The Wanderer in the Garden
Stunned by his body's sudden reaction, Kasvren glanced around for a moment, then looked down at the front of his trousers straining upward and let out a deep sigh. When he loosened the drawstring, guilt and shame washed over him briefly, but he quickly understood that he could not defy his own instincts. His cock stood rigid and swollen, twitching violently, and a desire so overwhelming it embarrassed even him seemed to rule every limb.
In the past, when he and Johan wandered the streets deep into the night, women with their bodices nearly bared would often sidle up to him, arms crossed tight, pressing their bodies against his. Johan would respond with easy charm and sometimes grant them a kiss, but Kasvren had never once done so. Johan used to tease him, calling it some kind of fastidiousness, but it wasn't like that. He couldn't explain exactly how it differed, only that he had never kissed such women, let alone shared a bed with them. Perhaps the closest way to put it was that he had simply never felt desire.
But now was different. He knew this urge would not settle quietly. Vile imaginings flooded his mind in brilliant color. A woman pulled down the stiff bodice of her dress and bared her breasts, lips parted, drawing near to him. A soft body pressed itself against his skin. And astonishingly, the woman was Isolde. No—no. Not Isolde. It could not be Isolde.
"Ugh…."
Gripping himself tightly, Kasvren let out a groan. The heat coiling around his palm was enough to frighten him. He hunched forward and, without thinking, bit down on the hem of his shirt, trying to muffle his moans at the thought that Isolde might hear him—or worse, see him—doing this. Even knowing that if such a moment ever truly came he could no longer stay in this house, a pleasure so explicit it made his consciousness swim ruled him utterly. What would she do if she saw me like this? She'd slap my cheek in disgust. Or maybe she'd only give me that cold, indifferent stare. No—perhaps she too would feel her innermost body grow hot and slick with the same animal instinct.
"Ah!"
The cry burst from him unbidden. He thought of the white hem of her dress that had brushed past his forehead. What if he had seized that hem and pulled? Would her small, pale body—scented of biting herbs and a secret sweetness she kept hidden—have toppled over him, or beneath him? If he had buried his nose in the nape of her neck and breathed her in—if only—ah, God.
He would not have been able to restrain himself. He knew he would have handled her roughly. No scream, no weeping, no curse from her lips would have stopped him. He would have rubbed and struck at that hidden, secret place deep within her without mercy, carrying her all the way to the height of rapture, to the highest peak.
He could almost feel her black hair brushing his fingertips. As the sensation of approaching release began to climb from the soles of his feet upward, Kasvren cursed under his breath and squeezed his eyes shut. A woman cold as a plaster statue, secretive as the darkness of night, holding blue poison and flame together in her breast. He wanted to hold that woman. Imagining Isolde undone beneath him, he stroked his aching cock in fast, furious strokes.
"Ah…!"
With a trembling voice, a pleasure close to pain erupted. His head swam. The pale liquid filling his palm hit the floor with a heavy sound, soaking into it. It was a mass of pure desire.
His desire for Isolde had never been discreet, and it could not be hidden.
When it was over, Kasvren steadied himself against the bitter feeling, wiped the floor, and washed his hands clean. His heart pounded, and his flushed cheeks burned hot. He looked into the mirror hanging above the washbasin—then turned away from the reflection staring back at him. A grown man, not some pubescent boy, doing such a thing. And thinking of Isolde while he did it! Good Lord.
Having shut himself in his room until the heat of his body cooled, Kasvren went down to the first floor and went straight into the library. He checked the pages of the books he had fanned out to dry just yesterday, plucked out each sheet that had absorbed moisture overnight, and stacked them one by one in the cool shade.
The rain from the night before had soaked the ground; it would be well past midday before the books could be laid out to dry again. As he walked through the garden, where the water still dripped drop by drop from the leaves, what he had done kept resurfacing in his mind. Damn it. This couldn't go on. He needed something to do. Something….
That was when a stranger came into view. The figure walked slowly, an old scarf wound around the head, and the hair beneath it was nearly white. An old woman.
Even though Kasvren stood in the middle of the garden staring at her, the woman entered the grounds as though it were nothing. Looking more closely, her clothes didn't seem much better—she wore layers of whatever she had, like a gypsy, and even those were damp, as if she had found no shelter from the rain the night before. She hunched her small frame and shivered violently.
"Ma'am?"
Kasvren, who had been half in a daze at the stranger's appearance, snapped back to himself and strode quickly toward the old woman to steady her. She smelled of rotten eggs and sour onions. A vagrant, clearly.
"Ma'am, how did you come to find this place?"
At his question the woman seemed to answer, but her slurred articulation crumbled entirely between her lips, and he could not make out a word. Though flustered, Kasvren guided her toward the front entrance first. What Isolde or Rad Dat might think never entered his mind. He was no master of this house either, to be sure, but he could hardly simply pass by someone in distress….
"Welcome."
Isolde's voice sounded from the entrance. Where she had appeared from, he could not tell. Without so much as a glance at Kasvren, she looked only at the old woman, then came down the steps, took the small figure by the arm, and led her inside.
"Will you help me?"
At Isolde's words, Kasvren ran to her like a puppet on strings. All the while he thought: if she knew what I had just done in my room while thinking of her, she could never speak to me so easily.
Isolde led the slow-footed old woman deep into the back of the kitchen. There stood a great wooden tub, and in an enormous cauldron the water was boiling and bubbling. For a moment Kasvren tensed at the thought that Isolde might, like some dreadful old tale, intend to toss the woman into the cauldron and boil her alive. But Isolde only tipped her chin toward the cauldron and then the tub, as if to ask what he was standing around for, and said:
"Fill it with hot water. I'm going to bathe her. Cold water comes from the well behind the back garden."
It was the tone one might use with a servant, but Kasvren obeyed without a word. When the tub was about seven-tenths full, Isolde rolled up her sleeves and plunged her own arms in to stir the water. Her skin was white as porcelain.
"It's just right. You may go now."
"You intend to bathe that old woman yourself?"
"Why? Is there some law against it?"
A sharp edge of mockery ran through Isolde's words. Only then did Kasvren realize how narrow-minded his remark had been, and he apologized, his ears burning red.
"I'm sorry."
"Out. Now."
He left the kitchen practically chased out. As he closed the door behind him, the hollow tong of its impact seemed, strangely, to ring on and on.
Back out in the garden, Kasvren spotted Rad Dat just then tidying a pile of firewood and hurried toward him—nearly running—and told him about the old woman who had just entered the house. He felt he was rambling incoherently, but Rad Dat nodded as though he understood perfectly and answered:
"Now and then, someone comes looking for this mansion in that way. The young mistress takes pity on them and gives them a place to sleep and something to eat."
"A vagrant?"
"That's so. No one has ever stayed here more than three days. However much care the young mistress gives her, before anyone knows it, she has gone off again. And then, all of a sudden, she turns up once more."
"She has no house in the village either? No one to look after her?"
A lonely smile bloomed across Rad Dat's face.
"That's so. Where she came from, what manner of person she is, what her name might be—neither the young mistress nor I know a thing. She spends nearly all her time in a daze and cannot properly answer when spoken to, though at times her mind does grow clear. Even then, she says not one word about herself. She is a precious guest to the young mistress. Please bear with any inconvenience."
He had set out to satisfy his curiosity, and all he had gained were more questions. And in the midst of it, Rad Dat's word—bear with it—stung his tongue. The thought of the wretched thing he had done earlier made him feel preemptively guilty, but being treated like a boy who had never learned even the basic courtesies rankled his pride all the same.
"Don't worry. I was taught how to honor my elders from the time I was young—all of it."
Rad Dat gave him only a faint, gentle smile and made no reply. Having lashed out at the old man for nothing, Kasvren let out yet another sigh and tilted his head back. It seemed it would be a relief, if anything, to simply collapse here and melt down into the earth.