She Walks in Darkness (13 page)

He paused, looking down at me. I believe he really thought I would be interested.

“Yes, your first, your only true North American civilization, signora—not a poor copy of Europe’s so-called, tasteless, mechanized civilization, such as you have now—was inspired, like all other great cultures, by the Rasenna. Soon now I will know the history of that last migration—and of the first! I will know where Tyrrha stood, the first, the true Tyrrha, that ‘High Place’ from whose flame Egypt and Sumer and all the others lit their poor candles! For at last I have found the key! At last I can read the ancient, lost tongue of the Rasenna!”

The face of that last high priest who buried himself with his threatened temple and its treasures never can have looked more dedicated, more terrible, in its all-sacrificing exaltation. I thought, shivering, that now at last I knew how a madman looked.

s suddenly as it had come, the madness faded from his fierce old face. It became again the fine, high-bred mask.

“But I speak to children, creatures without understanding.... Your pardon, signora. Rise, my son.” He stooped and helped me to my feet as Floriano stumbled to his. “Thanks to this young man’s impetuosity, I fear that I have also caused you pain.”

Floriano’s face was still bleeding from the third blow, his eyes were dull and lusterless. He moved like an old man, the will to live, even his hate, gone out of him. Silently we left that buried temple, Prince Mino moving as silently behind us. The way back up must have been as long as the way down had been, but I remember very little about it. Nothing except that every step, the time it took to take that step, seemed precious, something irrevocably lost. As of course it was. Every movement, every moment, is one less out of our allotted span of life. And the prince had kept his promise, shown us his treasure. There was nothing more for him to wait for.

Our time was bound to be very short indeed.

The vast cavern was gone forever, and so was the snake-like hissing of that steam-crowned abyss. We were out of that suffocating passage, back in the Tomb of the Priests. My lantern still stood there, lighting the great round chamber, even lessening the darkness of some of those niches that for ages had been beds of the dead.

“This way, signora. I know that you are tired, but one more sight I must ask you to see before you rest.” The regret, the considerateness in the prince’s voice made it almost gentle, but his face was still as cold and hard as the faces of the carven dead.

He led us towards the far side of the room, where the shadows were deepest. Objects began to loom up through them, took shape. One of the niches held a cot, camp chair, and table, all folded. In the next were a primus stove, a loaf of bread, and some cans and utensils.

“Comforts provided me by my good Mattia.” The prince’s voice was now as expressionless as his face.

I thought of all the luxury in the villa above. As an avenger, Floriano had not done badly. Yet, to do Prince Mino justice, I believe that if that mask hid grief, it was all for the old man who had tried to make him comfortable.

“Life in the cave might have been safer, had it not been for the odor. Even living here, I have considered a nightly walk in the open air above essential to my physical fitness. But for a while now, I must change both my quarters and my habits. My notes and papers I have already removed to the cavern. Death soon will be sole lord again in this ancient chamber.” Why did he smile faintly, subtly, as he said that?

“You can’t stay here at all without old Mattia to bring you food!” I grasped at a sudden hope. “I’m sure my husband will help you. Let me talk to him—”

“To that poor unconscious man, signora?” Again that cutting curl of his lip.

“I meant when he wakes up, of course! Do believe me—do help him! If I’d ever been in love with your son, I’d certainly be over it now.”

“The love of women is a strange thing, signora. I dare not trust to your change of heart. One or two of the villagers knew me well of old. Through one or other of them, help will reach your husband, as I have promised, and future supplies will reach me, though neither can take the place of Mattia Rossi.” He sighed. “Truly I expected you, my son; I have waited long for you. But you have added one more crime to the list for which you must be punished. That has altered my plans somewhat, even for you.”

Floriano shivered and swayed; he must have been near collapse. Blows, exertion, loss of blood, all must have taken their toll, magnificent animal though he was. I saw Prince Mino shoot him a quick glance. “You are faint, my son? You would like some brandy? And you, signora?”

We both shook our heads. I think we had both of us reached that point when fear itself becomes unbearable, when anything, even the blow itself, is better than waiting for it to fall....

“As you please. Now for that sight I promised you. I have not been lonely here. The bones of the old Tequna have been good company, but also I have those who once bore my name, members of my own house.”

He swung his torch beam along the curving wall, towards the third berth left of that which held his furniture. Into a niche that had been undiluted blackness....

Part of me must have fainted then, though my body still stood upright.

Side by side they lay, their skulls still close together upon the rotted remnants of what once must have been a silken pillow. Two skeletons, still covered by a mass of bits and pieces of rotten silk. I saw them, and I saw something else—the heavy, rusty iron chain that still bound them together, stapled them to the wall behind what had been their heads. And though it was what I had expected to see, everything went black....

When I woke, I was lying on something softer than rock. Horrifyingly, I thought of that rotten silk. My eyes flashed open, I looked down, and saw that I was lying on Prince Mino’s camp cot. Then I heard Prince Mino’s voice.

“You should be happy now, my son. You are seeing what none ever has seen before, save the legitimate heir of the Carenni. As my father showed it to me, I show it to you.”

Floriano made some sort of strangled noise; he evidently did not appreciate the honor. His father went on, “He was taken by surprise, our ancestor. Mad with grief and fury, he plunged his sword into the boy when he found those two lying in their guilt. She in whose arms that shamer of his house lay, she whose crime was the lesser because no Carenni blood flowed in her veins, she paid the greater penalty. That was no true
bella vendetta.
Both lovers should have lain here living, have been left alone in this age-old silence to learn which first forgot love and turned to tear the other—!”

Floriano’s voice cut across his, shrill as a woman’s. “What are you talking about? What has this evil old madness to do with us?”

Prince Mino’s quiet voice was quelling. “You will do your house this one service, Floriano. You will undergo the penalty that that other young traitor of our blood should have paid. Here, my son, in the next niche, you shall lie. With your bedfellow.”

The handcuffs! They were to bind Floriano and me together forever, as the chain still bound those two skeletons: the chain that had been put upon them when both still had young, lovely flesh. When the girl had been alive—I knew then that, deep down, I had feared this all along. With all my own doomed flesh.

For a minute I must have been unconscious again. Floriano’s shriek roused me: a hideous, inhuman howl that seemed as if it would bring down the roof. Then, after a moment’s hush, he began sobbing, pleading. The tone made his meaning clear, although Prince Mino was no longer making him speak English. No doubt because he thought me still unconscious, me, the providentially supplied pawn he could use in his son’s punishment. But why didn’t Floriano’s voice sound nearer? He must be standing night at my side.

I opened my eyes, looked down at my wrist. No handcuff was there. I looked again, I stared, but both my wrists were free, blessedly free. When I had fallen and the camp cot had been put up—oh, that horrible, considerate courtesy of Prince Mino’s!—the cuffs must have been in the way. The prince had freed me.

Could I possibly get away now while he was enjoying his son’s piteous outburst? At least I must try. My shoes would make a noise on the stone floor. Cautiously I sat up, took them off. Holding them in one hand, I swung myself carefully, very carefully, to the floor. But the cot creaked. My heart stood still. Neither man moved, however. Floriano’s pitiful pleading still went on, and apparently his father had ears for nothing else.

I tiptoed towards the great doorway. At every step I expected to hear Prince Mino’s voice. I wanted to run, to look back over my shoulder, but if I did either, here among all these dancing shadows, I might stumble and really make a noise.

I was through the doorway, outside in that short passage that I think the Greeks would have called a
dromos.
I still couldn’t run; it was quite dark here.

“NO!” Back inside the tomb, Floriano’s agonized cry rose to a shriek.
“No!”

“Disobey me, and you will suffer for that disobedience. And still lie there. Would you make your pain greater than even I choose to make it? Lie down.”

The wail that followed was like nothing else that I have ever heard, something that I wish I did not have to remember. Another came, and another, and I did run—as if devils were behind me, as indeed they were. The black silence of the labyrinth received me, sweet as welcoming arms. I ran until I bumped into a wall and knocked myself down. I put on my shoes, then scrambled up and ran on, hands outstretched before me, as I blindly made turn after turn. Until some unevenness in the stones of the floor tripped me, and I fell again.

That time I lay there, too spent to rise. Expecting every instant to have Prince Mino’s flashlight blaze in my eyes, to hear his cold voice. But I saw nothing, heard nothing but my own breathing. Nothing else broke that terrible, stony silence. Dead silence, that was like part of the stone itself: a foretaste of death.

I realized the truth then.
I’m lost. I never can find my way out of this maze. Unless somebody comes I’ll die here, alone in the dark.

But nobody could come except Prince Mino, and then I would still die in the dark, but chained to Floriano. Better, far better, to die alone.

I don’t know what finally made me understand; somehow knowledge came to me out of the silence and the blackness that were as calm as himself. Prince Mino was not coming. My flight had been exactly what he wanted. Deliberately he had chosen words to frighten me, make me run away. My body, found here with no marks of violence on it, might well keep searchers from going deeper into the vaults, unearthing him. He had even spared himself the physical ugliness of having to kill someone he did not hate. Clever, clever Prince Mino!

I couldn’t imagine what he really had done to Floriano; I didn’t want to know. But he was a man of honor; he had promised to help Richard, and he would. As for myself—well, I was too tired to care. I pillowed my head on one arm, and relaxed. There was a kind of relief in giving up, in not fighting any more....

“Bar-bara! Bar-ba-ra!” From far away a voice was calling me. Calling me back from the quiet un-dark place, the good place, where I had found refuge, back into a darkness that was not good.... As I came back into my body, I heard it more clearly.

“Bar-ba-ra! Barb!”

Richard’s voice! Had he died, all alone in that lovely, sinister room far above? Died and then come back, down into this underworld, to find me?

“Barbs!” This time his voice sounded farther away. Why should it, if he were dead?

I jumped to my feet, called out with all the strength left in me: “Richard! Richard!”

His voice leapt across the distance and the darkness, eager, exultant: “Barby! Where are you?”

He was there, he was real!

I don’t remember much about those next few minutes, that blind, anxious stumbling and running, as we groped towards each other’s voices. When a flashlight blazed in my eyes, I jerked back, remembering Prince Mino. But Richard’s voice came from behind it, “Barb!” And then we were in each other’s arms, kissing hungrily, clumsily. Floriano would have sneered at our technique, but to us it was good, good. He said huskily, “Barb, honey. Barb....”

I said, “You woke up, Richard. You woke up!”

He said grimly, “I woke up a good while ago, Barby. While that fellow Floriano was pounding on the door and cursing you.”