M. Lachlan: Lord of Slaughter

So they went back and heard how in her fever she’d had a dream so vivid it now seemed more like the memory of something real. She was in the woods in the evening and she sensed something far inside the shadow of the trees — more of the darkness than in it. It was as if all the darkness of the world, the shadows of the forest and those that lurked beneath the church gables, the ancient and hungry darks of childhood that brooded beneath beds and in cupboards, that skulked under stairs and in attics, flowed in to the body of the creature that pursued her. Instead of fleeing from it and hiding, she called to it, speaking in a voice it understood — the howl of a wolf in the hills.

Paul simply said she had been frightened by her fever and that she would soon be well again. So it seemed. Beatrice became happy and began to look forward to seeing the monks. With Loys she forgot her dreams. For three visits the fat doctor dozed while Loys and Beatrice laughed and talked. When Loys made an excuse to visit alone, Beatrice always made sure her chaperone was old Marie, so deaf and so in awe of monks that she sat with her face buried in her embroidery, oblivious to the couple flirting. Of course, both knew the danger they faced. As a monk who had taken his vows Loys was not free to marry her, and as a low-born man he was no sort of match for a duke’s daughter.

Loys and Beatrice prayed for their affection to pass and agreed not to see each other. But she knew he collected firewood in the forest on a Wednesday morning and she — who had always loved to go out alone on her horse to greet the dawn — suddenly found it necessary to exercise her horse in those woods at that time — despite the winter cold. They had met, away from chaperones, away from the dozing Paul. She told him what she feared. She saw a man in her dreams who she was convinced meant her harm. She needed to go where he could not find her.

‘He can’t find you in your father’s keep,’ said Loys. ‘He has a hundred warriors to defend you there.’

‘He will find me,’ said Beatrice, ‘because I have seen him. He is here.’

‘Then identify him to your father and that is the end of it,’ said Loys.

‘It won’t do any good,’ said Beatrice. ‘I’m not even sure he is one person or a demon that inhabits many people, as he chooses. He watches me and I know he will not rest until he has me.’

‘Then ask to go to your cousins,’ said Loys.

‘No. I would be with you. I want you to take me away from this place.’

‘I have my vows, lady,’ he said. ‘What will I do if I break them?’

‘I will give you new ones,’ she said, and he understood she was asking him to marry her. He looked into her eyes and knew he bore a passion for her before which his monastic vows, his studies, his security, were pale and insubstantial things, mere candles to the light of the sun. It had led to where it had to lead — a little room somewhere away from the vengeful gaze of her father and away from the monastery.

Now they were in that little room, in Constantinople, the city chosen because they both knew Greek, he as a serious student, she because there had been a fashion for learning among the ladies of the court, who had taken it up as a pastime while their husbands were away at the wars. He came to her and said, ‘One day this love will fade, I promise it, and we will live properly and free of unreasonable passion. Free of love. Until that day we can only pray. Let me kiss you.’

She put up her mouth to him and he bent to take a long kiss.

‘Behind me,’ he said, ‘is dawn in a city of marvels. The mighty churches, the domes, the spires and the schools, the statues and the Hippodrome, ships and galleys from a hundred lands bobbing on the bright water, all I have longed to see for all my life. In front of me, you naked in the morning light. I cannot turn around and, it is my shame before God to say it, but neither do I want to.’

She drew him to her and he put his hand to her breast.

‘You have to go,’ she said.

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘but in the offices and schoolrooms, when I sit with grand philosophers and debate the nature of God’s earth, it is of you I shall be thinking.’

‘Think on your philosophies and your work,’ she said, ‘the sooner you might be with me in something resembling our former comfort.’

He broke from her. Then he dressed.

‘Come to the window,’ he said when he was done, ‘and watch me go.’

He held her again, her human warmth like a current pulling him into the comfort of the bed. He tore free of it and went to the door.

‘Bolt it behind me.’

‘Yes, Loys, I’m not stupid.’ She smiled at him and gave a little wave of goodbye.

He blundered his way down the dark stairs, careful with his hand on the splintery wooden wall, and then stepped out into the light of the summer morning, the jabber of the streets. His put his hand up to shield his eyes and was jostled by a gaggle of high-hatted priests who squeezed past him to avoid a cart that rattled by, its horses at the trot. If unreasonable passions governed him, then how much more did they govern Constantinople? So different even to Rouen. Men moved about their everyday business here at the pace of a Norman responding to a fire.

He went to the man selling peaches and bought one. Beatrice leaned out of the window. She had dressed and had her wimple on now, as demure as any wife emptying a piss pot into the street. He laughed to himself as the thought occurred to him. They’d received a visit from the neighbour the first time they’d done that. It was against the law in Constantinople. It still seemed odd to him to make the wives of the town parade along with pots of shit to throw into the sea when they could have kept their dignity and saved their efforts by just pitching them outside.

‘Here!’ he shouted and threw the peach to her.

It flew up through the chilly dawn light, a little sun rising to noon in her hands as she caught it.

A line from a psalm came into his head.

‘You send forth your spirit. They are created and you renew the face of the earth.’

‘An apple!’ she shouted. ‘Thank you, serpent!’

He smiled and waved and then went on his way to the university.

The emperor picked up the sword. The wolfman went down onto his haunches while the boy lay limp on the ground. The sound of the rain and the singing of soldiers filled the tent. The emperor turned to his right. The back of his guard was just visible through the slit in the tent flap.

Basileios walked to it and opened it. The man jerked around, his soaking face staring up in surprise at the emperor’s sudden appearance. He shook with cold. The emperor beheaded him.

Then he turned back inside the tent.

‘It’s a fine slave who tells the Roman ruler what to do,’ he said to the crouching figure. ‘Look at you, in your mud and your dye. Why should I do anything you ask me?’

‘Kill me,’ said the wolfman, ‘or kill you.’

The man’s Greek was appalling and Basileios hardly understood what he was trying to say. On the floor the boy coughed and hacked, sucking breath back into his lungs.

‘How did you get in here?’

The wolfman’s face was uncomprehending.

The emperor studied the wolfman in the glow of the weak coals. He was gaunt, almost starved in appearance, but wiry and strong-looking, smeared with mud on his belly, chest and knees from where he had crawled through the night. Matted black hair stuck wet to his face and a soaking wolfskin lay across his shoulders, its head sitting on top of his.

‘Kill me. Kill you.’

A shout from outside. The Hetaereia had found the head of their companion. A man poked his head into the tent. He had the smooth skin and delicate features of a eunuch. His short sword was free in his hand.