Alys Clare - Fortune Like the Moon

Then, at long, long last, they had been reunited. He had taken her in his arms, tried to kiss her, thinking that, after a year apart, she would be as ardent and eager as he.

He had known, really, when she wouldn’t kiss him on the lips. Had known, only hadn’t been able to believe it.

She had … No. Even to himself, he could not use the words ‘betrayed him’. Even then, in his dire, dreadful disappointment, he could not bring himself to criticise her. She was mistaken, he told himself instead. That night, seeing me again after so long with the good sisters, she thought she did not want me. It was a shock, seeing me! And I should not have thrust myself on her, I should have had more sense. More patience.

It would have been all right. Soon, she would have remembered how she and I loved one another. And everything would have happened as we planned.

But it couldn’t.

Because she fell down those steps and she was killed.

And, for all the satisfaction and pleasure that my life has given me since, I should have died with her.

* * *

After a long time, he got slowly to his feet. He had brought with him a stout sack, which now he unfolded and spread on the grass. Reaching down into the shallow water at the river’s edge, he selected a collection of large stones, the heaviest that he could lift. He filled the sack, stood up, then, grunting with the effort, dragged it along the grass as he went on around the bend in the river.

Here, out of sight of the road above, there was a place where the strong, swift current had formed a deep black pool beneath the eroded bank.

He tied the top of the sack securely, then, using a strong length of rope, fastened it tightly around his waist. It bit painfully into his thin frame, but that hardly mattered now.

He stood for a moment, thinking of her. Of how she used to smile, in those lovely, endlessly sunny days that long-gone summer, when, so unexpectedly, the future suddenly seemed to promise so much. Of her lips as he kissed her, the swell of her firm young breasts. Her eyes, which he had, he now realised, never really read. Of her long dark hair.

Gunnora.

My love. My lost love.

He had her cross around his neck. Taking it in his hand, clutching it in a strong grasp, he took one last look at the world.

On the opposite bank, a young willow was showing a faint hint of green; it looked as if, at long last, spring might be coming.

Olivar smiled slightly. Spring. Well, even if it was here, it was, for him, irrelevant.

Raising his eyes to the wide sky above, where somewhere, so he had been told, heaven was, he murmured a last prayer for her, and then one for himself. Mercy. Forgiveness. And, please, dear Lord, the chance that, one day, she and I may be reunited?

In the midst of that thought, he jumped.

The weighted sack did its work well. Within seconds, the waters closed over his head, and he disappeared.