Interlude

Long ago, the young man was absorbed in his work, selecting only the best of the lilac blossoms. They would be placed on the Ladies’ Altar and Pater insisted that all be in full flower. The scent would fill the small chapel, the boy knew. It was a sweet smell. When confined in so small a space, the overpowering perfume would trouble him.

He preferred the asphodels that grew in the bogs, but he was rarely given permission to travel that far. The boys in their first two years, before they were professed, they were hardly given permission for anything but prayer and farm work.

Anyway, Brother Herbal needed no help. He was young yet, with long legs that took him to fields and woods throughout the parish. He knew all the nooks and crannies that flowered into every color.

The brothers and priest talked about him, he could tell. He received the sense of things, even when he wasn’t trying to read the men who directed him, encouraged him, disciplined him, who asked that he flower, too.

They suggested him as apprentice to the herbalist. He’d have to be professed, though, before they would spend any real time on him. But he knew his flowers. The bog asphodel was called bonebreaker, he shared. Brother Herbal asked, “Is it the poison then?” “No, Brother, the flower grows on poor soil. Cattle that graze on it alone have weak bones.” “Yes,” Brother agreed. “Yes, yes, yes...” he repeated as he walked away, already lost in his own thoughts of shadowed pine cathedrals and sunny courtyards of blooms.

The boy’s attention wandered. In the open air, the lilacs' perfume hinted of Elise, the girl he left behind. He held the rusty sheers to one side and gave himself over to her memory. She lived not so far from where he stood, here at the farthest reach of the Paters’ Garden where, he was assured, the lilac grew best, a creamy white, not the lavender everyone expected.

Elise, he remembered, and her memory came alive for him. Her dirty blond hair and pale blue eyes. Her funny way of inclining her head when she thought hard. Like a puppy, he told her. She was secretly flattered. He noticed her!

She pretended to be offended. “So I remind you of a dog?” she huffed. But of course he saw through her bluster. “You’d prefer to be considered catty? Let me see your claws!” and he took her by the hands and would have kissed her if she'd just urged him the once.

“You,” she whispered. And he basked in the memory and felt the full force of her love, her gentleness tugging at him.

So I turned and found her there.

“Elise! You... I... How...”

“I climbed over the wall!” She was proud of her adventure. “Come, let’s hide in the bushes. I have something important to tell you.”

“Sit here, in the sunlight. Let me see you.”

“That’s just it! Won’t they see us? Won’t you be in trouble?”

I smiled. “There are no secrets here. Anyway, you’re the one who’ll be in trouble if your father finds out you’ve climbed a stone wall to visit me.”

“He thinks I’ve gone to the ladies’ chapel.”

“I’m going there! With these blossoms.”

“I told Father that I’d see you here.” Elise gave a curious look over me and my work. “Father said, ‘No, he’ll be at hard labor.’”

“I usually am, I swear it! Look at my hands!”

She felt his palms and fingertips. “Oh, you’re all callused. Is it awful?”

“No,” I replied. “I like it here.”

“Good. That’s good. Isn’t it?”

I stood to clip more of the blossoms. “Now,” my back turned to hide my face. “What is it you want to tell me?” I asked, though I already knew.

“Marcus has asked me to marry.”

Silence, for just a beat. “I like Marcus.”

“Come look at me.”

And I turned. “I’m happy for you.”

“I haven’t said yes.”

“No?”

“I’m yours. You know that.”

I ached with the choosing, though I had chosen already, I knew, in my heart and this was best–that Elise would have Marcus, a good man.

I told her, “It’s you who should choose, Elise.”

Did her countenance darken? “We don’t chose.” She shook her head. “We are chosen."

Gereon looked up from his sick bed. “My death bed,” he told the shadow. It loomed above him, its wings stretched as far as east and west, its call a trumpet.

“Cark!” it cried. “Cark!”

“Are you the Angel of Death?” Gereon asked. “Tell me, is it time?”