She turned her head slightly, though not in refusal. She’d learned the lesson early on that to refuse me was to suffer punishment.
“For prayer,” I said. “Kneel.”
She knelt. And I made myself look at the wall again while I recited the Litany of Examination under my breath.
“Open my eyes to what is hidden. Let no falsehood pass unchallenged before my sight. I will not look away...”
But I looked. I didn’t mean to. My eyes dropped before I’d given them permission, and the shape of her was... exquisite.
I looked at the ceiling. The ceiling was made of stone, and that stone was cold, indifferent. I focused on a crack in the mortar above the window and breathed through my nose until the image behind my eyes faded.
She knows exactly what she’s doing.
She was staring at the floor. She wasn’t doing anything.
That’s how the demon works.
“Bend further,” I said. My voice came out rougher than I intended.
She looked up at me and swallowed hard, but did as she was told. I caught a glimpse of the flesh between her legs, and it nearly undid me. I had to grip the stone of the wall to keep standing.
“Dress and sleep. We’re done for the evening.”
Something moved across her face, something like calculation. She was always calculating. I hated that about her. There was nothing restful in her face, even in her mostcooperative moments. Something behind her eyes was always watching, always filing things away. It was the demon. It was always the demon.
She dressed, then lay down on her pallet and faced the wall.
I knelt at the altar and began the evening prayers.
I prayed for two hours, but it wasn’t enough.
The candles had burned down to their stubs. I replaced them without breaking the litany, then pressed my forehead to the cold stone of the altar floor and asked the Boundless to take the heat from me, to render me clean and purposeful, to be an instrument and nothing more.
The scourge hung on the wall beside the altar. Seven cords, knotted at the ends with blades. I’d made it myself at sixteen, in the monastery, under Brother Eamon’s instruction. The making of it was itself a form of prayer.
I took it down.
The first stroke was always the hardest. After that, the body’s own shock made the rest easier. I kept my breathing even. I counted. The Texts prescribed seven, but seven had stopped being sufficient three weeks ago. I did twelve. The welts overlaid each other in ways I recognized; I knew my own back the way a cartographer knows a map he’s drawn himself.
The fourteenth stroke drew blood. I knew by the heat of it.
I felt cleaner, felt the hot, clarifying burn of genuine penitence.Thiswas real.Thiswas what it meant to be serious about the work. Any man could profess purity. It cost nothing. The test was what you did when purity was inconvenient.
I replaced the scourge on its hook and sat back on my heels.
Behind me, she breathed slowly and evenly. She’d been asleep for an hour. I hadn’t checked since I began the prayers, but I could hear her now. It was the particular rhythm of genuine sleep, not performed stillness.
Do you suppose Lancelot fucked her?
I didn’t turn around.
You don’t even know if she’s a maiden. Wouldn’t that be answer enough if she is not?
I don’t know what happened between her and Lancelot,I argued back. That voice had grown more and more persistent over the last few days. Arguing and demanding.
She’s right there. You could put your finger inside her and see if she is still pure.
No.
