One for Sorrow

Chapter Forty-nine

Old habits die slowly, and John, a veteran of many military encampments, still retained his ability to sleep lightly no matter how strenuous his day. It was a practice that was useful in Constantinople, where a court official camped as near to his enemies as did any soldier on the Persian border.

In sleep, John remained almost consciously alert for sounds of danger. Thus, while the downpour which dowsed the roofs of the city and their many crosses was merely a soothing background noise, a faint rustle in the hall screamed out that someone was making a stealthy approach.

John woke and, moving more silently than the intruder, was positioned behind the door by the time it swung open. His visitor paused. The lamp in the hall had gone out or been extinguished, for the opened door admitted no light into John’s room.

Lightning flickered briefly as the intruder stepped forward, to be greeted with a choke hold.

A choke hold that was quickly released as John felt a woman’s soft hip pressed against his thigh.

“Do you usually welcome ladies in this fashion?” Cornelia gasped, rubbing her throat. She turned to face him, but did not step away.

“Ladies who arrive unannounced at this hour are usually not ladies, and more often than not visit with evil intent.”

“I couldn’t sleep after all the excitement. I thought you might be awake too. I was hoping we might talk.”

She was wearing only a thin sleeping tunic, and John was aware of her breasts brushing his chest. “Of course.”

Cornelia closed the door and sat down uninvited on John’s bed. The ropes holding its cotton-filled mattress creaked under her slight weight. He lit the lamp on the chest by the window and sat down next to her as she looked around.

“Well, John, it seems that despite all your fine gold-embroidered robes and silver goblets and late nights feasting at the palace table, your true tastes remain as simple as ever.”

She laid a delicate hand along his thin face, and looked into his eyes. Her touch made him catch his breath, as it had on the Anubis. “Time works swiftly,” she said softly, running her fingers down John’s sunburnt cheek and along the line of his jaw. “You still look much as you did when I first knew you. Remarkably so.”

“So your wish to talk has brought you here at this hour?” John asked, needlessly. He remembered Cornelia had difficulty sleeping and that when sleep refused to come, she liked to talk. He felt inexplicably awkward, a boy from the country again.

Cornelia lowered her voice. “There are too many people within earshot during the day.”

John was aware of the clean smell of her hair. It was achingly familiar.

Cornelia, seeming not to notice the longing look on his face, rushed on. “I see you have a few scars you did not have before.” She touched his chest. “Here, and here. And on your back. Was it as unspeakable as they suggest?” She hesitated. “I am aware of your grievous wound. It is common knowledge. That men should be treated so! May the goddess punish the bastards for what they did!” Her small fist smacked on the coverlet, her voice quavering with rage and distress.

The Lord Chamberlain face grew hot. He realized he was wearing only the loincloth he slept in. Was Cornelia wondering about the other scars that it hid? “There’s no point in looking back, Cornelia. We go on or we die.”

“And good Mithran that you are, you endured. Did you think of me at all, John, through those long years?”

“Often, Cornelia, especially on rainy nights like this.” It was the truth. But he did not reveal how he had tried not to remember, and how he had cursed his inability to forget.

“On rainy nights, I thought of you, too, and prayed to the goddess that you were safe and would come home to us soon. Mark you, sometimes I called down demons on your miserable head. But I did not know…I would never have wished this on you, John. On us…” Her voice was almost drowned by the rain splashing hard against the window panes.

“Europa was talking with Thomas,” John said abruptly, wishing to change the course of the conversation.

Cornelia laughed quietly. “He is harmless enough. Nothing will come of it. We move around, Europa and I. One day, there may be someone who will keep her from traveling. Not yet, I think.”

“I would not keep you here, Cornelia. I am not who I was.”

“Nor I.”

“To look at you, though…” The lamplight was kind to the few wrinkles at the corners of her eyes and the threads of gray in her hair. “Why are you really here, Cornelia?”

“Because it is a rainy night and I wanted to be with you.”

John’s hands moved to her hair. “Silk. It’s just like silk.” He was vaguely aware how foolish and trite he sounded.

“They say the empress sleeps between silk sheets.”

“Between silk vendors, or so it is has been whispered!”

They both laughed.

“And I see,” Cornelia observed, “you no longer sleep naked.”

“Not now.”

“My poor lover.” There was a catch in her voice.

John grasped her hands in his. He felt a sudden need to protect her, although he realized she was no longer the girl he had known but a woman who had made her way in life, with a daughter to shield from harm. “Don’t feel sorry for me, Cornelia. How many die before they ever reach manhood? How many more are ill treated or starved of affection by those they desire? You gave me all the pleasure the gods will allow a man.”

The ropes strung across the old wooden bed-frame had allowed the mattress to sag, bringing their hips together. The rising wind lashed rain against the dark diamond panes of the window and sent drafts through cracks around its frame. In the gathering chill, John could feel the warmth radiating from her body.

“I have some wine here,” he said, taking the clay cup from the chest and placing it in her hands.

She took a sip and coughed. “Your taste in wine is still terrible.”

“You sweetened it for me once, remember?”

“I still can.”

She moved closer and John again tasted the sweet heat of her mouth. He sank into it, thin hands tracing the still familiar contours of her warmth and softness.

He pulled away. “It is just the same as in my memory at least.” He was afraid she was about to cry. “Do you remember that cup?” She was still holding it. “I don’t suppose you would recognize it. A plain clay cup. Peter has wondered aloud on more than occasion why, with that crack in it, I insist on using it when I’m alone. I wonder what he would think if he knew that I had had it made specially?”

Cornelia looked puzzled.

“It is because it is identical to the one we had when we were with the troupe,” John explained. “Because your lips had touched its twin when I first knew you.”

Cornelia smiled. “I do remember, John. And now I think on it, I also remember how you almost broke it when you knocked it off the table that time when…”

“As I recall, it was you.”

Cornelia reached down abruptly and pulled her tunic over her head. She was naked.

“Cornelia, I can’t.”

“I know. I just wanted you to see me, John. Just look at me, lover. Or am I hurting you?”

John shook his head.

The rain beating on the window was washing away the sorrows of all the years, leaving only Cornelia. Cornelia of the silken hair, Cornelia of the small, firm breasts.

She looked at the cloth around his hips.

“No,” he said. “I cannot….”

She rose and put out the lamp. The acrid smell of smoke mixed with her scent. “There, John. I won’t look or touch. I just want us to be together.”

He reached down, hesitant even in the darkness, and undid the garment.

She pulled him down on to the mattress and they lay together, joined at thigh, hip, chest, and mouth, intersections of warmth in the chilly room.

He tasted her mouth again. She moved against his lean frame, her body forgetting what her mind knew.

Suddenly she rolled to one side, apologizing.

He leaned over her. “Why should you be sorry? It always gave me the most pleasure, knowing you wanted me. But I’m afraid nature makes young men much too impetuous. I loved you then as a boy might, for myself. Now, I can love you as a man.”

He kissed her deeply again. His slim fingers found that the language of his lover’s body had not changed. Rain sheeted rhythmically at the window. His mouth finally left hers and moved downward.

By the time Cornelia awoke, the sun had long since risen over the newly-washed city. John was gone, having left her a single lily, the royal flower of Crete. It was balanced precariously in the cracked cup on the chest by the window.