soaked, and looked forward to the bath that I knew Jehan would have waiting for me, but as I started to leave the salle Geoffrey called me back.
“Rózsa will be here sometime tonight, Christopher, or tomorrow at the latest. She knows about—”
“My illiteracy?” I interjected bitterly.
“Your difficulty,” Geoffrey continued smoothly, ignoring the resentment in my voice. “I took the liberty of informing her. Go now, and have your bath. You are progressing quite well. Give yourself some time.” I just shook my head and left for my room, where I found Jehan curled up in my bed, waiting for me. It never ceased to amaze me that a man so tall could wind himself into such a small space. The bath water had cooled just enough to be tolerable, and Jehan watched me with bright feral eyes as I undressed. I eased into the hot water, closed my eyes with a sigh, and heard Jehan stirring on the bed.
“Master Kit? Shall I wash your back? I’d like that,” he added when I failed to answer right away. The complex interdependencies between the vampires and the wolf-folk troubled me. On the one hand they were perfect servants, well cared for and never fed from against their will, but the carnality inherent in the feeding itself led to a familiarity in relationships that I felt entirely too comfortable with, and given their sensual natures, they were ever eager for the union and the erotic pleasure. I shook my head impatiently suddenly recalling my father’s wise words of years ago: “What’s not broken needs no mending.”
“Yes, Jehan, I would like that, and a shave as well, an it please you,” I answered, and relaxed beneath the big man’s hands. In only a fortnight I had learned not only to be comfortable with the ministrations of servants, but had come to depend upon them. Later, resting against Jehan in the opulent bed, I fed.
I woke alone and dressed quickly in the clothing Jehan had left for me, garnet velvet the color of blood for the trousers and doublet, silk white as the sun on snow for the shirt, and a deep falling band of Italian needle-lace. I paused before pulling on my boots to stroke the fine silks, with an abrupt memory of the shabby clothing and coarse scholar’s gown of my Cambridge days, the unfashionable cropped hair and detestable caps. My family had sent me clothing of good woolen and linen stuff, hardly worn, some of it, but I’d pawned most of it. Some of the money went to buy books of my own, and a pang of loss went through me for those forfeited volumes, and the maps I had painstakingly hand copied when the atlas edition had proved too dear for my means. Relentlessly I followed the thread of the memory—some of the coin had gone for less honorable purposes. What was that little puff-adder’s name? John? No. James? Well, no matter. He was the son of some country knight, come to Cambridge the term after I had taken my Bachelor’s degree. He was so worshipful and full of admiration for the new Dominus, and so lonely and lost. He had played me like a trout, and landed himself in my bed one night when the room’s other occupants were absent.
It had been a heavenly night, but a hellish morning, for the boy demanded money from me to keep quiet about the affair, and I had paid him, fearing at best to be stripped of my degree and turned out of college, and at the worst to be imprisoned, tortured, and executed, the punishment meted out for sodomy, as a crime against both church and state. I had been much relieved when the young man’s elder brother had subsequently died, and the family demanded the youth’s immediate return, but the incident had left me with a violent antipathy for extortionists and cozeners. With a blistering clarity, I recalled seeing the boy a year or so later, leaving Sir Francis Walsingham’s via the back door, the day of my fateful interview with the secretary—the reason that Tommy had been waiting for me, to seduce me into Walsingham’s circle of spies. That man had had a mind as twisted as a tightrope. I shook myself out of my reverie and went downstairs to the study, where a strange young man lounged before the fire, his gold and flame-colored brocaded tunic and venetians almost eclipsing the firelight as he turned to face me.