Night Blooming (55 page)

“If the monks can abandon their Office for one night, you ought to be allowed to follow their example,” said Rakoczy, reverencing her before approaching her.

“I would like to; I’d like to sing and dance, as well,” she confessed. “They sound so jolly, the singing and laughter.”

Rakoczy suspected this would soon give way to rougher amusements, but he kept this to himself. “It is a fine festival. But few women attend it,” he added.

“Women would be attacked by the men is what you mean? I suppose the women who do join in are light women, whores and entertainers?” She cocked her head. “Probably even they aren’t very safe during this festival.”

“No, they’re not,” said Rakoczy, remembering the three ravished and slaughtered women he had found in an alley in Tergeste almost five centuries ago, the hapless victims of religious delirium that had been the culmination of four days of public demonstrations. The women, who had been sold to brothels as children, had become the target of the riots because they were obvious and part of the people of the city who were against the austerities of the Paulist Christians. He suspected that even in her white stolla and with her crucifix hanging on a thong around her neck, Gynethe Mehaut would fare no better in the streets of Bobbio than those three women had in Tergeste.

She sat on the nearer divan. “You were right. This is very comfortable. It was here I ate prandium, and I was very much at ease. I didn’t recline, but the couch was still easy.” Her fingers pleated the folds of her stolla and she looked up at him. “Will you sit down, please?”

He chose the other divan and sank down onto it. For an instant, he remembered the Emir’s son and the time he had spent in his service, as well as his escape from it; San-Ragoz had been forced to travel by night and to hide from the world, as did all runaway slaves. But that was eighty years behind him. He offered an enigmatic smile to Gynethe Mehaut and remarked, “Yes, this is very nice.”

“You speak as if you thought it would be,” she said.

There was a spurt of noise and a shouted exchange from the street below, then a loud report of breaking crockery and a crash of metal.

“Of course,” said Rakoczy. “I have known couches like this of old.”

She contemplated his face for a short while, the flickering oil-lamps changing his features with shifting light and dark. “I don’t know what to make of you,” she said at last. “I want to understand why you are so willing to see me as someone like others.”

“Why should you make anything of me?” he countered, but deferentially so that she felt no challenge in his question.

“You are kind to me. You do not fear me, or shun me for my afflictions.” She had been rehearsing this in her mind, and she spoke now with the directness of practice. “You tell me you understand, and I have come to think that perhaps you do. Why is that?”

Rakoczy contemplated his hands while he thought. “Those of my blood,” he said at last, “have limitations imposed upon them, very severe limitations, in many ways not unlike yours. They shape all that I do, and have since I was a very young man. Over time I have learned to accommodate them, but I can’t ignore them. That’s why I am able to understand; my limitations may not be as obvious as those you have, but that is in part because I know what I must do in order not to appear more foreign than I am.”

“Is that why you dine alone?” She was openly curious now, as if his explanation had given her the opportunity she sought.

“It is … related,” he answered. “For those of my blood, taking nourishment is a very private act, and so we keep to ourselves when we do it.”

She thought over what he said. “Can you tell me any of the things you do? Or what your blood imposes on you?”

He contemplated her face, perusing her features for any sign of apprehension or duplicity. Finding none, he decided to be candid with her, at least on this point. “Like you, I must avoid the sun, unless I take steps to protect myself first,” he told her. “If I do not prepare, sunlight will burn me as surely as hot metal, and I will have to remain in the dark for some time in order to recover.”

“But you aren’t white,” she said, pulling back her sleeve and extending her pallid arm.

“No,” he agreed, “but in this I might as well be.”

“Then what do you do?” The plaintive note in her question brought a pang to his soul that made it difficult for him to answer.

“I fear what protects me will not protect you,” he told her. “My native earth is proof against all but the most extreme sun. So the soles of my boots and brodequins are lined with my native earth. So are my carpenta and plaustera, and my saddles.”

Gynethe Mehaut stifled a laugh. “What a fine device! How did you come to think of it?”

“I happened upon it long ago,” he said, not wanting to admit how many centuries had passed since he had come upon this stratagem. “It has served me well,” he said.

“It must. You don’t appear to suffer at all,” she marveled.

“This isn’t the only imposition my nature makes on me,” he went on, almost eager to speak. “It is the one I have been most able to correct.”

“Are all foreigners like you?” Gynethe Mehaut inquired. “The few I have known were not so hampered as you say you are.”

“No. No, those of my blood are few and we are scattered far over the earth,” he said.

“That’s sad,” she said. “But at least you have others like you.”

Another eruption of noise reminded them that the celebration was growing more tumultuous; the songs had begun to degenerate into howls and shouting.

“Yes,” he said, and smiled at her. “I’ve seen those like you, as well.”

She studied him, her red eyes shining like good wine in the lamplight. “Where? What were they like?”

“I saw three in Egypt,” he said, recalling the white-skinned children brought to the Temple of Imhotep, two of whom had been so badly burned that they died quickly; the third was an infant, abandoned by her parents and at last given to Pharaoh as a concubine and raised with the children of other royal concubines. “I saw two in the western lands of the Great Khan, and two in Tunis.”

“I hope this is true. I am so weary of being told that no one has ever been like me before,” she said in a rush. “I know my uncle was said to be like me—white of skin and red-eyed, but he didn’t bleed and he died long before I was born, so I have no sense of him beyond the tales the family told.” She sighed, holding up her arm and pulling back her sleeve. “You say you saw those like me?”

“None of them bled from the hands,” he said, and saw the animation leave her face. “They were white, as white as you, though.”

“Yet they aren’t
truly
like me, are they?” She sounded so forlorn, so alone, that Rakoczy slipped off his divan and sat at her feet. “This damned blood!” she muttered, making her hands into fists as if that would put a stop to the wounds.

“Oh, no,” Rakoczy said, taking her hands and opening them carefully. “Blood is never damned. It is the one thing that is completely and utterly yours, and for that it is sacred. These wounds may not be welcome to you, but do not accuse your blood, or despise it: value it, and know that it is truly yours, the vessel of your soul.”

Gynethe Mehaut stared at him. “Does it seem so to you?”

“It is so,” he answered, keeping her hands, his compelling eyes on hers. Very slowly and very deliberately he began to unwrap the bandages. “This is a gift that is greater than any other, to know someone in blood, as those of my kind can do.”

She watched, fascinated; as he hesitated, she laid her right hand on his hair. “Do what you will.”

“If it is what you wish, as well. If I impose my desires on you, it would not serve you or me. It must be what you seek; otherwise there is no virtue in it, and of no use to either of us.” He set the linen wraps aside and stroked her skin gently, avoiding the central wound. “Tell me: what do you long for?”

Her breath trembled. “I hardly know.”

In the street sudden loud shouts silenced the bladder-pipe player, and a flute began a quick melody; cries of approval greeted the tune, and some of the men began a ragged, rollicking chorus.

“What would you like to try?” He touched her again, so gently that tears welled in her eyes.

“That is … lovely,” she murmured. “If the blood doesn’t bother you.”

“No; it doesn’t bother me.” He lifted her palm to his lips; a smear of blood left on his mouth marked where he kissed her.

Gynethe Mehaut was unable to speak for several heartbeats, and when she did, her voice was hushed, as if she was afraid to be overheard. “What can you do?”

“Tell me what you like,” said Rakoczy, sensing her passion, but unaware of what she sought, he was reluctant to go on.

“I haven’t known anything of men’s nature but what was forced upon me. I don’t want that,” she said, her hands shaking as she admitted this.

“All right.” He kissed her hand again, and the taste of her blood lingered on his lips. “How can I give you pleasure?”

“Do you want to give me pleasure?” She was genuinely surprised.

“Yes, because then when we touch each other, it will not be in the flesh alone. That contact is the very heart of pleasure, the essential core that gives joy to intimacy.” He looked directly into her eyes. “I want to do all that will delight you.”

“I don’t know what that could be,” she said quietly. “To be in your company is a delight. I cannot imagine anything more satisfying.”

“Then you’re frightened,” said Rakoczy, feeling her hesitancy. “You have no cause to be.”

“That is what I was told before,” she said. “And then he accused me of tempting him from Grace.” As she pulled her hands away, she looked mournful.

Rakoczy was quiet, his perceptions a tangle of her eagerness and dread and his own yearning. He remained on his knee beside her divan, and finally he said in a tranquil voice, “It seems to me that you bestow Grace, not compromise it.”

Someone in the street screamed, and this was answered with angry bellows as well as the scrape of metal as weapons were drawn. There were a series of excited shouts, accompanied by the slap of iron on iron, and then someone wailed in pain, and there was a clumsy scamper of retreat.

“Do you truly believe that?” Gynethe Mehaut asked, breathing more quickly.

“Yes; with all my heart,” said Rakoczy, and took her offered hands again.

“What do you want of me?” Her words were hushed.

“I would like us to touch one another so that we know each other to the limits of our souls,” he said; the blood on her palms was as heady as wine, and he could not conceal his desire for her.

“May we have this always and always?” she asked, renewed eagerness lending her energy.

“No, not always,” said Rakoczy quietly. “Those of my blood may love knowingly no more than six times; after that, there is a change.”

“What change?” she breathed.

This was going to be difficult, and Rakoczy did not speak at once. “After six times, there is certainty that when you die, you will become what I am, and those of my blood are. And once that change has occurred what is between us now will be over.” There was a long silence between them.

“Would I still be white?” Gynethe Mehaut asked at last.

“Yes,” Rakoczy said, and kissed the palm of her unwrapped hand. The nearness of her blood was tantalizing, but he kept from doing anything more until she accepted him.

“Would I still bleed?” Her voice was almost inaudible.

How difficult it was to answer her! “I don’t know.”

“So. There will be no more than six times that we can have our intimacy.” She looked at him. “Is that what we will have?”

“If it is what you want,” said Rakoczy, new hope gathering in him.

“Wouldn’t it be better to lie in bed?” she asked, getting to her feet and motioning to him to rise.

He did, and caught her up in his arms; he was startled by how little she weighed, and thought it had to be on account of her frequent fasting. As he bore her into the bedchamber, she reached up and put her hand behind his head to draw him down to kiss her. “So,” he said as he laid her on the black wool coverlet, her pale skin and stolla seeming to glow against the darkness, “now we know where to begin to awaken your exultation.”

“You mean with kisses?” she murmured, red eyes sanguine as rubies.

“For a start,” he said, and began a slow, ineffable exploration of her body with lips and hands, evoking gratification and rapture from every part of her flesh until she quivered like a wind-blown reed, clinging to him as she discovered her own passion and felt his as if they had fused, and for an eternal moment, she comprehended their shared nature and, at the culmination of her ardor, his esurience for blood.

T
EXT OF A LETTER FROM
F
RATRE
G
RIMHOLD IN
R
OMA TO
B
ISHOP
F
RECULF AT HIS PRINCIPAL SEAT,
S
ANT’
P
OTHINUS OF
L
YONS, IN
F
RANKSLAND, WRITTEN IN CODED
L
ATIN, CARRIED BY HIRED COURIER, AND FINALLY DELIVERED IN LATE
A
UGUST, 800.

To the Sublime Bishop Freculf in Franksland, the greetings of his agent in Roma, Fratre Grimhold, with the continuing assurances of his devotion to the Bishop’s cause, and the Pope, on this, the 19
th
day of July in the Pope’s year 800.

Sublime, I have done as you ordered me. Not only Patre Servatus, but Fratre Eugenius are dead, both paying the price for betraying His Holiness, Pope Leo, and the Roman Church. I did not employ the Patre Ariolfus disguise to deal with Fratre Eugenius, for that was too hazardous, as it turns out the Frankish monks who helped me to see Patre Servatus blessed and buried have described Patre Ariolfus to the Laterano Guard, so I took a capa, such as those worn by the street gangs of Roma, and I put a bandage around one eye so that it would be thought I was half-blind, then I found a remote corner near the place that Fratre Eugenius meets with the Byzantines to give information to them and to collect their promises of advancement when Constantinople rules in Roma. Fratre Eugenius expected to become Metropolitan of Roma for his treachery, but that is not the case any longer; he has left this earth for whichever destination best pleases God.