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December 20, five days preceding the birth of our most holy Savior, + Jesus Christ +
The Year of Our Lord 1399
Maulbronn Monastery
My dear compatriot in Christ, Brother Savaric,
We live now in an age of vice and deceit and that which the faithless are pleased to call reason. It is a tragic fact that the great pestilence that God sent as a chastisement of the world did not inspire a mortification of body and a renunciation of spirit; rather, there has arisen a new and insidious sensibility, a reckless and prideful assertion that it did rise from natural causes as common as the bloom of a flower or the withering of old age. These are blasphemies that reach my ears even in my humble cell where I grow ever more detached from the things of this world, and in response I can only pray that men are not seduced by this diabolical idolatry of science, and turn to the Almighty in this increasingly secular age.
It was not always so. Once lions in the guise of men walked this earth, and it is one I, Brother Anselm, wish to tell of now. Never before has this confession fallen from my pen, nor from my lips; it is one I could not bring myself to tell a confessor. Age has granted me a measure of wisdom and I now perceive that I bear some culpability in the matter. I was a youth of eighteen at the time, and I pray that God will see this confession, delivered without the benefit of intermediary, and forgive me and bear me to Heaven and His eternal graces. If not, I beseech you to pray for my miserable sinner’s soul.
I will not name the monastery where I resided at the time; it is enough to say that it was, on the face of things, no different from any abbey of its day. We lived in peace and seclusion, engaging with the town outside our walls only insofar that it was necessary. We were untrammeled by the vicissitudes of the world, and yet even in our closed community the shadow of the great plague had fallen upon us. Fully one-fourth of our brother monks had succumbed, and the rest prayed incessantly, visited penances upon our bodies and souls, and avoided the outside world.
One day in 1348, the outside world came to us in the form of a knight, Ulric, who presented himself to us at the behest of the bishop. He had been charged with discovering why a certain village had thus far been free of the dark plague; it was whispered that demonic forces were at work within.
Ulric.
How to describe such a man? In my eighteen years I had never seen his like: tall and broad, noble and comely, certain in the righteousness of his errand. And a man of God, of faith. Let that never be in doubt. Strength and sternness predominated in the lines of his face, and a certain quality of melancholy suffused his pale green eyes, endowing them with a light that pierced the heart. And yet there seemed to reside in his strong limbs a trace of passions that had been disciplined by the fiercest rigors of will. All this I perceived while haunting his footsteps almost from the moment of his arrival until his leave-taking.
I lingered in the shadows during his council with the abbot and my brother monks, awed by his presence and too foolish to speak up when he requested a guide. Another brother, Osmund, volunteered, and I confess to a wild sensation of anger and jealousy when his offer was accepted. True, Osmund was chosen for his knowledge of the marshlands, and I was the son of a city tanner, and the marshes would have proved a wilderness of terror for me, but that did not lessen my anger. I repented as best I could, though, refusing meat that evening and repairing to the Lady Chapel of our church after Compline to pray for forgiveness.
I was not alone in my desire to pray. Illumined by the glow of candles, Ulric knelt at the railing, his head bowed, his lips moving silently. It is true I should have left him to his private prayers and returned to my cell, for does not Christ Himself advise us to pray in secret? But in truth I was so moved by the sight of that strong man, a knight, the bishop’s emissary on his knees in humble supplication, that I tarried, concealing myself behind a stone column.
O God! Would that I had left!
As I watched him and marked the width of his shoulders, the muscles shifting beneath his dark tunic as he bent further forward in prayer, the length of his fine hands, I began to feel a strange pull of emotion, as inexorable as a sea-tide. But I did not discern it for more than a fleeting moment, for as I strained my eyes to watch the knight, I saw from the corner of my eye a figure approaching him.
The man was a stranger; no monk, nor one of the tradesmen who found his way to the abbey in the course of a workday. He was of taller than average height, and slender. He wore a long, close-fitting black garment and a short beard, and his hair was drawn back from a wide, clear brow. His eyes were pale and passing strange; it seemed a myriad of lights danced in them, blue and gold, like unto an herbalist’s healing flames. When he stretched out a hand to touch Ulric’s shoulder, I saw that he had blackened and raggedly sharp nails, like claws. A chill passed through my body.
I relate to you now what I remember. God alone knows why I have never been able to sear this from my heart and mind.
“Ulric,” the stranger said, and touched the knight’s shoulder.
Ulric started and began to rise to his feet, but the man’s hand did seem to press him firmly to the stone. “Who are you, sir?”
The stranger smiled, a peculiar upward fluttering of the lips. “What do names matter, Ulric? If I gave you mine, would it make me a more worthy soul? Follow me into battle because I am al-Hakim bi Amr al-Lah. Listen to what I say, for I am Jesus. Eat this apple because my name is Eve.” He knelt beside Ulric and snaked an arm around his waist in a bracing but exceeding intimate gesture, drawing him close. “I only wanted a word with you.”
I then saw that Ulric struggled to pull away from the stranger, but it appeared that the man possessed an extraordinary strength. “I was at prayer,” he said in a low tone appropriate for a chapel, “and I command you to release me.” I saw his hand stealing toward the dagger he wore at his waist.
“But you’re so delightful to hold,” the stranger replied in a crooning whisper. I swear to you at that moment I began to realize the truth, though it revealed itself to me at an agonizing slow pace.
“Release me,” Ulric growled, and swept the dagger up under the man’s chin. I perceived in horror that it was not a dagger at all, but a flower, creamy white, with a strange protrusion in its center that appeared all too like the priapic organ. Ulric saw this and flung it away with a cry as the stranger laughed. That laughter was a soft metallic shiver that insinuated itself inside me forever. If I close my eyes now, I can still hear it.
You will wonder, perhaps, why I did not run, to fly for aid or at least to hide myself from the conflict arising in that tiny, smoky chapel. I could not. I was frozen with fear, and a terrible curiosity, and a strange yearning that held me immobile. I longed to cry out, but my mouth was as stifled as my legs.
Sweat had begun to form on Ulric’s brow. “Tell me, then, what you want, and leave me be.”
“I wanted to thank you for what you’ve done. You follow so excellently, so blindly, that every action you take is purest pleasure for me. When you enter that village, when you take that young monk with you, when you cut down the guilty, or the innocent, it fills me with delight. It serves me. Thank you, Ulric.” The stranger’s lips moved against Ulric’s ear, causing the knight to tremble.
“I serve God, not man.”
“I’m no man, Ulric. Don’t you see?” The stranger put both hands on Ulric’s shoulders and drew him close until their lips nearly touched. Then he slid one hand down the knight’s chest and thither – between Ulric’s strong legs, so that Ulric gasped and struggled once more for freedom.
“No—“ Ulric cried, but the stranger lay a hand over his lips, silencing him.
“You are ever close to me, fair knight, for all your protestations of godliness. You slaughter wantonly and well, and I have only come to offer you your reward.” He – or say rather, it - took the hand from Ulric’s mouth.
“What reward?” Ulric fought with renewed frenzy. “I was at prayer!”
“I often interrupt men in the midst of prayer. It confounds them immeasurably. Your reward, dearest Ulric – I can heal you.”
Ulric ceased his struggles and stared at the dark man. “Heal me?”
“Yes. You know of what I speak. You lay with that boy – oh, a mere seventeen-year-old boy, Ulric, for shame! – and he gave you what you now bear in silence and pain.”
At these words I nearly fell in a faint. In the deepest recesses of my mind, foul and exciting images had awakened and were writhing to dreadful life.
“How do you know?” Ulric whispered.
“I know many things.”
“Gilbert,” Ulric murmured. “He was only a boy.”
“And so shall he always be, at least in his grieving mother’s mind. The truth is that he’s nothing now but moldering bones and worm-eaten flesh. But I can save you from that same fate, Ulric, if you bind yourself to me.”
And now I guessed what had befallen the knight, the fair and comely protector. I confess with a trembling heart that I would have rushed to offer myself for his life, if I could have spoken or moved.
On his knees, Ulric was not a pathetic figure, but a hero straining to free himself from the loathsome fetters of sin. “Liar,” he whispered. “Liar, father of lies from the beginning.”
The stranger laughed that soft, metallic laugh again and stroked Ulric’s hair. “God has endowed his angels with gifts. Did the priests never teach you that?”
“An angel – an angel of darkness. You can’t heal. You can only destroy.” Ulric turned his face away, and for a terrifying second I swore he locked my eyes with his. They brimmed with anguish and pleaded for release. If only I could have saved him.
“No,” the evil one replied. Slowly, he unfastened the belt at Ulric’s waist and let it drop. Ulric trembled, powerless to move. The stranger smiled and untied the strings of the knight’s tunic, pulling it from his body as gently as a mother with her child until Ulric’s pale, beauteous torso and arms were fully revealed, as glorious as any pagan statue. “No, I can do much more. And I can give pleasure. Great pleasure.” He bent and suckled gently at Ulric’s nipple.
Ulric’s head fell back. He moaned. “God. God help me.”
“Not God,” the stranger said. He brushed his hands, with their claw-like nails, over the sublime perfection of Ulric’s skin. “Is there pain? Just a little yet? A small swelling here, and here…but you are not disfigured, fair knight, not yet. Ask…and you shall receive.” He bent to Ulric’s nipple again. His tongue darted and flickered over the sensitive flesh, and his hands slid Ulric’s travel-worn breeches down his thighs.
I dare not relate to you the sensations I experienced while I watched. God knows, and will punish me accordingly.
Ulric lay back, moaning and protesting in whispers, as the stranger slowly stripped him mother-naked and began to perform the most hideous acts, licking and suckling all parts of his body. He attempted to surge up, but it was as if invisible bonds secured him to the stone floor. Above on the chapel’s altarpiece, the Virgin and Child bore witness in stone, but their eyes were decorously averted, as if they had known this blasphemy would ultimately descend upon the chapel. I watched in silent horror as Ulric’s organ, against nature and inclination, responded to the dark stranger’s attentions. And even as he protested, the organ beckoned and grew, and Ulric tossed his head from side to side, gasping and uttering mingled curses and pleas to God for help.
The stranger threw aside his own garments and parted Ulric’s legs. To all appearances he was an ordinary man, but the lust in his eyes relayed the truth. He took Ulric on the floor of the Lady Chapel, grunting in some foul babble, thrusting into him like some infernal machine, and Ulric, helpless to resist, cried out in terror and ecstasy. At last, they finished with a cry that I feared would bring the very stones of the church tumbling down, and I sank to my knees, overcome with fear and loathing.
The dark one leaned over Ulric’s naked, sweating body. “How beautifully you refuse. Well, I leave you to it, fair knight, though I may collect you for your deeds withal. Farewell.” He stood and dressed as swiftly as sight can tell, and made his way from the chapel.
Still frozen, I could but watch as he moved towards me. He saw me! And as he approached I smelt brimstone and the bitterness of iron and sea-water. I was powerless to move or speak, and he smiled as if he knew this, and touched my cheek.
“Maybe next time, little monk.”
And with that he was gone.
I turned my eyes back to Ulric, who lay upon the chapel floor as if dead. Presently, though, he rose and dressed himself, slowly, as if he were in terrible pain. He looked up at the Mother and Child, made as if to cross himself, and stopped. As he pivoted on his heel, I saw the gleam of tears in his eyes. He walked away and did not see me.
After a time I found it in my power to move again. I fled the church, went to my cell, and lay wakeful the night through, praying and weeping and thinking upon what I had seen.
In the refectory the next morning, Ulric appeared at breakfast and ate as if nothing had happened. He collected Brother Osmund – O fortunate Osmund! – and the two left the abbey. I watched to the last, of course, and just before they rounded the last turn and disappeared, I saw Ulric shift in his saddle and stare up at the church. A shudder coursed through his body, and he turned and urged his horse away.
And now I have come to the end of this telling. Condemn me if you wish; it matters little, for God has his own judgment reserved for me, for my part in this. But do not doubt it is true. Lucifer, the Morning Star, the former right hand of God Himself and now cast down into the deepest pits of Hell, is real, and walks among us. Beware temptation; beware the beguiling snares of the devil.
Vale,
Brother Anselm
Summary: Brother Anselm reveals witnessing a meeting between the knight Ulric and a dark stranger.
Rated: NC-17
Categories: Crossovers Pairing: Lucifer/Ulric
Warnings: Non-conChallenges:
Series: NoneChapters: 1 Completed: Yes
Word count: 2650 Read: 576
Published: 21 Oct 2011 Updated: 21 Oct 2011