“The Chatelaine Barbea,” our host announced.
A tall woman entered. So poised was she, and so beautifully and daringly dressed, that it was several moments before I realized she could be no more than seventeen. Her face was oval and perfect, with limpid eyes, a small, straight nose, and a tiny mouth painted to appear smaller still. Her hair was so near to burnished gold that it might have been a wig of golden wires. She posed herself a step or two before us and slowly began to revolve, striking a hundred graceful attitudes. At the time I had never seen a professional dancer; even now I do not believe I have seen one so beautiful as she. I cannot convey what I felt then, watching her in that strange room. “All the beauties of the court are here for you,” our host said. “Here in the House Azure, by night flown here from the walls of gold to find their dissipation in your pleasure.”
Half hypnotized as I was, I thought this fantastic assertion had been put forward seriously. I said, “Surely that’s not true.”
“You came for pleasure, did you not? If a dream adds to your enjoyment, why dispute it?” All this time the girl with the golden hair continued her slow, unaccompanied dance.
Moment flowed into moment.
“Do you like her?” our host asked. “Do you choose her?” I was about to say—to shout rather, feeling everything in me that had ever yearned for a woman yearning then—that I did. Before I could catch my breath, Roche said, “Let’s see some of the others.” The girl ended her dance at once, made an obeisance, and left the room.
“You may have more than one, you know. Separately or together. We have some very large beds.” The door opened again. “The Chatelaine Gracia.” Though this girl seemed quite different, there was much about her that reminded me of the “Chatelaine Barbea” who had come before her. Her hair was as white as the flakes that floated past the windows, making her youthful face seem younger still, and her dark complexion darker. She had (or seemed to have) larger breasts and more generous hips. Yet I felt it was almost possible that it was the same woman after all, that she had changed clothing, changed wigs, dusked her face with cosmetics in the few seconds between the other’s exit and her entrance. It was absurd, yet there was an element of truth in it, as in so many absurdities.
There was something in the eyes of both women, in the expression of their mouths, their carriage and the fluidity of their gestures, that was one. It recalled something I had seen elsewhere (I could not remember where), and yet it was new, and I felt somehow that the other thing, that which I had known earlier, was to be preferred.
“That will do for me,” Roche said. “Now we must find something for my friend here.” The dark girl, who had not danced as the other had, but had only stood, smiling very slightly, curtsying and turning in the center of the room, now permitted her smile to widen a trifle, went to Roche, seated herself on the arm of his chair, and began whispering to him.
As the door opened a third time, our host said, “The Chatelaine Thecla.” It seemed really she, just as I had remembered her—how she had escaped I could not guess. In the end it was reason rather than observation that told me I was mistaken. What differences I could have detected with the two standing side by side I cannot say, though certainly this woman was somewhat shorter. “It is she you wish, then,” our host said. I could not recall speaking. Roche stepped forward with a leather burse, announcing that he would pay for both of us. I watched the coins as he drew them out, waiting to see the gleam of a chrisos. It was not there—there were only a few asimi. The “Chatelaine Thecla” touched my hand. The scent she wore was stronger than the faint perfume of the real Thecla; still it was the same scent, making me think of a rose burning. “Come,” she said.
I followed her. There was a corridor, dimly lit and not clean, then a narrow stair. I asked how many of the court were here, and she paused, looking down at me obliquely. Something there was in her face that might have been vanity satisfied, love, or that more obscure emotion we feel when what had been a contest becomes a performance. “Tonight, very few. Because of the snow. I came in a sleigh with Gracia.”
I nodded. I thought I knew well enough that she had come only from one of the mean lanes about the house in which we were that night, and most likely on foot, with a shawl over her hair and the cold striking through old shoes. Yet what she said I found more meaningful than reality: I could sense the sweating destriers leaping through the falling snow faster than any machine, the whistling wind, the young, beautiful, jaded women bundled inside in sable and lynx, dark against red velvet cushions.
“Aren’t you coming?”
She had already reached the top of the stair, nearly out of sight. Someone spoke to her, calling her “my dearest sister,” and when I had gone up a few steps more I saw it was a woman very like the one who had been with Vodalus, she of the heart-shaped face and black hood. This woman paid no heed to me, and as soon as I gave her room to do so hurried down the stair.
“You see now what you might have had if you’d only waited for one more to come out.” A smile I had learned to know elsewhere lurked at one corner of my paphian’s mouth.
“I would have chosen you still.”
“Now that is truly amusing—come on, come with me, you don’t want to stand in this drafty hall forever. You kept a perfectly straight face, but your eyes rolled like a calf’s. She’s pretty, isn’t she.”
The woman who looked like Thecla opened a door, and we were in a tiny bedroom with an immense bed. A cold thurible hung from the ceiling by a silver-gilt chain; a lampstand supporting a pink-tinted light stood in one corner. There was a tiny dressing table with a mirror, a narrow wardrobe, and hardly room enough for us to move.
“Would you like to undress me?”
I nodded and reached for her.
“Then I warn you, you must be careful of my clothes.” She turned away from me. “This fastens at the back. Begin at the top, at the back of my neck. If you get excited and tear something, he’ll make you pay for it—don’t say you haven’t been told.”
My fingers found a tiny catch and loosed it. “I would think, Chatelaine Thecla, that you would have plenty of clothes.”
“I do. But do you think I want to return to the House Absolute in a torn gown?”
“You must have others here.”
“A few, but I can’t keep much in this place. Someone takes things when I’m gone.”
The stuff between my fingers, which had looked so bright and rich in the colonnaded blue room below, was thin and cheap. “No satins, I suppose,” I said as I unfastened the next catch. “No sables and no diamonds.”
“Of course not.”
I took a step away from her. (It brought my back almost to the door.) There was nothing of Thecla about her. All that had been a chance resemblance, some gestures, a similarity in dress. I was standing in a small, cold room looking at the neck and bare shoulders of some poor young woman whose parents, perhaps, accepted their share of Roche’s meager silver gratefully and pretended not to know where their daughter went at night.