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LACHRYMAE

The ancient villa at the heart of the city had sunk Ground-floor s peeped slivers of glass above street-level Kate thought they ht made blocks of vivid red, turquoise, and aain Marcello&039;s editor had given her a vivid description: the House with the Crying Windows She looked up Just under the roof, a row of eye-shaped gables were angled to suggest desolation Water trickled froutter-spouts positioned like tearducts The brickas stained green by years of sorrow

It was striking She wondered why it wasn&039;t in the guide-books

Light behind the eyes changed froreen

She walked across the deserted piazza

She had al in touch with Marcello, but dutifully ular telephone calls to his apartment, his haunts, and the various papers she kneorked for Finally, an editor told her Marcello had left instructions for her with hi at a certain address in the city, and would receive her there

Though she still knew little about Marcello, she didn&039;t think this was a fainally from Rome Under his sophisticated veneer, he was a country bumpkin And he was not from money

This was an impressive property

Kate ascended the steps to what must once have been a balcony and paused at the front door It was bright blue, with gold crescents, silver stars and odd angel-faces She had a shiver of recognition but knocked anyway A hole opened in the centre of a painted eye

For a moment, she was looked at She turned round completely, hands in the air

The door opened The hallas empty A cheap trick

She stepped inside Portraits andthe corridor The mirrors reflected the portraits opposite Dried leaves drifted on the rich red carpet The doors were locked

The front door closed behind her It also locked

It occurred to her that Marcello e She&039;d seen a door like the portal of the House with the Crying Windows before, at Santona&039;s apart no alternative, she walked down the corridor In the first mirrors, she cast no reflection But as she neared the end of the corridor, a black shadow coalesced, then resolved into a looking glass ie of herself, the sharpest she had seen since her death

She looked at her own face

She&039;d been reckoned plain in life Red hair, spectacles, and freckles weren&039;t conventional attributes of beauty for late Victorians Over a century, fashions in prettiness changed, and she&039;d been told enough times recently that she wasn&039;t so terrible in the looks department that she&039;d come to wonder

To her mind, she was still plain Maybe she&039;d always be a late Victorian Her hair looked nice cut short, though And perhaps a different style of spectacles ht help

Behind her, in the irl, white with a wave of hair over one eye Her expression re-forn triu at a portrait

It was old Sixteenth century, by the clothes and style of painting The face was un the expression change Was this one of those ingenious puzzle paintings so prized by cleverclogs Renaissance patrons?

She&039;d been too taken with the mirrors and her own silly self, to pay much attention to the pictures Now she looked at them The same face appeared over and over, in different styles and es Father Merrin had said Mater Lachry woman, a mature wo woman was Viridiana, the lay worker Kate had seen at the Vatican, and the crone was Santona, the fortune-teller The child - &039;the most terrible, for she is an innocent, and has the ruthlessness of innocence&039; - she would never forget Only the mature woh she saw in the harlot the last traces of Viridiana and the beginnings of Santona

A door opened Kate was getting tired of this Cat and the Canary business If this were supernatural trickery, it was nothing Orson Welles couldn&039;t contrive with levers and distracting flourishes

Laughter bubbled frohter, rich and lewd Music also sounded, very loud A choral work, played too fast, aunholy She couldn&039;t help but think of this as sound effects The walls shook with the racket

She shrugged and cli was dark, but la flicker as she set foot on the carpet There was probably a tilting panel under it

The allery She went around the landing, which was a balcony in a huge ballroo with music, she heard whispers, as if every word ever said in this house were still trapped here

This door hung open Lights moved within the room

Kate crossed another threshold and entered a whore&039;s palace The room was dominated by a four-poster bed, curtained with raphic pictures covered the walls A stench of rotten perfuht was redder than blood, a solid scarlet

The curtains opened, and she saw Marcello in the arhed, enormous mouth stuffed with food, lipstick smeared over her chin This was the last aspect of Mater Lachrymarum, the harlot, the liar

&039;Welcome to Mamma Roma&039;s boudoir, missy,&039; she said

Kate&039;s heart was a stone

She didn&039;t care about the Cris She was flattened to have been abandoned for this gross creature

Mahter and clasped Marcello so close to her ht have suffocated Kate wished he would stifle hiantuan teats Like all men, the only woman he could really surrender to was Mamma He cared only for the breast, not the heart

Was she crying? Again?

She turned and tried to flee, but tripped on thick carpet and sprawled on the landing So held her down

She had to listen to their intercourse, the great gurgling, farting, squelching of it, the barks of laughter and joy, the grunts of pleasure and pain Her own sobbing didn&039;t drown out the din She was shrinking inside herself Contracted to a point, she vowed this was all she would be in the future, an appetite with teeth Penelope had learned within days of her turning the lesson which had eluded Kate until now

For the first time in seventy years, Katharine Reed felt like a proper vampire

Soon, she would rise and prey