“That I didn’t. I thought both of ’em were gone——”
“Do you know that he’s accused her of wantonness with a lowborn lover, and me the fruit of it?”
“Too well I know it. I heard him make the same charge when you were in the womb.”
“How much of the charge was true? And I charge you to speak truth.”
“You are Nicolo’s son. My lady vowed it, her hand in mine, before Our Lady. Antonello the jongleur had gone to Florence a good year before your birth. What had been between them before then, no soul on earth may say. Antonello was the son of my lady’s nurse, and they played together as children, and mayhap they discovered each other, with no harm done, as children will. He came to Venice with his troop, and sought out my lady, and she admitted him to her bower now and again, while her lord was trading in Trieste. Her lord, I said. So she confessed him, here below. But she would not confess him her Lord above. And that was what he craved, in his blasphemous, miscreant heart. For a while he was master of her body, but by blessed Jesu, he never won her soul.”
“You said that no one living could declare her innocence or guilt. Is Antonello dead?”
“Sixteen years ago.”
“Was he older than Signor Nicolo?”
“At least a year younger. My lady was fourteen when she wedded, and her lord seventeen. But God did not let her conceive till she was full fifteen.”
“Then Antonello died young!”
I was watching Rosa’s eyes. They wavered, then returned to mine.
“It’s hard to live on with your guts pulled out, and cut in four.”
“Who did it, I wonder?”
“Save your wonder for a two-headed calf! A young merchant, trading in Rimini, cried him for a thief. When the watch searched him, they found the merchant’s purse. Antonello swore that he had borrowed it for legerdemain from a merrymaker the night past and that the gentleman had disappeared before he returned it. But who would believe such a fantastic story?”
“Was the crier Nicolo Polo?”
“No, it was Maffeo Polo. And if the merrymaker were Nicolo, he had made full merry. He’d proved the gentleman from first to last. He hadn’t sullied his hands or steel in base blood. One must cross swords with an equal invading his bed, but a rat’s death isn’t good enough for one who brings lice. If the court knew naught of this, they knew that jongleurs were lewd, lawless fellows who needed lessons. Antonello was hanged, cut down while still alive, and quartered.”
“Signor Polo must have loved my mother with great passion.”
“He hated her with the black hate of Hell.”
“Why?”
“Because she was above him when she became his bride, and he couldn’t bring her down. It was no good to whip her, because she wouldn’t weep. It was no balm to sport with trulls or even highborn ladies, for he knew not one could hold a rushlight to her, and worse than that, she rejoiced at their serving in her stead.”
“She did weep. I heard her.”
“Sometimes tears ran down her long cheeks, but I was within sound of her voice day and night, and only once did I hear her weep aloud. That was when she had news of Antonello’s death. His slayer didn’t hear her, for he stayed in Rimini for her lover’s drawing and quartering, then took ship for Constantinople. The master would have given his soul to have heard her, but, glory to sweet Jesu! he never did, and I would die in slow fire before I told him of it, and if you should tell him, may your soul be saved for my lady’s sake but your living body crisp and blacken in slow fire!”
“Be still! As I hope to see salvation, I never will!”
Only my own vehemence caused me to realize hers. As she had talked, she had shaken and smoothed my bolster, spread sheets, and emptied pots; and because my pitch of feeling had mounted beside hers—like a flute in tune with a lyre—I had remained unaware of the steep climb. I had thought Rosa had much phlegm and little bile, but now I had never seen such eyes in a human head.
Suddenly she sighed. “I would you could have heard her, Marco, for your soul’s sake. But you couldn’t have, because you were not yet born.”
“I was in the womb, and I heard her through its walls.”
“Mayhap you did! Mayhap you are only mad!”
“But I can’t remember what she told me the night before she died. For good or evil, I charge you to tell me.”
“I can’t tell you because I don’t know.”
“Then you lied when you said you were always within sound of her voice, and for that you need a flogging.”
“I didn’t lie. My lady made no sound at all for three days before she died. But I wasn’t always in sight of her hands, and perhaps they gave you some signal.”
The pressure of pain grew across my forehead until it seemed my eyes would burst out.
“There were two candles burning. . .”
“That is so.”
“She had me put them both on her bedstand.”
“Yes, yes, I found them there.”
“She took a piece of white leather—perhaps it was a parchment—from a hiding place and held it in the flame, but it did not burn.”
“Jesu, have mercy!”
“Was it a letter that the Devil wouldn’t let her destroy? Did he draw the yellow teeth of his very element, so she might die with sin upon her soul? Or did her saints make cold the flame, to save her from doing evil?”
“Don’t think about that now. Leave that for the priests to settle, when you’ve recalled it all. What happened next? You’ll foul the chain of memory if you don’t haul——”
“I don’t know what happened next. It’s faded out.” The pain too had dimmed away.
Rosa wiped her face. “Someday it will come,” she prophesied.
“It might have come just now, if you’d told me the truth from first to last.”
“May my soul perish——”
“You said you didn’t know if Antonello was my mother’s lover, but later on, when your caution was lost in heat, you called him just that.”
“The wish was father to the thought, Marco my child. It may be that my lady never lay in the embrace of love, only of hate. When death called her to his cold bed ere she was twenty, she might never have known a bed warmed by a sweetheart’s passion. So I wish she’d broken her vow to rejoice her soul in Heaven and to torment Nicolo’s dreams. Would not her saints save her from the wrath? Aye, if they too had dwelt in mortal flesh and knew its yearnings. If atonement must still be made, I take it on my soul.”
Her weak voice rang. I looked to her scrawny form, her breasts that were ever dry and now were wasted too, her anxious old-maid countenance, and these were all transfigured by her one great love. Perhaps it was the love of a grown-up child for a doll that broke, with no warmer, better doll to come and comfort her, the story ended as complete as though the child herself had died.
I will live on in your stead, Rosa. I’ll be your lover, yourself, and your child. Doubt not I will be your avenger.
“You’d be better off if Antonello, not Nicolo, had been your father,” Rosa went on. “Poor as he was, lowborn, not even handsome, his seed would have been blessed.”
“I don’t doubt it, but I thank God for my evil begetting.”
I did not finish, just then, what I was about to say. It came to me it would have no validity until I had said something else in another place. Until then, I would have nothing to lose but wind. I had posted no bond to forfeit if I broke faith. A gauge had been thrown, which I had neither yielded nor picked up. I could not run with the hare and hunt with the hounds.
So I left her and went back to the dining hall. The strong, pure, marine light burst through the casements facing the lagoon and shone on Signor Nicolo Polo and my kinsmen seated at the board. Nicolo’s face was flushed with wine and glory; he was a full-blooded man. The others were hanging on his words.
“May I speak, your Honor?” I asked, when my entrance caused him to fall silent.