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They had barely been out for a few hours before the sky opened.
Like God had punctured a hole in the fabric of the clouds, they shed everything they could possibly hold within. No walls, barriers or conventions preventing their outcry.
Hans shielded his eyes from the sleets of heavy rain, squinting through drenched eyelashes to glean anything at all from the swiftly muddled road stretching before them. It went on and on, over hills and into the grey-blue nothingness of a world suddenly turned upside-down by the storm. Somewhere in the distance, thunder rolled over cloudy ridges. His horse whinnied nervously, defying the pull of Hans’s reins for a panic-stricken moment before it calmed itself again.
The world seemed to gain a strange sentience when it was storming. Like it suddenly gained a voice and was singing and weeping, loud and unapologetic, uncaring of its inhabitants growing sick from the cold, trudging through mud in full plate.
Or, in Hans and Henry’s case, being so far away from the Devil’s Den that it’d make more sense attempting to camp in the mud than to fight through sheets of rain for three hours.
‘My lord,’ Henry called somewhere behind him. The lord didn’t turn his head to look at him. ‘We ought to continue forward.’
‘In the direction of that nothingness?’ Hans gestured sharply forward, deigning to look at Henry for a moment. It was for this very reason that he preferred to not look at him too much these days. For Henry looked at him in a way that made him feel wholly exposed to the world. Like his page could peel away at every layer of his skin, flesh and bones until he looked directly at his heart. Henry could grasp it with both his calloused hands. Cup it like one might a small bird.
Hair clung to Henry’s forehead, dark and saturated with water. It looked like roots burrowing into sand. His eyes were windows to the sky behind him.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘We cannot camp here. We’ll be washed away.’
‘And you’d rather be washed away atop your horse on the road.’
Henry’s expression hardened. He couldn’t hope to hide his emotions even if God Himself commanded it. They were plainly written on his face for the whole world to see. ‘I’d rather find somewhere to lodge for the night.’
Though they might argue, Hans trusted Henry’s opinion more than he dared say aloud. They bickered back and forth for a while. Henry in earnest, Hans to fill a void in his throat.
His protests were as hollow as that void, and it wasn’t long before Henry had overtaken Hans’s horse and was leading them through the storm. They didn’t speak, for they’d have to yell to hear each other over the rain’s assault upon the grass and mud.
Hans watched Henry’s back, bow slung over his shoulder and quiver bobbing at his hip. A hare hung by its feet on the side of his saddle, its fur as dark-gray as the clouds above. Its eyes were closed as if it had been asleep when Henry’s arrow had pierced its little heart. Henry had drawn the cross over the hare’s chest before tying it to his saddle. As if hares went to Heaven.
Maybe they do , Henry had said.
Hans forced his eyes off it and resigned himself to stare at the road.
Field after field passed them, all soaked and slick with mud. Henry said that seeing fields like this was a good sign that someone lived nearby. Hans said he’d believe it when he saw it.
Finally the contours of a farmhouse made itself apparent on the horizon. Henry’s stirrups dug into the side of his horse and Hans followed in his gallop. The closer they got, the quicker it became apparent that nobody had lived there for a while. The farm was decaying and ghostly in the rain. Wind hooted through broken boards, and it sounded like a witch was howling somewhere in the walls.
The barn was the only building still intact enough to enter. It sat looming and menacing against the dark sky, seeming more a shadow and a figment of Hans’s childhood nightmares than an actual building. The witch howled intensely through the rotting boards of the roof, and Hans grimaced.
‘Not exactly elegant,’ Henry said as he closed the large barn doors behind them. They creaked on their hinges, the doors seeming to shiver as if from the cold. They slammed shut with a puff of clammy air.
Hans scoffed. ‘This place wouldn’t know elegant if it slapped it across the face.’
Henry smiled thinly at this and shrugged. It can’t be helped, his body said. Sometimes he needn’t speak.
They readied themselves for sleep in silence. The rain pattered against the roof, less intense now but still determined to drown the outside world. It sounded like fingers were drumming all along the rooftop.
Henry’s fingers hooked into the linen of his undershirt and shamelessly heaved it over his head. It dragged across his wet hair, making it stick up awkwardly.
And Hans watched him, the most beautiful creature in the world. A mangy mutt taken from its diet of scraps and dust and fed roasted whole chicken and mulled monastery wine. The beast had learned to obey and bow its head to its masters who fed it a king’s feast, but its teeth had never dulled.
Hans remembered the thick, still air of the Nebakov dungeons. Remembered how dust swirled around Henry as he cast his body against the iron bars separating him from Istvan Toth. How he had barked and bared his teeth, how spit had flown from his mouth as he enunciated every syllable in the word bitch .
Henry caught his gaze and cocked an eyebrow. Hans swiftly looked away. His heart galloped against his ribcage.
‘Are you alright?’ Such a genuine question. Hans suppressed the urge to shake his head no. Instead he busied himself with dragging his own undershirt over his head. It fell in a crumbled pile by his feet.
‘Just praying to God I don’t catch a chill from that awful weather. Or that the ghostly owner of this farm won’t come to haunt us in the night.’
Henry exhaled a soft laugh at this, and Hans’s heart soared. ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’ Henry laid out two soft sheepskins on the hay-strewn floor. ‘The most you’ll see in here is a rat.’
‘I don’t much love that either, you know.’
‘His lordship must simply swallow his fear for the duration of tonight.’ Henry’s gentle smile seemed a permanent fixture on his face as he lowered himself onto the sheepskin. One arm came to support the back of his head and his eyes closed. His chest gently rose and fell, breaths coming steadily like waves breaking against a shore. Hans could drown happily in the sound.
He followed Henry’s lead and let himself get as comfortable as he could on his shabby bed. Calling it that felt quite generous - he could feel hay poke at his lower back, and there was a steady drip, drip, drip of raindrops falling into a rusty bucket somewhere in the darkness to his left.
So he simply laid there. Henry had extinguished the torch he’d lit to inspect the place, and nothing lit their little shelter safe for streaks of weak moonlight occasionally breaking through black clouds. Despite the cold outside, it was warm here. On account of the hay, most likely. Or Henry’s body being the bonfire that it was so close beside him.
‘How do you stand being that warm?’ Breaking the silence felt like firing a pistole in the dead of night. Henry didn’t answer him right away, and Hans wondered if he was already asleep. Then–
‘It’s my peasant resilience,’ Henry said, and Hans could tell he was smiling. It made Hans smile in turn. ‘Comes right in handy during winter. So I don’t get in a strop when no servants come to light my fireplace for me.’
‘Come off it.’ Hans pushed at Henry’s shoulder and received a push back in return. ‘There’s no way every peasant is so freakishly lit from the inside as you are. Must be blacksmith-related.’
‘Maybe.’ Henry shrugged. ‘Now be quiet, my lord. I’m tired.’
‘The gall of you!’
Henry just hummed, and then it was quiet again. For all his whining, Hans tended to do as he was told when Henry gave the order. It was a humbling realization to come to in the quiet dark.
Hans fidgeted with the sheepskin beneath him, pulling at the wool and snaking it around his finger. The silence felt unbearably loaded, but he knew not what to fill it with. Not when there existed a thread between himself and Henry, tugging intensely and begging for Hans to move closer. Henry laid so unbothered beside him, just far enough away so that their arms didn’t touch, and breathed so quietly. Hans chanced a look at him and saw how his hands were folded below his chest, moving up and down with the rhythm of his breath.
Hans, on the contrary, felt no sense of calm. His heart had not ceased its galloping, and all he could do to attempt calming himself was to count the raindrops that fell into the bucket.
One, two, three, four.
Five, six, seven—
Then Henry moved. With shameless ease his head moved into the crook of Hans’s neck where it stayed, his cheek against Hans’s shoulder.
Hans stiffened and his breath stilled. Afraid that if he moved, Henry would shy away.
‘Goodnight, Hans. Go to sleep, please.’ His voice was quiet, a low rumble. Almost overtaken by the rain.
And before Hans could reach out for him, or move his head to kiss his forehead, Henry wiggled away and resigned to crossing his arms over his chest again. Not even a few seconds passed before his breathing was steady, gentle, betraying slumber.
Hans would get no sleep that night.
***
In the morning they ate the hare Henry had shot the day before and drank diluted wine from leather skins lined with beeswax. The rain had ceased, and it was a beautiful day. Sunshine peeked between clouds that were soon whisked away by warm summer wind, and it wasn’t long before Henry had packed their belongings and they were on horseback again.
Hans had insisted on a dip in a lake or river if they could find one, and Henry had indulged him. They were both filthy from yesterday’s weather. Even the blacksmith’s boy recognized this.
As they rode through the endless countryside, a flock of geese flew overhead. They croaked and bellowed from above, and Hans watched their path across the spotless sky with a quiet flutter in his breast. He closed his eyes and breathed in the summer air, warm and fragrant with stray road-side flower beds, and Hans wished he could grasp the air and bottle it; maybe he’d release it into the dead of winter to urge spring’s arrival.
Henry rode beside him, and he could feel his eyes upon him. He moved flawlessly with his mare, back straight and chest puffed out. A natural on horseback, his thighs were strong and thick in the saddle. His stirrups glinted in the sunlight.
Hans suppressed the urge to reach across the void between their horses and interlock their fingers. Maybe it’d get easier someday. Or maybe it never would.
It was in the clearing of a forest that Henry dismounted his mare and Hans followed suit. They tied their animals to a tree and then, as if he knew this place by heart somehow, Henry led on through tall, thick grass. For his lord he pushed aside stray branches and trampled down thorny thistles, and Hans couldn’t feel fonder if he tried. For Henry he would go to the depths of Hell and shake the Devil’s hand. For him he’d cast aside all things fair; wine, women, song and God. And he would feel nothing in their absence.
And Henry no longer feared drowning.
Which was alright, of course. It was good. He had stripped himself of his clothing in a whirlwind, the muscles of his ass taunt and pale against the tan of his neck and forearms. Unceremoniously he had waded into the lake like some brute, and Hans had forgotten to even undress, so busy was he with watching Henry.
He was to his waist in dark-green glass, clinging to him like vines wrapping around a pillar. He ran his hands over the surface like one might caress a lover, and Hans found himself pathetically envying water’s glassy body.
The water only moved with Henry’s touch, like he was a pagan deity wading through his humble kingdom. It rippled and danced, bathing him in harsh light from the cloudless sky above.
Yes, he looked quite like an angel. The sky was the lake and the lake was Henry’s throne. His naked body, mint green and half-obscured by ripples, looked alien and foreign in the water’s embrace. Hans imagined tracing it, from Henry’s chest all the way to his hips and his ass, letting his roaming be somehow hidden from divine eyes beneath the water’s shimmering surface.
Of course there was no logic to it. God’s eyes could surely penetrate water as they could locked doors and drawn curtains. Such was their lot - audentes fortuna fucking iuvat .
Let God see us , Hans found himself chanting with the distinct flutter of fear squeezing his lungs that always accompanied defying the divine. Let God see us and weep as I’ve wept.
Henry looked up from his reflection in the water and caught Hans staring at him, sitting alone on the bank of the lake. Strangely, he smiled, and Hans couldn’t for the life of him determine why.
‘What is it?’ Laughter was on Henry’s lips, gentle and playful, and he motioned to go further up towards the bank. Hans swiftly averted his eyes, choosing instead to intensely stare at a nearby berry bush. A woodpecker started hammering away at the bark of a nearby tree. Rhythmic and numbing to Hans’s already scattered brain.
‘Come now,’ Henry tutted like he was talking to some mildly disobedient dog. ‘It’s nothing you haven’t seen before.’
‘Stop being so damn crude.’
Henry just shrugged. He was completely out of the water now, sloshing it everywhere as he brutishly pushed through the tall grass to get to Hans’s side. Without a care in the world he reached for his hand. And without thinking, Hans smacked it away. Instantly he regretted it.
‘Seriously?’ Henry looked more baffled than angry. ‘What’s with you? Why are you being stroppy?’
‘I’m not–’ Hans willed his fists to not ball. Begged to God that his voice wouldn’t crack. He still wasn’t looking at Henry. ‘I’m not being stroppy. Come off it.’
‘You’re the fucking definition of it right now, you are.’ The laughter in Henry’s voice was extinguished. Hurt had replaced it, and it was the kind of hurt that saw his shoulders slumping and his eyes seem more gray than blue. Hans hated that expression on him. Hated even more that he was the cause of it. He knew not how to stop.
‘I don’t know what to tell you.’ Hans finally looked at Henry, and what a mistake that was. He stood before him like Adam in the Garden, the sun filtering through the trees circling the back of his head like a halo. A knight in every way, beautiful and deadly and always two wrong steps from Heaven’s gates.
Good God, he could have anyone he wanted. And he was here, in the depths of a remote forest with a man who was promised to another. A man who had caused him nothing but misery and trouble. A man who woke up in the middle of the night gasping for air, not knowing if it was from the noose, the rubble or the cannonball blasting a hole through his stomach.
Hans’s lip quivered before he was able to bite it. He just about saw Henry’s expression shift from anger to God knows what - he averted his gaze too quickly to discern it. He started pulling straws of grass from the ground in big chunks, crumbling them in his palms and dirtying his white nails.
‘Shit, alright–’ he heard Henry say above him. There was a rustle of linen and then Henry was beside him in the grass, his now clothed thigh firmly against Hans’s own. He had been no way near dry when he’d pulled his undergarment back on. It must be chafing him.
But Henry said a gentle ‘hey,’ his hand coming to tentatively rest on Hans’s hip as if he was expecting to be rebuked. When he wasn’t, he allowed his hand to settle there. It found purchase easily.
‘Hey,’ he repeated. ‘Talk to me. Won’t you? You're alright.’
‘Why are you here?’ Hans was grateful that it didn’t come out outrightly hostile. It moreso resembled a soft plea - a bearing of his heart that had him biting the inside of his cheek.
Henry blinked. ‘Why am I here?’
‘Yes.’ Finally gaining the courage to look at him, Hans met Henry’s gaze. His eyebrows were knitted and his eyes were flickering to every part of Hans’s face as if he was trying to locate the problem through his expression alone. It made Hans feel so terribly fond that he thought he might throw up. ‘You could be anywhere else right now.’
‘I–’ Henry paused for a moment. His frown twitched as if in tandem with his thoughts racing. ‘I suppose I could. Don’t want to, though.’
‘Why not?’
‘Why not? Hans, I–’ His page seemed about at his wits end, exhaling a joyless, breathy laugh as he ran his free hand through his wet hair, pushing it out of his forehead. ‘Shit, because I don’t want to? Because I want to be here with you? I don’t understand what’s so strange about it.’
‘I can’t– I don’t know, alright? I don’t know. I’m in a rotten state, this has me all..’ He paused in his sudden outburst, searching for a way to articulate something unspeakable. None of them had any words for what they were, for what they were trying to do. His hands felt like bees were buzzing in the marrow of his bones.
Henry said nothing. He merely watched him, his hand still firmly planted on his hip. It sat there like it belonged. Like they wouldn’t be denied entry into God’s kingdom.
‘What are we going to do?’
The woodpecker had flown away. Frogs croaked in the reeds, birds sang, a fish’s tail splashed lakewater onto the bank, and the world turned.
‘I don’t know,’ Henry said. ‘What do you want to do?’
‘I wouldn’t be asking you if I knew, Hal.’
His page smiled. ‘I guess you wouldn’t.’ A beat of silence as he thought the question over. The sun continued to shine, and wind still rustled the leaves of trees. It all mattered as much as it didn’t, and Hans wished he knew how to enjoy a moment for what it was without thinking of when it would come again.
‘I meant what I said at Suchdol.’ Henry’s voice was calm, assured. The same tone he adopted when he was convincing someone else as much as he was convincing himself. ‘I’ll stay by your side. Even when you marry. When you marry I’ll–’ He paused, finding the words again. ‘I’ll be the first to celebrate you. I’ll be the first to toast you.’
Despite himself, Hans smiled. ‘Fuck off,’ he breathed, barely speaking the words. He felt at a strange loss for breath. ‘Won’t you tell me you’ll be sad?’
Henry looked at him and the frown disappeared. Instead his lips were gently parted, as if mid-sigh. His eyes were big and so, so blue. Terrible and too easy to drown in. He hadn’t shaved much since Suchdol. A dusting of dark hair trailed from his nostrils and feathered out at the sides of his lips. Hans wanted to stroke it with his thumb, wanted to feel it scratch his skin as he kissed him.
Then Henry’s lips split in a smile. The kind of embarrassed smile he’d pull when women complimented him; bashful and boyish. It made Hans’s heart threaten to hammer out of his chest.
‘I’ll be sad,’ Henry said, still smiling. ‘I’ll ask you to run away with me, and you’ll probably say yes. But then we don’t, because you know better.’
‘I know nothing at all.’
‘You know many things,’ Henry retorted. ‘And I know you’re not the robber baron type.’ He scooted closer and, after a brief pause, he let his head fall onto Hans’s shoulder. His wet hair tickled his lord’s jaw.
‘I don’t want to lose you.’ The surrounding birdsong almost drowned Hans out, so quiet did he speak that he was surprised Henry heard him at all.
‘You never will. We’ll die together. And then we’ll stand before God together, too.’
‘He won’t like that much.’
‘We’ll see.’
They sat in silence for a while with nothing but their breathing between them. Henry’s thumb had begun to gently stroke Hans’s hip and he finally let his head rest atop Henry’s, exhaling a shaky breath. Surely to be in love was God’s most cunning punishment. No metal tongs or rope chafing his wrists would ever scar him so terribly as love did
And how he loved Henry of Skalitz.
Eventually they stood up. Henry’s hand in Hans’s, he led him through the thick grass and together they broke the still glass surface of the lake. Henry’s hands found purchase on either side of Hans’s waist, firm and sure in his grip, and they were naked in the water’s embrace before the divine and all its judgements.
Let us be judged , Hans thought as he traced the contours of Henry’s muscle from his chest to his stomach, through the water’s surface and against his thighs where the water colored their skin like stained glass. Henry was warm and open, his face a mirror to his heart. He was both soft and hard under Hans’s roaming hands and his arms closed around his lord, safe and so close that Hans could count every droplet on Henry’s eyelashes, on his nose and on the corners of his mouth.
God, let us be judged .
Henry’s lips were on his neck, teeth scraping against his skin. He drew Hans closer, so close that individuality was shed for blessed duality. His nose pressed against Hans’s jaw.
And see us absolved.