I shook off the dream, to realize that there was in fact wetness on my face and hands. Not tears, but blood, and the sweat of the nightmare creature I grappled with in the dark.
Sweat. There was something I should remember about sweat, but I couldn't recall it. A hand tightened on my upper arm and I pulled away, a slick film left on my skin.
Around and around the mulberry bush, the monkey chased the weasel. But something was wrong, it was the weasel chasing me, a weasel with sharp white teeth that pierced my forearm. I hit out at it and the teeth let go, but the claws… around and around the mulberry bush…
The demon had me up against the wall; I could feel stone behind my head and stone beneath my grasping fingers, and a stone-hard body pressing hard against me, bony knee between my own, stone and bone, between my own… legs, more stony hardness… ah. A softness amidst the hardness of life, pleasant coolness in the heat, comfort in the midst of woe…
We fell locked together to the floor, rolling over and over, tangled in the folds of the fallen tapestry, washed in the drafts of cold air from the window. The mists of madness began to recede.
We bashed into some piece of furniture and both lay still. Jamie's hands were locked on my breasts, fingers digging bruisingly into the flesh. I felt the plop of dampness on my face, sweat or tears, I couldn't tell, but opened my eyes to see. Jamie was looking down at me, face blank in the moony light, eyes wide, unfocused. His hands relaxed. One finger gently traced the outline of my breast, from slope to tip, over and over. His hand moved to cup the breast, fingers spread like a starfish, soft as the grip of a nursing child.
"M-mother?" he said. The hair stood up on the back of my neck. It was the high, pure voice of a young boy. "Mother?"
The cold air laved us, whirling the unhealthy smoke away in a drift of snowflakes. I reached up and laid the palm of my hand along his cold cheek.
"Jamie, love," I said, whispering through a bruised throat, "Come then, come lay your head, man." The mask trembled then and broke, and I held the big body hard against me, the two of us shaking with the force of his sobbing.
It was, by considerable good luck, the unflappable Brother William who found us in the morning. I woke groggily to the sound of the door opening, and snapped to full consciousness when I heard him clear his throat emphatically before saying "Good morning to ye," in his soft Yorkshire drawl.
The heavy weight on my chest was Jamie. His hair had dried in bronze streaks and whorled over my breasts like the petals of a Chinese chrysanthemum. The cheek pressed against my sternum was warm and slightly sticky with sweat, but the back and arms I could touch were as cold as my thighs, chilled by the winter air gusting in on us.
Daylight streaming through the uncurtained window revealed the full extent of the wreckage I had only dimly realized the night before; smashed furniture and crockery littered the room, and the massive paired candlesticks lay like fallen logs in the midst of a tangle of torn hangings and scattered bedclothes. From the pattern of indentations impressing itself painfully into my back, I thought I must be lying on the indifferently executed tapestry of St. Sebastian the Human Pincushion; no great loss to the monastery, if so.
Brother William stood motionless in the doorway, jug and basin in hand. With great precision, he fixed his eyes on Jamie's left eyebrow and inquired, "And how do you feel this morning?"
There was a rather long pause, during which Jamie considerately remained in place, blanketing most of me from view. At last, in the hoarse tones of one to whom a revelation has been vouchsafed, he replied, "Hungry."
"Oh, good," said Brother William, still staring hard at the eyebrow, "I'll go and tell Brother Josef." The door closed soundlessly behind him.
"Nice of you not to move," I remarked. "I shouldn't like us to be responsible for giving Brother William impure thoughts."
Dense blue eyes stared down at me. "Aye, well," he said judiciously, "a view of my arse is no going to corrupt anyone's HolyOrders;notinitspresentcondition.Yours, though…" He paused to clear his throat.
"What about mine?" I demanded.
The bright head lowered slowly to plant a kiss on my shoulder. "Yours," he said, "would compromise a bishop."
"Mmmphm." I was, I felt, getting rather good at Scottish noises myself. "Be that as it may, perhaps you should move now. I don't suppose even Brother William's tact is infinite."
Jamie lowered his head next to mine with some care, laying it on a fold of tapestry, from which he peered sideways at me. "I dinna know how much of last night I dreamed and how much was real." His hand unconsciously strayed to the scratch across his chest. "But if half what I thought happened really happened, I should be dead now."