The evening was upon us and we stood dressed and ready, cakes and pies in our arms to bring color to the pale cheeks of Sebastien Diocletian. I prayed that he and his servants would not be insulted by the gesture; I was sure that a European would know how to entertain though Mistress Callaway was sure that they would not. Markus, one of our hired men, brought the wagon up for us as Father had requested earlier, and he was only too happy to do so even at this late hour. Our family never left for an evening of entertainment that was not to the other's farmhouse, each more like the other's second home. We all had rooms in each house and came and went through each as we chose. It was a special night indeed.
My mind had wandered most of the day as I counted down the minutes and seconds until we should leave under the just now waning moon. I had wondered what Sebastien had planned for us this fine evening, for surely the moon hung heavy and so nearly still full. The sent of apple blossoms were in the air adding the perfect details to the moist night air. It was a night set for nearly any activity one could desire to partake in. I wondered again and again how much attention he would pay to me, or if Fillip and Father would be the main focus of his entertainment. I wondered too, if he would even be home: if the house lights would be dimmed and the windows dark. I wondered if it had all been a farce and my stomach churned at the evil thought of it.
I dreamed of him taking my slight hand and kissing it in welcome after helping me down from the wagon. He would then aid Mistress Callaway in the same fashion and shake the hands of Fillip and my father with great respect as he commented on the fineness of our stock: two handsome blacks. I prayed with earnest that Father could find no fault with him and find no objection to his spending time with us or us with him. In short I hoped to be in love with the man by the end of the summer, or rather that he be in love with me by the end of the night. I had never met anyone like Sebastien, and as luck would have it, I have never met anyone like him since, and that is truly a pity.
The wagon bumped its way along the dusty road calling me back from several reprieves. Each was more desperate and anxious than the last. I wanted love and companionship from this man like I had no other. God had finally seen fit to make me desperate. Part of me relished the feeling, as it was new to me, and then part of me hated myself for it. I was weak in it. I resolved level headedness again as we approached the cottage nestled in the bend in the road. It was full of light! Sebastien was at home, and I was not dreaming for I pinched myself to be sure. Father reined the horses into the drive and pulled them to a halt in front of a manservant as the door to the cottage was flung open and Sebastien stepped outside.
"Hello all and welcome! You do me a great honor in granting me your company this night." I rose and he offered up his hand to help me down, but paused to kiss it welcome before doing so, almost as I had imagined and somehow better as I stepped down with his aid. Mistress Callaway was next and she thanked him politely but shortly I thought. Father and Fillip jumped down, as men tended to do and he shook hands with each as Fillip made the introductions.
"Won't you come in all? I have made the fire up to keep off the damp. I do believe that we shall have a rain yet late tonight or early tomorrow morning. Come in!" He took my arm as well as Mistress Callaway's and led us up the steps and inside. The cottage was immaculately clean, the rugs appeared to be freshly beaten and all the surfaces newly dusted and polished. He had gone to some trouble to impress us.
"Ah! What a wonderful smell; fresh cherry pie if I'm not mistaken."
"No you are not," Mistress Callaway replied somewhat curtly. "We thought we would bring you a taste of this world's foods. But I dare say that you are not a man for sweets?"
"No, I am not. I am of a sensitive stomach."
"I dare say that you are," she half snorted. I was at a loss. What rudeness she was displaying to our host! But what surprised me more was that he bore it. He even approached her and slipped an arm around her shoulders to lead her to the sideboard where it might be divided for the rest of them. She seemed to hold back a second, but then nodded and moved with him with ease and comfort. Mistress Callaway cut the pie and Sebastien delivered it to us where we sat. No more, that night, was Mistress Callaway rude to Sebastien. For the life of me, I could not guess why she had begun it, nor why she had ended it so suddenly. She was not often a rash woman.
The rest of the evening passed pleasantly, though mired deep a discussion centering on the puritan way of life, religion, and human nature in general, between the three men. Each would, every so often, pause and make sure that the opinions of the ladies were heard voiced or that we were pleasantly engaged otherwise. And every so often, I thought I spied Sebastien watching me, shifting his eyes away whenever mine met with his. I thought I might make a game of it, counting the number of times he would do it before he finally smiled openly at me instead of adverting them. But our leisure and games was cut short by a clap of thunder that shook the walls.
"Well Sebastien. It appears that your earlier prediction was correct. It is about to rain in true New England fashion, so we shall be off immediately or we shall be stuck in the mud."
"I would have it no other way sir, for I am sure that I cannot persuade you to all stay. This country seems to be set on everyone in his or her own bed every night. Your horses shall be brought up immediately and a tarp provided lest the clouds should burst before you reach the dry safety of your home." Father laughed at Sebastien's excessiveness and understanding of our code of principles.
"You have learned well in a short time good sir! No puritan can abide being out of his bed a single night."
"No father, it is rather that no town of puritan people can abide a single puritan being out of his own bed any night," I replied smartly as I rose, setting my tea cup on the little table in front of me. My family snickered, knowing full well that I did not believe in such compulsiveness. Sebastien merely looked confused as he took my arm to lead me out to the wagon; a gesture that surprised me as much as my words had surprised him. Father followed suit and took the gentle arm of Mistress Callaway and lead her in style from the parlor out the door with Fillip close behind. This left Sebastien and I to lag behind as he hit me with new questions, fully expecting an immediate answer.
"Do you not then believe in the puritan way of life Synnove? Do you not believe in your God?" His eyes were wide and earnest: I nearly swam in their intensity. The frosting of the green and grey colors around the central darkness; I had to force myself to concentrate on his words and think before I spoke.
"I believe in my God, most certainly. But my God is the god of my father as well. The God that loved us so well that he gave us his only Son to brutally slay with nails and stones. A warm and gentle creator that is infallible and perfect in every way, who loves us all no matter what we do on this earth. I do not believe in the demanding and vindictive god of the puritans. What loving Father in Heaven could prescribe the drowning of a man to test for the presence of the devil? Or tearing his flesh from his limbs with hot pliers because he floated on the water, simply because panic did not seize him and he floated on the calm that his God was there to save him? Such things I have seen in this town and others, and I cannot believe in such a god. We fled the Old World for this new one of promise and freedom from persecution, and then we created a new world of the same and worse for ourselves by our own bloodied hands." I looked up at my companion as we paused on the porch waiting for the wagon to appear. He studied my intently, his eyes searching mine and seemingly touching my soul in quest of something that he desperately needed. I did not look away from him, but let him continue on his journey in me. Something inside told me that this was only the beginning of this voyage and it was not meant for me to shy from it. I had shied from nothing in my life and I would not begin to shy now as something whispered to my very soul: some grand desire, some great need, but I knew not what it was. I could not hear the words for the beauty and passion of the voice.
The horses snorted in front of me and we pulled ourselves from each other's gaze. Sebastien handed me up to Fillip in the wagon and I took my seat in a daze. Father thanked him for the brilliant evening out. Sebastien returned his happy appreciation while glancing back and forth from me to father and then back to me, and then we were off. The team glided down the road at a good speed, though I barely remember a thing of the trip home. The voice was calling my soul again and my mind could not clear the image of Sebastien's amazing and terrifying eyes: their penetrance was deep indeed. Thunder clapped loudly overhead as the lightening lit the blackened sky and it began to weep. We were home. Father was lifting me from the wagon before I realized that the lights before me were that of our farmhouse.
"Synnove? Are you alright my child?" he looked desperate as he set me back down to the earth. "I had thought you had fallen asleep on the ride home."
"Yes Father. I think that I am just tired. I cannot seem to concentrate. I think I dozed off," I sighed, stifling a yawn. "I am fine, just tired from the evening."
"Have Sophie make you a hot cup of tea and then off to bed with you then. I will not have you ill Synnove." He hugged me close to him and then turned me loose to do as he had bid, but something seemed to plague him as he did so. He seemed to want to hold me too him longer.
Sophie brought me my tea as I was brushing my hair before bed.
"Ma'am, if I may ask, what was he like?" Her voice was soft as she set the cup and saucer down on my vanity. Half terrified that I would reprimand her, half terrified that I would not answer the question she had put before me. I looked up at her from my mirror and set my silver plated brush, an heirloom of my mother's, down on the oak table top of the vanity before turning to answer her.
"He was like no other that I have ever met Soph. He is a gentleman of Europe and so much more I think." I trailed off as she smiled and left me to my bedroom preparations, happy with the answer that I had given her. Dreams mean so much to humans, I know they meant the world to me.
I sipped my tea as I lay in bed thinking on what Sebastien had said, when we were alone, with his words and most of all with his eyes. When I had done, I blew the candle and was asleep in a heartbeat, hanging on the memory of his grey eyes. The dreams came again, but this time they were of a soldier: a roman. His long chestnut hair was tied back elegantly with a piece of black cord mingled with gold, his face, half hidden by his helmet and the final rays of the sun, was spattered with the blood of the fallen. He had sworn not to cut it until this last vow was done. He turned then, to watch the growing twilight as men of the same shield picked their fallen from the gory fields. He too had lost someone; it was that which brought him to this war. The lifeless pile of offal that lay at his feet, who's blood stained his linens and dripped tears from the tip of his sword, had taken her from him. How he had screamed when he ran him through, cursing him for the rape and murder of his young bride on their wedding night. The bastard had been the first to lay with her, then dispatched what was left to the other side where he could not yet follow. The brute had died a horrible death, nearly as horrible as hers. Sebastien had made sure of it. He cut his phallus from him as he named himself and claimed the rights of a deeply wronged man and loving husband. The brute had fallen to his knees, cupping his lost loins, screaming at the pain, before Sebastien granted him merciful death, slitting him from crotch to sternum.
Screams were heard to issue forth from the blade of the final executioner, hard at work against the high-ranking refuse of the opposing army. It was time to go home; now he could die and be with her on the other side, his obligations to her and her family now fulfilled. He had done what must be finally done; he had avenged the life of the fallen. He had imagined this moment every day of the last few years of searching him out.
He had imagined how the blade would feel as it penetrated his taunt young flesh, as of yet still so full of life that it would easily return from its malnourished and dogged state, should the burden that had plagued him for so long be lifted from his shoulders. But the easing of it had not been what he had expected it to be in the end. The final release, in reality, being nothing the likes of the taste of her lips or the feel of her flesh against his. He simply wanted her back and would trade the years he had just lived to have died with her in that bed, with or without Roman honor. War had taken the youth and vigor from them both, the brute sporting aged hairs in the midst of his youthful black curls. And where had the soldier's soul gone? He had no passion for it now, feeding off the hate to commit the vengeance that was prescribed to him, by himself in his pain. He felt hollow now. The better half of him being long in the Under World already, waiting years for him to finally come.
He had buried her in the gown that she had just wed him in. It was spared the stain of the brute's touch and of her wasted blood: only moments before she had shed it. She had sloughed it from her skin for him, only moments before the little noise that drew him away. He winced visibly as he stood in the rain as he thought of the feel of her silk skin as he passed his palms over her delicate shoulders. He remembered all too clearly his great desire for her as she leaned into him, kissing his chest and rubbing her breasts innocently up against him. No other woman had drawn his passion forth from him like she had. It had been plain to him from the first moment that this was what love was, a petite raven-haired beauty with pale blue eyes.
He drew my face up; I could remember the touch of him: how the calluses from the swordplay had felt against my tender young flesh. I remember the feel of the hunger mounting, how I burned for him: the rub of his hands on my shoulders, back, neck and then pulling in my hair as his lips attacked my body. I could still feel the rough bristle of his this day's beard on my white neck and his bare chest on my lips. At the age of eighteen, and the daughter of a general and a senator, I had not yet known a man. I knew I was waiting for him. I knew I was; I felt him against me, though I had no idea what to do beyond the point that we were at. My mother had died when I was too young to know of such things as these and my father was too unaccustomed to believing that his only daughter would ever be involved with a man. She was his little girl forever. But tonight I would be a woman and Sebastien, my love, would take me there. I blushed at the thought, as I had never felt like such a child as I did then in his arms. My heart pounded against him as I fumbled with the tie of his night robes. His thumbs kneaded my breasts before his hands slipped across my back, encircling me and drawing me near as the tie fell away and the robe opened to me. I gasped as I felt him so completely pressed against my body. I was nearly mad in my hunger for him but had no idea how to satisfy my physical craving. I moaned at the pain of it. He paused.
"Hush, my love. Someone comes close through the bushes. I did you not hear them stir a moment before?"
"No," I kissed him. I was completely lost to anything but him. He kissed my lips seriously and pushed me back as he tied his robe and picked up his sword. "Can you not send a servant to check through the gardens?" I had begged and he only smiled and kissed my lips again.
"No, Synnove, I cannot. I am the son of a senator, and even now, sit in on the senate. I will not have it said that I was afraid to search my own garden for spies of the enemy." I swam at the call of my new name. It was meant as a gift to me, a vow of his love. Synnove: Gift of the Sun, for surely my blue eyes had fallen from the heavens.
"No. You would rather have it said that you left your new bride to be satisfied by the slavery whilst you were tracking hares through the brush." I padded across the marble floor of our home in what I believed to be a seductive manner, then sat primly on the bed. Sebastien laughed, kissing my cheek before he left and instructing me to bar he chamber doors and let no one but him in. I pretended to pout the injustice but did as I was bid after he left, closing the doors silently behind him.
A few moments later I heard footfalls on the tiling in the hall outside our bedroom, coming towards it. In my foolishness and lust, I believed it to be my husband returned from the pointless mission to scout the garden. I had not believed there to have been any danger: not here, not this deep in the heart of Rome.
"Sebastien? You have come to your senses have you? Come to take the virgin head of your new wife instead of chasing nothing in the gardens?" I flung open the doors to come face to face with the man that lead our army to the north that rallied against Rome for her leadership: Diocletian. Numerianus was still alive and the throne would pass in peaceful succession to Carinus when the time came in his mind. Diocletian, on the other hand, would not hear of it.
"Whore!" he seethed through his sadistic grin. "Bitch in heat this one, my friends. Finish off the pup if you must, for I must with this one." He looked me up and down, licking his lips then brushing his scraggly beard with his hand. He grabbed me by my neck and squeezed so that I could not call out as he forced me down on the bed and quickly answered the question of what was to occur next. It was pain like I had never felt before, dulled even by the black that was creeping across my eyes. I hadn't had time to even attempt to beat him off and there was already no going back. I had felt the flesh tear and the blood begin to seep out as I fell asunder. He had choked me to death in his passion and in his fear that I should cry out and attract Sebastien too soon. Odd that he should have felt fear.
The last of the drama I saw from across the room, I do not know how or why I was to witness it. Sebastien ran in quickly after slaughtering the two guards posted at the door. One screamed out like a woman as Sebastien released his anger. Rivers of their blood ran across the white marble floors. It had not taken him long to figure the trap that had been set once he was in the cool of the garden, and could hear nothing, seeing less under the sliver of moonlight. She had completed her waxing cycle this eve as he uttered his token of love to me.
The brute, having accomplished his mission and hearing the clamor, fled out the nearest window and into the night. Diocletian had come to do this nasty business himself. It was a personal note to call Sebastien to war as he had opposed it openly in the senate, preventing rash actions and the loss of many men in the traps of the enemy. He saw the back of the coward as he climbed through the window. But he also saw my body, lying on the bed motion and breathless, the throat crushed and innocence torn to shreds then left to bleed out upon the clean white linens. A howl of the worst pain escaped from his wretched soul through his throat and as he gathered my carcass up and uttered the vow that he had now fulfilled standing on the little rise looking off into the sunset. He didn't see the shadow that followed him now, actually it had followed him for years already: watching. I could see it but I could not tell him of its presence for the dead are not allowed to speak to the living. Not normally anyway.
News of my death spread quickly through the streets. It rallied the Romans and invoked the imaginative hearts of the Christians, to whom I had always expressed sympathy for. Some of their customs I had admired to the point that my token of commitment to Sebastien had been an exquisitely engraved ring. They made a tale of a saint out of it; the original of which has been lost many times over the centuries and millennia. Funny how the truth in the tales is lost in the retelling of it all.
I inclined my head into his chest the next day as they lay my body to its final rest. Sebastien was ragged, as ragged as my father, and they both swore war. I wept then, for it had occurred to me that in that vow they each forfeited life. I wept for myself and for what I had lost. I could not even feel the touch of his flesh against my cheek as it rested there on his chest. The sense of touch was reserved for the living. And now my life was over, or it was supposed to be at least.
Sebastien stood on the knoll watching the twilight fall into night with Diocletian lying dead under his heel. My father, sentencing the long unbeknownst dead to their final deaths. The executioner, my eldest and most cherished brother, brought his blade swiftly down on the necks of those who kneeled pathetically, sobbing mercy before him. He would not see those who deserved mercy, suffer. I could see his tears, pure waters of pain in remembrance of me, mingled with disgust at the task he now performed. From where I stood with Sebastien waiting for him to finally come to me so we could both know peace and rest. But as my spirit clung to him, we were to be robbed of each other yet again.
A shadow moved on its own accord then, and a hand reached out from the dark. It was stark white and cold on the soldier's heated flesh, but he could not cry out as he was drug into the woods. The shadow simply would not let him. It wanted to feed too and his hatred was delicious, his pain like the sweetest red wine: pure intoxication. The sight and smell of blood had made it ravenous. Yet a soldier may not fall like that, it had no honor in it and he took back what was his; folly though it surely was.
His eyes emerged from the woods first. Grey with green frostings that set an eerie light onto them. His mane of hair now loose to frame his paling face. He was a fearful sight as the realization of his own rape came to the front of his tormented mind.
I awoke with a start. The words: "Sebastien, what did they have you become to transverse the miles and time between us? What fools have we both been?" fell from my lips before I knew what I said. I ripped back the sheets and ran across the newly waxed hardwood to the window that overlooked the meadow where I had spotted the coyotes only the night before. Rain beat hard against the glass, soaking the wood so that it would not rise under my slight force. Lightning raced across the sky showing to me the figure of Mistress Callaway walking powerfully, head held high, across the grassland towards a white figure standing on the edge of the forest.
"Sebastien!" My breath left me then and I fell to the floor in a heap.
