behind that pretty surface, and protect you from the darkness I sometimes see in your eyes when you’re not aware that I’m watching. I want you beside me for the rest of my life, and yet, when I reach out to you, I feel like I’m reaching for a shadow in a mirror. As if you’re not really here or not quite real. What are you, Lasse? A mirage, like the sailors tell of? Or some kind of darkness from my own soul?” Nicolaus’ usually soft voice had grown in intensity until it was almost grating.
Lasse sighed and put his legs up on the heavy crossbeam beneath the table. Nicolaus wasn’t just a customer, but he also wanted more from Lasse than just a body and an agreeable surface. And Lasse didn’t feel anywhere near ready to trust anyone with his heart and mind again. Not after Otto. On the other hand, he also didn’t want to leave Nicolaus. Lasse liked the ardent young priest, and wished their life together wouldn’t hurt Nicolaus so much. For Lasse, it didn’t matter. He didn’t desire anyone, not even Tat’yana or Nicolaus. As long as it paid, did him no damage, and didn’t hurt too much, it was all the same to him. The money he earned from his jobs for Viktor actually meant that he hadn’t needed to accept any customers lately, but of course those jobs might be even more difficult for Nicolaus to accept than what had happened to Lasse in the past. After all, Lasse had then been a suffering victim, something he wasn’t any more, and was determined never to become again.
“Did you know that evil is real?” Lasse kept his eyes fixed on the candle in the heavy pewter candlestick on the table rather than looking at Nicolaus. He couldn’t take the young priest completely into his confidence, not even as much as he had told Tat’yana, but he supposed he did owe Nicolaus some kind of trust. “I’ve been touched by such evil. No! ” Lasse raised a hand when Nicolaus sat up, suddenly alert. “I’m not talking about evil from the devil, but about evil in a man. Something delighting in destruction and betrayal, but entirely of this world.”
“But my dear Lasse, such are the signs of the devil.” Nicolaus was now smiling and looking a lot happier.
“No. I don’t agree. There is evil that is entirely in man, and that we cannot blame on the devil.” This was the first time Lasse had ever argued with Nicolaus, or showed any kind of disagreement, and the young priest’s smile was growing broad enough to split his face. “But let us take that discussion another day, Nicolaus.” Lasse hesitated, wanting to be honest, but not really sure how far it would be safe to go. “Back when I was a cook…I’ve never told you that, but I was and I was good at it. Back then I used to be quite fond of one of the young maids, who’d smile at me and call me Cookie. Right now I don’t suppose I’m really interested in anything but survival and revenge against the man who turned me into what I am today. But the point is that I’m not certain I could ever love a man. Not like you love me. Do you think-” Lasse suddenly had to stop and swallow. “-Do you think you could possibly settle for some kind of friendship instead?”
Nicolaus, with his smile still in place and his eyes filled with tears, said, “My dearest Lasse, I’d be absolutely delighted.”
“I suppose the sea means freedom to me. Getting away and leaving the past behind. Including the past me.” Lasse smiled wryly, and looked at the sunlight glittering on the water across the harbor.
“To me it’s just frightening. I have no intentions of ever sailing if I can avoid it.” Nicolaus was looking at him rather than at the sea. Things had actually gotten a lot better between the two of them since they had stopped sharing a bed. Nicolaus still took delight in teaching Lasse all kinds of things from his beloved books, but he no longer spent most of his nights kneeling in prayer, and joining Lasse for his daily walk around the harbor had given him brighter eyes and a better appetite. “What frightens you, Lasse?”
“Frightens?” Lasse started walking again. “Well, the mere thought of falling back into the power of Otto von Quadt is enough to scare me out of my mind, but aside from that? Being helpless, perhaps. People with the power to hurt me.”
“The worst hurt can come only from the people you care for.”
“If that was true, I’d fear you and Tat’yana more than Otto. And believe me, that is not the case.”
“Who is Tat’yana? A Russian?”
“A friend here in Stralsund. She’s from France. She used to wear another name, but if you meet her you better call her Tat’yana, that’s what she calls herself these days. You might hear her call me Cookie.”
“Is she the maid you told me about?”
Lasse stopped and looked at Nicolaus. “No, the maid is back in Sweden. Tat’yana is a clerk. When I disappear on those occasions that I refuse to explain, I’m usually with her. We work for the same man.”
“And what do you do for him?” The tension in Nicolaus’s voice showed that he knew he was intruding more on Lasse’s privacy than ever before.
Lasse stood for a while, looking at the water again before answering. If he wanted Nicolaus’s friendship, he’d have to take a chance and tell his something of his life. “I kill.”
“What! Is that a joke?” Nicolaus looked ready to faint.
“No.” Lasse dropped every bit of the polished surface he usually wore as a mask, and knew Nicolaus was facing empty eyes in a stonelike face. “Nicolaus, there are three things that I can do well enough to make a living. One, I can cook, but taking a place as a servant would mean placing myself in somebody’s power, and I cannot do that. Two, I can be elegant and desirable enough for wealthy people to pay me for sex. And I’ll do so if I need the money. Three, I can kill. I’m good at it, and I feel nothing in doing so.” He hesitated. “Except, once or twice, a slight regret.”
“Once or twice?” Nicolaus almost whispered. “But how many have you killed?”
“I don’t know. Twenty? Thirty? Less than a hundred. I’ve never tried to count.”
“But…but how? Why?” Nicolaus seemed even more shocked than Lasse had expected.
“Preferably with a knife.” Lasse shrugged and looked into the young priest’s eyes. “Would it help if I told you that most of them deserved it and would in fact have been hanged if their crimes had been exposed in a court?”
“I don’t know.” Nicolaus shook his head and sat down on a wooden post, ignoring the horse tied to the post even as it knocked off his hat and started nibbling at his hair.
“You must have guessed that I had to kill to escape Otto, and Viktor is an arms dealer. Part of my work for him is as a bodyguard, and many of the people he does business with are not nice people.”
“But you are so pretty. And so young.”
“And therefore anyone targeting Viktor is going to concentrate on the more obvious threats.” Lasse smiled slightly. “Eh, Nicolaus. You really don’t have so much hair on your head that you should feed it to the horses.”
Nicolaus put a hand to his head and looked around to stare at the horse. “I think I better go home.” He got up from the post and stood a bit, wobbling.
“Do you want me to come with you?” Lasse kept himself from reaching out to steady Nicolaus. If Nicolaus couldn’t accept what Lasse was and how he made a living, they’d better stop it now.
“No. Thanks. I’m fine. I just need to think.” Nicolaus gave a rather wavering smile and set off more or less in the direction of the small house he’d rented near the St. James Church.
“Hello, Cookie. Did you tell him you were pregnant? He looked that shocked.”
Lasse turned with a smile to answer Tat’yana. He had spotted her during his talk with Nicolaus, but she was in her tavern doxy persona today, and the few people going in and out of the small shops would have wondered at Nicolaus talking to her. The area around the Church of St. James was still partly a ruin after being destroyed by Wallenstein seven years earlier, and Nicolaus’ scattered colleagues had simply accepted Lasse as an old friend of Nicolaus from the university in Rostock with an occasional taste for low company. With the exception of a widow well known for her pretty young male servants, Lasse had been very careful to select his customers entirely from the travelers staying in the harbor area, and of course there was no overlap between the clerics of St. James and Viktor’s people at the Vulgar Unicorn.
“No. I told him that you were, and that you were going to claim him as father,” said Lasse.
Lasse and Tat’yana both stepped aside as a man came out from the fishmonger with a brace of dried cods over his shoulder and untied the horse. He hesitated, looking at the well-dressed young man and the whore in the stained red dress, but when Lasse raised a questioning eyebrow the man just shook his head, mounted, and rode on.
“There’s been questions asked.” Tat’yana sat down on the post Nicolaus had just left. She kept a bright smile on her face as she looked up on Lasse, but her voice was dead-serious.
“Who and what?”
“One is addressed as von Werle. I don’t know about the other two. They are staying in the house of Herr
