†
Prisoners began to stir, those who lived. Light barely reached them or the depths of their despair, but the intrinsic metabolic clock which is humanity roused those who would, or could, be wakened.
Soon, the guards would make their rounds, remove the dead, toss bread if they were so inclined, and take those to torture who must be tortured. But this would only happen after midmorning—persecution most often occurred only after dinner, when those who tortured cast a pitiless stomach for it. The butchery of man was best dealt with in later hours as was lust, debauchery, and murder. So, for now, the condemned only moaned their appreciation, or despair, for their last moments.
It was nearly two hours later when a young priest, dressed in the clothes of a mercenary, climbed the steps of the gallows. A crowd had thronged for the event, having heard of the terrible man, the infamous murderer, kidnapper, rapist…mercenary. They had all heard of his remarkable last stand on the cliff side, of the mass killing he’d accomplished before he’d finally fallen, and of the rare beauty who’d spared him. He was feared, and his death would be one of necessity; destroy the beast before it could destroy you! Consequently, the crowd was more solemn than usual. Even so, there were jeers, calls, and curses from a foolish few.
D’ata heard none of these. Guards either side led the condemned man to the gallows. He paused at the foot of the stairs, remembering when he’d briefly seen the timbers in the darkness of the last night—was it just an evening before?
He climbed slowly. The scaffolding seemed so much higher than it needed to be, and he was weakened from a long night of truth. The sun had failed him today as it seemed to so often. The seasons didn’t even appear right as of late. Perhaps it fit his life, he thought to himself. Mercifully, at least the rains had finally ceased. But it was cold—a good day for an execution.
He watched his own feet as he climbed, unfamiliar with the boots he now wore. They fit him well, though. He wondered if the dark blotches were bloodstains, wondered about the miles his brother had walked in these shoes. It gave him peace to walk in Ravan’s boots and to know that a righteous man would finally be free. Not only would he be free, his book would be unwritten, his name unknown. His brother could start anew as though he had never been born. This gave D’ata great solace and the courage to climb on.
Ravan had argued with him in the last cold hours of morning, had refused to make the switch. But no matter. After a while, he’d slept deeply from the opium. The Brandy had cut the bitters well enough, and Ravan had drunk most of the small flask. D’ata ordinarily brought it for those who suffered physical pain from their tortures. Tonight, it had served its purpose splendidly, and eventually Ravan had succumbed.
When the time had come, D’ata had left his sleeping brother behind, draped in the robes of a holy man and with straw pulled over him. The same guard hadn’t even noticed—not even remembering for his drunken stupor the evening before—when a priest had come knocking on the castle door. With a fearful look and sword drawn, the guard had commanded the prisoner to leave the cell. He’d then appeared surprised when the mercenary, already standing, had followed him willingly and without comment. By the time Ravan would later awaken, it would be too late. If God’s will were done, his brother would already be upon the gallows.
D’ata wavered a bit, unsteady with the height of the narrow stairs, the long night, and the harrowing moment at hand. He thought briefly of the fall—how difficult it might be. It must be better than the fire, though. That would be a horrible death, he thought to himself.
He would not be burned for he was no heretic. He was simply a murderer, and therefore would be hanged—the method reserved for commoners. Only condemned royalty or nobility received the mercy of the block and the executioner’s blade. Hanging was better than burning, he thought to himself—perhaps like drowning. This made him think briefly of Julianne, and he was comforted that at least their fates might be similar.
A guard grasped his elbow to steady him. Their eyes met briefly, and there was a second of hesitation when D’ata almost felt he would be discovered, but then the man looked away as though he could not hold the eye of one such as this. If he'd further considered the prisoner, he might have seen beyond the disguise. The bruises were simply charcoal, smeared from the long burned out torch in the cell. If this guard had lingered even a moment longer, he might have seen the eyes of the sad priest who had broken communion for him just three days before. This was not to be, however; D’ata’s disguise held.
He thought of Julianne. It wouldn’t be long now. “I’m coming, my love,” he murmured, only loud enough so that he could hear it. He was calmed and quieted by his own words. His conviction remained, and there was no regret for his decision. Of this he’d never been so sure.
Finally, he was at the top of the platform. Held between two guards, he squinted across the crowd. Had he looked more closely, he might have recognized some of them, but his gaze was not for them. He was numbed and ready to be done with it all.
The constable began reading, but D’ata could not hear the words. He peered at the man, heard nothing, and this appeared wrong to him. Why, he asked himself, was there no sound? It was as though the world had gone suddenly mute. Never mind, he thought to himself. It is better this way.
Everything remained oddly silent, and he looked peacefully across the crowd again, beyond the town square, past the shops, taverns, and homes. His gaze followed the meadows beyond the town, saw the chill mist roll up from the sea. He imagined he could hear her whisper from the fog-bank that she was waiting and would be there to greet him…with their child.
There was no fear in his heart. There was no remorse, either. All was forgiven, and amends were made. D’ata had prayed for days, weeks, months, and years for just this moment—for God to allow him to die. His prayer had finally been answered. There was a God, after all, and He was compassionate. This morning, as he’d taken the clothes from the mercenary—his brother—he’d never been so sure of anything in his life as he was of this choice. Ravan had unknowingly given to him a gift so precious, and D’ata could not imagine a price more fitting than his own death. He smiled now, recalling his brother’s face, remembering his story. He’d been a mercenary, and yet, D’ata would never think of him in this way.
The Constable seemed to have stopped reading. Next, the charges would be read. D'ata knew that after each one, they would toll a bell. He saw the Constable’s mouth move, saw the expressions of shock and outrage on the faces of those gathered, but thought it strange, for even this was silent to the young priest’s ears.
Now it occurred to D’ata that it was indeed a peculiar deafness, and it was just then that he became aware of the beating of two hearts. He glanced again across the mass of faces and recognized no one. Silence prevailed—a deafening muted silence. He heard only the beating hearts, and they seemed to be getting louder and louder. He wondered if, perhaps, so close to death, that it was the beating of his brother’s heart that he heard—if it was a gift, twin to twin, as they’d been before they were born.
No, this is not Ravan’s heart I hear, he silently decided, for it does not feel familiar in that way. It must not be him.
D’ata glanced about himself, wondering if the others felt the strange electricity in the air that now made his hair feel as though it stood on end. It would appear not. The reading of the charges continued as though nothing was amiss. They were terrible charges—unconscionable allegations of treason, theft, kidnapping, rape, and murder. It was a horrible list, and the count of murder exceeded eighty just for the soldiers Ravan had slain in his final battle. D’ata had no concern for the charges, could not even hear them. He was preoccupied.
Evidently, the masses could not hear the slow ka-thump, ka-thump as it trotted along in pairs. It was oddly familiar to him, in a bad way, like an amputation, though he’d never heard it before.
“Do you hear that?” D’ata glanced at the faces of the guards standing either side of him, looking to see if they’d noticed the strange and sudden cold on their skin as he did. They ignored him as though neither could they hear him.
Suddenly, there was a voice—hollow, horribly intimate, and cold. “And so it is you give your life willingly, off the whim of a story—the fleeting fancy of a tale.” The voice boomed, deep and echoing, as though they stood within a cave together, just the two of them.
There was something terribly familiar about it, something he thought he'd heard in the moans of the wind down the hallway between the cells last night. Slowly, it occurred to him that he’d heard this voice before, on his darkest of days. It had scoffed at him in his blackest of hours…and he knew to what it belonged.
“Yes,” the voice said, “you know me.”
D’ata was stunned. Who are you? he demanded. He’d spoken only in his mind but could hear his own voice as clearly as if he’d shouted across the mob below.
“Who am I?” the voice countered.
Now there was a terrible laugh—a sickening scree—and D’ata jerked his hands up, covered his ears to keep the horrible sound out, but it was to no avail.
“I am the one who watches as you, a holy man, does the unthinkable,” the voice laughed again.
“Why do you say this? How can you think such a thing? I do this for Ravan!” D’ata cried, fear unexpectedly clawing at the peace he only moments ago enjoyed.
No one else seemed to hear or notice the bizarre conversation taking place. The constable continued to silently mouth the announcements, oblivious of the dialogue.
Suddenly, the day appeared to darken almost as though night was falling. Blackness swept an unholy tide over the crowd below, and D’ata peered again at the masses. There amongst them—there—could be seen a pair of eyes, red as brimstone and cowled such that nothing else could be seen. It stood amongst mortal man.
Sneering, it continued. “You do this for yourself!” It hissed, “You do the unthinkable!” and laughed again, “How perfect! A holy man takes his own life—commits the abominable!”
Now the guard pulled D’ata’s hands from his ears and bound them behind his back so that, should his head not float, he could not sustain himself on the rope.
Lucifer continued, gloating, reveling. “You will be cast into the seventh ring of hell, past the minotaur, and there you will stay forever with those others who commit such a crime against themselves. And I shall watch, for it will amuse me greatly.”
“No,” D’ata murmured, a sudden bolt of terror striking his soul. “No!” he screamed, for it was not the thought of purgatory which struck terror in his heart but the fear that Julianne would not be there.
Satan could not contain his glee. “You shall be eternally fed upon as your roots take shallow hold and your branches bear no fruit, and this shall entertain me for eternity, for I am now your Master, and your God has said it could not be so!” the voice persisted.
It did not need to define itself at this point. D’ata knew what it was. It was evil. It was death without absolution or reconciliation. It was abandonment, sorrow, and pain. It was, worst of all, solitude from love, especially of one whom he loved more than any other.
“No…” D’ata spoke aloud, if only a whisper.
“Yes!” The voice hissed, “Yes—it was for you to choose!” The red eyes bled now, dripped horrid like burning oil as it spoke, “You choose the suicidium against yourself, and in Hell you will spend eternity—my prize, my conquest!”
“I do not commit this atrocity!” D’ata screamed. “I give my life for him, for Ravan, for my brother!” D’ata was now bent over with rage. “It is a sacrifice for him!” Fear gripped his heart as doubt crept in, and he appealed to the onlookers, but the crowd seemed not to notice, and the reading of the conviction began.
The voice taunted him further. “Not for him. No, not for him, and you are just now realizing this. The one they call Ravan, your brother, is ever such a convenient excuse for you, but you die because of yourself! You choose this because you are selfish; it is a coward’s choice!”
“My brother, he…” D’ata staggered, now questioning his own motives. Could it be true? Could his heart wish more to die than to die for him?
“He lives! He is free! But not because you bargained. You spent the night with him, but it is with me that you now barter!” The hiss was almost more than the priest could bear.
D’ata mumbled, overcome with the horrid understanding of what the demon was saying—that there might be truth in its evil words. He pleaded. “I do it for…for him.” His voice broke.
“He would not accept the choice—fool that he was!” The monster’s voice now roared. “He would not accept! You tricked him, to make him sleep as you did. A deception it was! Wicked!”
D’ata glanced around in desperation. Could no one else hear the evil amongst them? He struggled, tried to free his hands from the bonds, and screamed aloud, “Ravan! Can you hear me? Brother!”
His mind raced as he panicked, not from fear of death, but from his own doubt as to his true motivation. Did he do this for his brother? Or was it an excuse to step beyond—a selfish choice to seek Julianne? Only God would know his true heart, and D’ata had to be certain, or he could be lost forever.
The hangman—garishly out of place in the bright red robe that announced his occupation—stepped forward and urged D’ata over the gallows trap. The younger man struggled, and it took two strong men to overpower and stand him over death’s door.
All at once, D’ata could hear the crowd again, could hear the constable as he offered him the chance to speak his final words. He scanned the masses, looked for the bleeding eyes, but they were gone.
The officer crossed his hands in front of himself and waited for D’ata to speak. The crowd hushed. There would be no cries of sorrow. There would be no pleading for mercy. There would be no entreatment for truth.
The young man, standing upon the gallows, broke the quiet but not to those gathered below. Instead, he spoke beyond the evil who had visited him, the unholy one who’d dare show himself now, at this terrible moment. D’ata now knew this was what had hidden outside the cell last night. It was the feeling he and Ravan had sensed when they believed their stories had been intruded upon. The demon had been there in the dark, hidden beyond recognition. D’ata recognized it implicitly now, but it was not to Satan that he first spoke.
The devil’s voice was silent as though pride must allow it to hear the final words of its supreme device, its epic accomplishment, its masterpiece.
D’ata trembled, but his voice did not. “Hear me, God!” He looked up to the sky, his voice hoarse, torn, as he spoke to the heavens, “Hear me now, if you have never heard me before!” He fell to his knees in his final prayer. “I go unwillingly.” D’ata closed his eyes, spoke calmly and with great conviction. “I speak to you from my heart. I love Julianne, and I love my brother. As I kneel here, yet alive, while my heart beats and my soul stirs, I deny this demon his victory. I do not step here willingly!”
D’ata spat his final retaliation, opened his eyes, and cried out so that all could hear, “Lucifer, fiend, monster…diable of all that is black—at this moment I live, and I deny you this death!” In horrible recognition of its own prideful folly, the voice suddenly wailed, a horrendous and awful sound, but D’ata continued, this time to the crowd. “I deny it this victory! I deny it this trophy, this triumph! As of this moment, I do not step here willingly! And it is vanity—supreme boastfulness—that foils the demon now!”
The young man commanded his stage; he rang his message true even as the noose settled, heavy and coarse around his throat. The executioner snugged it so that it fit cruel beneath the priest’s jaw on either side.
“No!” the voice screamed, a shrill and terrible wail as though it realized its own folly.
The priest rose from his knees, and the crowd silenced. All waited to hear what the prisoner might finally say.
“I am D’ata—father, son, priest, and man! I reject you, Satan, and the suicide that was almost yours!” His voice echoed across the heads of the spectators, down the valley and into the fog beyond, and no one heard…except one.
* * *
Ravan awoke with a thick and cottony feeling in the back of his throat and a crushing headache. He was lying on his side, the stone of the cell pressing hard against his cheek, and he was covered with straw. Flinging the straw aside, he sat up abruptly, momentarily disoriented. He squinted at the overhead glare as the morning light stabbed through the tiny window, and just then he noticed the door to the cell…standing ajar.
As he scrambled to his feet, he accidentally kicked the empty brandy flask he’d shared with his brother before daybreak. Or had he? He could not recall D’ata drinking from the flask. It was as he was considering this that he noticed for the first time the heavy robes that he wore—not just the cape that his brother had draped upon his shoulders out of compassion but the cassock and boots as well.
“D’ata…Nooo!” He screamed and lunged from the cell.
Past the other prisoners he ran, out the door, and up the first flight of dungeon stairs. His legs were untrue to him—a consequence from the days in the cell—and he fought to climb the narrow stone stairway, the same ones his brother had descended the evening before. At the top stood a locked door. Banging on it with his fist he struggled to control his voice.
“It is I, D’ata, the priest. I must be present for the execution!”
It seemed like an eternity to him, but a guard appeared almost immediately. Dropping his cowl over his eyes to disguise his scar, Ravan murmured a “thank you” and fled for the north tower of the castle. By the time he found it, he knew he had precious little time. The town square was much too far away, but this did not matter now. He ran for the stairs instead. Up, up, up he ran—willing his legs to endure—up the tall north tower. Along the way he snatched from a weapons rack a bow and handful of arrows.
As he climbed, the small arrow loops in the stone afforded him glimpses of a huddling mass, far beyond. Yet, he was still not high enough. His legs screamed for him to cease, but he forced himself swiftly onward until he finally reached the highest bastion. Emerging into the gray daylight, he was relieved to find there was no one else there.
Breathless, he limped to the ladder that would afford him the edge of the top of the tower and climbed it, two rungs at a time. Finally, he collapsed upon the very peak of the castle tower and situated himself fast between two of the enormous cut stones. Bent on one knee, he quieted his heart and drew a deep breath. Laying the arrow in its rest, he closed his left eye and let his breath out slowly. He drew the bow, the arrow’s fletching brushing his cheek.
In the distant square, the executioner grasped the helve, wrapping his thick, meaty fists around the stock. He stood by, ready to pull the massive lever and release the trap. Ravan swallowed thickly. This was the most awful and dearest target of the mercenary’s life.
“For you, my brother,” he whispered to himself and released the horrible dart. He knew the arrow would be true to its mark even before it struck, that he would spare his brother when no one else had.
The arrow flew from the tallest keep of the very castle which held Ravan captive for so many months. Nobody had stopped the holy man from his terrible flight up the stairs. It was an ungodly shot, farther than any man had ever made. From nearly four hundred paces away, the aim was deadly and sorrowfully true.
In the town square the trap sprung, and inevitability was upon them all as the young man fell. D’ata never felt the rope yank and bite cruelly into his throat. His body did not contort and fight—there was no gaze in agony as his last moments were robbed, suffocated from his sight. This was no suicide; there was no choice whatsoever. Ravan now burdened it all as the arrow pierced his brother’s heart, just before the trap fell.
For D'ata…all was immediately gone.
* * *
The body was supposed to be burned, but this did not happen. A stranger, cowled and limping, claiming to be a surgeon, purchased it.
“Take it—do with it what you will, but I will deny it did not burn,” the guard appeared happy to take his coin and be done with the responsibility.
A day later, Ravan rode north with the body of his brother. He’d paid good money for the horses—stolen gold from the coffers of the church itself. No one had suspected a man in priests clothing of such a thing, and he simply walked in and out of D’ata’s own church without incident.
Ravan also bought a fine bolt of cloth to wrap his brother in—Cezanne cloth, although he did not realize this. Two long days later, he found the Cezanne estate and buried his brother next to the grave of his beloved Julianne. It was just as D’ata described it as he’d sat next to him in the prison cell only two nights before.
The mercenary never alerted any one of his arrival. Instead, he stole into the remote pasture on a clear and starry night and dug the grave alone. It was a deep, good grave. When he was done, he gathered stones and carefully laid them around it so that it would be marked forever, long after the wooden cross was gone.
Stepping onto his horse, he paused by the gravesite, considering this most unusual turn of events. It wounded him terribly that he should discover and then lose his brother so quickly. But his heart was warmed with the knowledge that he had this brother—his twin—and in the span of a single night, he’d loved him as though he’d known him a lifetime.
“I shall try to be the man you believe I am,” he murmured to his brother’s grave. Then he spun the horse and started north.
* * *
The young priest was gone, and no one seemed to know why or where. He’d disappeared one dark night from the tiny parish where he served, and no one ever saw him again. Many speculated that he'd died of a broken heart, and truthfully, he had. His heart had stopped, at the kind and loyal hand of his brother.
No one ever again went to see Julianne’s grave. It was too sad, so nobody ever noticed the fresh grave next to it…save one. Yvette rejoiced that the handsome young priest had finally come home to his beloved Julianne. She cut fresh wild flowers from the meadow and strung them into delicate daisy chains to link the small wooden cross of the new grave to the massive white gravestone of her sister’s. It was a pretty little cross, handmade, it appeared—rustic, but strong.
Strange, though—upon it hung a lovely silver chain with a small copper ring on it, small enough to belong to a boy…
…just about her age.