The Nameless Day by Sara Douglass

“Nowhere,” she said, twisting about slightly as she walked so he could hear. “It ends in a rock wall.”

There was a skittering sound to Thomas’ left, almost as if a light foot had inadvertently slipped on leaf litter, and he jerked his eyes toward the sound.

There was nothing but a thin scattering of trees and the soft dappling of late-afternoon shadows over the ground.

He looked forward again.

Odile was now standing facing him, a peculiar light in her eyes.

“He was there,” she said, and pointed to one side of the track.

Thomas squatted down, but there was nothing to see. “Where are his bones now?”

She didn’t reply, and after a moment Thomas turned to look at her.

Odile was grinning broadly, as if at a private jest. “My brother and sister and I took the bones and buried them,” she said. “We thought it was neater.”

“You thought it was neater?”

“They were jumbled all over the place, as if wild beasts—or worse—had scattered them.”

Thomas stood up. “And there was nothing but bones … and the cross?”

“Aye. There was nothing else. The bones were picked clean and bleached by their years in the sun.”

“What became of the cross?”

“My brother said it would do well enough to finance his apprenticeship in Nuremberg.”

Thomas bit back a bitter reply. Odile’s brother had taken the cross and sold it…

did they have no idea that—

“It was doing the dead friar no good,” Odile said, watching Thomas carefully,

“and had not done well by him. It were best it be put to some other use.”

“What do you mean ‘not done well by him’?”

“It hadn’t saved him, had it? It was useless gold. My brother took it and gave it back some use.”

Odile’s brother was obviously not a particularly devout man, Thomas thought.

Now Odile was looking toward the gorge. “All I know is that the friar called this place the Cleft,” she said.

Thomas turned and regarded the gorge as well. “The Cleft,” he murmured.

What was it about this place that made it so important?

Odile took his hand in hers. “Come,” she said. “There is no danger.”

And so, hand in hand—and Thomas not even wondering that he held the hand of a woman—they walked into the Cleft.

THEY WERE naked now, on the bed, and Margaret had her face turned slightly to one side, unnerved by Raby’s nakedness.

She had never seen a naked man previously. Not even her husband, Roger, and she had most certainly never seen a man in a state of arousal.

“You’re frightened,” he said, a hand caressing one of her breasts. “No need for fright.”

He lowered his mouth to her breast, taking her nipple in his mouth, then sighed contentedly.

Margaret didn’t know what to do, what did a woman do now?

Then Raby’s hand was sliding down between her legs, insistent, and she gasped, and stiffened in consternation.

“Do not tell me now that you have changed your mind,” Raby said, lifting his head, his voice hard, “for I shall choose not to hear it.”

“I have not changed my mind, my lord.”

“Then accept me with a little more willingness, my lady, or reduce me to such a cursed frustration that you shall rue the day you decided to offer me your body for your passage home!”

Tears sprang into Margaret’s eyes, but she forced herself to relax.

“This is just sport between you and I,” Raby said, his fingers now working back and forth at that place between her legs that, until now, Margaret had never let any

man or woman touch. “Mere sport, with no guilts and blames nor any suggestions of responsibility and dues owed. Yes?”

“Yes, my lord.”

“Sweet Meg,” he said, then, as he kissed her once more, rolled his strong body atop hers.

Margaret gasped, but it was not the feel of Raby’s heavy weight atop her that startled her, but the sense of magic so strong, so consuming, that it enveloped both her and the man who now sought to make love to her.

And he, so far away… and yet so near.

IT WAS a strange and utterly eerie place. Odile had called it peaceful, but Thomas found that every nerve in his body jangled the further they walked in.

Strange misshapen boulders lay strewn everywhere, their edges blurred, as if they had melted and run in some demonic furnace.

Small shrubs struggled out of dry, cracked earth, and blackened trees stood outlined against the sky. The entire gorge seemed arid and sterile. What was it about this gorge?

“There’s been a fire through here,” Thomas said, letting Odile’s hand go and walking forward a few paces.

“Oh, aye, there’s been a fire or two through here,” Odile said, and at the tone of her voice, Thomas turned and looked.

Odile was smiling at him… and she was also pulling her loose-necked dress down over her shoulders and breasts.

“This is a place of fires,” she said, and the dress dropped to the ground.

Underneath her dress Odile wore no underclothes. She stood there, still smiling, her head tilted to one side, one hand gently rubbing her protruding belly in circles.

For a moment Thomas could not believe what he saw. Odile? Naked? A temptress? He tried to look away, but was unable to. Her naked body fascinated him, and aroused him in a manner which made him feel instantly ashamed.

She was well-formed with the strong legs and arms of all peasant women. Her skin was white, marked here and there with pale freckles.

Her breasts were large and stretched tight with milk, and her belly was so rounded it formed an invitation all of itself.

Thomas’ breath caught in his throat, Odile stood there like an ancient goddess of fertility, her pregnant belly making her more desirable than had it been flat and virginal, and Thomas recalled the pleasant sensation he’d felt when she’d pressed against him in the forest. “Odile,” Thomas managed to whisper.

There was no thought in his head of fleeing, or even of castigating her for her blatant display.

All he could do was stare and lust for her as he had rarely lusted for any woman in his life. His lust was so consuming, so total, Thomas vaguely wondered if Odile had slipped something into the meal she’d fed him. Some witch-brewed potion so that he could not resist her.

And he should resist her, Thomas knew that, but, oh Lord Jesu …

Odile walked over to Thomas, and lifted one of his unresisting hands to her breast.

“Tom,” she whispered, and pressed herself against him.

“I… I…” Thomas cleared his throat. “Odile, what has come over you?” It was inane, he knew that, but better to question her than to question what he felt, and how he was reacting to her.

“You are a very wondrous man,” she whispered. “Given over to a most extraordinary quest,”

Lord God, did she know as much as did Marcel? Had Odile also been sent to him by tie archangel to guide his steps?

What else could explain this learned, educated, noble-spirited woman living the life of a peasant in the forests of Germany?

Her hands were moving over his body, rucking up his robe here and there, and Thomas found himself completely unresisting as she very slowly pulled his robe over his shoulders and head, allowing it to fall softly to the ground behind him.

“Odile…” he said, wanting to resist yet more, but aware that, strangely, his hands were now moving of their own accord as they stripped away his underclothes.

Nothing seemed normal in this encounter. The day light seemed dimmed, the sounds of the forest muted. Thomas thought that perhaps he was caught in some enchantment, but by now, as Odile’s hands toyed with his body, he found himself unable to raise even the slightest worry about what he was doing … or what he was about to do.

He put his hands on Odile’s shoulders, and pushed her to the ground.

Odile fell heavily, but she laughed, and rolled immediately to her back, lifting and spreading her legs.

Within a heartbeat he was kneeling on the ground before Odile, and then atop her, completely given over to his lust now, driven to a distraction of desire by her soft laugh, and even softer hands against his flesh.

For an instant Thomas remembered how it had been with Alice, how they had spent a long, gentle time rousing each other before they’d actually committed their sin of fornication … but Thomas was not capable of a long, gentle arousement.

There was no thought in his head for soft caresses, nor for any words of reassurance or affection. Not now, not in this state.

All he wanted to do— now, now, now—was to drive himself inside her, and feel her softness and warmth wrap itself about him.