Текст книги "The Collected Short Fiction of C.J. Cherryh "

Автор книги: C. J. Cherryh

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The servants met her at the top of the inner stairs. She went up to her room, gave her clothing to the maids, and fell into bed, in the freedom of breath and residual ache of the ribs that came with unlacing.

She slept the night by fits and starts, and waked all tangled in the bedclothes at noon. Her hair was so tangled that her unhappy maid had to comb and comb it, painfully. Nonna came in, with the maid looking for her shoes, which turned out to have half-dried, badly soaked, and suffered from mud and scrapes. A great to-do erupted, when Nonna knew it. "How can you have come in with wet shoes?" Nonna asked. "Where have you been walking?"

"The gondola moved," she said, a lie. "While I was getting out. The gondolier was a fool. I nearly fell in. I'm sure the duke doesn't care."

"Never speak badly of him."

"I find nothing good," she said, disrespectfully.

"Hush. Take the shoes away. Dry them in the kitchen, Anna." This to the maid. And Nonna insisted she eat a biscuit and take sweet tea.

"You're nervous, of course, you're only nervous, my dear. It's the day, the very important day ahead of us. He'll come himself, in the barge, in just two hours, and you'll do us proud. So grand, so beautiful a bride you'll be."

There was no escape, no escape she could see. She sat and let herself be coiffed, and her feet stockinged in spotless silk and set in restored and fire-warmed shoes.

Then, with no choice but Nonna's before her, she let herself be laced into the amethyst silk gown, and hung her two masks, dangling from silk ribbons, among its folds.

By then the time had run out, and Nonna saw her down not to the water-stairs on the Raceta, as she had come in last night, like a thief, but to the public walk, on the Priuli, where the whole city might see. A maid waited below to watch out the door, and soon the maid said the duke's gondola was coming.

Giacinta kissed her Nonna, and started to leave.

"The mask," Nonna said agitatedly, "the mask, Giacinta!" just as she went out the doors. It was not the white half-face she put on. It was the moretta, the black mask of silence, a reproach to di Verona, a caution to herself, that she would say nothing, nothing at all, nor eat, and especially not drink. She clamped the button behind her teeth, and that was the end of converse and compromise and the foolish warfare she had chosen with il duco. The gondola took her aboard and drew away down the lesser canals to the Grand, under a stormy sky, and there to the shore. Di Verona's grand barge was there, and he stood on the bank to meet her, with the passersby all curious to see the passenger for whom a foreign duke waited.

He was perhaps surprised, a little set aback by the mask she wore– he, the lion down to the lips, which at first frowned, then grinned at her with nothing of cheerfulness. "A mystery, are you, today?"

She did not, could not answer him, only inclined her head, took his hand, let herself be set into the barge, gilt and azure canopied, among other barges and other colors of the more grand and glorious of La Re-pubblica, on the great Serpentine.

"An improvement," il duco said, "over last night. Perhaps you should always wear it, as a wife." She turned her black-masked face to the water, gray water, reflecting the leaden sunlight that pierced the clouds. Rain fell in sporadic drops, and thunder muttered. He spoke, thinking himself a cutting wit, and she thought only of her rose in the Ca d'Oro, and the candle reflected in a hundred mirrors.

It was armor, her silence. She could not answer, so she need not listen to him, or to anything in the world. She could not find excitement in the festival any longer, so she need not regard the parade of wealth and power: she only stared bleakly at the passing buildings, and the leaden sky and the dull gray surface of the canal.

Trumpets blew. The great barges moved with oars, and occupied the center of the Serpentine, the sort of parade she would have loved to watch, safe on shore. They made their way to the landing nearest the great piazza, and there, amid a cheering throng, the barges disgorged their grandly-costumed occupants in what became a foot processional.

There was music. Banners waved. Giacinta moved where her captor dictated, her hand locked in his, and everything was a confusion of color and noise, swirling faster and faster. Cheers, then, and il duco demonstrated her to the masked, festive crowd, and with gallantry lifted up their joined hands, and shouts and pushing and shoving followed, for il duco's servants had cast fistfuls of coins into the crowd, all along their way.

"Share my happiness!" he cried to the onlookers, parading her along the edge of the crowd. "My bride, Venezia, my bride!" And his servants called out, "Giacinta Sforza is the bride-to-be of Cesare di Verona! Bring her flowers! Bring her joy and music!"

Flowers rained down, costly flowers, from his own servants, it was likely, and the music shrilled and piped. Di Verona seized her about the waist and swept her out across the crowd of celebrants. They danced, oh, they danced, and afterward, she was so thirsty, but wearing the moretta, she could not drink, or scarcely breathe. She felt faint, but still cherished her isolation. She stared blankly at the congratulating crowd, and then—

Then she saw a man among the others, a white and gold harlequin like her harlequin, who appeared just behind the first fringes of the crowd. She blinked, and he was gone. Then she could not get her breath. She could not speak. She wanted to tear off the moretta and run through the crowd crying out to anyone who would hear that she belonged to the harlequin, not di Verona. But the harlequin was gone, fled from the sight of the celebration, and she was not such a fool. She found herself swept up again to dance, and dance, and dance, and never a sip of water, never relief from the mask which she would not shed, not now. It hid tears as well as anger, and she was too proud to shed them for the crowd.

Only afterward, when they had repaired to the barges, and di Verona brought her to his palace for another round of drink and dancing, he opened her hand and pressed into it a small scroll.

"Your invitation to the Doge's ball," he said, "as my betrothed. But we shall not become separated, shall we, love?"

She mimed exhaustion, and he closed her hand over the little scroll until it crumpled, until her hand hurt.

"You will dance," he said, "While I please."

It was past midnight that di Verona's gondola delivered her to her own water-stairs, and she closed the water-stairs door. Then and only then, she took off the mask, and wiped her tear-streaked face with the back of her hand, and took off her shoes. Her white silk stockings were bloodstained, where the once-soaked leather had galled her heels and pinched her toes. She padded upstairs, and tried in her silence to evade Nonna. In vain. Nonna met her and hugged her, and with that strangely potent handkerchief, dried her tears.

"There, there, my sweet, all our informers say it went so well. The whole city approves il duco's bride, this shapely mystery, they say, this so silent, so proper, so mysterious girl. La moretta!

You could not have done better for us."

"I want a drink of water, Nonna," she said, trembling, and had that, and a cup of wine, and a biscuit, which, besides the other biscuit at noon, was all she had had to eat that day. She wanted to go out again, to go back out into the calles to look for the harlequin who had haunted her day at the piazza, but she had hardly the strength, and the wine, unsupported by anything of substance in her stomach, quite undid her. She could scarcely climb the stairs or suffer the maids to undress her and wash and salve her feet.

She still had the invitation, crumpled as it was, in the bodice of her gown. The maids laid it aside on the nightstand, and she fell onto the soft mattress between the cool sheets, half-sensible, and then not sensible at all.

Thunder waked her. She heard the renewed pounding of rain against the roof, and heard the maids talking, how the rumor was the sea-gates were nearly overwhelmed, that water had risen into the back of the cathedral, and that the great waves, wind-driven, were splashing down over the great gates into the lagoon. "We'll all drown," one wailed, and the other said that the cathedral had lit candles and prayed for the city's salvation.

She went back to sleep and dreamed that the water came, that it rose up and up above the banks of the canals, and that they all drifted, dancing beneath the waves, the carnevalecarried on forever, and they all were ghosts, she and her white harlequin.

But morning came, and a shaft of sun broke through, and the canals had not flooded last night after all. She sat listlessly, refusing her breakfast, now with a notion of starving herself, of fainting senseless from hunger before the wedding, which Nonna said would be within the month. Could one possibly starve to death, within a month?

"You will learn to love him," Nonna said, in their little breakfast room.

"I never shall. I will not marry him, Nonna. I will not!"

"And what will you choose, else? For us to be poor, in Venezia? To be turned out penniless?

There's no worse fate."

"There is. Di Verona is worse. I don't care about being poor. I'd rather be poor, than face him for the rest of my days."

"Don't say such things."

Nonna was vastly upset. And she had had enough, suddenly. She stood up, her feet protesting even then. "He is cruel and spiteful, Nonna. He has a cruel nature, and cruel hands, and I detest him more the longer I spend in his company. I will never live with him."

"Let me show you something," Nonna said, and went to the cupboard drawer, and took out a little glass bottle, stoppered with waxed cork. Its contents were black, and left a brown stain on the glass.

Nonna set it on the table beneath them. "This is my alternative," Nonna said. "This is what I will choose, if you fail to secure our place here."

"Poison? Is it poison, Nonna?"

"Rather than poverty. Yes, it's poison. I want my garden, my girl, I want my garden and my house and my servants. I have earned them, in my old age. I have brought you up to use your wits and think like a practical woman. I have taught you to be practical. I have arranged the best marriage you could make, an alliance that will make you rich beyond anything I ever asked for myself, beyond anything your father had. You will be splendid, la duchesa in your own right. You will never, never be so foolish as to make me use this."

"Put it away," Giacinta said, sick at heart. "Put it away, Nonna." Nonna took the little bottle back to the cupboard, and shut it in the drawer. "You will go with il duco to the Doge's ball. You will, of course, stay well aside from any matters there. Stay with il duco himself. He will see you come to no harm, and his men will let no harm come near him.

"I don't know why he should care whether he marries me. I don't know why I should matter."

"Legitimacy. Legitimacy, dear girl. You are your father's daughter, as I am mine, but Cesare di Verona—lacks a certain certaintyin that matter, and you are the most beautiful, the most eligible—"

She was struck to bitter laughter. "So il duco is common! He is commonborn as the Doge, as the Council, as any of the merchant princes!"

"Common is as common does," nonna said stiffly, "and he has nobility of spirit, and he is, whatever they say, di Verona."

"He has money, Nonna, oh, say it! He has money, and he wantsnobility, which our name can provide him."

"He wants Verona, which rejected him."

"Oh, is thatthe key to his passion? Reject him and he immediately must have you? Go reject him, Nonna, and he will become your passionate suitor."

She had never used such a tone to her grandmother. But she had reached the end of her endurance last night, and Nonna only bit her lip and shook her head at ingratitude.

"He is cruel, Nonna. He has no heart. I found none."

"If he had more legitimacy, if he had a noble wife, it would be easier for him. If he ruled Venezia, ruling Verona would be certain. And then Milano. Never forget Milano, granddaughter." Oh, Nonna could never forget Milano, from which they themselves were exiles, her father's rights overthrown, and Nonna unable to prevent it. The fall of their family gave Nonna no peace, and di Verona was as much la duchesa's means to revenge on her enemies as she was di Verona's means to regain his city. It was all la vendetta. It was all revenge, and blood. She lost all interest in her breakfast, but she forced it down, foreseeing she would need her strength. She only half heard Nonna's talk about the old days, and the house, and the garden, and how they would plant a flowering plum, which loved to have its feet in water. Then they would have fresh fruit in late spring. Nonna was happy in her imaginings. But it was all nonsense to her ears. Everything had become clangor and nonsense.

She had one night, one night left before this disastrous ball at the Palazzo Ducale, when di Verona's plan would set itself in motion. And she had one recourse. She had her key. She had her one escape.

She went upstairs by midafternoon, when Nonna had taken to her bed, and had her maid lace her into her party gown.

She put on the shoes, never minding the pain of her bandaged feet, and slipped downstairs. And from the drawer she took Nonna's little bottle, and slipped it into her reticule, with her few holiday coins.

Then, wearing the white mask, the bauta, she went out the front door of their little house on the Priuli, and walked down the margin among the revelers, looking, looking, hoping her forlorn harlequin might have lingered somewhere near. The music echoed off the opposing walls, sounding out of key to her, and the laughter and the revelry she met were sadly distant to her ears.

She thought perhaps she should go down to the Palazzo Ducale, and ask to see the Doge, and warn him of di Verona's intentions in the plainest words. The consequences of that brazen action were unforeseeable, but she feared for Nonna if she did so, and yet she did not know why she cared for Nonna's safety, when Nonna had arranged this all for her. She was angry, and bitter, and so full of plots and possibilities that an angry mind could hardly sort through the consequences. She was young. She was new to connivance and conspiracy. The affairs of three states had gone on over her head. Never worry, Nonna would say to her. It doesn't concern you.

Now it did. Now she wished she knew.

The sky commiserated with her, gray and thunderous, and the water lapped high about the foundations and crept onto the walkways in thin sheets. Carnevalestruggled to be merry despite the storm, despite the rumors, but the sights all paled for her, and when she made her way to the great piazza, the sight of the dancers reminded her of her public humiliation. She stood a while, contemplating the Palazzo, and how she could manage to pass the door. She started in that direction, and got as far as sight of the guards, and lost her nerve.

All these things she did, evading the one venture she most wanted and feared to make. But when the day began to decline, still leaden and rainy, and with no sight of her harlequin among the crowds, she had found no courage to dare the Doge's guards, and walked back through the calles, immune to the pranks of pantalones and pulcinellas, one white mask among many.

It was the Ca d'Oro she sought, and the door, which, with the flooding, she could scarcely manage. She soaked her shoes again, and her hem, with a slip on mossy rock. But she gained the still, silent inner stairs, where she had left the matches and the candle. Thunder boomed above the city. The storm, threatening day-long, had broken. She lit the candle stub with difficulty in the wind, and shut the door against the rain and the world. Then she suffered the greatest fear, ascending, candle flickering on walls and ceiling, until she came to the hall of mirrors, where her candle became a hundred candles, lost in a dark that the windows beyond the arched alcove did little to relieve.

The table had changed. On it stood a bouquet of drooping roses. Her ring was gone. Hiswas there, a more massive golden round, a signet. It must be his. She set down her candle, and picked it up, and turned it to the light. It bore a coat of arms engraved in flat gold, the divided shield, and above it not a helmet, but a cap, a common cap, and not at all common. She had seen it emblazoned on banners in the piazza, that divided shield and the unwarlike red cap. The arms of the Doge himself.

All the blood fled her limbs. She plumped straight down in the shadow, in the mockery of a hundred mirrors, and turned the ring in her fingers, the arms faint in shadow and glittering in candlelight.

It was long before she found the will to move, and by then she found it difficult, her limbs gone to sleep among her crumpled skirts. She was no more warlike than the Doge. She had never been encouraged to contest her fate. But she had learned fire, all the same, from la duchesa's temper. She had learned la duchesa's stubborn endurance. She had learned la vendetta, and the will, when challenged, to stiffen the backbone when she had a choice before her. Oh, that, above all else. And now she knew her footing—at least who she dealt with. But what he might now do, and why he had courted her, and if he already knew about Nonna's plot—these still were questions.

She rose. She took her candle. The ring clenched in one fist, she went to light candle stubs in the candelabra, and found them all renewed, long, fresh tapers, half-burned, marking the limit of his patience. She lit one candelabrum after another, until all the mirrored hall was aglow in the gathering dusk, until it would shine outward onto the canal, until, if he were near, he might see. She took the diminishing candle stub, then, and explored the halls above, the forgotten, fading murals, the rotting tapestries in all the passages and the long disused bedrooms, clear to the attic. She knew his name now, her harlequin. Everyone knew it. She said it to herself, while she waited:

"Antonio." She whispered it to the empty halls, to see if it was friend or enemy. "Antonio Raffeto."

And when the light had utterly faded from the windows, while storm battered the roof tiles, and the candle stub she held began to gutter and burn close to her fingers, she went down again to the ballroom.

Every candle flame bent as she arrived, but she had opened no door. The wind sighed through the halls, and a cold air moved her skirts.

And ceased. The water-stairs door had opened. And it had just shut.

She stopped still, her eyes fixed on the opposing hall. There was no candle below. She had taken it. She held it in her hand.

But he needed no help to find the blaze of light in the grand ballroom. And he climbed into view—her harlequin, white and gold in the candleglow. He wore a gold domino, only that, and had a rose in his hand.

"My harlequin," she said faintly.

"Giacinta," he said, and gestured toward the stairs, toward the outside. "They say the Ca d'Oro is haunted now. We've made a legend, I fear."

"I'm its ghost. I've become its ghost." In her purse she had the little black bottle, her escape from Nonna's plans, and her betrayal of Nonna's own escape. But that was for the morning. "I shall live here forever."

"You were with di Verona," he said, accusingly, "in the square."

"You werethere. I wished you'd rescued me. But I knew you couldn't."

"Did you think so? You might have called out for help."

"I wish I had. But I was afraid you would die."

He walked closer. Proffered her the rose. She ignored it and flung herself into his arms, crushing out the dying candle in her fist. The hot wax burned her, and tears welled up beneath the mask, but she hardly felt the pain. The ring was in her other hand, and it was cold as ice as lips met, as he took care for the candle, and found how she had burned herself.

"Foolish girl," he cried, and pried the wax from her fingers. He kissed the burn, and kissed her lips again before he set her back and looked at her. Dark eyes glittered behind the gold domino.

"And faithless, I fear."

"No. I will not be. I shall never be." She spoke in pain, in pain that transcended the burn on her palm. "I swear," she said, "I will never marry that man."

"You accepted his betrothal. You stood in view of all the Repubblica and the great cathedral, and you accepted to be his bride."

"Under threat."

"What threat?"

Dared she imagine indignation, and that it might wake on her behalf?

"The threat to my grandmother. She is old. She is foolish, my Nonna. He gave her promises, di Verona did, that she could have her house and her garden, if I married him. And he—" Here was the thing she must say, and must not incriminate Nonna, must not, no matter the anger the Doge might direct elsewhere. "Defend yourself tomorrow, that is what I wanted to say, what I came to say today, but I had no courage. La Duchesa is no part of this, understand this first and foremost. But go protected, tomorrow, and don't let di Verona or his men come near you."

"You recognize my seal."

"I knew it once I saw it." She knew he would take back the ring. She clenched her hand on it a moment, and carried that fist to her heart, then stretched it toward him and opened her hand.

"And I know di Verona is your enemy."

"Are you?" He had not taken the ring. "Are you my enemy, Sforza?"

"Never."

He took off his mask. The eyes had been wicked and dark behind it. Without it, they were brown and kind. She took off the white bauta, and let it fall.

"No more la moretta?" he asked her.

"No more mysteries," she said, looking only into his eyes, and willing, oh, very willing, if he were willing, too.

He took her hand and closed it on the ring, and pulled her to him and kissed her, oh, very long, while the thunder walked above the roof, and the water lapped about the walls. They danced to their silent music, they danced all about the vast mirrored hall until the candles spun and their heads were giddy.

He spread out his cloak on the floor, and she spread hers. He set her diamond circlet on his littlest finger, and set his heavy signet on her forefinger, with a solemn kiss. They made love, then, and she asked no questions at all, what would happen in the morning, what would become of her. He might go away in the morning, but she had warned him in as plain words as she could, to save his life.

They made love and slept, and the candles burned down to darkness.

Dark became dawn through the windows, and the pale day crept in, bringing detail into the shadows. They kissed. They gathered up their scattered garments, and spoke very little, casting glances at one another, grown strangely shy as the cold, gray light of day invaded the ballroom and reflected them in every mirror.

Then the bells began, from high up the Serpentine, faint and far.

"Come," her lover said, and took her by the hand, and led her out to the windows that offered a view of the Grand Canal and its beginning traffic. The farthest church rang out, and then the next, and the next, and the next, pealing all at once, until the nearest tolled, and the sound enveloped them, mad, and glorious, rolling down the Serpentine under a golden, clouded sunrise. It was his city, the Doge's city, all the bells of his city joining together for a special day, until, last, the great bells of San Marco itself joined in, deep and joyous.

It stole the senses. And it left such silence when it was done. She remembered to breathe. Remembered that she might soon die.

She found his arms about her, holding her warm and close, leaning back against him.

"I have to go soon," he said, his breath stirring the curls beside her neck. "And will you only haunt this old palace, or might you come to haunt mine?"

"I am la Sforza," she said, with a deep sigh, that old, proud name that was Nonna's, too. "I could never be your mistress."

"I have no wife."

That was true. Dared she think—dared she hope it was his offer? She pressed his hand against her heart, and drew a deep breath.

"Come with me," he said. "Come with me. You say you don't love him."

"It will embarrass him," she said, thinking of it, imagining di Verona's desires, fiercest for what defied him. "It would ruin him. It will drive him to war with you. Is thatyour plan, after all?"

"I have no plan at all," he said, against her neck, his arms pressing her close. "But I can make plans very quickly."

"So can I," she said. And let go a deep breath. "Let me go." He released her, as if astonished, and his face frowned, wounded.

"I could love you," she said. "I do. And I never will marry him. I swear that. But let me go. My Nonna will be beside herself with worry."

"I will call my guards," he said, "and take you up to the Palazzo in safety. Send for your grandmother."

"No," she said, and laid a hand on his heart. "You will trust me. You will trust me in this, and let me go. And if something should happen to me, you will care for my grandmother. Let her have her little house, and her garden, and her pride. Promise me. It's all she cares for."

"How can I let you go?"

"Easily," she said, "if you trust me, as I trust you, and tell you the truth. Admit Cesare di Verona to the ball. Don't let him or his men near you. And don't let him or his men leave again. There's to be riot in the city. Division in the council—when the Doge is dead." He gazed at her eye to eye a moment, not all a lover's gaze, but the Doge's as well—full of concern, and with a sure knowledge of the world's hard choices.

"I must get home now," she said.

"I will take you there," he said, and added, holding her arm, but never bruising, always gentle in his touch: "But, Sforza, if you betray me, you will break my heart. You broke it two days ago at San Marco. Last night you put it together again. I don't think you could do it twice."

"Mine was half dead," she said, "and I had nowhere in the world to go. Now I do. Only trust me, Antonio Raffeto."

It was down the stairs after that. Masked again, they went down to the water-stairs, where a gondolier and two of the Doge's guards had spent the stormy night cloaked and shaded in canvas.

The harder thing was to get to her own door. She imagined Nonna at watch at the windows, and she asked him to let her ashore well down the walk.

He let her go. She hurried, high heels striking the pavings, until she reached her own door. She tucked the signet into her purse, then opened it, and braved the storm inside.

"Shameless girl!" Nonna cried as she ran upstairs.

"I was caught by the storm," she said, which was true, "and I slept in a dry nook." Which was also true. "I was already chilled. I had no wish to take the fever."

"Shameless girl! Look at your shoes!"

"They're mostly dry now, Nonna." She kicked them off for the maids to attend, and sped barefoot off to her room, to bathe and dress again.

The dress was the maids' complete despair. They heated irons and brushed it, they straightened the braid and curled the wind-tangled feathers, all these little touches. They brushed her cloak. They exclaimed most over her burned hand.

"It was one of the sweet-stands," she said. "I touched the stove." They dressed it with herbs, they wrapped it in black lace so it would not show beneath the lace of her gown, but the pain was nothing to her today. She smiled through her bath, smiled while they pulled and tugged and curled her hair. She was the soul of patience while they applied her powders and her rouge. She put the freshened dress on again and stood arrayed as crisp and new as she had first ventured out to carnevale.

"You are so good," she said to Nonna's maids, and gave them each a coin, for luck. She slipped a little dagger into the belt that held her ribbon-tethered masks. She put on her cloak, and fussed the lace at her cuffs into place over her burned hand. She smiled at Nonna.

"See? No damage, Nonna."

"Only because you're very, very lucky," Nonna said fiercely.

"I am clever, like my Nonna," she said, and kissed her Nonna on the forehead, to Nonna's great annoyance. She had never noticed before, how tall she had gotten, and how small Nonna was these days. And she saw that Nonna had grown small in all the world, too, and afraid, in these last years, when small and afraid was the last thing her fierce Nonna wanted to be. "I love you," she said, "I love you, Nonna."

"Pah," Nonna said, and waved her attentions away with great fierceness. "Il duco will be here any moment."

"Will he?" She hardly cared. But she went down to the landing above the front door. Night was falling, already rendering the shadows on the Priuli's margin dark and ominous. "I shall stand and wait outside."

"You shall do no such thing," Nonna cried, pursuing her downstairs, step at a time, aided by her cane. "What has possessed you, girl?"

He has, she thought to herself, and sighed deeply, and waited by the door until the maid, watching through the portal, signaled excitedly that il duco's gondola had arrived. She descended the stairs like a duchess, exited the door, walked to the gondola and stepped aboard, with the gondolier's hand hardly needed to steady her. The gondolier boarded, fended off, and poled down the Priuli, nosing over into the Acqua Dolce, and carried her on and on to the Grand, where il duco's barge waited, its silver oars poised, its azure blue canopy tied back to show silver and gold cushions.

He had on, this time, the half-mask of a triton, plumed in azure and extravagant, overshadowing his cruel, beard-shadowed jaw. He stepped out and showed her aboard the barge with every grace, handing her down to the well, among the silver satin cushions.

He plucked the dagger from her waist, and flung it over the side, down, down into the opaque water. And smiled that predator's smile at her.

The oarsmen fended off smoothly and rowed down the Grand, past the Ca d'Oro and its silent windows, that kept secret their memories.