Bardas slept as easily as he ever did now, freed for the moment from the torment of coughing that racked his whole body, granted the release from pain that was all the healing Alf could give. His face, though thinned to the bone, wore a semblance of peace.
Sophia combed out her black braids. Freed, they tumbled to her knees: her one beauty and her one vanity. This morning she had found a thread of grey. Well; it was time. She was thirty-four.
Across the bed, Alf straightened. In lamplight and intent on his task, he looked strangely old, an age that smoothed and fined rather than withered and shrank, like the patina of ancient ivory.
She was obsessed with time tonight. As he began to gather the packets and vials from which he had made Bardas’ medicine, she asked, “How old are you, Alf?”
A bottle dropped from his fingers, mercifully falling only an inch or two, striking the table with a sound that made them both start. Very carefully Alf picked it up again and laid it in his box of medicines. His voice was equally careful, his face completely without color. “How old would you like me to be?”
“As old as you are.”
He tightened the knot on a bundle of herbs, head bent. His hair hid his face, whiter in that light than Bardas’ yet thick and youthful. “That,” he said, “could be embarrassing. Or frightening.”
“To you or to me?”
“Both.” He looked up. It was a boy’s face with the barest hint of white-fair downy beard. But a man’s voice, well settled, and eyes too unbearably ancient to meet.
He laughed as a strong man will, in pain. “I’m not that old! If I were like anyone else, I could conceivably be still alive.”
“Then—”
“I was seventeen when l took vows in Saint Ruan’s. Bardas was a very young child. In too many ways, I’m still seventeen.”
“I’m neither embarrassed nor frightened.”
Wide-eyed, surprised, he looked younger than ever.
She smiled. “I’ll tell you a secret. I’m still seventeen, too. I just don’t look it, and I try not to act it. At least not in public.”
“It doesn’t matter? That I—”
“Why should it? I only wanted to be sure. I hate mysteries.”
She finished her combing and began to bind up the gleaming mass again. “It’s reassuring, in its way. All that wisdom and experience, and a body strong enough to last out any storm.”
“But also, all too often, at the mercy of its own unnatural youth.”
“Unnatural, Alf? Did you buy it? Or induce it?”
“Saints, no!”
“Well then,” Sophia said, “for you it’s natural. It certainly looks well on you.”
Alf closed the lid of the box and fastened it. He was smiling wryly. “There are two kinds of people in the world. People who want desperately to burn me at the stake, and people who take me easily in their stride.”
“Not easily. Just…inevitably. What must it have been like for you? Raised as you were, trained as you were, and being what you were. Even with the monks’ acceptance, or tolerance at least, you still had to face the Church. My poor little prejudices are nothing to that.”
“I’m trapped in this body. I have to endure it. You have no need.”
“Don’t I? You’re so wise about the rest of the world, and such a fool with yourself.”
He bowed his head. “I don’t think I understand people very well.”
“You do. Perfectly. Except when your own person comes into it. The monks triumphed with you, I think.”
That brought his head up, and won reluctant but genuine laughter. “I begin to see what I missed in all that lifetime without women. A clear eye, an acid tongue, and a wonderfully illogical logic.”
“Only a man would find it illogical. It makes perfect sense to me.”
“Of course it does.” He came round the bed, took her hand and kissed it. “You’re good for me, Sophia.”
“Like one of your medicines: bitter but bracing.”
He laughed again. She watched him go, smiling even after he was gone. “Naturally,” she said to Bardas who slept on unheeding, breathing almost easily, “I’m in love with him. Who isn’t?”
o0o
Alf’s laughter died beyond the door. He was grave and almost sad when he stood in his own room, setting the box of medicines with his blue mantle, running a fingertip over the fine wool. It was early still, hours yet to midnight; he felt no desire to sleep. A bath he had had.
A book? He had a new one, given him by Master Dionysios when he returned to Saint Basil’s. “Take it,” the Master had growled, glaring at him as if he had committed some infraction. But behind the glare lurked the joy no one else had even tried to hide.
He set the book beside his chair and undressed slowly. He glimpsed himself in the silver mirror that lay upon the table; Diogenes had left it that morning when he cut Alf’s hair.
Alf turned it face down and reached for the loose warm robe he always wore for reading at night. Settling into the chair, he opened the book.
This was not Dionysios’ volume of Arabic medicine.
The moon and the Pleiades have set.
I lie in bed,
alone.
Irene’s love poems. He moved to close the book, found himself turning the page instead.
Immortal Aphrodite of the elaborate throne,
Wile-weaving daughter of Zeus,
I beseech thee,
vanquish not my soul, O Lady,
with love’s sweet torment.
Bardas was dying. The Emperor had lost not merely a skirmish but the fabled luck of the City. Jehan lay cold and sleepless in the camp, rolling on his tongue the bitter dregs of his victory. And Alf could think of nothing but the fire in his flesh. He set the book down with exaggerated care and rose.
The house slept about him, even Sophia drowsing on the cot she had had the servants set up near Bardas’ bed, with Corinna stretched out at her feet in mountainous repose.
Softly on bare feet he ventured into the corridor. Something stirred, startling him: Nikki’s kitten, mewing and weaving about his ankles. He gathered it up, settled it purring in the curve of his arm. Its thoughts were small feral cat-thoughts, warm now and comfortable.
The women’s quarters, though called that still, had been given over to the children; beyond it at the top of House Akestas, Thea had claimed a room of her own. Its door was unlocked. Alf opened it slowly, fighting every instinct that cried out to him to flee.
Dim light met his eyes. A lantern hung on a chain from the ceiling, shaped like a hawk in flight. It illumined a small room, simply and plainly furnished, almost like a servant’s. The only extravagance was the bed’s coverlet, a blaze of flame-red silk embroidered with the phoenix rising from its pyre.
Thea sat cross-legged upon it in a woollen robe, her hair free, mending a shield strap. That was so very like her that Alf smiled without thinking and was in the room before his terror could master him.
She returned his smile, not at all disturbed to see him there where he had never come before. “Welcome to my empire,” she said. “Sit down and keep me company while I finish this.”
There was nowhere to sit but on the bed. Alf sat stiffly at the very end of it.
She had returned to her mending, frowning with concentration. Her hair had fallen forward; he wanted to stroke it back. But he did not move.
The kitten yawned hugely, stepped out of its nest, negotiated the descent to the bed. After some thought, it curled in a hollow beyond the crest of the phoenix and went complacently to sleep.
Thea took the last stitch and tugged at it. Satisfied, she laid the shield down beside the bed, tossing back her hair. The lamp caught the gold lights in it, deepened the shadows to black-bronze. “Inspection tomorrow,” she explained. “His Majesty, having run home from battle with his tail between his legs, wants to assure himself that he still has enough power to make an army miserable.”
“Isn’t he claiming the victory? A few Greeks fell, to be sure, and he lost his horse. But he routed the Franks and brought the icon and the standard back to the treasury where they belong.”
“So he says.” She stretched like a cat; her loose robe clung to breast and thigh. “A few people believe him. The rest know he has to save his skin. Before he took the crown he promised his supporters that he’d rid the City of the Latins in a week. A month, he’s saying now. Soon it will be a season. And he may not last that long.”
He found that he had moved closer to her, close enough to touch. His hands were icy cold. His heart beat hard. Coward, it mocked him. Coward, coward, coward.
She stroked the kitten, rousing it to a drowsy purr. “Under Mourtzouphlos,” she said, “for all that he’s had his failures, the palace feels different. He may have lost a battle today, but he’s won others; and he’s willing to act. The Angeloi never even began to try.”
Alf listened to her in growing despair. He had succeeded; he had convinced her that he could not give her more than he ever had. Love, but love of the mind only, that of the body twisted and made powerless by his lifetime in the cloister. Companionship, friendship, even kinship he could give, for after all he was the only being of her own kind in this part of the world. But nothing more.
She had fallen silent. He could have wept to see her so beautiful, and he too little of a man even to touch her except as a brother. He would have been better as a eunuch, like Michael Doukas, who had never known how to desire a woman and who could never know it.
No, said a voice deep in his mind. Even this is worth the price.
If he could live his life again, he would have her in it just as she was now. Watching him, saying no word; ready to be hurt, more than willing to be loved.
Even though I am no maid?
He stared blankly. He had never even thought of that. “For me,” he said, “only one thing matters. That you are you. Thea. None other.”
He heard himself speak and realized that it was the truth. And that she too was afraid. Not of her body—that, she had mastered long ago—but of that which had been between them since they met in Anglia, and was like nothing she had ever known. Beside that, his own terror was a small thing, a child’s whimpering in the dark.
It doesn’t frighten me. He held her hands and met her wide eyes, and remembered as he so seldom did, that she was younger than he.
“Do you know what it means?” she cried. “We’re bound. One soul, the humans say. They don’t know the half of it. Wherever you go, I must go; whatever you do, I must be with you. If you hurt, I hurt; your joy is my joy. We can never be free again.”
“Free?” He kissed her palms and held them to his cheeks. “What is freedom?”
Her fingers tensed; he felt the prick of nails. But she did not try to pull away. “Bodies are simple. An hour’s play, a moment’s pleasure, and there’s the end of it. But this is forever. Forever, Alf!”
“It’s not an easy thing to face. And yet…many a time I’ve wished you far away, or regretted the day I met you; we’ve quarreled and I’ve come close to hating you. But if you left and never came back, I know that I could not live.”
“It’s a trap. A vicious, impenetrable, eternal trap.”
“So,” he said, “is all this wonder of a world. See what blessings we’re given to make it easier. Beauty and agelessness and power, and the bond that has held us together from the moment of our meeting. Although I’m not much of a blessing for a woman, nor indeed much of a man at all.”
“Who lets you think that?” Indignation put all her fears to flight. She pulled away from him, only to take his face in her hands and kiss him on the lips, shivering him to his foundations. “You’re a man,” she said with conviction.
“I’m afraid.” And of that he was, folly though he knew it to be.
“Of course you are. So was I, my first time, and it’s worse for a woman than for a man. I soon got over it.”
“I—I don’t think—I’m not ready—”
“No?” She looked down; he blushed. “Your body most certainly is.”
“I can’t,” he said in sudden desperation. “It’s useless. I was a monk for too long. I’m still a monk. I’ll never be anything else. Let me go!”
She was not holding him. Nor did he take flight. Even as he begged for release, his fingers lost themselves in her hair; her arms circled his neck.
“The body knows,” she whispered in his ear. “Trust it.”
The body, yes, and the power. Gently, delicately, he wove himself into the web of her mind. All its threads were air and fire, eternally shifting and changing, yet at the center of them ever the same. Whatever shape she chose to bear, she remained herself.
Her awareness enfolded him. For an instant it turned upon itself; he saw through her mind a structure of perfect order, a temple of light, its center a sphere of white fire. Himself as she knew him, taking shape about the fire, a slender youth in the habit of a monk that bound him like chains. Yet as he watched, his bonds melted away; he lay beside her clothed only in his skin, drawing her into his arms.
She was warm even to burning, and supple, and slender-strong; slim almost as a boy yet curved where a boy would never be. What his eyes had known against his will yet unable entirely to escape, his hands now explored in wonder and delight. “Oh, you are beautiful!”
“And you.” She kissed his brow and the high curve of his cheekbone, and after an instant his lips. She tasted of honey.
Before he had truly partaken of her sweetness she withdrew, turning, drawing him with her. He was above her now, her arms about him. Her hands ran down his back, along the knots and ridges where the whip had gouged deep. “I love you,” she whispered. “I have never loved anyone else as I love you. Nor ever shall.”
She had forsaken all the armor with which she faced the world, all her sharpness and her mockery and the hard fierce glitter of her wit. Her eyes were meltingly tender; she tangled her fingers in his hair and brought him down to meet her kiss.
Deep within him a seed burst and sprouted and grew and put forth a blossom, a flower of fire.
She moved beneath him, opening to him. His blood thundered in his ears; his body throbbed. He was all one great song of love and terror and desire, and of sheerest, purest joy.
Behold, thou art fair, my love, behold, thou art fair!
Thou art beautiful, O my love, as Tirzah, comely as
Jerusalem, terrible as an army with banners.
I will get me to the mountain of myrrh, and to the hill of
frankincense….
To all his words and songs and fears she had but one, and that one lost in light. “Yes,” she breathed, or thought, or willed. “Yes!”