Obsession: Tales of Irresistible Desire (18 page)

The only time he hurt my feelings was when he called me Margaret. I can remember rolling away from him and saying, “Are you sleeping with her, too?”

“Of course not, love. Of course not, my darling. Come back to bed.” Then he grabbed my wrist and practically dragged me onto the mattress. Actually, he did drag me. He takes what he wants. He’s a real man. Not like Margaret’s husband, who stood by and let those terrible things happen to her. I wouldn’t be able to let a man like that touch me.

I got pregnant by the blessed Father of Hell, and he promised me he would take me and the baby down to dwell with him world without end, amen. “Just don’t baptize the baby,” he said.

I wasn’t going to. I was blissfully happy. I did whatever he told me. I don’t remember those weeks at all, but I do know we were happy.

But then I passed a church and the Holy Mother lured me in. I know now that she was jealous. I mean, having the child of God is like a life sentence in a harem. Into the purdah of the faceless nuns who tell you how to be good and sweet. To keep clean and tidy and think clean and tidy; and pick up after everyone, just pick up after them and if they make you bleed, just clean it up, stay clean—

My God! My God! It didn’t hurt this much with Bryan.

Well, of course it didn’t. Of course, of course.

The Holy Mother made me ask the priest if a baby wasn’t baptized, would it go to hell. And the father asked me if I were a Catholic, because that was basic catechism. All the unbaptized babies used to go to limbo, and now they go to purgatory, and when the Lord returns, they will be gathered up into His arms and carried to heaven.

I got confused. No limbo? Since when is there no limbo? I tried to persist. I asked, what if the baby were . . . tainted? He looked at me strangely, asked me to explain.

I left. I was shaken. I thought about my past mistakes—about Bryan, especially—and I wondered if the Devil could be mistaken about things. What if I went to hell without our child? Can the son of the Devil go to limbo? I mean, purgatory?

Then it occurred to me that what I could have done with Bryan was repented. What I could still do. If I repented and was forgiven, than I could join little Bryan in heaven some day—

—ah, but only if I was forgiven. They say God forgives everything. But I have slept with His rival and I think His mother is a spineless idiot. And quite possibly, I hear the Anti-Christ.

Oh, no, I’ve been screaming again. Surely someone heard that time. It’s echoing. My thighs are covered with blood, I think. It’s pitch-black in here.

No, no, no, no.

Then she came to me. The beautiful woman who said she was a social worker. She said she wanted to talk to me about the baby. Had I considered adoption? It was obvious the priest had sent her. The were on to me, then. That’s when I moved in here.

And I dreamed about her. I saw her with the Devil, my Devil, and she was kissing him and loving him, and I knew her for who she was: Lilith, Adam’s first wife, who was a witch. Eons ago, she became the Devil’s consort and she reigns with him in hell—and she steals children. She is known the world over for snatching children’s souls as they enter the world.

Deceiver! Lord of lies! The Devil had gotten me pregnant so he could give my baby to her. How he broke my heart, I who loved him so. I gave him myself, and all along he had another. He wanted to take my baby. He still wants it!

Well, I am not giving this baby to anyone. God took my first one. This one is mine. This one is for me to love. No one else has ever loved me, and I deserve someone, don’t I?

I realized then I’d been passive with the Devil, just as the Blessed Mother had been passive with God. I’d become his instrument. I remembered the blank days and nights when I did his bidding and felt nothing but sweet, unquestioning joy that he was pleased with me. Like some parent with a child, or frankly, like the Holy Mother and God. Who did he think he was?

“Try to get this baby from me!” I screamed at him. “Just try!”

“You misunderstand me,” he said, but I had ceased to believe him. He can be very cunning, you know.

I was in despair. I didn’t know what to do. And then, the miracle. The blessed miracle. For my Holy Child spoke to me, from my womb. She—for she is a girl—she said: Hail, mother, full of grace. Blessed art thou among women, and blessed be the fruit of thy womb.

We communed. It was as if she lay in my arms already talking to me. There is a closeness between mother and child, between beings who are joined, as we are joined.

With Bryan, they told me to push. If they hadn’t done that, if they’d helped me like this, I would have him now, my beautiful boy. I was too trusting, too hoping, too innocent. But his half-sister, my eternal baby, has told me what to do.

The pain is killing me, and I am glad of it. I’m going. Finally. The rope I tied around my thighs has cut into my skin. It’s so tight my knees are mashes of bruises. My wrists bleed from the handcuffs. But it is blood gladly shed, for her, for the Lamb.

I am screaming. I am biting at my bonds. I am struggling to separate my legs. The contraction, oh, God!

But I can stand it. For love of my child, I can stand it. I can do it!

Through my tears I am smiling. I’m a real woman, not some faded rose of Sharon. Thanks to me, we’re eternally joined, body and soul. We are one. We will always be one. We will never, ever be separated. What greater love is there?

I am smiling.

We’re almost there, little darling.

We

I’m—

I want her as she appeared to me then as I want nothing else, not even my peace and happiness. I want until my flesh burns with it and as long as I live, I shall want no other.

Catherine Lundoff

My flesh has become scales, my feet a serpent’s tail. My belly slides over the icy flagstones of my own castle, slithering forward alone. Always alone. She is never by my side in these dreams, nor when I wake, sweating, to the dawn.

They lived happily ever after: this is the way the story ends. So we learn when we are but babes at our nurse’s knee. Always it begins with “once upon a time,” with no knowing what is to come. And had I known then what I know now, I should have never left my father’s keep. But I was young and foolish and brave and I would not heed warnings or advice. Instead, I went to court to serve my king, dreaming then only of honor, love, adventure. There I met a lady, the like I had never seen.

This then, is what went before I came to the pass I now find myself in. I heard the talk from the courtiers long ere I beheld her. They whispered that the king himself sought to bring her to his bed but I heard no word of his success. Beautiful and terrible they said she was, like a dragon or a tiger, not the way women’s beauty is praised. My curiosity, my obsession grew with each passing day until I had to see her, had to speak with her.

When that moment finally came, I saw no dragons but knew her only as the fulfillment of my heart’s desire. What she felt when she first saw me, I know not, though I was held a handsome youth and a brave knight, broad of shoulder and strong of arm like warriors of old. I wore the Holy Cross on my shield with pride through battle and tourney and many ladies longed for me to pay my court to them. But there were none like her and I saw them not. I pursued her as I would a hart or stag and she smiled upon me. So certain I was that I saw love in her face that I never thought to ask what she saw in mine.

I remember the feel of icy stones on cold scales from my dreams, my way lit by the last of the night’s torches. I remember the strange wildness I saw gazing out of her green, green eyes and wonder how my own eyes appear. If there were any to see them.

Then I saw only the looks that followed her at court. How they lingered, almost like a timid caress, yet turning abashed and afeared to other views when she returned their regard. But not I, for I had never known fear or doubt before. I desired her as I desired no other woman, not merely for her beauty but because I wanted to conquer what others dreaded. Then, too, I wanted the sons she would bear, sturdy heirs of my body from those wide hips, and the daughters as beautiful as she. Their faces looked out at me from her eyes.

There were other things that I saw as well, and things I heard when first I spoke of her to my companions. Witch they said she was and Fey and in my heart I knew it was so. Certain there were those among my former friends who say now that I should have listened and watched more closely. I hang my head for the shame of neglecting their counsel but in those days, I was a man in love. I fought with some and turned others from my door to haunt only hers.

There I remained for several moons before I asked her leave to address her father as I would have asked no other woman. She looked upon me kindly and did not say me nay. I went then to her father, a knight from distant lands who had come to pay allegiance to the king. Swiftly, too swiftly, did he grant me her hand and her dower. Yet I did not mark it then, not even when he left after our wedding in the manner of one who parts with tainted goods he never thought to sell. Not a thought did I give to this then but today I believe I would give him his daughter and the dower thrice over to be whole once more.

A thousand yesterdays ago, or so it seems, I loved her and ruled my lands with her at my side. The first year of our bond, she bore me a son, and a daughter the second. More children followed, just as I had dreamed when I first looked on her. And such children they were! Beautiful and perfect, but for my eldest son.

He had eyes slitted like a cat’s and was quick and sly and cruel. Still, I tried to love him for her sake for she loved him best of all. I even made him my steward on his seventeenth birthday so that he might learn to rule after me for her sake. I did it despite my fears that he hoped his wait would be but a short one.

At night my sleep was often unquiet, my dreams full of monsters unseen but always nearby, watching me. I woke shaking, fearing the feel of their claws in my flesh. Trembling lest they lie in wait for me in the dawn’s light, their fangs ready to feast on me, to consume me until I became one of their number. Always too I felt desire, moving hand in hand with repulsion and I tried my hardest to forget this. Always I awoke shivering next to my bride, her warm flesh comforting my night terrors until I could forget my fears, my unnatural longings.

That I shall never forget nor cease to love, even now. Her beauty calls me still in my waking dreams. I want her as she appeared to me then as I want nothing else, not even my peace and happiness. I want until my flesh burns with it and as long as I live, I shall want no other.

Yet all was not well between me and my lady wife despite the comforts she brought me. Each Sabbath eve of our wedded life, she kept to her chambers while I watched the candles burn down and yearned for her. In my waking dreams, she lay in her bath, her round, full ripeness glowing golden against the marble sides. Red lips and black hair framed the green eyes that spoke at once of spring glades and of wild forests. My flesh hardened at the memory of her soft glory and in the rage at her absence that I could not bear to confess to myself.

It was on one such Sabbath eve that I sat and watched the flames, thinking on her walking in the gardens in moonlight, her lips parted in song and the vines lengthening as they followed her slow stride. The very flowers blossomed at her call as I had myself. For she had chosen me of all the lords at court, all those who craved the feel of her breasts in their hands, the soft wonder of her thighs but dared them not. I laughed to think on it and remembered on, my eyes lost in the tapestry before my chair, one truth ringing loudly above all others: mine, she was mine.

The sun had not set when my son, the steward of my lands, came into the room as soft as if on a cat’s paws and my thoughts scattered like birds before . . . but no, I banished all thoughts of slitted green or yellow eyes. These were the stuff of nightmares and left for sleep alone, not to be seen when I was awake, the ruler of my lands and family. None should know that my nights were haunted.

He paid no heed to my distraction, asking instead those questions that he had asked on the dozens of Sabbath eves that had gone before. Did the countess his mother keep to her chambers this day? Would she do so after the king arrived? Always he spoke this way though I suspected that he knew the answers and asked only to torment me.

Each day for three years, he had spoken to me thus: first, of harvests and kingdom, and last and oh so softly! of my lady wife, his mother. Naught but praise had he for her wisdom, her goodness, but some emotion that I could not fathom hung on his every word. Why did his mother keep to her chamber each sennight? Surely she had told me, and he as my son had the right to know. But perhaps I could not tell him.

Then he would begin again on another line of questioning. His words hissed from his lips like a serpent’s. “How well my father bears with his wife’s absence! How patient you are with her woman’s moods. But surely, my lord, my father, you know what she does in those apartments whence even her maids and the children are barred? It cannot be forbidden to you.” And again. “She will not keep to her chamber thus when the king is here, depriving him of her beauty and wise counsel, no, surely not. My lord will need her by his side.”

His words broke against the wall of my thoughts, just as his hatred roiled beneath their waves, though I failed to hear it at first. I loved him not and had but little faith in him, however I tried to conceal it. That day in my folly, I heard only one word of the many he spoke: forbidden.

The fury of a fool swirled within me as I remembered what she had told me when we wed twenty years ago. Each sennight she was to keep to her chambers and I might not see her until Sabbath morn. Forbidden. That was the word she used, my countess, my own.

True, there were softer words around it, set to lull and soothe but there it remained, cold and hard in the midst of them all. Was I not Raymond de Colombiers, master of these estates and vassals, and indeed, of she who shared my bed? How could my wife’s bath be forbidden me, I who loved her more than gold, than kin, than life itself?