Statements like this were a grave concern. The church was very strict concerning its stand on any perversion of nature. Any autoerotic behaviors, especially those resulting in the spilling of seed, were considered sodomy. Sexual expression was forbidden except for the consecrated act of husband and wife in an effort to procreate. True, few men fulfilled such a doctrine, but it was the stand of the church, nonetheless. The monsignor had a duty to try to instill it upon D’ata.
Any misdemeanor amongst men was generally accepted as a result of woman’s wanton and sinful nature, causing temptation in men. In this case however, it was hard to blame a distant Julianne on D’ata’s continued transgressions. Furthermore, the monsignor was genuinely taken aback by the sincere honesty with which D’ata gave his confessions. By all counts, the young man saw no true wrong in what he said and did. He seemed mostly confused.
To complicate things further, Monsignor Leoceonne knew Julianne, had known her since infancy. He found the girl obedient and sincere. True, the girl was strong-willed, perhaps from living without a mother, living only amongst the men. Yvette did not count, for she was too young. This had not been the perfect situation for Julianne, but in these times, it was a blessing for her to even have a home. Many struggled with death and loss, it was not at all uncommon. Nevertheless, the Monsignor struggled with casting the weight of blame on the girl. D’ata’s repeated lapses and blatant confessions demonstrated rebellion against God and consequently were the most serious of nature.
The Monsignor tempered the reports he sent home to the Baron and Lady of Cezanne, but was specific in his detail to the Archbishop in Marseille. Reports were sent to Milan. D’ata, because of his honesty, tread on very unstable ground with the church.
It would be easy to cast D’ata upon the block, and the Monsignor worried about this. There was so much to lose. If D’ata fell from favor he could be punished by the church, perhaps even to excommunication, and it could affect the Cezanne family and the entire Cezanne domain. The Baron held great power and his knights were undivided. Their devotion to the Cezanne coat of arms was undisputed and the church could jump at an opportunity to dominate. A schism between the church and the Cezanne power would be far reaching, could even plunge the domain and surrounding township into war—it could devastate the Marseille.
Monsignor Leoceonne tried to occupy more and more of the young priest’s time with lessons, prayer, and memorization of passages of the scripture. When there was little else to occupy their time, the monsignor had D’ata polish the church, inside and out. This was no small task as the cathedral was daunting, with massive stained glass windows that pointed like monumental, colored tombstones towards heaven. There was row on row of pews, straight-backed and smoothed from patrons’ skirts and tights sliding across them.
* * *
D’ata halfheartedly ran the soft cloth over the pews. Polishing them was a redundant task, perhaps like much of the doctrine that infected their faith. Of late, D’ata had begun to have doubts.
The altar was granite and immense. The Madonna, marbled white, and nearly ten feet tall, looked down on the quiet efforts of the young man. D’ata was trapped, imprisoned, and all he could think of was the flaxen-haired beauty with the dark gray eyes. He believed he’d held for mere hours the most precious moments of his life, and then just as suddenly lost them. This was a difficult draught to swallow.
He broke communion bread for a new congregation. They were predictably curious and offered explanations to each other in stolen whispers. There were nods of approval and hushed questions about their new acquisition, the young and handsome D’ata. Someone suggested that he was the son of the Baron of Cezanne and everyone knew of the Cezannes. Most had even heard of the boy and the story of how he became a Cezanne. Why he was now at St. Aloysius, however, was a mystery. The monsignor simply answered questions with, “Because God has brought him to us.”
As mass finished, D’ata mumbled halfhearted greetings, “Very good to see you; yes, it is a lovely parish.” He would eventually escape to his sparse quarters in the rectory and, for perhaps the first time ever, genuinely collapse to his knees. He begged God for guidance. He prayed as though he finally knew God. ‘Please,’ he pleaded silently with his head bowed, his lips pressed into his folded hands. ‘Please, let her be a part of your plan for me. Do not take her from me.’
Falling forward, he pressed his palms flat on a stone floor that offered no compassion, damp and gritty beneath him. His face pressed against the backs of his hands. “As you are my father, I promise you I will do anything—if you will bring her back to me.”
It was a prayer of desperation and the most sincere he had ever been.
* * *
It was four months before God answered his prayers. September was hot, but this evening was gray and cool, the rain whipping intermittently against the stained glass. It was a gloomy Monday, and the church was empty and tomblike. D’ata was cleaning the church again, each small task echoing through the empty chamber. His mind was miles away.
Tired of the beating of his own heart in his ears, he stopped and knelt to pray. His prayer was unchanged. He bargained, lamented, and pleaded his case to God. Kneeling on the steps of the pulpit itself, he bowed his head, bent upon knees that were truly calloused from hours of prayer. He looked to the heavens, up towards the Madonna and child that towered over him. After several hours, he lapsed into a restless and fatigued sleep, reclined right there on the stone steps.
He was a long and lanky figure, reposed as he was, and looked oddly like a sacrifice left at the foot of an altar. D’ata had lost weight these last months. He hadn’t meant to, but he could find no appetite. Time was the most unkind partner of all, for even a minute seemed unbearably long. D’ata wondered if he would lose his mind before all was said and done.
D’ata lay still as he dreamed. It was a black and white dream. There was no color except for the golden hair of the Madonna, without eyes, giving birth in silence to the holy child. The infant, white as snow, looked up at him with the most startling gray eyes.
The Madonna, instead of reaching for the child, reached for him, resting her holy hand on his shoulder. Her tears dripped from empty sockets as she whispered his name, “D’ata...D’ata.”
D’ata stirred, stiff from sleeping on the steps, and turned to see who so gently shook his shoulder. ‘The Madonna now has eyes,’ he mused. Her expression appeared so sublime that he closed his eyes again, sure it was just another dream and preferring the escape of dreams to the pain of reality, as of late.
“I love you,” she said softly.
D’ata’s eyes opened suddenly. In all of his dreams of Julianne, she had never spoken to him. He’d even feared he would forget her voice. “Julianne?” Befuddled urgency swept over him and he struggled to sit up, to take her hands in his. Was he dreaming again, or had he finally gone entirely mad?
She smiled at him. Her hair wild and wet, her gown clinging to her, she was more beautiful than he could ever remember.
“I could not bear to be away from you. I hope it is all right that I have come,” Julianne said, her face radiant with happiness. D’ata thought her voice was the sweetest music he’d ever heard.
The thunder outside was only a soft breath compared to the pounding of D’ata’s heart. Without a word, he pulled her to him, desperately clutching her. He was afraid that if he let go, she would vanish forever. “Oh, Julianne!” Was all he could manage in reply. It was exquisite to touch her, to hold her and bury his face in her wet hair—to breathe the essence of her.
She folded against him on the altar steps, sighing softly.
They kissed and this time there was no hesitation or objection, no end or argument—no words.
He kissed her as he had a million times in his dreams, ran his fingers through her wet and tangled hair as he had in his mind so many times while serving communion.
Julianne cried as they embraced, tears streaming down her lovely, dirt-streaked face.
?
??Are you hurt?” he breathed.
“No.” She dismissed his concern. “I have missed you so much, but my tears are for happiness.” Her mouth trembled; it had been a long and arduous journey for her. She was weatherworn and exhausted, and she sobbed as the magnitude of her efforts surfaced. He just held her, until her sobs waned. She was with him and suddenly the world was right once more.
D’ata could only imagine the danger of her coming alone. In all his worry and sorrow, he never considered she would risk so much to come and find him. He kissed the salty offenders away and lifted her easily, laying her instead to the rear of the pulpit, on the lovely tapestry of Christ with the bleeding heart. He straightened her skirts, so they could recline next to each other and then he draped his robes across her, to warm her from the chill and wet.
Holding her close, in the quiet of the church, they spoke quietly of their weeks apart, of the agony of it. Their bodies warmed and steam rose soft and sweet from the damp wool robes. Her trembling ceased and she whispered of her escape to him.
Julianne had told her father that she wanted to go to town to spend a few days away with her friend, Babette. He agreed it would be good for the girl to be around her friend, as she had been so sullen as of late. Julianne, however, never made it to Babette’s.
Instead, she snuck off to the Cezanne estate, and Henri had given to Julianne the old roan mare for the journey. He told her the Baron would never notice such an animal’s absence, and Henri could explain it away with natural death if need be. One look at the sad torment on the face of the girl and Henri must have realized that without the horse she would walk, if that was her only option.
Henri was kind, said he missed D’ata and would silently offer prayers of safe journey and happiness for them both. He gave her a few rations, a hay hook for protection, and a roughly scrawled map, describing D’ata’s whereabouts.
D’ata smiled as she told her story. He cherished the kindness that his old friend bestowed upon his beloved. It did not surprise him at all.
Julianne had plodded slowly but steadily to Nimes, without her father knowing. Nobody knew. She was just all of a sudden gone. The boys would have to care for themselves, she explained. She didn’t worry too much—they were strong and would have to help father manage without her. Certainly, they would be confused; her father would be furious and worried, but in time she planned to come back to make things right. She didn’t know how she would do this, only that she would.
It had been most difficult to say goodbye to Yvette. She’d kissed her baby sister on top of the head, struggling to hold back tears. She didn’t know when she might see her again and that was what made it so difficult. When Yvette was older, she would understand. Perhaps one day, when people were more accepting and things were sorted out, they could all rejoice in the love that was D’ata and Julianne. For now though, it was just how it would have to be.
* * *
The evening waned and the church darkened. D’ata rose to light a single candle so that he could see Julianne’s face and placed it behind the altar on the floor. As he sat down next to her, looking into her eyes, he took her body into his arms, that long absent ache in his groin returning along with the stir in his belly. To look onto her face was to look upon the creation of all that was good. He was completely and utterly overwhelmed with the great benevolence of her heart, that she’d risked everything and traveled such a treacherous distance to see him again.
“Julianne, I didn’t know if—I wasn’t sure that you...” He couldn’t find the words.
Julianne reached up to brush a finger along his lips, to trace the smoky shadow of his jaw and quiet him. “I love you, D’ata.”
There were no words of God and obligation now.
They kissed deeply, and presently her lips wandered from his, following the stubble of his jaw to the lobe of his ear, down his throat to where his priest’s collar bound his neck.
He moaned, the feel of her touching him like this burned his skin in a wondrous and remarkable way. He could take no more. He pulled the collar free and roughly loosed, first his robes, and then her gowns. He drank in the beauty of her, his eyes wandering unabashedly over her body. He feasted on the delicate perfection of her, thin and pale, and brushed his fingertips over her nipples.
Julianne gasped and her eyes smoldered as she viewed the naked beauty of him. Such a contrast it was, her milky whiteness and honey hair to his tawny skin and raven locks.
She reached for him and there, on the thick wool rug in St. Aloysius cathedral, as he’d done so many times in his dreams, he lifted his body over hers. Amid the rush of desire, he took her tenderly, completely, and ravenously.
Julianne, startled at his aggression, gasped at the initial pain, but after a short spell the pain subsided and she matched the rhythm of D’ata’s desperate lovemaking. Soft, sweet moans escaped her as well and served to excite him even more.
D’ata gasped and groaned, his body arching hungrily into hers as he experienced, for the first time, such unimaginable, unbearable ecstasy. His breath caught, ragged as the waves washed over him, until he finally shuddered in glorious relief. Collapsing on his elbows, he leaned his damp brow against her neck, his breath hot against her shoulder.
There was nothing but the wind against the windows, the rain spattering out their own song, the marbled Madonna smiling down at them.
D’ata sighed deeply and kissed her eyelids as he slid from her, pulling her against him, covering them both with his robes. “I love you,” he murmured.
“As do I,” she whispered back.
He buried his face in her hair, smelling the woods and earth. He vowed that never again would he let her go. They should be together—of this he had no doubt. He prayed a silent prayer, thanking God. His conviction was complete and his belief absolute—God had answered his prayers.
There was no guilt, no remorse. Love barred the outside world from them and, finally at peace, they slept the sleep of children.
* * *
It was three hours later when Monsignor Leoceonne noticed the roan mare tethered beneath the lean-to outside the church. He discovered the pair sleeping naked beneath the priest’s robes, a dark stain of blood on the lovely wool tapestry obscuring the bleeding heart of the figure of Christ.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
†
The Dungeon: Midnight
The brothers sat back to back in the dark, pulling warmth from each other as their stories unfolded. The torch had long ago expired and the only light was the sliver of a moonbeam that washed cold across the unlikely pair. Like bookends they sat, shifting at intervals. The stone floor was a constant discomfort, but the stories they told were gripping and poignant. They endured the cold without comment.
Ravan, pondering D’ata’s tormented history, was silent as he considered it. He pulled the flask to his lips briefly before offering it to the other. This time D’ata took a draw himself. Ravan leaned more heavily against him, apparently finally comfortable with their proximity. “Now you’ve done it,” he muttered more to himself than to his companion.
D’ata swallowed the wine, welcoming the warmth in his belly. He’d neglected to eat again this evening and the wine felt good. Waving a hand carelessly over his head, there was apathy in his voice. “We loved each other,” he argued weakly, closing his eyes. It was obviously painful to recount such memories, especially when he had become so accustomed to burying them. But perhaps his brother felt less like a stranger now, and the past might be shared. He dropped his face into his hands and rubbed his eyes.
“Yes, and you fornicated in a church,” Ravan said dryly, mercilessly, turning his head slightly to discern the reaction on his brother’s face. He said it without malice, but it was harsh nonetheless.
D’ata winced, that his brother should describe it so bluntly. “I know, I know,” he sighed, hanging his head. “Don’t you see—it was all wrong. Not us, I mean, but the whole affair. The world was—is wrong.” He dropped his hand into his lap and l
eaned his head back, resting it against the head of his companion. Looking up at the tiny, moon-blessed window high above them, he said, “I was not meant to be there and she was not supposed to come; it was all wrong. We were not supposed to be in this life.” He lamented softly, almost a whisper, “I know that now.”
“Well, you have obviously considered the error of your ways, or you would not be here tonight to offer me redemption,” Ravan said softly, turning his head slightly. “That should make it right? Should it not?”
D’ata straightened his legs in front of him, working a spasm from his calf by twisting his foot in circles. A rat scuttled away beneath the straw. “Yes, well, God is my salvation. I know no other recourse.” He spoke from rote memory, the lines carefully memorized, spoken a million times before. It was dull and ugly, and it gave no solace.
They sat quietly for a spell and then Ravan ventured carefully, “Tell me—was she good?” He grinned, elbowing his companion gently. It was more a stab at kindhearted levity than a serious query.
D’ata hesitated, turning a bit, surprised by the impudence of the question. He pondered Ravan’s raw audacity, but then he caught on and took the bait. “I can’t believe you! As compared to what, might I ask?” He smiled painfully at the sad humor of it, all the same. “As though I made this a priestly, everyday affair?” He tried hard to sound properly indignant. It was odd that mirth could surface at such a time as this.
Ravan chuckled and D’ata followed a few seconds later, their voices eerily mingled into one soft laugh.