Night Blooming

by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro

  “Does it seem just to you that you should be required to do this—worship all night long?” Rakoczy stayed half-a-step behind her, for the way was narrow and a water-worn channel ran down the center of the track.

  “It is what I must do, and I am willing to do it,” she answered, her posture very straight and the sound of her voice formal. “I pray as I am told, and I am spared the hard life of beggary or whoredom.”

  There was nothing Rakoczy could say that would negate her assumption; he nodded once. “I suppose you are constrained, then, to do as the Church instructs perforce.”

  “Oh, yes. I should die very quickly if I were to be left to the kindness of the laity. But I am not yet ready to enter the next world, so I do as I am commanded.” She paused and turned back to look at him. “You may not have heard this: I am told my mother wanted to expose me when I was born, and perhaps she was right. It may have been a better thing than how I have had to live. My father would not permit it, for I was their only child born alive, and he thought I would acquire color as I grew older. He insisted that I be swaddled and nursed. My mother knew better. She had had a white brother; he died when she was still a child, and he remained pale to the end. My father didn’t believe her. He said God would restore me.” Abruptly she stopped talking.

  Rakoczy had listened closely, and when she said nothing more, he told her, “It must have caused your parents much discord, to have to find a place for you.”

  “I know they wanted me to … to become as others; they gave me to the Church, thinking that this would hurry my healing. At least I didn’t bring them notoriety in the town any longer, so they hoped the worst had ended. Instead my hands began to bleed, and that frightened them, I think. My father didn’t want to look at me, and my mother wept.” She stared down at the ground.

  Rakoczy laid his hand gently on her shoulder. “And what do they say now? Have they become reconciled to your condition, as you have?”

  She shook her head. “It is all of a piece: I have heard nothing of my parents for more than four years now. I don’t even know if they are alive.”

  “Would you like to find out?” Rakoczy inquired, seeing injury in her posture that she had been able to keep out of her words.

  She shrugged, dislodging his hand. “If they live, I would be glad to know of it, and if they are dead I will pray for them. But I no longer fear for them as I did after they stopped coming to see me. Santa Albegunda was a three-day journey from their town, where my father is a tanner and a seller of leather, and when he travels—as he must—it is to procure skins or sell his wares, not to visit a nunnery. My mother must keep his house for him, and tend to selling and trading hides on market-day. Neither of them can be gone from his work for long, and he only has a donkey to carry hides for him, so they travel slowly. And I think they are relieved to have me out of their lives, for I had become a detriment to them.” Looking at him, a flicker of defiance in her red eyes, she said, “They have left me, and so the Church is my only kin now. As they intended. My stay at Santa Albegunda was the second time I was sent to a convent; I spent most of my young years at Sant’ Osmer. I was returned to my parents shortly after my hands started to bleed.”

  “Did they—your parents—want to keep you with them?” Rakoczy could see that this question disturbed her, although she sounded tranquil when she answered.

  “I don’t know. When I was returned to their care, the priest beat me regularly, and for a time that sufficed. But the bleeding continued, and he said Santa Albegunda had waters that would cure me, so I was sent there, in the hope that the Saint might work a miracle. I think my parents were relieved to be rid of me. The rest of the town was growing nervous, and some of the neighbors had already asked that my father take his family somewhere else. He could not do so, of course, the Potente wanting to keep a tanner in his fisc.” She stared toward the distant wall, seeing far beyond it. “I was tired of the beatings, and being spat upon in the street, so I consented to go to the convent at once. Perhaps I thought Santa Albegunda would cure me—I don’t know—but most of the nuns weren’t too much afraid, and that was a wonderful thing.” As she glanced back at him, she said, “You cannot know how hard a thing it is to be despised.”

  “There you are wrong, Gynethe Mehaut,” said Rakoczy, and there was something in the way he said it that held her attention. “I have been despised.”

  “For being foreign,” she said.

  “Among other things.” He looked down into her face, his penetrating gaze as compassionate as it was enigmatic. “I know what you have endured.”

  She shook her head. “It’s kind of you to say it, but you don’t know—you can’t. You are free to go your own way, which I dare not do. You have position and wealth and the high opinion of the King. At best I am a curiosity, and am fast becoming an inconvenience.” With a little sigh she turned away from him, no longer able to abide the benignity she read in his dark eyes. “I believe you mean well, but you have no notion of what my life must be.”

  Rakoczy regarded her with deep compassion. “I may know better than you suppose,” he said, “but I won’t debate the question with you. You have much to bear and you have done so with more grace than anyone could expect of you.”

  At this, she swung back to scrutinize his face. “Your regard is unfeigned,” she said after a long moment of consideration. “If you report that I am not as dangerous as many suppose, I may be given more freedom rather than increased constraint.”

  “Do you anticipate more restrictions?” Rakoczy asked, and anticipated her answer.

  “Yes. It would reassure those who fear I am a messenger of the Anti-Christ. They want to remove me from the world.” She sighed.

  “Do you mean they want you dead?” Rakoczy was troubled that she would be put in such an untenable position. “How could they dare have you killed?”

  “Being killed would not be as dreadful as other things.” She swallowed hard. “You give me reason to hope I might be spared immurement.”

  “Immurement?” he echoed. “What makes you think you will be immured?”

  “Sorra Celinde tells me that if there is any question regarding my … condition, that I will become an anchorite in a great convent or monastery, to perfect my penitence, and to give strength to the walls through my prayers.” There was a tightness in her voice that she had held at bay until now. “That way, if my wounds are blessed, my sacrifice will be welcome to Heaven without bringing God’s Wrath upon those who killed me. It will be a martyrdom, one the Church can revere.”

  “Penitence for what? Why should you be a martyr? What sin have you committed, that the Church should be willing to wall you up for it?” He felt a surge of indignation that he could not conceal. “The Church cannot expect you to do this.”

  “Why not? If Bishop Iso is right, my hands are an affront to God and Christ, blasphemous and … and profane. I carry the sign of the Anti-Christ, and no true Christian should have to endure my presence, or so says Bishop Iso. Bishop Freculf thought the same at first, but he has come to think that this is a sign of the favor of Heaven. He wouldn’t protest making me an anchorite because the sanctity of my wounds would significantly strengthen the walls of any convent or monastery. But Bishop Freculf would not compel me to accept such a life, as Bishop Iso would. Bishop Freculf wants a willing sacrifice, not a capitulation.” She held up her hands. “I don’t know why I have these wounds. I don’t know what they mean. I have no more understanding of them than any other person. I have never sought to be one with Christ, for that is not for women to achieve. I have never tried to reach beyond the vows of nuns for my deliverance, nor have I become a Sorra for fear that I might contaminate the others in the convent, if my hands are truly diabolical. I do not think they are, but Satan is the Father of Lies, and so I might not understand the damnation they bring. In all the years I lived with the Sorrae at Sant’ Osmer, we were told of the purity of Christ’s Blood and our salvation because of it, and for that, I revere His Wounds and kno
w I am not worthy of them myself.”

  “Blood is the heart of it, isn’t it?” he asked in a rush of tenderness.

  “It is life, for the living and the holy dead,” Gynethe Mehaut agreed, and signed a blessing. “It is the very center of Christian faith.”

  “And many others,” Rakoczy said, remembering the chalices of blood in the mountains of Spain; he regarded her with increased appreciation, saying, “I will have to tell the King something regarding this night’s conversation: what would you like that to be?”

  Her expression was startled. “Do you ask me?”

  “Those are your hands,” Rakoczy pointed out. “Surely you are the one to say—”

  She made a sudden gesture of refusal. “No. I will say nothing that will bring me any greater notice from the King.”

  “But how you live may depend upon what the King decides,” Rakoczy told her patiently.

  “So it might,” she snapped. “But he will not listen to me.”

  “He will to me,” Rakoczy said, his whole being offering kindness. “Tell me what you want him to hear.”

  This time when she searched his face, there was a penetration in her gaze that had been less apparent before. Finally she took a step back. “I hardly know what to say,” she admitted. “No one has asked me such a question.” She walked on a short way into the shadow of the garden wall. “I haven’t knowledge enough to decide what is right for me in this.”

  “Possibly not,” he said, “but you know what you experience and no one else does.” He felt increasing rapport with this white-skinned woman, and a presentiment of peril to come. “Surely you must have some inclinations about what is to happen to you.”

  She considered her answer carefully. “I want my case to be put before the Pope as it will be for His Holiness to decide. If he truly speaks for God on earth, then he will know what should be done with me, for the good of my soul and the benefit of all faithful Christians.”

  Rakoczy heard her out, a coldness closing a fist within him, as if some unknown but inexorable force had been put in motion; nothing of his apprehension was reflected in his demeanor. He reverenced her. “If that is what you want,” he said, “it is what I will do.”

  “Do you dare?” Gynethe Mehaut asked in astonishment.

  “It is hardly a dare: the King has asked me to question you, which I have done, and he has asked me to make a recommendation, and that I will do. It is my commission; there is no impropriety in laying your case before the King, with my recommendation.” He tried to give her an encouraging smile. “It is my intention to convey your desires as that recommendation.”

  She shook her head in disbelief. “If you will do this, I will be forever in your debt, no matter what the Pope decides.”

  “No, Gynethe Mehaut. You will owe me nothing,” he said, his voice low and soft. “I am only a messenger, and that deserves no gratitude. If I can fulfill the task given to me, I will be rewarded enough.” He took a step back from her, though he kept his voice low as he said, “I do understand much of your plight, little as you may think it possible: believe this.”

  Watching him, she realized she did believe him, and that troubled her as doubt never could. “If I am grateful, it is my decision. You cannot insist I not be so.”

  He inclined his head. “I am rightly rebuked,” he told her, his tone light, his eyes somber.

  “I haven’t rebuked you,” she said, chagrined that he might think she would so forget herself.

  “It is just as well that you do,” said Rakoczy quickly, seeing her distress. “I intended no correction, Gynethe Mehaut.”

  “You might,” she said.

  “It isn’t my place to correct you,” he said, wishing she would accept some gesture of affection, but certain she would not. “I intended only raillery; we are two strangers in this place: if we cannot laugh together, then we are truly lost.”

  She thought about this for a long moment, then gestured her comprehension. “I’ll grant you so much, Magnatus. I haven’t laughed in a long time; I hope I haven’t forgot how.”

  “And I,” said Rakoczy, relieved that she had not been completely put off by his attempt to amuse her.

  “Why should laughter be so important? Those who laugh mock God and the King,” said Gynethe Mehaut. “How can I laugh?”

  “Great Karl laughs; other men laugh; the Bishops laugh.” Rakoczy would have liked to touch her, to give her reassurance with an orectic embrace, but he was fully sensitized to her now and knew that she would not want it, that it would be an imposition, so he remained still. “Why shouldn’t you? God shouldn’t mind a little mirth in the world.”

  “That isn’t what I’ve been taught,” she declared, as if this would settle the matter.

  “Then I am sorry for you, for to have faith without joy, you deprive yourself of its greatest gift,” said Rakoczy intently. “Still,” he went on more easily, “if it causes you dismay I won’t do it any longer.”

  She was unused to such consideration, and it took her a long moment to be sure he was sincere. “You puzzle me, Magnatus.”

  “And why is that?” He wanted to see her walk out of the shadow, so that he could see her more fully.

  “You aren’t like the Bishops, or the hobu, and you aren’t like the courtiers, and certainly you aren’t like a peasant or a monk, so you puzzle me.” As if responding to his desire, she came into the moonlight, looking him directly in the face. “You are foreign, but I suspect it is more than that.”

  “Why?” He took a step closer to her.

  “Because you aren’t afraid of me,” she answered. “My skin doesn’t frighten you, nor my hands. I might be any woman, and well-born at that.”

  “No, Gynethe Mehaut, I am not afraid of you. There is nothing in you to fear,” he said, and took a step back from her. “I would be honored to be your friend, for I think you are in need of friends.”

  She looked away from him. “How can that be?”

  “You have suffered much: I will do what I can to alleviate your affliction if you will permit me.” He ducked his head to show respect. “I am not the ally a Frank would be, but I assure you that my Word is good, and I will abide by it no matter what may come.”

  “You do not know what may come,” she countered.

  “No, but I won’t rescind my pledge,” he told her, and gave her an opportunity to respond.

  “I wish I knew why you do this,” she said, and waved him to silence before he could speak. “You can say nothing that will incline me in your favor. I have no desire for the life beyond the convent.”

  “I was not asking for you carnally, or with any intent to seduce you,” said Rakoczy, disquieted that she would think his offer of support had such an expectation. “I was hoping you would accept my assistance in any capacity I am able to provide it.”

  “Is this because we are both strangers, in our way? I could abide that.” She did not quite smile, but a little of the resistance left her.

  “Then let it be on that account,” said Rakoczy; he remembered the aloofness he had first encountered in Nicoris, and how long it had taken her to trust him.

  “As strangers, then, who are among strangers,” she said, and turned away from him. “Sorra Celinde will come soon and I haven’t finished my work in the garden.”

  “Among the night-blooming flowers,” said Rakoczy, and waited for her to speak again.

  “Yes. I want to make the most of the moonlight,” she said, moving past him and hurrying back along the narrow path toward the plot where she had been working.

  He followed her part of the way, saying, “I will inform you of anything the King tells me about his decision.”

  She nodded, indicating she had heard him. “I’ll thank you, for the sake of friendship,” she said over her shoulder as she fled.

  Rakoczy watched her for a long moment, then turned and made his way back into the collegium of Attigny. As he walked, he thought over all that had passed between him and Gynethe Mehaut, as well as wh
at had not. It had been an encounter that had left him restive; he was troubled by her request to ask the King to put her case before the Pope, but he would abide by his Word. He had been hoping he might be allowed to examine the wounds on her hands; but Bishop Iso had protested, and so he would have to wait for another time. Reaching the massive inner door, Rakoczy pulled on the bell-chain to summon the warder-Fratre who kept watch over the books and manuscripts within.

  Fratre Gaugolf answered the summons reluctantly; he yawned as he pulled the door open and peered out at the man in the black gonelle. “It is late,” he said bluntly.

  “I am charged to write to the King tonight.” Rakoczy waited patiently while Fratre Gaugolf opened the door.

  “There is only one set of lamps lit. You will find it too dark to write,” Fratre Gaugolf declared.

  “Let me determine that, Fratre, if you would,” said Rakoczy, his night-seeing eyes well-adjusted to the dimness of the collegium. “If you are right, I won’t linger. But I must discharge my obligation to the King as handily as I may.”

  Grudgingly, Fratre Gaugolf stood aside and let Rakoczy enter the large chamber. “There are writing desks at the—”

  “—far end of the room; yes, I know,” said Rakoczy, controlling his impatience with this officious monk. “And sheets of vellum and parchment in the shelves behind them. The ink-cakes are on the desks, and the quills are in a box next to them—do I have it right?”

  “Yes, you do,” said Fratre Gaugolf. “Go, then, and try to write your letter.” He stumped back to the bench near the fireplace; the two logs had almost burned through and now showed only sullen red embers amid the blackened wood. While Rakoczy made his way to the tall writing desks, Fratre Gaugolf took another log from the stack near the hearth and laid it on the dying fire; a shower of sparks heralded his efforts.