"Noah!" Seraphina whispered, horrified, clutching at him again.
"Enough!" he rasped at her, wrenching his arm free and nearly oversetting her in the process, glowering all the while into Valerian's magnificent, hateful young face. After a few deep and tremulous breaths, he managed to speak more calmly. "Now. What shall it be?"
Valerian spat onto the rush-covered floor.
His behavior was beyond enduring; Noah wrenched the precious manuscript from the lad's grasp, shoved it into Seraphina's, and struck his son with such force that Valerian stumbled backward and collided with a wooden support beam. Blood trickled from the corner of his mouth, and the fires of deepest hell blazed in his eyes.
He didn't say that he hated his father, for there was no need to speak of it. Noah knew a moment of torturous despair, and wondered if things would have been different if he'd made Seraphina call the boys by solid, ordinary names, such as Thomas or John, Gideon or Joseph.
Seraphina screamed, but Noah could not stop himself. He cuffed the lad again and entangled a meaty peasant's hand in that mass of chestnut hair, pulling hard, forcing his firstborn to his knees.
Valerian did not fight back, even though Noah could feel the strength surging inside the youthful, granite-hard body; he endured each blow, each kick, each slap and wrench, all the time gazing upon his father with that ancient, murderous contempt in his eyes. Only when it was too late did Noah realize that this very passivity was Valerian's greatest weapon; by suffering the punishment without struggle, he had assured his mother's undying devotion. At the same time he had sealed Noah's doom, robbed him of the last shreds of Seraphina's esteem. He, this changeling with the face of an archangel, had at last destroyed that which Noah valued above all else.
He drew back his foot, with a mighty moan of sheer agony, and kicked the crouching Valerian as hard as he could.
Seraphina shrieked, kneeling in the rushes to gather her bleeding and now-unconscious offspring into her arms, cradling his head on her bosom. When she raised her eyes to Noah's face, his worst fears were confirmed; the hatred he saw in her gaze would outlive them all.
Though she might lie beside him every night, and even suffer his gropings and groans in the darkness, though she might sit across the board from him for a hundred meals, nay, a thousand, Seraphina was eternally lost to him.
Noah felt tears burning in his eyes, for he loved his wife the way a saint loves God, with fevered and unutterable devotion. He held out one hand to her, unable to speak, and she stared at the twisted, calloused fingers for a long moment, then turned her head away. She buried her face in Valerian's hair and spoke not to Noah, but to their second son.
"Take your brother to his bed," she told Krispin in a bleak, distracted tone. "I'll get a cloth and some water."
Only then could Noah manage one desperate word. Her name.
She rose, helping Krispin lift an insensate Valerian to his feet. She did not look at her husband, and her words sliced through him like a reaper's scythe honed for harvest. "May God curse you, Noah Lazarus," she murmured. "May all His angels despise your name, now and on the Day of Judgment.
Valerian
I remember clearly, even after six hundred years, that I awakened sometime after sunset, in the dark, cramped little cell I shared with my brother, feeling as though I'd been trampled by the baron's horses. The straw in my pallet rustled when I moved, and I heard Krispin breathing softly in his own bed, against the opposite wall, but there was another noise tugging at the edges of my mind. It was several moments before I realized what else I was hearing—the sound of my father's drunken, disconsolate weeping.
I closed my eyes, as if to block it out, for although I had never loved Noah, I was not immune to his suffering. I did not revel in his injuries as he did in mine.
"Do you think she's left him at last?" Krispin asked.
"No," I replied, unable to withhold a small groan as I shifted on my bed, disturbing bruised muscles and broken skin. "She'll never leave him. Where would she go?"
There was a brief silence, within the room at least. Without, Father's wails grew louder and more desolate, like the cries of a wounded wolf, and I wondered if his agony would drive him to come after me again. Although he was not a cruel man in any other respect, there could be no denying that he enjoyed taking off strips of my hide.
"You're not his get," Krispin speculated, with no emotion whatsoever coming forth in his voice. "That's why he hates you so much."
The words wounded me sorely, although they shouldn't have. Certainly I'd had the same thought myself more than once, and I'd often pretended, when I was small, that I had sprung from the loins of someone far more interesting than Noah Lazarus, bootmaker, of Dunnett's Head, Cornwall. A smuggler, for example. Or a poet. Or one of the pirates who plagued the coasts of both England and France.
Alas, I had the boot-maker's broad shoulders and powerful, long-fingered hands; I had his temper and his oddly aristocratic nose, though he probably hadn't noticed the similarities. Oh, I was Noah's seed all right, but he couldn't have despised me more if I'd been begotten by the devil's great-uncle. And rather than try to make peace with him, to win his affection, I had always mocked him instead. Even now, after all these centuries, I'm not sure why I had to defy my father, to constantly rouse his ire; I only know that I could sooner have ceased breathing and stilled my own heart than begged him to love me.
"Valerian?" Krispin sounded slightly irritated; it always annoyed him when he spoke to me and I failed to reply straight away. "What do you think? Are you his son, or are you a bastard?"
I smiled in the fetid gloom, even though I ached in every conceivable part of my anatomy, even though I wanted, on some level of my being, to weep and weep until my body was dry as sun-parched straw. "I am his son," I replied, "and I am most assuredly a bastard."
Krispin did not laugh at my jest, and I was sorry for that. It would have been a comfort to me, his amusement.
Things began to crash against the walls and floors in the outer part of the house where Father kept his shop. He was overturning cherished possessions now, flinging them in rage, and I shuddered inwardly, praying he would not remember me.
"He might have loved us," Krispin said at length, "if we'd wanted to be bootmakers."
I was weeping silently by then, and I didn't want my brother to know, so I didn't speak. But I knew it wasn't our rebellion that made our sire hate us, most especially me. It was the fact that our mother had always taken our part against him.
After a while Father was quiet. Krispin drifted off to sleep, and so eventually did I. On the morrow Mother gave me the book that had started the latest battle, carefully wrapped in her best shawl, and spoke to me in a subdued tone.
"You bring it upon yourself, Valerian," she said, pouring water from a ewer into my wooden cup. Father was not in the shop, and Krispin had gone down to the sea at daybreak to watch for ships, the way he always did, so Mother and I were alone. "Always baiting him, always defying him. Why do you do it?"
I was ashamed, for I knew she had endured much because of my willful nature. "I don't know," I answered glumly, tearing off a piece of coarse brown bread for my breakfast. My lower lip was swollen, and it hurt to chew and swallow. I did not express my fear that if I ever stopped rebelling against Father I would instead grovel at his feet, pleading with him to love me.
She looked upon me sternly, then touched my hair. "Be gone. He'll be back soon, with the things he needs to put the shop to rights again, and he mustn't find you here."
I nodded, snatched up a second piece of the hard, dry bread, took the manuscript shrouded in poor brown cloth, and started for the door. Matthew Challes, Brenna Afton-St. Claire's tutor, whom she generously shared with the boot-maker's boys, disliked laggards and dealt with them severely.
I was the first to enter the schoolroom, that hallowed, light-filled place, with its rush-scattered floors and windows opening onto a vista of the wild sea, and Challes gasped audibly when he saw me. He w
as a tall man, taller than I was by the span of my hand, with deep-set brown eyes, a poet's sensual mouth, and pale skin. There was a faint smattering of pockmarks across his right cheek.
"So Noah's been at you again, has he, lad?"
I simply nodded and held out the book.
Challes set it aside, with less reverence than I would have expected, and stooped slightly, eyes narrowed, to study my battered face. "Good God, it's barbaric. How do you bear it? Why haven't you run away to London or gone to sea?"
I could not go from Dunnett's Head, though I dreamed of it, because I knew my mother would perish if I abandoned her, and because there was someone else I could not bear to leave, but of course I had too much pride to admit the truth. Blessedly, before I could be compelled to make an answer, the Lady Brenna breezed into the schoolroom, and as always, I felt my steady heartbeat turn to a violent thud-thud-thud when I saw her.
She was fifteen that year, nubile and womanly, and it was generally known that her father, the baron, was seeking far and wide for a suitable husband. He had only two requirements in a prospective son-in-law, as I recall—social rank and a respectable fortune. The contents of the baron's coffers, never remarkable, had been dwindling rapidly for a generation or so.
I remember quite clearly that I would have given my immortal soul to be her mate, to bury my hands and face in that wild cascade of lush, red-gold hair, to see myself reflected in those jewel-like green eyes, to press my body against hers, my masculine frame moving in sweet, intimate concert with her soft, lithe one.
To this day I recall that she was wearing a velvet frock that morning, rendered in a deep blue, and that it was no less beautiful for its shabbiness.
Seeing me, and my wounds and swellings, she winced in mingled amusement and sympathy. "My poor Valerian," she said, touching my cheek with a light, cool hand. "When will you learn to steer around trouble instead of sailing straight into the heart of it?"
I had no answer for her question; I was too busy wondering if she knew what even so innocent a caress did to me. Although my tunic fit loosely and hung to the middle of my thighs, thereby covering any involuntary evidence of my desire for milady, a sidelong glance at my tutor told me he'd guessed the true state of affairs.
I blushed and pretended I hadn't seen the mating of mirth and censure in his gaze. I was just opening my mouth to babble something inane to Brenna when Krispin came in, bearing an armload of autumn wild-flowers and grasses and beaming.
"For you, milady," he said, holding the gift out to Brenna and following up with a courtly bow. He adored her, as I did, and I wondered if she knew and returned his esteem in even the smallest part.
The light of pleasure blazed in her eyes, and I was bludgeoned by jealousy.
It was Challes who interceded, clearing his throat loudly. "Here, now, no more of this nonsense. Sit down, the lot of you, and we'll begin our lessons."
I couldn't concentrate; the sun was bright and the wind coming up from the sea and swirling through the gapped wooden walls and high windows of the old keep smelled of salt. I dreamed of grand adventures in faraway, exotic lands, with the Lady Brenna at my side, and paid scant attention to my Latin.
When we were through with our studies, Krispin vanished, as he often did, to explore one of his sea caves or walk the shore, and I lingered just outside the great, sagging gates of the keep, looking at the sea. Being a lad of seventeen summers, I was in no significant hurry to return to my home and spend the remainder of the day helping my father in the shop.
I had not heard Brenna's approach, and I was a little startled when she suddenly appeared beside me, holding some of Krispin's now-fading bouquet of flowers and sea-grass to her freckled nose. "Do you dream of leaving here forever, the way your brother does?"
I smiled, even though I felt an infinite sorrow stir in the depths of my spirit. Yes, I thought. And I dream of taking you with me. "I'd like to see France and the lands beyond," I conceded, cautious in her presence as always, because her opinion of me meant everything. "What about you, milady? Do you imagine being married and bearing children?"
A brief, troubled silence followed, during which I suffered the proverbial agonies of the damned, fearing I'd said the wrong thing. She gazed out toward the sea, squinting against the brightness of the late afternoon sun, her expression so solemn, so mournful, that I wanted to take her into my arms and promise to protect her from dragons and devils and all else she might fear.
Finally she looked up into my face. "I'm to go to Northumberland," she said at last. "Father has found me a husband there. Word reached us yesterday, and he told me as we supped."
I felt a great wail of grief and protest rise in me, pulsing painfully in my throat, but I did not release it. It would have frightened Brenna, and otherwise changed nothing.
Brenna linked her arm through mine. "I don't want to leave you, Valerian," she said. "You love me, don't you?"
I merely nodded, for I would not have dared to speak even if I could have managed it. Without Brenna, my life would be unendurable. And there would be no more lessons in the keep, no more Challes, no more books and poetry and music.
For the first time, I truly wanted to die. In retrospect, that seems an exquisite irony.
She rested her head against my shoulder, and I could smell woodsmoke in her hair, and the sea, and that scent that was, and is, peculiar to her. "I've always pretended," she said in a voice so small that the wind nearly carried it away, "that I would marry you one day. I knew it couldn't happen, and yet…"
I turned, staring into her face, bewildered and full of wild, impossible hopes. "What did you say?"
Brenna smiled that same unbearably sad smile that had rested upon her lips moments before. "Is it so difficult to believe," she countered, "that I should love you?"
I swallowed hard, full of sadness and ecstasy. How wrenching it was, knowing that she wanted me as I wanted her and, at the same time, being aware to the depths of my soul that we could never be together.
She interlaced her fingers with mine. "How will I bear it?" she murmured, asking herself, not me. Asking the sea and the hard, brittle blue of a September sky.
By then it was all a blur to me, the water, the village, the grassy slope leading down to the shore, for I was blinded by tears. I could not answer her question, or my own, which was exactly the same.
Brenna stepped in front of me, raised her hands to my face. "Perhaps Father would let us be married if I told him how much we care for each other."
I laughed, and the sound was jagged, seeming to tear the flesh of my throat as it passed. "The baron? Bless a marriage between his daughter and the bootmaker's son? Good God, Brenna, he'd have me in chains before day's end, and on the rack not long after!"
She rested her forehead against my chest, and I wanted to push her away, for there were always servants and others about, watching, interpreting what they saw and heard to suit themselves, passing it along to all who would listen. Still, thrusting her from me would have been like expelling the breath in my lungs and never drawing another. I felt her tears dampening my tunic, and laid my hands lightly, reverently, on her slender shoulders.
At last she drew back, sniffling, and her attempt to smile rent my heart. "Perhaps he will be a good man, my husband. Perhaps he will be gentle and think me pretty."
I closed my eyes, remembering the sounds I'd heard so often, through the daub-and-wattle wall that separated my parents' chamber from the one I shared with Krispin. Those were primitive times, and that particular brand of modesty was in short supply in the countryside and the village alike. I had seen men take their wives in the fields, like dogs mounting bitches in the street.
"Jesu," I whispered, shattered by the image of Brenna lying in another man's bed. In that moment I wanted to go to the high cliffs south of the village and fling myself off them, into the sharp rocks clustered below. "Yes," I said finally. "He'll think you pretty. How could he not?"
We parted then—surely it was Lady Brenna wh
o broke away first. I descended the hillside toward the village without looking back. I was still half blinded by tears and thus didn't see Krispin until I'd practically collided with him.
"There's a ship on the horizon!" he cried, fairly dancing with excitement.
I pushed him aside—perhaps I was a bit too rough in my despair. I didn't gave a sacred damn if the shore was lined with Viking vessels, brimming with spear-waving invaders. Brenna was going away, probably before the winter snows, and I would never see her again.
Krispin was not content to let me pass; he clutched the sleeve of my tunic and wrenched me back. I swung at him without thinking, catching him up alongside the head and dropping him to his knees.
I barely noticed the flush of fury in his fine-boned face, or the venomous spark in his eyes. He raised himself and came hurtling at me like a snarling dog, and I cuffed him again, more out of surprise than anger.
He went sprawling once more, in the chilly grass, and then sat up, wiping blood from the corner of his mouth. His face was utterly expressionless as he sat there, looking up at me, thinking God only knew what.
"I'm sorry," I said, extending my hand to him, making no effort to hide the mark of tears on my face.
Krispin allowed me to help him, though oftentimes when we'd had such a scrap, he'd slap my hand away when I offered it. "What's the matter with you?" he demanded, dusting off his leggings and tunic. Like mine, they were poor and ugly garments, rough to the touch and virtually useless against the chill of a cold night. "I was only trying to tell you about the ship—"
I was already striding toward the village again, and the shop, where my mother would be keeping her pitiful vigil, watching for Krispin and me as if we were sailors just home from the sea, while my father watched her, in turn, and seethed. My brother scrambled to get into step with me.
I dragged one arm across my wet face, and we talked no more of ships. We could not have guessed, in our innocence, what monstrous suffering that vessel would bring to us all.
Time Without End Page 2
