If I told Laurent, "I'm not supposed to be here," he would take my face in his hands and incline his forehead against mine, and whisper to me softly.

"You must be here. You are fragile. You must be here. You are fragile." He would say that and nod at me, nod at me, nod at me, so I stopped saying it. But I did not feel fragile, and after a few weeks, I began to wander out on my own, and I would find him sitting in the long grass, or occasionally practicing his footwork with a sword.

He had two sorts, a hand-and-a-half, or epee-bastarde, and a long, tapered estoc, for piercing. When he practiced swords he wore a long cotton chemise, through which, in the waning light of evening, I could see the shape of his body. I never saw him use them, but these swords were not well-kept, and I saw the old blood hiding at the straight crossguards.

I was not familiar with his footwork, but it seemed vaguely military, though elegant. His body in general in bed and at board was loose and flexible, but he had himself well in command when he thought himself unobserved. I would stand in the shadow of the roof and watch him practicing. I liked him in command. I wanted him in command of me. And for awhile, that was enough.

If he caught me watching, he might ask me, "What are you curious of?" as he passed, skin flushed from the waning sunlight, and I would say "What did you trade to get these swords? Their quality is good." We often spoke in familiar patterns. I think that he liked to know what to say.

"Do you know much about swords?" he might ask.

"I know a little about most things one can buy."

"I did not buy them," he told me once. "The trade was well weighted towards the other end."

And so I knew that these were the swords of dead men, and that the world of dead men was his own world.

I was not unfamiliar with that world myself, as all young men then were accustomed to the idea of killing at the right time and for the right name, and killing a soldier of England did not bother me much in and of itself. I was also not unfamiliar with intimacy, and its many forms. But his bed was entirely new to me, and that, also, was enough to keep me there. As much as I would like to say, now that he has passed, that I fell in love with him, or was able to comfort him in some way, to claim it would be to parrot falsehoods. There are enough parrots among us.

He would say to me things like, "I am the most sorrowful wretch in the world," and "Give me justice, draw your blade on me, for I shall bend to it," but these were well-practiced things, which worked on Dasius but not on me. His true mood was only what he was when he was alone, and this I gathered by peeking at him when he was at repose.

Most evenings, he would rise early, at the beginning of the day's decline, and head out on his own. I don't believe for a moment that he disliked horses, or anything of the kind. He kept the horse boarded so that Dasius would not be able to track his coming and going. Around midnight he would return, and I thought he must be going to Rouen or some other smaller city, and he would put the horse up quite lathered from the journey, whispering and cooing at its trembling withers. Then he would come home soundlessly, and slip into bed with Dasius, who he always insisted to me was his ward, and no lover.

Perhaps there is truth in that or perhaps there isn't. He had reason to say it to me, and also no reason at all. What did I care about Dasius, when it was plain to me that I had surpassed him in Laurent's affection? And had I really? Were we ever competing for it? It seems to me now, and seemed to me then, that neither of us had much power in inspiring him to a true passion. Dasius and I would play whist together, or "Rough and Honours" as it was known then, us two and two ghosts as the south and the east to round out the table. Mostly we would play against each other, though sometimes we two played against the ghosts. We played it endlessly. Sometimes if the game was very hard fought, he would whisper in acid, "You are cheating. Control your ghost," and I would whisper, "I cannot control him. The ghost is me."

He hated me for teasing him. He hated me for luring his master away. Mostly he hated me because I behaved as if I were older than he was, when we were the same age in truth. I, however, had been out in the world, and he, at that time, had always been under obligation. He had never tasted any kind of air or blood or passion which he didn't feel he owed to somebody else. He operated as a boy cowed, and I thought it was funny, because he was handsome, and far more intelligent than I was. I called him "lecheor plain d'envie", that he barefacedly envied me of what in itself was a perversion, and it drove him absolutely mad. It only made me laugh at him harder. He was so darkly beautiful, with his wet grey eyes and his lovely slimness, and his anger was so towering. He was as far from a lecher as he could possibly be, but he envied me all the same.

When Laurent arrived home, cards were forgotten, and clothing cast aside, and propriety discarded in kind. Laurent wanted the feeling of blood leaving his body, of that delirium which a starving body produces, and I was happy to provide it, and roughly. He wanted to be dominated. He called me "mon coquin", my knave, and played helpless in my arms. His "ward" was not invited into bed, and Laurent begged off on the suggestion, saying that Dasius was far too "squeamish" and that it annoyed him. For my part, I never saw this squeamishness, though rather a lack of opportunity. I will say right now that I never saw any squeamishness about blood on Dasius's part whatsoever, but rather an attention in Laurent to sensibilities which didn't exist, and which produced them over time. The boy who played whist with me was not the same one Laurent talked of, even then. There was an idea of "Dasius" between the two of them, and the boy was not bold enough to cast it off. Mere de Dieu, if he heard me call him a "boy" he would come after me. Mere de Dieu, there was then and there is now a repressed sexuality in his violence.

But there was a little control, certainly. Dasius had certain weapons, which if played well and rarely, had an effect upon his target without parallel. This was, "I'm leaving." Between them, this scene was always new, which baffled me. It didn't seem there was any awareness of the repetition whatsoever, but it bored me to tears.

Laurent would exit my room, stumbling and euphoric, eyes half-lidded, and go into the room they shared, and I would hear a shout, "Que fais-tu?!" this very rude, "What are you doing?" From Laurent in that state, such a shout was like a breathless kitten's roar. "Je vous laisse!" I'm leaving you. Always the same.

"Trop fadasse!" I said once, terribly dull, ineffective arguing. Someone far more poetic than me might call it their dance, but it's not dancing. It was brainless tedium. The next day at cards, he would wipe his eyes with his handkerchief and look at me without earnesty when I teased him about it, and so I knew that at least part of his scene-making was calculated. "Vous etes sans gout," he would whisper to me, you are quite tasteless, and I would say, "Fuh," and wipe my chin at him.

"Why should you judge me for what I must do? What are you that you judge me?" he whispered once, taking a card from his ghost.

"You may be right about what I am not," I said.

"And what are you?" he asked, considering the card.

"Desired, unlike you."

"That is what he has given you. If he should take it back, you are nothing then."

"You're intelligent. Why do you stay here?" I asked him. "Your brother went."

"Nicky went because there is too much affinity, not too little. He refused to be bandied about by love. Will you continue to make vain attempt at piquing my fury or will you be honest?"

"I am only a wool trader's son. A mother's daughter. Molested. Passed around."

"And I am a whore's son, whose whore abandoned him to a greedy mouth's silver. We are of a kind. Do not mock me any longer."

"But you are so good to mock. You have such painful gravity."

Between us was the question, "Why did you attack me that evening?" and that question has always been between us. There is nothing so simple as "love", and as the years pass, even that careworn "love" grows denser and denser. As we are now, there is so much history. He has written me letters on this question, and they are almost like love letters, but his nature is so repressed that he does not even trust himself with a pen. How can I trust a missive written in a stranger's hand?

In such a letter is written, "You left because you said you felt unmoored, that you were a ship adrift. Did you find anchor? Do you not understand that without him I am myself adrift? Before him, there was no constant presence in my life, no authority or true affection. Can it be more simple than that? Why must you pick at this as if it is the only thing about me worth understanding? If you will be an analyst, as you desire, you are too narrow for it."

I wrote him back, "There are other things I wonder about. Do you wonder other things about me? I know you to be jealous of my happiness." But he sees this as a stab at him. Sometimes I receive letters of a confessional nature, but these I know to be fabricated by a dangerous mockingbird, who knows his older brother's voice well enough to imitate it. These letters I burn.

I think of Dasius so much because we were left alone together more often than not. In bed however, away from Dasius's gaze, there were times when Laurent would whisper to me to forget about him, and so I would.

"Bite me as a snake bites," he would moan, in that keening tone he would effect, pressed for breath, fine legs twisted with mine, "push against my skin until I cannot bear it. Do it again and again. Never stop doing it."

He never questioned my name or anything else about me. He would loll his head back away from mine, against the pillow, and say "Miriam", my mother's name for me, who had both loved and pilloried me my femininity, and his saying it made it mine. It made me free. He breathed that name and it fired me for him completely, and in later centuries, when the name no longer suited me, he willingly changed it, and made that name mine as well. He had a confidence about him, a belief in artifice which made it real. These names were far more than pillowtalk, but he was very good at that as well. And so I know a little of the power he had over reality, and how formidable he could be in the wringing of identity from passion.

His body, because he was elegant, could seem delicate, but under my hand, he was well-muscled for all his leanness, taut beneath soft skin. His hair, which he spent long hours caring for, was so blond as to seem almost white in bright light, with curls the perfect size for grasping fingers. He dressed himself immaculately, and if any item were out of sorts, I would find him sitting by the hearth mending it himself with needle and thread. If we were not at bed, he did not want me touching him. He did not have a passion for me, and little natural affection. I collected his secret expressions and images of him at rest. I committed him to memory. He made me like him, and made me in other ways.

It was not my bed he slept in, and though he often shared little confidences with me, it was Dasius he returned to again and again, even then. When I was thick with his blood, and he was seeing heaven, he would kiss my ear and whisper, "Blood of God, you are my very spirit," and leave me to cross the house to arms which truly loved him. And I would look out the window, mind reeling, blinking my eyes to remind myself that I was alive, and know that I did not belong there.