She stretched and yawned like a bored dog, revealing canines living up to their name. Too long and curved to be human.
Despite the hot Sicilian sun, I shivered and silently accepted the Lord as my saviour while wiping my hands on my vestments. They were shaking.
She was lying on a wooden sunbed, her hand draped languidly in the cool azure of the swimming pool, her index finger idly flicking water drops at the fresh floral tributes floating on the surface. I took a step forward as she unhooked the bra of her swimsuit.
Sunlight held no fear for her for sure, and her skin was the kind of deep bronze only the old rich know how to cultivate.
Lowering her big, oval sunglasses, she turned her head to focus on me. There was something reptilian in the motion.
“Priest,” she said. Her voice, though quiet, carried easily in the still air. “Have you come to save me?”
“Do you need saving?” I felt the soft leather of the messenger bag, its weighty contents tugging against my shoulder muscles, a reminder of my burden, in both senses of the word.
“I’m not sure I can be saved,” a flicker of a smile slid balletically across her lips.
“Everyone can be saved, Countess,” I said pushing my first piece onto the board. “It depends on how much you are prepared to sacrifice.”
“Ah, a knowledgeable Papal envoy,” she sat up straight. “What else do you know about me?”
“I know you’re not the prima ballerina you say you are,” I offered, nothing given away, a pawn move.
“And yet,” her hand circled the flowers in the pool.
“Window dressing,” I countered.
“Although,” she smiled again, richly this time, “we all dance. You appear to be skilled. For a priest, anyway.”
“I think of it as a chess game,” I parted my feet and bent my knees, not exactly a fighting stance, more a loosening of the bonds of civil discourse.
“And you have come to take the queen?” She rose to her feet in slow, calculated movements, the tightness flowing from her. I felt my first doubts as the dog-reptile became a cat.
“I am here to save your soul, Countess,” I reached for the pointed wooden crucifix and bible in my bag. “Confess your sins before almighty God. Redemption and everlasting life in the bosom of Christ shall surely be yours.”
She was too quick, and in a blur of motion, crossed the distance between us, twisting the crucifix from my hand. She held me in a steely grip, the point of the cross against my throat.
“As I said, Priest,” she snarled, “it’s too late.”
Those were the last words Countess Marreva Caston di Milonava ever said, as the wooden crossbow bolt of my hidden apprentice pierced her heart through the soft flesh of my sacrificial body.
We knew the only way for me to hold her, was for her to hold me.
“Checkmate.” I gasped.
Be First to Comment