A Bed of Earth by Tanith Lee

Author:Tanith Lee [Lee, Tanith]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3
Tags: Fantasy, FIC000000, FIC009030, FIC009000
ISBN: 9781585672615
Google: SoILG0dYqnYC
Barnesnoble:
Goodreads: 17198866
Publisher: Penguin
Published: 2002-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

She went to the Castello library in the morning, quite late, at the time when house business was usually being concluded.

Sure enough, Lanto and Oliviotto were collecting up their papers, and the ledgers were being put away.

Andrea Barbaron turned around, saw her, and grew affable.

“Good day, Triche. How are you?”

“Very well, my lord.”

“You look a little pale. Some early peaches came this morning from the garden at Verona. You must eat some.”

“Yes, Father, then I will. Thank you.”

“And look,” he said, coming towards her, nearly jocular, “these books have arrived, too. You’ll want to see them, I expect.”

The secretaries were bowing, going out.

Beatrixa stood straight in the summer light of the windows.

Andrea gazed back at her, narrowing his eyes. When he did this, a crafty, porcine look came over him. He was very heavy now, a bulkily-muscled, fat, high-colored man in his high-colored mantle of Barbaron red.

What do I know of him? Nothing. Lord, Father—these were titles.

“What is it?” he said.

“I have something to ask you.”

“It must be no joking matter, this something.”

“I think not.”

“Come, sit down here at the table. Drink this wine.”

Don’t be kind to me. Because, presently, all that may end for ever—

Yet, why should it? Demons lied. It was their faculty. They lied.

He pushed the goblet towards her. In the crimson glass, the Barbaron tower, hatched with gold. What had they ever talked of, her father and she? Cerebral topics, or frivolous meaningless things—

Yes, I will ask, but not as you would have me do it, Silvio della Scorpia, my enemy, my devil.

“There is an old story, Father. I heard it in childhood, oh, I forget where I heard it. But unsuitably, it’s begun to unsettle me. I say unsuitably, not because it isn’t a horrible story—it is—but because it concerns the house of our foes, the Scorpion house.”

Trying to scan his features, her own eyes flickered. She steadied them.

Andrea thought in turn, I have seen eyes like those behind a drawn sword. (And, she saw him think it.)

“Don’t prevaricate. You’re my daughter. Speak out.”

“A high-born girl of that house, Meralda was her name.” His face had not altered, nor his color. He simply waited.

Beatrixa looked away from him, and took a mouthful of the wine he had poured for her.

She knew the tale, who did not? And she had already been reminded by the threats of the della Scorpias who abducted her. Originally she had heard maids’ chatter, one stormy night when the sea had roared and the lagoons churned. Meralda, betrothed to an evil lord, had fled with her lover, some artisan. Had been betrayed or caught. Tortured, murdered, discarded into Aquila. Down in the salt-mud, like the Casket of the Heart.

She had not heard from the chatter any mention of Meralda’s betrayers. (The servants would have kept one rumor at least that night away from Beatrixa’s honed, childish ears.) While the della Scorpia louts, sitting by Beatrixa in the boat, had accused another—Gualdo.

But Silvio—what had he intended? What did he mean?

Ask him: When was it that he met with Meralda della Scorpia.

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