Page 113 of Don't Let Me Go
“From a very witty tart,” I answer.
“Oh, dear, I hope you haven’t been consorting with riffraff. Your father will be so disappointed.”
“What can I say? I’m a man who craves a certain variety in his life. It’s hard to keep me satisfied.”
“Is it?” Thierry asks, taking hold of me. “I’ve never found it so.”
I pull his face to mine and bite his lips, and the familiar hunger awakens in me: To taste every inch of him. To consume him with kisses. To devour him body and soul until we are one body, one soul.
Sometimes my craving frightens me. It’s like a fever that ravages my body, stripping me of reason. Yet I’ve long stopped looking for a cure.
It was three years ago that Thierry first came into my life, and to this day I do not know if it was a gift from heaven or a temptation from hell. My father had recently broken with the Church of Rome and converted our family to the teachings of Calvin and his Reformed Church. Our new minister, a man of great influence, encouraged my father to dismiss all the Catholics from our household lest they spy onus or plot against us. So it was that Thierry’s father, Old Broussard, a lifelong and committed Huguenot, became my father’s steward at Thouron, bringing with him his son to live on our estate and provide me with constant companionship.
I still remember the first time I laid eyes on Thierry. When he stepped out of the carriage that delivered him to the doorstep of our estate, I felt like I was seeing the sun for the first time after a life of living under the earth. His beauty blinded me. And his green eyes, sharp as glass, unnerved me. Even his touch when we shook hands seemed to burn my skin. I could scarcely stand to be in the same room with him for fear of what would happen if ever I forgot myself.
I was by no means a pious or moral young man. Quite the contrary, in fact. My father frequently fretted for my immortal soul. But up until that time, my sins had been of the standard variety that boys in the country enjoyed. That is to say, nothing I couldn’t boast about to my friends late at night in some tavern where we traded tales of our debaucheries.
Butthe sin I wanted from Thierry was different. I knew it would damn me. Not because it would send me to hell but because I was there already from the sheer want of it.
Thus began the longest year of my life.
By day, Thierry was the perfect companion. We would ride or hunt, taking endless delight in each other’s company and conversation. Then by night, alone in my room, I would burn for him until I was exhausted with desire.
I thought I would go mad. I slept with every girl in the village who would raise her skirt for me in the hopes of purging this fever from my blood. I tried to forget him with drink and dice and (worst of all) prayer. Nothing worked.
Then on his sixteenth birthday, after everyone had gone to bedfollowing a modest celebration befitting the steward’s son, I found myself bold with too much wine and too much longing. I stole from my room and crept through the humid night until I arrived outside his bedroom door.
Without knocking, I slipped inside. The candles were out, but in the light of the full moon, I saw him sit up in bed. He did it quite calmly, quite naturally, as if he’d been expecting me. As if he’d always been expecting me.
He asked what I wanted, and when I was unable to speak, he rose from the bed, beautiful and perfect as Apollo, and came to me. Without saying a word, he took my left hand and brought it to his lips, then my right. Then he placed both hands over his heart and said, “Don’t you know there’s nothing you could ask of me that I would not give?”
His lips tasted of honey. His hair smelled of lavender. My nightshirt fell to the floor, and a second later we joined it there, discovering new and exquisite ways to astound each other.
Thus began the happiest two years of my life.
Two years in which I’ve never stopped asking for him, and he’s never stopped giving himself. Two years in which the fever between us has burned so true and strong that, were I not at heart a cynical beast raised in a cynical age, I could almost dare to call it holy.
“Do you hear shouting?” Thierry asks, pulling his lips from mine.
Intoxicated as I am by my craving for him, it takes me a moment to return to my senses. I cock my head toward the window and at first hear only the tolling of more bells. There’s nothing unusual in that. Except the louder they clang, the less it sounds like tolling and the more it sounds like a warning. Or an alarm.
A scream pierces the night, baleful and desperate. It’s followed by another. Then a third.
“Something’s wrong,” Thierry whispers, sliding out from under me and moving to the window.
I’m about to join him when our chamber door is rocked by the insistent pounding of an impatient fist. It swings open, and the inn’s proprietress, Madame Montague, enters frantically. She’s dressed in her nightgown, her white hair wild and erratic, her wrinkled face twisted in fear. Every muscle in my body tenses in apprehension.
“What is the meaning of this?” I demand.
Madame Montague glances nervously out the door and wrings her hands. “Oh, messieurs, you have to go! You’re in danger!”
Her panic is palpable. Without hesitation, I leap out of bed and start to dress. “What’s the matter?” I ask, pulling on my breeches.
“You must leave the city. Now! There’s no time to delay.”
“But why? What’s happened?” Thierry asks, rummaging on the floor for his own clothes.
“The king—God forgive him—the king has declared war on the Huguenots. His soldiers are searching the city. They have orders to kill any they find!”
