Free The Silver Devil by Teresa Denys

work!"
    All
the color drained from Father Vincenzo's face. He said in a low voice,
"She is clean enough to be corrupted. Now let me pass."
    "Always
your servant, Father." Piero stood aside and swept him a flourishing bow.
He laughed as the door closed and turned to me, his eyes fever-bright.
    "My
congratulations, lady, for being all that the duke could desire. Although in
truth," his lips twisted, "he does not ask much! Any that is shaped
for a woman and is less than wholly rotted will serve his turn—so the priest
can freshen her for him. But you are new enough, and fair enough, to hold him a
little longer." He studied me thoughtfully, his fingers stroking his beard
in that habitual, irritating gesture. He took & step towards me, and I
flinched.
    "You
must learn not to be so squeamish with His Grace," he remarked
sardonically. "He is soon impatient with a cold wench."
    "Perhaps
he will tire the sooner and set me free."
    "Why"—he
moved nearer still—"where would you go, after he casts you off? You were
better to choose yourself a gallant who is close to the duke and live under his
protection. If you chose rightly, you would scarce know you had stepped lower
than the topmost rung of the ladder."
    "A
rare stratagem," I retorted, "if I could find a man willing to take
up the duke's neglected whore."
    "You
need not seek far."
    "Who
would be such a fool?"
    "I
think I would, for once." He was so close now that his body pressed
against mine, and I twisted to escape him. But I was hard against the wall and
could not thrust him away. His face was only inches from mine, and I could see
the paint grained in his skin; the traces of brown at the roots of his silvered
curls, and the way his breath came quickly between his parted lips. I realized
then that my struggles excited him, and I stood still.
    "Even
if you were enough of a fool to take the duke's leavings," I answered
angrily, "I doubt I would take such a foolish offer."
    For
a moment I thought he would murder me, but then he laughed. "You will not
have the choice, lady. You will find I am dear to His Grace, dearer than twenty
harlots; and when he begins to look sullenly upon you or gazes on another woman
and smiles, then I will beg you of him. He is as like to take it as a favor
that I will husk the grain that he has thrashed. It will not be long," he
added as I made a little sound of disgust. "His Grace is no more constant
than the moon."
    "Then
I wish his mind had changed when I lay sick," I said. "The delay
ought to have outrun his patience."
    "You
mistake." For an instant there was something like tender reminiscence in
Piero's eyes. "He is a sort of child in that—he wants nothing so much as
the thing that is withheld. And once he has it"—he stepped away from me
and shrugged elaborately—"he breaks it, like as not, or tosses it away
unvalued."
    "He
is a monster," I whispered.
    "A
royal one." Piero's excitement was dying; he was once again the brisk and
dapper courtier I had seen at first. "Come, we have debated long
enough—you must be dressed, and fitly. Time is precious."

    As
I hurried in Piero's wake through a labyrinth of passages, those we met stared
at me as though I were some freak from another country. Two guards flanked me,
helping me when weakness made me stumble, but I would not let them support me;
it seems strange that I should have striven for dignity at such a time, but my
pride would not support such humiliation. I kept up as well as I could,
half-blinded by the harsh alternations of fire and shadow and chilled to the
bone by the howling drafts.
    The
Palazzo della Raffaelle seemed to me the palace of a nightmare, a crannied
warren of gray stone stretching into seeming infinity. Blazing lights loomed up
in the blackness of its sudden turns and vanished again as swiftly. And always
before me was Piero della Quercia's hurrying back, his stride somewhere between
haste and swaggering, the silver threads in his cloak gleaming in the
torchlight. At last, when