It was very late. The lamp burned low; Alf quenched the wavering flame and sat in the dark that for him was no more than a grey twilight. Beyond the rose-rimmed window the air was warm and close, windless, the stars half hidden in haze. A burning day, a steaming night, a white-hot day thereafter. That had been the pattern for days now.
He looked down at the book open in his lap, and up into the cat-flare of Thea’s eyes. She eased the door shut behind her, smiling a little. “You couldn’t sleep, either.”
“Who can in this heat?”
“You, for instance, when you choose.” She came closer. Life in House Akestas had taught her modesty of a sort; she wore a brief shift that left her arms and her long legs bare. Briefly he thought of Saint Ruan’s far away in green Anglia, and of the monk who had lived long years there without ever thinking of a woman.
“You never had me to think of.” She perched on the arm of his chair and peered at the book. “What are you reading, little Brother? Theology? Philosophy? Stern moral strictures?”
Without his willing it, his hands moved to close the book. She caught them; he struggled briefly and fiercely.
All at once he surrendered. She brandished her prize. “See now! What secret are you hiding?” She opened at random. Witch-light welled through her fingers; she read a few words, stopped and looked up. “Why, this is beautiful.”
He sat perfectly still, face turned away from her.
She shook her head, incredulous. “Who would have thought that a monk could have taste? And such taste at that.
‘Once, when the world was young,
Tantalus’ daughter became a stone
upon a hill in Phrygia;
and the daughter of Pandion
touched the sky, winged as a swallow.
O that I were a mirror,
that you would look at me;
a tunic, that you would wear me;
water to bathe your body,
myrrh for your anointing.
Gladly would I be a cincture
for your breasts, a pearl
to glimmer at your throat,
a sandal for your slender foot,
if only you would tread on me.’”
She touched his cheek. It burned under her hand. “Would you really, Alf?”
He tossed back his hair so suddenly that she started. “No!” he snapped, more startling still in one so gentle. “It’s only a book. Irene lent it to me.”
“Did she?”
Her eyes were dancing. He stood and sought the window. It was no cooler there, nor had he escaped her. Although she remained where he had left her, her voice pursued him, as relentless as it was beautiful. “Irene is in love with you, little Brother.”
He breathed deep. The scent of roses filled his brain. “What is there in this world, that even on the edge of ruin, no one has any thought but that?”
“It’s the Law,” she answered him. “‘Go forth; be fruitful, and multiply.’”
“Even our kind?”
“Especially our kind. If there were any god but the One, and we could choose our own, it would surely be Aphrodite.”
“You are an utter pagan.”
She laughed; he knew without looking that she tossed her free hair. “‘Immortal Aphrodite of the elaborate throne, wile-weaving daughter of Zeus, I beseech thee’…tame for me this lovely boy, who looks on me by day with priestly disapproval and cools these torrid nights with Anakreon and Sappho and others no less sweet.”
“The patron of this city,” he said deliberately, “is the Blessed Virgin.”
“She protects you a great deal better than she’s protecting her city.”
He turned to Thea then. He had won, for the moment; her eyes yielded, although her smile had only begun to fade. “You see it, too,” he said.
She shivered. All mockery had left her. “I don’t have your sight. But I feel it. Something is going to break, and soon.”
“Very soon. Alexios is in Thrace with many of the Latins. But Baudouin is here as he wished to be, and the old Emperor is as feeble in mind as in body.”
“Old!” She tried to laugh. “He’s younger than either of us.”
“Do years matter? ‘Boy,’ you call me, though I’ve lived longer than most men ever hope to.”
“And ‘dotard’ is what Isaac is. Hopeless, my friends tell me. Completely out of his mind.”
“Your friends?”
She twined a lock of hair around her finger and watched him sidelong. “My friends,” she repeated. “I have a few, you know. You’re not the only one who goes out and about and explores the City.”
“I never thought I was.”
She smiled. Alf frowned. There was something suspicious in the way she looked at him, as if she treasured a secret she knew he would not approve of. The last time he had seen her so, she had been frequenting the harem of a Saracen emir.
“In Constantinople?” She laughed. “Hardly. My friends are good Christians. Latin Christians. Saxons.”
“Saxons? Here?”
“In the palace, in the Varangian Guard.”
For a long moment he stared at her, blank with shock. This was worse than the Emir’s harem. Or the Lord Protector’s kennel. Or the Prince’s mews. Or—
“How do they see you?” he demanded. “As a cat? As a hound? As a falcon?”
“Of course not. Beasts can’t ask questions or make friends with guardsmen.”
His breath hissed between his teeth. She was smiling, relaxed in his chair, leafing idly through Irene’s book. No sheltered Eastern maiden, she, who had run off in youth with a Lombard prince and ridden to battle with the princes of Rhiyana and gone to the stake as a witch and a heretic. Yet—
“Guardsmen,” he said. His voice sounded thin in his own ears, and cold. “Soldiers. If you have no care for your own honor, might you not at least consider that of your hosts? What would Bardas say, or Sophia, if they knew that their guest ran wild among the Varangians?”
Her eyes glittered, emeralds ringed with fire-gold. “Their female guest. Don’t forget to add that. Their male guest, of course, is far too holy ever to exceed the bounds of sacred propriety.”
“I am a fool and a coward, but I know what is fitting. Do you even put on armor and take up an axe? Or…is it…”
Anger flashed through her mockery. “Why not just say it, little Brother?”
It caught in his throat. But it was in his mind, clear to read.
She said it for him. “You think I’ve found a cure for my five years’ sickness. A great tall Varangian with braids to his waist and arms I can hardly circle with my two hands, and a huge besom of a beard. Someone who’ll tumble a yellow-eyed witch with no qualms at-all, and laugh with her at the pallid little priest she’s been breaking her heart over. A bull to make me forget my white cat from Anglia.”
She was standing in front of him. Half of her was laughing; half of her trembled with anger. “You won’t be rid of me so easily, Brother Alfred. Nor is my virtue as easy as that, whatever you may think. I can be a man’s friend without leaping into his bed.”
He flushed, but his voice by some miracle was steady. “You are beautiful. Any man would desire you. Even I, armored in my vows, have never been immune to you. Is it wise, Thea, to walk among men of war who can take by force whatever they wish for?”
She laughed aloud. “I should like to see them try!”
“And then they come to House Akestas and dispose of the witch’s familiars.”
She sobered abruptly. “No, Alf. That, they will never do. I’m wild and I’m wicked and maybe I’m a harlot, but I am not a traitor.”
“Then you’ll stop seeing the Varangians?”
“I never said that.” She rose and tossed the book to him; he caught it without thinking. “You’ve done your duty, Father Confessor. I’ll do as my conscience bids me. If that is to visit my friends and to look and listen and to catch what rumors I can, what right or power have you to prevent me?”
“I, none. Your conscience—”
“My conscience is my own, and I am my own woman. Whatever you may say.”
“I never said otherwise.”
“Didn’t you?”
She had reached the door. It closed upon her before he could speak; her mind barriered against him with calm finality.