The Duke In His Castle (9 page)

But he is himself again. He jerks away from her as though her fingers burn. “Don’t—” he says weakly, but with the same obstinate dignity, and turns his full attention to the female lying before them, beautiful, nude, and alive.

Only, Nairis—whoever she once was, let her now be called thus—is obviously in shock. Her peculiar child-eyes stare in an infantile look of incomprehension; now that the Duke peers closer, leaning over her, they are blue as cornflowers. She is, he assumes, not an idiot, but apparently whatever she experiences now is so far from the usual manner of “birth” that it is impossible for her mind to grasp. He hopes the effect is temporary, or at best, if ancient memories do not come to her, she can learn quickly in order to assume a life in the here and now.

What has been done?

“I think you should call your servants, my Lord,” the Duchess of White says softly. There is a weird expression in her eyes and she never looks at the newborn woman-child. “And get something to cover her with. Unless, that is—” And again, some perverse demon in her waxes profane—“Unless you are so bewitched by the display of
new
female flesh that you are unable to part from her.”

Rossian, leaning close over Nairis, is indeed bewitched. His thoughts are different, his outlook modified, his senses scream. . . . Yet he is not about to reveal the difference. His voice is cold and profoundly normal, as he calls Harmion and gives instructions to the servants.

“She must be treated as a new-born child,” he says gently, regarding Nairis, to Izelle. “It’s as if I’ve engendered her. Although a woman in body, she is so innocent, her consciousness a blank. Strange how young she was when she died. Though, such youthful death could have been caused by childbirth or a simple pestilence. Her age holds no more than two decades, I would say—for I’m certain she is returned to us at the exact age of her death, as though time has been paused for her, and then, in a skip of centuries, it now resumes. What mysteries surround this death, I wonder? For that matter, what kind of antique time did she experience in her brief life, ages ago? But—whatever her past, it is no longer. One day I might question her when she is deemed to be strong enough. Meanwhile she must be looked after carefully. Too quickly exposed to life, her mind might come unbalanced. And then—”

“And then you would have one insane but beautiful Nairis on your hands,” Izelle snaps. She is getting more and more irritated for a reason known only to herself. “Such a relationship just might promise pleasures, isn’t it true, my Duke? Idyllic sensual pleasures for a man—
are
you the man I am supposing you to be?”

He straightens abruptly, his form still and inscrutable. “What? What in Heaven? You, my Lady, suggest things that are offensive.”

But then, it’s as if he is deflated, wrung out, and the cold energy of anger leaves his eyes, leaves him with the hollow place just below his lungs, and apathy. Now he deliberately ignores the Duchess, that little gadfly with a foul sting, and stands leaning over his creature Nairis—for yes, she has become his, hasn’t she?

There is a never-before-seen kindness in his eyes. Inside, he feels a warm slow blooming of joy, a strange after-effect of creation. This is what the Deity must feel when the Deity creates the Universe; the scale is different yet the parallel remains.

The Duke then reaches out gently (his hands are trembling) to help the “new-born” one to sit up. His strong, expert fingers have lost their ruthless aplomb and are suddenly hesitating, for he is unsure where it is appropriate to touch her. And so he places them lightly underneath her shoulders, fingertips to skin which is feeling cool to the touch, for the night has its effect upon the living exposed flesh. He presses his fingers; they dig into her shoulders, soft, resilient; he lifts her up into a sitting position.

The creature Nairis obeys the directed pressure of his hands automatically, making small animal-infant sounds as she exhales, and her skin is covered with goose bumps from the compounded moments of chill. He tries not to look now, but her small plump breasts slide down her delicate ribcage while their roundness becomes pronounced on their underside; at the same time they are suddenly sharp-pointed.

The Duke looks away, then learns how to look without looking, to see her with his peripheral vision in order not to see lower, the smooth slender stomach, the oval depression of the navel, and continuing below—no. Her glassy eyes remain wide open, and he focuses there, so that it is easier to think of her as still unreal, an animated doll.

For, in those moments now that he is fully aware of this incarnate responsibility before him, the Duke is cold with terror and with the choices piling up, the temptations that are presented. And in thought he continues to blaspheme, as notions race past him,
Does a creator feel lust for his own creation, does Deity desire what is most innocent and unadulterated in the first instant of engendering, just before mortal corruption takes over?

Izelle watches him. If she suspects what goes through him at that point, she is never to be sure. It is easier, instead, to let him be, and simply feel pity.

In that moment, Harmion, somehow knowing exactly what is required of him, returns to the open-sky chamber with maid-servants, with additional candles, and with a strange fixed look in his eyes. One maid brings with her a freshly laundered sheet to wrap about the nude woman-child. Their intrusion into this place of ritual is somehow peculiar and breaks the concentrated tension; the sheet is unfolded and its sharp revitalizing scent of lavender soap wafts on the cold air. Another maid brings soft fabric slippers, and a stack of additional linen.

The Duke stands back, torn out of a personal reverie, and allows the nude innocent to be concealed from his view and from the night by the generous sheet.

Nairis accepts the covering and shivers, her posture slumping as she withdraws into the sheet and herself. They gather around her and ever-so-gently, with the help of many hands, they teach the body of Nairis to get up.

She stands. Lovely and limber, yet she totters on her feet newly-shod in the satin slippers. She has to be led away, helped along like a rag doll. As she turns her back, her hair is glorious, a brown and red illusion of flow, nearly to her waist, shimmering in the candlelight. . . .

Izelle is watching, oddly frozen, unmoved by the sight. Impossibly, she is allowing them to take the woman-child away. It’s as if some new emotion is tearing the Duchess in twain, so that it’s easier simply to do nothing.

“Where should she be taken, M’Lord?” says Harmion, clearing his throat, pausing just barely at the doorway. And then he adds, “I recommend the Mad Queens Tower, if it’s all the same with Your Grace. The quarters there are sufficiently presentable and ready for accommodation.”

The Duke stares at him uncomprehending, it seems. Then, he comes to himself. “What? Oh . . . yes, that will be fine, Harmion. Please take her there. Help her . . . ready for the night.”

When all are gone, all but the candle-lit table, the empty former box of death, and looming night-shadows, Rossian remains standing, immobilized, watching the night. His gaze slithers along the walls, averted from Izelle, and he takes deep breaths of the cold air.

“I am . . . sorry,” she says. “I’ve implied things that are unworthy.”

He remains as he is, never turning her way.

“Rossian? My Lord Duke?”

“You, my dear, have a malicious bent. Yes, I see it now. You called me
truly cruel,
but what do you call
yourself?
” He speaks unexpectedly in a hard voice, stronger than she imagines him to be capable of, and she is startled.

And then he turns, and she sees the truth—receptive wounded eyes, gleaming dark with moisture.

“Do you really think I am—like
that
?” he asks, and his voice fluctuates; is cracking. “That I would think of her with such filth? Her, whom I perceive only as a dear thing I have somehow
wrought?
To desire such sacrilege?”

Desiring sacrilege. Being profane. Do you really think that I—
Mad inconclusive thought fragments begin to race in him, driven by fever. . . .

“I am sorry,” she says again. “Forgive me, for I am indeed quite offensive, often intentionally, but sometimes not. Only—there is something about you, Lord, that touches me peculiarly—” She cuts off abruptly. Then, just as abruptly, she changes the subject. As she speaks, her voice rings bright, sending echoes against stone.

“Well, now that you presumably know your secret, would you care to test the castle boundary once more?”

Could it be that everything stills then, is suspended. The night air pauses in its flow. The stars stop their infinitesimal journey across the tiny patch of boundlessness overhead.

The Duchess holds her breath, watching him with unflinching eyes.

But the hurt-transfigured gaze of the Duke remains grim, and there is no new hopeful resolve in his voice, only weariness. “No,” he says. “Not now—tomorrow. As I am now, I have no more strength for acts of power. . . .” And he throws back his head and glances with a shudder at the open sky overhead.

The Duchess of White averts her eyes, allowing him the privacy of weakness. He has earned it in full, tonight.

IV: A Dream of Falling

I
t is three past midnight. The Mad Queens Tower stands on the northernmost end of the castle grounds, as thick and squat a cylinder as any, one of the many rounded turrets that protrude in ancient tumescence from the baseline of the castle foundation.

The top of the tower does not narrow into a point. Rather, it has a flat roof which serves as an observation point, with thick crenellated parapets rising in a brim of protection. Wind hums through the crenels between the merlons and disappears into the gaping absolute darkness of the descending stairwell, in a twister, a whirlpool of aerial force. There it races down, down, down, falling without end, like a nightmare-dream.

Until it hits bottom, full force.

If wind were a man, it might be expected to die, as such things be told in the proverbial way of things.

They say, always wake up before you hit bottom.

Only, the bottom is no end, and the end is not the bottom. The base of the stairwell opens like a curling snake into a courtyard area, and here the wind and the clamoring air currents have the chance to continue their mad rush, onward and out into the world. The sky of the world is wrought of only a few degrees lesser darkness than the interior of the stairwell and other places hidden by stone walls, on account of a sprinkling of stars that lend a diffused glow to the heavens—throw a spoon of milk into a cauldron of pitch, stir to smoothness, and the dark remains, yet its nature has been altered just a degree beyond overt perception.

On such a night as this, with no moon, it is said that in the ancient days the noblewomen who reside in the tower would receive lovers. If the lover does not come, the high-born woman walks out onto the roof and waits for him, sometimes with a single flickering candle to signify her presence; its light can be seen for miles, a cry in the void. She waits, standing in the chill air of many nights, and eventually she becomes unbalanced. So many blue blood females wither with longing, with neglect or betrayal, with unrequited or simply forgotten love, that the tower, burdened with history, bears their woeful name.

Queens, Princesses, Duchesses, Countesses and lesser Ladies of various rank—wives and maidens, daughters and sisters—all are equal in the eyes of anguish, all are royalty of unfulfilled desire. In the moment of their emotional nadir they are all Mad Queens, tearing out their hair and gouging eyeballs, screaming and foaming, if only within the recesses of their broken minds. Meanwhile, their outsides often remain composed and placid till the end, numb hollow shells over roiling death inside.

The tower stands, has stood for decades unto centuries unto stretches of time unaccounted, for the Dukedom of Violet is one of the oldest in the realm, and this place, the castle grounds, is older yet. There is a bit of irony that most recently the Mad Queens Tower houses neither Queens nor madwomen, nor any other tormented souls, but occasional guests of the living Duke.

Such as tonight.

The Duchess of White and the strange creature Nairis are both given elegant accommodations in the tower—as elegant as the crumbling castle permits. While the Duchess enjoys the services of a maid for the night, a change of clothing, a warm fire in the hearth, much perfumed linen and warm coverlets, a sleeping cap and gown of the softest fabric, a tray of sweet pastries and a hot tea service, Nairis—not much more cognizant than a newborn—is unveiled by three maids no less, dressed in a sleeping gown, placed on the chamberpot to no effect then finally success, cleaned up, spoon-fed a hot soup, scrubbed around the neck, face and ears, hair brushed till it crackles and gleams, and finally laid upon a feather bed upon which the slender body of Nairis sinks.

Nairis lies thus, listening with the precise awareness of a wild animal to each snapping twig and hissing spark of the fireplace, to each rustle and creak of settling stone (for even after all these centuries, the castle moves, breathing like an ancient legendary wyrm). She is warmed by a thick quilted coverlet and a hot brick wrapped in several layers of cotton. One maid has gone but two maids still hover over her even now, watching her motionless form, her gently flickering eyelids as they become groggy with the need for sleep.

But apparently, as many newborns, Nairis has the curious inability to fall asleep even when exhausted. And thus they come to rock her; one older buxom maid draws Nairis up to her motherly chest and moves to and fro, making soothing hum-noises of a lullaby, while the very young one runs her fingers kindly over the forehead and tender filaments of auburn hair.

It must be noted that the buxom maid has been selected for this task because she is a nursing mother with a steady and reliable supply of milk. Before coming to attend Nairis she is told of the possibility that the strange young woman—who is explained to be suffering from a malady and is unable to understand or look after herself—might require a breast to suckle, just as a newborn, in which case the maid is ready to accommodate her.