Because I could not stop for Death –
He kindly stopped for me –
The Carriage held but just Ourselves –
And Immortality.
He kindly stopped for me –
The Carriage held but just Ourselves –
And Immortality.
The monks of Saint Volta wore red from head to hoof, and baptised themselves in lamb's blood.
Some believed that the red of their linen robes were so dark, so rich, that the dye could be none other than blood itself. Some believed it was a monk's own—pints of it drained day by day as he sat in his cavern cell, bare of warm furs and food, and touched his forehead to the cold earthen floor.
From day to night the monk prayed and fasted and drew pints of his own blood, until bottles started lining the room, until ribs started poking from skin, until the day, blessed day, a wash basin and a bolt of white linen was placed at his aching hooves. The monk would rise, smile a skeleton's smile, and rejoice that at last! His Saint had Heard him.
Yet most believed the red linens were bought by the bolt from Magda's Yard. That the monks were little more than fanatics.
And what had Caine believed?
In the beginning, the monks of Saint Volta had fascinated him. Their gruesome blood initiation; their relentless self-mutilation; their ghastly asceticism, buzzed necks, red robes, bony smiles. How could one dedicate one's entire life to a Saint? he had wondered. Even if it was Volta.
Caine, like everyone else, poured the most wine at the Saint's glorious altar come Midsummer's Eve; Caine, like everyone else, read stories of the Saint's exploits and thought to himself, If there is an existence after death than to Volta's realm I wish to go. Perhaps the monks had only wished for that a little bit more than the rest of them.
And then he had been sent to kill one, because a monk in red robes had violated a baron's dowried daughter, and the baron paid in bars of solid gold.
When Caine sees the dark man bent double over Caligo's shining altar, he slips behind a tree as quietly as a shadow and listens to the whip crack down on sundered flesh.
Crack! The man must be a monk. Crack! He must have committed a sin. Crack! He must be trying to kill himself.
So even here, men tore themselves apart for a being they saw as Holy. Even here, divine decrees split mortal deeds into Piety and Sacrilege, and for those who lived by the Word, Sacrilege was a fate worse than death. What had this monk done? Caine wonders. And then he sighs, because a morbid curiosity has gripped his heart in an iron fist, and the monk's relentless whipping is making his own scars ache.
He steps out from the tree's shadow and walks until he sees his own reflection staring back at him from the altar's nebulous marble. Dead silver eyes. Black tumbling hair. Four symbols carved in one neat line down his forehead. He looks to the monk, knelt shaking by Caligo's polished hooves, and drags his eyes over the red lines carved into his dark, bloody back.
"What sin have you committed, monk," Caine says, each syllable well-rounded and precise, his voice so soft he is almost crooning, "for you to mutilate yourself so?"
Some believed that the red of their linen robes were so dark, so rich, that the dye could be none other than blood itself. Some believed it was a monk's own—pints of it drained day by day as he sat in his cavern cell, bare of warm furs and food, and touched his forehead to the cold earthen floor.
From day to night the monk prayed and fasted and drew pints of his own blood, until bottles started lining the room, until ribs started poking from skin, until the day, blessed day, a wash basin and a bolt of white linen was placed at his aching hooves. The monk would rise, smile a skeleton's smile, and rejoice that at last! His Saint had Heard him.
Yet most believed the red linens were bought by the bolt from Magda's Yard. That the monks were little more than fanatics.
And what had Caine believed?
In the beginning, the monks of Saint Volta had fascinated him. Their gruesome blood initiation; their relentless self-mutilation; their ghastly asceticism, buzzed necks, red robes, bony smiles. How could one dedicate one's entire life to a Saint? he had wondered. Even if it was Volta.
Caine, like everyone else, poured the most wine at the Saint's glorious altar come Midsummer's Eve; Caine, like everyone else, read stories of the Saint's exploits and thought to himself, If there is an existence after death than to Volta's realm I wish to go. Perhaps the monks had only wished for that a little bit more than the rest of them.
And then he had been sent to kill one, because a monk in red robes had violated a baron's dowried daughter, and the baron paid in bars of solid gold.
When Caine sees the dark man bent double over Caligo's shining altar, he slips behind a tree as quietly as a shadow and listens to the whip crack down on sundered flesh.
Crack! The man must be a monk. Crack! He must have committed a sin. Crack! He must be trying to kill himself.
So even here, men tore themselves apart for a being they saw as Holy. Even here, divine decrees split mortal deeds into Piety and Sacrilege, and for those who lived by the Word, Sacrilege was a fate worse than death. What had this monk done? Caine wonders. And then he sighs, because a morbid curiosity has gripped his heart in an iron fist, and the monk's relentless whipping is making his own scars ache.
He steps out from the tree's shadow and walks until he sees his own reflection staring back at him from the altar's nebulous marble. Dead silver eyes. Black tumbling hair. Four symbols carved in one neat line down his forehead. He looks to the monk, knelt shaking by Caligo's polished hooves, and drags his eyes over the red lines carved into his dark, bloody back.
"What sin have you committed, monk," Caine says, each syllable well-rounded and precise, his voice so soft he is almost crooning, "for you to mutilate yourself so?"
