It is the soft touch of tears on his face that wakes him, falling gently like drops of blood. The Lord of this house weeps for him, and the drops have fallen on his eyelids.

The Prince opens his eyes and sees his host for the first time.

---

There is still a dull hank of Persinette's hair twisted around his hand, under his glove and gauntlet. It's cut into his skin, through a faint layer of grime still ground into him despite his host's ministrations. Wound through his ring -- the ring he had meant to give her. They were going to be married, did you know that? It had slipped his mind, somewhere between their deliriously happy tumbles and her belly starting to swell and his last near-fatal fall. But he refuses to let go of it, even when Barbe-bleue says it is cutting off the flow of blood and threatens to cut through the golden threads to free him. (Even when he cannot see, he knows it is still the same color, the color of sunshine and of God’s own aureole, in his mind’s eye.)

His host tends to his wounds with great gentleness, a doctorly hand cleaning and anointing the pierced places. After a brief time in the castle the Prince was more than capable of dressing himself, of holding his own goblet and brushing his own hair, but his host seeks any and every excuse to touch him, to guide his hands. Part of him finds it an insult and a sting; he’s made it this far, hasn’t he? But part of him enjoys human touch over the dig and scrape of brambles.

It is a hollow house, and there is no song in it. There are no servants, not in all his vast castle with all its tables and beds, looking-glasses and gold plate. The two of them keep to a handful of rooms and there are rarely any fires lit in the other grates. he forbids him to wander.

“I trust you to respect my hospitality and obey,” he says bitterly, as if he expected the same of his other houseguests and they promptly stole the silver and tracked mud onto the tapestries.

---

A curious man, this Barbe-bleue is. The Prince does not yet have enough of his sight to tell if his name is literal; everything is still pained and blurred, the colors crazing. His hair seems the darkest inky black, and the color of his skin is uncertain, fair in some lights and tawny in others. He has the manners of a country aristocrat, ill-mannered by lack of practice but not without elegance or courtesy. His age is uncertain. He’s carried the Prince before quite easily, without stumbling. “I have not entertained guests these recent years,” he says, weariness plain in his voice. “There were once balls held here, lavish parties; men would hunt in these woods and fish in these rivers. But since the death of my last wife...”

The Prince’s own father has had five different wives; he thinks nothing of it. They talk at length, without much better to do, though his host seems always busy writing letters. His own heritage comes out, once his tongue has healed.

---

They make love one night, when it’s bitterly cold, and to touch the stone floor with naked feet is to invite walking on needles. (It’s the first time since Persinette, naturally; who takes pity on a blind beggar? Even one with a royal title. Who shelters him with their body? He misses the smell of spun silk in her clothes and the sound of her sweet voice. It’s her that makes him lonely, the echo of her voice that makes him burn for a foreign stranger, the shadow of her fairness in his host’s blue-black hair. It is his mad grief, lost from her, that makes him take shelter in the body of a seven-times-widower, in strong limbs and a guarded heart.) The prickle of that blue-black beard against his mouth is like gentle thorns.

“I don’t think I shall go back to women,” he says, offhand, and his host gives a reluctant smile.

What he sees in the looking-glass is no beautiful youth; crossed and recrossed with scars, disfigured even. But his host is worshipful of it.

---

The seasons turn, from the wet autumn that cast him adrift on the castle steps, blind and masked in scars, to a bitter winter, to a moist spring. His host writes letters to the King and Queen, telling them of their youngest son’s predicament and improving health, and how he will be returned to them once he has recovered his strength and the roads are better, of the princess in the tower. There are never any answers that the Prince sees.

Now that he is well enough, his host must make a journey; only one of three days, but he wouldn’t want his auspicious noble guest to want for anything in his absence. The keys he leaves, with a bristled kiss and instructions -- this is for the casket where I keep writing-paper, should you be thirsty there is a wine cellar, this key in gold opens all the other appartements, should you wish to sleep in a different bed every night, do it; open them all, and go into all of them, except for one...

---

He never could resist locked-away treasure, forbidden fruit. Perhaps his host has a beautiful daughter, or a silver box that holds his detached heart. The key is in his hand, small and worn glossy like bone.

There are hooks on the walls. The floor is like a rust-red carpet, caked, clotted. He’s used to the sight of blood, he does not drop it on the scarlet floor or carelessly drop it into the basin. Nevertheless words abandon him, at the sight and at the smell of bodies (women’s bodies, wives’ bodies, bare breasts mottled with rot, bloodless, headless--)

He steps back from the basin and locks the door with shaking hands. He does not cry out, he does not faint.

--

“Show me your hands.”
He does, stripping off the gloves he hasn’t worn in months.The few strands left wound across his palm are brassy under their scarlet stains.

Anger makes Barbe-bleue’s face unspeakably ugly, but it passes in a moment.

“Forgive me!”

“Masculine inquiry,” Barbe-bleue says, very flatly.

But you won’t be faithless, he says with his dark sorrowing eyes , there’s no need for any of that for you. But his hand is still on his sword.

---

There are no riders churning up dust; no one advances over the brow of the tree-tangled hill.