Christmas Carol

by Speer, Flora

  The party broke up at that point. Those assigned to kitchen duty began to wash and put away the dishes. A few members drifted toward the basements, to sleep. Bas and Jo disappeared into his room next to the kitchen, from where Bas could hear anyone attempting to enter the house. Pen and Al headed for the stairs leading to the upper floor. And Nik took Carol’s hand, keeping her close to his side as the others dispersed.

  Looking up at him, she saw in his eyes the knowledge that lay certain and sure in her own heart. He did not need to ask the question, and she knew she did not need to answer it, but all the same, she did.

  “Yes,” she said, her voice quiet and calm, and free of all doubts or questions.

  Chapter 12

  “I have a machine that will play recorded music.” Nik lit the two candle stubs in the holder on the library desk. “Sometimes when I dream of you, in the dream my favorite song is playing and I hold you in my arms while we move together as though I know the steps to a long-forgotten dance.”

  “I would like to hear that music.”

  From a drawer of the desk he removed two disks and a flat black box about the size of his hand.

  “This is old equipment,” he said. “We found it when we were cleaning out one of the rooms. Luc is clever with machinery; he works with it at the water-cleaning plant, and so he was able to make this player function for me.”

  Carol expected the sound to be as scratchy as a tune from an antique phonograph record, but obviously Luc had known what he was doing when he repaired the disk player. The music was clear and pure. The strains of an old waltz filled the library like the echoes from a long-ago ball. Carol caught her breath, and her eyes stung with sudden moisture.

  “I do not know this dance except in dreams,” Nik said, holding out his hands. “Will you teach me?”

  She went into his arms, and showed him where to place his hands, and counted out the steps for him. And all the while, her heart was beating to an ancient refrain. The music filled her ears and her mind, drenching her in reawakened happiness.

  “It’s easy,” Nik said after a few minutes. “But then, I have an expert teacher.”

  It’s easy if some part of you already knows the steps, she thought.

  When the music stopped he went to the machine and set it to play the same waltz over again.

  “Do you always hear the same song in your dreams?” she asked, watching his long fingers moving on the equipment. “Never another song?”

  “It is always the same, but I cannot be certain if the music was already in my mind or if I learned it when I was finally able to use the player. The first time I heard the recording, it seemed to me as though the song was familiar.”

  It was, she thought. Three hundred and fifty years ago, you knew it well.

  The second time they danced, he was much more sure of himself and of the steps for the waltz. He caught Carol in his arms and whirled her around the nearly empty library as if they were on the polished floor of a grand ballroom. Looking into his eyes, seeing his smile, she felt the centuries drop away until once again they were betrothed lovers entranced by newfound desire, caught in hope and in dreams of a bright future together. When the music stopped a second time he stood holding her, looking hard at her, and she knew he had seen the image in her own mind.

  “How strange,” he murmured, blinking as if to clear his sight. “How wonderful. It was like a waking dream. We were somewhere else, a place beautiful and shining with candlelight.”

  “I know. I saw it, too.” She smiled at him with trembling lips.

  “It was not just the music,” he went on, “nor the memory of the dreams I’ve had of you. It was real.”

  “So is this, the here and now.” She could no longer bear the intrusion of the past upon the present. True, he was, in a mysterious way she did not understand, Nicholas, but he was also Nik, and the man he was in this future time was a brave and noble person. He, too, was worthy of her love.

  She knew they would soon lose each other, but whether he came to her as Nicholas or Nik she would not stop loving him, and the love was what was important. In all the world, in any time, love was all that mattered.

  “I have not had a woman for many long months,” he told her, his voice low. “Not since well before last Winter Solstice. I have been so consumed with planning, and with making certain all of my friends would be safe, that I have taken no time for myself. For these few remaining days before the uprising begins, will you lie with me, Car? Will you stay with me for the entire night?”

  “I have already said yes,” she reminded him.

  “I thought it best to put it into words so there can be no misunderstanding. You have seen how I live. I own few earthly possessions and my existence is a dangerous one. I can offer you nothing but my heart, and what hope there is for our cause.”

  “There are no greater gifts than love and hope,” she whispered.

  He took her face between his hands, smiling when she raised her own hands to hold him in the same way. Slowly, prolonging their anticipation, they drew closer, until at last their mouths met, and held, and melted into one warm and blissful joining of lips and tongues and richly burgeoning desire.

  It was a long while until he released her. Leaving her to stand reeling from the effects of his kiss, he took up the pottery candleholder and thrust it into her hands.

  “Hold on to this and don’t burn yourself,” he ordered. Before she could ask him what he intended, he swung her off her feet and into his arms.

  “Nik, this is dangerous,” she cried, trying to shield the candle flames and hang on to him at the same time.

  “It is the least dangerous thing I have ever done,” he responded. He carried her out of the library to a room that opened off the main hall. He managed it without incinerating either of them, but looking at the flames reflected in his eyes when he put her down on his bed, Carol thought it would not be long before they were both consumed.

  With unsteady hands she set the candle-holder on the floor beside the bed. Then she looked around. It was a bare little chamber, a space stolen from the back end of the old drawing room. The familiar carved molding along the ceiling stopped abruptly where it met the plain expanse of a more recently constructed wall. There was one long window curtained in olive green blankets. She was sure the opening behind the blankets was covered by boards. There was a small chest of drawers, and a wooden chair with two slats missing from its back. The bed, covered with another olive blanket, was wide but hard and lumpy. That was all—walls, covered window, bed, chest and chair, and two candles. It looked like Paradise to Carol.

  Nik sat on the bed beside her. While she was looking at the room he had stripped to the waist. Carol ran her fingers along a wicked-looking raised scar that crossed his chest.

  “Where did you get this?”

  “It was a gift from one of the civil guards some ten years ago,” he said. “I was fortunate. They did not learn my identity, and my friends got me safely away. I have been more careful since.”

  “You could have been killed!” she cried. “You could still—”

  “Not another word,” he commanded. “What happens three days from now is in the future. I will not spoil the intervening days and nights by worrying. Not when I can have you in my arms.”

  As he spoke he was working at the sash and the buttons of her raincoat. The house was so badly heated that Carol had immediately adopted the habit of her companions, and at all times wore as many layers of clothing as possible. She’d added the old cloak Pen had found for her when she went outdoors.

  “So many garments,” she murmured, letting him remove the raincoat with its woolen winter lining and then the cardigan sweater. Beneath this she still had on a gray wool turtle-neck sweater and matching wool trousers.

  “The clothing only makes you appear more provocative,” he said. “I have spent many delightful moments wondering what lay beneath it.” He paused, looking with some amusement at her plain cotton bra and briefs before remov
ing them, too. Then he waited, giving Carol time to finish undressing him. His eyes glinted with easy male humor when she gulped at the sight of his proud flesh.

  Like the rest of the house, his room was cold. Carol began to shiver. With a sound deep in his throat that was part chuckle and part growl of rising passion, he quickly tumbled her under the covers and got in beside her. The thin, patched sheets were cold, the blankets were inadequate. Only Nik was warm. She clung to him as if her life depended on his heat.

  “Are you frightened or only freezing?” he teased.

  “How could I be afraid of you?” She put her hands on his chest, running a finger along the ridge of scar tissue. While he nibbled at her earlobe, she sighed with pleasure. “I am cold, but I do believe you will find a way to warm me as quickly as possible.”

  “I will try.” He moved from earlobe to throat to shoulder. He reached her breasts and she arched against him, moaning. Heat filled her and she was vividly aware of his hardness against her thigh. Her need for him was a painful ache. Their teasing banter ended suddenly. Unable to control herself, she grabbed for him.

  “Car,” he groaned, “I’d be gentle if I could.”

  “Don’t wait.” She shifted, giving him ready access to her hot and moist flesh. “You don’t have to be gentle, either. I don’t feel gentle, myself. I feel greedy. I want—want all of you—Nik!”

  She screamed as he filled her, and then she wrapped her arms and legs around him, pulling him closer, ever closer, rising to meet him as he pounded into her in a fury of passion. It was as though he exploded inside her. Carol bit his shoulder, trying with the last fragments of thought available to her to stifle her cries. She was unsuccessful. She gave up the effort to keep some modicum of control over herself because it was too distracting when all she wanted was to follow him into the place where he now was, where blinding, searing passion canceled out all thought of yesterday or tomorrow, where there was no time, but only the present, the moment, and the two of them together, made one in love.

  When she recovered enough to think again, she was still in his arms and he was still part of her. She marveled that she had ever thought his room was cold.

  “I’m sorry,” he gasped, his rough cheek against hers. “That was too fast. I should have been more careful of you but, Car, I lost my mind. Never—never before—”

  “It was just right.” She kissed him to stop the unnecessary apology. “Just what I needed. Time enough to be slow later.”

  “I wish I could be sure we would have the time.”

  “We have tonight.” She moved a little, then gasped in shocked surprise. He had not withdrawn from her and he was growing hard again. She closed her eyes, enjoying the sensation.

  “It’s amazing what a year of abstinence can do,” he murmured, and fell to devouring her once more.

  Neither of them made any pretensions to innocence. They did not discuss their romantic histories, or talk about the future they knew they could not share. Instead, they devoted the night to enjoying each other, to giving— and taking—as much pleasure as possible in the hours before dawn.

  Thus it was that when Bas rapped on Nik’s door, to warn him it was time for him to be up and dressing if he intended to be in the square before the Solstice ceremony began, Carol stretched beside her lover, and kissed his cheek and the scar on his chest and then his mouth, and did not feel the least bit injured or insulted when he rolled away from her and got out of bed and began to dress.

  She lay watching him in the light of the now-guttering candles, knowing an inner peace and completion she had never experienced before. As during the hours of the night, so now in these few moments before the festival day began, she did not think of any other time or place or person. There was only Nik.

  “You’d better hurry,” he urged, seeing her with the coarse green blanket pulled up to her chin. “The square becomes crowded and it’s often hard to find a place to stand where you can see what is happening.”

  Breakfast was a simple meal, only a chunk of coarse brown bread left from the previous night and a cup of hot, flavored water that Bas called tea, but that tasted like no tea Carol had ever drunk before. She thought it was a mixture of dried herbs rather than real tea, but without complaint she swallowed it for its warmth and to wash down the dry bread.

  With Jo’s help Bas was already preparing the feast, and the kitchen was surprisingly warm. Carol noticed that there was an oven built into the chimney, and presumably this oven was being heated in advance. Bas trussed up the chicken the women had purchased the day before and placed it into a roasting pan. With so small a bird there was room left in the pan for plenty of the root vegetables that made up most of the diet at this cold season of the year. Peeled chunks of turnips, parsnips, carrots, and potatoes went in around the chicken. Bas threw some chopped onions on top and Jo sprinkled in a few herbs. Then the lid was secured and the whole thing put into the waiting oven.

  “It will cook slowly and be ready to eat by noontime,” Jo said to Carol. “I have made the bread already, and Nik is donating wine from his mysterious cellars down below.”

  “Then the sweets to finish the meal,” Pen added.

  “If we took away your sweets, would you celebrate the season as happily?” asked Jo, laughing.

  “Probably not,” Pen admitted. She sent a wink toward her brother, and winked at Carol, too.

  Still laughing, they all left the warmth of the kitchen for the damp chill of the pre-dawn square.

  “Is it always so cold in winter?” Carol asked Nik. They were picking their way through the debris that lay around Marlowe House. With the others well ahead of them, Carol did not think anyone would overhear what she said to Nik.

  “Sometimes, it’s colder,” Nik answered. When he spoke, his breath formed a frosty cloud.

  “During my time, December is much milder in this city.” Carol stopped talking while she negotiated a climb up a mound of broken masonry and a sliding descent along the other side of it. “What kind of bombs were used in the wars? Could the detonations have sent enough dust into the upper atmosphere to cool the climate?”

  “I don’t know. It may be so.” Nik’s voice turned bitter. “There is entirely too much we are not told. I hope that particular situation will change soon, so we will have the information we want and need. Car, I must warn you again. Be careful what you say while we are outside the house. There will be many civil guards in the square during the celebration. Some of them will not be in uniform.”

  “I understand. I won’t mention forbidden subjects again. May I ask questions about the ceremony?”

  “If you phrase them carefully and whisper them to me.” They were past the debris and onto the flat, paved expanse of the square. Nik took Carol’s arm. “Stay close to me.”

  There were no artificial lights. Only the faintly brightening sky lit their way as they crossed the square toward the World Tree at its center. A row of civil guards in helmets and brown overcoats kept open a circular area around the Tree, allowing no one to approach the metal artifact. There was no pushing or shoving, and the crowd was for the most part a quiet one. Only the occasional cry of a baby broke through the soft murmur of whispering voices and the shuffling sound made by many pairs of booted feet. The sky grew infinitesimally lighter, and an air of heightened expectation rippled across the crowd.

  “Here they come,” Pen whispered to Carol. She and Al were standing next to Carol and Nik, but in the semidarkness Carol could not discern the presence of anyone else she knew. Presumably, Bas, Jo, Luc, and the rest of Nik’s group had melted into the throng.

  At a nod from the officer commanding the civil guards the crowd separated, opening an aisle from one corner of the square to its center. Along this aisle walked a procession of notables. A man in flowing golden robes came first. Beneath his gold headdress his face was solemn as that of any priest, and Carol quickly decided that must be what he was. Behind him walked two women in sky-blue gowns. Since they were not shivering, Carol
wondered if they were wearing thermal underwear. Her own hands and feet were fast reaching a state of numbness, and she could not see how anyone could move so lightly while wearing gowns so sheer and loose unless they possessed an unapparent source of warmth.

  “The next person is one of the Leaders.” Nik spoke to Carol in a voice just above a whisper. “His name is Fal.”

  He was a plump, pompous-looking fellow with a slight limp. His tunic, trousers, and boots were all a deep shade of red, and a round medal of some kind hung from a heavy chain to rest on his too-wide chest. He was surrounded by a dozen or so attendants in black and gray. A collection of civil guards in brown and another group of military types in gray uniforms ended the procession.

  “The Leader’s personal guard,” Nik murmured into Carol’s ear. “We have only one Leader with us today. The other two are celebrating elsewhere.”

  The actual ceremony did not take long. This was doubtless because of the astronomical requirements of the Solstice, since sunrise only lasted for a few minutes, but Carol could not help wondering if the biting cold played its part to keep the participants moving through their roles with brisk efficiency. The priest in the gold robes approached the World Tree and began a singsong incantation which, after a few verses, was taken up by the women in blue and then, gradually, by the rest of the people in the square. As if at the command of the man who stood with golden arms outstretched, the sky began to take on a touch of yellowish dawn color. Against this pale shade the fingers of the World Tree arched upward, pleading.

  “Our square is used for this ceremony,” Nik informed Carol in a low voice, “because, thanks to the destructive wars, from here we have a direct view of the horizon for the midwinter sunrise.”

  No sooner had he finished speaking than the upper rim of the sun began to rise above the horizon. At the exact moment when the first ray of sunlight shone forth, the Orb appeared.