A Dancer in Darkness by David Stacton Page A

severally disappear.
    The Court Poet’s placidly plodding lyric took voice again, and spoke of Antonio’s search for Daphne. Should he find her here, or here, or here? Each here was a variation which Antonio had worked out during the night, moving himself on the black and white floor of the hall, as though he had been a chessman.
    Then, to a long descending scale on the cembalo, followed by a reedy tweak on the lute stop, he discovered Daphne where the Court Poet had intended her to be all along, and footed forward towards the Duchess, with those exaggerated but perfectly genuine mock gestures of pleasure and surprise that the period demanded.
    Despite herself the Duchess was startled. She rose, looking down at his flushed, absorbed face, and it was like looking at St. Veronica’s shroud. There was the same intense blindness in his eyes. Then she allowed him to lead her forward, down from the dais, and knowing that something was happening, she moved through her steps in a daze, retiring each time as he expressed desire, respect, bafflement, sorrow, enchantment, and despair. She had no time to think, for then came the chase. She had only to run upon her toes and flutter her hands at her bosom and in the air. Yet as she gravely fled before him, her flight became real to her. When she reached the clump of laurel, she vanished into its safety with gratitude.
    She did not know what agitated her so. From the leaves she peered out at him, as his hands beseeched her not to be metamorphosed. Beside her the machinery of a clever transparency lit up and showed the actual change. His hands fluttered all around her hiding-place, like birds set free in a storm. And then came the same rapid rippling of his fingers down his loins that showed extinguished desire. The transparency faded. He did a dance of sorrow round the bush, and she saw his legs, his feet, his calves, his torso swaying like bamboo, and the long line of his body, sinuous and truthful, was something shewould never be able to forget. For it spoke directly. It told her it loved her. She wondered if he knew, and knew that so far he did not. That selfless étude of his, that graceful, hopeless movement of his leg, which tapered into nothingness, was an entire impassioned speech something inside her answered instantly. She clapped her hand over her mouth, so as not to speak, but it was too late. Without realizing it, she had fallen in love with a soul, and of all the forms of love, that is the only seemingly irrevocable.
    The muses came back to lead him sauntering away. It was such an artificial sorrow. The laurels were hot and dusty. She must put on her public face, and step forward for the courtiers’ applause. But she was shaken. She knew that this must never be.
    And so, seeing her face like a glimpse of the moon through branches, suddenly did he. And that was why his dancing grieved so much. It was his body again. It had told him a truth it were better not to know.
IV
    More than the Cardinal planned, his plot was in advance.
    She made pretexts. After all, he was her household steward. It was natural she should see him every day. She thought that if she reminded herself of his inferior role, she would forget him. But though his role might be inferior, he was not. She could not forget him. If she sent for him, and he was away on some errand at Ravello or Salerno, her whole day was suddenly dulled. Yet she flattered herself that she showed nothing. There was nothing to show.
    Then she began to feel that he was deliberately avoiding her. She was lonely. That thought made her lonelier. She had only Cariola to talk to, and these days she did not like the way Cariola looked at her. Cariola was fond of her, but she was a walking microscope to the smallest intrigue. She was so well trained to sniff it out, that she could scent it even when it was not there. She trusted Cariola completely. But she did not trust her with this.
    Yet it was Cariola, after all, who offered a harmless