Chapter Text
The Devil was beautiful.
I don’t know what I expected. A goblin face and a goat’s beard and horns and cloven hooves shod in iron. Instead, he had white skin that glowed in the moonlight, though his raiment was all as black as the soulless eyes staring out of that pale, clean-shaven face. The empty eyes were how I knew he was the Devil, even though he looked nothing like the devils I’d seen in paintings. And I had seen the finest paintings in Italy, on the travels my father had taken me, to play for all its great houses. The Savior and the Madonna, the angels and demons. The Greek gods and heroes, the dryads and the nymphs. It was the last he most resembled. But he was more beautiful than any painting, and unlike a painting, he moved, subtle and guileful as a snake. He stepped forward into the gray light, and I got a better look at his clothes; he looked a proper gentleman, dapper as any dandy in Venice. Black coat, vest, breaches–all silk velvet that gleamed in the moonlight. Even his cravat was black, further setting off his porcelain face. I have heard the word ‘porcelain’ used to describe fair women, but he truly looked like a china doll–or maybe an angel. And why not? Lucifer was an archangel before he fell.
“You called me,” said he.
I don't know what kind of voice I expected, either. A doll's voice, high and sweet, with a lilt of seduction. The slithery hiss of a snake. But his voice was ordinary. A hint of humor in it, even. Incongruous coming from his preternaturally red lips.
I hadn’t actually expected the spell I bought off the old tinker woman to work. Especially after I read the list of required ingredients. So simple: Sulphur. Salt. Quicksilver (it was difficult to find an alchemist, but all of them have some). A length of red thread knotted six times, the last knot joining the ends into a circle. And desire, she impressed on me. That was the most important thing. Want with all your soul–while you have one–to see the thing done.
She impressed warnings on me, too. The Devil, once summoned, could not be sent back. He must have his due, and the only currency he would accept was my own immortal soul. I rolled my eyes at her. Yes, yes, I knew. That was the point. I meant to exchange my goods for his services. And what use had I for my soul? It didn't make my fingers more agile nor my bow arm more sure. Even the art of playing–of pulling emotion out of the wood–this surely was governed by the heart, not the soul. The soul and its cleanliness was useful only for obtaining admittance into Heaven. And I had no desire to spend eternity playing a harp surrounded by cherubim.
Better than an eternity in Hell, said the old woman. I laughed and asked why she was trafficking in witchcraft if she believed in eternal damnation. She crossed herself and told me to mind my own business, to which I readily agreed on condition she do the same. Then I gave her my coin–a dear sum, for almost all I earned I had been forced to hand over to my bastard father–and she gave me the spell: instructions for how to treat the necessary ingredients and an incantation to chant over them.
I waited for a full moon and made my way to the edge of the city, to the crossroads where the new carriage road into Genoa diverged from the old Roman Via Aurelia. When the moon reached her zenith, I drew a hexagram on the ground and placed all the prepared components within it, and burned them while reciting the incantation (which I had committed to memory). Then, I called him by six of his many names: Lucifer. Mephistophales. Sammael. Apollyon. Beelzebub. Diabolus.
And he came.
Walking down the main road like just another traveler, but I could tell by the aura of shadow around him that he was no such thing. And now he stood before me, smiling.
I forced a joke to mask my awe and horror. “Do you always come when called?”
His lips only curved in bemusement. “I do.”
I was taken aback that he would respond to every query. I quickly realized he must, if his aim was to procure as many souls as possible.
“Tell me what you desire,” said he, as though he had read my thoughts.
“Do you not know?” This may have seemed impertinent, but in truth, I had difficulty declaring my wish aloud.
“I still want to hear you say it.”
I cleared my throat, now thoroughly vexed with myself. I had rehearsed these words. Speaking them should be no different than any other performance.
“I desire to be the best violinist who ever was or will be.”
“And what do you offer?”
“My immortal soul.”
For a second, light flicked across his eyes, red and green like an animal’s reflecting back torchlight. Then it was gone.
He pointed at my instrument, which I had brought, then held out his arms. I set the case upon the ground besides the scorched circle of my ritual fire. It was hard and even enough, as we stood at the intersection between two good roads. Then I removed the violin from her silk wrapping and handed her to him.
He held it out, appraising. “This will do well enough for now. Someday, you will have finer.”
I wanted to defend my violin, but my tongue was still stopped by the embers in his eyes.
He held his hand out, and it took an embarrassingly long moment for me to realize he was asking silently for the bow.
I handed it to him--our fingers touched briefly, and it was as though I'd touched a kettle boiling over the hearth. I snatched my hand back, as he brought the violin to his chin, where he held it while tightening the bow with a quick twist of his wrist. Once he was satisfied, he pulled it across the strings and began to tune. When he was finished, held it out for me.
“When you play, everything the violin knows--that I know--you will know.”
“You know how to play?”
It was an inane question. I'd seen the ease with which he tuned the violin. And besides, he must have some infernal power which allowed him to do… I did not know what all he could do. But clearly he could play, and doubtless well.
He only smiled, and there was no mockery in it.
I was struck by the beauty of his white hands upon my violin in the moonlight. Before I realized I was speaking aloud, I had said, “I should like to hear you play.”
He laughed, deep and warm. “Ah, but that will cost you extra.”
My brows surged up. “Extra? I have already given you my immortal soul. What else could you possibly want?”
He looked at me, head tilting to the side, like a raven assessing a trinket. “A kiss.”
My pulse beat so hard on my throat it cut off air entirely. A kiss. And I knew from his expression what kind of kiss. I swallowed. I had only ever kissed women. Because what he was asking for was a sin. A mortal sin. And yet–he was as beautiful as any maiden. And was I not damned already? Did that not mean anything was now permissible?
I nodded. He returned the violin to her case, then came and stood so close to me the tips of his black boots almost touched mine. He was considerably shorter than I, but in no way did he seem small. He grasped my chin and pulled down my face so I could look fully into his eyes, black as tar pits. Up close, I saw that the corners of his lips were white where they met his face, like the crushed-rose red of their centers had been smeared on with a thumbfull of rouge.
I let out all my breath, and he pulled me to him before I could take another. His kiss was sweet at first, warm and tender. His hand curled around the back of my neck and guided me down into that soft mouth. Not so different than kissing a woman, if one didn't think of the hard planes of the flat chest against one’s own. Then he pulled me deeper. And deeper. Until I was inside his mouth. Then it became a horror. His tongue cooled and coiled like a snake, tasting of brimstone and charcoal.
I recoiled.
He released me, letting me stagger back, and I looked at him, seeing him maybe for the first time. Light flashed from those holes-for-eyes again, as I'd seen before. This time the light remained. Orange and green like some profane alchemical fire. His tongue darted across his red lips, shiny and gray, like an oyster.
I shivered.
He smiled again, and there was no benevolence in it this time.
“You asked for this.”
I wasn't sure if he meant the kiss, or for him to play–he was retrieving the violin from its case as he spoke.
He resumed his pose with the violin beneath his jaw, bow high in the air. The hair caught the moonlight and flashed silver, like a rapier. Then he attacked the instrument with that blade.
He opened with a shrieking tritone, grating the bow across the strings like steel too slow to spark flint. Immediately he followed with open fifths, leaping back and forth from dissonance to dissonance. I had just begun to shrink from his ‘music’ when he introduced a melody, which was dark, ecstatic–Phrygian. It surged across the strings in waves of arpeggios that rose and fell and yet never resolved into–I could not say what key, as it kept modulating.
A second melody joined the first, then a third, a fourth, in what now could have been a fugue, yet had no regular form. It was evident he knew all the rules of harmony–of polyphony, yet he gleefully broke them all. Each double stop and chord was more discordant than the last. The sound abraded my ears, yet I was compelled by its ugliness, which was its own kind of beauty.
As for his technique–such virtuosity I had never seen. Finger twisting chords. Flying bowstrokes skipping both downbow and up. Ghostly false harmonics played two at once. Riotous bursts of pizzicato played simultaneously with both left hand and right, sometimes interspersed with bowed strokes. Once, I saw him play a chord with his left hand in so tortured a posture that he depressed the G string with his thumb.
The instrument resonated so strongly beneath his hands I thought she would break apart. The sounds he drew from her turned anguished and animal, until she shrieked as I knew must the damned. The hairs on my nape raised, and my arms pebbled though I wore a wool coat and the night was not cold.
Just when I was about to cry out for him to stop, he set the bow very close to the frog and chopped at the strings, playing a series of unlinked chords which did not go anywhere that felt like home, and finished by drawing the bow directly atop the bridge, which made a ghastly shriek and snapped the E string. When he lifted the bow aloft, the hair was in tatters.
He turned to me, and his lips twitched into a smile that did not meet those eyes, gone black again, yet somehow darker than they were before. I knew the question they asked though he did not voice it: what did I think? That he should care surprised me. Why should the opinion of a mortal musician matter to the Prince of Hell?
I remembered that Lucifer's sin was Pride, and the vain creature before me susceptible to flattery. “Your technique is unmatched. But I hope those… melodies are not all you will teach me. I should not like to play like that.”
He laughed, heartily. The good humor also returned to his speaking voice. “I will not teach you anything–you will know. And you may play however you like. Or don’t play at all. I don’t care. As long as you are alive, live as you like.” The smile slipped. “Once you die, though, you are mine, even after Judgement Day.”
This was the first moment I sensed I’d made a grave mistake. I did my best to put on a brave face.
He handed my instrument back.
I frowned. “Surely you ought to repair her.”
“For that you must give me another kiss.”
It shames me to say I flinched at the thought of that oyster-tongue in my mouth. “I should rather find a luthier.” I loosened what hairs were left on the bow and returned it to the case, then carefully re-wrapped the violin in her silk bag and placed her alongside him. Afterwards, I stood–with some effort, for my knees quavered.
He pouted, the red center of his lips making the moue impossibly full. Then they curved into a beguiling smile again. “Don’t you want to play at once? To try this gift I’ve given you.”
I pressed my lips hard together. He had me and he knew it.
“Very well.” I grimaced. “But make it quick.”
He giggled. “I shall do no such thing.” Then he grinned and glided towards me, supple and slinking as a mink.