“I see by your raiment tonight, my lady, that you are a mocker. So be it. Now is the mocker mocked. This young intruder desires to be a lady’s bravo, and will serve for no hire but love. Let him, then, and let that be your penance for mockery.”
Ilaria gasped and started to say, “Are you suggesting—?”
“I am absolving. You are already forgiven whatever must be done. And when the greater obstacle has been removed, a smaller one will be more easily dismissed.”
With that, the shape in the fog moved farther back in the fog and blended into the fog and was gone. I had no idea what the stranger’s words had meant, but I did perceive that he had spoken in my behalf, and I was grateful. I turned again to Ilaria, who was regarding me with a sort of rueful appraisal. She put one slim hand inside her robe and brought out the dòmino and raised it before her eyes as if to mask something there.
“Your name is … Marco?” I bowed my head and mumbled that it was. “You said you followed me. You know my house?” I mumbled yes. “Come there tomorrow, Marco. To the servants’ door. At the hour of mezza-vespro. Do not fail me.”
7
I did not fail her, at least in the matter of promptness. The next afternoon, I presented myself as commanded, and the servants’ door was opened by an ancient hag. The hag’s little eyes were as mistrustful as if she knew every shameful thing about Venice, and she admitted me to the house as distastefully as if I had been one of the worst. She led me upstairs, along a hall, pointed a withered finger at a door, and left me. I knocked at the panel and the Dona Ilaria opened it. I stepped inside and she secured the latch behind me.
She bade me be seated, and then she walked up and down before my chair, regarding me speculatively. She wore a dress covered with gold-colored flakes that shimmered like a serpent’s scales. It was a close-fitting dress and her walk was sinuous. The lady would have looked rather reptilian and dangerous, except that she kept wringing her hands the while, and thus betrayed her own uncertainty at our being alone together.
“I have been thinking about you ever since last night,” she said. I started to echo that, wholeheartedly, but I could not make my voice work, and she went on. “You say you ch-choose to serve me, and there is indeed a service you could do. You say you would do it for love, and I confess that arouses my … my curiosity. But I think you are aware that I have a husband.”
I swallowed loudly and said yes, I was aware.
“He is much older than I, and he is embittered by age. He is j-jealous of my youth and envious of all things youthful. He also has a violent temper. Clearly I cannot enlist the service of a—of a young man—not to mention enjoy the love of one. You understand? I might wish to, even yearn to, but I cannot, being a married woman.”
I gave that some thought, then cleared my throat and said what seemed to me obvious, “An old husband will die and you will still be young.”
“You do understand!” She stopped wringing her hands and clapped them, applauding. “You are quick of intellect for such a—such a young man.” She cocked her head, the better to look admiringly at me. “So he must die. Yes?”
Dejectedly I stood up to go, supposing that we had agreed that any yearned-for connection between us must simply wait until her bad-natured old husband was dead. I was not happy at that postponement, but, as Ilaria said, we both were young. We could restrain ourselves for a while.
Before I could turn to the door, though, she came and stood very close to me. She pressed herself against me, in fact, and looked down into my eyes and very softly inquired, “How will you do it?”
I gulped and said hoarsely, “How will I do what, my lady?”
She laughed a conspiratorial laugh. “You are discreet besides! But I think I will have to know, because it will require some prior planning to ensure that I am not … . However, that can wait. For now, pretend that I asked how you will—love me.”
“With all my heart!” I said in a croak.
“Oh, with that, too, let us hope. But surely—do I shock you, Marco? —with some other part of you as well?” She laughed merrily at what must have been the expression on my face.
I made a strangled noise and coughed and said, “I have been taught by an experienced teacher. When you are free and we can make love, I will know how to do that. I assure you, my lady, I will not make a fool of myself.”
She lifted her eyebrows and said, “Well! I have been wooed with promises of many different delights, but never quite that one.” She studied me again, through eyelashes that were like talons reaching for my heart. “Show me, then, how you do not make a fool of yourself. I owe you at least an earnest payment for your service.”
Ilaria raised her hands to her shoulders and somehow unfastened the top of her gold-serpent gown. It slipped down to her waist, and she undid the bustenca underneath, and let that drop to the floor, and I was gazing upon her breasts of milk and roses. I think I must have tried simultaneously to grab for her and to peel off my own clothes, for she gave a small shriek.
“Who was it taught you, boy? A goat? Come to the bed.”
I tried to temper my boyish eagerness with manly decorum, but that was even more difficult when we were on the bed and both of us were totally unclad. Ilaria’s body was mine to savor in every inviting detail, and even a stronger man than myself might have wished to abandon all restraint. Tinted of milk and roses, fragrant of milk and roses, soft as milk and roses, her flesh was so beautifully different from the gross meat of Malgarita and Zulià that she might have been a woman of a new and superior race. It was all I could do to keep from nibbling her to see if she tasted as delectable as she looked and smelled and felt to the touch.
I told her that, and she smiled and stretched languorously and closed her eyes and suggested, “Nibble, then, but g-gently. Do to me all the interesting things you have learned.”
I ran one tremulous finger along the length of her—from the fringe of closed eyelashes down her shapely Verona nose, across the pouted lips, down her chin and her satin throat, over the mound of one firm breast and its pert nipple, down her smoothly rounded belly to the feathering of fine hair below—and she squirmed and mewed with pleasure. I remembered something that made me halt my tracing finger there. To demonstrate that I knew very well how to do things, I told her with suave assurance, “I will not play with your pota, in case you have to pee.”
Her whole body jerked and her eyes flew open and she exploded, “Amoredèi!” and she flailed angrily out from under my hand and well away from me.
She knelt at the far edge of the bed and stared as if I were something that had just emerged from a crack in the floor. After vibrating at me for a moment, she demanded, “Who was it taught you, asenazzo?”
I, the ass, mumbled, “A girl of the boat people.”
“Dio v’agiuta,” she sighed. “Better a goat.”
She lay down again, but on her side, with her head propped on a hand so she could go on staring at me. “Now I really am curious,” she said. “Since I do not have to—excuse myself—what do you do next?”
“Well,” I said, disconcerted. “I put my. You know, my candle. Into your uh. And move it. Back and forth. And, well, that is it.” A wondering and terrible silence ensued, until I said uncomfortably, “Is it not?”
“Do you truly believe that is all there is to it? A melody on one string?” She shook her head in slow marveling. I began miserably to collect myself. “No, do not go away. Do not move. Stay where you are and let me teach you properly. Now, to begin with …”