Thorn by Fred Saberhagen (reading like a writer TXT) 📕

      “Thank you,” she called out softly, turning back to the window.

      “It is I who should thank you. You have been of considerable help.”

      “How?”

      He didn’t answer. The desert here was high enough so that the night had grown quite cool. Mary breathed deeply of its coolness, meanwhile listening to a distant owl. Her thoughts were ready to go with the bird, fly through the night. Sadness was rapidly being replaced by a fierce though quiet elation.

      When Thorn had finished filling the tank, he came like a conscientious attendant to treat the windshield with a squeegee no one had bothered to lock away. That task complete, he vanished again in the direction of the building. This time Mary made a more intense effort to watch closely. But this time too Thorn simply disappeared.

      Then abruptly he was standing at the driver’s door again, opening it to get in. I don’t believe this, Mary thought, feeling delighted, as by some stage magician’s cleverness.

      “You had to go back in to return the keys,” she remarked cheerfully.

      “And to leave payment.” His voice seemed to chide her gently for having omitted anything so important. “Not, of course, at the outrageous rates listed on these signs.”

      “Oh, of course not.” Was this really her, so eager to be agreeable?

      He was now seated beside her, with the door closed. Looking at her. But for the moment he made no move to start the engine.

      Something in the way he looked at her made Mary sigh faintly and lean back in her seat. “You were right,” she said. “It was hard to go through that, but now somehow I feel sure those dreams aren’t going to bother me any more.”

      “I trust that they will not.”

      The moonlight was silver and strange. Mary had the feeling that she had never really looked at moonlight closely before.

      Again she was the one to break the silence. “I have the feeling,’’ she announced,’ ‘that when you kiss me I’m going to enjoy it very much.”

      One of his eyebrows went up. “Then I must seem churlish indeed to delay. But I would like to find a better place than this.”

      Thorn turned the key in the ignition. He was immune to personal fear, but not to horror. And he supped full on horror in the next moment, when he heard the strange reaction, and sensed the hellish fire of the bomb blast, blowing backward and upward at him from the engine.

Chapter Twelve

      Our wedding night, or wedding morning rather, was spent at Careggi, the beautiful Medici villa which lay only a few miles outside the walls of Florence. Lorenzo praised that country retreat to me extravagantly as we rode out through the silently opened city gates before dawn, and told me that much of his childhood had been spent there. I was on my own stallion, Helen at my side on a docile young white palfrey that Lorenzo had begged her to accept as his own wedding gift.

      We reached Careggi just as the sun brightened the Tuscan countryside. Piero, gout and all, was waiting for us on the grounds, seated on the rim of one of the great stone fountains near the main house. The head of the Medici family rose to offer us greetings and congratulations, then led us to what would now be called a debriefing session, in the guise of a wedding breakfast at which the men and women of course sat down separately. The questioning was very polite and very smooth, and accompanied with intervals of real celebration; but in the course of an hour my hosts had managed to extract from me more information than I had been aware of carrying regarding the Boccalini and their affairs. When I was finally milked dry and yawning, Piero made flowery apologies for the delay, presented me with a jeweled collar and a warhorse as my own wedding gifts, and released me to join my bride. The sun was fully up by now, the day already growing warm.

      The women had finished their own breakfast somewhat earlier. Helen had been bathed and perfumed under the direction of the ladies of the household, and was already installed in a second floor room that in years past had served, so I was told, as a bridal chamber for members of the family. I was now, amid some merriment, conducted thence myself.

      Closing the door of this room behind me with a weary sigh, I turned to the great bed to discover my new wife fast asleep. I hardly needed a second look to make sure that this was no coy bridal ruse, but only the natural result of great exhaustion. I did not intend to wake her; I myself had had almost no sleep during the past two days, and at the moment rest felt more attractive than any other sensual delight. Yet when I had undressed and turned back the covers, I paused to look. Nightclothes of any kind were still the rare exception rather than the rule, and my bride’s whole inventory of physical charms was available for inspection. The wholesale removal of rags and grime had left visible a number of bruises I had not been able to see before, along with a few half-healed scabs. But it was a young body, basically healthy and of a trimly attractive shape. It seemed likely that it would give me considerable pleasure, and might bear me strong, healthy sons as well.

      Pulling a cover over us both, I let my head fall back in weariness upon a pillow. But the finely woven bed canopy above was bright with morning, my mind was full of a hundred concerns, and sleep refused to come at once.

      That there should be an unfamiliar, girlish breathing at my side in bed was in itself no strange phenomenon. But it was strange, very strange, to reflect that this particular sound would not only grow familiar, but it could nevermore be lightly put away. At least she did not snore.

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