Artemis Rising

by Cheri Lasota

  Closing her eyes, she said a silent prayer of thanks, but whether she prayed to God or to Artemis, she did not know. She remembered Tristan’s kiss at the orphanage when he had loved her in his innocence, before so much had come between them. Remembered, too, the kiss she had stolen from him in the cave. But here, nothing barred her soul from his. Nothing but a warm kiss and the touch of a hand. And he was touching her now. And with a painful urgency, he was kissing her.

  His mouth tasted of sun, and that familiar scent of bergamot soap touched off his skin, diffusing itself into the cool night air. His hand on her neck, his other at the small of her back, he pulled her closer and closer. She found her own hand tangled in the silk of the hair at the base of his neck. Her other rested on his shoulder. His kiss drew away to her cheek, to her neck, and then his fingers were there at the ties on her bodice. His light touch tickled like feathers and she shied away. Those stunning eyes of his sought hers instantly, questioning. His hand drew back. But hers drew forward, to brush against the plane of his cheek. It was so smooth, his skin. And the feel of his hair in her fingers was like the leaves of a willow.

  She reached around his neck suddenly, brought him to her lips, wanting to be closer still. Needing his mouth against hers, his skin against hers, she found his hand and guided it to her bodice. Every touch was a first, and every look. She let his hands go where they might, trusting him, trusting herself. He braced her back and laid her down on the meadow grass, her midnight blue cloak fanned out beneath them like a blanket.

  “Isolde,” he said, laying his long body beside her. “Can you really be mine? Somehow, you don’t seem real. Like I’ve wandered blindly into a dream.”

  At the word, tears pricked her eyes. For her, it was just the same. A dream. Almost unreal...

  A vision suddenly jolted her from him. She felt Tristan pull back, but she could not see him. Neither could she see the trees or the stream, though she heard the night sounds just as before. But her eyes saw only a sickbed. A dying man. A cry for help. The premonition twisted her gut, and her body went rigid.

  Tristan grabbed her arms, but she was on her feet in a moment.

  “What is it?” he said.

  Arethusa gazed at him, wanting him to understand the urgency she felt, and the fear. “We must go to Pai,” she mouthed.

  At her words, the color drained from Tristan’s face. “Are you certain?”

  She felt walls of water falling down on her, filling her lungs. She was slipping into the drowning pool, feeling the suffocating shivers pulling her under until Tristan took her arm to steady her.

  “I am certain,” she mouthed.

  WHEN ARETHUSA REACHED THE BEDROOM WHERE PAI lay, she saw the condessa gripping the door handle with taut knuckles, her face livid and her voice shrill.

  “Those children will be the death of him,” the condessa said to the Padre, who stood just inside the door. “I told him from the first not to bring them into this house.”

  “Condessa, I beg you to leave the room.” The padre’s reply sounded desperate, as if they had been arguing for some time. “Fernando is too ill.”

  With Tristan following close behind, Arethusa brushed past the condessa into her father’s sickroom. Heavy drapes cloistered the windows and shut out the approaching dawn. Candles, scattered about the room, cast shadows on the walls. Pai lay motionless on the bed.

  “Arethusa, Tristan—thank the almighty God. Your Pai’s been asking for you all night. I was going to send João out to search for you at dawn.”

  “He does not seem to see us,” Tristan said.

  Arethusa hurried to her father’s side and clutched his hand, a cold and clammy thing wound tight with a wooden rosary. The dim candlelight illuminated Pai’s flushed skin and fevered eyes. His labored breathing was deafening in the quiet of the room.

  “Pai,” Arethusa mouthed to him. But no recognition came into her father’s eyes. His fixed gaze stared up into the ceiling as if he saw some glimpse of the beyond. Tristan walked to the far side of the bed to take up Pai’s other hand. Arethusa glanced at him, realizing that as she was finally coming together with Tristan, her father was fading away from her.

  “The doctor was here, but Fernando sent him away.” Padre Salvador paused, then, as if he did not believe it himself. “The lung fever has taken over. Now we can only wait.”

  Arethusa heard the door shut behind her. Without turning, she knew the condessa had left the room. Tears welled in the padre’s eyes, and Arethusa saw his soul ache for his brother and for the bitterness of his wife. She pitied the condessa. She had married a man who did not love her. Was the condessa simply another victim of this curse of fate? It was strange how many lives were touched by the myths. And strange that her father had taken so long to reveal the truth. But now she knew why.

  The infection was just part of what was killing Pai. The guilt of keeping his identity secret must have weighed heavily on his conscience. But more than that, Arethusa sensed her mother beckoning Pai to the beyond. She glanced at Tristan, and he was beside her in an instant. She moved without thinking, seeking his arms around her.

  “Arethusa, I have known for some time that you are my brother’s daughter by blood,” Padre Salvador said, bringing her eyes up sharply.

  You knew?

  “I’ve known since the day of your first festa, but, for Inês’s sake, Fernando kept your identity concealed. As a confessor, I am ever bound by my oath, but now that you have learned the truth, I feel it would not betray my brother to speak of it now.”

  Without hesitation, she moved from Tristan’s arms to her uncle’s. The rough cloth of his cassock was a comfort.

  Arethusa felt a quiet breath brush past her ear as the padre whispered, “My niece.”

  She leaned back, mouthing, “Uncle.”

  “When Fernando first saw you at the festa,” he said, holding her gaze, “he thought he had walked into a dream. He told me you were the vision of your mother, and when he saw your pendant, it confirmed his belief.” He broke away from Arethusa and fidgeted with the ring on his own finger. “That was one of our family jewels. He told our father he had lost it. In truth, he had given it to your mother before she left the island.”

  “Pai recognized it at the festa that day,” Tristan said to Padre Salvador. “It’s no wonder—he was looking at his own moonstone pendant.”

  “And his own child,” Padre Salvador added.

  “We read a letter from Senhora Maré telling Pai the news of her pregnancy,” Tristan said. “He never knew his child was a girl until he saw you, Arethusa.”

  She glanced at Pai, listened to his shallow breaths. For a moment, she stood in her father’s place that day so many years ago. She looked with his eyes as he gazed at his daughter for the first time. What you must have suffered. You could not even openly mourn my mother. She had been a herald of death for him and still he had taken her in. How different from Tristan’s birth father, who had refused to care for him even after the death of his wife.

  Arethusa fell to her knees beside the bed and again took up her father’s hand. Prayers leapt from her heart like waves crashing on the rocks. She called out to God. Somehow, it seemed right. Though her mother worshipped the Goddess, Pai had always clung to his Catholic faith, despite his belief in the myths.

  I call upon you, God, in my hour of need. Grant me the chance to tell my father how much I love him.

  The anxiety drained from her body, leaving a soothing peace in its place. She closed her eyes and collected its comforts like shells on the sand. For a time she sat unmoving, and it came to her that Pai was still with her, that he still held on.

  A touch roused her from her prayers, weak and tender. Arethusa opened her eyes to Pai’s quiet, searching gaze. She rose up on her knees to embrace her true father for the first time. The moment was a gift, and she wept for the beauty of it. Her tears washed his flushed cheeks and tangled themselves in the hairs at his temple.

  The desire to speak to him swelled in he
r heart. She knew that the sound of her voice, even if merely a whisper, would be such a comfort to him, a pledge of her love and forgiveness. Pai had broken his vow of silence, and now she must break hers.

  Arethusa leaned down close to his ear, opened her mouth to speak, hoping some sound, any sound, would come out. Faintly, she felt a movement within her throat, a straining of the muscles. She felt it, but she could not hear it. She was afraid that it would not be enough to produce words, but she gathered her courage and spoke into his ear. She didn’t know if he heard the almost inaudible movements of her throat, yet she struggled on anyway, if only to comfort her heart that she said what needed to be said.

  “My mother loved you to the very end. She never gave up hope that she would find you.” Arethusa took up his hand and pressed it to her cheek. “Regret nothing. You loved me beyond my deserving. No words can express what that means to me.” Her voice strained from disuse, she coughed and tried to clear her throat. But she had to tell him one more thing. Leaning down again to his ear, she whispered, “Eu amo-te.”

  She rose to look in his eyes, and what she saw there astonished her. The guilt had vanished. His face shone with a soft, balmy light, and she knew that he heard her for the first and last time in his life.

  It seemed God was looking out through her father’s eyes. Even now, she felt a quiet presence suffuse the room. She looked to her uncle and Tristan and saw the same calm shining in their tears.

  Pai spoke, though his raspy voice cracked under the strain. “I love you as I loved her—without end.”

  Pai glanced at Tristan, who moved to the other side of the bed. “I give you my daughter. Keep her safe.”

  “I will, Pai. I swear it. I’d give my life for her.”

  The shock of Tristan’s words took the breath from her body. No one had ever made such a promise for her. But it was more than that. His words brought a realization to her mind.

  If Mãe had been with Alpheus all these years, than the conde would not have been left behind to mourn her. The sea had taken her mother’s life. She was lost to the cold, ripped away from the one who loved her. And Arethusa was looking down at him now, a waste of a man, decaying in grief, married to a woman he did not love. Was this to be Tristan’s fate?

  Tristan pulled the potion vial, the lock of Arethusa’s mother’s hair, and the sketch from his pocket.

  Holding up the empty vial, he said, “We drank the potion, Pai. Our vows are made.”

  “You should not have done that.” Padre Salvador stepping forward. “Such a vow is not from God.”

  Pai clutched the lock of her mother’s hair. “You cannot know, Leandro, what it is to be caught in this web.”

  Padre Salvador lowered his gaze and stood in silent disagreement.

  “Artemis?” Arethusa mouthed to Pai.

  His features darkened into a labored frown. “Your mother’s Goddess cannot save me now.”

  Padre Salvador moved to the bedside table. “You have already confessed, but have you reconciled yourself to God, brother?”

  Pai looked suddenly fearful. “Even after all I’ve done, Leandro?”

  The padre took up Pai’s hand. “Fernando, let this all go. Let go of your past regrets and fears. You cannot be forgiven until you first forgive yourself.”

  Padre Salvador’s acceptance of Pai’s condition shocked Arethusa, but then she remembered that he had administered the Last Rites many times before. Pai blew out a ragged breath. Then he nodded, calmed, it seemed, by his brother’s words.

  Padre Salvador laid a hand on Pai’s shoulder and offered an encouraging smile. “I absolve you of all censures and sins, in nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen.” He opened the tiny gold altar-cruet containing the holy oil for the anointment of the sick.

  “Conde Fernando Estrela, through this holy anointing, may the Lord in his love and mercy help you with the grace of the Holy Spirit. May the Lord who frees you from sin save you and raise you up.”

  Padre Salvador administered the holy oil on her father’s forehead and palms. He raised the Holy Eucharist as he recited the familiar blessings and prayers of the mass. Then he blessed the Eucharist, transforming it into the viaticum, the bread given at the threshold of death. He brought it to Pai’s cracked lips. His watery eyes were affixed to the ceiling as he accepted the viaticum, and with frenetic fingers, he rubbed the lock of her mother’s hair in his hand.

  In a voice barely audible, Pai whispered: “Aufer a me, Domine, cor lapideum.” His chest shuddered with great exertion. The rosary fell from his slackened hand and clattered to the floor. His breath came no more.

  Arethusa picked up the rosary, kissed the crucifix, and wound it around her father’s hand. As she rose, the echo of her father’s words filled her mind, Take from me, oh God, this heart of stone. She thought back to the day of the stoning. Even after so many years had passed, she felt again the same leaden pain, the same hollow emptiness. She was to lose them both today, her mother and her father, in realization and in truth.

  “Requiem aeternam dona ei, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat ei. Requiescat in pace. Amen.” At the last uttering, her uncle fell to his knees and wept.

  But Arethusa and Tristan stood like two stones rising out of the sea, unmoving, their grief too familiar for tears.

  *

  Arethusa walked through the prayers and rituals of Pai’s funeral rites unseeing and almost unfeeling. Shock robbed her of reality, and she leaned heavily on Tristan as they moved from the funeral mass to the cemetery. The condessa walked ahead of them with grave severity behind her husband’s casket. The lady had not spoken a word since Pai’s passing. This was so unnatural to her temperament that Arethusa feared her silence even more than her shouts.

  When the pallbearers lowered the casket into the ground, a shudder shook Arethusa’s body, and she dropped to her knees beside her father’s coffin. The creaking of the pallbearers’ ropes stilled as Arethusa traced the fine grain lines on the walnut casket. She looked up into Tristan’s face. Heavy circles rimmed his eyes.

  He leaned down, whispering, “If I could, I would bring him back to you.”

  She pulled him to her and embraced him, feeling somehow that his grief was housed in the deepest well. This thought roused her from her own sorrow, and as she felt the shudder of his sadness against her body, she ached to ease his mind.

  Her whisper came almost soundless to his ear. “Let me take you home. Our father does not reside here. He is with my mother now, as it should ever have been.”

  He wiped his eyes and gave her the barest of smiles. “It’s still such a gift to hear you speak from your own mouth. I never dreamed I would.”

  She gathered him into an embrace, and then they rose together. With one last look at the gaping hole that swallowed her father’s body and a nod for Padre Salvador, Arethusa led Tristan away from the cemetery toward the church.

  As they rounded the corner of the building, Arethusa collided with a man, her head knocking into his chin. Glancing up, she halted her steps, and instinctively put her arm up to shield Tristan.

  “Leaving so soon?” Diogo’s voice was a mask of polite indifference.

  “You...” Tristan almost squeezed the life out of Arethusa’s hand.

  “Are you so surprised?” Diogo said, glaring at Tristan. “I came to fetch my future bride. Have you forgotten the arrangements your father and I made?”

  Arethusa recoiled in disgust. The mere sight of Diogo in the bright light of day repulsed her.

  “As you can see,” Tristan said, his reply immeasurably bitter, “our father is dead.”

  With a wag of his head, Diogo scoffed, “Have you bothered to check the conde’s will?”

  Fear flashed across Tristan’s face, and Arethusa felt a stab of anxiety in her own heart.

  “Padre Salvador is to read his will tomorrow,” Tristan countered. “But that is none of your concern. The moment my father died, you lost all right to our business affairs...” He lowered his voice. �
�And to Arethusa.”

  “You mean your sister?”

  “I’m her guardian now.” Tristan did not move, but she felt his body tense next to hers. “And I would never give her to you.”

  “You cannot stop me,” Diogo said, his smirk contorting to rage. “I can destroy you with a mere word to my friends.” With the flick of his wrist, a knife blade was between them. “Or at the point of a knife, if it comes to that.”

  “Be careful of making threats under the eaves of a house of God,” Tristan said, eyeing him warily as he positioned himself between Arethusa and the knife that glinted in Diogo’s hand.

  He laughed as he retracted his knife. “You were always too superstitious, my friend.”

  “Friend? You were never our friend. You’re a liar and a lecher.”

  “True. But then you were too blinded by Isabel’s bright eyes to see it.”

  Tristan narrowed his gaze. “It was you, wasn’t it? You paid Conde Branco to take Isabel in.”

  Diogo smiled.

  “Did you think it would sweeten the deal? That our father would think better of her if she was a Freemason’s ward?”

  “Of course. And I also know his secret, the secret he’s kept from everyone all this time. The day he adopted you”—he glanced at Arethusa—“I knew who you really were.”

  Arethusa couldn’t mask her surprise. Does he truly know?

  “Oh, yes,” he said, answering her unspoken question. “Your mother. On the night of the shipwreck. She went mad. Thought you had died when you hit your head. Kept calling out the name Fernando. Had no idea what she was jabbering on about. But I remembered the name when Conde Fernando Estrela adopted you. It wasn’t hard to figure out. A bastard, eh? Wonder what the proud Condessa Estrela would think of that?”

  Arethusa raised her hand to strike out at him, but Tristan held her fast.

  “The condessa has just lost her husband today,” Tristan said. “Leave her in peace if you have any soul left in your body.”