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Accounts of the Stone 12 Pellegrino: Il Fidanzato(continued) So began the Marchel's slow decay. Daily, with a renewed terror of mortality and a taste of self-loathing, he watched the bumps appear. Sometimes they resembled rosebuds springing from his skin, with tightly drawn, crimson petals and, despite winter's arrival - also the monk's increasingly frequent visits- they still bloomed, wanton and enduring, in his own personal garden. For those which the monk could not remove with burning coins, he tracked their progress, as if a bettor at the races urging on a sweaty horse to cut through the wind. Will a particularly large one kill him, and if so, which one will it be? Which will bleed most during the space of a week? Upon which red rose will the monk press his foreign coins repeatedly until all that remains is the smell and sizzling sound of flesh? Unaccustomed to a lifestyle away from civilization he soon began to feel Solitude's sad surfeit keenly, so he began to invite performers and artists to his castle. Champtoce's history of excess and Bacchanalia hearkened to the halcyon days of Rome, and the Marchel was intent on the same mind-numbing delights that his predecessor experienced, especially if he will not have the opportunity to enjoy them later. They came in droves. At first, a few actors and jesters, plying their wares and teasing a smile from the corner of his lips while he watched on from the head of his table. Then the acrobats and the female singers; tumbling and juggling multi-colored balls up and down the large banquet hall while the women's Lorelei voices floated up to the rafters, seeking the Heaven from whence they came, bading listeners ascend the staircase and catch the notes between their fingers, or else fall to their deaths should they fail. On the winter solstice, when Champtoce was filled to capacity with the sounds of song and artistry, another came. She had a new sound. As was ritual for the new visitors, they performed first, after the Marchel's dinner. The vagabond artists took their place beneath the steps leading to the high table where the Marchel and his assistants sat, and after a clap of his bandaged hands, exotic and lively music began to emanate from their stringed instruments with the softest and most skilled pluckings. Clothed in veils and silk, a girl walked forth, parting a way with the swivel of her hips and the sound of little bells circling her waist and ankles, their isochronous and muted jinglejangle protesting the shameless show of curving, white flesh. Dark, kohled eyes hovered above the diaphanous, green veil which concealed the lower half of her face, and her wrists began to weave circles in the air as her hands affected a series of alluring and hypnotic gestures. A small, solitary drum joined the music, and as a snake shedding its skin, she began her writhing dance. Since the disease ravaged the skin on his thighs and stomach, the women workers of the castle, and even the few whores in the village, avoid him. This, with the wine and her seductive dance, turned the Marchel into a new Herod with a demand for more waiting at the dry tip of his tongue. Entranced, he motioned for the manager(the man orchestrating the performance and the one who accepted the payment, anyway) of the troupe to the table without taking his eyes from the woman's undulating stomach. "What is she called, the dancer?" "She is Samireh, Marchel." "She dances very well. Your daughter?" he inquired. "No, sir. A prisoner that one of the men of my tribe bought. Her shackles are still around her ankles, above the bells. As for her talents, you are much too kind. She dances very well because since she was instructed by the camp's mother in dance. Nearly every night since she joined our caravan, she has worn those bells and perfected her trade, be it at our camp's fireside or the hall of a gracious host. Like you, Marchel." "They are silver, the bells, are they not?" "Metal, sir. We are but poor performers." "After the performance, send her to my quarters, and you shall have silver." "Yes, Marchel." At that, with his dirty bearded chin still downturned after the bargain as it was during their conversation, the manager left the Marchel's side. Soon after, he too left the table and, with the help of his assistants' arms, climbed the staircase like a feeble, age-kissed man. In his room, safe from view and the rumors that one sighting of his wounds would birth, the physicians unbandaged his wrists and bathed his boils with the gentleness of ladies in waiting. After they dried his skin with soft towels, he sent them away and waited for the woman as an eager hound watching a fat bird plummet, impaled on his master's straight and true, feathered arrow, down to the obscurity of the marais and its tall grasses. Lubbert Das, Samireh denied her host that night. She went up the wide staircase with her white feet as dainty as lotus blossoms newly plucked, the belt of bells announcing her to his expectant ears. As she reached the top step, he bounded out of his chambers, met her hand with his and lead her to his room. The smell of living rot conjured a retching sound from between her red lips, though she tried to conceal it; it conjured images of maggot-ridden carrion and dead bandits covered by a cloud of flies by the forest's trails. She denied his overtures and she denied his pleas; she blanched at the sight of his wound-covered wrists and she denied him yet again. She pleaded and she cried to the Marchel who was insensate to all but the sight of curves below her navel suggesting firm hips and rounded thighs. Her inconsolable shrieks became more desperate, and her hands- which a short time ago were weaving mudras to tell a story of the Nataraja, a river churning in his turqouise throat and a demon at his henna'd foot- began to claw and beat the tender-skinned face of the Marchel with a tigress' ferocity. She drew a step forwards with sharp fingernails curled to talons. He drew a dagger. Afterwards, he sent for the monk and his most trusted valet. Earlier, the monk heard the gypsy's discourse of the once-prisoner Samireh, and again suggested his cure to the rotting Marchel. "She is the wearer of iron," he said, lifting her veils to show ivory ankles, covered each by dull, limey shackles and a winding cord of little bells. When the woman's veiled limbs twitched their jingling last, and her closed eyelids fluttered their long eyelashes to a slow stop, he agreed. The next morning, after using her iron-belled blood as an ingredient in the poultice bath, he walked down the staircase wearing clothes which would have scrubbed his wounds raw and bloody the night before. His skin, though still covered with pustules, no longer bled nor emanated death's fluids. His valet hauled the woman's body over his shoulder like a sack of jingling grains and carried it to the hunting cottage. Further reasearch, the monk said, and the Marchel, still stunted by guilt, gave a small wave of the hand as agreement. At noon, the manager approached Champtoce castle so he may inquire after the girl, but was denied entrance at the gate by guards who were not there the day before; so too were the other performers who travelled to the castle after hearing of the Marchel's hospitality. Disappointed and weary, they turned around and entered the forest again. The Marchel watched all of this from his chamber's high window, distracted from the pile of gold which was to be an advance payment to the monk for his cure, and the rustling of clothes as they were folded neatly and packed in large trunks. He is to go on a swiftly planned journey, to cities where ladies swarm like locusts, for a bride of noble birth. He is young and rich, as the king said when the Marchel inherited his fortune, worthy of one with an empress' dowry, one bedecked in exotic, black jewels, in diamonds, or pearls.
(note to self: the last 550 words were very, VERY lazy.) |
