Finally I returned to the keep—the shock of all I'd seen waking instilled a new prudence in me—and I entered through a servant's gate in a rear wall. After a considerable exploration of the place, I found Brenna in her father's room, kneeling beside his bed and holding his hand.
He was blackened, like a statue burned in a fire, his flesh grotesquely swollen, as if his skin would split like a sausage. He stared sightlessly at the beams high overhead. He, like so many others, was dead, and the stench was overwhelming, causing my empty stomach to pitch and my eyes to water.
I hesitated a few moments, then took hold of Brenna's shoulders and raised her gently to her feet. "He's gone," I whispered, and she turned and burrowed into my embrace, burying her face in my tunic and weeping.
I held her until the storm had passed, and spoke to her only when her sobs had turned to soft, heartrending sniffles. "We must take ourselves from this place," I told her. "By some miracle, we've been spared, but if we linger, the plague will surely find us."
She nodded against my chest.
"We'll need horses and food and coin."
Brenna drew back and looked up into my no-doubt bruised and dirty face. "Let's go, Valerian. Now. Let's go and never look back."
I kissed her then. It was just a light, moist touch of our two mouths, but how I treasure the memory of that innocent contact. I hadn't learned, even then, how infinitely precious, and how profound, the simplest expression of affection can be.
"I'll fetch some food from the larder," Brenna said when we drew apart. "And my father won't be needing his purse." She glanced woefully back at the body lying on the bed. A light flickered in her weary eyes; perhaps it was hope for our future. "Hurry, Valerian. I'll wait for you at the servants' gate."
I nodded and hurried out.
At noon Brenna and I sat on a knoll east of the village, our horses nibbling at the sweet grass, saying our own silent goodbyes to the only home we'd ever known. We watched, dry-eyed, beyond horror, while the lucky ones carried corpses into the square and hurled them into a great, roaring fire. Later, I supposed, thinking of my mother and father, already beginning to accept the fact that my brother's body was surely there among those others as well, the charred skeletons would be properly buried. Prayers would be said, and absolutions granted, and heaven would enfold them all.
Please God.
"What of Challes?" I asked, hours later, as Brenna and I rode slowly along the inland road, passing no one. It was the first time either of us had spoken since we'd watched the bodies burn. "Did you see him?"
Brenna, who wore a cloak over a plain kirtle, shook her head. "No. He is probably dead, like Father. I wonder if Moll fell sick."
I knew Moll was her lady's maid, and that she had loved the woman devoutly. Moll, I suspected, had overlooked much mischief in her time at the keep. "It won't serve us to look back," I said quietly, reaching across to squeeze her hand where it grasped her mare's reins. "We have each other."
She looked at me with wide eyes, eyes void of innocence and girlhood fancy, and haunted by inconceivable horror. "Yes."
I reached out, grasped the mare's bridle—I was riding one of her father's geldings—and stopped both horses there in the middle of the road. "I love you, Lady Brenna," I said. It was all I had to give her—a few words, a fragile assurance. We both knew how easily fate could part us—the roads were dangerous in those days, and there was no guarantee that one or both of us would not fall ill with the pestilence at any moment.
Tears pooled along Brenna's lower lashes. "And I love you," she said. "It's enough."
I nodded, and we rode on, but there were clouds gathering on the horizon, and I had a feeling of foreboding. I tried to shake it off, telling myself the events of the day just past were reason aplenty for my gloom.
I was only partially right.
That night Brenna and I slept in an abandoned crofter's cottage, with straw for a bed. We made love, as much to give each other solace and consolation as to appease any physical need, and this second time my thrusts were pleasurable for Brenna. She strained beneath me, offering herself, crying out in her delight, and finally arched like a supple bow, quivering, her eyes sightless, her fingers clawing at my bare back.
I groaned, transported, and spilled myself into her. Soon afterward we tumbled headlong into sleep. It was raining when we awakened, and Brenna seemed uneasy, distracted.
"I want to be near the sea," she said.
I didn't question her, for I knew the waves of a sheltered cove near the keep had been her playmates—she loved the water, and took solace from it. So we ate our poor breakfasts of stale bread, and washed ourselves, running naked in the rain like pagans, and finally turned back, through the gray drizzle, in the direction from which we'd come.
I have tortured myself for centuries with a single question. Would things have been different if we'd pressed on toward London Town instead?
* * *
CHAPTER 4
« ^ »
We rode hard all that day, through the gray drizzle and the chill, until we reached the sea. Brenna gave a soft gasp when first she glimpsed that steely, white-ruffled expanse, and drew up on her mare's reins, plainly struck by the harsh beauty of the scene.
The shore was narrow and littered with great stones, and the surf battered the land with such ferocity that huge and glittering scallops of spray arched high against the charcoal sky. The shiver that slipped down my spine like the tip of a dead man's finger had little to do with the cold; no, it was born of the terrible, nameless dread stirring in the darkest reaches of my being. Had I possessed the powers that were conferred upon me later,
I would have taken Brenna far from that place, be she willing or unwilling, but I could do nothing then.
She spurred her mare onto a steep, treacherous path that led down to the water, and though I lunged for the reins, I was too late. There was nothing to do but follow—and shout her name.
If Brenna heard my calls over the roar of the surf, she paid no heed. Instead she quickened the mare's pace, driving the frightened beast skillfully between boulders and churning pools toward the jagged shore. My own mount balked at the top of the path and would go no farther.
I sprang from its back and ran after Brenna, stumbling and falling several times before I gained the beach.
I screamed again; I can still feel that cry, swelling sore in my throat, lodging there like the pit of some large and bitter fruit. Brenna looked back at me over one shoulder, and I saw intense joy in her face as she rode, splashing, into the thundering waves. She threw back her head and laughed, and though I could not hear the sound, I saw it, and felt its echo in the very center of my soul.
I dashed toward Brenna, meaning to grasp the mare's bridle and haul the pair of them back to safety, but my sudden motion only frightened the horse, causing it to rear and toss its head in even greater panic. Brenna fought to calm the animal, but there was no fear in milady's magnificent face, only the purest concentration. I don't believe she regretted her recklessness; she surely hadn't guessed what was about to happen. To my torment, for that moment and all of eternity, I foresaw the event with sudden and brutal clarity.
I stood sodden in the cold tide, buffeted by it, blinded eyes stinging from the salt, and I was full of horror. My very breath was battered from me, and when I finally caught sight of Brenna again, she was far beyond my reach. The horse reeled and pitched, and Brenna went hurtling from the beast's back, her slight figure disappearing beneath the relentless waves.
I scrambled toward her, only to be swept back toward the shore by the sheer elemental force of the water. I struggled through the tide once more and was nearly trampled by the terror-stricken mare as it battled its way back to solid ground. I had a glimpse of Brenna's red-gold hair in the surf, and somehow, by strength of will, I reached her and gathered her into my arms.
I wept as I carried her ashore, for I knew, even before I laid her out on the sand, well away from the grasping, murderous water, th
at she was gone. I knelt beside her, the stony ground biting into the flesh of my knees, and emitted a great, wailing sob that shaped itself into her name. Then I fell forward, my forehead resting against her bosom, and gave full rein to my grief. My cries were wrenching and hoarse and seemingly without end.
Night came; I did not venture far from Brenna's side, even to search for the horses, which had both bolted long before. Instead I gathered what twigs and bits of driftwood I could find and managed to make a small fire—I still believed, in my bewilderment and sorrow, that I might offer my beloved some degree of comfort and protection.
I felt the too-rapid beat of my heart and the raw rasp of my breathing, but I cared nothing for those things. My tunic and breeches clung to my flesh, soaked and icy, and that did not matter, either. Physically I was numb.
I kept my vigil throughout the frigid night, holding her small, still hand in mine, and with the dawn came the devastating realization that this was no nightmare, but the cruelest reality. My Brenna was well and truly dead, and needed burying.
I lifted her into my arms once again and started off toward the place where I had glimpsed smoke rising between the gentle green hills the day before. I did not think beyond the hope that I would find a village, with a churchyard to receive Brenna's fragile remains and a priest to say the holy words that might secure her place in heaven.
I don't know how long I staggered over that barren, windswept terrain, holding my perished angel close against my breast, and I have no memory of reaching the small cluster of huts where I came groping and flailing to my senses some days later.
By that time, according to the aged and crowlike woman who had, by her account, dragged me back from the threshold of death, Brenna had already been laid to rest. Lucky she'd been, too, my nurse proclaimed, not to die of the plague like those other poor souls. They'd been flung onto a blazing pyre as soon as they'd breathed their last.
As I lay on my pallet, drenched in the sweat of a recently broken fever and smelling of all manner of base things, I wished with all my being that I, too, might be taken by the pestilence. I realized even then, however, that I was condemned to live, and to my great and secret shame, I also knew I hadn't the courage to put an end to my own misery. I believed too little of my father's grim theology to follow its dictates, and too much to risk the fires and pitchforks of hell.
I turned my face to the dank, daub-and-wattle wall and mourned in silence.
After a while a holy man came to see about me. I would not look at him.
"I am Brother Timothy," he said.
I did not reply.
"You must be grateful and repentant," he persisted. "God has chosen, in His infinite mercy, to spare your life."
I spat, though my mouth was dry.
The man of God sighed and left me to my private damnation.
I might have lain in that wretched hovel forever, despising everything that was holy, waiting to perish of despair, if the crone hadn't finally grown impatient one foggy day and put a foot hard to my ribs.
"Get up, you," she commanded, having apparently passed the outermost bounds of Christian charity. "I can't abide the smell of you, and I'm that weary of spooning gruel and goat's milk into your mouth as if you was a sickly babe. Go on, take yourself out of here."
I groped to my feet with her none-too-gentle help and swayed dangerously before finally catching my balance. I staggered out of the hut with its thatched roof and hard dirt floor into the cold glare of sunlight. For a moment or two I was blinded by the dazzle and raised one arm to shield my eyes.
Mortals are damnably resilient, even when they don't choose to be. Within a moment or so I could see clearly, and my weakened frame supported itself with a shaky determination that came from some unexplored part of my mind. I looked about and saw other huts—pigs and dogs and chickens wandering in their midst—and a few gaunt humans in poor clothes. Not far from the edge of the village was a great firepit, encircled with stones, black and acrid at its center. I was drawn to the place by a horrible fascination that shamed even as it compelled me to take the next step toward it, and the next.
Blackened bones and skulls lay scattered, haphazard, through the ashes, and I recognized a single charred arm, muscles clearly defined, sooty fingers curled. I wretched convulsively and reeled away from that grim sight and the other helter-skelter leavings of death. I could be grateful, at least, that Brenna's mortal remains had not been cast into the pit. That none of those hideous pieces and parts were hers.
I nearly collided with the small, rotund monk who stood behind me.
"What is your name, lad?" he asked, and I was struck, even in my welter of confusion and agony, by the serenity in his expression. I knew this was Brother Timothy, the holy man who had visited me in the witch's hut.
He wore robes of undyed wool, a narrow, frayed rope girding his middle, and his tonsured head was fringed with brown hair. The flesh of his face was tight, but the eyes were old, and I could not begin to guess his age; he might have been seventeen or seventy.
"Valerian," I answered hoarsely. I did not speak of my dead father, nor did I offer the name of my village. I had no home now, after all, and no kinsmen. For me, there was only one question, one concern, in all creation.
"Where did they bury milady?"
Brother Timothy gestured toward a copse of naked birches on top of a small knoll nearby. The branches of those trees looked like white cracks in the smooth, chilly blue surface of the sky. "There," he said. "On the hill."
I moved past him, awkward in my weakness, near collapse, but desperate to look upon Brenna's grave.
"We did not know her name," the monk hastened to inform me. "But there is a cross to mark her resting place. Was she your sister. Your wife, perhaps?"
At his words, the loss of Brenna cut through me anew, fresh and sharp, seeming to sever not just muscle and marrow, but other, less tangible parts of me as well. I locked my knees to keep them from buckling and forced myself to keep moving. "I have no sister," I said. "And the word wife is too feeble to contain all that Brenna was to me. If I could have died in her place, I would have done it."
"Such decisions are not ours to make," Brother Timothy replied. "Perhaps that is a blessing in itself. Nor is such a desire unselfish, for its root is merely the cowardly wish to escape your own pain."
A surge of contempt swelled within me and, somewhere deeper, where I was wont to look, shame. "Pray, do not speak to me of blessings," I said without meeting his eyes. "There is no mercy in your God, and I seek no favors of Him."
How glibly I uttered sacrilege in those days of innocence and sorrow, and how very little I knew of damnation and devils, gods and angels! I was yet a lad, after all, with a child's blithe certainty of a multitude of things.
Brother Timothy laid a hand on my shoulder, and though he was smaller in stature, his grasp was forceful enough to stop my progress. "Your grief makes you bitter and angry," he said with a tenderness that made me yearn to sink, weeping, to my knees. "Those feelings will pass one day. The wounds will heal. In the meantime, though, you must turn your heart toward heaven, where comfort and absolution lie."
I shrugged free of his grasp and went on, propelled by stubbornness, not strength. I ached with frailty and fatigue. "No more talk of heaven," I growled, blinking back the stinging moisture in my eyes. "No more."
I knew which plot was Brenna's, even before Brother Timothy pointed it out.
My beloved rested beneath a gentle mound of newly turned earth, with a crude wooden cross to mark her passing. It was a peaceful place, though the sea churned in the near distance, like some tempestuous gift seeking to ungive itself. Light would dance among the shimmering leaves of the birch trees, come summer, and in other seasons the wind and the rain and the sea would sing their varied choruses.
I pressed my palms into the raw dirt and dug my fingers in deep, as if to find her, drag her upward, resurrect her somehow. "Brenna," I whispered. What I wouldn't have given, facing the finality
of her death yet again in the moments that followed, to be as she was, unaware, empty of emotion, immune to suffering. Hidden from the gazes of man and God.
I trembled, light-headed from my exertions, and might have pitched forward to lie sprawled across the grave if Brother Timothy hadn't grasped my shoulders and raised me to my feet.
"Come away," he said quietly. "You can do no good here."
I had risen from my sickbed not even an hour before, and I had no power to resist. I allowed that tenacious and good man to support me as we moved away from the village, descending the opposite side of the hill.
Below lay an ancient structure, surely a monastery, with low stone walls and a single crumbling tower. From that height I saw garden plots, a well, a narrow courtyard without fountain or bench. I stumbled, and Brother Timothy tightened his grasp, and once again kept me from falling.
The interlude that followed lies strewn through my memory like dried bones, disjointed and strange. I was taken to a cell, furnished only with a cot and a crucifix, and able hands stripped away my ruined garments. I was bathed in warm water, garbed in a clean, if coarsely woven, robe, given stout wine and broth by spoonfuls.
I slept, wandering in the dark mists of my dreams, searching tirelessly and in vain for Brenna.
When at last I returned to full awareness, body and mind rallying to a semblance of their former vitality, I discovered myself to be a dry, hollow husk of a man. My grief had vanished, but so had my conscience, my better graces, and, indeed, my soul.
I was empty.
"Stay with us, your brothers," Timothy pleaded when, after days of gradual, painstaking recovery, I was well enough to rise from my cot and move about the monastery and the grounds. We were in the courtyard that afternoon and the weather was bright and crisply cold. "Surely it was a sign, our finding you—"
"I am grateful for all you've done," I said, though in fact I felt nothing—not gratitude, not hatred, not grief or joy. What followed, however, was purest truth. "I am not suited to this life, Timothy. I was born a sinner and I shall remain one for all time."
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