“She is called Calyx,” Mere Morwenna said. “For she was born from her mother’s side with a caul covering her body, and, within its bloom, a child who brought with her the wisdom of another world.”
“Is this why she is a misshapen thing?” I said, feeling bile and bitterness in my throat. “Who is her mother?”
“Her mother is dead,” Mere Morwenna said. “She gave her life that this child might live. She is born from the Veil itself and brought into this world as a cupbearer for the goddess.”
“She is no changeling,” I said. “She is deformed. Children are often killed at birth, so your friend Brewalen tells me, when they have these deformities.”
“I may be deformed on the outside,” the cloaked girl said, “others hold their misshapings within. Some are like castles—beautiful and fair at a distance, but within the walls themselves, there is pestilence and poison that has not yet been torn at by the ramrod. Do you trust the outer beauty or the inner? Do you look for that which will corrupt with time, which hides darkness, or what is timeless?”
“You disgust me,” I said and glared at Mere Morwenna, also. “You and your kind are truly witches and lovers of the Devil. How else would my mother be accused of such a crime if she had not fallen in with your lot? How many other peasant women go to your herbs and healings and come away with the mark of the Devil upon them?”
The rage that filled me, the wanting to blame them for my mother’s imprisonment, grew from an enormous fire within me that I needed to expel in order to breathe the night air without feeling the smothering burden of helplessness. I felt as I hadn’t in years—on the verge of tears, yet I would not let them fall from my eyes. “Had she kept to her life, though it were the life of the lowest whore in Christendom, she would not await a terrible judgment, both here and in the world to come.”
Mere Morwenna drew back from me as if she had encountered a viper.
The veiled one called Calyx stepped forward, pointing her finger nearly up to my face. “You have seen a demon yourself once. You have seen what you are meant to know.”
Mere Morwenna reached out, clutching the girl, drawing her back to the folds of her cloak.
“If you are a witch, then work spells to release my mother from prison. Bid the Devil free her!” I shouted as I returned to my mount.
“Give your mother peace,” Morwenna said before I rode off.
When I returned to the castle, Alienora stood along its slender parapet, as if she’d been there all night, keeping watch. Her beauty against the torchlight inspired me with affection and took away much of my anger. She was purity. She was love.
In her form, I saw all that could be made right of this world. I left behind that Forest world of witches and devils, and hoped that the purest light of love could overcome the darkness.
7
I first sought out Corentin, and found him drinking before the hearth in the Great Hall surrounded by hounds. I leapt upon him, nearly pressing his face into the fire. His eyes glowed with the flames, and I saw fear in his soul.
“What have you done?” I asked. “Why have you turned my master against me? Of what crime am I accused by you?”
“The crimes of sodomy, and blasphemy, and thievery,” he said, and then began laughing. “And should you kill me now, all would know of it. Kill me here, by the fire, with drink in my hands, so that it might be known that you are vermin. That you are the monster that I have said you are. That you are the murderer, like your mother. It is in your blood, Mud-hen. That is what I have said of you. But do not be so angry with me, fair one, for although I said the words, it is your master who believed them because he knows your true parentage. He knows from what sin you are born. He knows the stain that is upon your brow that causes you to be a twisted soul.”
8
I risked my life, but I ran through the castle, up and down corridors, until I came to my master’s chamber. I awoke him, in his bed. He lay there with a woman whose nakedness made her lighten the darkness. Kenan drew a robe around his shoulders, pushing me into the corridor, then shutting the door behind him.
“I have heard the lies from Corentin himself. I have heard what poison he has planted in your brain. Hear me out, sir. Hear from me what I have suffered at Corentin’s hands. Do not speak, and when you do, you may cut off my hands if you wish. But only after I have spoken my part.”
Kenan, fury in his face, grunted an acknowledgment to me.
“I came here, sir, an innocent. You remember me then. You brought me to this place. I thought it to be a world that would be better than my own home. I thought that the marsh and the mud were left behind when I entered this castle. But instead, I found soon enough that mud not scraped off at the threshold could be brought within even the better households of the land. For within a fortnight of living here, Corentin came to me and forced himself upon my flesh. You may remember me then. I was puny and slight. I had not had the food that Corentin, older and stronger, had been fed since his birth. Neither did I have strength then. Who do you think could have been the victim? The puny, pale, filthy boy from the marsh, or the strong boy who took what he wanted and did as he wished? I risk my own death and my own reputation by telling you this. I swore that I would never tell a soul for fear of the shame such a revelation would rain down upon me.
“And thievery? Have I stolen anything? Has gold gone missing? Or silver? Has a horse vanished from the stable? A swan from the pen? Have even the roasters been taken by any other than the fox? If something was stolen, I would look first to Corentin himself, for he has proved himself a knave to me many times over. And blasphemy? How does that stand against me? I am at Mass each Sabbath. I am in chapel for morning prayers when not called away on the hunt.” Then I stopped. Looked at him. I could see that his mind was trying to grasp all of this at such a late hour.
Then he said, “You have had a long night. Go to bed, boy. There are other concerns in the world than yours at the moment.”
“You must tell me, sir,” I said. “You must. Where have I fallen in your eyes? How could one man’s words to you, lies about me, change your good opinion of that boy who you knew? Corentin told me it was because you knew who my father was. I demand that you tell me.”
“You demand? You demand?” he said, and came at me with both fists. His hand grasped my collar, lifting me against the wall, and he hit me hard in the jaw. I struggled, but he was strong and fierce, and I felt myself fall to the ground. He kicked at my ribs once.
He stood over me.
I lay there, clutching my side.
“You are the bastard of an evil man I once knew well. A man who delighted in perversions and worshipped the Devil himself. A man who took the woman I loved from me. From me. From my arms. And he destroyed her. And from their union, you came. I thought I could love you as I once loved your mother. As I once saw her, so beautiful and young and happy and innocent. I thought by saving you from that misery, I would make amends for what I left her to in years past. But then you had to destroy my own son. My own child. With your father’s sins and deviltry. And now you lie to me. Like a serpent in the field, if I had a sword right now, I would cut you down and not think the worst of it.”
“Sir?” I pled, weakly. “How? How? I do not know your son.”
“I have many bastards. But only one that I have brought up and given help. He’s your brother whom I took from his mother’s arms as a baby to save him from that accursed rat’s nest. And he is my son. His name,” my master said, “is Corentin.”
Then he turned and went back into his chamber.
Chapter 6
________________
THE BLASPHEMY
1
The night’s events troubled me such that I found no peace in sleep, nor could I return to my quarters, where I would surely find Corentin if he were not abed with a serving girl. I felt battered and worn, and I did not know where to turn for solace. I went to the chapel and prayed before the Virgin for guidance in that dark time. I lit candles and
went to sit at the foot of the statue. I placed one small candle in the palm of Our Lady’s hand, and it extinguished too soon. I lit it again, and put it in her stone hand, and again, its small flame went out. I began to wonder if I might be cursed, or losing the battle for my soul within me. In those days, the priests told us that both angels and devils vied for our immortal souls. We could not control such battles, nor determine the outcome. We were at the hands of the invisible agents of the Divine and the Damned, and I felt that night that my soul had been fated to Hell.
Sometime in the night, perhaps just before dawn, the only angel I had ever met came to the chapel. Alienora. She, too, had been unable to sleep.
“I saw the light here and thought our guard might be praying,” she said. “What vexes you that you cannot sleep?”
“I would ask the same of you, my lady.”
“I have been troubled by dreams,” she said as she knelt beside me. “Dreams of which I dare not speak.”
Boldly, I put my hand against her cheek. I felt a feverish heat in her, which shocked me to my core. I had imagined her a chaste and pure angel, but this fire on her face was of the animal. My hand warmed against it, and the warmth spread up my arm to my shoulder, then throat, and my entire body went from a frozen winterland to burning.
I looked into her eyes and saw there a desire I had not expected from one so pious. Her lips seemed parched. She whispered something to me then, and I did not understand it. I watched her lips as she spoke. I listened again as she said, “I dreamed of you.”
I leaned over, pressing my lips against hers. My lips moistened hers, and I felt a gentle softening of her mouth, as it opened against my rough pressing. Like a rose blossoming, her lips parted. My hands went to her face, holding her in that kiss like I held a wineskin to my lips, unable to stop drinking from it. I felt wetness from her tongue as mine played against hers. As her lips parted further, a bit of ash from my internal fire leapt into her mouth. Her arms went about my neck, and my hands roamed from her face to her beautiful hair, and I drew back and caught my breath as I looked at her. She gave me that look of the animal in mating season. Her eyes were blurred and clear at the same time. She looked both at me and through me. She seemed to have donned a mask, and a sly smile on her face showed fear and yet daring. Was she as chaste as she seemed? How could I know? Would I be murdered for the liberties I took with her now?
I caressed her throat, kissing to her shoulder, then pressed my lips to the nape of her neck. She smelled of lemon and herb and evergreen. She took my hand and brought it to her throat, and then to her breasts. I began undressing her, my mind no longer my own, my body no longer a servant of my soul but of that animal instinct that raises up and lays low all people in the spark of youth. Her breasts were small and perfect, flickering with shadows from the candlelight, and I took each nipple in my mouth. Hearing her gasp slightly, I glanced up at her face, which now seemed to burn with lust as I had never before seen in a woman, virgin or whore. She grappled with my outer garments, tearing at them when they would not come off. Soon enough, we’d created a pile of clothes and she had begun licking my chest, pressing her face into the center of it as if she could find my heart to kiss it as well. My manhood grew enormous to me, and I felt powerful as she whispered her love for me in my ear, licking around the whorls of that part of my flesh that was so sensitive to a woman’s touch.
I pressed my hand against her flat belly, then wandered to that thatch of hair that crude men call names of affection but which I thought of as the source of power over men. My hand felt moistened as it found her center, and I heard the gentle purring sound in her throat and the tender gasps and moans as her hips pressed up against my fingers. We kissed long then, and I held her and roamed her body with my hands, and she brought her hands down to my maleness, caressing it, feeling its length, bringing out its own moisture into her fingers as she played with it and became familiar with the slight sway of its movements.
I had no doubt now that she was not the virgin she had seemed and that she had been taken by at least one other in the household, whether it was someone unknown to me, or perhaps even the loathed one, Corentin, who had stolen my own childhood from me and been revealed to be my mother’s child from before my birth. But these thoughts troubled me not, for her heat and her handling my erect phallus had taken my soul into darkness while my flesh sought its own natural home.
I was the one to moan and gasp when she took me fully in her mouth, kneeling before me as if I were a saint, but her worship was of lust and pleasure. I found, with my left hand, her backside as she thus brought herself to my need, and, with my right, played with her beautiful red hair. Then I was the one to bring her legs to my face, and I kissed and worshipped there as no man had before, wanting to meet her fire with my own, wanting to incite her pleasure to the brink of wild, unimaginable lust, to unleash something within us both through my mouth and her opening.
Then we kissed, tasting of each other, a communion of passion, and her legs wrapped around my hips, and I plunged into her with the abandon of one who understands a woman’s readiness, the moment at which the vessel is at its brink of fullness, and as I did so, I felt the barrier within her. Before I could even realize what I’d done, I felt my phallus push through it, opening her, and I heard her cry out. I covered her mouth to silence her, and knew that she had, indeed, been a virgin before I had entered that sacred space.
Rather than wince in pain or beg me to stop, as some maidens had done in my youth, I felt her hips rock against me, and she whispered for me to continue, to increase my fury inside her. I had never experienced this with a lass, and it incited my body to heights I had not known before. I felt myself lengthen within her, although this was impossible, I felt my member grow fat in that small secret space that is so protected by maidens. She brought her hands to my buttocks and held them against her body as if to draw all of me into her.
And then I felt the supreme moment. Before the waves of pleasure. Before that final exultant second of loss.
We held time hostage in that moment. We were still. Inside her, I was still. She, too, was still.
Our vision locked in a dream together.
Frozen.
Held.
Silence.
And then release came, and I began kissing her face as I withdrew myself, and felt that awful breaking of the thread, of the stream, between us, that moment when the cat turns and spits at its mate, and the rabbit fights with its beloved.
So she looked at me with a kind of horror, then up to Our Lady’s face.
She drew back from me, weeping.
I could not console her. I, too, felt that animal coldness that all mating brought when it ended. It was a recognition of death, I think, of the fact that we were indeed animals, and the illusions of the world of men were nothing in the face of the moment after the fornication had ceased. We, in our world, believed we had been created in the image of God and that we were above the animal kingdom. But that damned moment after the breaking of the thread between the two bodies brought the understanding that we were as doomed as the sheep in the meadow, as the stag in the forest when the horn of the hunter blows and the dogs begin to howl.
2
We parted at dawn, weary from our efforts, drained of life, it seemed, and although I told her of my love for her, she did not return the words. But when night came again, she found me at the last of my labors and asked that we might talk of our affection. Although she did the speaking, what I heard from her was both encouraging and dreadful. She loved me, she told me, with all her heart.
“But I am the baron’s daughter,” she said. “You work in the field and in the hunt. Although my betrothal to a man I never met ended in his death, I did not then feel cursed. I do now, for I believe we violated that most Sacred Lady’s sanctuary. We forgot ourselves, and our bodies befouled that place. I have prayed to her who has never understood the sin of lust and asked her forgiveness. She answered my prayers with the atonement I should make, a
nd I shall do as she has guided me.”
My heart pounded in my breast, and I wanted to embrace her to me and beg her not to speak of atonement and sin when my love for her, and my desperation for her arms and the longing for that scent of evergreen and lemon in her hair, had become overwhelming.
“I am going to take the vows,” she said. “The sisters who live in the caverns in Laseur will welcome me, and I shall bring my dowry to Our Lady herself. This is the only atonement and expiation for the sin I committed. I must become a Bride of Our Lord, and, in doing so, I shall also pray to the Virgin for your sake and for your mother’s, as well.”
I stood there, stunned, unmoving, and could say nothing to dissuade her. It was believed that the only way to restore virginity to a maiden was to take vows with the Church and to serve Our Lady as a nun. The Sisters in the caverns lived an ascetic life, with few comforts, and some, anchoresses, had not seen the light of day in many years. There were rumors of leprosy that had been cured by what were called the Virgins of the Rock, and that Our Lady had herself been seen many years before, in the sky over the entrance to the caverns of Laseur.
Her flesh and her purity would torment me for days and nights after this.
3
Ewen went with me to take food to my little brothers and sisters, whom I had never come to know. A neighbor who had lost a child from fever took in the youngest baby and nursed her. I arranged to send eggs and some grain to this kind woman, and she told me that she would care for the baby until such a time as my mother would be free to return home. I felt heartened by the hope she offered.
The Priest of Blood Page 10
