Sunlight-Colored Roses

Long, moon-pale, straight hair from a part at her forehead. Graceful fingers clasping. Light eyelashes shadowing dark-blue eyes.

Her fingers curve across Ludwig’s brow. The full moon illuminates the shadowed room, an arc of light stretching from the window all the way to her brown, stumpy leather shoes with tattered laces knotted and re-knotted.

Her linen sleeves rolled up to her elbows emphasize her thin, angular arms, making her look like a child who’s outgrown her clothes.

Suddenly his eyes open, pale and milky as moonbeams. Blanchefleur gasps.

His mouth curves in a smile. “Blanchefleur,” he says weakly, his voice raspy.

Blanchefleur hastily pours him water from a pitcher and brings the crude pottery to his lips.

“Thank you.”

His fingers cover hers on the cup.

She blushes, but beneath the flustered impulse she feels something deeper. A rightness, a familiarity. It feels right that his hand should cover hers. Right that she should stay so close to him. A feeling that they belong together. She doesn’t know if Ludwig feels the same way. It is so soon. They have known each other only a few days.

But she feels that she has met her soulmate. That a flow of perfect understanding exist between them. She longs to bring his hand against her cheek and press his warmth close, but it is too soon.

Ludwig stretches his long fingers toward her face, brushing her cheek. She does not know if he knows he brushes against the blushing. “You’re so beautiful,” he says, his voice laboring. Somehow it doesn’t feel strange to hear him say it. A rush of joy flows up from her heart.

Nothing else really matters, if Ludwig thinks she is beautiful. Somehow the sting of what the other women have said and done melts away. Her sisters, her stepmother. Even her father’s rejection. She feels how her heart centers itself around the being lying on the bed.

“To think of my life. How short and small. At the very end of it, the most beautiful woman I have seen is seated at the foot of my bed. And holding my hand.”

“Not the end, Ludwig,” Blanchefleur said. “I am here to help you get better.”

He laughed, a little ironically.

“Ludwig, is there something I can do for you now?” She wonders how crisp and polite her tone is. She feels so familiar with him, even though they have just met. “I can write a letter for you.” It is customary to offer this sooner. Blanchefleur put it off though. She has been afraid to find out if he was married. But with what he just said to her, she knows he isn’t.

“Yes, Blanchefleur. Pull your chair closer to me. Closer. I can’t speak very loudly. I want to stay awake and talk to you all night long.”

Blanchefleur wanted to laugh, but there was something serious in her voice that caught her heart. Immediately she pulled her chair closer and put her hand in his outstretched hand. She asked him to tell her where he was from.

He told her a great deal. He spoke extensively of the farm where he had grown up, of his father, and his mother, before she had died. He told her about all of his animals, the crops he had grown. She sat next to him, looking at their intertwined fingers, while he spoke. She answered the questions he asked her in few words. Her mouth grew dry and tight when she tried to talk about herself. She wanted to hear about him.

There was nothing unusual or unconventional about his life, but he spoke about it with so much interest, lending a sparkle to it. It warmed her face because she knew he was trying to impress her.

She closed her eyes and easily pictured living on a farm with him, as his wife. Learning how to grow crops, and bake bread, and tend animals. She could sew and mend well, and she could cook, though the recipes she knew were for food nourishing the sick. It would be a different life, with Ludwig. There would be no sickness in the country air. Though he was pale now, it was easy to imagine his face full and flushed, his stride strong, his long frame grown hearty.

She thought only of him, forgetting about herself.

Later, when the other nurses needled her, she did not hear them. The older nurses fawned on a new nurse who was young and attractive, their eyes darting poisonously to Blanchefleur all the while. Their jabs missed the mark. Their efforts wandered lost in the fathomless dark depths of her wondering blue eyes.

She concentrated on her tasks when she was not with Ludwig, and she thought about Ludwig.

When Ludwig was not with Blanchefleur, he thought only of Blanchefleur. However he did not mention her to anyone else, especially not the other nurses. He was far too wise about human nature to do that. He did not want to do anything that would cause her suffering, or jeopardize a moment of his time with her.

The next day Blanchefleur was assigned to assist in surgery all day, and he was given a different nurse. That evening, as his lashes were beginning to settle over his eyes, after staring at the violet-colored sky that was now fallen dusk, a figure halted in his doorway. He saw the column of her hair smooth and shining, and his heart leaped.

“Come and sit here,” he whispered shortly.

Blanchefleur went to him, and thew her arms around him. His heart grew full and aching with joy. He stretched his arm around her and pulled her close.

He saw the deep shadows beneath her eyes. He had seen her sway as she had made the trip across the floor toward him. She lay her head upon his shoulder, resting against his breast, and soon she was asleep. Throughout the long night Ludwig watched the moon, and dragged his fingers through her soft, straight hair. The hours melted quickly. Though he lay in silence, and comparatively alone, with the sound of her breathing his only companion, the moments never were enough.

Dawn came too quickly.