O r i g i n a l | S i n

My Lord Alain, you see, was not a rich lord, nor an idle one.  Politics were as volatile as the seas his Rock overlooked in those ages, and when he was not overseas defending his meager land from the greedy hands of usurpers, he was upon that sea, defending his stores and his people from the pirates that scavenged the shore.  He could scarcely spend a fortnight in the arms of his Lady before the next missive came, and he strode out to battle again.

Each time he left, I hated him - hated that he left his young wife weeping, though she never showed him her tears; hated that he could bear to leave her at all, when I would have given my right hand and a lot more just to touch her face.  And each time he returned, his hair was a little grayer, and I pitied and loved him all the more.

For you see, he did love her.  He did hate to leave her undefended and lonely.  But that was the way things were, and that could not be changed.  And so, to ease his heart, I gave him my vow: that I would guard her with my life, make her smile with small gifts, keep her mind from the gray depression his absence left in her eyes.

She had eyes of a green you would not believe...

...and Alain did not know I promised such things because I wanted, desperately, for her to forget him and give me, me, the gift of her love.  He trusted me, and in return, I dreamed of betraying him.  Sometimes, late at night, I stood guard outside her door just to be that much closer to her, just so I could fancy I could hear her breathe.  And sometimes, exhausted and tormented and unable to sleep, I would wish Alain would never come back.

And one day, my damning wish had been granted - or I thought it had.

For two nights and two days, a tremendous storm has lashed the high bluffs of the Channel Islands, sending scattered peltings of rain, of ice, of snow across the cragged rocks and squat stone towers of the Lord's high keep. The scream of the wind - like a thousand lost souls falling to eternal torment - is almost ever-present, growing now dull and hoarse, now shrill and pelting, but never, never stilling. So, too, the rack of freezing moisture, the chill of the thunderous salt-spray as, jostled on by the bitter wind, the great gray seas try to retake this lonely outpost of land.

For two days and two nights, has she stood vigil, as present as the sentries upon the high walls - a small figure enwrapped in the wind-whipped gold of her hair, a halo, a garment of sunlight spun into the finest threads of silk.

See, she did, the battered little craft that struggled into the protective cove of a harbor - and run, she did, from high upon the battlements, over stone worn over the past two centuries by the daily passage of hundreds of feet - her silken slippers whispering across the ice-slicked surface - without cloak, without boots - from the fortress high to greet the weary, ice-lashed fisherman. Silence falls, a bleak silence unbroken even by the wind - which falls to a certain stillness for the briefest of moments as she finally stumbles into the great hall, blank-faced and shivering. Silence falls.

Silence was never a good thing.

At length he stirs, ever so slightly. His eyes do not leave the black clouds on the horizon even as the rain sweeps in the long, tall slit of a window and catches in his hair, his eyelashes, and freezes. His lips move, unwillingly-- "What news, Lady?"

Her ladies flock about her like a gaggle of hens, clucking and pecking - bringing mulled wine, or warm furs, and steering her closer to the fire, as if by sheer movement, sheer duty, sheer, pointless activity, they could blue the heavens, still the wind, defy death.

She moves but little - to clutch the warm metal chalice of steaming, fragrant wine, to shrug an offered fur off her damp shoulders, to lift her drowning-dark green eyes to his - pale as the ice which gleams and melts in his pale hair - and she says nothing. Mute with plea, mute with prayer, mute with...

Genevieve's page - a young boy of no more than ten - whispers quiet where his lady will not. "All hands lost. Wreckage litters the seas. There is not even a body to bury." The boy's eyes round into large saucers, as he realizes his inelegant words before her - and he is turning with stammered apologies and sinking bows - but she is already fleeing, across the rushes, from the great room, and when her ladies make move to follow, she freezes them with a single, chilling word. "Stay."

The ladies glance apprehensively between the door swinging open, and the knight standing unmoving, lit by a single, diffuse slit of light. At last one moves to close the door--but his footsteps ring harsh across the high ceilings of the hall, lost in the stormy darkness. His hand falls upon the serving-woman's wrist, stays it, as his eyes--hard as ice, cold as ice, numbed by the ice of the storm, of death--strike upon hers in warning. She falls back, stammering an apology, and he is gone from the hall, following the disappeared...widow.

And the widow, fleeing death and desire, fleeing heart and heartsblood, slowing to a still, sweeping pace that cracks the bits of ice clinging to her dress, her windswept hair. The... widow upon whose lips prayers form and die like snowflakes upon warmest skin, like frost before a fire. The... widow within whose heart guilt blooms dark as a poisoned rose, as wracked with thorns, and as piercing - blooms in a roiling stew mixed with ggrief, and some other - darker - brighter - darker - flavor. Her feet whisper passage over the chill stone, over rich carpets plundered from those golden, heathen lands where ice never touched mast nor sail, over a threshold in swift succession.

His scent - yet - permeates the room they shared, rich with smoke and sea-salt - and she... breathes.

He follows her into the private chambers, and forgotten is shame, is restraint, is etiquette, even, as he barges in and stands, silent, behind her. One hand ventures upon her shoulder...and all the apologies, all the condolences in the word could not say what that single, simple touch did. Grief. Loss. Pain. Disbelief.

Comfort. Somewhere, comfort--a beacon of light amidst a storm-tossed sea. Comfort--the instinctive drawing together of (like to like) shattered souls, suddenly lost without the dearest of friends, the dearest of lords.

And he breathes. She breathes. The exertion of the long, blind rush from the room--and the searing pain of loss--they breathe...quick, gulping gasps of air hissing through nostrils. And how close, how similar, those breaths were to others drawn in the fire of passion...how close, how similar, this ache that rips them apart is to the ache of desire...

Breathing slows, gradually. Breathing evens, and asynchronous, jagged jolts of air twine...meld...into a silent slipstream of loss-love-death-life, drawn past parted lips as he leans his brow against her tresses and closes his eyes.

Alain...I'm so sorry... --but what was he sorry for?

How sinkingly bittersweet, the press of his brow to the ragged, wet fall of her silken hair - in mutual grief - as ravaging as the wide ocean, which swallowed friend and lord - as swallowing as the bitter, chill black seas which deny even his body, for grieving, for burial.

How like the rhythm of the sea, their slip-sliding breath, how like the rack of desire, the choking, sighing, needing, grieving shudder that ripples through slender, and somehow nigh frail figure, as beyond - without, the wind stirs to greater fuury.

"It will be all right." The hush of the sea after a storm, his voice, washing upon the shores of her consciousness in warm, cleansing caress. "He is with God now..."

Somehow, a second hand alights upon her shoulders, curling as carefully as the wings of a great bird around an injured fledgling. He shifts against the cascade, the waterfall of liquid silk, spun gold; his lips find her ear and he murmurs soothing words...words growing empty and hollow in the face of the rising...storm...

And silence, as his lips burn against her jawline.

"He had my heart." The barest whisper of sound, as soft as the hushed passage of fine silken slippers over worn stone, as gentle as the kiss of mother's breath upon an infant's brow, as haunted as the night, this night. He had my heart... but he did not have all of it. He is with the lord... "...where I may never see him..." ...damned.

Falling back, then, into his unfurling, gentle touch, into the warm rush of his soothing murmurs, into the comforting heat of his body - so close, into the burn of his lips upon her jaw, is she, all fragile strength, all chill, golden flame.

And there are no words to encapsulate the storm that rages within, without, as in a convulsion of needful grief and grieving need he folds his arms around her and crushes her to him as though she were a bandage to heal his broken heart, a balm to soothe his shattered soul. Alain.

Geneviève...

...and surer now, stronger, his mouth closes over hers as his hand grapples, squeezes about her delicate fingers, desperate. He turns to her. He turns her. Burning, seeking kiss, as his hands clasp her back, clasp her to him, slender as a reed, and twice as delicate, twice as fine... (fine as a beeswing).

There is hesitancy - the barest, faintest suggestion of flleeting panic, hinted - like the frantic beating of a trapped bird's too-fragile, delicately strong wing - like the final breath of a drowning man, just before he gives in to the hungry, necessary embrace of the enveloping waters...

...and then her fine ivory hands are sliding along his neck, his jaw, twining desperately into his hair of the palest of gold, and then her lips are moving against his, in growing flame - like to like to like - in drowning, shameful glory...

...and when the flickering signal light from the distant island passes three times in quick succession - flaring across their entwined forms like a trebled flash of lightning...

...she tightens her hold upon him.

And sinful union it is--sinful, and yet so sweet--amidst the lashing storm, beneath the frowning sky, between the stony walls...upon her wedding bed. Sinful union, even if Alain was gone--for this was Alain's Lady, and ever would be--and the realization only drives him, spurs him, to cling to this shred of a moment, this instant in an endless forever, this flaring flame in the eternal storm, as though it were a lifeline. Sin. He did not care. He would purify himself in her hair, in her eyes, in her...they will burn away one another's shame, grief, fear, guilt. They will burn away in this cliff over the crashing sea, where the wind moaned the souls of lost sailors, sighed the aches of lovers. They will burn away...

...and she is fine, fine as a beeswing, skin and flesh, slender and slim--so fine that each bead of sweat, each beaded cry, each strand of hair and each inch of skin was a study in perfection--delicate, exquisite, fine as a beeswing.

And evening passes to night, and the flames of grief-passion-madness dim to the gentle lull of warmth, like the sun upon springtime grass, like the caress of a mother upon a babe. Sleep comes, entwined and innocent upon the desecrated bed, within the desecrated marriage--sleep comes, and forgiveness is theirs. Alain was gone--and like to like, they had joined. Forgiveness is theirs for the first, last, and only time.

The night passes into day, and the storm calms, and the clouds break. A bar of sunlight touches the sea, sets one lithe foot upon a spill of pearls upon the shore. They sleep still, innocent in their sin, while far on that distant island, Alain prepares his ship to take him home, home to the amazed, relieved, loving arms...of his wife, and his dearest friend.

They sleep still--one last moment of peace in the long, tormented centuries that stretch away to infinity before their dazzled eyes.

It was not purposeful and premeditated.  That is what I told myself for ages afterwards.  It was not our fault.  We believed him dead.  Alain of the Rock, lost at sea.  That is what I told myself, that I would not have to think of the truth: that I had wished him dead, hoped him dead.

But that is not the only truth.  The truth also was, Geneviève knew.  She knew he lived still, and she pressed ahead nonetheless - out of love, out of a need that goes beyond simple lust.  And for this I could not forgive her when the time came.  And for this I destroyed her, and damned myself.

But we are not there yet.

[To Love]