A Brightness Long Ago, page 21
But there is no Guarino for me to discuss it with, not for years now. I live with certain memories. Surely we all do.
* * *
• • •
THE FRONT ROOM of the inn was packed with people loudly reliving the race. There were women, too, and not just serving girls or whores. Bischio’s race upended many norms.
One man jumped up on the bar and demonstrated Adria’s double-leg kick, for those who hadn’t been there—or just because he wanted to. I saw the man Adria had ridden here with. He was sitting alone, with a view of the door. His demeanour was such that no one seemed inclined to share his table. I need to be careful, I thought. Mind you, had I been careful, I wouldn’t be here, I also thought.
I waited for a group to cross between the entrance and Folco’s guard on their way to the long wooden bar, and I went quickly up the stairs. These were also crowded; a prostitute smiled encouragement at me, and raised her eyebrows in inquiry.
I had no idea which was Adria’s room, but fortune can spin her wheel for the foolish, not just the worthy or the brave. I saw a servant come out of a room, put down two pails, and close the door. She picked up the pails, flushed with exertion.
I took a chance. “Has she finished her bath yet?” I asked.
She looked startled. I added, “I am ordered not to disturb her until she has.”
“Best wait, then,” she said, and carried on down the hallway and the stairs. She might talk to someone below, but I didn’t think so.
I did wait. I walked along the hallway, which was dark, no candles or lanterns lit yet towards day’s end. Light was expensive. I went to the end, opened the shutters there, and stood as if looking out. I heard people come and go behind me; a door opened and closed, a lock clicked. No one came to ask what I was doing there. It was a busy, excited day, even at an inn a distance from the walls. Some people who’d come to Bischio for the race would be staying here, with rooms in the city impossible to come by or wildly expensive. This inn wouldn’t be inexpensive either, I thought. Not this week.
The window faced west. I watched the sun going down. There was a crowd in the courtyard below. I looked at them in the waning light. Someone was lighting torches. After a while I realized I was lingering because I was afraid. That made me move. It often has, does so even today. I don’t like letting fear guide me—though it can be a sound guide.
I turned. I waited for two men to walk along the corridor from a room and go down the stairs, laughing. Their laughter faded. I went to the room the girl had walked out from with the pails. I knocked.
“What is it?” I heard her say.
I drew a breath.
“I might have been promised a kiss on a stairwell in Mylasia,” I replied.
I hadn’t known I was going to say that.
There was a long silence. Then I heard her moving about the room. No reply, though. Time passed.
The door opened.
Her hair was wet, her tunic damp. I could see the bathtub in the middle of the floor behind her.
She didn’t smile. She said, “I don’t recall it being a promise.”
But she stepped back for me to enter. There was no one else in the room. She closed the door. I stayed near it.
“How did you find me?” she asked.
I cleared my throat. “I went to the Falcon district, there was a crowd in front of one house. They were singing, some of them.”
“I heard that.”
“It wasn’t very good.”
“No.”
“But they were happy.”
“Yes. You found the house and . . . ?”
“I went to the laneway behind and waited.”
“You knew I would be leaving?”
“I thought so, yes. If you hadn’t already gone. It . . . it fit what I know of you.”
“What you know of me,” she repeated. “And Gian never saw you.”
“I saw him first.”
She was really very tall, even barefoot, as now. Wet footprints on the wooden floor. The wet tunic showed her body too well for my concentration.
“Well, Guidanio Cerra, I admit this is unexpected.”
That was unexpected.
“I . . . you know my name, my lady?”
She flushed. I knew my own colour was high.
She said, “I asked, after Mylasia.”
“You . . . how?”
“I sent a letter in the winter to Avegna. To the school. Where you said you saw me.”
“You asked Guarino who I was? He answered you?”
She smiled, a little wryly. “He wasn’t going to refuse a Ripoli.”
Which was true. And served to calm me. The reminder of who she was.
“You told him we met in Mylasia? That I’d said I was at the school? He didn’t ask why you had been there or why you wanted to know?”
“He wouldn’t ask me questions.”
I nodded. I said, quietly, “I can recommend my father in Seressa for any clothing you need expertly tailored, my lady.”
She didn’t reply. In one sense, I wasn’t sure why I’d said that, either; in another way, of course I knew. Her eyes were grey or green, it was hard to tell in the muted light. There were two lamps lit, one by the wall, one near the bed. She had opened her shutters. We could hear sounds from below. My coming here, following her, seemed absurd.
She said, “I asked him who you were because it seemed proper that I know who saved my life, at risk of his own.”
“Of course,” I said. “As you can see, I’ve survived that risk, to this point.”
“Yes,” she said. “I’m pleased, of course.”
I said, “I’m also wealthier than I’ve ever been, because of you, so you’ve . . . repaid any debt you might think you owe me.”
I could see her putting it together. She had an alert face, I thought. I was seeing her clearly, up close, in some light, for the first time.
“You wagered on me?”
“I did. The triana.”
“Not to win? No faith, Signore Cerra?”
“Not that. Faith you didn’t want to win.”
“Oh,” she said. “I see.”
What I know of you, I had said.
She was standing two or three paces away. The day had darkened further just in the time since I’d left the other window in the corridor. Twilight now.
“I was wagering for Teobaldo Monticola, as well,” I said. I felt I needed to say that. It was embedded in this, it seemed to me.
“You work for him?”
“I met him on the road. I won a horse race of my own, against one of his captains. Won the horse, which Monticola bought back, so I had money. He invited me to join him in Bischio to watch the race.”
She looked even more alert. “And should I guess you are the reason he knew who I was?”
“I saw you in the sanctuary when they blessed the horse. I told him if you were riding it would be for Folco, I didn’t tell him who you were.”
“But he already knew.” It was a statement; she wasn’t asking.
“Yes,” I said. “I don’t know how.”
“Of course you don’t.” A sharpness.
She didn’t explain. Why would she? The mood had changed. I had known it would when I named Monticola. She was Folco’s niece, worked for him. I had just helped the man he most hated in the world, who most hated him.
I said, “He wagered trianas but also laid bets on you to win.”
A slow smile. “I know he did. So that he’d defeat Folco that way. And then tell him, of course. You didn’t share with him your thought? That I wouldn’t want to win?”
“No,” I said. “I . . . am not his man yet.”
“Yet?”
“He has offered me a post . . . as tutor in Remigio.”
“Monticola’s son is older than we are.”
“And in Sarantium. No, this would be the young ones, the sons of Ginevra della Valle.”
“Ah,” she said. “That means something. So, you will go to Remigio?”
“I haven’t decided. He’s allowed me time to think about it. Until tonight, in fact.”
“What is there to decide? It is a great honour for someone so young. What . . . what else would you want to do, instead?”
Her voice had changed.
“I don’t know.” I realized mine had, as well. “I had thought of going home to Seressa. My cousin . . . has a bookshop. I have money now. Because of you. I can buy an interest, not just work for him.”
“A bookshop,” she said, but not with anything dismissive that I could hear.
“I’m not a soldier,” I said.
“But you ride well enough to win a race with a mercenary captain?”
She’d registered that. She also smiled, a little wryly again.
“I know horses,” I said.
“From the school?”
“Yes.” I hesitated. “But I’m not a courtier. I have . . . no status at all. My lady.”
She shook her head a little. She said, “They brought me wine. Will you take a cup?”
I said (I don’t know where it came from), “I am light-headed already, my lady, in your presence.”
She opened her mouth, closed it. “That is polished flattery,” she said.
“For a tailor’s son, you mean?” I said it too quickly.
She looked at me a long time before replying. She said, “We are what we are and the world is what it is.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I know that. Both things.”
She said—I will remember it all my days—“Did I really promise? In Mylasia?”
I cleared my throat again. I was light-headed. I said, “Honestly? No. You—”
“I said I regretted having to defer it,” she said. “I remember.”
“Yes. Because of the poison.”
A beat, as of musicians waiting. “Somewhat because of that, yes.”
Somewhat. My heartbeat was absurdly fast. The lamplight in the room was erratic. It was difficult to tell, but it seemed to me her colour was still high.
“You did save my life,” she said.
“You feel gratitude?”
“That must be it.” She drew a breath, then said, “I have a thing to say, and a question to ask, Guidanio Cerra.”
“Yes, my lady.”
“You can’t call me that. Not just now.”
I nodded.
She said, “I have no poison on my lips, though I am dangerous in a different way . . . you will know it . . . in who I am. My family.”
I nodded again. Speech had left me.
“I also . . .” She seemed awkward now. She cleared her throat. She said, or tried to say, “I should tell you that I am . . . that I have never . . . we cannot do . . .”
“We cannot make love,” I said, “because you never have and must not be gotten with child.”
“Yes,” she said. It was barely audible. “Those things. Yes. Thank you.”
“And the question?” I asked.
She lowered her head, lifted it again. “There are still . . . that is, there are . . .” She swore suddenly, like a soldier, said, “Do you know how to please a woman?”
And, as I remember it now, looking back, it seemed, just then, as if so much light had come into the room. I looked at her. I said, carefully, “I have some thoughts. And I am willing to learn.”
* * *
• • •
IT IS ALMOST DISTURBING, how aroused she feels hearing him say those words. She doesn’t feel fatigued any more.
She says, keeping her voice steady, although it takes an effort, “In that case, I believe you should kiss me.”
She thinks he is trembling. She knows she is. He takes a step towards her and stops. She has no idea why he stops. She doesn’t want him to have stopped. But he is smiling now, a good smile. He is a little taller than she is. They are alone in a room with a bed, on the day she’s raced to glory in Bischio. He saved her life half a year ago.
He says, “A question of my own, if I may?” He pauses. “Do you know how to please a man?”
This is the dance. One she knows from home, from the world of courts. She has resisted it as a way of living, leaving home for Acorsi and a different existence, but she knows it well, and it is not always displeasing, she decides.
She says, gravely, “I have some thoughts. And I am willing to learn.”
And she is the one who steps forward and puts her arms around his neck and her mouth to his, safely, not safely.
* * *
• • •
PHILOSOPHERS HAD WRITTEN about time, how it didn’t have to be seen as steadily flowing, might be said to speed up or slow down, even rest suspended. I was entirely certain, entwined with Adria Ripoli on a bed in an inn near Bischio, that these ideas were all very wise, worthy of reflection, of being carefully weighed against each other.
That wasn’t going to happen just then.
I was aware that the world existed outside that room and I would have to re-enter it, be thrown back into it, carry on with my life, decisions to be made in a violent world. And that such a life, mine, would not—could not—include this woman and what I felt about her, what I’d felt—however improbably—since Mylasia half a year ago.
“You must have been a very good student at Avegna,” she said. We had been quiet, just breathing, for a time. One of her hands lay on my thigh.
“And you say this because . . . ?”
“Because you are a quick learner, Signore Cerra.”
“Two of those here,” I said. “If I may be permitted to say.”
She laughed. “You are permitted.”
“I suppose someone might be killed for simply touching you.”
“Then someone would have to want very much to touch me.”
“Yes,” I said.
The sound of her laughter kindled desire again in me. Not that kindling was greatly required. I lifted her hand to my mouth, kissed her palm, her fingers. Then I shifted downward along the bed, which was quite large, it could have held four sleepers, many nights it probably did, at a country inn.
I kissed her breasts, moved down along her belly and kissed her there. I brushed my lips along the scar on her thigh. I let my fingers drift and circle in the space between her legs, as she had just taught me to do. She made a wonderful sound, somewhere between a sigh and a plea. I slid farther down and let my mouth go there.
“Danio, you don’t have to do that again,” she whispered.
I lifted my head. She was looking at me, along the length of her body. Her nipples were hard, as they had been before.
“You don’t want me to?” I asked.
* * *
• • •
“YOU DON’T WANT me to?” he asks, and she can hear he is teasing, and it is . . . it is . . .
“I didn’t say that,” she hears herself whisper. “Dear Jad, I did not.”
His laughter is soft, warm, then he finds other things to do and it is her own breathing she hears, then her own voice as she says things that seem to urgently require saying, however inarticulate they might be.
After, when she feels mostly able to deal with breathing and her body again, he is up beside her once more and she lets her hand touch him, as if idly, and feels how pleasingly excited he is again. She explores him with one finger only; down, and back up, and very slowly down again.
He says, a little desperately, “You don’t . . . you don’t have to . . .”
She doesn’t even dignify that falseness with a reply.
She, in turn, shifts down the bed and his body.
“You will destroy me,” she hears him say, and she is inexpressibly pleased with the world just then, even given the awareness of what is hovering—always—beyond them, like a shape, a shadowing where the light does not reach.
We are what we are and the world is what it is, she had said, in that time when they had been standing, not yet touching, not in this bed.
She wants him inside her. She knows she cannot do that. This will end, just as her time with Folco at Acorsi will end. She says, after his shuddering release has come and subsided, “Do not ever forget this. I promise I will not ever forget this.”
She sees him shaking his head, he seems to be searching for the capacity to speak.
Finally, he says, “I cannot. I am . . . branded with you, Adria.”
First time he’s said her name. And such a thought. Such a lovely, such a sad thought. Why is there always sadness, she thinks, entangled with joy? Why is that how life must be?
She moves back up and kisses him again. Eventually, though not quickly, they rise and Guidanio dresses himself (she does not), and he walks to the door, and she goes there with him, in a long, pleased, luxurious nakedness, and they kiss again there, slowly, sweetly, and then he goes back out into a world that is not this room and is—always—what it is.
As if to prove that this is so, almost mockingly, only a little later she hears loud voices in the corridor and then there is a knocking again at her door, and a voice she does not know. And soon after that, a voice she does.
* * *
The proprietor of The Cannon’s Bell inn (the name had a long history, mostly lost) was a gaunt, long-faced fellow, belying any expectation of a portly, cheerful innkeeper in the countryside. He was used to people telling him to look happier. He didn’t see much reason for doing that.
He undermined another assumption by being honest, serving decent, unwatered ale and local wines that were better than the run of such things. Also, if he was bribed to keep quiet by patrons, he kept quiet.
He expected to find his god in light when he died. He lived in hope of that and carried a well-worn sun disk always, even at night. His wife said he touched it in bed more than he touched her, but that was a private matter.
