He had been nursing a dark secret about Riba for some time, since they had been alone in the Scablands for nearly five days. At first he had treated her with astonished deference, the way someone might while on a walking trip with an angel. All men have been entranced by the beauty of a woman, but imagine the fascination for someone who had grown up never seeing or imagining such a creature. After a few days of her company, he had started to calm down a little, if only at the emergence of baser feelings than reverence and adoration. He took meticulous care not to treat this divine presence in a way that might demean his own wonder (though what demeaning it might involve he was profoundly unclear about). Things stirred deep inside for which he had no name. After a few days they had come to a small oasis with a spring, luckily in full spate, that had created a small pool. She laughed in delight and Vague Henri’s natural delicacy had caused him to offer to withdraw to the other side of a small hillock alongside the pool. He lay on his back and slowly began his first truly great struggle with the devil. Opportunities for great temptations in the Sanctuary were scant. Redeemer Hauer, his spiritual advisor for nearly ten years, would have been mortified to discover how weak was Vague Henri’s resistance, how ineffectual the endless harassment about the certainty of hell for those who committed crimes against the Holy Spirit. (It was, for reasons never explained, the Holy Spirit who was particularly traumatized by sinful desires of this kind.) Henri’s will was suddenly owned by the devil, and he turned onto his stomach and slowly crawled like the reptile servant of Beelzebub he had become to just below the brow of the hill. Had temptation given in to ever been so richly rewarded? Riba stood with the water up to her mid-thighs and lazily splashed herself. Her breasts were huge, not that Henri had anything to compare them to, and the areolae that covered the tips were an extraordinary rose pink unlike anything he had ever seen before. They moved when she moved but shivered with a grace that made him gasp. Between her legs… but we must not go there-though this was not a ban that Vague Henri countenanced even for a moment. The devil had taken him entirely. His breathing stopped, utterly struck at this most secret place. Henri had many images of hell branded into his soul, but until this divine moment not a single image of heaven. It was a picture of grace in softly folded skin never to be surpassed, still vibrant, still ringing in his soul until the day he died. So it was that Vague Henri, transfigured with holy terror, slowly slid back below the brow of the hill. The transgressed-against Riba carried on for many more minutes, unaware of the epiphany going on just over the hill. Had Henri simply stayed by the pool and watched, she would not have thought it amiss. She loved to give pleasure to men. This was what she had been raised for, after all. As for poor Vague Henri, he had been struck like a tuning fork and months afterward was still vibrating. Nature had given him intense desire, but his life had left him bereft of any experience or understanding that might make it possible to deal with it.
Riba had been a good deal luckier than the boys when it came to employment. She had started as maid to the maid of Mademoiselle Jane Weld’s personal maid, a position, however lowly in the cutthroat world of ladies’ maidships, that could take upward of fifteen years’ service in the field to obtain. Chancellor Vipond’s niece had taken on Riba with a particular sense of resentment that she should have, and be seen to have, an under-undermaid who was of so little standing. However, her resentment began to lessen (and with it the already intense resentment of the other maids to increase) when it became clear that Riba had in fact a genius for the skills for which ladies’ maids are much valued: she was a hairdresser of great delicacy and skill; she could squeeze a spot or blackhead, causing as little damage to the complexion as was humanly possible, and then disguise the redness so that it was invisible; complexions blossomed under treatment from Riba’s homemade creams and lotions, in the manufacture of which she was a magician; unsightly fingernails became elegant; eyelashes became thick; lips red; legs smooth (exfoliated as painlessly as possible, which is to say one degree below agony). In short, Riba was a find.
This left the problem for Mademoiselle Jane of what to do with her two other, now redundant, personal maids, the most senior of whom had been with her since she was a child. Mademoiselle Jane, though a cold beauty in many respects, had a sensitive side and could not bring herself to tell old Briony that she was no longer required. She knew that her ex-nanny would be deeply upset, and she was also rather concerned, now that she thought of it, about the numerous confidences that she had shared with Briony, confidences that a resentful person might be willing to reveal if she were given sufficient motive. Mademoiselle Jane spared Briony, therefore, the painful experience of being let go after twelve years’ faithful service by having Briony’s bags packed while she was sent off to buy a tub of rosemary cold cream. On the unfortunate maid’s return, she found only a bare room and a servant holding an envelope. The envelope contained twenty dollars and a note thanking her for her faithful service and informing her that she was being sent to become maid to a distant relative in a far-off province, and in recognition of the said service she was to be accompanied on her very long journey by the servant bearing the envelope, who was instructed to stay with her and protect her at all times until she reached her destination. Mademoiselle Jane wished her good luck and expressed her hope that she would make the very best of her good fortune. Within twenty minutes Briony was on her horse and, with her protector, off to a new life, never to be heard from again.
The other maid, just in case Briony had been as indiscreet as her mistress, was similarly dispersed, and Mademoiselle Jane was left to contemplate a life where spots, pimples, blackheads, thin lips and unmanageable hair were a thing of the past.
For several months the young aristocrat was in heaven. Riba’s skill in the arts of beautification made the very best of her only moderately good looks. Even more suitors came to call, enabling her to treat these would-be lovers-as was required by Materazzi traditions of courtship-with ever greater disdain and derision. As she well knew, no drug, however rare and expensive, offers the wonderful pleasure of being the center of another’s dreams and desires while being able, with only a smile and a look, to shatter them completely.
Though at first lost in the delight of knowing that she was breaking more hearts now than even the detested Arbell Swan-Neck, Mademoiselle Jane started to become uncomfortably aware of something so strange and unfamiliar that she was for some weeks sure she was imagining it.
Some of the young aristocrats who came calling, and only some, seemed not quite as shattered by her continuous rejection as she had come to expect. They groaned and lamented and pleaded for her to reconsider as much as the others, but she was, as we have seen, a sensitive girl (if only to herself) and began to suspect that their protestations were not entirely sincere. What could this possibly mean? Perhaps, she thought, she was becoming used to breaking hearts and the pleasure was diminishing, as pleasures too frequently indulged usually do. But it was not this, because she continued to feel exactly the same intense rush of feeling with those who really were heartbroken by her coldness. Something was going on.
Mademoiselle Jane always set aside the late morning for breaking hearts and she gave her suitors generous slots, sometimes as long as thirty minutes if they were particularly good at lamenting her beauty, heartlessness and cruelty. She decided to set the entire morning aside for those she was suspicious of in order to see if she could get to the bottom of her disturbing qualms. Her chambers were constructed in such a way that she could spy easily on her suitors as they arrived and left and she duly spent the morning doing so.