Isaac's Apple Tree
He brings me into the banquet hall and sets love as his banner over me.
——Song of Songs 2:4
The stone monastery stood like a silent tomb in the midnight rain. Esther knelt on the cold stone floor, the moist air seeping into her starched burlap robe. The flickering candlelight on the altar danced on the tips of her light golden eyelashes, and the neighing of war horses mixed with thunder could be heard in the distance, from far to near.
When the door was knocked open, the wind blew the evergreen lantern around. The soldiers' black cloaks were stained with mud and blood, and the sound of their iron boots on the stone slabs was like the Doomsday Judgment. The leading man passed through two rows of frightened monks and walked straight to the altar.
He only glanced at Esther. The gaze was like a sword that had just been drawn out of gunpowder smoke. It was dark, but the edge was tempered with scorching light. She knew those eyes - she had been hiding among the thorns behind the oak trees when he slaughtered the pagan horsemen in the valley half a month ago. The blood dyed the stream red. He reined in his horse and turned around among the corpses, his amber eyes reflecting the rising sun. Then she prayed not to be discovered, now she prays...
"Take her away," he said, his voice like sandpaper on pig iron.
When Esther was pulled up, the cross pendant around her neck fell off, bouncing on the ground and rolling toward the toes of his boots. He bent down to pick it up, rubbing his thumb over the silver surface that had been polished by countless prayers.
"Who are you praying to?" He asked, his tone flat, "The God who abandoned you in this barren mountain?"
The prison car was bumpy for three days. Esther was locked in a room in the east tower of the castle, with velvet curtains blocking out the sunlight and a fire in the fireplace that never went out day and night. She didn't speak, and she only prayed silently to the cross drawn with charcoal in the corner every day.
On the fourth night, he opened the door and came in. The rhythm of her leather boots tapping the floor gradually coincided with her heartbeat. He stopped in front of her, looking down from a high position, the candlelight casting a deep shadow on his slightly curly black hair.
"Can your God hear you?" He placed one hand on the wall beside her ear, leaned down, and hung the cross pendant back around her neck. The silver chain still carried his body temperature. "The stones of this castle are soaked in blood - Saxon's, Norman's, my father's, my brother's. Your carpenter who died on the cross, did he ever promise you to be invulnerable to swords?"
Esther looked up, her light gray eyes like the sea before a storm. "Vengeance is mine, says the Lord, and I will repay."
He laughed, his laughter low, but like tearing silk. "Then let your Lord repay me. But before that -" his fingers stroked the curve of her jaw, and the thin calluses on his fingertips made her skin numb, "I want you to understand that every word you pray to the void will eventually fall into my ears."
He lowered his head to kiss her with the ferocity of plundering a city. Esther tasted the rusty taste of blood between his lips and teeth, and her nails dug into the muscles of his shoulder blades, but he pressed down harder. She bit the tip of his tongue, and he just chuckled, clasped the back of her neck and deepened the kiss. When they separated, a strand of silver was connected between their lips, and his pupils shrank into narrow vertical lines under the candlelight.
"Tomorrow," he wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth, "my army will set off to conquer the north. Will you go with me, or will you stay here and continue to pray to your wooden idol?"
Esther didn't answer. After he left, she huddled in front of the fireplace and found that the cross around her neck was warm from her body temperature. There was a nightingale singing outside the window, and she recalled the lines from the Song of Songs: "Listen, it is the voice of my beloved; behold, he is coming over the mountains and over the ridges."
On the way to the northern expedition, it snowed for the first time this year. Esther was placed in his tent. When she woke up late at night, she found that he had fallen asleep leaning on the cot, his brows furrowed, as if he was still fighting with others in his dream. She hesitated for a moment and gently covered him with the wool blanket.
He opened his eyes, and there was a moment of confusion in his amber eyes. That expression was fleeting, replaced by his usual sarcasm and aggression. He grabbed her wrist and pulled her down onto his chest. His heartbeat came through the chainmail, dull and powerful.
"Does your god teach you to do good deeds while people are sleeping?" His voice was hoarse, and his hot breath brushed against her ears.
"Our Lord teaches us to love our neighbor as ourselves."
"Love?" He turned over and pressed her under him, untying her collar, kissing the hollow of her collarbone and biting lightly with his teeth, "Then do you know that I want more than that?"
Snow fell on the roof of the tent with a soft rustling sound. Esther closed her eyes and felt his lips go down her neck like a branding iron, leaving burn marks on every inch of skin. She inserted her trembling fingers into his thick hair and heard the small moans escaping from her throat.
"Listen," he raised his head on her chest, with an almost pious fanaticism burning in his eyes, "If you are the lamb on the altar, I will be the sacrificial knife. If you are the bride in the scriptures -" He lowered his head and pressed his lips against her heart, "I will be the beloved who comes over the mountains and ridges."
"My beloved is mine, and I am his." Esther heard her voice coming from far away. He was stunned for a moment in the darkness, then lowered his head and bit her lips, turning the night into a long, sacrificial possession.
At the break of dawn, Esther wakes up. He fell asleep next to her, his black hair scattered on the pillow, and there was an old scar on his left shoulder, like an ink stain blurred by tears on a scripture scroll. She touched the scar lightly, and his eyelashes twitched.
The morning light filtered in through the gaps in the tent and fell on the red mark on her neck, like some ancient mark. Outside the window, soldiers were gearing up, horses neighing, and swords clashing. Esther thought of another morning - the moment in the valley when he reined in his horse and turned around, the sunlight gilded his whole body in gold.
At that time she thought he was a messenger from hell. Now she was lying in the occupied tent, listening to his steady breathing, and suddenly understood the verse in the Song of Songs that she had never understood: "O daughters of Jerusalem, I charge you by the antelope or by the doe of the field, do not stir, do not wake my beloved, until he wishes."
It turns out that waiting is also a kind of robbery. It turns out that those who are possessed may not be willing to do so.
He turned over and wrapped his arms unconsciously around her waist, like a child holding his only treasure. Esther closed her eyes and heard crows pecking in the snow outside the tent amidst the sound of swords. The crowfeathers were dark, like the color of his eyes. She suddenly couldn't tell whether he had captured her or she had stolen something more important from him than the city.
The bells for morning prayers did not ring. Instead, there is a distant horn, long and desolate. He woke up, his amber eyes looking at her momentarily, as if looking at a miracle that he could never truly have in his life.
Esther reached out and smoothed the wrinkles between his brows.
"Come on," she said, "your battlefield awaits me."
He took her hand and kissed the base of her ring finger. The kiss was very light, but it was more like a promise than all the plundering last night.
Conception:-