Faces Under Water Read online

  Why go? Shaachen might pay him for attendance, but he did not need the cash.

  There was, though, nothing else to do, save sit here, or prowl about the City, cautious for assassins, his brain ticking with ideas about the blue-eyed woman.

  He looked for Porco and Modest. Modest refused to be of use.

  “He doesn’t like walking,” said Porco.

  “And you?”

  “My woman’s cooking my supper.”

  Furian left them and went out alone. Nothing had occurred. Even in her house, nothing. An instinct, maybe only obvious common sense, told him they were holding off, to see what he would do. (But why?) In any case, Porco and Modest bored him.

  Nevertheless, Furian had dressed in slum clothes, and wore a rag mask that covered eyes and nose.

  He went on foot around Silvia—Modest would decidedly have been aggrieved—went on through the alleys and over the bridges. There was a large party at the Castello Barbaron. From the long windows flames pealed molten. Torches dazzled up and down the street. They were playing music.

  Furian looked up at their lights, a wolf out on the dark plains of Venus.

  It was nearly eleven before he reached Shaachen’s quarter.

  In a wine shop a swarthy eye-masked man watched Furian sullenly. When Furian got up, the man followed him out. By a canal, Furian turned and felled him without comment. The man lay sprawled. “Give me a penny.

  Just a penny. All I wanted.” Furian threw a handful of bronze to him, and went on.

  * * *

  “COME IN AT ONCE. Stay to the room’s edges.” Shaachen had showed him up by the dim dregs of one candle, but in his study things had been tidied.

  There were two toughs at the downstairs door, and Shaachen had assured Furian the others were about, one even on the roof.

  The casket with the magpie stood on a cabinet. It was locked. It gleamed in the candle stutter, wriggling as if with life.

  “You’re to be my witness,” said Shaachen.

  “To what?”

  “I would have done it with the mask, but they took that.”

  “You want to call Powers and inquire why del Nero died.’

  “That too.”

  “You might have been wiser to have gone to ground, Doctor.”

  Shaachen was lighting more candles. They burned up everywhere, on shelves, tables, the corners of the floor. There would be plenty of light.

  “Don’t you smell it,” said Shaachen, his not-recently shaved head tufted and bristly as the magpie’s had been, “don’t you sniff an element of pride?”

  “Whose?”

  “They might kill us, or not. They like someone to know what they did. How clever they’ve been. And the little people, tiny insects who can’t cause trouble. To us, who’d listen? It’s safe. They frighten us, then let us be.

  To know and admire, and tremble.”

  Furian nodded. “Perhaps. And who are they?”

  “I know one thing. I surprise you—the old fool, what can he find out. Who would want del Nero dead?”

  Furian waited. Shaachen only peered and poked at the open circle drawn on his tiled floor.

  “He was a nobleman’s son,” said Furian. “But he became a fine musician and composed a tune the whole City started singing.”

  “Jealous, someone,” said Shaachen.

  “Yes, it could be. Some member of the Musicians’

  Guild, angry at a rich man having fame and success as well.”

  “Come in the circle.”

  “If I must.”

  “Better than to be outside. Things will go on outside.”

  Shaachen’s paraphernalia lay within, jars, boxes, a stand with a book. Magic needed many props. Furian stood well clear of it all to let the Doctor work. The room already prickled with energies, and Furian’s fingers seemed full of pins.

  “How is the fever?”

  “It’s well. I’m bad.”

  “You look like the painting of a sick saint.”

  “Thank you.”

  “The one with arrows through his belly.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Take the medicine.”

  “I think I prefer the illness. The last thing you gave me was full of crushed flies.”

  “It worked,” said Shaachen, which was true.

  Furian kept to one side. The wine he had had helped to hold him fairly steady. The nausea was gone, he was only cold, with a dull hot coldness, and every candle had a fever halo.

  Shaachen seemed cheerful, bustling. Now he took up a silver shaker, and shook it. Little bells sounded. He cast something powdery down and fire broke at intervals along the circle. Shaachen closed the circle with chalk.

  He read out from the book on the stand a list of long, grotesque names. The tongue was now Latin, now perhaps Egyptian, now some scratching Eastern thing, now mere noises, clicks and gutturals, hisses.

  You did not laugh. For all this idiocy would work.

  One of the first things Shaachen had shown him, years back, was a frost-blue angel misting through the window. It had a fiery sword in one hand, a brazen apple in the other. It had gone out like a blown flame at Shaachen’s command, but sent a sort of imp to bring what Shaachen requested, which that night was a vial of holy oil.

  It had certainly been oil. If sacred, it was debatable.

  During former rituals the magpie was shut into the bedroom. Safe in the casket, perhaps it watched, at last. A bubbling sound had begun in the room’s four corners. Up the south window and the wall went a shadow. Solidifying there was a gigantic tortoise. On its back, a translucent jade ball, in which was light.

  North, Furian heard the rustle of the black feathers of a crow. West, he glimpsed the white crocodile, and East the curious beast with a rat’s head and spraying down of tail. These were the room’s four guardians.

  Shaachen spoke a disjointed, partly-rhyming litany in Latin.

  The guardians faded, and directly beyond the circle, on the widest space of the floor, the three Zodians of the City appeared in a glowing triangle.

  Scorpio, the sea scorpion, gleaming bronze, under his black iron planet of Vulcan; Cancer, a genderless veiled human form, holding in its arms the moon pearl; Pisces, the smaller fish visible within the sea-green womb of the greater fish, balancing the emerald radiant of Neptune.

  Shaachen cast out through the circle, in at the edge of the zodiacal triangle, a piece of parchment. On it had been written the name Cloudio del Nero. There was a rush as physical matter met the energy of the psychium. The paper flared up, took wing; It was a black butterfly. It fluttered fragile as two charred leaves, on the softly-flaming ground.

  Slowly now, a girl’s shape, wound in a blue mantle, with the star of Venus on her forehead, formed between the City Zodians. She walked on air, through shadowy pillars, and dissolved.

  “There is a woman in it,” said Shaachen.

  “Didn’t I tell you?”

  But Shaachen held up his hand—as she had done, that very woman—for silence.

  A wind blew through the columns that were noticeable only by their absence. It blew into the faces of the men in the circle. A hot, sulfurus and cindery wind, as if swept straight from San Fumo, the Isle of the Dead.

  Furian covered his mouth and nose with one hand.

  Shaachen stood braced, leering. He spoke another incomprehensible word.

  A black animal shouldered up out of the wind. Its eyes were like wet lava. It had curved horns and a mane of spikes, six sparking hoofs, a dragging phallus capped with a barb.

  “A beast of rage,” said Shaachen.

  Furian’s body shuddered, separate from him.

  And then, where the butterfly lay on the parchment, pinned flat now, motionless, the mask evolved, exactly as Furian had first seen it, in the wrung-out, lavender water darkness at the onset of dawn.

  Its black false hair spread out from it, the curls pointed up with gilt. The spangle-rimmed eyes and classical god-like nose and mouth. From the lips
ran a trickle of ichor, shining. From the eyes ran raindrop tears.

  A horrible moaning lament involved and possessed the air. It was a distortion of the melody del Nero had fashioned, played upon white-hot nerves by needles of probing steel. Unbearable embers of notes scattered.

  The mask bled.

  Gradually, as they watched, it split in two agonized segments, and out of it crawled worms with beaked and eating mouths.

  The image was so tangibly foul, Furian felt himself choking on it. He turned his head, and as he did, a voice screamed through the chamber.

  “Crossed! Clogged! Unstitched! Undone!”

  A sound came also between Furian’s teeth. He felt his body bending double. He wondered, with a last horrible cynicism, what would he do to the magic if he puked inside the sorcerous ring? And held himself together with a mental fist.

  But the horror was over. The lights had danced up bright, and when he looked, all the swirling pictures had vanished.

  Shaachen too seemed bleached. His nose was standing out like a horn-shell.

  “Now you know everything,” said Furian.

  “Ah, no. Not yet,” said Shaachen. “Thank God.” He spoke a prayer, and some other murky filmy something lifted from the room and was gone. “Let us sit. Sit, sit.

  There’s wine in the decanter under the cloth.”

  They broke the circle. It had crumbled a little, and portions had run like old white dye. But it had kept them safe.

  Shaachen said, “Evil was worked. He wasn’t murdered in the usual way. But murdered, murdered for sure. What was done leaves an echo that continues. The mask knows—”

  “You told me this before,” said Furian.

  “The mask knows, for it was the one who made the mask that killed him.”

  “A mask maker,” Furian said, slow and stupid. He coughed, and righted himself and poured the wine.

  “The Guild,” said Shaachen, staring away to the astral landscape of some incarnation not this one, a prophet on a mountain. “The Guild of Mask Makers. Or that elite group among them who makes such masks as the dark Apollo.”

  “Not jealousy then?”

  “Jealousy and fury were its friends.”

  There was a stain on the tiles, deep, acid green; a strange burn that might, by morning, have faded.

  ON THE GRIMY GRIM BED, Furian tossed and turned. He had twenty minutes sleep before the girl woke him, pulling his shoulder.

  “Let go, you harpy. Damn you.”

  The sun he had seen rise was of course still low, the sky yellowish nacre. A charming day, for anyone who had slept.

  “I’m to give you this,” said the girl obstreperously.

  He took the paper. Shaachen again? It seemed not. The writing was characterless and careful, the sort you could purchase from professional scribes at street corners.

  Go to Aquila, and see the sight.

  “Who gave you this?”

  “The flayer’s boy.”

  “Who gave it him?”

  “I don’t know.” The girl flounced.

  He turned her out.

  He stripped and washed in old water, shaking with fever and the previous night. His head was hollow, and full of the resonance of some thing that had no sound. (The echo of evil Shaachen had detailed.) More medicine. It burned now like that mark on the floor.

  He put on a clean shirt, the decent coat. The black eye-mask.

  To go where the paper said was madness. So he would go. Go and admire and tremble. They could have had him any way. Killed him. Perhaps he really did not matter to them, except as something to toy with.

  Porco was at breakfast, a fine one shared with none, not even the slattern who had cooked it. Chicken livers in saffron. (He had profited by Furian.)

  “Come on.”

  “Ah—Signore—”

  “Look. Yes, silver. You’ll come.”

  “I will. May God, Heavenly Maria and Neptunus forgive you, Signore.”

  AQUILA WAS THE GREAT LAGOON. Beyond, you could see the ocean, in a curve like the smoky iris of a green-blue eye. But Aquila looked leaden, and on the water drifted broken pots, weed that had been netted in, and a dead octopus fishermen were hauling to their hungry boats.

  On the shores, and slid on platforms into the water, the buildings were picturesque in their depravity. Barnacles re-enameled the scaling walls. Everything but the lagoon had a green tinge. Even the sun.

  Under Aquila lay the church of Maria Maka Selena.

  A little before noon, when the sun passed over, you might see at low tides the tilted clock face, a hundred feet down, looking up into the sun’s eye. Old silver-leaf, the figures of maidens, all green now, malachite girls under a peridot sun…

  “Bear up, Signore.”

  “Shut up, Porco.”

  What was he here to see? Presumably he had to hang about, and while he did, someone might come up and stick a knife in his side. Years before, there had been a plague of glass daggers—which, snapped off at the hilt after the blow, left few clues. There was a song too, A dagger of glass thrust through my heart—

  A song was coming from nearby. A rushed song.

  Too fast. Furian realized, it was del Nero’s largo, played on an uncontrolled and squeaky violin, at a trot.

  All the petals of its beauty screwed into those hurried meaningless phrases. As if to have it over.

  “That’s splendid, that is,” said Porco. “They’re all playing it that way now. It was a dreary old dirge before. Some fiddle-player from the Musician’s Guild, he started it fast, they say. It’s better. You want to have a smile, don’t you.” (Keep smiling, I do.)

  Furian groped after this. He said, “Which fiddle-player?”

  “Don’t know, Signore. They’re all one to me. Scrape out a tune. He’s got a lovely mask, they said. As nice as any you see.”

  The green bubble sun winked. It was blindingly white.

  On the Laguna Aquila there had started a commotion.

  A big boat was pushing off, and on the deck a woman shrieked, struggling to pull herself in two.

  Furian focused on her sluggishly, unevenly. Her hair a tousled tortured fairish mass, and her clothing half ripped off her, so people on the quay were laughing and pointing at her now. Her sagging breasts were bare, and one long thin leg—she was a parody of allurement.

  Her hands had been tied, probably to prevent her wounding herself or another. He grasped where she was going in the guardianship of her black-tunic jailers. The Madhouse lay behind Aquila, against the sea wall.

  Poor bitch. There were jewels hanging on her dress, and a sparkling chain. She had a beautiful mask too, still demurely fixed for Carnival over her shrilling, screeching features.

  It was made of ivory, the mask. A fan, fretted, out of which partly emerged the outlines of a delicious face. It had dawn pink lips, sultry evening lids.

  He knew her mask. The Principessa Messalina. At the Revels of Diana—she had leapt to the altar, tearing her dress in the same wild way—

  She swayed, writhed. He thought of the worms.

  Porco was jeering.

  Furian said, “Her name’s Messalina. For the Madhouse, presumably.”

  “Heard she ran half-naked in the church. Wanted to have the priest on the altar. And all the men after. Some thing about her namesake.”

  “Messalina had all Rome in a night. The old empress, that is.”

  Furian realized it was not Porco who had delivered this information.

  “Is it the Princess Messalina?”

  “Oh yes.”

  “What happened to her?”

  “Gone mad,” said the newcomer. He had an odd familiarity. A brown lower face, and scrawled lips. There was a bruise on his jaw.

  “And why did she go mad?”

  “Women,” said the man. “They’re all mad anyway.

  But I’ll add, Signore, those pretty masks, the best ones—they’re unlucky.”

  “In what way?”

  “The composer who died—or wh
o’s missing and supposed dead—he had one of those masks. An Apollo or Bacchus. And she—that one down there—she had her special mask from the Guild. Last year, the last autumn Carnival, there was a prince, I forget his name, he had a mask of some dead king, and he stuck a knife in his throat one evening at dinner “

  “Did he have cause?” said Furian gently. “Indigestion, perhaps.” He knew the man. Furian had knocked him flat the night before, then thrown him coins.

  “No cause. He was rich as Pluto, and he had a good-looking wife. Fancy boys, too. Unlucky, the masks.”

  “Unlucky for some,” said Furian. He reached across and took the man by the crotch, very hard.

  The swarthy half-face grew mottled.

  “Tell me,” said Furian, “who sent you here.”

  “No—one—you were rough last night. Then you paid. Will you—pay—now—?”

  Furian twisted his hand and the man fell on the paving. People skirted him. Venus was callous, particularly during Carnival.

  “Where are you going?” gabbled Porco.

  “To a jolly place.”

  “You want me? It’s—this walking—”

  “Go and worship your chicken livers.”

  * * *

  THERE WAS A WATER-MILL in the canal. The water was curded like fleece, splintered like glass, then running in calm, humped waves.

  The wanderlier cursed the mill. They bumped against the steps, with an iron-studded door directly above.

  Furian got up to it and rapped with the brass mask knocker, which was in the shape of a twelve-rayed solar disk, with hollow eyes and snarling mouth.

  A lackey came. He wore a mauve coat. He looked sidelong at Furian.

  “You understand,” said Furian, going past him with a slight collision into the passage beyond, “I’m here on someone else’s business.”

  “This is the Guild House. Only the Guild comes here.”

  “But I’m in.”

  “You can go out again.”

  “Is that so?”

  Furian was not amazed when the mauve menial called, and three strong men in dark leathers appeared along the passage.

  “My master,” said Furian, “will be disappointed.”

  “He must send in writing. A meeting may then be arranged.”

  “With whom?”