by Torey Hayden
“Those are naught but silly customs, Torgon. We are alone here, you and I. There’s no need for such foolishness between the two of us.”
“Your father was negligent in taking his stick to you. You seem to feel you are above the holy laws.”
Ansel raised an eyebrow. “Who are you to lecture me on holy laws? You meet your sister secretly when you know full well it is forbidden for you to see her. I know you do that. I’m not the old man my father was. I keep track of where my women are.”
“I am not your woman. I am the divine benna and you should be mindful of that. So, go. I refuse to bed you at this time, for I will have Dwr’s blessings on what I do.”
Instead, he began to unbuckle his girdle. “Is it that you do not like the ways of men? Surely not. It would be a pity in one as beautiful as you. No. I think it’s only inexperience. It’s been naught but old grandfathers and callow lads who’ve bedded you ’til now.” He let the girdle drop to reveal his bulging undertrousers. “But see how great stands this warrior’s sword? Come. It’s time you knew a real man.”
“This is unholy, Ansel. We have not had Dwr’s blessing and I will not bed you. I refuse. We have not followed holy law.”
“Would you be shut of holy law!” he said, his voice betraying anger. “Holiness! It’s all you talk about. Do you not realize you are the benna solely because my father chose you?”
“I am the benna because Dwr chose me. Your father was only the vessel of his choosing.”
“You think that’s so? Dwr and all these holy laws? You don’t believe them, do you?” he said, his voice incredulous. “Holiness is naught but cradlesongs for workers and nothing more. Just as the goose boys sing to their flocks to keep them soothed.”
Torgon’s eyes went wide.
“Of all people, you should know the truth in this. What chance is there that my father would have been given visions of a worker’s child? If visions were a real thing, would not the benna be a decent woman and well bred? One suited to the role of holy office? But there’s nothing out there in the heavens except darkness. And you were naught but my father’s choice. Or better put, the choice was mine.”
“Blasphemer!”
Ansel shrugged indifferently. “Don’t take it hard. You’ve been given a priceless chance to leave the worker caste behind and found a new line for your blood who will be high and holy-born. What sweeter thing could I bestow as a betrothal gift?
“When Father came to me and said, ‘We must decide between us who you will have when it is your time to wear the holy robes.’ I said I wasn’t choosy. ‘All that matters to me,’ I said, ‘is that she is fair of face, for I shall have to live in close quarters with her and care not to start each new day looking at an ugly woman.’ We considered the matter and he said to me, ‘What of Argot, whose father is a benita warrior? She is of excellent blood and also quiet and well-mannered. Thus your mother was, and this is a blessing in a woman.’ But I said, ‘No, Argot is not comely enough for me.’ So he replied, ‘What of Marit? Her grandfather carries the royal blood of the Bear People in his veins.’ And I said, ‘No, I had already lain with Marit and find her breasts too small. They will not feed the strong sons I will get from my woman.’ So finally I said, ‘Who I desire is Torgon, the carter’s daughter, for to my mind she is more comely than any other. She has wide hips for bearing the strong sons befitting of a warrior. And good breasts, for I have seen her swimming with her sister.’ My father was irate. He said, ‘A worker’s daughter? Here? Living in the holy compound? She will be vulgar and temperamental and like as not have fleas.’”
“Fleas?” Torgon cried. “My kind are as clean as you are, holy-born. Cleaner! For I have had years of smelling your father’s stinking undertrousers.”
Ansel laughed heartily. “Aye, well, I told him I didn’t mind about the fleas. My dogs have fleas, and a warrior must often sleep among his dogs.”
“You are a truly wicked man. Go. Now. I command it.”
“Yes, well, I too grow weary of so much talk.”
“Talk is all you’ll have of me. Your father was old, his breath was rank and he bedded me with the clumsiness of a turtle, but at least he was a holy man. I see now that despite your pretty skin, you’ll never equal him. Don’t think I’ll bed with you. Go. Leave this place tonight and return to living with your dogs.”
“No more talk, I’ve said.” He took a step in her direction. Torgon stepped back, but he was quicker. With a hunter’s practised speed, he shot a hand out and grabbed her hair. In one deft move, he pulled her to him.
“I like you much,” he said, drawing her against his body. He kept his hold on her hair, pulling it just enough to hurt. “I would rather you came to me of your own free will, since this is our first bedding, but it is of little consequence to me if you don’t.” He smiled, showing a row of even, white teeth. “You are, if anything, more comely when you’re angry, and I have a mind to get a child on you this very night, that your angered spirit might make a mighty warrior of him.” And with that, Ansel pressed his mouth forcefully over hers.
Torgon struggled no longer. There was no point to it. She would only be hurt and to what good? So, when Ansel pushed her towards the bed, she went.
This pleased him. He grinned with boyish delight. Loosing the straps that held his small warrior’s dagger, he lay it on the table beside the bed. Then he undid the tie of his undertrousers. It occurred to Torgon as she watched his smiling face that he did genuinely want her. This saddened her, for she too had long dreamt of this moment. But not like this.
He wasn’t rough. He didn’t lord his victory over her. Indeed, Torgon doubted he even realized there’d been a victory. He was so accustomed to the warrior’s way of taking what he wanted that resistance was of little consequence to him. Now he was all smiles and tender touches, as if nothing had gone before.
Ansel was well-practised at this manly art. He smiled and touched her face, running his thumbs along the ridges of her cheekbones. He took undisguised pleasure in the roundness of her breasts, cupping them individually and admiring them, then pressing his mouth to the nipples, as if he were a suckling babe. Running his hands down either side of her torso, he felt the muscles, smiled and felt again. “You are strong and lean as a great cat,” he said delightedly, as if her worker’s body were preferable to the rounded softness of a high-born woman. Indeed, he actually said, “I could not ask for anyone more beautiful than you.” Then he spread her legs and admired further what he had won.
Torgon did not resist. Before she’d been called to the holy life, she wouldn’t have been able to cope with this. She’d have fought or cried or, at the very least, had muscles too tight for coupling, but ten years of being a benna had taught her much about control. He explored her body unhindered. She lay quietly and waited.
His manroot was swollen huge with his desire and Ansel paused to show it off to her. He would have her touch it and taste it and experience it with all her body but she simply lay.
“Aye, well,” he said, “it is seemly that you’re overcome. You’ll not have seen so great a sword before.” He grinned. “But with your lively spirit, I’ve no doubt that soon you’ll want to help me wield it.” And with that, he thrust it in so forcefully that Torgon feared it would reach through her to her heart.
When at last the seed was sown, Ansel fell sated on the bed beside her. “There,” he whispered and kissed her hair. “You know now a real man has done you.”
Torgon remained silent.
He looked over. “Tonight we shall sleep together here. The acolytes are still absent, so it matters not who lies in which bed. The time comes soon enough for holy rules, so for tonight I want to lie beside you.” He reached a hand over and touched her breasts again. “I’ve had to wait overlong for the mother of my sons. Thirty-eight summers have passed by me already and I should have sons as tall as men by now, but I’ve never wanted bastard children. Before this night I’ve ploughed but never seeded.”
Torgon sighed.
“And now I’ve bedded you, I know it has been worthy of the wait. My choice was right, for I can tell I love you well already. In time perhaps you will come to love me too.”
“Do you treat all things you love as you have treated me?” she asked.
“It is a warrior’s way. You will grow used to it,” he replied gently.
“But it is not the way of a holy man and that is your rightful destiny.”
“Let us not talk now of holiness. Here. Put your arm here, that I may lay my head against your breast and listen to your heart. The time is come for sleep. I’m tired.” With that he smiled and kissed her one last time.
He slept. The candle at the bedside burned low, its small light flickering faintly in the darkness. Torgon regarded him. He was so much handsomer than Meilor, who’d been short and inclined to swarthiness. Ansel’s limbs were long and sinewy, the skin drawn taut over mighty muscles. His hair showed ruddy brown by candlelight, glinting like the fur of the great running stag.
Torgon drew in a long breath and let it slowly out. She would have liked the relief of tears just then to wash clean the bitter disappointment that she felt, to ease the grief for a future she knew now was stillborn, but no tears came. She lay in dry-eyed melancholy there beside him.
Had Ansel come for her before her calling and taken her then to be a warrior’s wife, she probably would have grown to love him. Young and green and knowing naught of holiness, she would have tolerated rough ways for such a favoured marriage. Why, if he’d wanted her so long, could he not have just taken her from her father’s hearth? Now it was too late. She was already wedded to a greater goal.
“It’s more than cradlesongs,” she murmured. “I truly have the Power. Your father knew that by the end. Why did he not tell you?”
Ansel stirred, readjusted himself and settled again.
“For I can’t have you as you are. Your soul is long gone into darkness and I’ve not the means with which to call it back again. For Dwr’s sake I shall need do what must be done.”
“Why are you speaking?” Ansel muttered sleepily. “Put out the candle. The night is fairly gone.”
“For your holy feasting I sacrificed a red deer in thanksgiving, a stag of many points,” she said. “And I am thinking now it is the colour of your hair.”
He smiled drowsily. “Torgon, this is not the time for lovers’ talk. My strength is spent. Put out the candle.”
“I speak, that the stag might know it was not I, but Dwr who commanded my holy hand in the taking of his life.”
“You are inclined to speak when silence would be better. Shhh,” Ansel said and put a finger to her lips. Then again he closed his eyes.
So silence came.
Torgon lay, listening for his breath to draw out deeply into slumber again. When it had, she leaned over and lifted from the table his small warrior’s dagger. “Dwr now commands my hand again. Go among your own kind, Deer Man, for you no longer bear a holy soul.” And with one skilled movement, she slit his throat.
The blood flowed, bubbling up like water from a spring. Torgon watched his face. Pink to momentary purple it went, then white and then the ash-grey colour of death.
It was a quick way to die. She knew, for she had used it many times with the stags and bulls at sacrifice, the malformed babes, and those whose souls had fled before them into darkness. Torgon looked at Ansel, lying motionless midst a sea of bedding made sodden scarlet with his blood.
“What have I done?”
Panic flooded through her. Everything was wet and red and stank of blood. All control left Torgon in that moment. She began to cry with fright. Rising from the bed, she attempted to lay Ansel’s body straight, but he was such a big man and so heavy. Each movement pushed up more blood from the wound to ooze thickly red onto the bedclothes. She struggled until terror finally overcame her. Then she fled.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Entering the playroom with a quick, decisive step, the toy cat cradled in his arms, Conor didn’t actually smile at James but there was the feeling of a smile in his expression. Pressing the cat against the sleeve of James’s suit jacket, Conor said, “The cat knows,” in a friendly voice, as if it were a greeting.
“I see a boy who looks happy today.”
“Yeah. Today is Tuesday. The boy comes here. The man’s cat is here? Where’s the mechanical cat?”
“See if you can find him.”
Conor went to the shelves and searched out the box of cardboard cut-out farm animals. Bringing it back to the table, he pulled off the box top. “Here it is!” he said cheerfully. He extended the little string leash and smiled.
Pulling out the chair opposite, Conor sat down in a confident manner. He fitted the little cardboard half-moon onto the bottom of the cardboard cut-out and then set it on the table between them. Then suddenly Conor was up from the table. He went over to one of the baskets on the shelf and took out a ball of modelling clay. Bringing it back, he pinched off a small bit, stuck it to the end of the string around the cat’s neck and then pressed it to the table top. An expression of glee crossed his features. “Plug it in!”
“Yes, that’s what you’ve done, isn’t it?” James replied. “You’ve made a plug for it. You plugged it in.”
“Yeah.” Conor looked pleased.
Pulling his stuffed cat from under his arm and setting it on the table too, Conor looked over. “There’s the boy’s cat. Standing on the table. Standing by the mechanical cat.”
James smiled. “Yes, there they are. Two cats.”
“Cats can see ghosts.”
“You believe cats can see ghosts,” James reflected.
“Many ghosts. Many ghosts to be seen. Many cats to see them.”
James watched Conor align the two cats carefully side by side.
“‘Come here today.’ That’s what the cat said. ‘Wake up, Conor. Time to go to Rapid City. Time to see the man. Today is the man’s day. Today we see the mechanical cat. Today we go where there are no ghosts.’”
“Are there ghosts at your house?” James asked.
“Are there ghosts at your house?” Conor echoed. He raised a hand and flapped it in a gesture James now understood to be an expression of anxiety. Then Conor recovered himself by picking up his toy cat. He pressed the stuffed animal’s nose to his own. “Lots of ghosts. Whispering, whispering. The cat can see ghosts. The cat says, ‘The ghosts are here. The man under the rug is here.’ The cat can see. The cat knows.”
Clutching the toy cat against his chest, Conor bent down to better examine the cardboard cat. He inspected it carefully, then reached a finger out and touched the string hanging down from around its neck. “Here are the cat’s wires. Plug it in. Make him strong.”
“Like the mechanical boy?”
“Yeah.” Conor stretched out the string leash and pressed it to the table top. “Electricity. Zap-zap. Mechanical things are made of metal. They don’t die. They can last forever.” He touched the faded colours. “This cat has very good metal. It looks like fur.”
Unexpectedly Conor swooped the cardboard cat up in the air, as if it were a toy airplane. “Look, the man’s cat can fly. Machines fly.” He looked over at James.
A pause.
“Ghosts fly,” he said and his voice trembled slightly.
“Many things fly,” James said. “Birds fly. Mosquitoes fly.”
“Angels fly,” Conor said. “At Christmas time many angels fly.”
“Yes, it is almost Christmas time, isn’t it? We see lots of pictures of angels now, don’t we?”
“People don’t fly,” Conor replied. “Only angel-people. Only ghost-people.” Rising to his feet, he glanced nervously around the room as if he were doing a dangerous thing. Then he swooped the cat in a tentative figure eight. “But the mechanical cat can fly.”
“Yes, you are making him zoom through the air.”
“Machines are strong. They can fly a long way.” A more energetic swooping followed. Up, down, around. These were th
e most uninhibited movements James had seen Conor make. Whoosh, the mechanical cat sailed past James’s nose. Zip, it whizzed over the notebook.
Then Conor said, “I am going to run?” His tone was a mixture of question and statement, almost as if he were asking permission to do this normal thing.
He did run. The first steps were very tentative, up on tiptoe, then more boldly. All the time the cardboard cat was held high, dipping and swooping through the air ahead of him. “The cat can fly,” he said over and over.
Conor sailed around the room until he was breathless and only then did he stop. Holding the cardboard cat up before his face, he caressed the paper features. “The boy can do what he wants in here. The mechanical cat says, ‘Boy, do it. You’re safe. No ghosts in here!’”
From the moment the next session started Conor knew exactly what he wanted to do. Getting the cardboard cat from the box, he began to fly it through the air. At first the movements were hesitant, just between James and himself, but then he stood up and moved more overtly. Soon Conor was running, the cardboard cat held high above his head.
On one occasion as he approached the table, he stopped abruptly. There was a brief glance to James and then unexpectedly Conor jumped up on the chair opposite. “The cat can fly,” he said with an almost defiant tone to his voice.
“Yes, the cat is flying,” James mirrored.
Conor lifted up one foot as if to step on the tabletop then hesitated. “I’m going to get on the table,” he said but didn’t do it.
“Today you feel like standing on the table.”
“The mechanical cat says yes. The boy can get on the table.” There was a moment’s further hesitation and Conor softly set his foot on the table. He paused, as if waiting for James’s remonstration, then triumphantly stepped up with the other foot. “The mechanical cat is strong! The boy can do what he wants!”
With that he took a flying leap off the table and ran away.
This bit of derring-do gave Conor more confidence. He came running around again, clambered up onto the table and once again jumped off.