‘Let me cry along with you, for God’s sake,’ Villiam said. He made the sign of the Cross over his bare, bony chest and began to weep.
‘My lord,’ Lispeth said, wiping her eyes. ‘You must come down.’ She was used to Villiam’s befuddling eccentricities. ‘There’s so much more to cry over downstairs,’ she said.
Villiam sighed and pulled the silk robe from her hands and tearfully requested she do a little dance as he got out of bed. This was not unusual. Lispeth curtsied and stepped from side to side, lifting her arms aloft and crying as Villiam pulled his long, bony legs from under the cover and stepped into his red velvet slippers.
‘Fine, fine,’ he croaked. ‘Now a bit of wine. I’m sorry the dancing didn’t cheer us up.’
Villiam preferred wine from the north until midday, a sweet white wine that was crushed by blond children. The stronger, drier white wine was crushed by teenaged boys from the south, and Villiam liked to drink that after his repast with Dibra in the late afternoons because her company bored him so, made him feel limp and trapped. Why had he married her? Because he’d needed an heir. Villiam’s mother had insisted he take Dibra as his wife shortly before she died. ‘Her father won’t try to steal our dirt now,’ was all she’d said.
‘How about a little song?’ Villiam asked Lispeth.
Lispeth stopped dancing. ‘Later, my lord. It’s Jacob.’
‘What about him?’
‘Come and see,’ she said and ran from the room to lay out the red carpet that Villiam demanded be rolled out for him every morning, through the hall from his bedchamber and down the central stairs to the great room where the servants would line up to say good morning, however late he’d gotten up, and to tell a joke that each of them had invented overnight.
Now Villiam tied his robe clumsily and shuffled out of his room down the hall as the red carpet rolled farther and farther. He was still half asleep, his throat parched. He heard a cry come from down in the entry room, like a wounded animal, or a monster. It was Dibra. Villiam flinched and paused, considered plodding back upstairs. But then he heard another voice, a small child’s. ‘I’m sorry!’ it said.
Villiam hurried toward the entry room, delighted and curious to see what young visitor had come and upset Dibra enough for her to wail so dramatically. He nearly tripped on the tails of his robe down the red stairs. ‘No! No! Nooooo!’ Dibra cried, a bit less convincingly now, as though the strength of her performance had weakened as Villiam drew near. She was forever disappointing him. Villiam was so accustomed to being entertained that any drama, however real it was, seemed to him as one staged for his private amusement. He had been living in perpetual diversion for so long, he could only conceive that this demonstration within his home was a farce. While tales of bandits marauding through the village may have given an honest lord cause to bang a fist on a polished table, Villiam’s hand was forever limp and unsurprised. He knew it was all planned, all theater. Death wasn’t quite real to him. He never once left the manor to see where the dead were slain or buried. He barely left the hilltop at all.
What theater was this now? Villiam’s excitement grew. As the scene appeared from below, a bit more with each step he took down the stairs, the cast of characters was revealed. First Lispeth, crying with her hands covering her face. Then Pieter, the front guard, and Luka, the horseman, bent over, hunched, as though God Himself were admonishing him. Villiam slowed his step to prolong his pleasure as the play unfolded. He peered down. Next he saw Dibra on the floor, her skirt splayed out, her arms collapsed under her head as though someone had just pushed her down. Dibra had never been good at physical comedy. Her wails were far too exaggerated. She didn’t understand restraint at all. For this reason alone, Villiam supposed, they were well paired. But now another character appeared as he reached the lower stairs. He looked farther into the room, into the shadows, at what looked to him like a faun, so ugly and goatish was its skull, and the body so small and contorted, as if it had tried to fix itself of its animal form to stand upright. The twisted figure moved Villiam; he had a special taste for freakishness. The creature spoke.
‘If only God had taken me instead!’
A bit too fervid for Villiam’s taste, but he supposed the priest must have approved of the script. Was he here? No, not yet. Father Barnabas must be sleeping in. Villiam finally reached the bottom stair and shuffled past Lispeth and the men. He did not stop to address Dibra, who was wrenched in despair, her body shuddering on the floor, a lull in the audible exclamations. Good that she knew to hold her sobs while Villiam passed so as not to distract him from the direction of the drama. Well played, Villiam conceded. And he approached the ugly little creature, who immediately fell to its knees before him. Villiam cleared his throat and assumed a tone that was low and indignant and self-controlled, as he thought his role to play was that of a stern lord.