F i a t | L u x

You remember.

You remember how it felt, the first time you glimpsed the face of the one you would love for the rest of your life, and beyond.  You remember the way your heart leap and seemed to freeze until she turned your way...looked your way.  You remember telling yourself, There.  That's the woman I've been looking for my whole life.  That's the one I would die for.  That's the one I would kill for.  That's the one I would sell the clothes off my back and the soul from my heart for.

Oh yes.  You remember.  And so do I.  I remember like it was yesterday, though it is nearly a thousand years gone.  How could I forget?  She was the Lady of my Lord, Alain of the Rock, my closest boyhood friend - a friend I had not seen for years, perhaps a decade; a friend I would not have intentionally hurt for my life.  But I did.  Because of her, and because I loved her.  And if I had another chance, I would do it all over again.

Because her name was Geneviève, and she was the light.

Through the welling fog that rolls from the channel like some great, dim beast he runs, he hunts. Through the wakening fields, clinging to the ragged cliffs, thin and bare, and further, where they become rich and rolling. Through the wakening village huddled in the lee of great fortress, as footsteps or horseshoes skitters over the free-rolling scree. Further, to the beckoning oblivion of the wood, where mist-strewn silence reigns, unbroken but for the lonely call of a seabird, and the crash of waves against cliffs.

Further, through the rich, moist green heart of precious hardwoods, impelled by fear, impelled by desire, which are - ever - two sides of the self-same coin, he wanders, his moss-shrouded steps soft in the rolling, fae fog, in the vague, gray and watery light from the trees onward.

He could not know that in the heart of the forest, the trees thinned until a perfect ring of the tallest and stoutest oaks flanked a circular clearing, in marching order. He could not know that the heart of Saint Anne's wood held Saint Anne's spring. He could not know - as he pushed through the perfect ring of trees - that he would find her - her there, stripped to her linen shift, flaxen hair drying from the wet spread like a net of gold about her shoulders and torso. As the church bells called Matins, he could not know that a brilliant shaft of warmest sun would break through the banking fog, would dapple through the protective canopy, would gleam off the clear sweet waters of the spring... and, as she knelt before the Saint's spring in silent, whispering prayer, turn her flaxen hair to molten gold.

He could not have known.

He could not have known.

And now, he could not leave. He could not even move. Wide-eyed, he could only stare, his heart pounding in his throat. Turn--turn and walk into the forest, and speak of it no more. Or apologize, at least. Do something--do not simply stand and gawk like some beardless boy. Do not watch her in her morning prayers, half-clad, as though she were some peasant girl, and not the lady of your friend and lord!

He could not leave.

Beauty, such beauty--hair like gold, skin like ivory--surely an angel graces the spring of the Saint? Frozen, skewered, pierced and impaled on the moment, on her loveliness--an insect in amber, an angel in the face of God--he could not move. He could not move, but for the slow uncurling of his fingers, unknown even to himself--his bow slips from those yielding fingers, crashes upon the ground in a stir of fallen leaves, in a crack of wood against an unlucky stone.

And then he is in a panic. What to do? Turn--turn and run, flee into the forest like a startled deer. No--he could not; she would recognize his bow and she would think--Alain would think--then pick it up, then, man! He bends, his fingers searching--and rises endless instants later, ready to run through the forest, to the shore, across the Channel, if he must, and never come back.

Except--she was there still, turned now, startled, and he had never seen anyone with eyes quite like hers. Those eyes--they rendered him motionless, helpless, and he cannot even stammer out an apology. An endless moment, a bare instant, they stare at one another, transfixed, caught out of time--and then he falls to one knee, fixing his gaze upon the forest floor.

"Lady--forgive me."

That was the first time I ever asked for her forgiveness.  That was also the only time, while she lived.

I do wonder, sometimes, how it may have ended had I left before the winter came that year to the Rock.  I do wonder if we would have gone our separate ways and never again met; if perhaps I would have forgotten her, and she I, over the long years.  And I wonder if, instead, we would have longed for each other until our dying day - if we had one - came.

I wonder if even that would have been a preferable fate to what I did.  But it's idle speculation, no more, and I am a fool to indulge it.  What happened has happened.  And what happened next was what always happened next.  Fate intervened, and sin stepped into the picture.

[To Sin]