Night Blooming

by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro

  She came to answer the summons. “Thank the Saints,” she said. “I am afraid to move in this place. Look at it!” There were Moorish hangings behind a divan, and two chests and a table on which was a small casket banded in brass. Five branches of oil-lamps hung from the beams. On the wall, four paintings depicted the life of Santa Felicita, with emphasis on her Martyr-sons. The bedroom beyond was equally grand, with shining silk around the bed, the nearest side pulled back to reveal the tall bed with three large pillows and two woolen coverlets atop the puffy mattress. Gynethe Mehaut flung out her hand, staring at the lavish display. “I don’t know if I should sleep in such a bed.”

  “Of course you should,” said Rakoczy. “Your penitence won’t be compromised by a down-filled mattress. Not for two nights.”

  “But these rooms,” she said, trying to mask her astonishment. “My hands … If I should bleed on the bed, it would be a shameful thing.”

  “Then I will wrap your palms with double-bands.” Rakoczy was able not to laugh at this concern, no matter how unlikely he thought it was.

  “I still can’t bring myself to wear the stollae or gonellae you gave me; I don’t want to bleed on them, either,” she said. “Especially the silken ones.”

  “They are meant to be worn, Gynethe Mehaut, just as these pieces of furniture are meant to be used.” He did his best to reassure her. “Enjoy this while you can. It may be the finest bed you will ever sleep in.”

  “No; this is very grand, but it isn’t the finest bed: that was at Lake Como,” said Gynethe Mehaut, her ivory skin suffusing with color. “No bed is sweeter than that one. I slept as if in Heaven, and dreamed of such wonderful things.”

  Rakoczy tried to respond without revealing the intense desire that surged within him. “You do me honor, Gynethe Mehaut.” He tried to persuade himself that he was glad that he had not gone to her in her sleep, to visit her dreams.

  “You guarded me from all evil, and you made my comfort your business. You did not scorn the way I am forced to live, and you never once made me feel—” She sighed unsteadily. “This is more luxurious, but it isn’t as comfortable.”

  “If you will rest, you will find it is—” He was interrupted by an outbreak of cursing and a loud clatter as if something had fallen on the stairs. “Well, you may want to wait until your chest is brought to you, but it is so hot, you will be better for a nap.”

  She shook her head. “I’m afraid to lie down. The coverlets are so white.”

  “The coverlet on my bed is black wool. Would you like me to bring it in to you and take yours away?” Rakoczy offered, sensing her emotions, her ambivalence and her isolation; he wanted to take her in his arms to reassure her, but knew that would only stimulate his need of her, so he contented himself with taking her hand in his.

  “No,” she said, then, “Yes. Will you?” She smiled eagerly. “Yes. That will be very good, if you will do it.”

  “Perhaps I should wait until your prandium is brought up to you, and the attire-woman waits upon you. That way no one will see the change and remark upon it.” He led her toward the divans. “In the meantime, you can recline on these.”

  “But they are Moorish,” she protested.

  “They are as much old Roman as they are Moorish; the old Romans reclined on such couches to dine. They had luxurious habits of their own; the Moors are not alone in that,” Rakoczy said. “Think of the Caesars when you lie on one, and you’ll feel much more appropriate.”

  She managed a bit of a smile. “I will.” For a long moment she was silent, her hand lying in his. “I don’t know what else to ask. You have anticipated everything.”

  “Anything you like,” he said, and let her hand go.

  “Perhaps later this evening you would spend a short while with me? I cannot go into the streets, but the festival should be exciting.” Her expression was wistful.

  “Frenzied, more likely,” he said with a quick, wry smile. “When monks celebrate, they are apt to be fractious.”

  Gynethe Mehaut shook her head. “And the town? Will the people be fractious as well?”

  “It’s possible,” said Rakoczy, who expected frenetic activity in the streets once Vespers ended. “Just as well to be indoors on such a night.”

  “Did you know that they would be keeping festival when we arrived?” There was a doubtful look in her eyes. “Do you want to celebrate with the people?”

  “I know that Bobbio keeps the Feast of Santa Maria Fructens in July, but I don’t know their calendar,” said Rakoczy candidly.

  “Surely it is the Pope’s calendar,” said Gynethe Mehaut.

  “More or less. The Feasts are often kept at different times in various regions, as suits the way that their crops increase.” Rakoczy shrugged. “I hoped the Feast was over; it was in Lecco. They keep it much more quietly.”

  “Was that when the priest went and blessed the trees and the villagers drank most of the old wine?” she asked. “I don’t remember any Feast like it in Franksland.”

  “There are Midsummer Feasts, but they’re not quite the same,” said Rakoczy, wanting to add that the old gods of the Italian peninsula were unlike those of the Franks, but he decided not to add to her confusion. As much as he wanted to linger with her, he knew he ought to leave her before the attire-woman came and found them together, for this would create gossip that would follow them all the way to Roma, making Gynethe Mehaut’s circumstances even more precarious than they already were.

  “No, they’re not,” she said, and turned away, as if aware of his thoughts. “When the attire-woman is gone, will you come again?”

  “After you have eaten, I will,” he said, and went to the door. “Make sure you set the bolt in place. The attire-woman will notice.”

  “Are you certain?” She shook her head. “Yes, you are. We are constantly watched, you and I, and I cannot hide what I am.

  “Then we must continue to be careful in all we do.”

  By sundown the whole town was alive with monks reveling. Most of them had fasted from dawn to sunset and drunk half-a-dozen chalices of wine after Vespers. Bawdy songs echoed in the streets as groups of men staggered from chapel to chapel to drink Communion wine and dance to the tunes on a bladder-pipe.

  Gynethe Mehaut admitted Rakoczy to her rooms when the night was fully dark and Tullius’ house was very quiet, most of the servants and half of the slaves having gone into the streets with the Frankish soldiers—all but Einshere, who was keeping guard over the rear gate—to roister until Matins. She had donned her lightest stolla, one of white linen washed with oil of lavender and decorated with embroidery of leaves at the neck and sleeves. One of the shutters was open, and Gynethe explained at once, a bit shamefacedly, “I hoped for a breeze, to cool the room. It is still hot, and I wanted some air.”

  “And you wanted to hear the merrymaking,” said Rakoczy, smiling gently at her.

  “Yes,” she admitted. “Although I should be praying.”

  “If the monks can abandon their Office for one night, you ought to be allowed to follow their example,” said Rakoczy, reverencing her before approaching her.

  “I would like to; I’d like to sing and dance, as well,” she confessed. “They sound so jolly, the singing and laughter.”

  Rakoczy suspected this would soon give way to rougher amusements, but he kept this to himself. “It is a fine festival. But few women attend it,” he added.

  “Women would be attacked by the men is what you mean? I suppose the women who do join in are light women, whores and entertainers?” She cocked her head. “Probably even they aren’t very safe during this festival.”

  “No, they’re not,” said Rakoczy, remembering the three ravished and slaughtered women he had found in an alley in Tergeste almost five centuries ago, the hapless victims of religious delirium that had been the culmination of four days of public demonstrations. The women, who had been sold to brothels as children, had become the target of the riots because they were obvious and part of the people of the
city who were against the austerities of the Paulist Christians. He suspected that even in her white stolla and with her crucifix hanging on a thong around her neck, Gynethe Mehaut would fare no better in the streets of Bobbio than those three women had in Tergeste.

  She sat on the nearer divan. “You were right. This is very comfortable. It was here I ate prandium, and I was very much at ease. I didn’t recline, but the couch was still easy.” Her fingers pleated the folds of her stolla and she looked up at him. “Will you sit down, please?”

  He chose the other divan and sank down onto it. For an instant, he remembered the Emir’s son and the time he had spent in his service, as well as his escape from it; San-Ragoz had been forced to travel by night and to hide from the world, as did all runaway slaves. But that was eighty years behind him. He offered an enigmatic smile to Gynethe Mehaut and remarked, “Yes, this is very nice.”

  “You speak as if you thought it would be,” she said.

  There was a spurt of noise and a shouted exchange from the street below, then a loud report of breaking crockery and a crash of metal.

  “Of course,” said Rakoczy. “I have known couches like this of old.”

  She contemplated his face for a short while, the flickering oil-lamps changing his features with shifting light and dark. “I don’t know what to make of you,” she said at last. “I want to understand why you are so willing to see me as someone like others.”

  “Why should you make anything of me?” he countered, but deferentially so that she felt no challenge in his question.

  “You are kind to me. You do not fear me, or shun me for my afflictions.” She had been rehearsing this in her mind, and she spoke now with the directness of practice. “You tell me you understand, and I have come to think that perhaps you do. Why is that?”

  Rakoczy contemplated his hands while he thought. “Those of my blood,” he said at last, “have limitations imposed upon them, very severe limitations, in many ways not unlike yours. They shape all that I do, and have since I was a very young man. Over time I have learned to accommodate them, but I can’t ignore them. That’s why I am able to understand; my limitations may not be as obvious as those you have, but that is in part because I know what I must do in order not to appear more foreign than I am.”

  “Is that why you dine alone?” She was openly curious now, as if his explanation had given her the opportunity she sought.

  “It is … related,” he answered. “For those of my blood, taking nourishment is a very private act, and so we keep to ourselves when we do it.”

  She thought over what he said. “Can you tell me any of the things you do? Or what your blood imposes on you?”

  He contemplated her face, perusing her features for any sign of apprehension or duplicity. Finding none, he decided to be candid with her, at least on this point. “Like you, I must avoid the sun, unless I take steps to protect myself first,” he told her. “If I do not prepare, sunlight will burn me as surely as hot metal, and I will have to remain in the dark for some time in order to recover.”

  “But you aren’t white,” she said, pulling back her sleeve and extending her pallid arm.

  “No,” he agreed, “but in this I might as well be.”

  “Then what do you do?” The plaintive note in her question brought a pang to his soul that made it difficult for him to answer.

  “I fear what protects me will not protect you,” he told her. “My native earth is proof against all but the most extreme sun. So the soles of my boots and brodequins are lined with my native earth. So are my carpenta and plaustera, and my saddles.”

  Gynethe Mehaut stifled a laugh. “What a fine device! How did you come to think of it?”

  “I happened upon it long ago,” he said, not wanting to admit how many centuries had passed since he had come upon this stratagem. “It has served me well,” he said.

  “It must. You don’t appear to suffer at all,” she marveled.

  “This isn’t the only imposition my nature makes on me,” he went on, almost eager to speak. “It is the one I have been most able to correct.”

  “Are all foreigners like you?” Gynethe Mehaut inquired. “The few I have known were not so hampered as you say you are.”

  “No. No, those of my blood are few and we are scattered far over the earth,” he said.

  “That’s sad,” she said. “But at least you have others like you.”

  Another eruption of noise reminded them that the celebration was growing more tumultuous; the songs had begun to degenerate into howls and shouting.

  “Yes,” he said, and smiled at her. “I’ve seen those like you, as well.”

  She studied him, her red eyes shining like good wine in the lamplight. “Where? What were they like?”

  “I saw three in Egypt,” he said, recalling the white-skinned children brought to the Temple of Imhotep, two of whom had been so badly burned that they died quickly; the third was an infant, abandoned by her parents and at last given to Pharaoh as a concubine and raised with the children of other royal concubines. “I saw two in the western lands of the Great Khan, and two in Tunis.”

  “I hope this is true. I am so weary of being told that no one has ever been like me before,” she said in a rush. “I know my uncle was said to be like me—white of skin and red-eyed, but he didn’t bleed and he died long before I was born, so I have no sense of him beyond the tales the family told.” She sighed, holding up her arm and pulling back her sleeve. “You say you saw those like me?”

  “None of them bled from the hands,” he said, and saw the animation leave her face. “They were white, as white as you, though.”

  “Yet they aren’t truly like me, are they?” She sounded so forlorn, so alone, that Rakoczy slipped off his divan and sat at her feet. “This damned blood!” she muttered, making her hands into fists as if that would put a stop to the wounds.

  “Oh, no,” Rakoczy said, taking her hands and opening them carefully. “Blood is never damned. It is the one thing that is completely and utterly yours, and for that it is sacred. These wounds may not be welcome to you, but do not accuse your blood, or despise it: value it, and know that it is truly yours, the vessel of your soul.”

  Gynethe Mehaut stared at him. “Does it seem so to you?”

  “It is so,” he answered, keeping her hands, his compelling eyes on hers. Very slowly and very deliberately he began to unwrap the bandages. “This is a gift that is greater than any other, to know someone in blood, as those of my kind can do.”

  She watched, fascinated; as he hesitated, she laid her right hand on his hair. “Do what you will.”

  “If it is what you wish, as well. If I impose my desires on you, it would not serve you or me. It must be what you seek; otherwise there is no virtue in it, and of no use to either of us.” He set the linen wraps aside and stroked her skin gently, avoiding the central wound. “Tell me: what do you long for?”

  Her breath trembled. “I hardly know.”

  In the street sudden loud shouts silenced the bladder-pipe player, and a flute began a quick melody; cries of approval greeted the tune, and some of the men began a ragged, rollicking chorus.

  “What would you like to try?” He touched her again, so gently that tears welled in her eyes.

  “That is … lovely,” she murmured. “If the blood doesn’t bother you.”

  “No; it doesn’t bother me.” He lifted her palm to his lips; a smear of blood left on his mouth marked where he kissed her.

  Gynethe Mehaut was unable to speak for several heartbeats, and when she did, her voice was hushed, as if she was afraid to be overheard. “What can you do?”

  “Tell me what you like,” said Rakoczy, sensing her passion, but unaware of what she sought, he was reluctant to go on.

  “I haven’t known anything of men’s nature but what was forced upon me. I don’t want that,” she said, her hands shaking as she admitted this.

  “All right.” He kissed her hand again, and the taste of her blood lingered on
his lips. “How can I give you pleasure?”

  “Do you want to give me pleasure?” She was genuinely surprised.

  “Yes, because then when we touch each other, it will not be in the flesh alone. That contact is the very heart of pleasure, the essential core that gives joy to intimacy.” He looked directly into her eyes. “I want to do all that will delight you.”

  “I don’t know what that could be,” she said quietly. “To be in your company is a delight. I cannot imagine anything more satisfying.”

  “Then you’re frightened,” said Rakoczy, feeling her hesitancy. “You have no cause to be.”

  “That is what I was told before,” she said. “And then he accused me of tempting him from Grace.” As she pulled her hands away, she looked mournful.

  Rakoczy was quiet, his perceptions a tangle of her eagerness and dread and his own yearning. He remained on his knee beside her divan, and finally he said in a tranquil voice, “It seems to me that you bestow Grace, not compromise it.”

  Someone in the street screamed, and this was answered with angry bellows as well as the scrape of metal as weapons were drawn. There were a series of excited shouts, accompanied by the slap of iron on iron, and then someone wailed in pain, and there was a clumsy scamper of retreat.

  “Do you truly believe that?” Gynethe Mehaut asked, breathing more quickly.

  “Yes; with all my heart,” said Rakoczy, and took her offered hands again.

  “What do you want of me?” Her words were hushed.

  “I would like us to touch one another so that we know each other to the limits of our souls,” he said; the blood on her palms was as heady as wine, and he could not conceal his desire for her.