At dinner parties, he’d often muse—much to my humiliation—“If there is a stray within ten miles of this house, Henry will find it and bring it home.”
Regardless of why, she never left my thoughts. I lit a candle for her daughter every night, and I often wondered how her tiny shoulder was recovering. I speculated at the turns in the beauty’s life that had landed them both in their current predicament.
I found myself keeping an eye out in the market for the errand boy. On my walks by the brothel on my evening constitutionals, I wondered at length about which window was hers. I spent more and more time assisting my flock with any and all physical labor that they required, mucking out barns and loading hay. Most tried to dissuade me, but I needed all that hard work to exhaust myself. At night, after I put out the lantern, I recalled her bare, glistening porcelain skin and the memory made it hard to get any sleep.
The whipping winter winds rip me back to the here and now, and anxious to escape the assault, I pull open the cathedral door, crossing the threshold into my sanctuary. The young man I’d been last summer had been an optimist, boldly striding into the world on a mission to spread the gospel. These days, I’m a misanthrope, eager to retreat from this evil world. I’d stumbled on my quest to serve God, and though I know it’s impossible, I feel as if my sins are written on my forehead.
Carrying my burden to the altar, I’m unable to shed my embarrassment at the fantasies I’d once had…that she and I would walk down this aisle together. My senses are heightened as I absorb the ritual of it all, marinate in it like a familiar stew. The thick odor of incense still hangs in the air from the last service, mingling with the aroma of melting wax from hundreds of candles, each representing someone’s plea to The Almighty. It is my sincerest hope that Our Heavenly Father is more generous with my parishioners in that regard than he’s been with me.
I shake my head at my blasphemous thoughts, as this exact behavior is what has me in my current predicament. I’m here to extricate myself... and these thoughts are not mine, but those of the devil on my shoulder. The Lord is testing me, like he has so many others throughout history. Abraham, Lot. I find Adam especially relatable. Tempted by the fruit…but the fault, much like in the Garden of Eden…lies elsewhere.
I gently deposit the burlap sack onto the cool stones at my feet, trying desperately to ignore the writhing movement beneath the rough material. Dropping to my knees, I clasp my hands in front of my aching heart. Raising my chin, I focus on the stained glass images of the Blessed Virgin, barely visible in the stately cathedral. Christ, nailed to his cross, looks longingly toward His Heavenly Father, and I close my eyes in humble regret. My suffering is nothing compared to his, yet I find myself yearning.
“…because of Thy just punishments…” I murmur, and the sack beside me lets out a muffled cry. My heart clenches, gripped tightly in her delicate fist, and I’m transported back to the day she came knocking, and I finally found out her name.
It was roughly six weeks after my late-night visit to that wretched den of inequity, and I’d just packed up for my Tuesday rounds. Every week, I take to the streets visiting the infirmed amongst my congregation, delivering them the sacraments so they don’t have to go without the gift of the blood and body of Christ. Gray skies and whipping winds warned me that a storm brewed over the bay, and I was shrugging into my sweater when I heard a gentle rapping on the rectory door. Assuming it was the milkman, I set aside my basket and bible and opened the door.
The raven-haired object of my erotic fantasies stood before me, her immaculate face framed by a hooded cloak. She cradled her tiny bundle, and when she looked up into my eyes, I could see she’d been crying. Her vulnerability melted me, and I felt myself falling even deeper in love with her. I wanted to confess these feelings, to beg her to run away with me that very instant. Before I could speak, she thrust her baby my way.
“Take her.” Her sapphire eyes shone with fresh unshed tears. Stunned, I simply blinked at her, unprecedented doubt about what to do or say stopping me in my tracks. “I’m begging you, Padre. Take my baby before I change my mind.”
“E-explain,” I finally stammered, pushing the door open, an implied invitation for her to enter my inner sanctum. She hesitated, then hurried across the threshold, the scent of her perfume hitting me like a seductive potion. I closed the door and locked it, following her into the foyer all the while admiring the way she sashayed in her long skirts.
“Tea?” I asked, struggling with my uncharacteristic nerves in her presence.
She nodded, and I led the way into my kitchen. I gestured to the modest oak table, and she seated herself while I put the kettle on to steep. I worried that my cowlick was sticking up, something that only concerned me right before I led services. I couldn’t shake the thought, and I dreamed up an excuse to leave the room so I could check my reflection in the mirror. To my surprise, my light-red hair looked surprisingly tame.
The whistle on the kettle blew, and I rushed back to join her in the kitchen. As I poured the piping hot water into our cups, the baby fussed, and her mother murmured to her in melodious Italian.
“I’ve spent some time in Italy. Whereabouts are you from?” I asked in her native tongue, starving for any and all details she was willing to share.
Her eyebrows bobbed, but she recovered quickly, responding in English. “Modena. Do you know it?”
I shook my head.
“It’s fairly forgettable.” She shrugged. “But I miss the food.”
I set her tea on the table in front of her, wearing a sheepish grin. “I’m sorry, I’m embarrassed that I don’t even know your name.”
Her eyes met mine, and she blinked her long coal lashes rapidly. She paused as if considering me and whether she wanted to be honest. Her features took on a resigned calm. “Eve.”
It fit her like a glove, of course. Eve, the naked innocent, manipulated by a serpent, tasting ripe, forbidden fruit, then tempting her mate to do the same. My temperature spiked at the imagery this undeniable parallel conjured, and I fought the urge to tug at my collar.
“Sugar?” I asked, after clearing my throat in an attempt to remove the ever-growing lump that seemed to reside there. When she nodded, I hurried to crack the window over the sink before retrieving the sugar bowl.
“Two lumps please,” she volunteered absently. “And now I’d like you to tell me your name.”
I felt my cheeks catch fire all over again, like a schoolboy with a crush. “Henry.”
“Henry.” Her eyes swept me. “It suits you very well. Please understand me, Henry: I need you to take my daughter. I can’t keep her…not in that awful place. She isn’t safe, and even if she were…she must have a real home.”
I dropped the lumps into her steaming cup and took a seat across from her. “Take her home, Eve. Leave this wretched riverfront and go back to Modena.”
I startled myself with the veracity of my statement, and I was struck with an epiphany. My desire for her to leave was born out of self-preservation. If I was in Eve’s company much longer, I’d surely cast aside my vows to God and offer her my soul instead. I’ve never been a weak man, and my convictions hadn’t wavered a day in my life. This sudden loss of control had me in a panic, and like a drowning man, I was grasping at my surroundings.
Her brow furrowed at my suggestion, and somehow she looked even lovelier. “If home were an option, don’t you think I’d be there already?”
I had no response. I yearned to know her story…every detail of her childhood, her family life, and the gory details of her dishonor. I needed to know everything there was to know about this devastating beauty. I was desperate for Eve to convince me that she was the angel she appeared to be…a victim of circumstance. I wanted to save her from this fate, like Christ had Mary Magdalene. I also wanted her. In my bed, on the couch, on top of the very table at which we sat. I wanted to possess her and claim her and shout to the world that she was mine.
“Eve…”
“I eithe
r leave her with you or I leave her on someone’s doorstep. I feel safer with you. She cannot come back there with me. I overheard some of the others talking…about the Madame and her intentions. She’s telling people my baby is more valuable to her than I am…that she’ll have her working before she can walk. They’re saying that’s probably why the Madame took me in in the first place.”
My mouth dropped open, mortified by the depths humanity will sink to for the thousandth time in my life. Eve nodded wisely at my stunned response.
“Men are disgusting,” she pontificated. When I averted my eyes with justifiable embarrassment, Eve stammered, “Pr...present company excluded.”
My darling girl, you have no idea.
“I’m hungry,” I announced, rising to put space between her and me. My appetite wasn’t entirely a lie. In spite of her wretched revelation about her employer, I was drooling, and my ravenous need was getting harder to suppress. I rose to retrieve scones and curd, hoping to prolong her visit. The baby had fallen asleep, and Eve took the opportunity to place her in the basket and remove her to the next room.
“Tell me your story,” I implored once she returned.
Her eyes locked onto mine, and a flush spread across her cheeks and décolletage. This reaction alone filled in many gaps in my knowledge of her, but taking a weighty breath, she folded her hands. “First tell me yours.”
Impressed with her cheeky confidence, I lifted a shoulder and brought my cup to my lips. “There isn’t much to tell.”
“I doubt that very much. The priesthood is an unusual path.” She gracefully took a seat across from me, seeming to settle in.
“Selling your body is too.” I gave her a mild smile, testing the waters. She didn’t flinch, but she did offer a wry smile of her own.
“Not when you have nothing else of value, it’s not.” She tossed her shiny hair and stirred her tea, and then popped her spoon into her mouth. I stared like a voyeur, taking in her effervescent beauty. “What’s your excuse?”
I cleared my throat once more. “I’m the youngest of three sons. Both of my brothers are happily married with heirs of their own. A cyclone would have to wipe out all of Cornwall before I would inherit any property or money. I’m not talented enough to run away and join the circus, so I figured I may as well give my life to Christ.”
She blinked once more, her long eyelashes captivating me. Then she chuckled, covering her pretty mouth before bursting into another fit of delighted laughter. It was infectious, and this time, I joined her, I couldn’t help myself.
“I’m kidding. Mostly. I’ve always loved the church…the pageantry. The pomp and circumstance. And more than anything, I wanted to serve my fellow man. The ministry seemed like the most sensible way to live that type of life.”
She nodded. “I can appreciate that. I’ve always wanted to help people too.”
“Some might argue that you already do.” My quip was out before I thought better of it. Eve blanched, and her face transformed as if she’d just tasted something rancid.
“I should go.” She started to rise, but I reached out, placing my hand over hers. Her skin was as soft as silk, and I kicked myself for causing her obvious desperation to get away from me. She’d mistaken my joke as condescension, and that was an experience I was far too familiar with. I have been told by my mentor that my dry humor is often taken at face value, and I’d been simply trying to make light of the elephant in the room. This is why I’d been instructed to listen instead of talk. When the flock chose to share, close your mouth and open your ears, Bishop McDougal had always told me in my days at seminary. Don’t pry details out of God’s children, they’ll spill when their souls demand it.
“Forgive me.” It was the most I dared to say, but my regret must have been written all over my face, because her features relaxed. She took her seat again. “Please. Tell me how you came to be here, in this circumstance.”
She lifted her tea to her lips, and I noticed her trembling.
“My father produces fine balsamic vinegar. I’ve helped him sell it at market since I was very young. There was a boy in my village. The handsome son of a wealthy vineyard owner that all the girls adored. I’d been sweet on him since I was old enough to notice such things. When I blossomed, he noticed me too. He passed me letters every time we came to town. Finally, he asked me to meet him one night, in the ruins near my family’s farm after dark.”
I’d been to Italy, and I knew the countryside was scattered with ancient monuments to the false gods of our ancestors. I could picture her, creeping out of her father’s house, her dark hair trailing her in the moonlight as she hurried to rendezvous with the rakish young man whose intentions were far from pure.
“He took advantage of you,” I offered up my conclusion to her story, but she slanted her gaze in surprise. Her lip curled in a far from innocent smile and she shook her head. Shameless, she didn’t flinch from my appraisal. With a knowing arch of her brow, she issued the slightest shrug.
“I went willingly. And when he tried to be gentle, I begged him not to be. I asked him for more.” She stirred her tea, a thoughtfulness falling over her. “Tell me, Padre…if God doesn’t want us to do such things, why do you think he makes them feel so good?”
I opened my mouth to tell her it wasn’t the Lord, but Lucifer who’d had a hand in that particular design, but I stopped myself. It would have been fraud, pure and simple. I had no answers for her. Knowing from my youngest moments where my path would lead me, I’d never indulged in the sins of the flesh, not with another, anyhow. I’d never regretted that decision, as I had seen nothing but trouble come from these untoward activities. That is, until I laid eyes on Eve. She’d exposed me to the notion of desire.
Infected me with it.
“Of course, my father turned me out when I could no longer hide my condition.” She poured herself another cup of tea and then poured one for me.
“And your lover?”
She pursed her lips, a dark expression infiltrating her pleasing features. “He’d left the village months before that. To finish his studies in Florence.”
“So he doesn’t know about her?” I gestured with my chin to the other room, where her wee babe slumbered.
“Oh, he knows.” A jaded smile made her look far older than she was. She set her empty cup in the cradle of its saucer, her gaze penetrating mine. “Knowing and caring are two very different things.”
I nodded. “What made you choose to come to Galway of all places?”
“You chose Galway,” she shot back at me.
“Galway chose me,” I corrected her. “I’d have happily been stationed at a country church somewhere far warmer.”
Her eyes danced as the sun came out from behind the clouds and cast her in warm light. “It’s a stop along my journey. I plan to earn enough for passage to America.”
“With a face like yours, that shouldn’t take you long.” It simply slipped out, and I felt myself blushing up to the roots of my hair.
“I’m told you can be anything you wish to be there…” Her gaze lifted from her scone to me and probed me so thoroughly I felt a bit violated. My smile went into hiding, but that didn’t deter her appraisal. She licked her lips nervously. “I should be getting back before I’m missed.”
Eve hurried out of the room to her baby’s side, then hovered over her for a couple of minutes as if rooted to the spot. Instead of scooping her up, she simply kissed her tiny forehead. Lip quivering, Eve seemed to gather her wits, and lifting her chin, she turned to me and met my eyes with determination.
“So you’ll take her? Find her a mother and father who will do right by her?”
Red-faced, I nodded. “I’ll take her.”
“You will?” She visibly relaxed, beaming at me.
“There’s a couple in my congregation. They’ve been trying to start a family for a couple of years now. She’ll be the miracle they’ve been waiting for.”
Eve flung herself into my arms, her grip on me fierce. Her
mouth found mine, kissing me unabashedly on the lips. I didn’t fight her, in fact, I held her close…her soft curves salve for my aching soul. Her tongue dipped into my mouth, ever so slightly, and frankly, I enjoyed it far more than was decent, imagining very, very bad things. She pulled away far too soon, as if remembering herself and who I was. “Sorry, Padre. You’re sure they’ll be good to her?”
“They’re lovely people.” The truth was, just the previous week, the wife had confessed to having impure thoughts. She was ready to find another source for the potent sperm she desperately needed. It was no coincidence that the husband had confessed a week prior to regularly losing his temper with her. My intervention on Eve’s behalf seemed a practical way to kill three birds with one stone.
“Thank you, Padre.” Eve’s husky voice and hooded eyes made promises I had no business acknowledging, yet I filed away for a rainy day. “I will not forget this kindness.”
“It’s my pleasure,” I confessed, hoping I didn’t look or sound as eager as I felt.
“Thank you.” She rushed for the door, and I got the distinct impression she wanted to leave before she could change her mind.
“Eve.”
“Yes?” Her jaw tightened, and her shoulders squared, as if bracing for me to add conditions.
I leaned casually on the nearby sofa, nodding at the baby. “Does she have a name?”
Eve softened, eyes on the wood planks at her feet. “Mary.”
“Like the Holy Mother.” Or the whore whom Christ befriended?
She nodded, her dark eyes shining with pride. “I can hope, can’t I? That she turns out far better than me?”
“…hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts…” I replied, and our gazes entwined in a tango, sending tingles rippling through me. “Book of Romans.”
Eve closed the distance between us, folding herself into me. Her embrace was fierce, and far too enjoyable. Her head rested against my chest, and nothing—not my confirmation, not my vows—had ever felt quite so right. I closed my eyes and savored the feel of her, the smell of her.
Love is Strange: A Taboo Anthology Page 4
