Silent Water Page 20

  “Don Mantovano was not a member of the society, so why kill him?” I asked, again to distract her.

  She turned to me. “He was not, but not because he did not share their inclination toward vice. He was simply too much of a hypocrite to be open about it.” She paused and savored my stupefaction. What was she saying—that he had raped her too? I found it hard to imagine, for Mantovano had been a slip of a man, and much older, and he would have been easier to fight off than Zamborski.

  “He did not violate me, but he did something just as vicious,” Helena resumed. “After Zamborski had left me in that copse, I straightened my skirts as best I could and came out staggering, for my legs were barely able to carry me. And who was the first person I encountered? None other than Don Mantovano, looking like an evil sorcerer in a black hat and cloak, even on a hot summer night. And that perpetually sour face! Not for him the dances and merriment; he preferred to scurry in the shadows like a rat.” She spoke more calmly now. “He must have seen Zamborski coming out of there before me, for he wagged his long finger at me without a word. But I was too distraught to say anything. I just ran back to our chamber, shed my clothes, and curled up in my bed even as the celebrations were still going on down by the river. But I could not sleep—each time I closed my eyes, I saw the flames dancing under my eyelids and heard Zamborski’s groans in my ears.

  “A few days later, Mantovano found a way to speak to me as the other maids of honor were entertaining the queen. I was on duty refilling the decanters of wine and setting out sweetmeats on the trays around the antechamber. He came up to me on the pretense of trying one of the sugared almonds and told me that he would keep my tryst with Zamborski secret from the queen if I agreed to be his mistress.” She shook her head as if she found it hard to believe it, and I felt the same. The idea of Mantovano as both a blackmailer and a lover strained anybody’s imagination. “I stared at him, not knowing what to say. I was mindful of Zamborski’s warning, and the lewd smile on Mantovano’s bloodless lips and the gleam in his fish eyes made it clear to me that even if I had told him the truth, he would not have believed me or cared. For him, it was just an excuse to get what he wanted. He had found my weak spot, and it didn’t matter how I had come by it.”

  She fell into a pensive silence, and I reeled from this additional revelation. I felt great pity for Helena, alone and unable to seek help from anyone, assaulted in different ways by men whose position at the court allowed them to act with impunity.

  “So you became his mistress and killed him when you couldn’t stand it anymore?”

  “No.” She shook her head again. “I never did what he wanted of me. I would have killed myself first. No, I held him off for as long as I could. First, I told him I had to think about it, and when he pressed me again a few days later, I said that I suspected I was with child. It was after I already knew I was not, but it was a convenient excuse. Then, in the autumn, he cornered me again during the banquet for the French ambassador and said that as I was not quickening, there was nothing to stand in our way. Fortunately, the next day he fell ill with some stomach ailment that kept him away from me for a fortnight. By the time he was well enough to return to his duties, Advent had begun, and I told him to wait until Christmas was over. Pious hypocrite that he was, he agreed to that. But by then, Zamborski was dead, and if Mantovano had had the wit to figure it out, or if he had decided to rediscover his fidelity to his wife and stay away from me, he would still be alive now. But he did not. In fact, he sent me a note urging me to make my decision the day after I had killed Zamborski. I replied, saying that I would meet with him after midnight on New Year’s Eve, when everyone was either in the hall celebrating or drunk and asleep.”

  “The wine he gave to the guards was laced with Baldazzi’s poppy milk,” I stated what I already knew was true.

  “A whole bottle had to go into that flagon,” she said proudly. “They were big men.”

  So that had been another lie: on the morning of Mantovano’s murder, she had pointed to the clay bottle by her bed and told me that it was for her, and that she had only used a quarter measure. If I had bothered to check that bottle, I would have found that it was empty rather than three quarters full. Would it have led me—or the chancellor—to solve the murders sooner? Would it have prevented this last desperate act that was unfolding and might yet cost more lives?

  “Whose idea was it?”

  “Mine, of course. Mantovano had few ideas of his own. Most of his life he had done the bidding of his betters, and on the last night of his life he did mine.” She smiled triumphantly. “It didn’t even occur to him to make sure that the guards were not aware of our encounter.” She cocked her head. “Or maybe it excited him to think that they would know and wonder what was going on behind closed doors.” She waved her hand dismissively. “It doesn’t matter.”

  I thought about how increasingly angry and desperate she must have been during those months following Midsummer Eve. Both of those men—one by his mere presence, the other by his pestering—made it impossible for her to forget the violence that had been done to her. As time went on, it must have been her life or theirs as the only way of regaining her shattered peace, and she had chosen the latter. But depending on the outcome of this night, she might still see her life forfeit in the end.

  “That handkerchief, by the way”—she arched an eyebrow with a rakish smile—“the one that the queen thought Mantovano had pulled out of his pocket to stanch the bleeding? It was mine. I brought it with me to wipe the dagger and clean my hands afterwards. But I was careful to select one of my new ones that had not yet been embroidered with my initials. After I stabbed him, I wiped my hands, then stuck the handkerchief in his. He did try to press it to his wounds, but he was too shocked and his blood was flowing too fast.”

  “Were you not afraid that he would scream and awaken everyone? The queen’s apartment is just two doors down.” No sooner had I spoken those words than I knew. “Was that what the belladonna was for?”

  Helena looked impressed. “You really are clever,” she said. “Chancellor Stempowski should have entrusted you with this case. Instead, he is using men who are incompetent, and he doesn’t care because he is secretly happy that Zamborski is out of the way. Luckily, though, it allowed Mantovano to pay for what he did to me. But to answer your question,” she added, “yes, I have been saving the small amounts Doctor Baldazzi gave me of what you Italians call belladonna. Here we call it wilcza jagoda, wolf’s berry, which I like a lot more. Our name is stripped of the unnecessary sentimentality; instead, it conveys the plant’s stealthy and ruthless nature. It looks innocent, but it is deadly.” She chuckled softly as she smoothed her dress. “The amount I slipped into the wine I brought with me to his office was just enough to take away his power of speech but leave him conscious until the end.”

  I felt nauseous and, despite everything, could not help but pity Mantovano. It must have been a terrible way to die.

  “So he did drink wine after all,” I said, more to myself than anybody else.

  “He didn’t enjoy it, but he was nervous. It was probably the first time in his boring life that he was going to cheat on his wife. And it turned out to be the last,” she added with feigned sadness.

  I did not respond, and she grew pensive again, but it was a wistful kind of pensiveness, as if the memory were precious. “I waited for him to die—it took almost ten minutes, the most exciting ten minutes of my life! You cannot possibly imagine that feeling, the pure, most sublime exultation of it. I was the judge and jury and God, all in one.” Her eyes lit up with such intensity that it bordered on ecstasy, and I thought that maybe she had finally gone insane.

  “Sometimes I wish I had taken my time with Zamborski, too, but he died quickly,” she resumed regretfully. “As Doctor Baldazzi said, I punctured his lung—though, of course, such precision was purely accidental—and he suffocated fast.” She fell silent, but the glow lingered on her face. She was reliving it. “After Mantovano had gone
still, I poured the wine with the belladonna out of the window, took the goblet, and went back to bed. But I could not fall asleep again. I was too excited. Some hours later I heard Lucrezia stir and get out of bed, and a few minutes later she started screaming.”

  We gazed at the guttering flame of the candle. It was burning low now, and soon we would be in complete darkness. The moment of reckoning was coming. “So much death already, Helena. Was it really worth it beyond the momentary satisfaction?”

  Her eyes appeared to glaze over as she stared past me at nothing. “Oh yes,” she said quietly but firmly. “Those two did not deserve to live, and I would do it all over again.”

  “What about your immortal soul?”

  “I don’t care about it. I don’t believe in it anymore.”

  A wave of exhaustion swept over me, the result of nearly a fortnight of this nightmare, and this day that had begun so long ago that it seemed like another year, another lifetime altogether. I wanted to lie down, put my head even on the dirty sacks that made up Dantyszek’s pallet, and close my eyes, block out this awful place. But I knew I could not do it, for then I would lose the last vestige of control, such as it was, over what happened to me. If I slept, I might not wake ever again.

  “Maybe I am evil.” Helena’s words, pronounced with quiet wonderment, reached me.

  “You are not,” I said, surprising myself with the vehemence in my voice despite my tiredness and fear. “You were wronged, and you took revenge on your tormentors. I understand that even if I do not condone it. But you were not born to be a murderess, otherwise he would be dead already”—I tilted my head toward Dantyszek, who seemed to have drifted off into a slumber, his breath shallow now. His eye sockets and cheeks were sunken, and his skin had assumed a gray tinge that I could see even in the poor light. If we did not get out of there soon, Helena would not have to worry about dispatching him. “You know it would be wrong to kill him . . . or me.”

  She turned her eyes on me, and once again I saw them shimmer with tears. “I don’t want to kill you, Caterina, but you leave me with no choice. I left you a note to warn you to stay away from this. If only you had listened.” She sighed, then added in an almost apologetic tone, “If I let you go, you will tell Konarski, and they will come after me. I cannot let you ruin my plans when they are so close to completion.”

  The mention of Konarski brought a dull ache to my chest. I would have given everything I had to be able to see him one more time, to kiss him the way I had failed to do earlier that day. He was the only man who had ever managed to stir something in me that other people seemed to feel so often and so readily. Whether it was love or lust, I did not know, but I wanted to feel it again, and now it was too late. I would die in this stinking, dark, airless cell. But the worst part of it was that he would never know what had happened to me, and he would eventually forget that I had ever even existed.

  Hot tears pushed at the back of my eyes, and I pressed my hands to them to keep them in check. I would not let her see my grief. For the first time since I had ended up in that cellar, I began to feel angry.

  “A lot of people suffer in this world.” I took my hands away from my face and looked at her defiantly. “For most people, especially us women”—I pointed a finger from myself to her and back—“life is not fair. I was married to a man I neither knew nor loved, and some of the nights I spent with him were not that different from the way Zamborski treated you, or the way Mantovano would have if it had come to that. Most women go through it; your fellow maids of honor will meet that fate one day, and the blessing of a priest will do little to make it easier. Only a few lucky ones escape it, and that is mainly if they choose a convent over married life. Maybe that’s where you should have gone in the first place instead of coming to court—”

  “Be quiet,” she said through gritted teeth. “Be quiet.”

  I knew I was being cruel, but I was too mad to stop. “You are trying to turn yourself into a martyr, but being a martyr means that you die”—I hardly knew what I was saying anymore—“rather than go around murdering people, especially innocent ones—”

  She jumped to her feet. “Shut up!” she shouted.

  Dantyszek woke with a jolt and gazed fearfully from one of us to the other, his eyes so wide I could see the bloodshot threads in them. “He is not innocent!” She made a jabbing gesture in his direction, and he recoiled. “Sooner or later he’s going to do to someone what Zamborski did to me, if he hasn’t already. I am doing the world a favor.”

  “What about Maciek Koza? That poor boy they threw into prison for your crime. You were ready to let him die for it.”

  She scoffed. “I knew he would be let out the moment Mantovano’s body was found.”

  “But if you kill us and flee, someone else will be made to pay for it. Someone as powerless and defenseless as he is.”

  She laughed mockingly, the sound harsh in my ears. “If they ever find you—” She broke off as a crashing noise rang out above our heads.

  We all froze.

  For a moment I had trouble recognizing what was happening. It sounded like someone—or rather several people, judging by the number of voices and footsteps—was overturning tables and stools upstairs in the kitchen. My heart lifted again with hope as the cell fell deathly quiet, and we each held our breaths while gazing at the door. But soon the desperate thought came back to me: had I left the cellar door open? If not, they might not guess that we were down below in the space that was supposed to be empty and unused.

  Suddenly I heard a scream. “Help me! Help! We are here! Help!—” Then I realized it was coming from me. I scrambled to my feet and lunged for the door, but Helena was swift. I felt her hand grabbing at the back of my neck, but she only managed to get a hold of my necklace, and her fingers twisted to tighten it like a garrote. Yet before I even had time to react, the pressure on my throat eased as the thread snapped, sending the pearls scattering on the stone floor with a soft tinkling sound like a fairy’s laughter. It was enough to slow me down and allow Helena to reach the door first.

  Behind us, Dantyszek took up yelling. The sound was hopelessly inadequate through the rags in his mouth, but it was enough to cause Helena to lose her head. I saw the indecision in her face—should she defend the door or kill Dantyszek before the prize of the evening eluded her? I took advantage of her hesitation and pushed her aside with as much force as I could summon. She staggered away, clearing the path for me, but as I reached for the handle, I could see out of the corner of my eye that she had not fallen. She regained her footing quickly, her hesitancy over, and charged at me just as I was pulling the door open.

  I started screaming again, my throat quickly becoming raw and painful. I was aware that she still had the dagger, that she had not dropped it, and my back felt terribly exposed. I let go of the door and turned around to protect myself from the blade. I still remember the roar of fury with which she raised the weapon over her head and aimed. All I could do was to raise my arms to protect my face, and that was how she slashed across the soft bottom part of my left arm.

  I was wearing a fitted sleeve for the evening, nothing but its brocade fabric and the chemise underneath to protect me, and the blade went into it as easily as if it had sliced into butter. For a moment I was stunned that it did not hurt, that nothing really happened, until a liquid warmth began pouring out of me, spreading and swallowing my silver-white sleeve, the stain deep red like spilled wine.

  The scream died in my throat, and I fell against the door. It closed with a thud, and a terrible silence ensued, broken only by faint moans as Dantyszek struggled against his restraints. They can’t hear him, they can’t hear him! The desperate words kept circling through my head because I was no longer able to produce any sound. Helena stood panting in front of me, the dagger raised high again, and she would no doubt have plunged it into my chest if I had made any move. But my ears began to ring, and I could no longer hear the footsteps and voices upstairs; I was overcome by a light-headedness and
knew that I would not remain on my feet for much longer. In my last conscious act, I fell sideways so as not the block the door. I slid against the wall, crumpling in a heap like a rag doll.

  The last thing I remember is Helena taking a step toward me but looking at the door, her head cocked. By then I could no longer hear anything, not even Dantyszek’s moans or her rapid breathing, and my vision darkened. Then my consciousness slipped.

  When I came to, the scene was much the same, except that the person who was leaning over me was squeezing my arm. I let out a groan of fear and protest, but I was too weak to fight. The figure kneeled down by me, and with relief I realized that it was not Helena.

  “You’ll be all right.” The voice came faintly through the ringing in my ears as the pressure on my arm increased. The words were familiar as was the voice, but I could not place it. “I will bind up your arm—”

  The person looked around in search of something, and in the light of the candle still burning by Dantyszek’s pallet, I saw Konarski’s face. Whatever it was that he was looking for was not there, and he called to another man who I now saw was leaning over Dantyszek, untying his wrists. The man was dressed in the uniform of the castle guards, though he did not have his halberd on him.

  “Hold her arm here—like this.” Konarski showed him, and I saw that he was scared. “She’s bleeding out . . .”

  I glanced at my arm, now overspread with a creeping dark stain, wet and heavy. “My sleeve,” I said plaintively. “It’s all ruined.” I heard tears in my voice and was stunned that after all I had been through, that was the thing that was going to make me break down.

  “Never mind the sleeve,” he said. “Hold still.”