The Blood: A Denouement: Chapter 35

When Jason was younger and thought himself a musician, he carried a guitar across campus and had a girlfriend named Sophia. He said that when they made love they “were one”. Many, many women and an ex wife later he knows that was a lie. But since the moment Hagano entered him, since the moment Marabeth and he came together and this ghostly ancestor appeared in them like the third member of a nighttime trinity, he knows what it is to be “one” with something. It is easier to slide back into Hagano’s mind than it is to slide into water...

In paradisum deducant te Angeli; in tuo adventu suscipiant te martyres, et perducant te in civitatem sanctam Jerusalem. Chorus angelorum te suscipiat, et cum Lazaro quondam paupere æternam habeas requiem.

He had heard it all that day, the words he did not know, a whisper under a whisper, an incomplete memory in his ears.

Now he heard it full, and loud, ringing off the old stone walls, only, these were not old stone wall. They were thick, the windows thin, and through their narrow eyes motes of dust caught in sunlight as dreary as the day slowly swirled down only to be lost in the rising haze of incense and the light of beeswax candles. The women and some men, in black or close to black as they could be, stood about the body with their candles raised. Over the altar, the gold crucifix was raised, and beneath the altar, old, but only old for a barbarian, with a golden circlet on the head that was just about to grey, was the King of the Franks.

Suddenly the voice of one monk rose from the others, singing

Dies iræ, dies illa,

dies tribulationis et angustiæ,

dies calamitatis et miseriæ…

dies tenebrarum et caliginis, dies nebulæ et turbinis, dies tubæ et clangoris super civitates munitas et super angulos excelsos.

Their voices rose from where they stood before the body of Clovis

Quantus tremor est futurus,
Quando Judex est venturus,
Cuncta stricte discussurus!

Hagano was there. When Jason stood firm, he stood beside him, but when he moved freely about, he saw the great chamber of the church with him in it. He held no candle and his cloak was clasped with a silver brooch. He was not attached to the court, but well known in the Burgund lands. A free lord. He ought to have been here in what was a grand church in this time.

He had seen her before, and now she looked back at him… frankly. Wrapped in a fur cloak dark as night. Her golden hair was a thick ponytail that glistened against it. As the monks sang on, she moved through the crowd, coming close to him.

Judex ergo cum sedebit,
Quidquid latet apparebit:
Nil inultum remanebit.

“Will the Judge his seat attaineth?” she whispered, standing beside him, and Hagano was surprised to see that she was of a height with him.

“Excuse me?”

“You do not know your Latin,” she almost purred. No, but her voice was like a growl. Her eyes were almond and pale grey. He felt like prey under her gaze.

“I know it well enough.”

She quoted:

“When the Judge his seat attaineth,
And each hidden deed arraigneth,
Nothing unavenged remaineth.”

While the monks sang in Latin, she continued in whispered tones:

“What shall I, frail man, be pleading?
Who for me be interceding,
When the just are mercy needing?”

“Are you a pious woman?” Hagano asked.

“No,” the lady said, “and Clovis was not a pious man.”

As the incense rose, obscuring the sight of the dead king as well as his smell, she continued, “And if there is a hell, he is certainly burning in it.”

Hagano crossed himself, but only half in mockery.

They remained for the hymn, while some came in and out, and it was after the priest had intoned the Gospel that the golden haired woman made a gesture to lead Hagano away.

“We have put in a good appearance,” she said as they left the sanctuary for the stone steps of the church.

It was winter, and this was Paris, though a far cry from any Paris Jason had dreamed of. They needed boots and heavy cloaks as they moved through the snow of this city and past the long low stone houses.

“I could not bear the hypocrisy of receiving Communion,” the lady said.

“You are unbaptized?”

“Everyone is baptized. That’s not what I said.”

Not missing a beat, after she had arched her head to look at the pale blue winter sky, she said, “I go south tomorrow and leave this place with no intentions of returning. Should we go to your apartments or mine?”

Now Jason felt the lust rising in him, and he almost rejoiced when Hagano said, “Are your apartments charming?”

“They are very charming,” the lady said. She smiled and held out her hand so that he saw the edge of a deep red sleeve.

“Let us go to them.”

He had not known who this woman was, but she must have been wealthy, and she led him back to nothing less than Clovis’s own palace. The palace, this overgrown combination of a villa and fortress, was old, for Paris was old, still sometimes called by its Roman name, Lutetia. Quietly, sometimes laughing, now and again turning to kiss him and pull him down into her cloak, the lady led Hegano through the maze of halls into her chambers. The palace was warm with the working hypocausts, and especially warm as they watched the snow fall on the otherside of the mullioned glass.

“It’s almost like Rome,” she said, as they sipped hot wine. “Except Rome isn’t this cold.”

“Rome also isn’t this clean,” Hagano said.

“You’ve been?”

“Once.”

“They say,” she said, “that one really ought to see Constantinople.”

“Maybe I will.”

“Maybe we will together.”

“Must you leave tomorrow?”

“I daresay we should both leave tomorrow,” the woman said, sitting down on the edge of the bed. Hagano longed to touch her firm breasts, suck those young nipples again.

“Clovis may have been half a monster, but at least he held his kingdom together. While he lived my people half loved him and fought to defend ourselves from him, but mark my word, his kingdom is about to fall apart.”

“You are no fool,” Hagano said.

“Did you think I was?”

When Hagano did not answer, she said, “I must travel to my home, to my mother. I have been at this court for three years. You, doubtless, have travels of your own.”

“I was bound to Kent. In the Angle Lands. The King had cousins there and I have allegiances.”

The woman bowed and said, “I must return to Burgundy.”

“You are a Burgund?”

She nodded.”

“I do not even know your name,” Hagano said.

“And did not need to. Unless of course you wished to call it out.”

As if her name was such a personal thing she could not speak it naked, she wrapped her dressing gown about her and said, “My name is Leinghelde daughter of Mechtild, Princess of Eburodunum.”

There was no gloating in her, but her wolves eyes settled on Hagano, waiting for him to take it in.

He took it in with the same feeling, at the same time as Jason.

“You….”

“Am your daughter.”

Jason fought his revulsion, and the desire to flee from the vision. He was disgusted with himself as if he’d had sex with his own child, and he realized that he had, for he was in Hagano and Hagano was in him. But he remained while Leinghelde spoke.

“Mother said she would send me to you one day. I decided I would send myself. This was always the plan.”

“Sin was the plan?”

“You sound like a Christian.”

“Do not act,” Hagano began, “as if father and daughter lay together in the old days.”

“I know nothing of the old days and I doubt you do either,” Leinghelde said. “But father and daughter have lain together here. I was born to the Wolf. Wolf of Wolf. This is how it shall be if we are to create the family. My mother was the beginning, but I am your bride. Flesh of flesh and blood of your blood. Cling to me.”

He gazed upon this beautiful woman, who could have been no more than sixteen—yes, he saw that now, but whose eyes were full of an ancient confidence. She resembled Mechtild yes, but he saw… Signy, the sister he had slain, Yes, her aunt. He saw Signy again and she repeated, her long white hands touching him, “Cling… to…. Me.”

That first time she had been a beautiful and mysterious woman, and the things that had taken place in her bed were exquisite. This time, knowing who she was, images of his fierce nights with Mechtild, her fingers raking his back, combined with those first times he had known his sister and the last time, before he had killed her for her treachery and taken her power into him. Image upon image, sensation upon sensation mounted until he gave a strangled cry and, his teeth sunk in her shoulder, her fingernails dug into his back, he pushed himself deep into Leinghelde as he could. Groaning, he came, and came, and passed out until Jason McCord lay blinking in the woods, naked, his stiff cock in his hand, coated in his hot, thick semen.

Much has been revealed, but there is more to come. There are only two.... albeit large..... chapters of our long tale (tail?) left. Brace yourself in the upcoming couple of weeks for the end of our story.