A Dancer in Darkness Read online

  At the gate in the wall, Cariola and Antonio whispered for a moment, and Antonio turned back.

  It had grown dark very quickly, with the rapid night of the south. Bosola could not see clearly, but there was something ominous about Antonio’s figure. His white face was stern, and his eyes burned out of the darkness. He passed Bosola and retrieved the apricots.

  “If the Duchess has been poisoned, you’ll answer for it,” he said.

  It was clearly a story they had made up between them, but something in his tone made Bosola panic. Suppose it was true? He had not inspected the apricots himself.

  Antonio held one out contemptuously. “Eat it,” he said.

  Bosola did not dare.

  Antonio threw the fruit against a tree, where it smashed into an ugly blur.

  “Was it?” he asked.

  Bosola half choked. “If it was, I knew nothing of it. I swear I did not.”

  “But you would not eat it.”

  “I was afraid,” said Bosola simply.

  Antonio eyed him angrily. “Where did you get them?”

  “From a dealer in the square.”

  “Which dealer?”

  “Piero Amici.”

  “One of the Cardinal’s agents,” snapped Antonio. His fingers clicked nervously, like crickets. He shifted from toe to toe.

  Bosola broke into a sweat. He had not known about Amici, so poison was possible. He had been lax, and the Cardinal did not trust anyone. Perhaps he had plotted to remove him in this clever way, and the Duchess too. Or Amici himself might have thought of it, out of jealous rivalry.

  Some of this must have shown in his face. Antonio watched him disdainfully. “Get out,” he said. “Right or wrong, I do not care, but get out. You do not know what damage you have done.”

  Bosola could not think of anything to say. It would do no good to cringe. He turned and limped rapidly out of the garden, his only thought an agony to hide, he scarcely knew from what.

  VI

  That night the palace was full of a peculiar bustle. Though you did not see it, it was everywhere. Domestic women came and went from the Duchess’s apartments. Cariola let none of them enter. She stopped them at the door.

  Bosola went to speak to her, but she would not even look at him. She merely gave him a glance, and shut the door in his face, but the glance was enough.

  All had turned against him. Nor could he afford to change his plans, for the only ones who can afford to lose the world are those who have it in their keeping. Lesser men must keep what soil beneath their feet they can.

  He had not known that he had an enemy down in the town. Proud of his position at court, he had treated Amici haughtily. One did not dare to treat anyone haughtily. Whether it was poison or not, and Bosola did not think even now that it was, Amici had not only the means but the will to destroy him. It was terrible for a weak man to have an enemy. The thought was unendurable. Amici might have written to Rome already to denounce him.

  He paced up and down the silent corridors. Torches burned low in their sockets. He heard footsteps and drew back.

  It was Antonio, pacing the yard below, with a nervous, helpless, tethered tread. Bosola could not help but watch. Antonio reached the end of the yard, stood against the rusticated wall, and looked up towards the Duchess’s apartments. The moonlight fell full on his face. From those eyes, beseeching the moon, Bosola drew back.

  Then he moved swiftly across the paving and into the palace by a door Bosola had not seen him use before, one that should have led him up to the loggia, but which did not. Nor, though Bosola waited, did any light go on in Antonio’s rooms.

  From down the corridor came a muffled scream, followed by tingling silence. Bosola hurried to his own rooms.

  He hesitated before beginning his dispatch to the Cardinal, but he had to forestall Amici, and he was sure he was right. The pen drove across the paper, and he followed it willy-nilly. He had been foolish to feel secure, for the Cardinal’s influence extended everywhere, and the spies he set upon his spies were multiple. Bosola wrote everything, dwelling much on his own cleverness, and promised to send further news at once. He wrote of the new house at Arosa, and of the church there, together with his own conclusions. He was even ready to name the Duchess’s lover, though he was not absolutely certain as yet of that. Just why he held back he was not sure, unless it was to have one secret in reserve, as ransom for himself in case of need.

  He sealed the letter, took it himself through the nocturnal streets to the messenger he kept always waiting, and then returned like a shadow to throw himself on his miserable bed. He saw now that Cariola had liked him only out of policy. That bed could not be too narrow for him now.

  When he woke it was day. He sensed at once that something had changed. The messenger would be half-way to Rome, and there was still much for him to ferret out, if he was to defeat Amici. He dressed and went to the household offices, not daring to ask any questions openly, though knowing privately he must.

  He was working there when a shadow darkened his desk. He looked up and saw Antonio.

  The two men eyed each other warily. By now Bosola was sure he had fallen into some kind of trap, whether Amici’s, the Cardinal’s, or that of another made no difference. All morning he had been waiting to be denounced.

  Now something in Antonio’s manner caught his attention, and relieved his fears. Antonio seemed not only embarrassed, but still severely worried, and his stance was the brusque one of an honest man about to tell a lie.

  Antonio walked around the room, avoiding Bosola’s gaze.

  “I come from the Duchess,” he said at last, awkwardly.

  Bosola’s eyes narrowed, as he considered the possibilities.

  “I wronged you. She was not poisoned,” said Antonio simply. With some effort he lifted his eyes to Bosola’s. “It was merely the apricots. Her Grace’s stomach is delicate.” It was the wrong word, and provoked the wrong idea. Antonio frowned, and then smiled with that awful insincerity of the basically sincere trying to make a good impression. He shifted hastily away from the subject. “The Duchess offers her apologies. So do I.” He held out his hand.

  Bosola took it, but inwardly he snarled. They were afraid of him and had come to bribe him, knowing he had seen too much and would have to be placated. Their words meant nothing.

  But Antonio had more to say. “If you can watch the man Amici,” he said, “we would be grateful.” Bosola breathed easier. That meant he himself was not suspected of being the Cardinal’s man. If it were not merely a clever deception. Apparently to Antonio the Cardinal could have only one man at a time. Also it meant that Cariola had not spoken out, even now.

  It was difficult to believe that any man could be so innocent as Antonio appeared to be, yet Bosola was half willing to believe that he was. Antonio only saw the world from the front, and so, apparently, did the Duchess. It made them both vulnerable to anyone who moved backstage.

  Her apologies he did not believe for an instant. For Antonio he felt compunction. But his letter was in Rome by now, and the comedy must be played out.

  All the same he was glad that he did not have to look too long at Antonio. There was a pathos there that made him flinch.

  VII

  We do wrong to despise the ambitious and dispassionate as cold and bloodless. They suffer as we do, though not in the same way, for they have small finite emotions too delicate for us to measure. Great storms and rages are no part of true pride. True pride is worn away only by the small, steady trickle of regret.

  The Cardinal had a mistress called Julia, a woman of good family and a little dull. He ignored her, gave her jewels, and saw her when he would. She was only a piece of voluble furniture, and she would last perhaps a year. Then there would be another. He slept with her seldom.

  Yet what he needed in her was the echo of a voice he had never heard and the touch of a flesh he had never tasted, for the intelligent, cut off from humanity, live by parellels. Long ago they learned that their true fee
lings would be derided if they showed them, and so they find an outlet in pretence.

  All men live this way, but some have the hope that the pretence may become real. For a few it does. But the intelligent know better. For them it never does, for they can be easy only with others of the intelligent, who are in the same plight as themselves. But this does not mean they do not feel. It merely means that they have learned that saddest of all lessons, that they can survive only at the ruthless suppression of all feeling. A little practice and emotion is no more than a passing twinge. But the twinge is painful all the same.

  And really it does not matter, for if one must learn to turn a deaf ear to oneself, then the pretence does just as well.

  The Cardinal had just dismissed Julia, and the year had almost gone. At such times he almost gave way to panic, the way a man does who is locked in a corridor between two rooms with the doors jammed. He knows such feelings are irrational, but for a moment he cannot help it. Despite himself, the Cardinal remembered all the other times that he had had that feeling, and foresaw all the future times that he would feel it. For a moment he almost called her back, but that, he knew, would be unwise, for he did not really like her any more, and she had never really liked him. Insincerity, too, has its limitations. We can put up with it from someone only for so long, and then we must have it from somebody else.

  It was at this time that Bosola’s courier arrived. The letter was brought straight to His Eminence. And it was for these and other reasons that His Eminence found himself singularly reluctant to read it.

  Finally, tapping it nervously on his desk, he shrugged and opened it. When he had read it he sat in the half darkness for a long, long time, until at last he became conscious of the coldness and the silence of the room.

  For like most of the ambitious he had no real awareness of the bloody ruthlessness of his own plans, and so now he felt a sense of shock. He had no real grudge against his sister. As a child she had been a pretty, harmless thing, stubborn and wilful it was true, but he was rather fond of that.

  He had plotted against her automatically. He had not intended, perhaps, that the matter should go this far. But since it had gone this far, he had no course but to go on with it, for if it was true that she was actually in this condition, then she would meet her fate whether he profited by it or not. It was for this reason he felt abruptly sad, for he realized that ambition does not plot against the foolishness of others. It is merely compelled to take advantage of the webs they weave around themselves, for it knows that if it does not, then others will, and that life has no other law. But still he hung back from showing the letter to Ferdinand. He could not bring himself to do so until next day, and that night he took a double sleeping draught.

  Nor would he go to Ferdinand. He wanted some control over the situation, if that were possible, so instead he summoned Ferdinand to him.

  He had not seen Ferdinand for months, and was encouraged by his brother’s solemn manner. He misjudged it. Ferdinand was merely tired, sullen, and irritable after a joyless debauch.

  But the Cardinal was pleased to see Ferdinand so seeming calm, for though he did not want to call him off, he did want to restrain him. He debated what to say, and then instead threw Ferdinand the letter, sitting back with interest to watch his brother’s face.

  To his surprise Ferdinand was tautly calm. “Why did my agent write to you?” was all he asked.

  “Let us say we share him.”

  Ferdinand scarcely listened. The letter shook in his hand. “Is it true?” he demanded.

  “If it is not, we shall soon know; if it is, we shall know even sooner.”

  “Who is the man?” demanded Ferdinand. He was angry now. He put his hands on the desk, and glowered down at the Cardinal.

  “You will do nothing hastily,” the Cardinal said curtly.

  “Who is the man?”

  “Lower your voice. I do not know who the man is. Neither apparently does the agent. He has a woman down there, and took some prodding.”

  “What woman?”

  The Cardinal shrugged. “It’s no concern of ours,” he said.

  “You know who he is.”

  The Cardinal had been prepared for Ferdinand’s temper. He had not been prepared for a cyclone.

  Ferdinand tapped the paper furiously. “No doubt this priest knows something.”

  “I do not know what, or from whom.”

  “I’ll get it out of him.”

  “You will do nothing,” snapped the Cardinal sharply. “He is a priest under oath to protect the privacy of the confessional, in my diocese, and under my protection.”

  It was the worst thing he could have said. That his brother had more power than he had, and secret information besides, drove Ferdinand furious, and always had.

  “Very well,” he said, and strode heavily from the room. The Cardinal watched him go with some compunction. But Ferdinand’s rages soon drivelled away, unless carefully supported, and he had not the courage to make any move upon his own. The Cardinal knew that he could handle him until the proper time.

  For once the Cardinal was wrong.

  VIII

  The priest of Arosa was dying and knew it. He did not greatly mind, for his life was now fulfilled. Months previously the Arosa altar-piece had been conveyed to Arosa secretly, and now, re-assembled, it glowed above the altar of the little church. To the priest it was a marvel, and tangible proof of the favours which had been granted him. Often, when he was well enough, he had himself conveyed into the church on a litter, and would lie on the stone floor, gazing up at it.

  Then, at dusk, two boys would convey him out of the church. Today, at dawn, he had tottered through his last Mass, supported by both of them. In the painting he particularly loved the small, prankish flowers in the foreground. He glanced at them now, as the boys conveyed him from the church, locked the doors, and slipped the key into maculated hands too weak to hold it. Then they carried the litter down the dirt road.

  It was at this point that horsemen swept down from the hillside with a loud yip. There was no one to stop them, for the house intended for the Duchess was abandoned, and the gipsies had gone away long ago. There were three of the banditti, one stockier and more assured than the rest. They were dressed in bright velvet, and had a swagger to them that smacked more of Rome or Naples than of the banditti of the hills.

  As they converged upon the roads, the boy bearers dropped the litter and ran for cover. The priest fell on the ground. The jolt shattered him. He heard the whinneying of horses. He shut his eyes tightly and whimpered, fumbling with his rosary. He bad cataract. His eyes were taut and milky.

  When he opened his eyes he saw dimly that he was lying at the bottom of a forest of knobbly black poles. Those would be the horses. Someone was bending over him, and roaring in his ear.

  “Old man, we have come to ask you questions.” The half-kneeling figure motioned the other two away.

  The old man shook his head from side to side, muttering, no, no, no. It seemed to him that he had fallen among devils at last, and he wanted to get back home. Also he had lost the church key in falling. He reached for it and could not find it.

  He was being asked something about a Duchess. He knew no Duchess. He did not understand. The terrible man in black must certainly be a demon. He wore a mask, and his bloodshot eyes were surely part of hell. The ground hurt his back. Surely it had something to do with St. Anthony.

  “Answer.” The black figure kicked him in the ribs. But that part of his body did not hurt any more. It was completely numb.

  “I do not know. I do not know anybody,” muttered the priest. “Only the two boys.” He twisted his head, looking for them, and the forest of black poles jittered up and down.

  The dark figure screamed at him and then stood up. “String him over that tree,” it said. The old man understood perfectly. He was being martyred. It was a sign of God’s favour. But that could not be true, for he was only a parish priest. The two others put a heavy rope under his a
rms, tied his legs, and dragged him across the rough ground. He began to scream. “Mercy,” he cried. “Mercy for an old man.”

  “Answer then.”

  He would gladly have answered if he could, but answer what? He did not even know what they had asked.

  Manning the rope, the two bravos threw one end of it over the projecting beam of a ruined house, and turning and twisting, he found himself hauled upward. A weight bit into his armpits, as though the rope were mouthing him. They raised him and then let him drop two or three times. His head began to wilt. His ears began to sing. Inside him something snapped and broke.

  “Answer,” screamed the third figure. The priest understood. It was the Inquisition. He would not answer. Besides, his mouth was full of dust and he could not speak.

  He dangled a foot from the ground. They began to haul him up again, laughing loudly, and then quite spontaneously he screamed. The sound seemed impersonal to him but very loud.

  “Answer,” shouted the third figure, and began to kick him and belabour him with a short crop. The priest’s body was so dry and light that each blow made it circle and dance at the end of the tope.

  In ten minutes he was dead.

  The bravos shrugged and let go the rope. The body toppled to the ground. But the third figure was beside itself. It gibbered and screamed and went on kicking the corpse. At last the figure stopped, while the others stood by uneasily.

  “Strip him,” said Ferdinand, “and take away the habit. When the buzzards have been after him, no one will know who he was.” In a minute it was done. The three of them rode off the way they had come, up the valley, without even thinking of looking inside the church.

  At Amalfi sunset sounded like a great gong. Gorgeous bolts of orange and vermilion silk fell tumbling through the sky, to reveal the first stars, like diamonds of a poor colour and inferior quality, and then the whole shabby splendour ripped apart and fell to dust before a sky putrescent green. High over the hills, without sound, the sleepless buzzards circled down.