The Abbot makes a choice

“Do you… smell something?” the Abbot murmured.

He was not certain that he did himself, but was not smell the only sense that could detect a presence long after it had ceased to be? It was the closest word he could find to describe this sensory memory, for was not smell the sense that could make one live again moments long past?

The odor of snow melting on stone could pull him back ten years to the cloister at Lund. Horse sweat and sour mash was his burly father, and he was again the frail, anemic boy shuddering in the burly shadow on those terrible visits home.

And the smell of blood had always sickened him and fascinated him, and this, he believed, was because he had been born in a gout of his mother’s blood, and blood was all he knew of her.

“Smells like perfume and girly things,” Dunstan said.

“No wonder the good Abbot thinks it smells odd in here,” Aengus chuckled. “Makes me wonder how you know the smell, though,” he teased. “Should I warn His Majesty?”

“I have sisters and a mother and stepmother.”

“I suppose the Abbot had as well, at that. Didn’t you, Father?”

Aelfden turned his face to the window. “No.”

“A mother, though,” Aengus insisted.

“No.”

“Oh. I’m sorry…” Aengus said weakly.

Aelfden walked past the elf to stand near the fire, and it was as if he walked into a draft that carried the mysterious odor to him. But it was no odor. He did not sense it in his nose.

It was in his skin. He scratched his ribs, he scratched his neck, he scratched his arms. Wherever he scratched, the tingling immediately moved elsewhere in his body. It was not even a tingling – it was a creeping, a crawling, a prickling, a squirming beneath his skin, like hundreds of baby spiders seeking a rent in their silken shroud through which they might be born.

He opened his mouth to groan but shut it again, fearing he would vomit instead. The squirming did not move up to his head, but his scalp still prickled on its own, and all his body was covered in gooseflesh.

But no one noticed his discomposure, for the elf suddenly cried, “The girls are coming!”

“We’re in here, Cat!” Aengus shouted.

“We know you are,” Flann said as they came in. “We were looking for you. Cat for her friend, and I for the Abbot.”

“Good morning, ladies,” Aelfden said, trying to mimic Dunstan’s calm.

“A good morning it is, Father,” Flann said with a tart smile. “And a good day for a wedding, don’t you think?”

“A wedding?” Aelfden summoned a weak smile of his own.

“I will not sleep far from Cat again!” the elf cried.

“Friend…” Aengus soothed.

“I shall sleep on the floor outside her door if I must, but I will not be kept apart from her.”

“That won’t be necessary…” Aengus said.

“No, it won’t be!” Flann said. “It’s in her bed you shall sleep, and no farther away. So say I!”

The girl’s hands were balled into little fists, as if she meant to strike the priest if he denied it.

She would not have been pleased to know it, but Aelfden’s compassion was moved by the sight of her. He had a great pity for girls such as Flann, for their defiance and their pretensions at self-​​sufficiency often only hid a greater weakness and a deeper despair than that of the girls who flung themselves on the mercy of others.

“My dear,” he sighed. “They will be married in good time…”

She was the one whom he wanted to see married as soon as possible. But she resisted his every attempt to speak of it.

“They will be married at once!” Flann said.

Aelfden viciously scratched his prickling forearm, trying to rid himself of the creeping once and for all, but he feared he only succeeded in ripping away a few of the scabs with the rough fabric of his sleeve.

“This gentleman is not even a member of the Church yet, Flann.” His voice was as tight and rippling as his skin with revulsion and anxiety. “You know how it will be. At Easter – ”

“Easter is weeks away!”

“And Lent begins tomorrow,” he said conclusively, “and you know we do not marry during Lent.”

“Then marry them today!”

“Flann…” Aengus warned.

“Here are your choices, Father!” Flann shouted over her cousin’s voice. “Forgive me for being blunt, though I suppose delicacy no longer becomes me anyway. Tonight this elf will lie beside his wife or beside a lady who is not his wife, but either way he shall lie beside my sister!”

“Flann…” Cat whimpered.

“Is that what you want, Cat?” the elf asked gently.

“Aye, she does!” Flann said. “It’s terrified she is, and she only wants to be safe. And so do I want her to be. She shan’t be alone any longer! If you can baptize a baby minutes after he’s born, you can baptize this elf twenty years after.”

“Young lady, that is nothing alike. When we baptize a child – ”

“I don’t care!” Flann snapped. “The truth is, we have three choices, Father. Cat can lie with her husband, or she can lie with an elf who is not her husband and whom she loves, or she can lie with an elf who is not her husband and who once raped her and tried to kill her, and tried to rape her a second time.”

Cat moaned and fell into the elf’s arms, but Flann did not even turn her defiant head.

Aelfden could feel his sleeve sticking wetly to his arm, and he was grateful that it was dark enough not to show the blood. Meanwhile the prickling had crept into the small of his back, and he did not know how to itch it discreetly. He could only squirm and suffer.

“Flann,” Aengus said, “you need to calm yourself.”

“I am calm!” Flann shouted. “Now, you listen to me, Father. There are three choices, but I leave you only two, for as long as there is breath in my body, no filthy, tattooed rapist is getting anywhere near my sister!”

“Tattooed?” the elf gasped.

“Aye,” Flann cried over her shoulder, turning her head away from the priest too slightly to permit him to scratch himself. “He had a big black mark on his cheek.”

“A big black mark?”

“Aye, a tattoo or something.”

“Elves don’t disfigure themselves with tattoos!” he cried, sounding scandalized at the idea. “Except…”

“What sort of mark?” Aelfden panted. He laid a hand on the mantle to steady himself.

“I don’t know,” Flann said, subdued now that she had seen the reaction produced by this thoughtless remark. “A few curvy stripes on his left cheek.”

That was what he was feeling. That feeling of revulsion, of rejection, as if his body was trying to slough off the very skin she had polluted with her touch. Never had he tortured his own body as he had in the weeks after that visit, trying to erase her, but it was as if she had made of his body one vast scar. At last he had understood that mortifying his flesh would only burn the scar deeper. The pain was what she wanted. For her, pain and pleasure were one.

“My lord,” he gasped. “Please tell Her Grace your stepmother there will be a small wedding today. She will want to make preparations.”

Flann straightened, but her expression of defiance had turned to wariness. She had won, but she did not understand how.

“Of course…” Dunstan murmured.

“Is this what you want, Cat?” Aengus asked.

“I think it is best,” Aelfden said.

His hand on the mantle prevented him from sinking to the floor, but it did not prevent his arm from shaking. A trickle of blood wended a winding path towards his elbow. He had not slept, he had not eaten, and he was so sick…

“A husband who is a Christian and is an elf…” he whispered. “It is the best choice, as you say, my dear.”

“Father?” Flann asked, gentle now that she had had her way. “Are you ill?”

“You must excuse me for now. I must make preparations as well.”