The Secret Book of Paradys (43 page)

But now the wanderer had returned, was trapped and must participate. There was to be no escape.

The grey pillars of the Temple-Church rose like tree-trunks of a petrified forest. The roof was ribbed – the inner belly of some apocryphal beast which had swallowed the processions whole. Rays of daylight pierced through. From a massive window a bolt of sunshine streamed and smoked.

An angel of white marble shone out in the path, but did not save Helise. Beyond, the Angel Chapel was an underwater cave where she would drown in marriage.

And now she was at the rail, and now she was alone but for one who stood beside her.

It seemed to her that no one else at all was there.

No maids-of-honour, no gentlemen, no witnesses, not even the priest. Not even her parents, who had condemned her.

Only this other at her side.

Something – the priest’s injunction – brought them to kneel.

Helise knelt, and her gown rustled and the small jewels clinked against the tessellated floor. And she heard the scuff of a shoe, the brushing of a viridian sleeve.

The blessing was being spoken, the magical water was being sprinkled. Could a devil endure that? Seemingly yes, for he had not sprung aside, his garments did not singe.

The responses of the Mass drew from her a whisper. At her side a male voice murmured low its clear Latin. A young male voice, younger than the voices of her father and brother.

Surely, a demon could not utter the responses of God’s Mass?

The one beside her had a voice, and now a hand, resting upon the rail. The hand stayed Helise, for it was in shape the hand of a warrior-saint, made thin and strong for the hilt of battle, the clasp of prayer. And on the fourth finger, an onyx ring.

The priest, having changed the wafers to the flesh and the wine to the ichor of Christ, fed them at the rail like two hungry sparrows.

But could a demon take between its lips the body and blood of Heaven?

Now she must stand up again. She must make the correct replies to the
questions of the priest. Like all questions, in her experience, the answers were preordained, unavoidable. Only questions that might be answered could ever be asked.

And so, in a few minutes more, she had been wedded, and had barely noticed, puzzling as she was over the paradox of the pale hand with the onyx, and the Host penetrating the intestines of one accursed.

Finally the pale hand itself took her own and on to her finger ran a coil of cold metal, to bind her, and the priest in turn bound her right hand to the pale hand. Tied, she must turn. Or,
they
turned her.

Handfast, Helise looked at her bridegroom, her husband. There before her, straight and slender, his face in a halo of uncoloured hair, was Jehanus, the beautiful, harrowed martyr from off the very wall. Only his eyes were altered. Their beauty had been brought to life with a green and stellar fire.

Bound fast hand-to-hand with her, he kissed her passionlessly with his cool mouth. It was a fearsome kiss, for it struck Helise in the breast and heart, into her womb even, down to the soles of her feet, like lightning. As in the Bible, a sword had gone through her. She had never known before what that phrase could mean.

Outside, the crowd shouted. She was put again on to the palfrey. They went up through the City, up to the mansion of d’Uscaret. And sometimes the thrown flowers smote Helise, and some wisps of paper, one of which lodged in her sleeve, and looking at it she saw it was a votive prayer for her safety. But now she did not mind. He rode at her side.

The viridian banners by the doors were garlanded with myrtle. This house was black, like a sarcophagus, and the great hall was black, with old charred flags like broken wings drooping from the rafters. But the candles burned and white damask clothed the tables and he led her to sit beside him.

Helise was happy. Her eyes sparkled and everything had become wonderful. They gave her white wine to drink, and on the gallery minstrels sang like angels.

They banqueted on fowl roasted with figs and cakes of flour and sugar, milk jellies, fish served in their armour, doves in their feathers. There were salads of spinach and beans made into gardens, and castles of rice and pine kernels, and almond puddings sweet as the promise of life everlasting.

A pageant was performed, displaying the prowess of d’Uscaret, her knights and lords, their deeds of valour.

Lilies fell from a canopy.

At the table sat the new father and mother of Helise. He was a dark and peevish man, fretful, who drank until huge drops spurred out on his forehead. The woman was like something cut from wood, having only two dimensions, angular in her tourmaline gown, her silver caul and steeple headdress from which black spiderspun floated.

What did they matter?

At the side of Helise sat Jehanus who was Heros, still and nearly silent, real as all things, given to her by God.

I am his wife, and he is
–

He was beautiful as a young divinity. Had she suffered so only to be intoxicated by this ecstasy?

The masque in the hall was now of a girl and youth embraced upon an isle on wheels, while tame panthers frisked about – but they were all men inside the feline velvets. A dim cry floated on the sea of delight:
shape-changer
.

“Come, madam. Now, lady, come with us –”

D’Uscaret’s maids of honour, the young girls of the house, were urging her bashfully, wantonly. She must get up and go with them, to the bridal chamber.

Helise rose and let them lead her out. Their butterfly mutters and touches, playful, childishly-naughty, swirling her through a door and up an inner stair where brands blazed in brackets. A vast heat was on the stair, bringing out the scents of flesh and unguents, and above in the curve of a shadow, the arch, the corridor, great doors carved with falcons, through which they slipped like thieves. And there the room, the room, and the tall wide bed, where tonight she would lie beside her lord.

Now she could reconcile herself with all of it. Yes, she could conjure endless darkness furled in ceaseless embrace. His mouth on hers, his arms about her. And if he should wish more – whatever he wished she would grant.

The girls of d’Uscaret, with sighings and nonsensical acid ribaldries – traditional things they probably did not, all of them, comprehend – disrobed Helise and clad her in a shift of samite, combed out her hair and wove lilies in it. She climbed into the high bed, and they arranged her there like a toy, leaning on the pillows.

At the hour of Matines, the wedding-party bounded up the stair with torches and candles, bells and lyres, bringing the husband to his wife.

The solid doors flew wide, and between them the uproar surged, the lights and sequins and the blowing of tin trumpets. The old men making sour old dirty jests, and the women laughing or compressing their faces. The Lady d’Uscaret was there, like a pillar of flint. Her perspectiveless face also contorted to smile or grimace, but it was like a disc of paper.

Before all the horde, the bridegroom. He made the rest into a dumbshow.

They brought him forward to the bed, and the men instructed him and the women looked away.

The eldest of the maids of honour bowed.

“Your bride is here awaiting you, m’sire. May you have joy of your night.”

Then, hiding their faces coyly, the maids ren away, and the old men tried to catch them going down the stairs, so there were shrieks and a scattering of sugarplums.

With a susurrus of trains and mantles, the doorway sucked back the last of the crowd. The doors were shut.

Heros and Helise, alone now, in the bedchamber.

She sat in the bed, as if in a bank of snow. She knew she must be shy like the gentle female deer. Her heart drummed, and she watched him under her lids.

What would he do now? She did not care, so long as he would lie down with her. She was parched for his nearness, the pressure of his mouth and body. This was true lust she felt, and did not even know it.

But Heros went straight back to the doors, and in came one of his gentlemen. Behind a screen painted with a hunting or hawking scene, the bridegroom was undressed. He stepped out from the screen wrapped in a mantle, and the gentleman took himself away, and again the door was shut.

And now, now surely, Heros would come to her.

But, as if he were alone only with himself, Heros d’Uscaret wandered along the length and breadth of the chamber. He seemed deep in thought. Now and then he hesitated, picking up some article or other. Once he stood for several minutes reading at an open book on a stand.

Helise did not dare to call to him. To question.

Her suspense became firstly painful, and then sickening, as gradually her trembling warmth died into chill.

As though he perceived this, Heros circled once more and snuffed the candles.

A veil of blackness covered the chamber, edge-to-edge, shrinking it to the area of the bed, where one light remained burning on the chest at the bedfoot.

Heros now moved towards this final candle, it enamelled him upon the dark.

There and then, he looked at his wife.

Before she could control herself, she leaned from the pillows, as if to hold out her arms to him.

But Heros d’Uscaret, her husband, blew out the candle. And as she shivered there, he got in beside her, and reclined, with the space of a third person left between them. And he said, “Goodnight, Helise.”

Perhaps only minutes later, lying beside and apart from him, she whispered, “Have I offended you, my lord?”

“No,” said the darkness.

“But will you not then –” and here she faltered on her own unspeakable audacity.

After her anguish had gone on for some minutes more, Helise stretched herself out, and visualised that now they lay together as man and wife should. But her instinct knew perfectly well that this was not as it should be. Blindly, her instinct clawed at the night while she kept like a stone, but after a century had passed, she murmured, “But will you not – kiss me, my lord?”

This question was answered.

“No,” darkness said again. “I won’t do that.”

And then there went by aeons of blackness and heartbeats like massing tides in the shell of the ear. After which Heros d’Uscaret said, “In the morning, Helise, you must take a pin and make your finger bleed. Stain the sheet with it, and your shift. That’s for the showing, to prove your virginity is gone. Without that your life will be miserable here. More miserable than necessary. Do you understand?”

She did not, of course. Of course she said that she did.

There were a hundred things – she did not know how they must be expressed. She lay in black silence, until he added, “Go to sleep now.” And then she lay awake all night until the dawn.

“Well, demoiselle. Do you please my son?”

Helise, a bride of eight days, gazed modestly on the ground. Eventually she found some words. “I try to, madam.”

“Come, lift your head. I can tell a liar by his eyes.”

Helise lifted her head, but not her gaze.

“Look up,” said the implacable Lady d’Uscaret.

Helise looked up. Just like her other mother, this one in her inlaid chair, but having no lap-dog.

The eyes of the second mother were black. Her dark hair was imprisoned within a birdcage of silver-wire, with a band of nacre across her pallid forehead. Everything was hardness, even the folds of her gown seemed hacked from steel.

“You’re afraid of me, Helise,” pronounced d’Uscaret’s lady. “But that’s as it should be. Your family’s rich, but has no history, in comparison with this house. Beside my own lineage, your name is a title written in sand.” Helise might have been surprised; already, not interpreting, she had seen that the new mother despised her own husband. But the new mother continued. “I too am by birth a d’Uscaret. But of the elder line.
We
may trace our roots to the days of the emperors at Rome. My lord is of the lesser branch. My blood kin are dead. A plague …” She paused, her eyes not softened but made adamant by memory or bitterness. “Perhaps you’ve heard legends of the d’Uscaret? These concern
my
kindred.” (Helise could not ascertain if this boast concerned legends of might, or myths of – other things.) “I alone am left. And
my son. My son is d’Uscaret. He has the sign on him. His fairness. His wonderful eyes. Once, my own eyes … Do you love my son?” said the Lady of d’Uscaret as if she spoke of dross.

Helise bowed her head again.

“Madam, yes.”

“Naturally. How could it be otherwise. But to you he is indifferent. Am I correct?”

Helise wavered between shame and fright.

“Oh,” said the hard woman, as she would flick a fly from her gown, “you are serviceable. You may entertain his nights and bear him a boy or two. But that’s all. His brood-mare.”

Helise stared at the flags as if at the gate of Hades.

“Poor little mite,” said Lady d’Uscaret, without compassion. “At least you have the wit to know he is a god, and far above you. You won’t annoy him, I believe. Never do that. It was a marriage of convenience. You brought cash, and we thank you, Helise. Remember your place here. You are a pretty beetle we keep to amuse us now and then.” She leaned her snake’s head thoughtfully upon her bone hand. “Go away.”

And Helise gathered up her skirts and hastened from the room.

The world was as it always had been, incomprehensible, unyielding. She had her part. A lesser part perhaps, here. She had fundamentally as much sway over the house as had her brother’s wife at la Valle. If she was dutiful, and did not thwart them, they would not chastise her.

The humble were the elect of God. Did not the priests teach so, in their gemmed, kingly robes, from their towering pulpits?

Helise spent her days in ladylike domestic forms. She embroidered, she pressed flowers. She had no talent for music, and reading soon tired her. At the proper times she heard Mass with the household in the family chapel. Food might have been a diversion but she had no appetite.

At dinner, sometimes she saw her husband.

Generally the great ancestral hall was not employed, d’Uscaret dined in a parlour of panelled walls, where were displayed some paintings on classical and religious subjects. Above the table, whose legs were in the shape of eagles, three silver herb-censers depended from the ceiling, with aromatics burning over charcoal, to perfume the air. All d’Uscaret that was present in the house assembled here, in this show-place, with their house dogs lying at their feet, and the tame monkey of the lord’s brother eating candied cucumber or running about the length of its leash.