Or snorted we in the Seven Sleepers' den?
'Twas so; but this, all pleasures fancies be;
If ever any beauty I did see,
Which I desir'd, and got, 'twas but a dream of thee."
She listened to the hard English rhythm and then to his translation, awkward and halting. Then she was silent for a moment, floating her hand across the surface of the pond.
"You know, I also wonder now what I did before I met you. Before I held you."
She slipped her hands about his neck, and as she did he drew her up out of the water and cradled her against him. Then he lifted her, her body still strewn with rose petals, and carried her slowly up the marble stairs to the couch of Akman. He felt her cling to him like no woman ever had, and as he placed her on the bed, she took his face in her hands and kissed him for a long moment. Then he heard her whisper.
"Tonight we will know just each other. And there will be nothing else."
And they gave each to each until there was nothing more to give because each was the other. Together, complete.
He was on the quarterdeck, the whipstaff aching against his hand, the mainsail furled as storm winds lashed the waist of the ship with wave after powerful wave. The ship was the Queen's Hope, his vessel when he sailed for the Levant Company, and the rocks that towered off his starboard bow were Gibraltar. He shouted into the dark for the quartermaster to reef the tops'ls, and he leaned on the whipstaff to bring her about, but neither responded. He had no crew. He was being swept, helpless, toward the empty darkness that lay ahead. Another wave caught him across the face, and somewhere in the dark came a screech, as though the sea had given up some dying Leviathan beast. His seaboots were losing their hold on the quarterdeck, and now the whipstaff had grown sharp talons that cut into his hand. Then a woman's voice, a distant siren calling him. Again the screech and then yet another wave cut across his face.