Free A Dancer in Darkness by David Stacton Page B

King Psapho. He wore a twirled silk turban surmounted by a crown, a thin ruff, a surplice coat embroidered with stars, and red stockings tight over his elegant calves. In one hand he held a baton of gold. The other rested on the arm of his throne. He was perspiring heavily, and his face was flushed, but he bowed and smiled to the crowd. His white face was full of joy, and as he passed the Duchess he raised his arm and saluted her.
    She did not see the salute. She saw his eyes. And indeed the eyes of someone lovable are terrible. They are bottomless and beseeching, and full of the terror of not being loved. But their true terror is that they recognize a lover.
    The cart moved on. Crowding behind it came a derisive forest of those megalocephalic giants which today survive in Valencia. Their shadows flowed over the passing figure of Antonio, and their empty eyes were knowing. The Duchess’s hand went to her throat and she moved uneasily. She wanted to flee. She thought she could do so, for we meet the inevitable person so seldom, that she still believed that love can be a matter of choice, as, indeed, for a little love, it can. But she was not precisely in love yet. She was only stunned by the sight of the future walking towards her.
    Last came the religious procession, which peeled off from the rest and began to mount the Cathedral stairs. She looked down, and saw being borne up towards her the Byzantine reliquary of the local saint. It was a silver bust the colour of pewter, studded with yellow diamonds and amethysts. The head was harshly modelled. The eyes were of moonstone, as though clouded by a cataract. They stared sightlessly.
    As the bearers negotiated the stairs, that face turned and glared down at her. She could have screamed. She fell instinctively on her knees. It was like a summons. Then the bust swept on into the sanctity of the church, and the crowd began to shout.
    Her obeisance had pleased the Amalfitani very much. They could not know why she had kneeled down. She wanted to rush into the Cathedral and beseech that hideous and inexorable thing. She wanted to say, no, you are wrong. It will not end like that. You have no right to judge.
    Unfortunately, we do not really make up our minds about anything. Our minds make us up. By the time we are aware of the necessity for decision, the decision has already been made. We can only follow willy-nilly. But in the meantime we are restless. We are ill at ease. We want to escape from something, we do not precisely know what. The Duchess felt that way, while Cariola was dressing her.
    “Leave me. I want to pray,” said the Duchess.
    Cariola was disturbed. “Madam should not kneel in that dress. She will ruin it. And she looks so beautiful.”
    The Duchess looked in her mirror, but saw only the face of a young and wilful girl. She could not see herself at all, and something inside her truly turned to pray. “No, I am horrible. I am terrible,” she said. With a heavy rustle of jewelled taffeta, she went to her prie-dieu, and indeed the dress was so massive that it sucked her down on to her knees; and so unwieldy that Cariola lingered in the shadows, fussing at the dressing table, until the time should come to raise her up.
    Then, with Cariola behind, she left her apartments and was escorted down the stairs to the great hall. There had been no such festivities there since her marriage, and now the court was young again she would have to dance.
III
    Antonio came from the north, from Bologna, which was ancient, settled, rich, and ostentatious. His duties there had been dull and well defined. He had wanted to get away. A seemingly chance acquaintance with the Cardinal, and some influence with the Bolognese Papal Legate, had brought him south. He found that strange mixture of splendour and squalor which the Spanish had installed in Calabria new to him. He found that he was expected to do everything, and do it, too, with very little to do it with.
    Any other gentleman at