by S. A. Swann
Unfortunately, Josef didn’t seem to have any such reservations. It was as if his time unconscious had allowed a mass of words to build within him, and when she returned with his supper, they came out in a torrent.
There was little she could do other than nod politely and try not to say anything that might prompt more conversation on his part. While he ate, she stood in the corner of the room, occasionally casting a wistful glance at the darkening sky.
“My family lived in Nürnberg. Every generation has pledged someone to service in the Church. I have uncles and cousins who are priests and bishops; my ancestors served in the Holy Land.” His words accelerated as he spoke, making it harder for her to understand them. However, she got the meaning of most.
Where he lived, the plague had come four years ago. It had taken his father, his grandfather, his siblings, and the woman to whom he had pledged his heart. The only member of his family to survive was a maiden aunt who had retreated to a convent so strict that she was not even allowed to speak to her nephew.
It had been a sign. Josef had given his family’s lands over to the Church and had taken on the mantle of the Order.
When he finished the story, Maria found that her breath had caught; she’d been thinking of the loss of her own father, along with the loss she had read in Josef’s sleeping face. This man had known her own loss, and so much else besides. She wanted to somehow acknowledge their shared pain, but all she managed was a whispered “I’m so sorry.”
Even that, she said in Polish.
He glanced up at her quizzically. “What did you say?”
She bent over and took his empty bowl. “It is time for you to sleep, sir. You still need your rest.”
He leaned his head back and said, “Yes, I suppose I do.”
Josef needed human contact. He might be devout, but being alone talking only to God and himself wore on his soul.
So when Maria had come with his evening meal, he had talked of his life, and everything that had led him to serve the Order.
As he talked, he thought it was a good thing that he had not entered a less worldly Order than the Hospital of St. Mary; he didn’t have the strength of spirit to commit to an ascetic life filled only with the contemplation of God. It might be admirable, but he was not his aunt.
Talking to Maria also reminded him that he had pledged himself to God, and why. He needed the constant reminder, because in Maria’s presence he had the uncomfortable habit of thinking as he had before he joined the ranks of the Order, when he could allow a kind word or a gentle touch to lead to thoughts of something more.
But nothing was as it had been before. Not himself, and not the world. If nothing else, he spoke to Maria about his past to remind himself of that. He told her of his callow youth and his expectations of a title and an inheritance, and he told her of the pestilence when it came to Nürnberg, and the devastation the plague wrought on his family and estates.
Yet when he spoke of that evil time, he saw his grief reflected in Maria’s face, and he almost stopped for fear of further distressing her, afraid that if tears came he would feel the urge to comfort her—and knowing that, despite his vows, any comfort he provided would be more for himself than for Maria.
Sensing that within himself, he kept talking even more earnestly. Talking of the woman to whom he had been betrothed, to remind him of who and what he was, what he had lost, and to push this poor woman away. Sarah had been the daughter of a powerful Nürnberg family that would have added to his own line’s wealth and power. The child he had been at the time was smitten with her. Sarah was a young beauty at sixteen, always with a smile or a kind word for him, whatever dubious adventure he had become involved in. He had long ago convinced himself that Sarah would always be the limit of his earthly loves. Losing her was the final event that made him turn to the Order.
When he said that, and told Maria of Sarah’s death, her face was drawn in an expression of grief as if it had been her own family lost in Nürnberg. She said something quietly to him in Polish, but before he could ask her what it was, she was telling him to go to sleep.
He leaned back and closed his eyes, and briefly imagined that she had touched his cheek. He didn’t open his eyes for fear of dispelling the illusion—or confirming it.
But as he drifted off, he mused that while they looked little alike, perhaps, if she had lived, Sarah might have grown into someone like Maria.
Josef’s sleep was broken by the door to his room bursting inward.
His eyes snapped open to see a hairy, gap-toothed Pole standing in the doorway, backlit by the lanterns in the hallway. The man strode in, followed by the scent of piss and ale, yelling in inarticulate Polish.
Before Josef could form a response, the invader had pulled his sheets off and had grabbed his arm. The smell of alcohol made Josef’s eyes water. That, the slurred speech, and the fact that he had broken in an unlocked door told Josef that this man was no representative of his Masovian hosts.
He winced as the man yanked his arm, dragging him half off the bed. It felt as if someone had plunged a glass dagger into his stomach, then broken the blade off.
“Enough!” Josef commanded the drunkard.
But the man continued pulling him off the bed, and the pain was becoming worse. He didn’t know what ill intent this man had in mind, but Josef wasn’t about to let those drunken plans come to fruition.
The man was facing away from Josef and the bed as he tugged on Josef’s right arm, so Josef rolled toward him, unbalancing the man’s already forward-leaning posture. Josef helped the man along by reaching down and sweeping his left arm in front of the man’s already precariously leaning legs.
The man tumbled face-first onto the floor, losing his grip on Josef as he landed next to the bed. He shook his head and started pushing himself upright, but Josef rolled on top of him. They both gasped—Josef’s visitor in drunken shock as the floor came up to strike him again, and Josef in a shiver of agony. It felt as if a demon was clawing his intestines out of his gut.
But that almost happened, didn’t it?
The man tried to buck Josef off his back, so Josef slammed all of his weight into the back of the man’s neck, as much to keep himself upright as to immobilize his opponent. The pain threatened to make him black out.
“Relax, my friend.” Josef spoke quietly, calmly, hoping his tone might calm things even if this man couldn’t understand the words. “It is time to rest and contemplate the path that has led us to this unfortunate point.”
The man below him uttered an unending stream of Polish that was most certainly obscene. Fortunately, he didn’t continue his attempts to dislodge Josef.
It didn’t take long before the alarm spread, and soon the doorway was crowded with a selection of Poles ranging from a trio whose clothing marked them as peers of the man underneath Josef to a lordly type with rich robes, a full beard, and a misshapen mouth who, Josef realized, must be the Wojewoda Bolesław himself.
Komtur Heinrich was in the middle of all of them, staring at the scene with rigid disapproval.
Lord Bolesław shouted a few things in Polish, and the man underneath Josef responded in kind, though Josef noticed a distinct change in his diction as he spoke to Bolesław, moderating his volume, speed, and, probably, his vocabulary.
Afterward, Bolesław addressed Josef in German: “You are Brother Josef, are you not?”
“Yes, my lord.”
Bolesław sighed and stroked his beard absently with one hand. “You are my guest, and I apologize for this. May I ask if there is anything to this incident you wish to explain? Or is it all as plain as my aged eyes make it out to be?”
“I was in my bed, and this man came in and tried to pull me out.”
“Tried?” Bolesław asked. “It appears he was successful.”
“Lord, I tripped him, and it seemed prudent to roll off and immobilize him. He appears drunk, and a danger to himself and others.”
One of the Poles in the hallway beyond the door
started snickering. Bolesław looked pained, pulling his mouth into a grotesque frown. “This is unforgivable behavior. Whatever my people might think of Germans or the Order, you are my guests. I will have this man tied up and lashed to within an inch of his life.”
Heinrich asked, “Has this ordeal aggravated your injuries, Josef?”
Josef tried not to wince when he said, “No, Brother Heinrich.”
Heinrich turned to Bolesław and said, “The man is drunk; grant him some mercy. My man is unhurt.”
“One cannot say the same for my door.” Bolesław shook his head and, looking over to the other Poles, said something to the best-dressed of them. After a short conversation back and forth, Bolesław addressed Josef again: “If you would, please let him go back to his master. I’ve given him leave to discipline this wretch. I wash my hands of it.”
Heinrich walked in and helped Josef to his feet as his drunken visitor stumbled out of the room to join his fellows. As his Komtur helped him into bed, Heinrich asked, “Are you being treated well?”
“Yes.”
“No one has questioned you about our mission here?”
“No, sir.”
“Good. Rest, and gather your strength. Soon the lord here will grant us an audience with a bishop. I suspect that shortly after, we will be able to resume our work.” He placed a hand on Josef’s arm. “Then we’ll need every able man.”
“Yes, Brother Heinrich. I’ll be ready.”
As he turned to go, Josef asked, “Brother Heinrich?”
“Yes?”
“Do you know who that man was? What he wanted of me?”
“He was a stable hand who felt entitled to this particular room. I believe his name was Lukasz.”
“Should I have—”
“Don’t concern yourself. It is between him and his betters now. It no longer concerns you.”
“Thank you, sir.”
But it took a long while for Josef to get back to sleep.
VII
Maria left the walls of Gród Narew before sundown, but the sky hid behind a dense cloak of purple-black clouds too thick to hint where the sun might be. The light was gone quickly, and she soon found herself walking through woods blacker than the sky. The trees embraced her as if they were the personification of darkness itself.
She had always had excellent night vision, and usually she didn’t need the lantern she carried with her. Tonight, caught underneath a moonless sky, she had to use it just to see where the path might be.
The apprehension she felt was unusual. She had lived around these woods all her life, and the short distance between the fortress and her family’s farm was well traveled, the land itself well populated. The presence of men here had long ago chased the more dangerous animals to the fringes of Gród Narew’s demesne.
But the Germans had been savaged by some sort of animal.
Maria held her cross. Papa had told her, many times, that it was there to keep the Devil at bay. And this night, the Devil felt very close.
I should have stayed at the fortress, she thought to herself. She either had to stay at Gród Narew, where her work was, or stop prolonging her work there. Familiar or not, the woods at night were too dangerous for her to brave just to avoid the unspoken accusations that weighed upon her at home.
She walked slowly down the dark path, the trees drawing their shadows around themselves. She made her way home accompanied by the sounds of chirping insects and frogs. The sounds were as comforting as the darkness was ominous.
She sighed. However justified, fear was useless. She was on the path, and there was no leaving it now. She tried to force herself to think of something other than the shadows and what might be dwelling within them. So she found herself thinking of Josef, and what it must have been like for him to lose his family in the plague. She wondered about the woman he had lost. Some lady of the court. Tall and shapely, with long blond tresses, and dressed in fine fabrics. A woman who had no need to labor.
Everything Maria was not.
Was it jealousy, she thought suddenly, or did she envy this poor dead woman for once holding a heart she had no hope to touch? Either emotion was sinful, and a further indication of her own unworthiness.
“Why do I …” she began to ask herself, leaving the question to hang unfinished in the still night air.
The insects and the chirping frogs had fallen mute. The woods had gone as completely silent as they were dark. She stopped and wrinkled her nose at a sudden foul odor.
Ale?
Something grabbed her from behind and threw her against a tree. Phantom lights danced in front of her eyes as the side of her head slammed against the craggy bark. Her lantern fell to the road and guttered out.
“Hey now, don’t you miss me?”
She knew that voice too well. “Lukasz?”
“Why, that warms my heart, it does.” He was little more than a shadow next to her.
He pawed at her, and she shoved his hands away, shrinking back from the smell of piss, ale, cheese, and manure. “Don’t touch me,” she said.
“Oh, you missed me as well. I hear it in your voice.” He was close, pressing her against the tree. “Since the Germans came, we’ve not had a single pleasant chat.” His breath was warm, moist, and stank of alcohol and onions.
“Get away from me, you foul beast!”
“Scream what you wish, my love. We are far enough from anyone’s ears.”
Above, the clouds broke to release the moon from their embrace. The path around them lit up with cold silver light, and she could see Lukasz’s face, leering at her with those cold, dead eyes.
He smiled and said, “Also far enough from anyone’s eyes. We are free to do as we wish.” His hand slipped under her cloak, and she felt his rough, sweaty fingers grope for her breast.
It was too much. She reached back and struck him in the face, as hard as she could. Her closed fist slammed his left cheek with the sound of a two-stone bag of grain dropping onto the kitchen floor. He fell back, taking his vile hand away.
She knew she should run, but she was too shocked at what she had done. Her blow had taken this man almost to his knees. Before she could summon the presence of mind to move, Lukasz backhanded her. She felt the blow across her own cheek as Lukasz screamed, “Bitch!”
As the warmth of blood spread across her own face, she wondered why his blow hadn’t landed with nearly the force of hers. Then he slammed her back against the tree with his whole weight. She started to struggle, but the presence of the glittering edge of a knife against the side of her face froze her in place.
“Ungrateful whore,” Lukasz spat at her. “You had to be spiteful.”
Even in the moonlight, she could see the swelling where she had hit him. It twisted his face, pushing his left eye shut. Did I break his cheekbone?
He pulled the knife around in front of her face as the clouds tried to reclaim the moon, plunging the woods into semi-darkness. “Maybe,” he whispered into her ear, “if you apologize, I’ll only cut you up a little.”
She sucked in a breath as she felt his free hand worming its way underneath her chemise. His body was heavy, pressing her into the tree. The bark tugged at her hair, the skin of her face stung where he had struck her, and over everything was the fetid miasma that was Lukasz himself. The vile stench brought her bile up even in the midst of her terror.
Then something rustled in the woods. Something large.
She thought of the fate of the Germans, and her fear redoubled. Lukasz was too occupied with pulling aside her skirts to notice. It wasn’t until a shadow darker than the woods rustled on the path behind him that he looked up and said, “Huh?”
Then suddenly, miraculously, the groping hand, the threatening knife, the weight, and the oppressive stench were all gone. Lukasz screamed something unintelligible as his silhouette merged with the shadow that had come out of the woods. Maria heard only a brief sound of struggle; then one shadow tossed the other across the path and into the woods on the opposi
te side. It landed with a thud amid the sound of breaking branches.
Maria’s terror ebbed somewhat when she saw that the shadow that had emerged from the woods had the outline of a man. The stranger moved into the woods after Lukasz. She heard Lukasz curse, and the brief sound of a struggle, followed by a solid thud.
The woods around her slipped into silence again. The only sound was the distant groan and rattle of wind through the trees. Above her, the moon broke free of the clouds, and the path unrolled before her in a curtain of silver light. She reached up and clutched her cross.
“Who is there?” she called out into the darkness.
The woods absorbed her words without comment. She heard nothing—not from Lukasz, and not from the shadowy figure who had torn him off her. An impossible hope crossed her mind that this was Josef come to save her, like the knight had saved the maiden in the ballad.
But she knew Josef was too wounded to walk abroad in Gród Narew, much less follow her into the woods. And the fear started edging its way back into her soul. She called out again, “Who is there?”
She took in a deep breath, and something in the air, some half-familiar scent, fired something in her brain that screamed inside her, Run!
But before she could convince her legs to obey, the stranger walked from the woods, onto the path. She looked at him and froze.
He was a man she had never seen before, dressed in a loose linen shirt, the bottom hanging over his mud-stained breeches. His shirt rippled slightly in the breeze, giving glimpses of his chest and abdomen. His face was clean-shaven, and framed by unbound shoulder-length blond hair.
But most arresting were his eyes, which shone blue in moonlight that tried to suck away every other color from the world. They reflected the only imperfection in his face—the fact that his left eye shone a slightly paler blue than the right, matched by a small scar that bisected the eyebrow above, pulling it into an expression of bemusement.
The two tiny flaws only served to make his appearance that much more striking.
He stepped before her, shaking his head and running both hands through his hair. When he did, the end of his shirt raised up and she saw the handle of Lukasz’s dagger sticking out of his belt.
