The Book of the Blue House

Cal turned over and eyed the waterclock which read that it was nearly the seventh hour. He stretched, and smacked his dry mouth before drinking from the water glass on his night table. He turned around and drew the covers over himself, pulling Gabriel closer to him. Cal had been sleeping alone for a while now, and these last few days with Gabriel had been welcome. Gabriel had his own suite downstairs along with Nijarin and Osellar, and Obala and Sara and Nikon were usually there with him. Would he want to leave it permanently? As Gabriel, so sweet looking, stretched and wrapped his arms tighter around Cal, and Calon surrendered to the warm soft skin and the strength of Gabriel’s body, he thought, we can worry about it later.

If Lorne came in this morning talking about how they all had to be up early, he’d tell the big lump to go and fuck himself. Besides, Matt and Kenton were in the kitchens and Brian probably would be as well. Cal’s duty was to accompany the Lord Abbot to the palace, and he needed plenty of beauty sleep for that. He and Resilyn were to meet the Abbot in his chambers at nine o’clock, and they would go to the palace from there.

Oddly enough, he was not excited about the palace. He had been in large houses and even in parts of the Kingsboro itself. It was the being asked to accompany Abbot Hyrum which he took pride in, and because it was pride and not fear he could sleep for one more hour in the darkness of this room.

Part of him wondered what was going on next door. Conn, so very handsome, so… pure looking Cal thought, had only arrived a few days ago. Golden the boy was. Tall but not too tall, golden limbed with cinnamon colored hair and a tinge of gold in his eyes. He could have been a Blue, maybe should have been. Cal was sure he had come to the Temple a virgin. What was Derek doing with him? It was clear Derek was in love with him, and it’s not even that it was rare for a Blue to fall in love with someone who wasn’t and take him into his bed. But it was rare for him to do so with a dependent and in the very Temple. Would Conn understand when Derek had to serve in the Rooms or in the Sanctuary and go to other men? Would he understand when Derek, being a man, wanted to sleep with other Blues? Or would Derek his own new feelings? Things weren’t so simple. Cal knew that now. If Gabriel kept coming to him every night, Cal wouldn’t really want to go sleep with other men either. He was no longer curious about other men and, what was more, curiosity wasn’t as much of a motivator as people pretended. Derek wasn’t the kind of person who, between his Temple duties and Conn, would recreationally try out sleeping with others. However, all priests were responsible for training postulants and novices, and Derek might have to sleep with Brian or with Matteo for that matter, but this was something different.

And all of that something was none of his business. Rosy cheeked Gabriel gave a grunt and a snore that said it was none of his business either. Yes, they would have to arrange things differently. Nialla was no simpleton. She had taken her few things down to Gabriel’s rooms with Sara, and she was there half the time allowing for Derek to come back to his own room. But Derek had not come to his own room. There was a time when in this city and in wealthy cities, whole families had slept in large beds, and generally naked too. If one or two wanted more privacy, then they rolled themselves in private blankets, and Lorne had not wanted Derek and Conn to depart, and so they hadn’t,. and like people of old, or like Blues in general, Lorne was not bothered by their lovemaking, though Cal knew Lorne had been making love to Derek before, and wondered if Conn would mind if Lorne made love to him again?

Still, all this supposed that Derek was stupid and heartless and didn’t see into any of these things, and as far as Cal estimated, Derek saw into all things quicker even than the Abbot himself. If Derek Annakar could figure out how to care for Conn, there was no need for Cal to.

Calon Everidon admitted that he was sort of a liar, for as nine o’ clock approached, he could no longer stay in bed, and Gabriel was already stirring. These days, Gabriel spent most of his time in the classrooms, and little of it in the blue rooms. It was certain that one day he would probably be a chief priest and perhaps even the new Hyrum of this house, or of another, probably toward the north. They opened the door off Cal’s room to enter the bathroom where other Blues were walking in, equally naked, but many of them yawning as if this was time for bed, and for some of them it may well have been. Gabriel and Cal cleaned themselves and washed their mouths, and then went back to bed and made love quickly after closing the door. Cal seldom closed the door into the kitchen and the rest of the suite of rooms, but this morning he felt like this was for him and Gabriel, and he was conscious of Derek and Conn, conscious somehow not of their listening, but of their new peace being interrupted.

He and Gabriel were done quickly, for when you had someone coming back to your bed every night, you could afford to be done quickly, afford to finish exhausted and laughing and then lie back in bed and catch your breath. They both went back to the bathroom again, but they bathed alone, for Cal had taken salt with him and a ewer full of river water he kept by the bed. This morning, in the entourage of the Abbot, he should be purified. He was remembering his ordination as priest three, almost four years ago, the change from Cal the boy on the streets into Calon the priest.

His novitiate had lasted half a year, and when it was done, his ordination was scheduled for May Day, one of the eight points of the year where there could be ordinations. Usually there was only one boy initiated at a time, so this was his special day. Cal’s year there had been no one during the Spiringtide and Derek had been ordained at Candlemas. The morning of his ordination, Cal rose far earlier than it was now, and made the preparations he knew to make in readying himself for a man. He dressed in the pale blue hoodless robe of a novice, and then waited for the first years to come to his door. It was strange how nervous he was as he heard them singing:

I come to the garden alone while the dew

is still on the roses,

And the voice I hear falling on my ear,

And the Lord Adaon discloses…

It is still early in the year and barely light, and they are there with their candles in glasses, grinning at him. There are Derek and big tall Lorne who is a year above him, whose beds he has shared often. And Jylis is here and Rearis and Tomlin who would leave in a year. A procession of eight first years, and they flank him, singing as they move toward the sanctuary whose lights are dimmed from the end of the first morning service, the place still smelling of incense. But the red doors are locked, for though the temple never closes, the morning of an initiation the sanctuary is locked.

I stay in the garden with Him,
Though the night around me is falling.
But He bids me go; through the voice of woe
His voice to me is calling.

They lead him to the sanctuary to revere Adaon and make an incense offering, to sing to him, and then they lead him past the altar with its great image, to the dimness down the hall beside the altar, and then turning to another hall which must be behind the image, and to a door on his left side. There they leave him, reverent, even in their smiles, and the other priests return to the sanctuary to chant while Cal opens the door to the dark room. He does not know the Blue who is waiting for him, and neither do those who brought him down here, and whoever it is will never tell. Now this one is the One. The priest he lays with is Adaon to him, the God himself consecrating his beloved. In the years since, Cal had been Adaon to every man who comes to the consecration rooms, including the novices on the morning of their initiations. They are always boys he does not know well, who will not know his touch, or his gestures. On occasion they have been boys he does not even like, but it did not matter, because he was God to them and in God’s place.

In the room of consecration, where usually devotees offer themselves to Blues, Cal, who has by now been with many Blues, experiences this one in the dark. What he would do what he would not, what would make him uncomfortable or frightened is already known. When they are done, when they have recovered, there is no speech, and out the other door they go into the garden that is in the very center of the first part of the Temple. Cal has been here many times since, and there are windows all looking down into the garden, and a great sky light, but all night before, Blues brought the great covering down over this place so that Cal and his lover only know the garden by feel, Cal must hold onto the man’s hand, and the hand is tender. It guides him into the pool, washing sweat and saliva and semen from his body, washing him in the soap crystals until he rises, and the man dries him in the darkness, and then, back in the room, pulls a robe over him, and departs silently back into the garden with only a kiss on both cheeks. When Cal has left the room he blinks in the dimness of the hall light, and comes out into the sanctuary where his brothers are waiting for him, for he is now cloaked in the hooded robe of deep, smoky blue.

They gather around Cal and sing, clapping him on the shoudlers and embracing him

Adaon save our blessed priest,
Long live our beloved priest,
Lord save our child;
Send him joy,
Happiness, bliss,
True to live among us,
Adaon bless this priest!

The song is many versed and they march him through the temple, up the Great Stairway, seven stories to the great chapel. He is breathless when they reach the top. In the great chapel, the others have heard the young men coming, and the whole of the high chapel is filled with singing to meet theirs.

There he is brought in to them robed in blue, and brought to the altar where the Abbot kneels and anoints his feet in oil and then his palms, and reaches quickly into his robe to anoint his hip and touches his lips and his brow saying “Here God kisses you, and here God kisses you and here God kisses you,” and then, at last, hands him a bag of coins.

“And what is the bag of coins?” The Abbot asks

“The price of my prostitution.”

“And what will you do with it?”

Cal opens the bag and spills it contemptuously on the ground. The gold and silver coins gleam.

“I am a spouse, no whore, a lover and no prostitute. I am the bodyservant of the God of Love, and I cannot be bought.”

They all bend their head and murmur the sacred word of assent, and then the Abbot kisses him on both cheeks and says, “You are duly consecreated and duly made a Priest of Adaon,” and Cal is led from the hall while the high morning service begins.

That service is a long one. It must be. For the first bathing concecrated him as a whore devoted to the pleasure of men and took him from his common life, but this bath concecrates him as a bride and bridge groom. He is watered and scrubbed and gently washed, his arms, pits, his sex, even between his buttocks. Derek runs a cloth across him as gently as if he were a baby, for he is a baby, being born again, and in the next chamber the priests still sing. Now the cold river water is poured on him, over his sex, over his ass, over his nipples and his head as he shudders, and the salt is sprnklied on him and the water again, and he remembers what was told him.

“This was done for you when you were but a child, and it will never be done for you again until you are dead. These are the brothers who will do that last service.”

Since then, Cal has done this too, gently washing the bodies of his brothers, his uncles, his other fathers, and preparing them to, at last, join the Lord Adaon forever. He feared this death once, but now there is no fear, only beauty. He is completely safe here. He remembers it was red headed, sparkling eyed Gabriel who tenderly massaged him with oil and combed his copper hair and slipped on the close fitting drawers of Blue Priests and then the under garment and now a snow white hooded robe, the robes worn only at these special times and that most people never saw. Cal remembers wanting to cry that day for he could always look seductive, always be sexy, but here he looks like something else altogether, and even he can barely look at the beauty.

He is led into the hall with rose petals strewn before him, and now they are all in white. Now the Abbot declares, “You are the Beloved of the Beloved. You are the Priest of the High Priest, you are the apple of His eye and though all touch you none shall touch you. You are a virgin forever, belonging only to God. You are a virgin forever belonging only to your brothers. You are a virgin forever beonging only to yourself.”

The Abbot slips the silver open palm over Cal’s head, and as it hangs on its chain, the weight of it is cool on Cal’s chest.

This morning as he performs the rituals himself, and the silver hand touches his breast again, he remembers again who he is and he cherishes the dignity of a Blue Priest, the beloved, of Adaon forever, a spouse who gives himself to all that all might know God, but who can never be bought.