by Ted Dekker
He hadn’t been forthcoming about his rescue of Natasha, and I’d allowed his reticence, taken with my own distractions. But I should have made things clearer to him. I should have intervened!
“Alek!”
The hall to our rooms wavered under candlelight. I burst into his room.
“Alek!”
His bed was still made. Untouched! What else had I expected?
Lucine was alone in the living room when I entered. No servants, no Kesia. Only Lucine in her white nightgown, flowing against her thighs like angel wings. She was nibbling on her fingernail, nervous as a cat.
I paused, thinking I should excuse myself.
“So?” she said, approaching quickly.
“So, yes. You were right.”
“He’s gone.” She rushed to the door that led out to the garden, threw it open, and stepped out into the back. “Natasha!” She ran out into the courtyard, crying the name of her sister. “Natasha!”
“Lucine!” I ran to stop her. Or to help her, I don’t know which. By the time I reached the flagstone, she was already halfway down the steps that descended to the rose gardens and hedge maze. “Lucine!”
“Natasha!” she cried. A quail took flight from the grass on her right, fluttering into the night. She stopped at the bottom, by the second fountain, and gave one last call. But only a far-off owl answered.
“Lucine, please, you should go inside,” I said, reaching for her shoulder. I feared that my alarm at her sister’s indiscretion in leaving yet again had frightened her. “Please, if she is with Alek she will be safe. I can vouch for that.”
“We don’t even know they went back to the castle,” she cried. “Knowing those two, they’re here, hiding out.”
“Then they don’t want to be discovered. And again, Alek—”
“Your man is no better than she!”
“Please . . .”
“Both of them have that look. It’s a mindlessness, the complete falling for a vice. I swear, any man who allows himself such indulgences should be put in a cage!”
The words washed over me like a pail of stream water in the winter. I stood there hovering over her shoulder, and my entire body seemed to freeze.
Was she talking about me? Did she know? She was calling me out! In her frustration with Alek, she was making her will known to me, surely.
Have no emotion for me, Toma. The man with emotion over honor is the crazed man I would punish.
“That’s the problem with this crazy Cantemir family,” she said, staring at the mountains in the west. “They run on this ridiculous obsession with pleasure and love.”
The Carpathians rose black against a full-moon sky, forbidding, gigantic hammers lowered by the gods with enough force to remain immovable for all eternity. The looming obstacle felt like the one in my heart.
“You don’t have to worry, madam. I’ve seen Alek lost in love many times and he never lets it interfere with his better judgment.”
“How can you say that? He’s gone with her.”
“Only because he sees no true danger. They are a peculiar lot, these Russians, but they haven’t provoked without being provoked. Even if she has gone back, she’ll be safe as long as Alek’s with her.”
She closed her eyes and breathed out, overemotional herself, I thought. Something besides Natasha was on her mind. Now I faced a rather awkward situation.
I was beside myself for her. My own emotions refused to give me any space. I had put up a brave face and made myself as invisible as possible after much vacillation, but none of it had tempered my feelings.
Now by moonlight she had told me she thought emotions were the bane of mankind. And yet she herself was in need. I was at a complete loss.
Then, to make matters absolutely impossible for me, she took two steps to the stone bench, sat, and lowered her face into her hands.
My heart was breaking! I wanted to rush over and hold her to my breast and assure her that whatever I had done to bring this sorrow would be immediately undone. But I wasn’t sure that I had caused her pain. Maybe her sister’s disappearance was wholly responsible.
“Lucine . . .” I walked to the bench, then, after a moment’s pause with no one watching, I sat. “She’ll be safe. I swear it on my life. If I must bring her back myself and chain her to a bed, I shall.”
“No.” Her voice was tight and she swallowed—I could see her throat move by moonlight. “That’s not it. I’m afraid I’m not crying for her. You’re right. I’m sure she’ll be fine.”
“Then whom? Alek?”
She turned her glistening eyes on me and offered a small smile, then faced the mountains again. “I’ve always lived in her shadow, you see. Natasha has always been the life of society. The crazy one who will take ten men by their tails and throw them onto her bed if she’s in the mood.”
She stopped there, but she didn’t have to say a word more. I could not hold my tongue.
“And I for one would choose you over Natasha without a moment’s hesitation.”
The night was suddenly warm. Lucine looked at me, perfect in every way: her small nose, her smooth cheeks, her tossed dark hair, and eyes golden by this light. My heart was crashing in my chest and I was terrified she might hear it.
“Not that I’m given to emotion,” I said quickly, remembering her comments about indulgence.
“Don’t be silly, Toma.” She looked away from me and my heart fell to the ground, shattering. “I was only saying that because I am secretly and insanely jealous of her.”
“You are?”
“Yes. Which woman would not be? She might be far too loose for my liking, but she is loved. Desperately. By many. Whom do you know who doesn’t long to be loved?”
Lucine wanted to be loved.
“Only if that love is genuine. Freely given,” I said.
“So they say. So they say. However it is, there’s no feeling like love. I should know, I once embraced it with abandon. Now Natasha is washed with this feeling.”
She was taking her sister’s side, a twin who saw the other side so clearly. Two sides of the same coin, the French said. Lucine and Natasha. Tempered and untamed. Brash and meek. Wise and foolish.
Lucine might see her sister clearly, but I couldn’t bear the thought of her changing in any way. “You don’t want to be like Natasha, Lucine.”
“Why not?” She faced me, chin strong.
“You’re perfect the way you are.”
“But am I loved?”
“Yes!”
She blinked.
“By you?”
I wanted to vanish into the night.
“In some way, yes. I love many things.”
“I don’t want to be loved like many things.” She stood, pacing now, careless in her nightgown. “I want a beautiful man to leave his life for me the way men throw away their good sense for Natasha. I want love over honor, passion over loyalty!”
She sighed and continued before I could protest any of it.
“But that’s all utter nonsense. In truth I’m bound by honor and my loyalty to another code. In truth I can’t risk that kind of emotion, so yes, I would put it in a cage.”
I rose, rather abruptly. “No.”
“No?”
“I mean, yes. Yes, of course, you said that.”
Lucine looked up at me, round eyes searching mine curiously. She stepped closer, framing a hint of a smile.
“You’re a curious man, Toma,” she said in a sweet voice. So close I could smell the flowers in her perfume. “So sweet, and yet inside there somewhere is a ferocious beast who slays men with a sword. And you do like me—Natasha and Mother are right.”
I had to cover my awkwardness. “What’s not to like?”
She reached up and kissed my bare chin lightly, with soft lips. “A response like that,” she said.
And then she turned and hurried up the steps, leaving me flatfooted by the fountain.
The kiss, though only a peck, made my head useless. I think I rounde
d the fountain twice for no reason before I recalled her last words. A response like that. Like what?
If I hadn’t been so accustomed to Alek’s adventures, I might have gone after them, or at least waited up, worried for their safety. Instead I fell asleep late, with thoughts of Lucine flogging my mind.
Both Alek and Natasha were safe at home, lost to dreams of whatever fantasy had captured them, when I rushed to check on them the next morning. I decided to let Alek sleep. He’d hardly slept these last two days, and there was nothing for him to do now that we’d settled in and secured the estate.
But the moment I saw him when I came in for tea at noon, I became alarmed. His face was white, and dark bruises cupped his eyes. His lower lip looked like it had taken a fist.
On his heels came Natasha, looking like a ghost with the same dark circles, blonde hair down and tangled. She wore a white flounce-trimmed shift under a black leather vest with laces, and a black velvet skirt that fell to her calves. This was a change in fashion for her, and it immediately brought the Russians to mind.
“New look?” Kesia asked, smiling past her cup of tea. “It suits you.”
“Thank you, Mother.” Natasha curtsied.
“A late night?”
A sheepish grin was answer enough. Natasha walked to the tray of meats, plucked a pickled sardine from a glass bowl, and nibbled on its head. She chuckled once and swayed slightly, like a schoolgirl singing, lost in her fantasy.
All the while we watched, Alek as well, fascinated by her. His eyes caught mine, held steady for a moment, then shifted away as his grin fell flat.
Now, remember, I knew Alek like a brother. I knew his eyes. His heart. His limits. And I knew in that moment that something had happened to push Alek past his limits.
Lucine was looking at me, face ashen. Only she and I seemed to have maintained a grip on common sense and propriety. Kesia was too liberal in all matters, and these two lovebirds had been intoxicated by some elixir of the Russians’ making.
I loved Lucine even more in that moment, because we shared the knowledge that only we were the wise ones, the two cut from the same finer cloth. I dipped my head to acknowledge her unspoken request that I step in and make sense of things.
“Alek, a word in private.”
He held up a hand. “No. I know, I know, Toma. No need for secrets. Natasha promised not to go back, I promised not to go back. We . . . we, both of us, promised not to go back. Yet we did. But we didn’t mean to. We just went out to the garden and found ourselves so delirious with love that we thought we must dance.”
“And you can’t dance here?” Kesia asked.
“Not like you can dance there, Mother,” Natasha said, biting into an olive. “Isn’t that right, Alek?”
He started to smile, then grew quickly serious, addressing me. “There is no concern, Toma. I assure you. It’s totally innocent.”
“How can any emotion that draws you on an hour’s journey in the middle of the night for a . . . dance be totally innocent?” Lucine demanded.
“The kind of emotion that eludes you, dear Sister.” Natasha sat, slouched somewhat, legs spread rather unladylike.
Lucine faced Kesia. “You see, Mother? This is what your wild philosophy gets you, this disregard for doing things the proper way. This obsession with emotion and pleasure.”
“I don’t see the problem.”
Lucine pointed at Natasha. “She’s half dead!”
“Or fully alive,” Natasha said, still grinning.
“Enough!” I thundered. “I want to know what is drawing you both up there. Against agreement, I might add.”
Alek looked sheepish. “Toma, you know me.”
“Which is why I ask. Lucine is right. You’ve set your common sense aside for . . . whatever this is. Now what is it?”
Alek stood, blurting before he was out of his chair. “Food, wine, women, dance, all of it!” My concern deepened. “What do you think?” he cried. “That we’re sleeping with demons up there? Think!” He slapped his head. “We are a man and woman in love and we go to party. Is that forbidden in Moldavia?”
“No. But in my company your tone is!”
He sat. “Forgive me. Sorry.”
“And now so are any further escapades to the Castle Castile. Under my direct order, I forbid it. Do you hear me?”
He didn’t respond.
“Alek—”
“I hear.” He looked at me, eyes grayer than I recalled. “And I obey. Sir.”
And with that my concern was even further aggravated.
“Madam.” Godrik, the butler, bowed at the door. “You have a visitor.”
“Pray tell, who?”
“The duke, madam. Vlad van Valerik.”
He might have shot a gun for the shock that followed. Alek and Natasha immediately sat straight up, and I twisted to the door.
“What does he want?”
“To speak with Lady Cantemir,” Godrik said, bowing. “He would prefer the garden.”
“He would, would he?” Kesia stood and smoothed her bodice.
“And he also inquired if Lucine was in today.”
“He wants to see her?”
“He only inquired, madam.”
“Well, then . . .”
“Tell him I’m ill,” Lucine said.
“As you wish.”
“Don’t be silly.” Kesia walked toward the door.
Natasha bolted to her feet. “Where are you going?”
“Sit, dear. He didn’t call for you. Perhaps it’s time I find out exactly what this duke’s true intentions are.”
NINE
The duke Vlad van Valerik remained at the Cantemir estate for no more than ten minutes, walking the garden with the lady Kesia and filling her ear with his lies, surely, before Lucine was called out to meet them both by the fountain.
I watched from a window next to Natasha and Alek, and I was inflamed with jealousy. The orders I’d received by letter now screamed terrible possibilities at me. What if the empress had been referring to this duke, Vlad van Valerik, in her mention of an enemy who might seek Lucine’s hand?
“He wants to court her,” Natasha said excitedly. “Of all the luck, Vlad wants to court her!”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I snapped.
“No, I don’t think so,” Alek agreed, and I latched onto those words.
But when Lucine came back in only minutes later, she refused to speak of it.
“Tell us, Mother!” Natasha demanded. “What does he want?”
“Nothing. Mind your own business, Natasha.”
“He wants to court Lucine!” She was practically jumping, and I swear if Lucine herself hadn’t been standing ten feet away I would have slapped Natasha for her delight in such a proposition.
“As I said, mind your own business.”
“I knew it! What did I say, Lucine? A big stallion will one day rip your clothes off, and you’ll know why you waited. This is delightful!”
Lucine’s expression remained flat. She turned on her heels and left the room. I cannot begin to express what kinds of emotions coursed through my veins that afternoon. My whole world caved in on me.
I had once been taken captive by the Turks in Istanbul when my spying on the enemy had earned me a jail cell. They put me in shackles in a dark dungeon, beat me, burned my lips with hot coals. Day and night, I was certain death was only hours away.
But the hours stretched into days and days into weeks and I withstood that certainty, taking strength from my endurance. Three months into my captivity I escaped, having regained enough strength to overtake two guards who’d come into my cell to deliver me to yet another session of torture.
It wasn’t the only time I had been taken captive, not the only time I had endured and taken strength from facing my pain. My latest captivity was one of the heart, here at the Cantemir estate in Moldavia, and once again I had withstood my torture.
But now everything changed on me. The moon lost its place in my sky. There w
as another light edging into my horizon, and jealousy came like a storm to block it out.
The only way to cope, I reasoned, was to physically remove myself from that horizon. And so I took another long ride around the entire property on my dark steed, quickly bringing him to a frothy sweat.
But I could not draw my mind away. The duke Valerik would not court Lucine, naturally. For starters, neither Kesia nor Lucine had admitted that the Russian expressed any such intention. Even so, Lucine would never agree.
Given my instructions from the empress, I had the right to demand that Kesia tell me of Vlad van Valerik’s intentions. I was to protect Lucine’s heart from any suitor, was I not? Had I been in a clear frame of mind I would have pressed then. But in my eagerness not to show the slightest jealousy, I steered clear.
But if I learned that the duke meant to court Lucine, I would stop him immediately.
It was already dark when I turned my snorting mount over to the stable and headed up to the house. But I couldn’t bring myself to go find the others. Dinner was rarely served until well into the night, and I would wait until then to show myself.
Instead I withdrew to my bedroom, where I ordered a bath, washed, and shaved. Then, with the door locked, I read from a book of poetry I carried wherever I went. But everything I read only drew me into darkness. My eyes rested on the first verse of a poem by Thomas Gray, “Ode to Adversity.”
Daughter of Jove, relentless power,
Thou tamer of the human breast,
Whose iron scourge and torturing hour,
The bad affright, afflict the best!
Everywhere I looked, relentless power and torture. Who could say that a sword was more powerful than the human heart? I slammed the book closed, unwilling to read any more. I had to write! I had to say what was on my own heart.
So I pulled out my journal and sat down beside the flickering candle at my desk, dipped the quill, and, after a long pause, brought the pen to the page.
Lucine,
I cannot live but to say that you have taken my heart captive. Please, I beg you, release me from this cage, for I am bound by honor to my empress.
Now you have become my empress, and these words I write now would be my death warrant.