Part 18 (1/2)

”No, the lice stay, but listen-” Morales waved his hand in a way that bade attention. ”Is Simon coming today?” he asked in a jestingly conniving whisper.

”Who knows?” Gonji replied, playing along. ”Why?”

”If he comes, will he devour me?”

”He might dismember you, but his tastes dont run to rotten Spanish flesh.”

”Youll protect me, then, if Ive been your friend, no?”

Morales was hiding something, and Gonjis curiosity was stoked.

”What are you getting at?”

The sergeant shrugged as if to dismiss it, then brought in the covered pan with his morning meal and his ewer of water. A grim pistolero watched Gonji closely from the corridor until Morales had withdrawn and locked the door.

Gonji doffed the black robe with its grotesque red ornamentation and began wedging it into the small grated window of his iron-bound cell door.

”What are you doing?”

Gonji pulled aside the garment and peered out. ”No more visitors, eh?”

The sergeant began to laugh, his mirth rising as he moved away. ”Too dark to eat like that.”

”Ill manage,” the samurai replied from the blackened cell. He removed the linen from his tray. A moment later he was whisking aside the robe again.

”Yoi! Yoi-good! Morarei-san!”

The sergeant returned, still grinning.

”You?” Gonji whispered.

Morales shook his head. ”Father Martin-but I didnt have to bring it.”

Gonji bowed to him, then moved to the floor, where he knelt in grateful silence, running his hands over the quill pen, small cruet inkwell, and parchment that lay beside his food.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN.

As the summer heat slowly permeated the land above, causing the dungeon stones to swelter and the mold to prosper on the slimy upper reaches of the cells, something new altered Gonjis stoic existence.

Valentina came into his life.

The cell opposite his had been unoccupied for a s.p.a.ce of days following the execution of the murderer who had suffered therein.

One morning Sergeant Morales face appeared at the grating ahead of the noisy party that wrestled the squalling woman into the cell across from Gonji.

”Youll like this,” Morales told him. ”Something to write about, eh?” He fluttered his eyebrows rakishly.

Gonji scratched absently as he watched the spectacle. He had never heard such vulgarity from a woman.

”Sc.u.m-ridden b.a.s.t.a.r.ds! Ill rip your cojones from between your bowed legs and feed them to you! Come on-one at a time! Ill send you all writhing into h.e.l.lfire agonies! Your shriveled members will rot away with the plague, you G.o.dd.a.m.n-!”

A swing of the iron-clad door batted her down onto her rump. Then the portal was swiftly locked. A nailed hand clawed through the grating at a guard whose scratched face bore evidence of her spirit.

”Meet La Strega-The Witch,” Morales told Gonji.

”Valentina de Corsia is my name,” she railed, ”and dont you forget it, cabron! Though witch I am, as youll all soon see. For you, therell be no resisting my spells. Youll each come l.u.s.ting after me in the night, and then my curse will destroy you! b.l.o.o.d.y b.a.s.t.a.r.ds! A plague on thee, blackguards! A thousand plagues of pain and misery on all you macho limp-d.i.c.ks!”

She noticed Gonji looking at her through the grating. ”Dramatic, no? I always wanted to be an actress.” She tipped her head back and laughed coa.r.s.ely, her humor dissipating a second later. ”Well, what the h.e.l.l are you staring at, slant-eyes? You want something to stare at?”

She tore open the bodice of her soiled dress, struggling with it like a bedlamite before removing the entire garment and throwing it at the wall of her cell. She propped something against her door and stood up on it. Tearing off her nether garments, she displayed her ample bosom.

”How about it, Man of Cathay-a double helping of delight, no? Even you will find a way to break out of your cell and get at me, and then youll be pox-ridden like the rest of them.”

”All right, La Strega,” Morales interrupted, ”put this on.” He screaked open her rusty cell door and threw at her one of the black robes decorated with red devils and the flames of Hades. ”Now you really have something to write about,” he told Gonji.

The samurai kept staring at his new neighbor, hoping that what he felt in his loins wasnt mirrored on his face. He had seen no woman for months, though he had heard the sounds of women prisoners in agony, but their subhuman wailings had helped him keep his thoughts from carnal pleasures; he needed no additional torture to remind him of how cleanly he had been severed from the mainstream of life. But now he would have to readjust, and it would not be easy. His shrunken stomach felt hollow, and his innards flared with the heat of desire such that he began to tremble. His breath soughed through his nose in short gasps. He watched her toss her long, tousled black hair over the cowl of the robe. Her eyes were wild and dark; the kohl that had colored their sultry lids, smeared from her rough treatment by the guards. A small trickle of blood issued from her nose. She wiped it roughly on a sleeve as she peered out into the corridor again.

”Youre probably right,” Gonji found himself saying without thinking, ”though I dont know how Ill manage it.”

She looked at him dimly a moment till comprehension dawned, and a sour twist came to her rouged lips. ”Save it. Its not you that I want. Youve enough trouble already.”

Gonji pondered her words awhile, and, still unable to take his eyes off her, he engaged her again. ”What have they charged you with?”

She shrilled a harsh laugh. ”Impersonating the king-what the h.e.l.l do you care?” Then her tone changed almost at once. ”Sorry. We may need each other to keep from going loco in here. Seduction and witchcraft-what did you expect? Thats most of the women in these s.h.i.+t-crusted dungeons, I suppose-seduction and witchcraft. Only they caught me too late-” She had raised her voice to a bellow. ”Your captain of artillery knows my curse, knaves, and there is no saving him!”

Gonji listened to her expend her rage for a time, at last growing weary of it. But before he moved back to his daily habits, he remembered something.

”By the way, senorita,” he said to La Strega, ”I am not from Cathay. I am samurai, from Dai Nihon-j.a.pan.”

”Is that so?” she responded archly. ”Is that supposed to mean something?”

”Si,” he replied evenly. ”It is.”

Her eyes flickered ever so slightly, but she said nothing. Gonji quietly moved to his mat, where he sat cross-legged, for a long time, with his writing materials. But he scribed nothing as the morning hours dragged by achingly.

The evening s.h.i.+ft arrived and tilted with Valentina as had the morning sentries. Gonji smiled in spite of himself to hear the endlessly inventive outpourings seasoned with her vipers tongue. He heard the guards combat her imprecations with curses of their own, or loud prayers and promises of perdition. Then there was a noisy din as her meal tray slammed into a wall.

The samurai went to the grating.

”Youll have a taste of the rack for that, evil wench,” a spattered soldier was saying.

”Up your a.s.s, you son of a swine and a b.i.t.c.h!”

”Is that possible?” Gonji asked in amus.e.m.e.nt.