Between Two Fires (9781101611616)

by Buehlman, Christopher

  “She could have it,” the fat one warned, eating again now.

  “I’d rather get it from her than her papa.”

  “Leave her alone,” Thomas said, and this time it wasn’t a request. He put his straw hat beside him. He tried to do it casually, but the fat one saw it and, also trying to be circumspect, spat out the overlarge piece of donkey he had just taken and set the rest on his leather bag.

  Godefroy turned to face Thomas.

  The girl slipped out the door.

  “What if I don’t want to leave her alone?” Godefroy said.

  “She’s just a scared little girl in a dead-house. Either she’s full of it and you’ll breathe it in from her, or she’s shielded by God’s hand. Which would be even worse for us. Save your ‘husbanding’ for whores.”

  “The whores are all dead,” said Jacquot.

  “Surely not all of them,” said Thomas, trying one last time. “And if one whore in France still has a warm chatte, Godefroy will smell it out.”

  “You make me laugh, Thomas,” Godefroy said, not laughing. “But I need to fuck something. Go get that girl.”

  “No.”

  Thomas stood up. Godefroy backed up a little in spite of his nominal leadership; Thomas had white coming into his beard and lines on his face; he was the oldest of the four, but the muscles in his arms and on either side of his neck made him look like a bullock. His thighs were hard as roof beams and he had a ready bend in his knees. They had all fought in the war against the English, but he alone among them had been trained as a knight.

  Godefroy noted where his sword was, and Thomas noted that.

  Thomas breathed in like a bellows, and blew out through clenched teeth. He did this twice. They had all seen him do this before, but never while facing them.

  A drop of sweat rolled down Godefroy’s nose.

  “I’ll get her,” Jacquot said, proud of himself for thinking of a compromise. He went out of the barn into the rain, pulling his coarse red hood up. He held the hood’s long tail over his nose and mouth against the smell pouring out of the house as he pushed the door open with his foot. The sun was almost down now, but the house was still full of trapped heat. The smell was blinding. Wan light coming from the polished horn slats in the windows shone on the rictus of a very bloated dead man who had stained his sheets atop a mess of straw that could no longer be called a bed; he had kicked hard at the end of it. His face was black. His shirt rippled; maggots crawled exuberantly on him, as well as on two goats and a pig that had wandered into the single-room dwelling to die.

  The girl wasn’t here, and even if she had been, Jacquot didn’t want to find her badly enough to stay in that hot, godless room.

  He would have preferred to go back to the barn then, but his failure would only put Godefroy in a worse humor. So he went around the back of the house, thankful for the cooler air, and whistled for her. He stood very still and looked around carefully. His patience was soon rewarded; he noticed her white leg up in a tree. Ten minutes later and it would have been dark enough to hide her.

  She was up in her tree, whispering for the angel and asking it to come back; but then she wasn’t sure anyone else could see them, or that they could do anything or lift anything. Or even that they were real. She had only started seeing them since the Great Death came on.

  She thought that the ones she was seeing were lesser ones; that the famous ones like Gabriel were preparing for Judgment Day, which must be soon. Gabriel would blow his horn and all the Dead in Christ would get out of their graves; she knew this was supposed to be a good thing, but the idea of dead bodies moving again was the worst thing she could imagine; it frightened her so much she couldn’t sleep sometimes.

  If the angels were real, why had she been abandoned now?

  And why weren’t they helping anybody when they got sick?

  Why had they let her father die so horribly?

  And now the man with the drooping eye had seen her.

  Why did her angel not strike this man blind, as they had done to the sinners of Sodom and Gomorrah?

  “Come down, little bird,” Jacquot said. “We won’t hurt you.”

  “Yes you will,” she said, gathering her leg up under her gown as well as she could.

  “All right, we will. But not much and not for long. Maybe just a night and a morning. Then we’ll be on our way. Or, better yet! We might take you with us. Would you like that? Four strong husbands and passage out of town?”

  “No, thank you.”

  He leapt up onto a strong, low branch, almost high enough now to reach her foot, but she climbed higher. She was much lighter than he. He would lose this game.

  “Don’t be trouble,” he said.

  “Don’t rape me,” she said.

  “It won’t be rape if you agree.”

  “Yes it will. Because I’ll only agree to avoid being hurt.”

  “So there we have it. You’ll agree to avoid being hurt. Very well. Come down or I’ll hurt you.”

  He dropped back down to the ground now.

  “You don’t mean it,” she said.

  “I do.”

  “You’re not a bad man. I don’t believe you are.”

  “I’m afraid I am.”

  “But you don’t have to be!”

  “Sorry. Already am. Now I see a bunch of lovely stones by the stream. What say I go get them and throw them at you until you come down?”

  The foliage wouldn’t allow for much stone-throwing, and he wasn’t sure he could make himself throw a stone at her in any case, but he said it as if he meant it. He sensed he had to get her to the barn quickly.

  “Please don’t.”

  “Then come down.”

  “It’s the other one. He’s the bad one. Tell him you couldn’t find me.”

  “He has a temper.”

  “So does my father.”

  “He’s dead.”

  “No, he’s not.”

  “Enough games. Come down or I knock you down with stones.”

  She was crying now. He thought she would call his bluff, but soon she probed for a lower branch with her long, ungainly foot. He helped her down and felt her trembling. He felt sick about what he was doing, but hardened his heart. He decided to talk to her about it while he hoisted her up on his shoulder and walked back toward the barn.

  “I know this seems awful, but it really isn’t. If God wanted order and goodness in the world, He shouldn’t have made things quite so hard on us. We’re all dead men, and women. He wants chaos and death? He gets them, and what say do we have in it? All we can do is try to have a little fun before the mower comes for us, eh? And he will come for us. If you relax, you might not have such a bad time.”

  “You’re just saying these things to make yourself feel better,” she said, breathing hard in fear for what was about to happen.

  “You’re a smart girl. Too smart. This world’s not made for smart girls. Here we are.”

  So saying, he used his free hand to open the barn door.

  “Mary, Mother of God,” he said.

  Godefroy was breathing his last, rough breaths facedown in the dirt with a hole in his head that was pouring an arc of blood like a hole in a tight wineskin. His hands were shaking. The fat one was slumped against the wall and looked like a sleepy child with his chin on his chest, except he was drenched in blood and the head sat wrong because it was barely attached. His hand was off just below where the chain mail ended. It was nearby, still clutching his wicked hammer. His killer had put the sword exactly where he wanted it, and with great strength.

  “Put her down,” Thomas said.

  “I will.”

  The sword’s point poked Jacquot’s woolen hood and settled just behind his ear. He knew the man wielding it could drive it through both hood and skull as easily as into a squash.

  “Please don’t kill me,” Jacquot said.

  “I have to, or I can’t sleep here.”

  “I’ll leave.”

  “You’ll come back
and cut my throat at night out of love for Godefroy. He is your cousin.”

  “On my mother’s side. And I didn’t like my mother.”

  “Sorry, Jacquot.”

  “You could leave.”

  “I’m too tired. And you would find me.”

  “No.”

  “Put her down so she doesn’t get hurt.”

  “No.”

  “Do you really want your last earthly act to be trying to hide behind a girl you nearly raped?”

  He put her down, then put his hands over his eyes. But while Thomas was trying to work up the will to strike, the girl stood in front of the smaller man.

  “Don’t kill him,” she said.

  She looked up at Thomas, and he noticed how very light and gray her eyes were. Like the flint in the walls of the barn, but luminous. Like an overcast sky on the verge of turning blue.

  Thomas lowered his sword.

  The rain stopped.

  “Don’t kill anybody else again.”

  TWO

  Of the Honey and the Broken Cross

  Thomas and the girl slept in the barn on separate piles of rotten hay with the droopy-eyed man tied up in the donkey’s old stall. He didn’t make trouble in the evening because he knew how close to dying he had been, but near morning he forgot and woke Thomas up.

  “What?” Thomas growled.

  “My undershirt. Would you help me so I don’t soil it? I have to shit.”

  “Just shit yourself.”

  “You only have to move the shirt a little.”

  “I don’t care if you shit yourself. You don’t deserve any better.”

  “This is my only shirt.”

  “There’s a stream. Jesus, you’re a woman. Shut your hole.”

  “So you’ll cut me loose when you leave? So I can wash my shirt?”

  “Not if you don’t be quiet.”

  The droopy-eyed man was quiet for a minute.

  Then he wasn’t.

  “How can you sleep with all the birds going? And with those two lying there dead. Did you close their eyes, at least?”

  “No. They’ll want to see Jesus coming.”

  “At least the rooster’s dead. There’s one happy thing. Will you leave me my sword and crossbow?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Because if you don’t, it’s just like killing me.”

  “No, Jacquot, it’s not. Killing you would be just like killing you, and I’m still tempted.”

  “You could bury them. You could wrap them in a cloth, bury them and leave a shovel. That way it would take me a long time to get to them. You’d have a head start. Or, if you wanted time, you could break the…”

  Thomas got up.

  “I’m sorry. I’m nervous. You know I talk when I’m nervous. I’ll be quiet now.”

  “It’s too late.”

  He went over to Jacquot and punched him with his mailed fist until the man lost consciousness and loosed his bowels.

  The smell offended Thomas, so he walked over to the barn door and breathed in the morning air, which was cool and good. A very few stars were twinkling in a clear sky just beginning to lighten in the east. It was too light to see the comet, and he was glad for that. He didn’t want anything else to worry about just now.

  The girl was making noise in her sleep, just sounds at first, but then she said, “Papa…Papa…They see you through the painting. The little boys…are devils. Get away from it.” Thomas woke her then, his huge hand swallowing her shoulder as he shook her.

  She looked warily up at him at first, and then she remembered him as the man who had protected her. Then she remembered more and looked like she might cry.

  “No tears,” he said. “And no talk of devils.”

  “I’ll try not to cry,” she said. “But I’m not sure I can stop.”

  “Just try.”

  She stood up now, brushing straw from her tangled hair.

  “And who spoke of devils?”

  “You did, in your sleep.”

  “I know I was having a bad dream, but I don’t remember devils.”

  “Stop saying it. You call their attention when you speak of them.”

  “Yes,” she said. “I think that’s true.”

  Thomas walked over to where the fat man’s severed hand still clutched the war hammer. He tried to unwrap the stiff fingers, then gave up and grabbed the hammer above them, bringing it over to where Jacquot’s crossbow lay. The girl thought he would smash the bow, but instead he smashed the crank lying next to it, beating it into junk.

  “Why not the bow?” said the girl. He looked at her standing with her delicate arms and legs and thought how odd it was that children were small, and that they found this normal. He could not remember being small. What must he look like to her, standing so far above her, holding that murderous hammer? What did it feel like to know you lived or died at the whim of the giants around you?

  “Why not the bow?” she said again, a little louder.

  “It’s too beautiful. Italians made it and it can punch a bolt through chain mail as if through eggshells.”

  It was indeed a beautiful thing, its polished cherrywood handle paneled with carved ivory depicting the Last Supper.

  “He’ll kill you with it.”

  “Then that’s my problem.”

  “Mine, too.”

  “How do you figure?”

  “I’m coming with you.”

  “Horseshit.”

  “I am.”

  “We’ll talk about that in a minute. But he can’t load the crossbow until he finds another manivel. He’s not strong enough. I’m not strong enough. Hell, Samson’s not strong enough.”

  She walked closer to him.

  “Don’t swear.”

  “Balls to that. I’ll swear as I please.”

  “It’s…”

  “What?”

  “Ignoble.”

  “Well there’s a big word. You can read, can’t you?”

  “Yes. French and Latin. Not Greek.”

  “Anyway, what’s this about you coming with me?”

  “Why don’t you take the bow?”

  The bow would have been useful for hunting if Thomas had any skill with it; he did not. He missed almost every deer, quail, and rabbit he ever shot at with bow or crossbow, and he didn’t like spearing frightened deer that the hounds had cornered. The only thing he liked to hunt was boar, because a boar would turn and fight you until you drove the spear in deep enough. That was something Thomas had a gift for.

  “It’s ignoble to kill from far away.”

  “Our Lord said not to kill at all. What’s the difference?”

  “Our Lord also said to render unto Caesar what was Caesar’s. My sword belongs to my seigneur. Or did, until the English feathered him at Crécy. Feathered me, too, but I lived. God, in His wisdom, made me a fighting man.”

  “Yet you ride with a man who kills from far away. So what were you doing on the road with these men?”

  “Well. That’s another matter.”

  “I’m asking.”

  “You were asking about the bow, and I was trying to tell you.”

  “You could sell it.”

  “It’s his,” Thomas said, indicating Jacquot. “He needs it. He’s not strong.”

  “Neither are you if you ride with him.”

  “What a pain in the ass you are! Anyway, I don’t ride with him. Not anymore. You settled that.”

  She looked down at her feet, using her toe to move a straw around in the dirt.

  “What were you doing coming up to us? That was stupid.”

  “I needed…”

  “I know. Your dead father. But girls shouldn’t come up to soldiers. You know that now. Right?”

  “I know that now.”

  “Good.”

  She used her big toe and the next one to lift the straw until she lost her balance, then picked up another straw and started the game again.

  “But if I hadn’t come up to you, I would be alo
ne.”

  “You are alone.”

  “No. I’m coming with you.”

  “What a pain in the ass! Three pains in the ass!”

  “Don’t swear.”

  “Christ’s holes, little girl. Christ’s bleeding, whoring holes!”

  “Bury my father.”

  “No.”

  “He called me his little moon.”

  “What?”

  “His little moon. That’s what he called me.”

  “I’ll catch it!”

  “I didn’t. You won’t.”

  “I will.”

  She looked at him now.

  “Then maybe you’ll go to Heaven if you catch it doing something good.”

  Thomas went to speak but didn’t.

  He hung his head and nodded.

  The work was going to be awful. So he made the man with the drooping eye do it. Thomas stood outside the house with his sword over his shoulder, looking in, while Jacquot broke the legs off the family table and then, using the sheet beneath the dead man, pulled him onto it. He was half hysterical with fear; he had wrapped the tail of his hood around his face and wedged a pomander of lilac and lavender in next to his nose to keep the evil air out.

  “A lot of good the pomander did them,” Jacquot said, heaving the corpse onto the board. He was barely audible through the cloth and over the flies. “I mean, by Saint Louis and his whoring oak tree. If this goddamned thing worked, he’d be out here dancing a jig with us. Instead he’s reeking to God’s feet, and ready to split for the worms in him, and I’m next. You’ve murdered me, making me do this.”

  “Shut up.”

  Jacquot grunted as he pulled his burden over the threshold of the house.

  “So we waste half a day burying a stranger and leave our friends like animals?”

  “Our friends were animals. We’re doing this for the girl. Now shut up.”

  “What are you going to do? Punch me out again? Then who’ll roll this geezer into his hole? You will, that’s who.”

  “You’re giving me a headache.”

  “Who’s got a headache? You weren’t beaten half to death last night. You didn’t shit yourself and then dig a grave and then…”

  He stopped talking when the little girl approached him. He had the corpse ready to dump into the shallow hole, but she came up to it and put a small blackthorn wood cross in its hand.