Hounds of God

by Tarr, Judith

  How easily they had taken him in, though not, to be sure, without suspicion. Even in his hunting he smiled to remember his first encounter with Bianca: returning from the market that second day with Stefania and finding the servant not only up but about, ancient, gnarled, tiny as old Tithonus who in the extremity of immortal age shriveled into a grasshopper.

  But she had the voice and the will of a giantess, and for all her ears’ lack, her eyes were piercingly keen. She could see a handsome young man well enough, and roar at him for a rake and a corrupter of maidens, and purr when he smiled his best and whitest smile. Although she trusted nothing that was both young and male, nor ever would, she had been heard to admit that that particular specimen seemed less dangerous than most. Especially under her watchful eye.

  He stumbled. His power plummeted in a flurry of feathers; battled for control; strained upward. A gust caught it, bore it up, and as it settled once more into an easy glide, hurled it madly skyward.

  Vast wings opened above him. A monstrous creature filled the sky: an eagle, a roc, a dragon. Its talons were hooked lightning; its cry shattered stars.

  It could not see him. That was his single greatest gift, the one that was his alone, to pass unperceived by any power. Next to the reading of thoughts, it had been his first skill; he had never had to learn it, nor had he ever been able to teach it. While he wielded it he was safe even from that immeasurable might which loomed over him, its wings stretching from pole to pole.

  And yet he made himself as small as he might, small as a merlin, as a sparrow, as a hummingbird. His body shuddered with terror; his brain reeled. If he could only cling close, could follow, could—

  An eye like the moon bent upon him. Widened and fixed; saw.

  Impossible, impossible. He was invisible. No one could see him unless he willed it.

  The cruel beak opened. Laughter shrilled, high and cold and cruel. The talons struck.

  Full between them Nikki flew, seared by the heat of their nearness, racked with the pain of it. But free and fleeing to sanctuary, the high-walled refuge of his mind.

  It was deathly quiet. The world was like an image in a glass, clear and present yet remote, even the rain and the cold touching him only distantly.

  He floated through it with little care for where he went; he could not make his thoughts come clear. When he tried, he found only the memory of alien laughter.

  oOo

  Stefania was determined not to fret. She was a woman of both wit and wisdom; she had every intention of becoming a philosopher, whatever the world and the Church had to say. And a true philosopher should not care whether, or when, a pretty lad chose to favor her with his presence.

  Even when he had promised to come before dark, and the hourglass had emptied once already since the last grey light failed. Even though he had never before failed to appear precisely when he said he would. What did she know of him, after all? Maybe he had found another and prettier girl to call on.

  Bianca had cursed him, exonerated him, and fretted over him. Now at last she had vanished into the kitchen to raise a mighty clatter. Uncle Gregorios was gone, called away on some urgent business. Stefania had only herself, half a page of Pindar, and a blot on the vellum that she could only stare at helplessly.

  He was only a boy. A friend, maybe. Amusing; pleasant to look at; useful for carrying packages and scraping parchment and arguing theology. He listened wonderfully and never showed the least sign of shock at anything she said, although she shocked herself sometimes with how much she told him.

  Even her dream, outrageous and lunatic as it was and probably heretical, to have a house that was all her own with no man the lord of it, and a company of women like herself, women who had a little learning and wanted more. Like nuns, maybe, but neither cloistered nor under vows, brides not of Christ but of philosophy, each prepared to teach the others what she knew.

  Nikephoros had not even smiled at that wild fancy. Of course, he had said; it would be like any other school, except that both masters and students were women. Nor had he been mocking her as far as she could see. And that was rather far; he was marvelously easy to read.

  She thrust book and copy aside and stood. He was not coming. He was a guest in a monastery; he had companions who might have kept him with them. His brother was ill, she seemed to remember; maybe there had been a crisis.

  He could have sent a message.

  She shook herself. This was disgraceful. An hour’s wait for a stranger she had known a scarce fortnight, and she was good for nothing but to pace the floor.

  Her cloak found its way about her shoulders. She snatched up her hood and strode for the door.

  She had not so far to go after all. Arlecchina cried on the stair above the street, her coat dappled with the flicker of the wineshop’s torches. Something dark moved beyond her, swaying, turning.

  Stefania tensed. A drunkard or a footpad, and she unarmed and the door open behind her.

  The shadow flung out a hand. In the near-dark she knew it as much by its movement as its shape. Nikki’s face followed it, his hood and hat fallen back, his eyes enormous. His weight bore her backward.

  Somehow she got both of them up the steps and through the door. He was conscious, breathing loud and harsh, stumbling drunkenly. Yet she caught no reek of wine.

  Warmth and lamplight seemed to revive him a little. He pulled free and half sat, half fell into Uncle Gregorios’ chair. He was wet through, shivering in spasms, his face green-pallid.

  Stefania wrestled with the clasp of his mantle. He did nothing to help her. His hands were slack; his eyes stared blankly, drained of intelligence.

  The clasp sprang free. The cloak dropped. She coaxed and pulled him out of his gown, his sodden boots, and after three breaths’ hesitation, his shirt. He was well made, she could not help but notice, with the merest pleasant hint of boyish awkwardness.

  Quickly she wrapped her own mantle about him and heaped coals on the brazier, reckless with fear for him. There was no mark on him, she had seen more than enough to be sure; he had not been attacked or beaten, not by any of Rome’s bravos.

  He was sick, then. He had taken a fever. Except…

  “What is this?” shrilled Bianca. “What is this? Where’s the boy been? Sweeping up the plague, I can see with my own eyes. Don’t cry on him, child, he’s wet enough without. You make sure he’s dry; I’ll make him a posset. Fools of pilgrims, they should know the air’s got demons in it, thick as flies around the Curia.”

  Stefania was not crying. Not that she was far from it. Bianca renewed her clatter in the kitchen, to good purpose now and with suspicious relish. “Old ghoul,” muttered Stefania.

  Nikki huddled in her cloak. His trembling had stopped.

  “Nikephoros,” she said, “you should never have come here with a fever.”

  He did not respond.

  She frowned. “I know. You thought it was nothing. Just a touch of the winter chill. So you came out and you went all light-headed and maybe you got lost. It’s God’s good fortune you wandered in the right direction.”

  She touched his hair, which had begun to dry. He started violently to his feet, nearly oversetting her. His eyes were wide and wild, and they knew her; he reached almost blindly.

  She must have done the same. Hand met hand and gripped hard. His fingers were warm but not fever-warm.

  The green tinge had faded from his face. He looked almost like his proper self; he even tried to smile. He had let the cloak fall. She looked; she was no saint to resist such a temptation. Yes, he was comely all over, slim and olive-smooth, his only blemish a red-brown stain on the point of his shoulder. It looked like a star, or like a small splayed hand.

  It begged her to set her lips to it. His skin was silken, but firm beneath, with nothing in it of the woman or the child. She rested her cheek against it. “You frightened me,” she said. “In a little while I think I’ll be angry. If you don’t fall down in a fit first.”

  She stepped back a little too
quickly. He did not try to stop her. She reached for the cloak, shook her head, took Uncle Gregorios’ housegown from its peg. It was warm and soft and only a little too short.

  She did not know whether she was glad or sorry to see him covered, seated again and submitting meekly to Bianca’s fussing, even forbearing to grimace at the taste of the posset. His hair, drying, was a riot of curls; she wanted to stroke them.

  Bianca babbled interminably, hobbling about, bringing food and drink, poking at the coals. Nikki ate willingly enough, even hungrily, to the old woman’s open satisfaction. “There now, nothing wrong with you but rain and cold and monastery food—Pah! Food they call it, no better than offal, fit to starve any healthy young lad. No wonder you fainted on our doorstep.”

  Stefania swallowed a thoroughly unphilosophical giggle. It was that or scream. A fortnight’s acquaintance and a night’s anxiety, and it seemed that she was lost. Just like the wise Heloise away in Francia, all her learning set at naught by a fine black eye.

  She glanced at him, pretending to sip Bianca’s fragrant spiced wine. He was a little drawn still, a little grim as he gazed into his own cup. Concern touched her. “Tell me what’s wrong,” she said.

  He was not listening. She reined in her temper, reached for the jar, filled his cup. He looked up then. “Tell me,” she said again.

  She watched the spasm cross his face. Pain; frustration; a sudden and rending despair. He shook his head hard, harder, and pulled himself up. His lips moved clumsily, without sound. “I—I must—”

  “You’ll wait till your clothes dry. All night if need be.”

  He shook his head again. His shirt was in his hand, the borrowed gown cast off. He dressed swiftly, fumbling with haste, but he did not precisely run away.

  In the moment before he left, he paused. He regarded Stefania; he bent, taking her hands. In each trembling palm he set a kiss. Promising nothing. Promising everything.

  Fools, they were. Both of them.

  20.

  In the depths of Broceliande even the sunlight was strange, enchanted, more mist than light. It lay soft on Alf’s bare skin, with but a shadow of its true and searing power; warmth but no heat, sinking deep into his winter-wearied bones. He stretched like a cat, long and lazy and sinuous, inhaling the crushed sweetness of grass and fern.

  A light hand ran down his body. He turned to meet Thea’s laughing eyes.

  His joy leaped sun-high; fear crippled it. His hand shook as he touched her.

  She was real, solid. His fingers remembered every supple line of her; his lips traced the swoop of cheek and neck and shoulder, lingered on the rich curve of her breasts, savored their brimming sweetness. Slowly, tenderly, he left them, seeking out the arch of her ribs, the subtle curve of her hips, the hills and hollows of her belly, coming to rest at last in the meeting of her thighs.

  He raised his head, drunk with fire and sweetness. She slid down to match her body to his. Her fingers roved over the webwork of scars that was his back, traced the patterns time and love had found there, waked the shiver of pleasure that dwelt along his spine. His every nerve and sinew sang.

  Thou hast ravished my heart, my sister, my spouse;

  thou hast ravished my heart with one of thine eyes, with one chain of thy neck.

  How fair is my love, my sister, my spouse! how much better is thy love than wine! and the smell of thine ointments than all spices!

  Musk and silk, sun and salt and the sweet sharpness of fern. Her eyes were burning gold yet soft, as always—and only—for his loving. Heart and body opened to enfold him.

  Love and light shattered together. He lay in darkness, shuddering with the last spasms of his passion. No sun shone down; no leaves whispered; no warm woman-shape filled his arms. There was only dark and stone and a memory of incense.

  San Girolamo. The name brought back all the rest, with a remnant of sight, enough to see the shape of the room and the huddle of shadow that was Nikki on his pallet. The ample warmth at his back was Jehan, deep asleep and snoring gently.

  Alf sat up. He had fouled himself like any callow boy dreaming fruitlessly of desire.

  He rose, sick and sickened, powerless to stop his shaking. Never in his life—never—

  First there had been his vows, and his body never yet wakened to passion. Then there had been Thea. First innocence, then sweet and constant knowledge. Never this crawling shame. Mingled most horribly with grief for her loss, and anger at his weakness, and the languor that came always after love.

  Thea would have braced him with mockery. The words of the great Song lilted incongruously in his brain: Stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples: for I am sick of love.

  “Solomon,” he said, “Solomon, if you could have known what manner of creature your words would drive mad…”

  His voice rang loud in the gloom. Neither of his companions stirred. Jehan, alone in the bed, had sprawled across the whole of it. A splendid figure of a man, maned and pelted like a lion; his dreams were like a child’s, blameless, sunlit.

  Alf backed away from them. With water from the basin he washed himself, scouring brutally as if that small pain could punish his body’s betrayal.

  Now indeed he could see why so many saints had mortified their flesh. Hated it; beaten and starved it until its bestial instincts should be slain.

  He had been a bit of an ascetic. Was still, for the matter of that. But not for any great sanctity; it was only carelessness and a body that bore easily the burdens of fasting and sleeplessness, cold and rough garments and long enforced silences. He had never had to wage true war with it, nor ever yet let it fall into proper saintly squalor.

  His head came up sharply. And should he now?

  No vows bound him. He was a man of the world, a lord of wealth and power, with no fear of death to drive him into penitence. No Heaven to strive for, no Hell but this earth in the wreck of all his joy. If she was dead and both hope and hunt no more than a mourner’s madness, then he would know there was no God for his kind; it was as the Hounds clamored, that they were the Devil’s own.

  No. He could not believe that his people belonged to the Evil One. Not Thea. Not gentle childlike Maura with her core of tempered steel. Not Gwydion—Gwydion who lay wounded beyond anyone’s power to heal, forbidding Alf’s coming with indomitable will, commanding the army from his bed and from the mouth of his brother. Aidan would have given more, would have dwelt in the broken body and surrendered his own full strength for Gwydion’s sake, a selflessness as pure as any mortal saint’s.

  Still wet from his washing, Alf wandered into the courtyard. The air was raw and cold, he knew as one knows beneath a heavy swathing of garments. Soon now the bell would ring for the Night Office. The monks would stumble blinking and yawning from their beds; some would sleep upright through the rite, trusting for concealment to the dimness and to their superior’s own drowsiness.

  Alf had never had that most useful of monastic arts. He had never needed it.

  He was shivering. Why, he thought surprised, I’m cold.

  He reached for a handful of shadow, paused, stretched out his mind for an honest mortal garment. Without shirt or trews, the rough wool of the pilgrim’s robe galled almost like a hairshirt, as well he knew who had worn thus the habit of a Jeromite monk.

  He was sliding back into it. Jehan noticed and worried. Nikki liked it not at all.

  “They don’t understand,” he said. “I am God’s paradox. Child of the world’s children, raised for Heaven; given the world and all its delights, only to see them reft away in a night and myself cast back into the cloister in which I began. My body was never meant for that, meekly though it submitted. My spirit… Dear Lord God, but for a single earthly love I have never been aught but Yours. And she, for all her mockery, is part of You; the love between us is Your own, though the Church would call it heresy. Yours even—what sent me from my bed. Even that.”

  And if she was dead, what then? Himself, alone. Without her, without Liahan and Cynan, with
the whole of an immortal lifetime before him, vast and empty, more bitter than any torments of the mortal Hell.

  Yet if they lived—if he had them back again—nothing could be as it was before. With Thea’s aid he had schooled himself to forget what he was. No longer. Her lover, the father of her children. And a priest forever.

  The truth racked him with its force, sent him reeling to the ground. God’s truth; God’s hand. God’s bitter jest, a laughter even his ears could hear.

  Priest of what? A Church that had been raised up for humankind and never for his own; a rite and a dogma that had no place in it for those whose bodies would not die, and that condemned all his gifts as blackest sorcery.

  Blackest ignorance.

  “Paul,” he said, “whose monks have hounded us so far and so fiercely, is called the Apostle of the Gentiles. What then am I? I’m neither saint nor evangelist. Only a reed in the wind of God.”

  And such a reed. Barefoot, beltless and hatless, wandering down an empty street with no memory of his passage from San Girolamo’s courtyard to this unfamiliar place.

  The sun was coming. He could feel it, a tingle in his blood, a shrinking of his skin.

  Prophets were mad. It was their nature. He was a seer, though the sight had been lost to him since before his kin were taken—since he stood with Alun atop the White Keep. Blinded, he remained a madman and a mystic.

  The narrow street stretched wide. A piazza, the Romans would say: a square with its inevitable church. No marble Bacchus here, no throngs of pilgrims in this black hour before dawn, no Brother Oddone seeing in mere fleshly beauty the image of divinity.

  If he thought he had it, would he worship it so ardently? He could not see his own soul; he could not know what a singing splendor was in it.

  The church was still and silent. It was very old, very plain. Its distinction was the glory of gold and crystal beneath the altar, encasing a strange relic, the coldness of iron, the harshness of chains.

  Once they had bound Peter himself, the fisherman who became Prince of Apostles. Another paradox; another who had lived in torment, betrayer and chief defender of his Christ.