†
It was December. The autumn had been long and unusually warm in the Marseilles as though the season took pity. The snows had not yet come, so the rain fell cold and soft, sorrowful and steady, like a gentle, sad weeping upon the grave. It was as though the gray skies shared the grief of those below.
The Cezanne’s kindly afforded a noblewoman’s grave for Julianne. It was the least that they could do. The headstone was enormous—polished white marble—and had been placed on the lovely but distant estate grounds. The engraving read, “Here lies Julianne; beloved daughter and sister. God have mercy on her soul.” There was no mention of the unborn baby, no mention of her lover—her unholy, only love.
The rainwater ran softly down the massive stone, filling the engravings so that they practically disappeared. The stone appeared oddly blank when it rained, just like the memory of her affair with her lovely, dark prince—erased—to be spoken of nevermore.
Her grave was nestled beneath a willow, and nobody but little Yvette had known the willow was her favorite tree, not even D’ata. The tragic pair hadn’t the opportunity to discover those small and sweet secrets about each other that comes only from being with a loved one for a long time. Now the willow branches were bare, long fingers brushing gently back and forth above the grave.
The flowers were wilted, dead over a month. The lone figure who lay supine across the gravesite looked perfectly appropriate nestled amongst the dead flowers. He lay in priest’s robes, arms outstretched to either side as though he were crucified to the earth. His head was turned to one side, eyes open, vacant, staring without blinking. The rain ran across his sad face, over his eyes, across his ruined heart. It was an odd picture, like a strange painting where the deceased was left on top of the grave as though someone had forgotten to bury him.
Raphael walked up to the grave, knelt, and regarded his friend for a long, sad moment before he shook his head. Gathering the frail priest up once again, he placed him into the carriage, bundling him in a blanket. Then, as he’d done so frequently these past weeks, he brought D’ata from the gravesite back home to the estate.
It was Henri who helped remove the soaked robes and left the soup at his bedside, covering D’ata with a soft, warm blanket…again. Then, the next morning, just like the day before, the young priest would mysteriously disappear from the mansion and reappear upon the gravesite.
Sometimes, when it wasn’t raining, a child would appear to sit on the grave next to the dying man. Yvette greatly mourned the loss of her sister, mourned the decaying man lying on the ground next to her—beautiful, mysterious, and oh, so sad. Eventually, the small one would leave before the hour was dark, and Raphael would come to gather D’ata from the grave once more.
The church didn’t prosecute D’ata. There were other pressing matters as the church wrestled with the change of venue of its Pope and the conflict of absolute power with the reigning King. Furthermore, Monsignor Leoceonne feared for the young man’s sanity, that he would not even understand his prosecution or punishment. For now, the church allowed D’ata the luxury of time, the luxury of his insanity. Chances were he would die anyway; he certainly appeared to be the living spectacle of death and was closer approaching it as the days went by.
* * *
Tonight, Raphael sat at D’ata’s bedside again, rocking gently in a chair while he watched his young friend sleep. He almost didn’t recognize him and wondered when D’ata’s face had become so thin. He thought about Julianne, about love—the force which compelled the two of them to risk everything. He worried for the young priest and recalled that someone once said time would mend a broken heart. Raphael had known his own heart to be broken a time or two in his life, but nothing compared to what the young man before him was now forced to endure.
He slid deeper into the chair, snorted to himself, and thought about the time will mend a broken heart theory, deciding it was rubbish after all. He thought to himself that time was more of a thief. It stole fragments of a broken heart and hid them beneath the crusted surface of the soul.
Being a poet of sorts, Raphael rubbed his chin thoughtfully and considered this deep philosophy. He knew that all one had to do was poke about beneath the surface and turn over a few memory stones. One could return to a certain place, a certain time, and the wound would be opened anew. It would then become quite clear that time would not heal a heart like D’ata’s; this one’s heart would never mend. His heart wasn’t just broken; broken implied it could be fixed. D’ata’s heart was shattered beyond repair. Some of the pieces were still there, uncomfortable and out of place. Some of them were gone—vanished forever—and the holes those pieces left were what caused the pain. It was like a wound, a severed arm that would never entirely heal. It would only shroud itself, dull itself, the fractured holes filled in with trickery, fancy, and nearly forgotten memories.
Raphael knew that sometimes all it would take was a familiar voice, a certain letter or portrait, an old favorite song. Sometimes it might only stir in a dream. But suddenly, there it would be again—all the raw pain and loss, and the pieces of the broken heart would cascade again, mercilessly broken about D’ata’s feet. At this moment, he would gather the pieces, grasping, clutching absurdly at them in an eternal struggle to desperately put them back, but it would all be for naught.
This saddened Raphael, this realization that D’ata would be one of those. One who had loved someone, truly loved someone and truly lost someone, especially as one who loses an innocent such as a child or…an unborn baby. These were tortured souls. This thought turned the servant’s stomach.
D’ata stirred, moaned a bit, but slept on. Raphael sat up, edging close enough to lay a hand on the shoulder of his friend. He struggled with the notion that he could not draw D’ata from his despair enough to bolster him up in some way, to help him in this terrible time.
It seemed as though everyone, in some way or another, felt responsible for the outcome of the young lovers’ affair. All mourned, but no one could penetrate the fragile shell of this forgotten one left behind. Even Julianne’s father had adopted a sad pity for the man who had loved his daughter to death. It was tragic beyond compare, and nobody spoke of it…ever.
A strange routine took over instead—keep the living safe, take care of them, but don’t ever speak of it—never speak of it. God may reach down from the heavens and punish if anyone spoke, and the punishment could be horrible. All could now see how possible that was.
Monsieur Cezanne and his wife would peek into D’ata’s room, but neither spoke to him. They whispered quietly amongst themselves instead. They were mourning as well, and not just for their son. They were unexpectedly driven to mourn the loss of a girl named Julianne, the loss of a baby, and the loss of what their son had once been.
The next day, Raphael admonished him, “You mustn’t go there tomorrow!”
He tugged at the young priest’s boots, and as he laid them aside, rainwater poured from them in muddy puddles onto the floor. The bedchamber was strangely warm and inviting in contrast to the fragile young man it held. In addition, something seemed even more wrong today.
“Do you hear me, D’ata? You mustn’t go there!” Raphael was frustrated but also deeply worried. He tried to be firm with his dear friend.
D’ata lay back upon the bed, staring blankly at the ceiling, not answering.
Raphael leaned forward, pulling at his robes, exposing the younger man’s bare chest. He searched his eyes, looked for some recognition—some spark of life. Leaning down, he pressed his ear against D’ata’s chest. There it was, the soft rasping sound of pneumonia as it set in, the grating of infection against the delicate lung tissue. Death beckoned, and today it spoke from the frail lungs of the failing priest. Raphael was no doctor, but he'd heard the sound before. He was wise and knew D’ata would die if he kept exposing himself to the elements as he was.
“Ah, mon ami—you kill yourself, don’t you? But it was glorious—no?” Raphael rubbed his eyes. “To love her so?”
He was tired, not from caring for his friend but from grave concern. He turned D’ata’s head, looked into the vacant eyes, and imagined the despair the young man must be living with.
“Few have loved as you have—you hear me?” he whispered gently to the lost eyes which only stared blankly at nothing. Desperate and frightened, he pounded gently on the chest of his young friend. “Tomorrow, you will stay home—you hear me, monsieur? Do you hear? You insult her memory to do this!” Then, he lost his resolve and shook the young man by his shoulders, shouting, “I will kill you myself if you try to go again! I will!” He was desperate and choked back his tears, swallowed his words, and fell silent. His head hanging, his shoulders trembled with mute sobs. He felt a gentle, twisted hand on his shoulder. “He dies,” Raphael sobbed softly, his face turned away.
Henri only nodded toward the dying man who lay lost in his insanity. “Come, Raphael. Help me tend to him. We cannot know that yet.”
The two men gently pulled the wet robes from D’ata’s body, once more, and wrapped him naked in the warm down blanket. They exchanged worried glances at the frailty that had so quickly overtaken the once strong, young man. Taking warmed river stones—the ones Raphael had earlier laid in the fireplace—they wrapped them into quilts and placed them around D’ata to drive away the cold.
“You hear me, don’t you? I will kill you myself, D’ata, if you go there again,” Raphael whispered under his breath.
The pneumonia gripped the young man, tearing from him his waning health. It was what D’ata wanted—to die. Henri and Raphael, however, refused to see it that way. There would be no such passage for this one. There had been enough loss of precious ones already.
They watched D’ata night and day, his parents allowing the ministerings by these, his oldest, dearest friends. He made no effort to escape to her grave now, only lay instead in his bed, the vile pneumonia draining purulent and bloody from the corners of his mouth whenever he was seized by yet another coughing fit.
His body had the fever and burned, soaking the linens. When this happened, they took turns to sponge him cool. Henri would estimate the weight of the linens by hand, calculating the losses, and would spoon water between D’ata’s lips to carefully replace them. The stablemaster explained that if they lost too much ground their friend would quickly die. He’d seen it in the horses, when they ceased to drink.
They meticulously cleaned D’ata’s mouth with salt water, gently washed his face and threadbare hair, rubbed his wasting body with warmed olive oil—and they prayed. Raphael knelt on the floor with Henri, hands clasped. They prayed that God should not yet take this one from them, that he should be spared.
The two men considered their efforts. There was worry in their eyes for the one they'd both watched scamper about the grounds as a child. They were tormented for this rare creature who’d helped to saddle the horses, muck the stalls, carry the water and firewood. They grieved this child who'd befriended their souls and captured their hearts.
“We have to get him up. If he doesn’t stand, the pneumonia will fill his chest and harden. I’ve seen it in the horses. If that happens, he will die.” Henri twisted his leathery old hands together in worry.
Raphael nodded, and again they pulled D’ata from his wheezing slumber to his feet. Forcing him to walk to the window, they stood with him for a bit in the winter sun’s low beam. D’ata was seized with a violent fit of coughing, and his face turned so red that he fainted, sagging his weight onto his two friends.
Eventually, the pneumonia became so thick that it was too difficult for D’ata to cough up. Raphael pounded the young man’s chest and back with both fists while Henri held him in his arms. They boiled mint leaves in water and held the bowl under D’ata’s face, a linen draped over his head, forcing him to inhale the steam. This was just as Henri had done for strangled horses from time to time. At intervals, they pressed spoonfuls of ox broth between his teeth and fed him bread soaked in milk.
They refused to call the physician, convinced that the doctor would bleed him. Henri had good instincts and told Raphael so, believing this would do more harm than good.
* * *
Time passed like a black and white dream, slow and deliberate. Winter grabbed the Marseille in her clutches, and D’ata did not die. His pneumonia gradually subsided under the persistent care of his friends, although the cough remained for a very long time.
He started to walk about his room on his own, staring blankly out the window at the slumbering bed of white. Spring would soon breathe over the meadows and lawns of the estate. Life would soon rejoice in the new born. All that seemed dead within the earth would spring magically forth with life, all but one. The world would plunge cruelly on…without her.
D’ata never went back to the grave. He moved instead to the small town of Saint-Jean-de-Luz on the Nivelle River. He lived at the local cathedral and slept in a tiny room out in the old stable connected to the west end of the monastery. It was his solitary sanctuary, and it was only sometimes, rarely in his dreams, that he forgot the pain.
Julianne’s and his unborn child’s deaths had him to blame. This haunted him. If he had been a godly priest, if he had not insisted on having what God decided he should not, the awful accident would never have happened. It was his own, selfish needs and desires that caused this tragedy—was it not? Of this, he was now certain. Of this, he must believe, and because of this, he knew he must suffer. There was no other way. D’ata willfully accepted his condemnation and carried it with him always.
Consumed with his need to forget and so aggrieved of what happened on the banks of the river, he was hardly even aware of the fragility of his own mind. Days blurred, one into another, and he was surprised to see autumn late in the air. Wasn’t it to be spring just now? No matter—seasons were meaningless anymore.
Initially, he did not join in the mass celebrations for they only confused him. Besides, there were too many whispers amongst the congregation. The scrutiny was extreme, and Monsignor Leoceonne thought it best to let the young man be, to allow him time to find his way back to God.
Instead, D’ata spent his time alone. When the cathedral was empty, he knelt upon the stone floor for endless, exhausting hours, praying. He prayed that God would forgive him and his awful sin. He prayed for divine intervention, that he should become a good and godly priest. Sometimes he forgot why he prayed, simply reciting from rote memory the words to some almost forgotten prayer.
He prayed and he prayed, hoping beyond hope that God might take away the pain in his chest, the agony in his soul. He prayed to forget—he prayed to remember. He even prayed he would die, pondered ending it himself. But, deep in his heart, he feared God might plunge him into oblivion, never to see her again.
At times, he wondered if it had all been a dream. He questioned his memories, but eventually cruel sanity would return and dash the truth down about him, just as Raphael had believed.
His knees became thick, leathery, and calloused—oddly out of place on what were now his spindly, weak legs. His face was gaunt and drawn. His hair fell out in patches, but most horribly, his eyes lost the spark of life.
D’ata never saw color again after that terrible day. Rarely, he would walk along the river which used to give him so much joy and comfort. He was bewildered by his joyful memories. Now he couldn’t comprehend why, and eventually he quit going to the river altogether. It never occurred to him that it was strangely gray. It seemed to him that it was how everything should be, how it had always been, like her dress and…her face. The slate-like color of his world seemed sadly normal to him now.
Several years passed, and insanity was gingerly replaced with devastating remorse and cruel despair. D’ata gained some weight back. His hair grew, first in patches and later more evenly. He would not shave his skullcap as the other priests did but let it grow long and thick around the nape of his neck. It seemed that it was so cold most of the time, regardless of the season. To D'ata, it just seemed better to let it grow that way.
He gladly accepted the tasks given him, like tending the one horse in the parish stable out behind the rectory. Standing for lost hours, he would brush the old animal until its coat shone like a young colt. He held the kiln-dried apple chips flat palmed so the old fellow could lip them up, crunching them contentedly. The gelding happily searched his new companion’s pockets when he came around, unaccustomed to such kindness.
When the limbs of the black walnut trees scratched at the beautiful stained glass windows, it bothered D’ata somewhat. There was something odd about the sound they made, and he could endure it for only so long before he would trim them away. Where have I heard that sound before?
The windows were no longer beautiful to D’ata. They just seemed peculiar to him now, that someone would put together such a random assortment of cut glass and make such a fuss about it.
Going to the prison, he was called upon to give last confession to condemned prisoners—a task he particularly hated but undertook willingly. Rarely, it seemed to have purpose, and so he was glad for the small comfort he could sometimes provide. Truthfully, these men were no more condemned than he was.
D’ata grew to believe that the only sanctuary for his soul—the only hope for relief from the pain—was to become a truly good priest in the eyes of God. Only God could remove the suffering, and D’ata thought it might take several lifetimes to finally achieve grace and forgiveness.
No one spoke of the transgression, at least not openly. There were murmurs in the congregation and amongst the other priests. They never spoke of it to him, however. They didn’t need to. D’ata heard of the great sin in his own head as surely as if it were spoken at mass, every day, aloud. It wasn’t necessary to remind him, for he lived it every waking day, every sleeping night, with every breath he took. It became a part of him—his second skin—and there was not a moment that passed when it did not define him.
As more time passed, he prayed more to forget. He concentrated, trying to force the memories from his mind whenever they surfaced. Sometimes he would forget, would awaken and brew tea, sit to read, or step outside to see the day. Never mind how perfect a morning may be, there was always the nagging sense of something foreboding that marred the moment.
Then, inevitably, something would trigger a memory. It would collide into him with devastating reality, and after a few paralytic moments, he would stagger back to his room. Curled up on his bed, he would then lay with arms tight around his head, trying to shut it out again. God tortured him, allowed him to live, and it was agony—a living hell.
D’ata was damned as surely as any man ever was.
* * *
The priest’s robes hung in heavy woolen folds, damp from the fog, as the young man made his way along the muddied streets of the sleeping town. D’ata wished for the Marseille. The cotton underlinen clung uncomfortably to his body, and his collar chaffed against the back of his neck.
Drawn to the light of a street lamp, a moth spiraled downward into the miniature lake left by another’s footstep. D’ata watched as the moth thrashed upside down, its wings tacked to the surface of the muddy water. Its efforts rippled to the edge of the tiny lake, and he stepped onto the insect, impaling it into the muck, finishing its fate. It was a gesture of mercy, a mercy killing to be sure.
In the distance, the looming shadow of the castle appeared beyond the town square. It was black, and ominous, and looked like it did not belong in the tiny French village. The castle housed the criminals of the state for five townships. Tonight, it was also the end-stage of the holy man’s pilgrimage. Only one prisoner remained to be seen. The mercenary, murderer, the one to be hung, the evil one…Ravan.