The Chaining Of Andromeda

Far below, remote in the darkness, the city was a cluster of yellow spangles, tiny and twinkling faintly, almost out of sight. Closer by, but still far away, sheep stirred on the surrounding hills, clanking their brassy bells.

The roofs of the villa were low-pitched and covered with pantiles, and thick whitewashed walls enfolded the central courtyard where the bay trees grew in their tubs. For the first time since sunrise the air was cool; it smelled of honeysuckle and wild marjoram, and nearby the nightingale trilled and carolled passionate defiance of his rivals.

Araminta, newly come from the bath, lay on the bed in her chamber, one of the rooms opening on to the cloister surrounding the courtyard. Louvres in the screen door allowed the air to circulate, and narrow slits of grey light lined out the edges of the slats. The windows were curtained and it was very dark in the room. Araminta was waiting and Giacomo would be coming to her soon. She felt frightened.

Silken Giacomo had seduced her to agree to it, to everything. He was very skilful, and honey-tongued in act as well as speech. And in her revery, thinking of him, she touched herself, her finger gliding in delectable dew. Always the same: first the pleasantry, then the sigh, and then the touch. She had followed him often into new labyrinths, to new undreamt of actions, to new shames, and he Chrysostomos himself, had led her with his hands, his lips, his tongue, even his eloquence, out into the sunshine of delight. He had knelt before her and begged; it had come to that at last, and she would not refuse him; she had acquiesced, and now lay fearful in the darkness, searching for an excuse, not to prevent the act, but to postpone it for a while, until she had considered it once more, until she had persuaded herself that she really wished to submit to it. Though she was frightened she listened to the nightingale and heard the occasional unidentifiable sound in the night.

She heard Giacomo's tapping on the door and his voice whispering her name. Even though she had been thinking only of his arrival she shied with surprise at the first muted sound. Slowly, quietly, Giacomo opened the door that cracked and creaked loud enough, it seemed, to waken everybody in the house, and she saw the triangle of his blackness in the paler trapezoidal darkness of the opening. She saw him slip inside and the opening creaked shut. He drew back the dark slide from his lantern and for a moment she was dazzled. He looked at her lying on her back, covered from throat to wrists to ankles by her robe, her arms at her sides, her eyes creased up in the brightness of the candle, her black hair disarrayed upon her pillow, He set the lantern down in front of the looking-glass so that the light was thrown back into the room. He threw off his cloak and sat on the edge of the bed looking down at her. He leant forward and kissed her forehead. He did not speak. With slow careful hands he unbuttoned her robe from hem to waist. She lay, her arms pressed down at her sides. She knew what was going to happen and she had agreed to it. He had wanted her to submit and she had submitted. Gently, he spread her legs apart, moistened two fingers, parted her other lips, and paused, gazing at the arrowhead of hair.

'Who is silent, consents.' she thought, and lay quite still, breathing quickly and shallowly, frightened but unwilling to escape.

Giacomo opened the leather reticule he was carrying and took out a glass-stoppered bottle and an instrument, like an awl, with a white bone handle. He unstoppered the bottle drenched the blade with fluid and took it to the candle. He passed the blade through the flame and the spirit took fire, with fluttering blue flames. He went back and sat on the side of the bed facing Araminta. He leant forward, held her for a moment before he turned away.

She lay, quite unresponsive, feeling his careful fingers. He parted her lips again, and held the fleshy part of the left between his thumb and ring finger. He nipped the outer edge between his fore and middle fingers and separating the pairs of fingers he stretched the membrane tightly. He paused, gathering his resolution, and then with a great sigh--all unknowingly he had been holding his breath---he drove the hot awl---she bit her lip and moaned---through the veil of tissue, piercing it close to her body. The dark blood flowed in a viscous trickle. Giacomo, with shaking hands, passed a narrow gold split-ring through the piercing. And still the nightingale was singing.

'With this ring I thee wed.' he murmured. He held her tenderly as she writhed in her pain, and with a styptic he stanched the blood now running down her thigh and soaking, a carnation, scarlet, flowering into the sheet.

It had been as bad as she had feared it would be. She was shivering, pinned, whirling round an axis of pain. He gave her some wine to drink: it was spiced with dill to numb the pain and make her drowsy. Then he kissed her on the lips and slipped silently away, and all the time the nightingale was singing.