Beloved Pilgrim

by Christopher Hawthorne Moss

  Albrecht stared at him. “You don’t usually get like this when you are… well… having your women’s flux. Here, let me help you. Would bathing make you feel better?”

  Still weeping, Elias nodded his head. “Thank you. There is no better place to feel miserable than in a hot bath.”

  Albrecht went to the door to summon a servant to arrange the bath. He helped Elias remove his soiled clothing and wrapped him in a robe. He gathered up the counterpane and threw it in a heap on the floor. “I will wash them out myself. No one ever needs to know.”

  “Oh, Albrecht, I am so miserable! That girl, that woman, Maliha. I got her let go.”

  Albrecht looked at him. “You did? Why did you do that, my lord?”

  Elias’s eyes brimmed over again. “I didn’t mean to. I dismissed her from serving me, that’s all, but Andronikos sent her away completely. I went to find her, to bring her back.”

  Taking the soiled items to a basin, Albrecht poured cold water over them and started to scrub and rinse. “Did you find her?”

  “Yes, I did. I told her to come back here and I would get her position back.”

  Albrecht paused and turned to look at him. “I don’t understand why you are—” He held his tongue at the sound of scratching at the door.

  Elias called, “Come,” and then averted his face so the servants bringing in the large tub and screen would not see his tearstained cheeks.

  When the door was firmly shut behind them, he put his face in his hands. “Albrecht, I love her.”

  Albrecht stood still, perplexed. “But the worst that can happen when she comes back is that you remain aloof. She doesn’t need to know you love her.”

  “But when I kissed her, she kissed me back!”

  “Oh” was all Albrecht could say.

  “She will expect me to take her to my bed, but how can I do that? She would find out I have a woman’s body.”

  Albrecht grasped the situation at last. “You will simply have to keep her at arm’s distance, my lord.”

  Elias turned a miserable face to Albrecht. “I know,” he moaned.

  Albrecht suggested, “Andronikos must have other work, other houses. You could ask her to send her there. Or just say you changed your mind.”

  Sparks flew from Elias’s eyes as he regarded Albrecht. “I won’t do that! I love the woman, but even did I not, I would never do such a thing. She told me her and her son’s lives are in danger because of me. I would rather die.”

  “All right, all right!” he protested. “It was just a suggestion.”

  Elias continued to glare at Albrecht. Then his shoulders dropped again, and he leaned forward and put his face in his hands. “It’s hopeless.”

  Hesitantly, Albrecht probed, “How do you know you are in love with her? I mean, there was the margravina and then the whore. What is different about this girl, this Maliha?”

  Rather than blowing up at the squire, Elias put his arms tightly around himself. “I don’t know. I just know. She is so lovely, so delicate.” He chuckled as he thought of her very ungentle reaction when he forced himself on her. “Yet she is fierce, like a lioness. I am enchanted. With the margravina, I saw her beauty and admired her grace at arm’s length, an idol. The woman in Bologna was… well, voluptuous and fun. I didn’t want to love her, just to… fuck her. But with Maliha, I want to take her in my arms and worship her with both my soul and my body. I want to protect her, but I know she can protect herself. I don’t know, there’s a magic in that. And when she kissed me back with so much passion, even though I am a man and she is a woman, I felt like I had found something precious.”

  The look on Albrecht’s face was both sad and certain. “Yes, that is love. I know just how you are feeling.” His grief was so evident that Elias could only step forward and take him in his arms to comfort him.

  When the bath was ready, Albrecht took Elias’s robe and held him steady as he lowered himself into the tub. “Drape a sheet over the tub, would you? There’s a little chill in here,” he asked.

  Elias lay in the tub with the hot, fragrantly oiled water up to and covering his chin. Albrecht asked, “Would you like me to wash your hair?”

  Elias stretched languidly in the water. “Yes, I would. And can you get me some wine?” He knew he was being childish or, rather, womanish. A derisive chuckle escaped his throat.

  At the sound of a tap at the door, Albrecht pulled the screen around the tub more securely. “That is probably more hot water. I will order the wine and some food as well.” Elias made an inarticulate sound from the tub as acknowledgement.

  “Was that the servant?” Elias called after a few moments, when all he had heard was the door opening, some whispered words, and the door shutting again. He heard soft footsteps come around the edge of the screen and felt hot water poured into the bath. Elias left his eyes closed.

  “Ah, thank you, Albrecht. You read my mind. Can you wash my hair now while we wait for the wine?”

  Thinking it was odd that Albrecht was apparently tiptoeing around behind him, he heard the man pick up the ceramic bottle with the oils used to wash hair and smelled the fragrance when Albrecht poured some into his palm and reached for his head.

  Elias was drowsy enough to dismiss the impression that Albrecht’s fingers were shorter and gentler on his scalp. He luxuriated in his touch. Just now, he needed to feel petted and stroked. His body still felt the fire that had rocketed up into him when Maliha had kissed him so deeply he felt it in his soul. And other places. He thought that was probably when his blood leaked out of the rags he used. His “womanhood” filled with his own juices and there was just too much for the rags to soak up.

  “Mmm,” Elias sighed. “I really needed this. I do love her so. I wish Maliha was the one washing my hair.”

  Elias froze when, after rinsing his hair, Albrecht set down the ewer and reached around to put his cheek against Elias’s and his hands on Elias’s breasts. The fragrance of the man’s hair was familiar, but not Albrecht’s. The hands started to stroke and knead his small breasts that were now slippery with the oil. Thumbs flicked his nipples.

  Elias jerked his eyes open. “What are you doing?” He looked at the arms and hands. They were most definitely not Albrecht’s. “Who is it?” He struggled to sit up.

  “It is I, my beloved, Maliha.” The voice was husky and right next to his ear.

  Elias froze for a heartbeat, but then managed to pull himself up and twist his torso to look behind him. He stared and parted his lips. “Maliha,” he breathed.

  Maliha leaned forward and took his face in her hands. She put her mouth to Elias’s. Elias opened under her lips and he slipped in his tongue, only to be met and matched by hers.

  Elias turned all the way to kneel in the bathtub. His arms went around Maliha. He cupped the back of her head with one hand and stroked down her back to her waist with the other. Maliha put her own arms around Elias and held him tight. Elias stroked his palm forward, stopping just shy of cupping a breast. At Maliha’s sigh of encouragement, he touched the generous roundness and felt the stiff nipple pressing into his palm through Maliha’s clothes. He pulled out of the kiss and nuzzled Maliha’s throat.

  All of a sudden, Elias clasped Maliha tightly in his arms. Their strength made it easy to pull her forward. He lifted Maliha off her knees and powerfully drew her sideways over the tub’s rim. With a splash, she fell in the water, resting on her side against Elias’s body. She laughed and squealed, and Elias echoed every delighted sound.

  IN ELIAS’S chamber, he lay on his bed, a naked Maliha lying in his arms. He traced the outline of each nipple with his finger, making the luscious body quiver. He looked at Maliha, devouring the ample breasts with their large, dark areolae, the rounded belly that was as soft as velvet. “I do love you, my lioness,” he whispered.

  Maliha nestled into his long, lanky body. She put a hand to a muscular shoulder and kneaded it. “I love you, Elias. Is that really your name? Is it not a man’s name?”

 
Elias sighed deeply. “I have to explain.” He swept a hand down his body. “This is not my right body. I am a man.”

  Maliha stared back into his eyes. “This… is not your body?” She stroked down one breast to Elias’s thigh. “Where is your real body?”

  He bit his lower lip. “It is the one I was born with. But these”—he touched his forehead and the spot over his heart—“are a man’s. I have known it all my life, but no one could have told me how it should be this way. So I never asked.”

  Touching where Elias had touched himself, Maliha nodded absently. “But, my love, what does God say to you?”

  His eyes widening, Elias considered her question. He said hesitantly, “I have… always felt that… God knows who I am.” His words strengthened as he reached the end.

  “God is good.” She nodded. “I love you, Elias. It matters not what is here and here so long as your thoughts are of me, and only my image is in your heart. As for all this”—she indicated his naked body—“I love it the way it is!” She got to her knees, and with a wicked grin, leaned to kiss everything on Elias’s body she could reach.

  Elias roared with delighted laughter. “It’s good this body pleases someone, anyway. But how….” He took her chin in his hands and held it so she stilled and looked back into his face. “How did you know about….” Again, he waved a hand to indicate his body.

  “When you grabbed me at my mother-in-law’s shack and I punched you, I felt your breasts. I kissed you back and explored your chest and was satisfied I had not been mistaken. I learned to love a woman when I was a girl and played with my cousin in a manner I don’t think our parents intended.”

  Taking her hands, he kissed the abraded skin on her knuckles. “How can it be that I am both ashamed of forcing you and so grateful I did?”

  Maliha lifted her head to look quizzically into his eyes. “Does Albrecht know?” she asked.

  When he nodded, she went on, “Does anyone else?”

  Elias shook his head. “No, I cannot let anyone else know about my body.”

  “You must hide your sex?” Maliha asked, putting her mouth on one of Elias’s breasts.

  “Just that I have a woman’s body. I need everyone to see me as the man I am. It is both safer and what I want.” He put his arms tight around her. “I will never hide it from you if you prefer it… to a man’s.”

  Maliha gave him another wicked look. “There is something of delight in both,” she said cryptically and did not push for more explanation. Instead, she let her hand stray across Elias’s flat belly. Elias writhed and made a deep moan.

  Later, when they basked in the warmth of their lovemaking, he thought suddenly of the child. “But what of your son?”

  Maliha had been drifting into slumber but woke at the mention of her child. “He is here. He will live with me here.”

  Elias lifted his head so he could look into the honey-colored eyes that were mellower now. “He will live with you? But I had not had a chance to ask it!”

  Maliha shrugged. “Just after you left, the manservant here came to where I live and asked me to bring my child and come back here. He said you wanted me.”

  Smiling broadly, Elias said, “Oh, I do, I do. Over and over and over.” He pressed his mouth on Maliha’s again.

  “What is his name?” he asked when he came up for air.

  “Tacetin. He is just three years old.”

  Elias’s face grew more somber. “And his father?” There was a tinge of fear in his voice.

  Maliha sighed and touched Elias’s cheek, brushing the locks from his temple. “His name is Yakup. Or was. I really don’t know. He went to join Kilij Arslan’s fighters just before Tacetin was born. That was his mother you saw, screaming at me. It is his house.”

  In the dimming light of long-burned candles, Elias looked into Maliha’s eyes. “I see. So she saw you kissing me, and to her you were betraying her son.”

  Maliha nodded. “She will not admit that he may be dead.”

  “Was she not aware of the expectations of you in this house?”

  “She condemned me for that as well, but she did not condemn the coins I was able to take for our lodging and care of Tacetin. But seeing me in the arms of a Frankish knight was too much. If the man the master sent had not come just then, she may have called for me to be stoned.”

  “My God, how close that came.” He clasped Maliha tightly. Then, hesitantly, he went on. “Did… do you love him? Yakup, I mean?”

  Maliha took Elias’s face in her hands and looked into his eyes. “I love you. I have never loved anyone until I met you. You are my beloved.”

  Elias gazed back. “Marry me,” he said almost desperately.

  Maliha smiled ruefully. “I do not see how we two can do that.”

  “There must be a way. I love you and don’t want to have anyone else but you in my life and me in yours.”

  Maliha was thoughtful. “You could buy me. I am not a slave, but I could become one.”

  Elias’s head drew up abruptly. “No, I don’t want you to be my slave or anyone else’s. We will find a way to be together.” Suddenly, his face paled. “God help us,” he moaned.

  Maliha pulled herself up on her elbows. “What is it, my love? What is wrong?”

  Elias’s face was pained where it had been tender before. “I have to leave in a couple weeks. The pilgrims are setting out by the end of this month for the Holy Land. I have to go with them. I have no choice. I am pledged.”

  Searching Elias’s face, Maliha frowned and drew her head to his breast. “So soon. I knew you would have to go sometime. I will stay here in this house—the master said I may—and then you will come back to me.” Her voice broke. “Please tell me you will come back to me.”

  Chapter Ten

  First Contact

  THE TWO pilgrims from Winterkirche rode along the dry, dusty road, with faces so long their chins almost scraped another cartwheel rut. The three knights—Black Beast, Alain, and Gerhardt—hurried their mounts to ride up alongside them.

  “I know why Elias looks like someone died, but your squire, why does he?” Alain prodded, a playful look on his face that was repeated on the other two knights’. “Lovers’ quarrel?”

  Albrecht would not meet the man’s eyes, but Elias gave Alain a baleful look.

  “Ho, calm yourself. Nothing meant by it.” Alain’s hands went up, one with his mount’s reins draped loosely between the fingers.

  Black Beast rode closer to Alain. Slapping him on the back, he bellowed, “Come now, mon ami, you must remember what it is like to be so young and in love for the first time.”

  Gerhardt counseled, “Leave them alone. We have enough misery to deal with ahead of us. Why start it out worse than it already is?”

  For an answer, Elias called, “Come, Albrecht. The air is too hot here.” He urged Gauner into a trot and started away from the knights. Albrecht followed.

  “I was just trying to get them to lighten up.” Black Beast frowned as Elias rode past. “He doesn’t really think he is in love, does he? She was just a kept whore.”

  Alain studied his fingernails.

  Gerhardt quipped, “Better not say that to Elias. You will be sorry you taught him so many of your fighting moves.”

  “Hmmm,” the big man acknowledged. “Say, did you hear he clobbered one of the guards on the gate?”

  Alain looked up at that. “It was when he went to find that wench. I understand that Andronikos smoothed it all over. And lo and behold, the girl was back, and with a brat in tow.”

  RIDING FARTHER up the column until the knights were out of earshot, Elias shook his head. “They can be such arseholes sometimes.”

  “Sometimes?” Albrecht responded.

  The two settled into the companionable silence of a long day’s journey, each lost in thoughts of his own.

  Thoughts of Maliha lying beside him, so soft, so fragrant, and so loving, filled Elias’s mind. They had done their best to make what they could of the few days they�
�d had together. To his joy, Elias was able to spend time with Tacetin, who was shy at first. They had decided the boy should not see him as anything but a man, if only to avoid slips of the toddler’s tongue. Tacetin, with his tousled dark hair and huge black eyes, studied Elias from the safety of Maliha’s arms until finally he reached out a small hand and touched Elias’s cheek. He said something in baby Turkish. Maliha replied in Greek, “Yes, Mama loves Elias.”

  Elias put his arms around them both. He nestled his head so that both Maliha’s and Tacetin’s foreheads touched his.

  If it had been up to him, Elias would have spent all day and all night closeted in his chamber with those honey-colored eyes to gaze into. Andronikos made no demands of either of them. They were as free as they could be for a time, considering all the preparation that went into the impending departure of the pilgrims.

  The two had their evenings and nights to themselves. They remained in bed, touching, kissing, tasting. It was hard to keep at bay the awareness of being separated almost as soon as they had come together, but each did the best to find distraction for themselves and each other.

  It took Elias a couple of days to realize he had hardly seen Albrecht since Maliha’s return. He happened to see him and Andronikos arm in arm on their way to the pavilion where the eunuch had made his advances, and he understood. He let a brief thought of his brother cross his mind, and then decided that Elias would have wanted this. He let Albrecht have his time with a new lover, knowing he could ask him how it had all come about later.

  On one languid evening, Elias had tried to explain why he just did not leave the crusade and stay in Constantinople. “I have three reasons,” he began.

  Maliha replied, “You have two to stay, and three if you count the fact that Albrecht seems to want to stay as well.”

  Elias’s eyes begged his lover to allow him to go on. “There is my vow made in Mölk to make my way to Jerusalem.…”