The servant hurried to carry out Her Imperial Highness’s orders, and soon the room was properly illuminated and warmed for the first time in days.
“Why are you doing this?” Vlau whispered out of hearing range of the servants.
Claere, who had placed herself stiffly in a tall-backed chair near the window, now regarded him with her great sunken eyes. “Because you spend more time in here than in your own chamber, Marquis. It is only right that the room is made comfortable for one such as yourself—with human living needs.”
“Then I am sorry! I should go—” Angry inexplicable color flooded his cheeks and he started to rise.
“No, stay,” she said in a commanding voice.
And he obeyed her.
“I am rather glad you are here,” she said evenly. “But if you are to continue, you must eat and drink and rest. It benefits no one if you languish and starve.”
“What does it matter if I eat?” he said. “When more deserving others could use the dwindling food that will be wasted on me.”
“It matters to me,” she replied.
He watched her with his dark unblinking gaze.
The servants arrived in that moment with his supper tray. There was a large platter of blue veined and aged cheeses, fresh baguettes of bread, a steaming-hot salted ham roll baked in flaky pastry, pears poached in port sauce topped with sweet cream, and apple tartlets in honey. Another servant carried a decanter of deep red wine to be imbibed with the blue cheese.
Vlau watched them arrange the serving table, set out the delicacies, pour the wine, and then make their bows and depart, after Vlau nodded to the footman server that he did not require his presence during the meal.
“Please, eat,” the Infanta said. Her hands were folded in her lap and she looked at him in expectation.
The sight of her gentle smoke-colored eyes in their hollowed sockets, trained upon him, evoked a painful spasm in his chest, which then continued downward, twisting his gut. Indeed, eating was the last thing he wanted to be doing. And yet, he was dried on the inside, hollowed out himself, empty, parched, dead . . . he had forgotten what it was like to taste and swallow. Only his mind was fevered, hot, burning, fertile with the moisture of life, like a river. . . .
Vlau picked up the goblet of wine and brought it to his lips—while she continued looking at him and he at her, their faces illuminated by warm candlelight. And for some reason neither one of them could make the supreme effort to break the bond of their gaze.
Vlau swallowed, and the cool bittersweet liquid was a vibrant shock. The wine filled his mouth with living force, and he knew sudden wild thirst—his body remembered it, the sensation of needing to drink. He then started to swallow the liquid in gulps, and it went down inside him in a torrent that for some reason did not seem to fill him, was not quite enough to satiate the bottomless need of his desiccated innards.
What is wine but the blood of death? The fevered nonsense words sounded in his mind. What is blood but the wine of life?
He drank the entire goblet and put it down, momentarily breaking the connection of their gaze. He breathed deeply while the wine coursed inside him, warming his blood.
“Now, eat,” she reminded him and continued watching his every move.
Vlau nodded and forced himself to pick up the knife and cut into the flesh of the pastry and the cheese. His lips parted and he ate, his motions once more mechanical and senseless at the beginning. But then his body took over—it recollected the burst of flavor, the virile juices filling his mouth, the sudden ravenous hunger. . . .
The fireplace and the candlelight together had warmed the room entirely by the time he was done eating, and the large tray with its dishes was mostly empty. Meanwhile, outside the great glass window, the sky stood pitch-black over Letheburg, while the stars emerged like sugar sprinkles, and the street lanterns were a sea of glowing spilled droplets of candied amber. So easy to forget that just a bit further off in the panorama of the city, outside the scope of the window, the distant walls stood up silhouetted against an orange inferno, and the relentless enemy continued to storm the parapets. . . .
Vlau Fiomarre felt a slow groggy relaxation coming over him, a pleasurable fullness of a solid meal and the warm buzz of wine. He did not recall the last time he had eaten so well and drunk so deeply—maybe that supper meal at Grial’s house was the closest approximation, except he recalled eating warily and in a hurry, hardly tasting anything and being on his guard the whole time.
But now—now was a strange suspended moment of animal comfort, an impossible magical time.
He glanced up and saw her watching him still, steady and serene. There was a tiny, barely formed smile on her lips.
And he could not help it. He smiled at her in return, warm and satiated and mindlessly present in the moment. . . .
“How was the apple tart?” she said, with a small nod of her head at the tray.
He blinked, recollecting himself because he was warmly mesmerized by the ethereal appearance of her smoke-hued great eyes. “Ah, delicious.”
“You know,” Claere Liguon continued, “I used to love berry tarts. I would always ask for them for supper and with tea and even at breakfast—even though I was sickly and could hardly finish a single one. When I was about seven or eight, I still remember the one time I was punished by my tutors, and sent to bed without a raspberry tart and custard because I refused to properly read and memorize the stupid chapter about the high office and governing differences between the elected Doge of Venice and the hereditary King of France. To make matters worse, after I was left alone, lying furious in my bed, I secretly named him the ‘Dog of Venice’ in a perfectly horrid little girl’s revenge. To this day, when I think of the government of Venice, La Serenissima, it is with irritation and a thought to canines, and yes, with some wistful thoughts of raspberry tarts.”
She made a small sound that was almost a laugh, and continued smiling at him.
Vlau glanced at the tray, his first impulse being to offer her a tart, for there were a couple of them remaining on the dish. And then the impossible darkness of reality, the realization struck him. She could never eat a tart again.
And oh, how bitterly he wanted to laugh at the simplicity of it, and then cry, and scream, and crawl out of his own skin and simply not be. . . . She would never again eat—she would not—because of what he did to her.
His countenance transformed, vertigo striking him, and his full warm stomach was now filled with rocks. Indeed, knives were cutting him. . . .
“Oh, no, no!” she said, noting his new terrifying expression and recognizing its cause. “I did not mean to make you feel uncomfortable, Marquis! Please, do not mind my careless words, it was just a passing silly memory! I was making small talk—”
“There can be no small talk between us,” he blurted, and his wonderful meal was now a boulder inside him. He regretted it already, regretted having even a bite.
“It does not have to be this way,” she said. “I was certain—I’d thought that by now, some things were in the past—”
“How can any of it ever be in the past?” he exclaimed, and stood up, pushing back the supper table with brutal force so that the fine china dishes clattered.
The fragile smile left her lips.
In that moment the servants arrived to clear the supper service. As they removed the leftovers of his meal, Vlau stood coldly, wanting to speak, to look at her directly, but frozen in a strange mindful pride.
As soon as they had taken away the dishes, raked the coals in the fireplace, and the door closed behind them, the Infanta said, “Please do me the courtesy of sitting down once more, Marquis.”
“It is wrong,” he said coldly, remaining standing, and no longer meeting her eyes. “I should not be here.”
“Maybe not,” she said. “But did you not say once that there would be no guilt? Do you not remember how you said it yourself?”
He frowned, the candlelight emphasizing his black brows, the shadowe
d hollows of his lean cheeks with their growth of dark stubble, giving him an even more fierce demeanor. “Yes,” he whispered. “I said it then. And I was a fool for having said it. But now—”
“Nothing matters any more.” She said the words softly and then stretched out her hand—thin and white, delicate skin over bone—pointing him back to the sofa. “Please . . .” she whispered. “If you go and leave me now, it would mean that nothing had changed indeed, and that your hate continues to burn at me and my family. If you go—” and her voice went silent.
“What?” he said, permitting himself once more to look at her. “If I go, then what?”
“Then I will be all alone in this room, in silence, with the candles softly dying and the fire eventually all gone out, in the dark . . . in the grave.”
And at that word, his heart was stilled. He heard her, and he sat down once more, where he had been, across from her in her high-backed chair.
“I will . . . stay,” he said. And his eyes did not blink—could not—for they were welling with liquid, and if he blinked, it would pool and run . . . and she would see it.
“Thank you,” said Claere, and her hands were once more folded in her lap.
There was a long pause of silence. The fire crackled in the hearth, and the light of the candelabras cast a soft buttery radiance at the well-appointed furnishings of the chamber, the brocade of the upholstery and the fine curtains.
Outside the glass window, in the darkness, against the mosaic of city lights, snow began to fall. Large white snowflakes floated down near the window, and brushed the glass with their cobweb pallor before sinking away out of sight.
“Tell me a story,” said Claere suddenly. “Tell me your favorite story of childhood, the one told to you when you were a little boy. The one that made you laugh and smile just before you fell asleep.”
Hearing her calm, soothing voice, his stiff posture eased somewhat. Vlau inhaled a deep breath, and then sat back against the fine cushions of the sofa. He tried to think—he thought back to what curious tales of magical desert kingdoms and flying carpets and clever genii his mother used to tell him and his sister and brothers as they lay down each night—back in the early days. Then he remembered one in particular, and with it a fragile warmth returned to his insides, slowly filling the dark places, turning eventually into a soothing flow of comfort and security and long-forgotten laughter.
And he started telling the story.
It was several hours past midnight. The candles in the candelabras had burned down into puddles of wax, and the wicks had ceased smoking a while ago. The fireplace too had faded into ruddy coals which had winked out one by one, until the room was submerged in darkness—all but for the light outside the window where the sfumato moon was a delicate blot of haze in the sky, while below everything was chiaroscuro contrast as the city lanterns continued to cast their cheerful golden dots into the sea of deep blue all around.
Claere sat motionless in the tall-backed chair, sometimes gazing out through the window at the twinkling cityscape of night. But mostly she looked at the man who was on the sofa, fast asleep. He had slid down against the cushions and pillows, at some point having fallen asleep while seated upright, but now was lying back, with his head lolling on one shoulder.
She watched his face slackened in sleep, seeing possibly for the first time how he could appear when not harboring a tense frown on his handsome features, or not glaring with intensity. And what she saw was a young man with circles of exhaustion under his eyes, a soft cast to his features, woefully unshaven cheeks and longish raven-black hair tousled around his forehead and ears.
Claere looked at him with a kind of gentle, painful, previously unknown affection that tugged at her and made her almost feel the place within her chest where once she had a beating heart.
Here was her murderer, the man who had struck a knife blade into that very place in her chest, and she should be feeling hatred and a desire for retribution. Instead, she could only look at him and feel pity, sympathy, and overwhelming excruciating warmth.
Earlier that night, after she had asked him for a story, just to get his mind off their grim reality, he had complied and started speaking. He talked non-stop, telling one tale, then another, and the tales turned into history and the story of his siblings and parents and his ancestral home, and outrageous childish pranks, and the grapevines laden with fruit so ripe it was nearly black, and the hot summer sun in a vibrant blue sky. . . .
His voice had been like music, its rich expressive cadence, its narrative, both soothing and invigorating in a strange dichotomy of living imagery. It filled her imagination with a distant world that was no longer—a world of happy innocence and bright colors, of fragrant breezes and dappled sunlight.
He talked thus, deep into the night, as the candles burned down, and he was eventually burned out along with them, his passionate words quenched, and his memories cast forth before them like a jumbled deck of cards. She listened to him, responding occasionally in her soft voice, nodding at other times, smiling when it was called for, but mostly allowing him to vent his intensity in the quiet solitude of this room. Finally he went silent, and paused, saying that he needed to rest his eyes, and then he exhaled in peace and was asleep in an instant, like a young boy.
Claere exhaled also, letting go of the mechanical breath she had held in reserve in her lungs so that she could make human living speech and hold a conversation with him. She then sat thus in stillness and silence, letting him rest, and watching his living peace . . . it was almost her own peace, or so she could let herself imagine. For, he had stayed in the room with her and thus made it a place of the living instead of her solitary grave.
And for that alone she was grateful.
As the fireplace burned down and the darkness in the room deepened by the time the moon finally sank beyond the horizon—though never reaching full pitch-black, for the city lights were too bright for that—there was nothing, no sound left, only his regular deep breathing. She listened to its comforting rhythm and watched the endless armies of snowflakes coming down outside the window.
At some point she wanted to rise and approach him, to sit down at his side—to look closer at the sheen of his olive skin and to observe his eyelids over eyes that occasionally moved rapidly in sleep, long dark lashes fluttering against his cheek.
But she refrained, for on some strange human level she did not want to frighten him, recalling herself, knowing full well what she now was—nothing more than an animated corpse. How would he feel, what jolt of primal terror, were he to wake suddenly and see her thus leaning over him, or simply nearby, staring at him with her cold, fixed, dead eyes?
And as Claere pondered this, seated primly in her chair—exactly as she had been for the last several hours, never having moved even a finger since he had fallen asleep—he suddenly awoke with a shudder and came to himself in the soft imperfect darkness.
“Ah!” he muttered, then said thickly in a sleep-laden voice, “Claere. . . .”
He had never once used her given name before, only called her “Liguon” or “Your Imperial Highness,” in each case speaking with disdain or with hints of mockery. Indeed, he had never spoken in her presence like this, not with this strange, raw inflection, and revealing such peculiar vulnerability. . . .
Such need.
“Claere!”
This time, because his utterance was a desperate cry—he was calling her!—she got up, stiffly and awkwardly, and moved to cross the distance in the room between them, and she leaned slightly over him, keeping her dead balance with some difficulty. “Yes, I am here . . .” she said, after refilling her lungs, and shaping the words into a whisper.
But he was sitting up now, his shadowed face wild with the moment of transition between waking and sleep, an instant of incomprehension and then sharp awareness.
Awareness of her.
With a gasp he moved forward then, toward her in the darkness. . . . And in the next instant she felt his hands takin
g rough hold of her own in a powerful desperate grip that would have been painful, had she been able to feel anything beyond a remote discernment of physical contact through the usual cotton thickness of her dead flesh.
Then he was coming down before her, falling, falling—kneeling on the floor, in the shadowed darkness, grasping her legs, her feet, the folds of her skirt, a mess of his limbs enclosing hers while somehow she remained standing upright. From the floor, he looked up at her, his upturned face faintly illuminated by the night’s glow seeping from the window, his black liquid eyes in agony. Finally her gripped her around the waist, pulling her small fragile body close to him as she stood stiffly. And stilling thus, he placed his forehead against her solar plexus, and then slid lower, against her silent womb. . . .
He held her thus—she, cold and brittle, he, burning and pliant and shaking with sobs, his face running with hot tears that stained the front of her simple dress, pressed against her, wallowing. “I am . . . sorry! So sorry! Forgive me!” he cried hoarsely over and over, gasped, choking on his tears and breath, shaking, shaking in a fever. . . .
Until she reached out and put her small cold hands on his head and stroked his dark soft hair.
“Claere!” he said, looking up at her. “Take my life, Claere! Please! Please, take it!”
He grasped her hands and this time pressed his warm trembling lips against the coolness of her wrists, her fingers, her arms, staining her lifeless doll’s skin with his scalding tears, like burning drops of liquid wax falling upon brittle parchment.
And suddenly, fiercely, he put his hand up on her left side, fingers splayed just below her chest, in that spot where he had once plunged steel, and which was now cold and silent. “It was here,” he whispered, “yes, here . . . it went in, and—and I hurt you . . . here!”
“Hush,” she replied. “It is no matter now.”
“Claere! My life is yours! All of me, I am—yours! Please . . . forgive me!”
Cobweb Forest (Cobweb Bride Trilogy) Page 9
