Disclaimer: I own none of the characters, ideas, etc., of Thomas Harris' Hannibal series in any medium.
Summary: Book compliant. Post-Hannibal. To the Minoans of Crete, the goddess enveloped by serpents was guardian of the house and guardian, too, of death.
Warnings for: character death, cannibalism.
The photo used is of Lady Justice (as designed by Hans Gieng in 1543) on the Gerechtigkeitsbrunnen in Berne, Switzerland.
To All Lovers A Joyful End
She thought of the horse, Hannah. In Clarice's absence Hannah had drawn carts, carts heavy with children. Sufficed to imagine the children laughing, rather than sullen, or hunched from the cold.
At a coastal town on Crete they rented a boat and set out on to the Aegean Sea while the sun went drowsily to its bed. The waters were quiet and black. Small stars pocked the sky. They were the same now for Starling and for Dr Lecter, as they had been the same for a few years. More. He stirred.
"The Minoans worshipped goddesses."
"That's not uncommon," she said, "in a religion with a pantheon," and he laughed at the dryness.
"The goddess before the god," he corrected, and Clarice smiled in the dark. "A goddess for the hearth, a goddess for the city. Each divinity given to the protection of some aspect of life."
"And after that?"
"That as well."
That evening lingered. They retired in the early morning to the hotel suite, Clarice yet in her sundress, he in a shirt now rumpled. The smell of the sea stuck to them. As he untied the shoulder straps of her dress, she ran her fingers through his black hair, as if to sweep the sea salt from it. No love-making that night, but much love. She wore a large sweater and he fell asleep easily beside her. They had debated the labyrinth at length. Improbable that Ariadne should so forget her father. Ah, but wasn't it true, that the heart might quicken at a first meeting?
"Theseus left her in the end," Clarice said. "So there's that for truths."
Lecter stroked her shoulder with his fingertips. "One possible truth," he said, "to be found among many."
At this she slapped him with the pillow. Like young lovers they were laughing again, at their familiar predilections. The segue of wit that had once so bothered him now endeared. This the generosity of love, comfortable, old.
As he slept – snoring slightly – Clarice watched. She touched his cheek briefly. The injections had softened his jaw. He had sought to gain weight, to strengthen the illusion, this with fattier cuts of meat. Slim yet. A certain ghost hung in the air. So many reasons why a man with his diet might not thicken. If he smelled it in his flesh he would not say.
She did not sleep that night. The window was opened to the sea. The distant susurrations of the tide lapped at her. Often now she woke to a memory, shrill, aural. Simpler not to sleep.
In two days they were to fly to Rome for a week of tourist nonsense, then to London and from there, home. She saw the shape of the house on the ceiling. In his sleep he turned. His hand grazed her hip. Clarice touched his cheek a second time then bent to kiss his nose.
Perhaps he would fight. Never forgotten: the eyes of the man in the cell, as he watched a young trainee approach him in his confinement. Bright eyes. Cold. Not at all human. But of course he was human, as they were all human. Human, to love and to be loved. He did love her. If he fought he could very well kill her.
Clarice got the knife out of the suite's small kitchen. A long knife. A boning knife. Stiff, for beef and pork. He was awake when she returned. That was good. She hadn't looked forward to waking him, as she must. She said this to him.
"Clarice," he said, as he had done since she had first given it to him. "Ever courteous, even in extremis."
"It didn't seem right not to let you know," she said.
"Abominable," he agreed. He sat up in bed. The sheet pooled in his lap. He'd worn pajamas to bed. Green. To match her eyes. "So, what denouement is it that you desire? Your death, or mine?"
She sat next to him, on the very edge of the mattress. The bony shape of his knee pressed against the small of her back.
She said, "You've always known what I'd do before I did it, Dr Lecter."
Lecter studied her. His gaze lidded yet he did not blink.
"No, Clarice," he said. He said her name again, slowly. Clarice. Like a man cupping a small bird in his hands and asking it to be still. "I have very rarely known what to expect of you, but courtesy."
"And what do you expect now, Dr Lecter?" she asked him.
He laid the back of his finger along her chin. There was still muscle in him. Still some juice as the folks back home might say.
"Of all the conclusions I've considered from time to time," he said, "it was this most symmetrical finish I most dearly hoped for."
His hand slid to cup her neck. He leaned forward. The kiss was sweet. In love all kisses were so. His grip was light. He would not squeeze.
She did it politely. The blade was well-tended, and the edge went in deeply. Unconsciousness claimed him well before death. The blood darkened the sheets, the mattress, the hem of her red sweater. Clarice set the boning knife on the bedstand and then held his hand between her palms. The miniscule jerks of the dying body persisted. Once, his left eye moved beneath the lid. She bent a final time to kiss him, softly on his lips, and that too was sweet.
She forewent Rome. London first, then Buenos Aires. In a small plastic container she carried a thick square of his heart, cut inexpertly from his chest. The brain would have been more apt but cutting through the skull was a tricky business she had not mastered. She had the servants put up black curtains. It seemed the thing to do. Half his heart she ate, and the other half she buried in a pot on the terrace and in that pot she grew a little flowering tree. In the winter some months later she moved the pot indoors. The winters were rarely too harsh, but Clarice liked to see it safely managed within the house.
Her routine continued. Very carefully she structured her life. Sometimes one or other of the staff heard her upstairs, talking in the rooms from which they were still forbidden. With whom did she speak? The late husband, perhaps, taken from her. Some of the servants thought it strange, but Marie, who managed the kitchen, declared it romantic that the doctor's wife spoke with his ghost. If this was how she chose to remember him, then who were any of them to judge her for it?
In the mornings Marie asked Clara how she'd slept, and Clara smiled at Marie and said, "Well enough," and then thanked her for asking.