A
leksei began reading Yeshua’s tale to me.
It was clear he took pleasure in it. I did my best to appear to listen attentively, all the while scheming ways to engage him. With the Patriarch’s threat hanging over my head, it had become more urgent than ever.
All I had to guide me was Naamah’s gift and my own instincts. I developed a finely honed sense of Aleksei’s reactions, and the response of Naamah’s gift within him.
So long as I looked away from him, he could not resist stealing glances at me. Swaddled in a shapeless woolen dress and draped in chains, a long scarf wrapped around my cropped hair, I hardly felt at my most alluring.
Still, he was a young man with a young man’s appetites surging beneath his efforts to suppress them, and I found ways to tempt him. If I angled my body just so and clasped my hands in my lap in a demure pose, the chains that ran from the collar around my neck to the cuffs at my wrists pressed the fabric against my skin, showing the shape of my breasts beneath the prickly wool.
When I smoothed the fabric over my knees in another seemingly absentminded gesture, it pulled it taut for a moment, revealing the line of my thigh; and when I tilted my head a certain way, the trailing end of the woolen scarf fell away to bare my throat.
Such small enticements! And yet, to a starving man, they held all the promise of an extravagant banquet.
Once again, I thanked him for the day’s reading. “I look forward to hearing more,” I added. “Especially the love story.”
Aleksei looked confused. “What love story?”
“The love between Yeshua ben Yosef and Mary of Magdala,” I said. “Surely that is one of the best parts.”
“Ah… no.” He flushed, fidgeting with the book. “No, it is not reckoned so in the Church of Yeshua Ascendant.”
“Oh.” I was disappointed.
He gave me a yearning look. “Mary of Magdala took the blood that Yeshua spilled on the cross and used it to a corrupt end. God only allowed it that even Elua might learn to resist temptation in the end. Moirin, you must set aside the false beliefs you were taught in Terre d’Ange.”
I shook my head. “There is no sin in love, Aleksei, nor in honest desire.”
“Please do not say such things!” His face looked pale and pinched.
“Why?” I asked softly. “Because they are dangerous truths you fear to hear? Or because your uncle will have me stoned to death for saying them?”
Aleksei scrambled to his feet, once more avoiding my gaze, clutching the book before him as though it were a talisman to ward me off. “It’s best that I go.”
Still, he hesitated. I rose from my stool, crossing the space between us. Although it was difficult to move gracefully in shackles, I had been practicing. “Aleksei, I am trying,” I said in a low tone. “But I am as the gods have made me. Naamah’s gift is real. I have felt her blessing, and there is only grace and beauty in it. It is no curse, and I do not know if I can repent of it in earnest.”
He was trembling, and I was standing close enough that I could feel the heat coming off him in waves. “I should go,” he repeated.
I touched his cheek—oh so lightly. His pupils dilated, and the pulse in the hollow of his strong young throat beat hard and fast. “You feel it, too. I know you do.”
If I pressed him any harder, I would lose him. I made myself turn away, bowing my head. Aleksei’s breathing was ragged in the small cell.
“Moirin…” He whispered my name.
Whatever else he meant to say, he fell silent at the sound of a key turning in the lock. Valentina opened the door and entered the chamber, bringing a tray with my mid-day meal. Mother and son exchanged a long glance, and then Aleksei left, stumbling and banging his shoulder against the door-frame in his haste.
I sighed.
“I know what you’re about with my son.” Valentina set the tray down on the little table, hard enough to make it rattle. Her voice was grim. “God help me, I don’t know if I’m praying for you to succeed or fail.”
I extended my arms toward her in supplication, dangling my chains. “Believe what you will, my lady. My offer stands. Purloin the key, and I will go and take any dilemma I may pose from you.”
Her mouth hardened. “Would you take him with you?”
“Aleksei?”
“Who else?”
“Yes,” I murmured. “If he wished to go, yes, of course. Your son was not meant to live this way.”
“Would you love him?” Valentina appraised me with a mother’s shrewdness.
I found myself unable to lie to her. For all I knew, I could come to love him. As Bao had observed, I had a tendency to give my heart away quickly. But at the moment, Aleksei was but a means to an end; and no matter what else transpired, it was Bao who held the missing half of my soul.
So I stayed silent.
“As I thought,” Valentina said bitterly. “You do but ply him with a whore’s cheap wiles.”
I sank onto my narrow bed, unwinding my head-scarf and shaking my shorn hair loose, weary of playing games. “Forbid him my company if you fear for him so.”
Her voice dropped. “I dare not.”
“Why?” I glanced at her. “God’s judgment?”
She looked away from me. “It is a test and a trial. Aleksei’s, not mine. I should not even speak to you.”
“Do you fear I’ll seek to seduce you instead?” I asked wryly, giving my chains an enticing jangle. “I’m willing to try, but I’m not at my best.”
Valentina shook her head. “Even if I were inclined to such depravity, do you think I would not know it for a lie, old and haggard as I have grown?” Unexpectedly, her voice cracked. “Do not mock me.”
“I’m not mocking you.” There were tears on her cheeks and the pain in her voice tugged at my heart, making me relent. “I’m sorry, my lady. I’m alone, scared, and desperate.” I paused, addressing her in a more gentle tone. “Who was he? Did he break your heart?”
She didn’t pretend not to understand. “Aleksei’s father?”
I nodded.
“Just a man.” Valentina dabbed at her eyes. “He was a young D’Angeline diplomat in Vralgrad. I was a young bride wed to an elderly groom, a match meant to bring prestige to the Rostov family.”
“This man tempted you?”
Her shoulders rose and fell. “I let it happen. I wanted it to happen, wanted
him
. All that youth and unholy beauty. Aleksei’s father told me no lies, made me no false promises. Nonetheless, I fell in love and broke my heart against him.”
“Men can be careless,” I murmured, thinking of Raphael de Mereliot, thinking of Bao and his Tatar princess.
“Yes, they can.” We regarded each other.
“Give my brother whatever he wants,” Valentina said softly. “He is not given to making idle threats. I don’t know how much time you have.”
“Will you not help me?” I asked. “Please?”
She shook her head from side to side, slow and deliberate. “I am sure of nothing. I have made mistakes. Forgive me, Moirin. God has decreed your person a battleground. I dare not intervene.”
“My lady Valentina!” I called after her as she made for the door. She paused, raising her brows in inquiry. I smiled at her, a genuine smile. Even though she had refused me, I could not help but pity her. “Not so very old, nor so careworn that I do not see the beauty your young D’Angeline diplomat saw in you. Careless or no, he must have accounted himself a fortunate fellow.”
Tears shone in her velvet-brown eyes, and she gave a harsh laugh. “I’d rather you weren’t kind.”
I shrugged. “That is your burden to bear.”
That afternoon, the Patriarch of Riva returned to hear my continuing confession.
I dreaded it.
I didn’t want to speak of Jehanne to him. Against all odds, it had become one of the purest and best things in my life.
He would taint it, of that I was sure.
He settled into the straight-backed chair, settling his portable writing desk on his lap. His dark eyes gleamed at me, his pen hovering over the virgin pages.
“So,” he began in a conversational manner. “Tell me of the whore-queen, Jehanne de la Courcel.”
I held back only what I dared. The Patriarch did not know how early in our acquaintance Jehanne had seduced me—no one did, save the Dowayne of Cereus House. He knew what the rest of the world knew, that Jehanne had stolen me away from Raphael de Mereliot at a dinner party.
“You became her…” He glanced at his notes. “Royal companion? Tell me of this practice.”
“It was a jest of sorts at first between us,” I said candidly. “I was all wrong for it. A royal companion is meant to be someone older and wiser. Skilled in Naamah’s arts, aye, but willing to offer loyalty above all else.”
He studied me. “And you come from a long line of these… royal companions, is that not true?”
“Yes.” My palms were itching and sweating. “The tradition began with my great-great-grandmother, who served as royal companion to the Dauphine Sidonie. My father served as royal companion to the Duc de Barthelme.”
“Fascinating,” the Patriarch murmured. “Is a royal companion always of the same sex as his master or her mistress?”
“As far as I know, yes.”
He stroked his beard. “Very cunning. So Naamah’s Order seeks to corrupt and debauch the flower of D’Angeline nobility from a youthful age, enticing them into unnatural perversions.”
“No.” I rubbed my palms on my dress. “It is only because a royal companion is meant to be a friend, and it is easier to forge a friendship with someone of the same sex, especially at a young age. Men and women take different paths to adulthood.”
Pyotr Rostov scowled. “It is a pretty argument to hide an ugly, sordid truth.”
I shook my head, unwilling to relent. “My lord, I have not lied to you. Loyalty is the most important aspect—the ability to give them one person they can trust without fear, one friend who will keep all their confidences. That is the one gift I had to offer Jehanne, and the one gift she accepted from me.”
He wetted his pen, tapping it on the edge of the inkwell. “But it was part of your job to service the queen in a sexual manner, was it not?”
Give my brother whatever he wants
.
He would not listen; he would never listen. These Yeshuites accused me of closing my ears to God, but at least I was trying to understand what they wanted and why. The Patriarch of Riva would never hear aught but what he wanted to believe from my lips. To
service
, gods! As though anyone in their right mind wouldn’t rejoice at the chance to share Jehanne de la Courcel’s bed, as though anyone could consider it a
job
, and not an honor and a privilege. It was an ugly, sordid term to describe something lovely.
“Yes,” I said wearily, leaning back on my stool and resting my scarf-wrapped head against the wall. “It was part of my job.”
The Patriarch’s pen skated avidly across the page. “How?”
“What do you mean?”
He gestured impatiently at me. “These are sins against nature, child. You must confess them in full. What acts did you commit?” He lowered his voice. “I have heard that D’Angelines sculpt vile semblances of a man’s generative organ through art and artifice. Did you play the man’s role with her? Or did you take turns at it?”
I closed my eyes, remembering Jehanne in Cereus House, showing me the ivory
aide d’amour
, cradling it in her palm and promising with a wickedly sweet smile to demonstrate all its uses to me. It had been one of the only times. “Not usually, no.”
“Did you perform unclean acts on her?”
“Unclean acts?” I opened my eyes.
The hectic sheen had returned to his gaze. “Did you pleasure her with your mouth?”
“Oh.” It wasn’t a topic that had arisen before. I wondered if it was because the act of the
languisement
was less unclean when performed on a man, or if the confession of fornication had sufficed, or if the Patriarch had been saving the accusation for the moment when it would hurt me the most, knowing my grief was still fresh. All three, mayhap. “That, yes.”
He muttered to himself in Vralian, recording my confession. “How many times?”
“Many. But it is not listed among the things that God finds an abomination, my lord,” I observed. “Why is it reckoned unclean?”
His head jerked up, outrage written on his features. “Need you ask?”
I shrugged. “Apparently so.”
Pyotr Rostov’s face darkened, and he leaned forward in his chair. “God gave you lips and a tongue that you might give praise to him, Moirin. Not that you might pollute them by placing them where the body’s foulest excrescences emerge. It should be obvious. Is it so hard to understand?”
I flinched away from him, my chains rattling.
Give my brother whatever he wants
.
I couldn’t, not this. “You speak of the very font and wellspring of life, my lord,” I whispered, tears stinging my eyes. “And no, I do not understand.”
My memories blurred.
There was my lady Jehanne, lying indolent and languid in the bower she’d had created for me, her arms stretched above her head, her thighs parted so I could kneel between them, her pink nether-lips already glistening with desire. She had smiled at me, her eyes sparkling with unremitting delight, the overhanging ferns painting intricate green shadows on her oh so fair skin. And Checheg, grunting and straining in the
ger
in the throes of labor, the babe Bayar’s head crowning, tearing delicate flesh. It was all part and parcel of the same thing.