XXIII

Six days later, Juliana returned. I had waited for this moment like a man dying of thirst in a wilderness, and it seemed that she felt the same for she took me without further ado to her wardrobe room and gave me all that I had dreamt of in her absence and more. When we had finished making love, we lay on the bed smelling of each other and perfumed with cinnamon, citron, verbena, orris root, southernwood, lavender, cloves, galangale, saffron, grains of paradise, attar of roses, bitter almond, dried orange peel, and the honeyed fruit of the strawberry tree …

‘Let us lock the door, barricade ourselves in, and stay here always,’ I said to her.

‘That would be perfectly lovely,’ she replied, ‘though we might grow hungry. Spices are meant to provide flavour not nourishment.’

‘Is that what we are to each other, do you think? Flavour not nourishment?’

‘Very good flavour,’ she smiled.

Stupidly, I took umbrage.

‘You are not simply my food,’ I told her. ‘You are the air I breathe and the water that gives me life. I am sorry that I do not provide the same for you.’

‘Don’t be silly, Bertold,’ she said. ‘You know what you are for me, but I must have other considerations. You do not have children. My daughters are rooted in my life and I in theirs. My father is another such. They do not take me away from you; they co-exist. You, they, all of you are nourishment. I give myself entirely to you as a lover, but as a mother and a daughter I belong to others.’

My silly anger subsided.

‘Of course, you are right,’ I said.

‘And it is because of these others that we cannot lock ourselves away. These are dangerous times, Bertold. My days with my father have taught me just how dangerous. We may yet be caught up in something – a web, a plot, a trap, an accident even – born of these evil days, which undoes us all.’

‘I will protect you and the girls in all events,’ I said. ‘Or I shall die in the attempt.’

‘I know you will, my Latiner. But let us hope that it does not come to that.’

I was unsettled by her forebodings, for I trusted her judgment, but I was young and still believed in the triumph of good in the tournament against evil.