Maleficara

Most days, they are simply together.

They clean the church, arrange the flowers, polish the silver, play chess, and debate theology in the sacristy. Sometimes they bake together—or, more accurately, Sebastian bakes, and she eats, and then she perches on the counter, sipping her tea (which Sebastian has taught himself, with obsessive determination, to brew properly), while he washes the dishes.

They talk for hours about things that would bore most other pairs to death. They debate the merits of Aquinas versus Augustine, the nature of free will, whether the universe is deterministic (Sebastian says no, Cielle says yes), and whether cats possess souls (Sebastian says yes, Cielle says no). Cielle is clever and mean, and Sebastian, who has spent his entire life being unassailable, is delighted to find himself bested every now and then.

Sometimes—often—he reads to her. He reads her the canon; Shakespeare and Milton, the Greeks, the Gospels, but also, when he is feeling mischievous, the Romantics, the Decadents, even a little Petrarch, because he likes the sonnets and because he likes to imagine her as the cold-hearted Laura. She likes the sound of his voice, and he likes that she listens.

He is also teaching her to dance.

Of all the activities undertaken in this parish, the weekly attempt to teach Cielle Phantomhive the waltz is easily the most Sisyphean.

Father Sebastian is, without hyperbole, a magnificent dancer. His mother, a widow of unshakeable will, spent a fortune on lessons for her only child, determined to refine her son into a paragon of social grace. And even though he has since devoted his body to God, it is clear that the body remembers the old, almost pagan joy of movement. When he dances, he is as close to perfection as a man can be.

It is, therefore, a small tragedy for him that Cielle, while in possession of many talents, is so abysmal. I am not being unkind. She has no sense of rhythm, no spatial awareness. She has (as she points out often and at volume) no use for this skill at the convent, unless the nuns have grown exceptionally licentious since the last she checked.

But Sebastian is relentless. He makes it his personal mission to correct what a parade of governesses and dance-masters had failed to do.

And so, at least once a week, he clears a space in the vestry, pushes the chairs to the wall, and rolls up the carpet. He puts on the old phonograph in the corner and lets the room fill with the tinny strains of a Strauss waltz. He bows, all gallantry, extends a hand, and waits for Cielle to roll her eyes, sigh, and take it.

The first thirty seconds of every lesson are always a disaster. Her feet lurche at improbable intervals, her pivots wild, as if her bones have been replaced by a system of springs and pulleys assembled by a madman. To add insult to injury, she has a pathological fondness for stepping on Sebastian’s instep. I have seen him wince as she grinds her heel into his foot, just as I have seen him grit his teeth and urge her on.

“Lean into me,” he tells her. “No, not that much, you’ll topple me. Watch my feet. One, two, three. Yes, like that.” He talks her through every step as if this time, mayhaps, she will get it.

Once, only once, does she surrender to it long enough to forget to sabotage the process. It is a Thursday in August, so hot that even the bees are too lazy to fly. She closes her eyes, rests her cheek against Sebastian’s chest, and lets him guide her. The axis of her body aligns with his, and they glide across the flagstones. Her arms are loose, her steps unselfconscious. The ash-pink of her skirts flares out in a great, soft bloom.

For ten seconds, maybe twelve, they are a single thing, moving together in time.

Then she trips on the hem of her skirts and nearly brings them both down.

He catches her, laughing, and she is furious, and the laughter only makes it worse, so she punches him in the chest, which makes him laugh harder, and then she is laughing, too, and the two of them collapse against the wall in a heap of silk and black wool and blue hair.

He keeps one arm around her, the other hand brushing a strand of blue hair from her cheek. “You are a disaster, but I adore you,” he says. It is the softest I have ever heard his voice, and it is so naked that even I, who am always present, feel the need to look away.

She tries to glare, but the colour in her face is radiant. “And you are the worst dance instructor in the country,” she informs him.

“And yet I am the only one with the patience to teach you.” He dips his head; his lips almost graze her ear. “You do realise, my darling, that you are not required to be good at everything.”

“I do not care for things I am bad at,” she scoffs.

“Then let yourself be bad at this. I will be good enough for both of us.”