Cruxim Page 3

  The child, although at first considering me her guardian angel, no longer spoke of such things. I wondered if she even remembered the incident that had brought us together. Perhaps she had simply outgrown such childish fantasies. Perhaps she believed Maria del Santos’ lies and had come to think she was truly my illegitimate child, although she never called me Papa, preferring Ame.

  Despite my absence, I wrote her often. She returned my letters, her childish scrawl soon giving way to the curling, sensuous writing of a young woman educated in philosophy, theology, Latin and French. And yet, her letters always made me melancholy. There seemed something unwritten in them, some sadness that was not shown to me when I visited.

  No matter how busy I was, I made a point to visit at least once a year, on her birthday. Because the nuns frowned at expensive trinkets and the life of a would-be sister of the order demanded austerity, I bought her, every year, a book and a passionfruit. She had developed quite a taste for those delicacies from the New World, and their religious significance had the approval of the nuns. When I visited, we would stroll in the small arboretum attached to the convent or walk among the orange orchards and vegetable gardens while we talked. Sometimes, we would venture to a nearby brook or the ruins of an ancient castle in a glen a short walk from the convent.

  “This is my favorite place, right here,” she told me the year she turned sixteen. We were sitting in the castle, in the great hall, which had mostly escaped ruination but for the roof. “Here alone there is freedom.” She fingered her rosary beads.

  “Freedom?”

  “Yes. You are lucky.” Her eyes were downcast. “Your freedom is absolute. Infinite.”

  I had glanced up sharply at that, wondering if we were about to have a conversation I had anticipated for more than a decade. A conversation about why she aged but I did not appear to grow any older, about what I did for a living, about the wings she had once seen sprouting from my shoulders. But we did not. Not then, at least.

  “We are all free in the love of our Lord and savior,” I told her, unsure myself whether I believed it. Even then there were days when my servitude seemed a burden. Perhaps she felt the same. “Come now, we must go back.” I put out my hand to pull her up.

  Joslyn had looked at my hand for a moment and had then taken it, clasping it a little too tightly. When she rose, she did not let it go immediately. When we left the castle, she flung my hand away and hurried on ahead of me, her face flushed.

  “Tell me,” she asked abruptly, still facing forward.

  I braced myself for the questions I anticipated, but all she said was, “Why did you bring me here?”

  Ahead of me, her habit swished against a border of herbs, filling the air with fragrant rosemary. Even now, I associate the scent with her.

  “For your safety,” I said, honestly. “And so you could have an education.”

  She turned back to me and smiled sadly. “You could not have taken me yourself, given me the education you obviously have?”

  I sighed, and I noticed her eyes flickered as she heard it.

  “Why not?” she demanded, walking forward on the path again, her back to me. One of her hands was outstretched childishly, weaving through the flowering sage and rosemary, sending the bees dancing into the air. “You could afford it. You paid for this!” She flicked the other hand dismissively at her habit. “And I know you paid Mama to take me.”

  “That is untrue,” I said sternly, thinking of Senyora del Santos and the support I had provided. “She always wanted a daughter.”

  Joslyn turned to me. “Well, she got what she wanted. But what about me? I always wanted a father. But you are not he. We both know you have never been my father.”

  “No.” My voice trembled a little. “Joslyn, I have tried, in my way, to be like a father to you.”

  “No!” Joslyn gave a bitter laugh. Then, for some reason, she became angry. “Do not try! I have a father—our Holy Father. The only man I shall ever have. Not father. Not husband. Not son. You have made sure of that.”

  Perplexed by her outburst, I said nothing for several minutes, simply walked behind her in silence. Soon, I could tell by the set of her head and the stilling of the rosary that she had calmed.

  I caught up and put my hand on her arm. “Forgive me. I have tried to do my duty as your guardian.”

  “Yes.” Turning to me, she took my hand innocently in hers, the way she used to when she was a child. Her eyes softened with tears. “I must go back.” She motioned toward the convent and then left me. As she turned to go, I thought I heard her whisper, “El meu angel de la guarda.”

  The year after that she was more distant again, but I told myself it was just the way of girls growing into womanhood. Of course, we still wrote each other frequently, and when I visited we talked of art and theology, of life and of her sisters in the convent and their doings, but it was clear to me that something in our relationship was different.

  Occasionally, as we talked, I noticed she stole furtive glances at me. Perhaps I had changed after all. Or perhaps it was that I never changed. I did not ask. A woman’s mind is her own place: a quarter men are excluded from. And a sister’s mind, especially, belongs only to herself and God. If something is bothering her, she will tell me, I thought, not knowing then that, for women, the opposite is often true. Silences speak the loudest in a conversation between a man and a woman.

  Sometimes, in her letters or during my infrequent visits to the convent, she would ask me about the world outside Convent dels Angels. How did women dress in the streets, or how did they wear their hair? If her tone was a little wistful or her look a little faraway, I did not think it especially troublesome. I saw in those questions a vulnerability I did little to quash. It never occurred to me that a girl such as Joslyn, whose beauty bloomed more vividly each day and whose mind was as clear as my own, might not be happy in such a place. It never occurred to me in the slightest ... until that day.

  It was the day of her nineteenth birthday. In the years since she had turned sixteen, I had become even more thankful for the habit she wore. There was something radiant about Joslyn, a glow that even the robes failed to diminish. At least, I told myself, the cloth kept her safe. Her purity was assured within the sanctity of the convent, if nowhere else. Nevertheless, I found myself struck by her beauty whenever I visited. When away from her, which I often was, I found myself impatient for her next missive. When a letter arrived it was read quickly, and then reread, and then kept with the others in a bundle by my bedside.

  I was lonely, if you suppose; but it was more than that. Joslyn’s tenderness softened the edges of a world that had grown cruel to me. The undead were everywhere. As fast as I killed one, as quickly as its blood quenched my hatred, another would take its place. They were organized by then, too, forming tight-knit covens and rarely venturing out alone. Although I had no shortage of prey, catching my quarry proved increasingly difficult.

  The year she turned eighteen, Joslyn had written me that the convent had been attacked by brigands. One of the sisters, a girl named Sister Ermilita, had been killed in a field near the castle. Her body, when found, had been pale and anemic.

  Some sort of animal, most likely a bat, Joslyn had written, was thought to have been feasting on her blood. The sisters have cleansed the field of witchcraft, but visits to the ruined castle are forbidden. Where now will I find my time to be alone with just my thoughts? Where now will we find space to be alone together?

  I thought it an odd thing to write, since we were routinely alone together on my visits. Knowing how much she enjoyed our walks to the castle, I presumed she was just disappointed that one of her rare freedoms had been curtailed. I, too, was disappointed that the castle was off limits. I felt comfortable in ruins of any sort; for so many centuries, they had been a refuge. But when I reflect on it now, I must admit that it was more than that for me, too.

  Joslyn had come to womanhood. Despite myself, I sometimes longed for a glimpse of her hair under the wimpl
e or noticed the daintiness of her hands as she plucked a gardenia blossom from the garden and held it to her nose. The child she had been—the scabbed-kneed, scarred orphan—had been my charge, my duty. But the woman she had become was the source of my rare joy.

  I have lain awake by day many times since, wondering what might have happened had things been different. Had she not done what she did. Had I reacted differently. But it is no use. What is done is done. And in our case, what was done will remain forever impossible to undo.

  Still, despite the shame and regret that hangs over that day in my memory, I am unable to forget.

  She was radiant that day. Her blue eyes, truer than the ever-changing Mediterranean, shone when I handed her the present I had bought her. It was an especially nice one that year: an illustrated, gold-embossed incunabulum of mythology I had taken from a coven-master I’d killed in Prague. I had fed deeply in Barcelona before coming to her, making my arrival later than usual. The sky had that gilt quality it gets just before sunset, which illuminated the book’s cover as I handed her the gift. When she took it from me, her hand brushed mine. She looked up at me briefly and then quickly back down at the gift. Opening the heavy cover, Joslyn had stroked a slender finger across the hand-illustrated page, over the face of a Seraph that graced it. I remember how her long lashes cast crescents of shadow on the paper. She smiled up at me, but her eyes held a question.

  I looked away quickly, afraid, myself, of the answer.

  Although she never mentioned my place within the pantheon of angels and monsters, Joslyn had always been fascinated by mythology. Why I indulged her in it I do not know. In my own way, maybe I was bringing her closer to my true self, hoping—and yet simultaneously fearing—that one day she may really know me.

  “And this,” I said, holding out a bespeckled purple passionfruit, balancing its firm roundness on the palm of my hand like a suppliant presenting it before the altar.

  Her hand wrapped around it on my palm, but she did not take it. She just stood there: palm clenched around the fruit, her dainty hand nestled on my open palm. Curling my own fingers around hers, I said, “Take it, it is yours,” and squeezed her hand. But still she did not.

  A moment passed between us.

  She looked up at me, and her lips parted, as if to speak. I glimpsed an emotion in her I could not define. Then she snatched the fruit away with a mumbled, “Thank you,” and hurried ahead of me on the path.

  It was so unlike her, such ungracious behavior, that I questioned, “Joslyn?”

  She did not answer but strode on down the path. Sometime later, she said without looking back, “Perhaps you will share it with me.”

  For years she had insisted I share the fruit with her; for years I had declined. Cruxim can eat, can even savor the richness of food, the velvet of claret or the biting fizz of champagne, and can even be sustained on them, but we do not require food or drink. Its enjoyment is marred by the superlative nourishment of blood. So, every year I declined, knowing her enjoyment of it would be a hundredfold my own. Still, every year she asked.

  “No, you eat it. It is yours. I bought it for you.”

  She split the fruit’s purple casing with a thumbnail. “You so rarely eat. You must take better care of yourself.”

  A frown creased my forehead. “I eat enough,” I said, my thoughts flying to the body that lay in an alley near the Cathedral of Santa Eulàlia.

  Joslyn put the fruit to her mouth and I heard her suck at it delicately as she continued making her way to the end of the arboretum, heading up the path that led to the castle.

  I strode to catch up with her, seeing in this day some wildness that had lain dormant for the past six years. Approaching her, I reached out and put my hand on her shoulder. She shrugged it off.

  “Joslyn?”

  “What?”

  As she turned to me, I noticed a sliver of passionfruit dribbled from the corner of her mouth—the black seed clinging in its yellow sac, which clung to her lips. Tenderly, I reached out to wipe it away. As I did so, she opened her mouth and caught my finger, gently sucking the sweet fruit from my fingertip.

  At the touch of her lips, something leaped inside me. Her slow sucking thrilled me, and I pulled my finger out of her tongue’s grasp too quickly, leaving a slurping gasp hanging in air between us as her lips drew air. Color flooded Joslyn’s cheeks. Turning, she ran—awkwardly with her habit held up to expose her ankles—down the path toward the castle.

  I, too, was embarrassed. I paused, replaying the moment in my mind, wondering what it all meant. Then, fearful for her safety, I pursued her. It was too late for her to be out alone. The mother superior would soon be calling her in for supper.

  She was quick, even despite her robes and the encroaching darkness, and she was soon well ahead of me. My embarrassment burnished to anger. Had I not cared to be secretive, I would have flown ahead of her on the path. As it was, she made it to the castle before me.

  The sun had slipped below the horizon by then, and the moon was not yet awake. In the half dark, the castle was a mess of awkward angles and long shadows that easily concealed a slim girl.

  “Joslyn?” I wondered if she might have kept going, on to the brook.

  There was no answer.

  “Joslyn?”

  Nothing answered but an echo.

  Worried and growing weary of the game, my voice was stern when I called once more into the silence, “Joslyn!”

  “Amedeo.”

  I had never heard her speak my full name before. Her letters were always addressed to “My Dear Benefactor,” and in person, she always called me Ame. My name had a gravity on her lips that both excited and chilled me. I turned in the direction of her voice, pinpointing it to the shadows by one wall of the Great Hall. Even with my enhanced senses, it took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the darkness. “I am here.” I stepped closer.

  “Come closer,” she murmured, moving into the thin light in the center of the room. She was paler than she should have been, and sylvan in the darkness. The silence that gripped me was the absent swish of her dark robes.

  She was naked.

  My breath choked in my throat.

  Joslyn rushed towards me, her arms outstretched, her face framed by hair mussed by the removal of her wimple. How I had longed to see her hair, and yet now it terrified me. It gleamed dark as sin in the rising moonlight, unaware of its power.

  Ignorant of my reaction, Joslyn rushed on until her body met mine. I felt her arms around my neck, her breath warm on my cheek.

  “Amedeo,” she whispered.

  A ripple of sensation rose in me at hearing my name again on her tongue.

  It did not last.

  Joslyn’s mouth quickly moved to my mine. She pressed her lips to my mouth, and I tasted passionfruit over the headiness of desire. My hands rose to her hair, silkier than my wings’ down. Unconsciously, I knotted a skein of it around my hand, pulling her closer still, my lips parting in turn.

  Then guilt overtook me. “Joslyn,” I said, weakly at first. Then, coming to my senses, “Joslyn!” Taking her by the shoulders, I pushed her back, holding her at arms’ length.

  She blinked, her lips still parted, her mouth ripe with desire.

  I suppose part of me immediately regretted stopping her. My eyes, used to the dimness of the Great Hall, now lingered on her coltish thighs, the cello fullness of her hips, and then that face—that lovely face with blue eyes brimming now with tears.

  Seeing the movement of my eyes, Joslyn brought her hands up to cup the crest of her breasts, which served only to make them more prominent.

  Finally, disgusted with myself, I looked away, stammering, “Y-your habit. Where is it?”

  “Why?” She laughed, a quiet, defeated laugh. “Amedeo, why?”

  “Because you’re naked, that’s why!”

  She laughed again, bitterly this time. “Yes. I am naked. I am a woman. Does it surprise you so, my beloved Benefactor? Do you think me still a child cooing over dol
ls?”

  “No. I...” My eyes fell again to her body and then away. “I think you a novice. A sister of the cloth!” I dropped my hands from her shoulders and took a step back.

  “If only that were it.” Her sigh escaped like a bat into the night. “I am a novice only because you put me here. Like a marionette I cannot dance unless you bade it. Why did you cloister me, Ame? You do not want me but do not want anyone else to have me. Is that it? You would deny me the love of any other? Of someone who may love me back?” Her voice was thick with tears.

  “Joslyn!” Her name came out more harshly than I intended. “Do not speak such things. I have always loved you. You know that.”

  “Like a father?” she asked. “We both know that is not your kind of love.”

  “I protect you!”

  “Ah, yes.” She looked away. “My guardian angel.”

  I simply stared at her, not knowing what to say.

  She returned my stare and then pushed closer again. Grabbing my shirt, she tore it roughly at the shoulder. Her hand slid down my back, seeking the softness she knew she would find there. “Did you think I had forgotten this?” Plucking out a feather, she said, “You think you can fool me that you are my father. You are not even a man!” She held the feather before her, a droplet of blood at its base. “You bleed like a man.” Her blue eyes frankly assessed my body, noting my arousal at her nearness. “Desire like a man, even. But you ... what are you, Amedeo? An angel who is incapable of love?”

  Still I was mute.

  “Oh, Ame.” She stroked my cheek with the feather.

  I turned to the side, struggling to resist her.

  “For years I have loved you—only you. Why else did I write you, long for your visits and for your words? I dreamed one day you would come and take me from this place, to somewhere we could be together.”