The wind carried a boy's voice from the edge of the sea.
[...]
'He's whistling to the seals,' said Brother Colomb. 'Do any of you know who that boy is?'
Four of the boys shook their heads. 'I know him,' said Hakon Paulson. 'I know him very well, of course. He's my cousin Magnus Erlendson from Paplay.' The boy smiled: he remembered rockpools in the sun, a cage of doves, small flung fists and tears and reconciliation.
Brother Colomb turned again to the window. 'Boy,' he called, 'come here. I need to speak to you. I know who you are. You are wasting my time and the time of the school.'
There was silence outside. They heard the rattle of feet on pebbles. The wind surged and fell away. They heard a whisper of feet across the salty grass. 'It's too dark in there,' said the voice. 'I won't come inside today. There's a seal hurt, down at the rock. Didn't you hear him crying out? I'm trying to reach him, but I can't till it ebbs a bit more.'
"What is the soul? According to Kabbalists, the soul is a mirror in which the sefirot are reflected, a spark of the divine essence. De León writes, 'The body is not an image of the Creator ... What, then, is His image and His counterpart? The soul, without a doubt.' The soul, he says, is 'God's own essential being.'
The Zohar tells us that our body is nothing more than a garment for our soul: 'How does Scripture describe the creation of man? "You have clothed me with skin and flesh" (Job 10:11). What then is man? If you say that he is nothing but skin and flesh, and bones and sinews, you are wrong; for, in actual truth, the real part of man is his soul. Clothes belong to man, but they are not man, and when man departs he is stripped of the clothes that he has put on.'"
By the time the games ended and Anatolius left his friends to hurry towards his appointment with the soothsayer, the sun was setting behind the green hills of Constantinople, leaving the city's innumerable columns silhouetted briefly against a fading purple sky that rapidly pulled them into its soft darkness.
'Lovers,' he mused. John had said that he and the girl had been lovers.
It was preposterous, of course. Not because of John's condition. He had, after all, once been whole. But the girl was too young. Younger even than Anatolius.
And John was usually the most rational of men. But of course the Lord Chamberlain had been under a great strain preparing for the yearly celebrations. Even the most brilliant of men were human. Then, too, John wasn't getting any younger.
[...]
Anatolius' thoughts returned to the girl. He recalled her exquisite face, the enormous dark eyes. Truly beautiful eyes, not merely illusions created by the skilled application of kohl.
Anatolius was all too familiar with artifice as practised by the soft young women of the court. Pallid and slack. This girl, this woman ... she was fully alive. Supple and muscular. Tanned. Her tiny breasts smooth and firm as apples. Yes, he had to admit it, he was in love.
And he had to confess, also, that he was glad John was not at his side to inquire about the goddess Lucretia, silken-breasted Lucretia, skin-like-
moonlight Lucretia. Anatolius' most recent true love. She who had married a senator last week.
But no, Anatolius chided himself. He had learned his lesson. He had been younger then, and foolish. Lucretia had been a delusion, but ... this girl ... whatever her name might be ... He must find out where the bull-leapers were staying. He must meet her. As for his friend John ...
