A Carni Supplement Short Story
by R. Saint Claire
I caught Aldo’s eye, the one still partially open. The right eye was already purpled and crusted shut. But the eye locked on mine, his left one, glowed with fiery rage – no sign of submission despite the torture inflicted upon him.
“Ciao, buffone, dove e la scherzo addesso?” rasped a voice from the crowd, followed by a clot of dung that slapped the back of Aldo’s head and made his poor old cap jingle. He still wore the costume of his trade: belled cap and motley tunic, albeit now reduced to rags and blackened with filth. Despite the defiance in his eye, the old clown had suffered from his ordeal. When they led him to the gallows, old Aldo was the very picture of the broken man. I’d tried to warn him that even if his japes against the Duke’s infidelities made the ladies titter behind their fans, the Duke was still a proud man. But Aldo went too far, comparing the Duke’s manhood to a limp sausage during the feast to Saint Giovanni Battista. After that, the Duke set his sights on Aldo’s only child, a daughter named Isabella.
It was hard to imagine how such a lovely girl sprang from Aldo’s loins, but at sixteen, Isabella’s graceful figure towered over her father. The courtiers claimed truthfully that she was the loveliest face ever to serve the Duchess’ bedchamber. But she was innocent as well as beautiful, and soon the Duke demanded she serve his bedchamber as well. The poor child fell in love with the great Francesco de Medici, and when he threw her away with a child brewing in her belly, her shame led her to fling herself in the Arno. Her death caused barely a discernable ripple in court, although behind closed doors, there was outrage. I tried to comfort Aldo, to remind him it was his job to amuse the Duke. Besides, if his daughter fell to ruin, it was his own fault. But Aldo’s countenance had traveled beyond the harbor of grief and anchored in the dark sea of wrath. His attempts at vengeance, however, were weak at best.
The two clumsy assassins he had hired now hung on either side of the scaffold. Courtiers and ladies sat on balconies facing the piazza while the crowd of peasants crushed loudly in front of the main event: the execution of Aldo, the Duke’s fool. Aldo had soothed the Duke’s childhood woes with juggling routines, accompanied him on hunting trips when he became a man and lifted the burden of rule with wit and wise counsel. And now, I watched Aldo’s legs tremble in loose hose as he climbed the wooden stairs to meet his grim fate.
The crowd hushed when il carnefice, the executioner, mounted the gallows with heavy tread. Forcing Aldo’s hands from his assumed prayer pose, he yanked the old jester’s arms behind his back. The sound of cracking bones evoked cheers from the crowd. I glanced at the Duke, whose face simmered with satisfaction behind steepled fingers. I wondered if the rape and ruin of Isabella hadn’t been enough to satisfy his lust, but I kept those thoughts to myself. I couldn’t risk my position and family’s good name for sentiments over a stupid fool.
But how hard it was to see the man strung up by his broken arms, his one shoulder bulging unnaturally from its socket, his belled slippers pitifully paddling the air. I never had the stomach for violence, hated even to hunt wild boar with the Duke, but I couldn’t run away now or even shield my face from the slow torture of a man who was once a friend to all.
A soft cry escaped the whitened lips of Lady Beatrice, who stood beside me. I caught her as she fainted, and the distraction gave me an excellent excuse to lead her to a bench away from the crowd, now cheering with the madness of the Colosseum, where martyrs’ torn limbs and spilled blood entertained the pagans of old. I asked myself if we Christians were any better now.
As the lady recovered, I was compelled stand on the bench to see what had ignited the crowd so suddenly. I shuddered to see the executioner’s knife carving a deep grin into Aldo’s cheeks. I felt like fainting myself then, especially when I saw the Duke and Duchess openly laughing at the man’s ordeal. I thought of Isabella and how her face resembled the Virgin gazing down from her lofty throne high on the cathedral’s facade across the piazza. Can no one stop this torture and just hang the man? I wanted to shout, but of course, I said nothing, only secretly praying for it to end soon.
Aldo was left to hang for a moment by his mangled arms. A hideous marionette, he pirouetted slowly from the scaffold. And with each rotation, the grin carved into his face seemed to lengthen, turn upward at the corners. I realized, with a sickening shock, that Aldo was laughing, a pealing cackle that silenced the crowd. My stomach churned when I saw his teeth shining white through the parted flesh.
“Ti maledico!” Spit and blood flew from Aldo’s deformed mouth. “Vi maledico tutti!”
I curse you all!
The last words he uttered as the noose was placed on his neck, “La mia piccola Isabella,” moved a few of the crowd to pity, but only some. A group of laughing boys lit fireworks. A sudden storm scudded across the sky, the black clouds pierced by white lightning. The Duke and Duchess and their minions retreated behind the velvet curtains of the balcony door to attend to their supper. The pageant was over. Aldo was dead.
There were heavy storms for the next several days followed by oppressive heat, which caused Aldo’s bloated flesh to blacken and tear the seams of his motley garb. Even the rose gardens edging the piazza couldn’t mask the stench, and at last, the poor fool was cut down and carted away without even the dignity of a Christian burial.
Joined together by some unseen force on the fateful day, Lady Beatrice and I were married soon after. Haunted by the memories of Aldo’s ordeal, I left Florence and purchased a vineyard in the south to set up a new life. While riding out through the forest one day, I felt the devil on my back and drove my horse faster and faster until it reared up and threw me to the ground.
Shaken but unhurt, I lay on my back gazing at the sky. Among the clouds was Aldo’s face with its hideous carved grin; the treetops rustled with sinister laughter. I climbed back on my horse and rode away, but I could never escape his curse. None of us could. The Duke was impaled through the eye with his own dagger when his horse threw him some weeks later while hunting. He died in agony, followed by the Duchess, who fell into a decline and never recovered. My vineyards dried up, leaving me nearly penniless, and my dear wife died giving birth to our daughter, who joined her mother in the grave soon after. I had named her Isabella as a tribute to the old buffoon, but he would not be appeased. Aldo’s curse lingers to this very day.
La maledizione!
CARNI, a carnival horror novel by R. Saint Claire, is available in print and ebook on Amazon.
*Aldo’s Curse by R. Saint Claire Copyright @rsaintclaire 2024
R. Saint Claire 