“Good,” said the Master of Eyes. “Then we wait only for the prince, now.”
Of all Lord Thrasamund’s flaws, it could not be said that he was hasty or slipshod in his plans. He set his men about the chapel in a strict order, four at the door, six around the altar, and at least two in eachfar-flung area of the room, so that there would be no successful flight, no skirmish from which his side would not emerge the victor. Ninian shrank back, keeping near to Offal-Eater in his corner. There settled then a great silence, the air thickening as the odor of blood wafted from Agnes’s corpse and impugned the chapel with the scent of salt and death.
And in the silence and death-choked air, Liuprand arrived at last.
He came surging through the door, his gait uneven, encumbered by fright and urgency. He very well may have tripped of his own accord, but Thrasamund did not leave even that up to chance—the moment Liuprand stepped through the threshold, the men guarding the door each plunged their swords into the backs of his thighs.
With a mighty cry, he fell. The floor itself seemed to crack as his knees struck the stone. Blood spread beneath the fabric of his breeches, like a dark shape moving under ice. A stammering noise of pain he uttered, yet not a single word.
Gasping, he tried to get to his feet, but he seemed to struggle overmuch—not with his fresh and weeping wounds but rather with the enormity of his own body. The hugeness of his form labored against the efforts of his spirit. When he did rise, it was clumsily; he swayed like a drunkard as he staggered to the altar.
Finally he laid eyes on Agnes’s body. At first there appeared to be no recognition on his face. He regarded her with the dull stupor of a very young child, to whom even the mundane sights of the world are beyond conception. His mouth opened, wordless still in its uncomprehending horror.
But all those in attendance should have desired his unending silence. For when Prince Liuprand screamed, it was the most terrible sound.
It was an animal howl, and it lit the chapel with the fire of his anguish. Some of the men let their swords clatter to the ground as they hurried to clap their hands over their ears. From her corner, Ninian began to weep piteous tears. Offal-Eater scratched furiously at his skin, gnashing his teeth, letting spittle foam and trickle from his mouth.
Liuprand screamed and screamed. It turned into a bitter and broken wail. He clawed his way onto the altar and took Agnes’s lifeless body into his arms. Cradling her corpse to his chest, his great, powerful frame was racked with sobs.
“She died calling out your name.” Thrasamund stepped up to the altar, a cold smile on his face. “Would that you had arrived only a moment sooner. Can you hear it, my prince? Her helpless, terror-stricken screams? Can you imagine the agony of her final moments, believing that you had abandoned her?” His eyes were emerald but infinitely dark. “I shall never let your mind be empty of it. Her cries will haunt you, even in your dreams.”
His savage howling had now ceased; there was only the sound of his rasping, heaving sobs. The blood on Agnes’s body soaked through his doublet, while the wounds on his legs leaked still, staining the white stone of the altar red.
“Was all this anguish and torment for love?” Thrasamund’s voice grew low. “Or was it lust only, the basest mechanisms of your body? You could have had your pleasure with any common whore or even forced your own wife, if she were unwilling. Yet you bedded the princess but once. Forsaking her night after night, to lie with her cousin instead—a lady of less beauty, less esteem, less charm. I wonder if it was merely the perverse desire of a man who, so glutted on every privilege and virtue of life, found excitement in the pursuit of the only thing forbidden to him.”
“No,” Liuprand moaned, softly. “No, it was love, it has always been…”
A small glimmer of amusement danced in Thrasamund’s gaze. “Is that so? You were not driven at all by the desires of the flesh?”
Words were lost to Liuprand again. He choked on yet another sob, rocking Agnes’s body in his arms.
“Prove it, then,” Thrasamund said. His smile was colder and colder still. “I will believe you are such a creature who loves purely and chastely if you can resist your carnal urges now. Even in death, your lover is beautiful, is she not?”
There was no comprehension on Liuprand’s face, no thoughts in his mind and no feelings in his heart but that wretched and searing anguish. Thrasamund gestured to his men, and two of them came to join him at the altar.
Even as the men descended upon Liuprand, the prince still could not understand. He struggled in only a perfunctory manner, and vainly—he was too confounded by his agony, too grief-addled, to protest much. He held tight to Agnes’s body, his sobs scraping and strangled with fresh panic, as the men pressed him down onto his belly and began to strip off his bloody breeches.
Thrasamund looked on and did not speak, but the satisfaction in his eyes burned like sparks from a greenwood fire.
When the men had completed their task and the prince was naked to the waist, one of them looked up at their master with a furrowed brow. “He is not hard yet, my lord.”
“Then help him to surface his prurient passions. They are within him, I am sure, and they must be drawn out.”
Obedient to his lord, the man reached beneath Liuprand’s feebly writhing body. He found his manhood there, limp, and began to stroke him roughly to hardness. The other man grasped at Agnes’s gown, tugging to free her of it, and when he could not, he took his knife and slashed apart the velvet and silk. The fabric fell from her and left her corpse naked to the chapel air.
Naked, and pressed beneath her still-living lover. Had she not been dead, she would have felt Liuprand stiff against her thigh. For her earlier efforts she was still slick there, and the mingling of their blood wetted her further.
It was far easier than either of the men had imagined, to maneuver the prince’s form to its course. It was like fitting a wheel into a well-worn groove. Aided by the slipperiness of the blood, to be sure, but also by the familiarity of the act to both of them. Even in death, Agnes’s body seemed to yearn for him; it recognized his shape and readied itself to be filled.
And Liuprand, who lived, and whose mind was still, for some part,intact? Could he have protested more adamantly this violation? The deep heart of the matter may never be known. But what can be said is that he was once a creature who prided itself on its lack of greed, its renunciation of all such low impulses and embodied cravings. Yet now, in his love, he was ruined. His asceticism had been flayed from him; he was an animal skinned, his abject humanness laid bare. He desired her body even when her soul was gone from it. Thrasamund had spoken truly: Her corpse was as beautiful and sensual as her living form had been, and when Liuprand thrust into her, he groaned with relief and with need.
Beneath him, Agnes’s body was jostled up and down the altar, her head rolling limply with each forceful ingress. Thrasamund’s men had long since removed their hands, and he worked over her of his own accord, panting and heaving with exertion. His thrusts were long and vigorous and deep, almost violent in their desperation—perhaps this was the moment in which Liuprand’s mind fully escaped him. Or perhaps he knew he would never see his lady Agnes again and in some hideous way believed that this was the final expression of his great and irrevocable love.
With a strangled moan, he released himself inside her. He collapsed, shoulders rising and falling in hopeless heaviness. Blood drenched the place where their bodies were joined. Still cached in the corner with Offal-Eater, Ninian became ill; she doubled over and vomited all down her frock and onto the floor. Most of the men, by now, had turned their faces away. The ones that looked on did so with the blackest, most vulgar arousal in their eyes.
Only Thrasamund watched with little perceptible emotion. His satisfaction seemed incomplete, insufficient, as if even this gruesome scene had not been as vile a torment as he had hoped. But he did not allow this discontent to prevent him from action. He drew his dagger once more and cut the doublet from the prince’s back himself. Liuprand was as naked now as his slain lover.
“So now it has been proven,” said Thrasamund, his voice low. “You are no more noble a creature than all the rest, even for your crown andfor your precious Seraphine blood. You are base and crude, vile and depraved. What right have you to rule us as if you are a god and we a lowly, lesser race of men? If you had not taken her yourself, I would have given her body to be forced and defiled by my dogs. But you have let your true nature be known. You, Liuprand the Just, golden prince of Drepane, heir to the throne of Berengar, are no better than a beast.”
