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  “Thank you” Adam said and she smiled. Jakob observed them, seeing the thread of innocent love sewn in her heart, the naiveté of the king, and thanked her as she passed.

  “Lovely young woman” Jakob toasted. The king lifted the chalice to his lips and watered down the gamy roast until he could swallow without gagging. Beatrice tended him with affection. Jakob watched the moment die out in the miraculous ignorance of men.

  “Beatrice is a childhood friend” Adam replied as she cleared the table and left the room.

  “What a fortunate young man.”

  “What?”

  “To have already known her. You have a foot in the door, or so they say.”

  “We are friends.”

  “There’s merit in friendship.”

  “She’s my servant.”

  “In a kingdom filled with princesses.” The king shifted in his seat and gave Jakob a look regarding his liberal tongue. Jakob set the utensils aside, dabbed his mouth with the cloth, and looked to Adam. “All I am saying, sire, is that you have a beautiful friend in a kingdom with so very few people, and no queen.” Adam gave him a smirk, as sardonic as someone with lockjaw given dentures, when Jakob reiterated, “You’ll want a successor, not for the kingdom, but for you name.

  “You’ll want blood” Jakob repeated.

  ~ 4

  Sea lifted off the sandstone and filled the shallow corridor with its aroma. Fire crackled and spat from the torches, leaving embers to drift through the dampened air like firefly escaping a nest of flame. Jakob felt excitement marbled with fear as he stood above the bales of saltwater lambasting the base of the stairs. The king lead Jakob who held the rocky wall as his guide.

  “Is it safe?” Jakob asked as a gush of air rolled through the cave, electrifying Adam’s hair on end, then receded into the ocean for another strike.

  “Clearly!” Adam laughed. “The thrill is in the danger, my friend.” Jakob looked to the king, then back to the waves, and clenched his fists. Adam stepped closer to the jet, listening to the foundation crack as the tide burst into the air and left a cloud of droplets raining from the ceiling. The king dove into the water and disappeared. Jakob stepped out into the flickering sunlight and watched the shadows stretch through the depths till the torrent returned and collided the well. The chill of the spray rushed over him then evaporated in the torches heat. Jakob’s heart raced. Do I love my king?

  He leapt in as the water swelled and sank, gripped in the cold and jettisoned into the abyss. He felt alive and sure of death, when a slim beam of light opened through the wake. Follow the glow, Adam instructed. The wave drummed, flogging him with loose rocks, and cold water quaked in his ears. Follow the water as it pulls. Fight as it pushes, lest it crush you into the rocks. At the first reprieve, surface!

  It whisked Jakob out of the fisher into the garish light. Salt water swirled about his head in a diadem of confusion. Then a shimmer broke the surface. He kicked against the undercurrent, feeling his lungs swell as the air they held soured. A cold rush pushed down on his shoulders, and he fought through the last rung in death’s snare till his head emerged.

  A thunderous crash deafened in his ears as a sheet of film disintegrated over his head. Jakob opened his eyes, blinded by the warmth, and found the rock wall striped with saltwater and kelp. He looked around to find Adam closer to the horizon, a safe ways from the cliff. Jakob laughed at his matted fur to which Adam smiled back. I’d braid it for such occasion, Jakob thought.

  “Would you like to hear how many men died there?” Adam yelled. Two, Jakob thought. Us.

  “Only those who tempted it, I’m sure!”

  “Follow me. You won’t appreciate the beauty of something so deathly till you live in the face of it. Stay near, doing as I do.” Adam dove, sinking into the waves as Jakob swallowed deep, pressing his lungs with room for more air, then swam after the king. Jakob trailed Adam, when the waves clapped in muffled thunder and tumbled him in its wake. He steadied himself and caught up to the king.

  Both men rested at the mouth of the cave, suspended in the airless heavens. Jakob slid his fingers against the rock, a bar borne by the seasons, watching the colors of his hand warp into green through the ocean’s hue. Rays of sunlight pierced the water with igneous spears partitioning the darkness. Jakob felt invincible, understanding this ineffable power as a sleeping giant in the washing waves of rest. Nothing felt as pure as that moment of beauty and might. The mystery of death unraveled before his eyes, no longer hidden and threatening. Life became vibrant.

  The king swam up to him and dragged him deeper into the riptide, jetting the men into the cavern. Blackness swallowed him, all movement ceased. Fear returned in panic as the cold unfurled like the hands of the dead pulling them back into the watery tomb. Jakob reached out and felt a chilly platform. Water crept from Adam’s fur as a dim light flickered over his shoulder like a spearhead fresh out of the furnace.

  “Hurry” Adam said, pulling Jakob toward the torch atop the stairs. “The dead desire nothing but company.” Jakob stumbled, pulsing with excitement and terror. To be so deep in the grip of death, harnessed in the seat of power, made reality paltry on his return.

  “I have never” Jakob panted. Adam laid a hand on his back, steadying him from tumbling the stairs. “Thank you. I have never felt so alive.”

  “Thank the men rotting on the seas flat” he laughed as they fell against the last step. “Good men built this cave, but it was too late when they found that they were excavating below sea level. While in the trenches, scraping closer to the outer wall-” Adam waved his hand as if wiping away their lives.

  “Those closest were lucky” the king said. “The earth crushed them; they were gone without a sigh. But those closer to the stairs saw their death, as wave after wave gave way with mud and rock and saltwater, slashing and ripping, filling this very place with screams of horror. Soon they were swept out, their bodies, their screams, their tools, as if they were never here. They were good men.

  “It is as if the cave always was. That was her first instruction to us, a lesson to always respect her and her power, that nature has no governing agent but instinct.

  “But it was all necessary, in a way. You’ve seen how timely it is to come in and out of her. If the tide is too low than you’ll fall into the ocean, waiting half a day before it raises level with the cave again. Most men don’t have the strength to tread water for so long, and no mortal can swim around; fatigue slips them into their graves. If the water is high, the cave is flooded and the surface is at too great a height from the opening to swim; if a fool tries against the waves, the swell will push him back down so that he will never reach the surface. He too will perish. But in the middle of the tide, raising or lowering, she for a few brief moments allows her travelers safe passage. It is excellent in its security, but unforgiving and easily misjudged.”

  Jakob strained his hair through his fingers as the king’s words settled on his mind. The chill was invigorating. Has it been so long since he tasted the salt of the sea? And his daughter, what of her? The king will provide; he has been generous thus far. Jakob looked back to the stairwell. The tides rushed the steps, slithering as wet serpents, leaving the air fetid with hissing as the watery tracks crept back into the dark. How many dead bodies are out there?

  ~ 5

  With every breath Jakob fought the urge to vomit as apple fragrance ambled from the tanner’s mouth. The man sat across the dining table, plucking the skin with his blackened nails, and mobbed the apple core with a toothless jaw. Beady eyes, gleaming with hunger, watched Jakob, wary of him. Jakob is a strange man from a strange land, the tanner thought. He’s someone to be watched. Jakob swallowed hard, trying to forget his manners, and stared at the plate garnished with leaves of boiled cabbage, pheasant, and leeks. Adam gnawed the bone while his mane scrubbed the limp skin dangling beneath, and rolled his tongue through the fat, wresting the oils from the meat.

  “Nothing like some good flesh, is there” Adam said as
he bobbed the leg at Jakob.

  “No, your majesty.” Jakob feigned a smile and swallowed spit marbled in lard. “How many people do you have in your kingdom? Your immediate kingdom, I mean.” Adam made a futile attempt to wipe clean his mouth covered in hair, then locked his fingers together and rested on his elbows.

  “People are free to go and come as they please.”

  “Where did you come from?” the tanner interrupted, brandishing a fork stuck with a waxy giblet. The bulbous skin tag resting on his upper eyelid twitched, flapping like a tongue. The side of his mouth drooped as he spoke and drizzled food when he ate. Loyal and hardworking, he was a hasty man who from a young age, looking old in his youth, worked for the kingdom. He was naturally gifted at skinning hides, preserving pelts, curing, and all things common to bolstering.

  “From a ways” Jakob replied.

  “I’d like to know” the king added.

  “Gascony.”

  “Don’t they eat pheasant there?” the tanner stabbed his fowl.

  “We usually eat egg.” Jakob sat his napkin back into his lap and took up the glass of wine. “We don’t have a strong migration. You can eat bird eggs, several of them, but you can only eat the bird once.”

  “Have you come up with a name yet?” Adam asked. Jakob dabbed his mouth with a tattered cloth and swallowed, pushing down the greasy stripe of flesh, then drained the goblet of sour malt to coup the gamey taste.

  “Gabrielle.”

  “That’s a beautiful name” Adam said. The tanner grunted, shedding his sneer.

  “A babe?” the tanner asked. His eyes, radiating with disapproval, became soft. The man has some spirit, Jakob thought.

  “Yes” Jakob replied.

  “When do you wish to go back to her?” Adam asked as the tanner sat baring his teeth in a constipated grin.

  “If the winter ever lets up, I will just visit. There is no work for me there, and I need to support her. What I had was left to a wet nurse, who I will continue to send recompense. That’s why I am here, sire, to garnish my wages and allocate her enough means to live.”

  “Leaving a baby behind?” the tanner asked. He raked the fork across his plate, pushing the chitterlings to the rim of the dish, and turned toward the king with a look that demanded retribution.

  “Is this your only option?” Adam asked.

  “It’s the most expedient” Jakob replied. Adam nodded and sat back into his chair while the tanner turned his head back toward Jakob with a scowl that promised a future objection. “Sire, may I plant in your garden? I took this” he said, withdrawing a rose from his jacket. “It reminds me of her, my most beautiful Gabrielle. This is all I want to plant, and it will be my full responsibility, and mine alone, to tend it.”

  “It will wilt” Adam said. Buried. Standing. All things wilt; the roots and the people. “But you may have your garden.” The tanner held his scowl and forked the gizzard into his mouth as Jakob smiled and tucked the rose back into the inner flap. Jakob marked his unkindly features and wondered how much rum and sin would cause such harshness.

  What’s eating you, Jakob thought.

  ~ 6

  17 years later.

  Adam sat at Jakob’s bedside as he gasped for air. The king laid an extra quilt over the covers and tucked the ends under the mattress as Jakob hacked and spit phlegm into a pail of vomit. Frost hung in the air like mustard gas, attacking the polyps in Jakob’s lungs. Adam looked on as a child standing before an intruder, helpless and wanting of embrace. They lived on the precipice of death as the days grew into shadows, waiting from the day Jakob arrived, the hour the doctor diagnosed the fluid in his lungs, till the first cough that brought the blood on his lips, for his death. His breath carried the scent of rot and face shone a soul in departure, leaving in its wake the remnants of life.

  “Breathe easy” Adam said. He brought a kettle of tea, poured the lukewarm fluid into a cup, and set it to Jakob’s lips. He sipped it and coughed mist into the air as Adam wiped his mouth and pulled the sheets back up to his shoulders.

  “I can’t” Jakob moaned as he rolled to his side and dry heaved into the basin.

  “You need to have something.” Adam leaned forward with the cup. “Your body isn’t going to fight this without nourishment. Drink.” Jakob raised his hand to the lip of the cup and pushed it away; the king stared at the withered digits, as sallow as moon dust. Jakob winced in pain, wheezing, rotting, drowning like a sailor with a punctured lung. His eyes sunk into dark pits and skin sagged off his cheekbones like expired taffy. Death impaled him, now it was just a matter of time in which its full effect would be seen. Adam laid his hand on his arm, as if touching the bones of his ancestors, and bowed his head.

  “I never knew my father. Or my mother. There was a war before I came into the age of reason. I was left with a remnant of servants to nurse me. Then when you came you were the first man I knew that wasn’t a retainer. I finally had someone in my home, not serving my home.”

  “Adam” Jakob whispered as he set his hand on the furry arm and squeezed with the last of his strength. The king lifted his head, found his mouth agape, then bit into the sheets and wept.

  ~ 7

  Adam threw his royal cloak over the table then set Jakob’s body on the slab. He placed a basin on the floor beneath the head and, with hot water drawn from the cauldron, mixed a compound of ginger and wine, cayenne pepper with rose petal for color, and steeped it into a tea. Adam poured the tincture over Jakob’s head, watching the beads ripple into lines as his hair fell back, spitting into the pan, washing his head like a mother bathing her newborn.

  Next he opened the shirt and scrubbed the body with stag skin, softening the flesh with balm. He took a scalpel and whispered a prayer, catching his reflection in the blade, then dug in below the neck, pressing the skin beneath the point until blood released in a dark bead. The king drew the slit to his navel and parted the ribs with tongs. There rested the benevolent warden. He unfastened the heart from its cradle, releasing the sinews with a few sharp snips, and brought the tender throne of his breast out of the body. Adam set it in gold paste and ground spice, brushing the fleshy apple with jewels, then placed it in a silk pouch and restored it to the beatless cradle. He stood back, wiped the tears from his eyes, and looked at the hollow casting of his late friend.

  Adam carried the body to the bailey where snow rolled flustered by the wind. Taking a pickaxe he hatched the ice with the metal tooth, grimacing as the slurry kicked icy spurs into his side. He wondered how many left his kingdom only to die and be left unburied in a strange land. Giving his friend Jakob this royal burial satisfied Adam for those who could not receive a requiem.

  At depth, Adam set a robe inside the grave and placed Jakob in the pit, then took a handful of soil and sprinkled it across the body. A morose feeling swam in his breast as he pulled the shovel from the dirt and filled the grave. The winds spat in his face, persecuting, daring him to forgo this rite, to escape the harsh treatments of nature; betray it said, become Judas, feed all your misery to the flames in exchange for warmth.

  It was in turning away that Adam saw the rose. A red bulb lay buried in a wilted globe of white petals. He reached out to touch it and the stem broke from the soil. Adam brushed dirt off the head, finished filling the vault, then tucked the rose into the mud center of the grave. He looked at the mound when the wind picked up and flattened the rose, tearing the petals from the bud. A feeling came upon him that although he stood above Jakob he felt right beside his remains.

  “Goodbye, dear friend” Adam said.

  ~ 8

  Dry winds kicked open the shutters as Adam pulled the coat down to his waist and emptied the spoonful of molding lentils back into the bowl. Groans rose up his stomach in a vine of thorns, piercing his flesh with hunger, wrapping his intestines like a trellis of meat. He pushed the bowl aside and went to the window. A film of frost lay over the land, scattered like blind men throwing seed in a vineyard. It covered the trees in drapes and tur
ned into knolls beneath the winds. Adam set the bowl on the windowsill where the draft tipped it, stretching its icy tongue around the brim, and licked the heat from the stew. Adam felt a thread of light warm against the back of his hand as the sun rose and opened the clouds. For too long he dressed his day with excuses, converting necessities into nuisances. Jakob’s daughter needed to know.

  Adam went to his coffer where gold plated shields hung the wall and lion statues made of bronze guarded the relics. Suits of armor each drove their sword between their feet, promising to pin the belly of thieves to the ground. This was a world of poverty to Adam; what was any of it? Everyone that gave it meaning was gone. His lands became molten in ice. Adam didn’t behold the riches of a kingdom. No. He saw the ashes of his legacy glimmering as listless as a corpse. Then he found what he came for. He took the dagger with an onyx handle, ran his finger along its silver tongue, feeling its sharp bite, and returned outdoors. The blizzard slowed to a drove, and when Adam turned the corner he found roses sprung over the grave. White roses bobbed as an aspergillum around the outline of the remains.

  Then he saw it.

  A red rose grew from the center, roosted in the body of the plant. It was the heart. A sign. Anima. He bit the head from its body with the dagger and brought the frond indoors to set the petals in an envelope. Adam stamped the letter with a wax seal then pressed the insignia of the lions crest with his ring.

  “Do you want me to run that for you?” Beatrice asked as she took his bowl from the windowsill and laid it in her cartoon. He set the letter aside, seeing Pablo in her eyes, seeing the girl that would hide beneath the dinner table with the cub prince. He stepped forward and kissed her cheek, taking the dirty dish from her bin.