studio grew too crowded for his liking, was poor, but well-kept. The lower area was domestic with its broom, lemon-bleached table, pans and crocks neatly stacked by the hearth, water pitchers stored for coldness in their alcove. Up here, the bed (his dead father’s) had a frame, and was laid with the cleanest, though coarse, sheets. Upon these, seeing Meralda and Euniche appear abruptly in the alleyway, Lorenzo flung himself.

  He could not quite believe his scheme had worked, despite the pains he had taken with it. He himself had paid for his mother’s jaunt—from the money she had already loaned him. Now, shocked by his success, his heart pounded. He now easily looked sufficiently feverish to confirm his feigned illness.

  The latch of the street door shifted. Lorenzo listened through the roar in his ears. He hoped the girl’s servant-woman would stay below, and his luck held. For only Meralda, wide-eyed and lucent as a painted angel, came into the upper room.

  Seeing her lover supine, she broke instantly into luminous tears. Lorenzo could not bear this and leapt up at once to take her in his arms.

  “Are you so sick, Lorenzo?”

  “No longer. Your beauty has cured me.”

  “But have you seen a doctor—”

  “Who would come here but some charlatan? No.”

  “Oh, what shall I do?”

  “Kiss me.” Then, after a while, “Where is that girl you call the Gorgon?”

  “Shall I send her for medicine?”

  “Send her to Hell.”

  “She brought me here. She’s gone to pray at the church for you. I think after all—she is my friend.”

  “Don’t trust her,” he said, not seeing he had today put both of them into the palm of Euniche’s hand.

  “Whom should I trust then?”

  “Me. Only me.”

  Worried by his high color, she urged him to lie down. He agreed, but said she must lie down next to him, to console him. By the bed he had put wine, and a dish of some sweets he knew that she liked. He let her feed him one or two of these, and fed her several, and then he said these sweet meats were not as delicious as her lips, and they drank the wine.

  They were young, and passionate, and now they lay together on a great bed, in the sultry hour of noon, their flesh longing only to be one, regardless of whatever morality or strictures had been plastered over their minds.

  At first it was as it had been, the kissing and caressing, but then—oh, he had found a way in through Meralda’s bodice, swiftly unlacing it, and his warm hands were on her breasts with only the thin linen of her curtella between them.

  Outside, at the entry to this particular alley, Meralda had seen a little pagan shrine. It was to Neptune, one of hundreds that had sprung up in Venus after the overthrow of the Council of the Lamb. The half-naked deity, rusty trident in hand, his beard of blue wool twined with tiny shells from the lagoons, had seemed improper to the girl. So she had been brought up. This activity on Lorenzo’s bed though, she did not seem to see was the herald of the ultimate impropriety: the taking of her virginity.

  Of course, though in some fashion her elders had tried to keep her in complete ignorance, she did suppose that this was sinful. She had felt pangs within her own body even when alone, especially after her meetings with Lorenzo began. But still, she believed she should not let Lorenzo continue because it felt so wonderfully enjoyable. The enjoyment’s function, she had not identified.

  Presently, when Lorenzo had pushed aside her heavy skirts, and started, with an impossibly limpid gentleness, to stroke her core—that he tongued her, she did not even realize—Meralda’s will left her entirely. She had no scope for shame. She lay spread for him, her eyes fast shut, abandoned as a maenad from the groves of the wine-god. And he, undoing his own clothing only where it was necessary, in another moment drove home inside her.

  He hurt her, for, in his haste he had torn her, but before she could do more than gasp, another sensation took hold of her, and flung her against Lorenzo in a clamor not of pain but delirium. N
ever had she felt such pleasure. She thought she would burst apart from it. She screamed shrilly and heard Lorenzo’s own savage howls. Uneducated in everything, she was aware that his outcry was no more to do with unhappiness than hers. That it was the prelude to a hideous lament, how could either of them really have been expected to guess?

  “What have we done?”

  “What do you think? I’ve made you my wife.”

  “Your wife—”

  “I’ve broken your seals, beloved.”

  Then she did not weep, only sat up slowly, stunned, seeing the abyss gape all around them.

  “Sweetness,” said Lorenzo, “God won’t mind—haven’t I told you, we’ll be wed.”

  Of all the things her family had hammered into her, this the most insistent: her chastity, she must retain until the selected marriage bed.

  “Is there a way—I can hide it?”

  Lorenzo laughed. He was pleased, the victor.

  “Outwardly. But not from any man that lies with you.”

  Still no weeping. She wilted from the lack of water.

  “I shall die.”

  “No. You’ll live and be mine.”

  “Ciara will kill me. Or … my father will do it.”

  Lorenzo poured more wine and held it to her lips, which were parched from his eager mouth. He spoke to her carefully, explaining that he, like his uncle, had talent as an artist and would soon get a rich patron. That much was feasible, anywhere in the civilized world. Or he would make a good soldier, and there were the armies of the Franchians. Whatever else, Lorenzo would keep her safe. They could go off together this very night—and then no one should ever harm her. She was his. Finally, he knelt by the bed, handsome and unflawed and, cupping her delicate face in his strong hands, asked her to become his wife, no longer bombastically but with a quiet theatrical eloquence. And Meralda, everything else lost, sitting in the burning shade of his beauty, strength, and fearlessness, felt her love take all doubt from her at last, because he asked so humbly what he knew she must give.

  So, it was to be that very night, their escape. Meralda had no loyalty to her house or family—why should she? Only to Lorenzo, whom she loved. But Euniche, as always, was another matter.