by Karen Ranney
She pulled the ruined cotte from her shoulders, stood naked before him. Her smile felt daring. His eyes seemed to darken as he looked at her, but she did not move to cover herself.
“The vision in my dreams is a poor replica of you, Juliana,” he said, his voice harsh.
She knelt before him on the floor, gathering up her ruined cotte to serve as their mattress. It was she who reached for his hand and urged him down to her, propriety and timidity forgotten.
He kissed her, leading the way into a vortex of darkness and desire. He removed his tunic and she kissed him again. Each successive bit of clothing he removed was marked and rewarded by a heated kiss.
He laid her down, then thrust gold-tipped fingers into her hair, holding her immobile while he plundered her mouth.
She held herself still, her breath captured on a sigh as he sat up, reached for the enameled box, opened it. A breath dislodged another sheet of gold. It fell to her belly in a tremulous quiver. His fingers broke it apart, his palm smoothed it over the curve of her hip, then halted at the juncture of her thighs.
He watched her as a soft touch of two of his gilded fingers brushed the gold dust over the delicate curls, touched her intimately.
A soft, helpless gasp escaped her. She closed her eyes as he painted her with a breath and the exquisitely delicate touch of fingertip. Her legs widened, welcoming him without a word. But he continued softly stroking her. His fingers were gentle but demanding. She opened her eyes to find him smiling at her.
The passion was building, the moment soon here when the world turned heated and white and she shattered into a hundred pieces. But she’d never felt it without him.
“No.” Her head moved from side to side.
His small smile was wickedly charming, but resolute.
“Yes.”
“Please, Sebastian.” Her breath was coming too fast, there was that feeling like fire in her blood, heaviness between her thighs, anticipation too intense to be endured for too long.
“Now?”
“Yes.” A soft gasp, but he did not enter her. Instead, his mouth came down to bestow the most intimate of kisses. A stroke of intrusive tongue threw her into the white void. She called out to him and he rose up and held her tightly, was there when it ended and she became whole again.
She trembled, but not from fear. Her sobs unmanned him; her effortless soaring into ecstasy enfolded him in pride. She came apart in his arms, and it entranced him.
He had been married to her as a boy. Had not known her until a few short months ago, but in that time she’d changed his life, made it brighter. She’d brought him joy and acceptance and curiosity. Would he have always loved her, or had it taken the knowledge of his own mortality to change him from the youth he’d been to a man worthy of Juliana? Would he have seen past her beauty to the soul of her? Would he have known that when she laughed it was almost with a note of surprise, as if the sound of it astonished her? Would he have seen that she had such passion about her work? She had wept for the Cathar women and children, with a generosity of spirit he’d witnessed and that had humbled him. Would he have appreciated, this man who had been untested, that she was a woman who loved deeply, without restraint? Or perhaps such questions were not important after all. She was here and so was he, whole and untainted.
“Are you pleased, Juliana?”
“No,” she said, her voice somber. Surprised, he raised his head to look at her.
“Not as much as when you are in me, Sebastian.” Her eyes were lambent, her face flushed, and there was a small smile that played upon her lips. Had he ever believed that she would be capable of saying such words to him, or that her glance would be filled with remonstrance? Timid Juliana? Had she ever truly existed?
She pushed him to his back and held him there, a palm placed on his chest. The box was open again. She licked two fingers and pressed them against the sheet of gold leaf. It clung to her fingers.
He wanted to be in her, but he slowed himself, curious as to what she would do. She draped the gold between his thighs, over his erect and straining flesh. He closed his eyes at the feeling of her fingers brushing against him, coating him just as he had done with her. A hesitation of touch had him opening his eyes again.
She seemed to study him, examine her adornment of him as closely as she would one of her manuscripts. He raised his head and looked at himself. He glittered like an idol.
Her fingers curved around him, lightly squeezed.
“I had the oddest thought, Sebastian,” she said, her fingers trailing in delightful torture over his flesh. “Your phallus is not unlike a quill, I think.” Her soft, daring smile startled him. So, too, the bubble of laughter in his chest. The moment seemed so filled with passion that humor was a strange emotion to feel. But he choked it back, gave her soberness instead.
“Am I not substantially larger than a quill?” His smile released some of the silly happiness he felt.
Her head bobbed down and her soft, intimate kiss banished his humor. A wordless groan occupied its space.
“You write beautiful love poems, Sebastian.” Her gold-tipped smile teased and promised.
“If that is a result of your reading, my lady wife, I shall send to the abbess,” he said, the words pushed through a cloud of exquisite agony, “and beg her to send me some more of her most audacious texts.”
She returned to her task, and he was treated to the oddest sensation of smiling lips brushing over his flesh.
He raised up and flipped her on her back, hovered over her.
She undulated beneath him brushing her breasts against his chest, hips and thighs arching, a teasing touch.
He looked down at her, frozen into wonder by the sight. Her eyes were closed, her face flushed. Upon her cheek was the beginning of a glittering trail that led to the generous slopes of her breasts. Her nipples were engorged and tinted golden, her open thighs sparkled with gold.
He tried to hold back, to make the moment last, to make their joining even more fervent and desired. But somewhere in between the words of that thought crept another—he must be in her now or die.
He moved back, kneeling, and pulled her onto him, her legs curving around his hips. The position thrust him deeper into her, but she was slick and ready for him.
Her arms wound around his neck as she hung from him. She whimpered, not in distress as much as yearning. His hands pressed down on her hips as he rose up beneath her.
He covered her breasts with kisses, anointed her neck with soft bites, breathed into her ear words he’d once thought with such ferocity. “Mine, Juliana. You’re mine.”
Her inarticulate murmur was appeasement enough for his sudden, fierce possessiveness.
When she cried out in joy, he covered her lips with his, to keep her sound of rapture secret and his. Only too soon he joined her, his lips clamped over a shout that demanded to be heard. He was lost in the feeling of her, adrift in the undulations that united their bodies and splinted together the raw ends of their souls.
Later, a very long time later, he lowered himself to the floor, pulling her close. Her head was tucked against his shoulder, her arm lay atop his chest. He stroked his hand on her belly, trailed gold-dusted fingers to her quivering breasts. They were both too weak to move.
She breathed the words across his skin. “I will not feel so guilty now if I waste a sheet or two of gold.”
His laughter was reborn again and echoed throughout the room.
Chapter 43
She was cold, even though the room was warm. The chill came from inside her and was only hours old.
Juliana slipped from the stool and took the spiral stairs to the top of the tower. She could now stand at the battlements and relish the view.
The autumn wind swept her skirt around her ankles, brushed her hair back from her face. Langlinais was bathed in the light of a late-afternoon sun, the orange glow giving the stones a yellowish tint. From somewhere came the sound of laughter, a shared jest, a ribald joke.
Sebastian was in the exercise yard, training some of his would-be knights. He was using poor Jerard as an object lesson. Jerard was wiry and tall, but he was not the match of his lord in strength or breadth. What made Jerard valuable was not so much his skill with a sword as it was his loyalty.
The abilities of Sebastian’s mind enchanted her, his humor surprised her. His strength of will humbled her. When he touched her, all thoughts other than those of him flew from her head. She would die for him. But he had not asked her to. Instead, he had challenged her mind and enthralled her body.
Sebastian of Langlinais was no ordinary man.
The inhabitants of Langlinais did not seem to mind that he was no longer as devout. He laughed a great deal, and his smile was almost constantly upon his face. He spent a good amount of time among the villagers, helped them draw up a charter, invited a few members of the growing guilds to make their homes there. He took in the poorest lads for training, and had promised them positions as squires and eventual knighthood if they proved worthy. It was not that he did not see the line between noble and serf. It was as if he moved it subtly from time to time, allowing those of the inclination to advance as they would.
He seemed to revel in the strength of his limbs, in the fact that he could go abroad without being garbed in a concealing robe. The men at arms he practiced against were eager to demonstrate their own ability, but it was obvious who would be the winner.
There were, however, still moments in which he grew too quiet, when he appeared trapped in thought. Too many times, he stood at the tower and faced south, as if he waited for the Templar army to invade his land. It was a sad fact that they would always need to be prepared for unrest. And, perhaps for the Templars.
Arrogance had surfaced from beneath his despair, and no one but she had the courage to tell him when he was being overbearing. He would lift his eyebrow and look very much the noble on such occasions, and she would tremble, but not in fear of him. Rather, with how much she loved him. The feeling, she knew, that was echoed as strongly in him.
There were times when she simply watched him. Sometimes, he would be in the middle of a conversation and look up as if sensing that she studied him. He would find her immediately, their gaze meeting among the throngs of people who surrounded them. There would be an expression on his face she was sure she wore, one of startled wonder that such a thing should have happened to them. And at those times, she thought as she had once before that it might be possible to speak to him in her mind. Beloved.
He looked up now, as if he’d heard her.
Sebastian had known, of course. He had to. This was the true secret, the real treasure. Not the relics. But the document she’d read wide-eyed and disbelieving.
She closed her eyes, forced a deep breath. Was this the reason De Rutger had been so desperate to kill the Cathars? Not for the treasure, not because they were heretics, but for what they had believed? If so, then the same danger had been transported to Langlinais. She shuddered, a movement more of the mind than of the body.
She looked down at the exercise yard. Sebastian was no longer there. With a sense she’d come to accept, she knew he was coming to her. Had he seen her atop the tower? Had he known, somehow, what she had found?
She returned to the scriptorium, sat at her desk again. The codex remained on her desk, the wooden cover closed. She’d found it, buried beneath the scrolls, had slammed it shut when she’d read the explanation for a long list of names. She opened the book again, read the Latin words that began the work.
O reader, in spiritual love forgive me, and pardon the daring of him who wrote, and turn his errors into mystic good. A colophon she’d read before, a sentiment espoused often by conscientious scribes.
The codex was a series of parchment pages bound together and contained within a wooden cover. The preface stated that it was the Latin translations of the oldest of the scrolls, those written in Greek and Hebrew. Those same scrolls had been kept in a sealed coffer in their chamber. Only for the last week had they been close at hand, remaining in the scriptorium that she might study them.
The scroll in front of her was one of the oldest of the more than hundred originally tucked into the basket. Somewhere in its past the parchment had become wet, and was consequently stiff on the corners.
She did not read Greek. There had been no one at the convent either to find the time or with the knowledge to teach her. The other language she also did not know, an involved series of curving letters beautiful in their regimentation. She surmised that it must be Hebrew.
She did not even dare to place her fingers on the scroll. It was so brittle that a piece had flaked off in her fingers. How old was it? A thousand years? Less? More?
Was that why the Cathar scribes had copied them, because of their fragility? Or because most of the ecclesiastical world could read Latin?
One of the scrolls consisted of writing that was superimposed over the original writing, a palimpsest. The newer the ink, the easier it was to remove. She’d reused parchment herself by simply sponging off the ink, then wetting the surface carefully, allowing it to dry, then scraping it gently. That same procedure did not work as well with old ink, because it had a chance to eat through the parchment. It looked as if this scroll had been saved not because of the later words written, but because of the earlier text not quite obliterated.
She lifted her head and Sebastian was there, covered in dust, his hair sweat-dampened against his head, his helmet somehow discarded on his way to her side.
He reached out for her and for a moment she did not think at all. Only that his mouth descended to hers, the cold of his lips rapidly turning to heat.
He pulled back, looked beyond her to the scrolls that lay open upon her desk, at the codex beneath her left hand.
“You’ve found it, then.”
She looked at him without surprise. “You knew I would.”
He nodded.
“Do you believe what you have read?” he asked.
“You once asked me what I would do if I noticed the sky was green. That it had always been green, even when I thought it was blue. Is this my green sky, Sebastian?”
He smiled. “Yes. I had kept the secret for too many years. I brushed the edge of danger asking you that question.”
“But the bloodline of Christ, Sebastian.” She gently touched the edge of the scroll. The shock she’d felt initially had deadened to numbness.
“From what I understand about their religion, the Cathars believed that man is intrinsically evil. And so, Christ as a man, could never be divine. Such a tenet of faith placed them on a course of opposition with the Church.”
“Do you believe it?”
“No, but I doubt it matters what you or I believe, Juliana,” he said. “The Cathars did, and went to great lengths to prove that Christ married and that his wife and child escaped from Jerusalem. They believe they traced the lineage almost to the present day.”
“Why didn’t you tell me before, Sebastian?”
His smile was tender. “These scrolls could rock the very foundations of the world as we know it, Juliana. Even a hint of their existence is enough to bring us danger. I did not wish for you the fate of the Cathars.”
“Then why tell me now?”
“Because you are Juliana,” he said, the smile vanishing, a somber look replacing it. “Because you are my wife. Because you deserve to know the danger I have brought to Langlinais. Because if anything happens to me, you must be prepared. And for the greatest reason of all. There has been too much deception in our life together. I want no more secrets between us.”
“Do you think they know about the scrolls?”
“The Templars or the Church?”
“Either. Both.”
“I doubt the Templars know, else they would not have accepted the chalice so easily. As to the Church, I have my suspicions, but no proof.”
“Did you go on Crusade in order to find your faith, Sebastian?”
“Perhaps,” he said, tracing hi
s finger across the bottom of the curving parchment. “Has this shattered yours, Juliana? Or just made you more certain than ever that what you believe is true?”
She thought about his question, “My faith has not been shaken, Sebastian. Faith is a belief that does not rest on proof. It exists on its own, stands on its own.”
“Yet people seek out objects,” he said, “in order to bolster that faith. Pieces of the true cross, the shroud of Christ.”
“Relics that remain in our chamber.”
“They are not there, Juliana.” At her look, he smiled. “I removed them from the coffer. Your abbess has had them for a few weeks now. They belong to the world, not to us. Eventually, I’m sure, they will find their way to being known.”
“Why not send them to the Pope?”
“And fuel the battle that is brewing, Juliana? No, your abbess will make her decision when it’s time. I’ve no doubt she will choose the proper place for the relics to belong.”
“And the scrolls, Sebastian? Where do they belong?”
“Where did they come from?”
His question surprised her.
“I doubt the Cathars created them. I suspect, in their travels to obtain relics, that they stumbled onto their existence. Their scribes compiled the codex, but the scrolls are much older. Where did they originate?”
She shook her head. “There are nothing but questions, are there, Sebastian?”
He smiled. “More questions than answers, Juliana. The Cathars would have every reason to foster a myth, especially since it matches so precisely their own beliefs. Or perhaps they considered it truth. My guess is that whatever they believed they planned to use it to discredit or even confuse the Church.”
“Why didn’t they trade the scrolls for their safety?”
“I think they knew it was too late. Why surrender their treasure when they were certain they were going to be killed? Remember, by that time, the men had already been burned at the stake.”
“Is that why Magdalene sent for you, so that the secret would be preserved?”