“You see? My wound is as good as healed
already.”
She did not respond to his light tone. In
fact, when he laid her down on their bed she flinched away from
him. It dawned on him that she might imagine he was going to force
himself on her. She probably thought immediate sex was what a man
would want when he had been away from his wife for several weeks.
To show her he had other things on his mind he left her on the bed
while he searched through his clothing chest for a fresh linen
undershirt and a lightweight woolen tunic. Once he was decently
clad he took up the tray of food and carried it to the bed.
“Move over,” he said. “Scrunch up against the
wall so I have some room to put this thing down. Now, what has
Clothilde left for us under this linen cloth?”
“Cold chicken,” Danise said without
enthusiasm. “Bread and some of the cheese you like. Plums.”
“Cut a slice of cheese for me, will you? And
a slice for yourself. I’ll pour the wine.”
He sat on the outer side of the bed,
positioning himself and the tray so that if she wanted to get away
from him she would have to spill both food and wine. He ate the
cheese she gave him, but when she offered a second slice he shook
his head.
“Not until you’ve eaten a piece,” he said.
“I’m half starving, but I won’t eat until you
do. That chicken looks delicious. My mouth is
watering.” Sipping at his wine he watched her reaction. She stared
at the food on the tray, then looked up at him.
“Truly, I am not hungry,” she said.
“Truly, you are going to eat,” he countered.
“For myself, I am aching to sink my teeth into that chicken, but I
can’t until you have a piece first.”
“Don’t talk to me in that way.” Her voice
remained oddly lifeless and unlike his Danise, but there was a
momentary flash of spirit in her eyes. “I am not a child.”
“Then don’t act like one.
Eat
,
Danise.”
Slowly she stretched out her hand to pick up
the knife and carve a slice off the breast of the chicken. She
nibbled at the edge of the meat she held.
“Eat all of it. Chew it and swallow it down.
Then drink some wine.” He kept his eyes on her until she did as he
ordered. “That’s better. I’ve seen too many people die recently. I
don’t want to add you to the tally.”
“Would it really matter to you?” Her voice
was still low, but it had a bit more life to it. Her eyes were on
the tray of food rather than on his face.
“It would kill me. Here, have some
cheese.”
“You haven’t said -”
“I haven’t said a lot of things,” he
interrupted, pushing the slice of cheese between her open lips. He
refilled her wine cup and handed it to her. “We’ll eat and drink
first, then we’ll talk.” Slowly, bit by piece by sip, he convinced
her to eat what he considered to be a small meal. It was not as
much food and drink as he would have liked her to consume, but it
was a start. When they were both finished, he set the tray aside
and sat back against the headrails of the bed, resting his head on
the wall behind it, stretching out his legs. Danise curled up in
the corner next to him.
“Tell me about my father’s death,” she said.
“And about Redmond’s, too.”
“I’d rather not.”
“I need to know, and the telling may help
you.” There was a little color in her pale face now, and she didn’t
look quite so much like a lost and lonely ghost.
“Perhaps you’re right.” He decided he would
give her just the outline of events, but when he began to talk it
all spilled out, every gory detail. She listened, wincing now and
then until he had told her all about the days of searching through
the forest until they found the village where the leaders of the
Saxon bands that had been causing so much trouble were gathered,
and how they had surprised and done battle with the Saxons. She did
not weep, not even when he described Redmond’s brave death and her
father’s end.
“Thank you,” she said when he was
finished.
“There is more I want to tell you, but it’s
not about tracking Saxons or fighting them, it’s about me. Danise,
I know I have treated you badly. Can you forgive me? Can we try to
get back some of the feeling we’ve lost? You have no idea how much
your love means to me.”
She presented him with the same wary,
troubled gaze with which she had regarded him on his entry into
their bedchamber.
“If you wish to couple now,” she said after a
few tense minutes, “of course I am amenable. It is my duty, after
all.”
“That’s not what I meant. Danise, I love you
with all my heart and soul, and making love with you is part of it.
However, at this moment I am so damned tired I’m not sure I could
manage it. What I want is just what I said, for you to forgive me.
I also want to tell you something about myself that I never tell
anyone. It’s not meant as an excuse for my despicable behavior
toward you, but it may help you to understand why I acted the way I
did. Now, I know you are worn-out, too. You’ve had a rough time of
it in the last couple of months, and probably just about all you
can take of emotional stress, so if you want me to shut up until
later when you feel better, or if you want me to keep quiet
altogether, just say so.” He deliberately sprinkled this speech
with words she would have to translate into Frankish. She usually
smiled when he did this and he knew she enjoyed exercising her
intelligence to make sense of what he was saying. He wasn’t sure
the gambit would work this time, until her expression lightened and
he thought he detected a momentary flash of humor in the gray-green
depths of her eyes.
“I will listen, Michel. Say what you
want.”
“All right,” he said, wishing he could put
his arms around her and draw her head down onto his chest, so he
could make his promised explanation without having her eyes on his
face with such burning intensity.
“You know I was divorced from my first wife,”
he began.
“Yes, you told me. It was good of you to be
so honest about a part of your previous life that can have no
meaning here in Francia.”
“Well, that’s just it. My divorce still has
meaning for me. That’s why I’ve never talked about it, not in
either century.” He stopped, thinking how to say what had to be
told. Deciding it was wisest just to state the facts, he continued.
“She cheated on me. I walked in on her one day and found her in bed
with someone else. Then, later, I learned she had been involved
with several other men as well as the one I caught her with.”
“You divorced her because she committed
adultery? Michel, I am sorry.”
“In the twentieth century, you don’t go into
court and shout ‘adultery,’” Michel said. “We call it
‘irreconcilable differences.’ “
“Whatever you called it, it was still a
dreadful wrong against you.” She put out her hand to touch his with
ready sympathy. Michel caught her fingers, to hold on to them while
he made the rest of his explanation. Somehow, the warmth of her
hand in his made the telling easier.
“What mattered to me was not just the
physical act that she had committed with other men, though that was
bad enough,” he said. “It was the breaking of the bond of trust
between husband and wife that destroyed everything I had ever felt
for her. After the divorce, I swore I’d never trust another woman.
But when I first came here to Francia, I didn’t know who I was or
anything about my past, so I neglected to put up all those
defensive barriers I had been using to keep myself from being hurt
again. By the time I regained my memory, I was so deep in love with
you that my sordid marriage was irrelevant.”
“You knew you loved me even then? So
quickly?” He could not tell what she was feeling, he could only
look into her soft eyes and marvel that they were together in the
same room and that she was still listening to him.
“There’s something else I have to confess,”
he said. “From the very beginning you were special to me. It was as
though we belonged together, but I couldn’t figure out why.”
“Ah.” A faint smile trembled at the corners
of her mouth.
“Don’t get all excited,” he continued. “I
know what you’re thinking, but I have been taught to disregard the
supernatural in favor of a scientific explanation. I put my
peculiar feelings down to a confused state of mind.”
“What nonsense,” she said. “What foolishness,
not to accept that there is more to life than what you can see or
hear or hold in your hands.”
“Can you understand now why I reacted so
badly when you told me that you thought I was at least a partial
reincarnation of Hugo? I felt as if I had been betrayed by a woman
for a second time, as though it was Hugo you were loving and
wanting instead of me. I guess you could say I saw it as a kind of
cosmic adultery. And then you refused to back down in what you
believed, and I just got more and more angry and more and more hurt
because I thought you didn’t love me anymore – or that you had
never loved me at all. That last night when we were together, all I
could think about was how to make you forget Hugo, how to make you
love
me
and not him. I was trying to force you to love me. I
did that to you, knowing full well that love can’t be forced. It
must be freely given.”
“What I understand from this explanation,”
she said, “is that while Hugo’s ghost has been in my mind and
heart, your adulterous wife has been in yours.”
“Can ghosts be exorcised?” he asked.
“Devils are exorcised,” she told him with
great seriousness. “Ghosts must be laid to rest, gently and with
love, by fulfilling what they have left undone in this world. Hugo
has been laid to rest because I love you, and in you, whatever
remains of him. I do not understand this, I only accept it. As
Alcuin would say, it is beyond human comprehension.”
“I can’t think of a single thing my ex-wife
left undone in this world,” he said. “But I think I know what you
mean. She’s in my past, and that relationship is over and finished
because I love you now. She doesn’t haunt me anymore, not after the
last few weeks.”
“I love you,” Danise said. “I will never
betray you.”
“I know. I think I’ve always known it, in my
heart. It’s my brain and my overactive ego that foul things up from
time to time.”
“From time to time,” she repeated, smiling
more openly.
“Come here.” He slid down in the bed until
his head was resting on the pillow. He pulled her down beside him
where he had wanted her all along, with her head on his shoulder
and his arms around her. “It doesn’t matter what you believe about
this mystery, Danise. You can think I’m Hugo, or Attila the Hun, or
Santa Claus, just as long as you love me. Believe what you want.
Who am I to say what’s truth and what’s falsehood or even just
imagination? All that really matters is that we love each other, in
this or any life. Danise? Danise?” When he lifted his head so he
could see her face, he realized that she was fast asleep and
probably had not heard his last, impassioned words. He brushed his
lips across her forehead before settling back against the pillow.
Within moments his own eyes closed and he, too, fell asleep.
* * *
The coffins of Savarec and Redmond were
carried to the garrison chapel as soon as they reached Deutz, there
to rest overnight under the eyes of an honor guard chosen by
Hubert. It was late morning when the folk of Deutz gathered for the
funeral service. Savarec was buried in the graveyard just outside
the fortress walls. At Hubert’s order he was placed so that he was
facing eastward toward Saxony, where he had fought so bravely
during many campaigns. Throughout the service and the burial Danise
stood tight-lipped and dry-eyed with Michel on one side of her and
Clothilde on the other. The governor of Koln and his wife were
there to pay their respects to Savarec and to accompany Redmond
when he left Deutz for the last time.
In midafternoon Michel and the men who had
come with him from Saxony carried Redmond’s coffin onto the ferry.
During the crossing they remained standing at attention around it.
Danise, at her own insistence, went aboard with the governor and
his wife, to be with them while they were all poled across the
Rhine to Koln. It was evening before Danise, Michel, and the men
with them returned to Deutz. Hubert greeted them in the great
hall.
“All is in readiness, Michel,” Hubert said.
“I have assigned eighteen men to your command. You will be able to
leave before dawn to return to the eastern forests. May you and
Guntram be successful and quickly bring to justice the traitor
responsible for the deaths of Savarec and Redmond.”
By the time she and Michel reached their
room, Danise was in tears.
“I was wondering when you would finally break
down,” Michel said, taking her into his arms. “My darling, I swear
to you, when this fighting is over, I will never leave you again.
You and I will go home to Elhein and live there for the rest of our
lives. If ever I have to leave Elhein, even for a short time, you
will go with me.”
“It’s the fighting that frightens me,” Danise
whispered. “I cannot pretend to be brave anymore, or to believe
that because you were sent to me, you will be safe. If so many good
men can die in battle, if Father and Redmond are gone, then why not
-?”
He did not let her finish. Seized by
superstitious dread at the thought of what she might say, he
covered her mouth with his fingers and then with his lips,
effectively silencing her.
What started as a kiss meant to quiet her
gained in depth and sweetness until Danise was murmuring and
sighing in his arms and Michel, denied expression of his love for
her for too many weeks, could barely restrain himself. He took her
to their bed and there, with aching tenderness, with repeated vows
of undying love, he tried to erase the memory of the last time he
had taken her, when he had been relentlessly determined to prove
his manhood and his claim on her.