She smiled at him. It was a very warm smile and seemed to transmit some of its warmth to the inside of his belly.
“Are you okay?” he asked, suddenly overwhelmed with gallantry. “Are you in trouble? Do you need help?”
“Why do you say that?” the woman asked, giving him a puzzled look but sliding a smile quickly on top of that. How old was she? She looked like an adult but sounded like someone his own age. But of course, no woman ever smiled at him like she was smiling at him now.
“I just thought. .” Rian said, rapidly trying to recover the thread of conversation. “It’s not very clean in there. With diseases and bacteria and stuff. I thought you might want to get out.”
His heart was pounding and his throat had constricted. His brain seemed to be split into two parts. One part of him was helpful and in charge of talking and breathing and everything involved in trying not to fall over. The other part of his brain just stood to the side, observing and asking unhelpful questions like, Did you really just say “diseases and bacteria” to the first naked woman you’ve ever met?
“I don’t think I could live if I wasn’t able to swim,” the woman said. “Could you?”
“I guess I–I don’t-” His words were getting jumbled. He was trying to recall exactly how long it was since he last swam. About two years ago, on a school trip, he thought. But then, why would it possibly matter?
The woman, and that she was a woman was now very apparent, for she shifted in the water, arched her back, and swam back a couple feet, twisting and swirling as if the sludgy, stinky water was really something beautiful and refreshing. Through the brown film of water, he saw her breasts, her waist, her thighs, and her feet float past him like something in a feverish dream. His heart stopped beating and his breath caught. It was as if the whole world stopped for just that moment.
She moved her arms around her to steady her movement. He watched the taut muscles slide underneath the clear, smooth skin of her shoulder. He wondered what that movement would feel like if he were to touch it-if he was to move his hands over it, and over the rest of her body.
Her lips moved and the song continued, buzzing in his mind and imagination.
Your face is young and so handsome,
Your limbs are soft and so fine,
Come down to me in the river,
I’m yours and you’ll be mine.
Your breath is near and so warming,
Your blood is quick and so hot.
It’s deathly harsh in the dry air,
But here in the water it’s not.
Rian was entranced. He felt as if he were asleep and dreaming. Suddenly, staying in just one place for the rest of his life wasn’t so bad, so long as the one place was with her.
She raised her arms and held her hands out to him. “Don’t you want to come in and swim with me?”
“Yes,” he said. “I do.”
“Then come to me.”
He took one step and then fell forward into the canal. For a terrible, awful moment, he thought that he wouldn’t reach her hands, that he would fall too short, or that she would pull away from him, but as his face hit the water, he felt her hands close around his wrists and felt her tug at him, pulling him farther and farther down with her, her body rippling against his in a way that made him want to laugh and cry and sing and shout and dance and be still, all at once.
The canal had to be fairly shallow, and yet he had the sensation that they were going deeper and deeper. It was getting darker and darker, and colder and colder, and still he went down, down, down. Into the deep.
Into oblivion.
Into death.
And the last words he heard were those at the end of the hauntingly beautiful song:
Come down with me, my lovely,
Come dance with me in the waves.
For all the lovers I dance with
Find cool and comforting graves.
CHAPTER FIVE
I
Abingdon
Winter, 1142 AD
Ealdstan stood near the altar rail of the stone church and spent some time peering up at the carvings. He recognised the work of the carver, an almost supernatural master at forming stone, one he’d persuaded to join the stonemasons of Ni?ergeard nearly a hundred years earlier. Even now the man spent his days shaping and decorating what he intended to be an outer defensive wall.
He waited.
At length, there was the sound of horses and the many calls and orders that entail the arrival of a retinue of the king, which served to remind Ealdstan just in time: Norman. I keep forgetting that the new kings speak Norman. He wondered if he had time to produce a language enchantment but decided his own language skills were more than adequate.
The entourage entered. Though Ealdstan had only seen the king once, as a young prince-and even with them all dressed in a similar fashion-the old wizard was able to pick out the king. He was thin, with wavy, shoulder-length hair. He had sharp features and a long, straight nose that tilted downward. There was a harried, hangdog expression in his eyes, and his face seemed older than it should be, his once straw-coloured hair now a platinum white.
“Faire bele, sorcier,” the king said, and Ealdstan began inwardly translating. Good greeting, wizard.
“Good greeting, my king.”
Etienne de Blois, or King Stephen, as he was known to the people, approached him. He threw a gesture behind him, and those who entered the church with him paused in the doorway-either slinking along the back wall of the church or wandering outside.
Now relatively alone, Stephen seemed to relax. “They never leave me a moment’s peace. Everybody wants something of me.” The king sighed and eyed him. “And you, Ealdstan, what do you wish of me?”
“I do not wish to impose,” Ealdstan began, wondering which tack to take with this ruler and what his temperament was. “But I may remind you of the debt your family owes me. Your aunt, Queen Emma-”
“Yes, yes-I know of the debt. There is no need to remind me of debts. I owe everyone everything, it seems. And I try to give it, by God, if it is in my power to do so. And so I ask you again, sir,” he said, with lowered brow, “what do you wish of me?”
Ealdstan fixed him with a cold stare. He was just opening his mouth to speak when a young man in leather battle gear walked through the church doors.
“Your pardon, sire,” he called from the other side of the building. “Only you said that you would give my men their rest once we had reached the encampment.”
“And so I did, but we are not at the encampment.”
“No, we’re not at the encampment, sire,” the apparent commander answered in an insolently didactic manner. “But we would be at the encampment if only my lord hadn’t insisted on making this detour on short notice. The men feel it is unfair to-”
“Yes, yes,” said the king with an annoyed wave of his hand.
“If your highness must change his plans from moment to moment, it is only to be expected that his men may feel the inconvenience of it. With only a little more notice, they could have-”
“Take them, take them away,” the king snapped at the man.
“My lord.” The young warrior nodded, turned, and then left.
“The rest of you,” the king called to the others lounging around the door and in the back. “You may go too, if it is your will to do so.”