Leis, part 8 - A Good Man

I woke early alone and thinking nothing, went rubbing my eyes to Laurent's door. Knocking, I said, "C'est lui-meme, chou-chou est ici," it's himself, pet is here, and ran my fingertips over the wood when he did not come to let me in. "Miou miou," I said, sleepily, smiling like a fool. Do I have a damned spirit? I wonder it. 


He never came to open that door, so I opened it, and there Laurent was sitting, on the edge of his bed, with his sword, a thin, sharp estoc, running its edge over his gold ring. He didn't acknowledge me. He seemed barely to have risen from slumber himself, except for his mood, plainly dark and dangerous. His brow held a deep furrow, blond hair wild as if he had been tumbling in bed elsewhere. 


"Let's get dressed, delicate spirit," I said, quietly, uncomfortable.


"La pulsation, je l'entends. 'Chou-chou'. C'est ca. Est-il nerveux? Je suis nerveux, moi. Mais non. Pourquoi devrais-je? Il le merite." He continued to murmur to himself, stroking his sword against his gold signet. Heartbeat, I hear him. 'Pet', that's so. Is he nervous? I'm nervous, I am. But no, why should I be? He deserves it. 


"Shall I touch you? Will you stop?"


"If you stay here I will go mad. After he is dead, go away. You're making me do it."


"After who is dead?"


"What no 'sweet soul' no 'gentle touch' no 'good head'? What will I do without an epithet?" he parted his knees and drew his estoc against his body as if it were the favored lover, cheek pressed against its hilt. 


"Where is Darkling?"


"You're slow but you're not stupid. I put him in the dark where he belongs. If you listen, as is not your wont, you will hear him crying out. I do not listen. I am not moved. I am happy to die. Great mercy, that it is easier for him."


There came a tingling in me, as if I were not looking upon Laurent at all, but someone else, whom I could not ever know. It was in his face, in his parted lips and the gentle closing of his eyes, the flush in his cheeks, as if he had been striking himself. Perhaps he had been. The muscles of his arms were lean and defined, as they were after he had been exerting himself, plain to see through translucent white silk sleeves tied up at the shoulders.


"I don't know what you've done. But if he is dead I promise you that I will take your sword from you and use it."


"Upon me?" he asked, eyes shut.


"Never. First I will go downstairs and cut Dasius's head from his shoulders. He will not resist me. And then I will cut my wretched lungs out of my body and hope that it stops my heart from beating from then on."


"You would do that to me and not even let me die?" he asked, voice bare of emotion. "Do you want him so much?"


"Yes."


"It would be a hard time, with an estoc for that purpose."


"I am against you. It would give me strength."


"Leis," he said, his voice breaking then, "I am dishonored. I am stripped naked by this. He spat on my face. I am a son of Egypt, of Gaul. I have lived a long time. Should I disappear? It asks me to go away and put away my life. I am consumed by a violence of spirit as I have never known. I am unsatisfied with my life. I want to die."


"Poor, gentle bird."


"I am not gentle. I am not delicate," he said. 


"You are my Laurent," I told him, offering my hands to him, my palms, but he seemed unmoved, weeping against his crossguard.


"Perhaps not that," he wept.


"Not a murderer. Not today," I begged him. 


And then he was on his feet, and threw the sword away, eyes focused and fierce. He pushed me aside and strode into the hallway, shoulders back and head high. I followed him, noticing Dasius at his own doorway, down the hall. As we passed his cat eyes tracked me, but he stood still and silent as a statue. 


"Lover," I said, close at Laurent's heels, and he said, so firmly, "Don't touch me!" ne me touche pas! that it did not sound like him at all. I said, "Escha?" choking upon it, a name he had only ever whispered to me once, in my convalescence a century before. 


"The word is polluted between your lips!" he shouted at me, pulling open the hatch at the top of the narrow stairs, and ascending. "Stop struggling! Stop screaming!" clawing and struggling, "My dignity, to touch its skin! Get back, snake!" 


I covered my mouth and turned my head because with the opening of the hatch came screams I should have heard, and tears sprang up, stinging my dry eyes, and with such force that I feared blindness, "Give him to me," I said, oh how Darkling cannot abide the dark after having been locked in the cellar for so long, but it was to Dasius that Laurent handed him, who embraced Darkling's body with his own so that it couldn't seize. Darkling's brown eyes were rolled back in his head, as if he were seeing God. "Please, God," I said softly, my tongue heavy over the words. It barely registering that with the close of the hatch Laurent had disappeared, and for me only Quinn, who Dasius lifted, holding him tight against his body and descending the stairs.


"His head," I sputtered, "be careful."


"O soft, what yonder angel speaks," Dasius whispered, "what speaks to us now, does it?"


It stopped my tongue, to hear him speak of his pride for the first time. 


But he preferred silence, and let me follow him into his office, pushing open a door in the back I hadn't before noticed. The metal and sterility beyond strangled my breath and I followed only for Darkling, feeling afraid and embracing myself with both arms. Dasius turned a small knife in his hands to see if it were clean, and I let out a soft sound as it caught the light, a felt memory haunting me. 


"Oh he will be bled," Dasius said. "Do not try to stop it. It is always the first thing. He is unbalanced. It is bleeding and then reassembling him from there. That is our bible. That is what we are. It is in the blood and he will bleed."


"Upon the floor?" I whispered, because I agreed that the blood was sacred, and could not abide the thought of it spilled without purpose.


But he did not answer, instead pressing the knife to Darkling's neck and twisting the steel, which set bleeding so harshly that it covered Dasius's white cassock in red to the elbows as he turned the body, letting the blood spill out over the perforated table and drain. 


I wished for someone to collect me. I wished not to be a coward who could not help but close his eyes. I wished for a stronger character and to not be so sensitive, to not cover my face to weep, unable to bear those hands upon my Quinny, wishing instead that I might have suffered a hundred times what had happened to me in my youth if it meant that this would not happen. Was it me who had poisoned Darkling's blood? with arsenic? Perhaps if I had stayed in Paris more years, and born the blade, would this still be happening? And then I realized that the soft sound I was hearing was Dasius humming, to me, a gentle Marseillaise song, as he worked on the body. 


"Stop whimpering, stop whimpering, perfect angel," he said very softly, ceasing his humming, "it's for his good. It's for his good. He will sleep now. Go to bed. I will bathe him in blood, which is good, good, so soothing. Sweet little pea, I will not hurt him. I won't. Love you, angel, perfect love, gentle hands for your beloved, a promise."


His love shamed me.


"Bed," he said, without turning.


"Please," I whispered, but he had finished speaking.


In my room I expected Laurent to be there, and he was, pale and shivering in his silk robe, standing aside like a drowned thing. 


"Tired," I said, and climbed into my bed.


"I am jealous because he is a man, a good man," he whispered, "as you are."


"Dasius is a good man," I said, as he climbed into bed with me, and his skin was so cold. "I'm angry with you."


"Dasius is just a boy, in truth. You're so cute," he whispered, pressing his cold face against my back, and when his neck touched me I felt that it was raw, and that he been bled roughly.


I'm sorry to say that I wept for fear more for the rawness of his neck than for the touch of his murderer's hand, for surely I do not know if he would have let Quinny die, and surely there was something in the attic that had attacked them both, and continued to attack Laurent, who had poisoned me with need of him through his blood, whether that be drug or something far more indelible, and who had been left with barely any of it.


I had so wanted to come home. I had so wanted to feel safe again, and to stop looking for a place to sleep and to be able to let down my guard, to stop wanting for money and degrading my body, to stop the feeling of desperation and rotting of spirit that clung to my flesh and made me fear so for my immortal soul, even if it foretold a rent between my beloved and myself, Quinn and me, whose self is woven in with mine without end. He is my blood, my pride, my lover and my head. I have loved him so desperately that I do not know where I end and he begins. But that is the way that Laurent has loved me.


Oh it is true that the blood is what we are, and I wept wretchedly when Laurent pressed me to his body and kissed my neck seeking my blood for his own, which is his, because he had given it to me of his own will so long before. I wish that I could say that I have ever longed not to be his creature, but I cannot say that, and only hate myself for it, this flesh, these lungs. 


He said, "For your own good, when you can, run away with him. Please, while I can say it, listen. My mind, it's not reliable. Listen. You are not good at listening."


All that I wanted, as I slipped into sleep, was for him not to cry, for not one more drop of blood to spill.



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