Between Two Fires (9781101611616)

by Buehlman, Christopher

  But now that horrible breathing.

  Outside his window.

  A shadow passed.

  He got to his feet and found that the right leg was completely numb, as if it had fallen asleep, and it was all he could do not to crash to the floor. He was sick and dizzy and his nose was running into his beard, but he got his sword and moved past the sleeping priest. He opened the door in time to see the form of a man limping toward the stables.

  Where the girl was.

  “You!” he said, but coughed at the end of it.

  The figure didn’t turn.

  Thomas tried to run at it, but now his woodish leg betrayed him and tumbled him onto the ground, where he blacked out. He came to not very long after, and went farther toward the stables, where he saw the girl and the figure talking over a lantern. His eyes were tearing, and he couldn’t see well, but it looked like a man. A shirtless man with long spines. Thomas lurched toward the couple, but the world spun again and he went out.

  He woke again moments later, or thought he did, to find the spined man helping him into bed. Except the man was bleeding all over the bed and laboring to breathe, because he was full of arrows, not spines.

  “Seigneur!” Thomas tried to say, but it wasn’t his lord.

  He didn’t recognize the man, a short dark-haired youth with protuberant, drilling eyes that looked almost luminous.

  The man exhaled a shuddering breath, spraying a small amount of froth from his chest wounds, then pressed hard with his thumb on Thomas’s forehead, forcing him to fully recline. It hurt. The man wheezed and coughed horribly and limped out of the room.

  Thomas still felt the imprint of that hard thumb.

  He slept.

  But not before he muttered, “Sebastian. Saint Sebastian, help me.”

  SEVEN

  Of the Battle of Song-of-Angels

  In the morning, the girl told the priest that the three of them were going to the shrine of the Virgin of the White Rock, ten miles north. She was granting miracles to some, and she would rid Thomas of the plague.

  “But, child,” the priest said, “this man cannot travel. And the bishop heard rumors of this shrine many years ago, and visited it and declared that, while it was a holy place and Christians should pray there, they should expect no miracles.”

  A saint had told her. She bit her lip, wondering if she should let them know one spoke to her. It seemed better to keep that secret.

  “A higher power than the bishop says the shrine is healing people. And we can take the knight upon a cart.”

  “If I had a cart.”

  “Go to the almond orchard and pray. God will show you a way.”

  “No,” the priest said forcefully. “We must stay here. If God wants our friend to live, He will bestow that grace upon him wherever he is.”

  Her insides fluttered as though a small bird were near her heart. Words came to her. She closed her eyes and said them.

  “Matthieu Hanicotte,” she said, calling the priest by his true name, which he had never told her, “you say these words because you fear to leave your little home. But I turn your words upon you; if Death means to take you, he may do it here as easily as on the road. He is already in this house.”

  A chill passed through the priest, and he said meekly, “Watch over our friend. I am going to the orchard.”

  The dead man’s cart was in good repair, and the three of them were soon upon the road to Rochelle-la-Blanche, a hill village where granite was quarried. The priest drove the fine cart, while Thomas lay feverish in the back of it. The girl held a cross over him with one hand and lay her other hand upon his burning chest. The priest was certain she was a saint. He had no other way to explain his discovery in the orchard.

  The cart’s owner had broken his neck trying to stand on the wheel of the cart and beat the last almonds from a high branch. The body was still warm when the priest found him. A chill had gone through Matthieu Hanicotte, and for a moment he had wondered if the girl was diabolic in nature. He thought not. Then he had a moment to wonder whether God had slain this man to provide them a cart, or if He had merely directed Matthieu to the scene of this sad event, already foreordained. What was the difference? Everything served God’s will, and here, at last, after months of senseless deaths and unending tears, was a tragedy that bore some fruit. The priest had blessed the man, then cried and thanked God for at last revealing His face to him. For all those thanks, however, the mule was stubborn, and it had taken the priest nearly half an hour to get it moving.

  But now the mule was happy to pull.

  As they got closer, they passed others bearing the sick and dying to Rochelle-la-Blanche.

  It was midday when they saw the town.

  And the mob that was heading there.

  Nearly thirty peasants, mostly men, were marching on the town, several of them pulling a small, empty cart by hand. They were all armed. When they noticed the priest’s cart coming up behind them, they turned.

  “A mule!” one shouted.

  “Get the mule!” said a woman with a two-pronged wooden pitchfork.

  “It’s a priest,” another said.

  “Fuck him, we have a priest, too. And we need that mule,” said a man in gaudy yellow stockings.

  Père Matthieu felt a shock of ice in his heart, and he nearly froze with fear. The knight could have made the mob think twice, but he was dying. Then an idea came to Matthieu and he leapt to his feet, standing tall in the cart, and, though his knees shook, he kept his voice firm.

  “He who wants the plague, come and take this mule. For plague is upon this man you see here. He who wants his soul in Hell, come and take this mule unlawfully from one of God’s priests, and stop us on our pilgrimage.”

  This halted their frightening surge toward the cart.

  Now the woman with the wooden fork said “Come with us, Father. Help us take the Virgin back.”

  “What?” said the priest. He now noticed a stocky, cow-eyed priest among the farmers; he was holding a pewter candlestick like a club, and he seemed abashed to have encountered another of his sort. He shook this off and spoke.

  “Yes, brother. We’re taking our Virgin back. She was stolen from our village, Chanson-des-Anges, by those bastards of Rochellela-Blanche during the Great Hunger of ’17. Since then God has smiled upon them and pissed upon us for not defending her. Help us in our rightful suit.”

  “Shame on you, brother,” Père Matthieu said.

  The girl stood now, wide-eyed, and said, “You’ve got devils with you. Right now, with you.”

  “In your hearts!” Père Matthieu said quickly, suddenly scared this mob might decide she was a witch. “For the devil is in any heart that moves a man to hurt his neighbor. Yet will he leave you in peace if you will put your weapons down and turn from your sin. This is your last chance.”

  “You’re not from here,” the club-wielding priest said viciously and suddenly, as if the words weren’t his, and began toward the cart. The girl’s gaze stopped him.

  “I see it,” she said quietly. “I know what’s at your elbow.”

  It was the cutting of a marionette. The stocky priest began to cry then, blubbering incoherently. The woman with the fork came now and grabbed him by the shoulder.

  “To Hell with them,” she said. “Let’s get Our Lady back. Chanson-des-Anges!” she said. The crowd echoed her cry, and they lurched toward the village, pulling the weeping priest with them.

  Even though it took place at Rochelle-la-Blanche, the battle would henceforth be known as the battle of Chanson-des-Anges, because the attackers shouted that again and again. They shouted it as they waded into and pushed aside the crowd of sick and penitent pilgrims that surrounded the statue. They shouted it as they broke the arm of the priest of Rochelle-la-Blanche, who threw himself in front of his Blessed Lady to defend her. They shouted it as they broke the pretty, white-stone statue from its nook in the white rock beside the church, leaving a piece of her foot. They shouted it at the group of
men who began to form in the market square nearby, now six, now a dozen, shouting and pointing and summoning others.

  Then one in the Chanson mob said, “Do not let them gather!”

  Nobody was sure who said it, because only the girl could see the foul thing that spoke those words.

  A stone flew. Then a brick. Someone shot an arrow. Then the invading mob rushed at the outnumbered men in the square, and a horrible melee began. The Rochelle townsmen scattered, but more were coming. The Virgin must have been working true miracles here. More healthy men were gathering than the priest or the girl had seen in one place since the sickness first came. Now a hunchback in a blacksmith’s apron ran toward the Rochelle men, dragging a box, from which they began to pull swords, axes, and hammers.

  “Defend the Lady!” someone said, and the Chanson-des-Anges mob fell back toward their cart, where the Virgin of the White Rock lay awkwardly on her side, and formed a ring about it. The men of Rochelle surrounded them. They were reluctant to start killing, but then someone in the square held up the body of a little blond boy whose head had been busted by a brick.

  “Perrin!” one screamed. “They killed little Perrin!”

  The twenty or so defending the cart screamed defiantly “Chanson-des-Anges, Chanson-des-Anges,” as if daring the thirty well-armed farmers, tradesmen, and granite workers to slaughter them.

  They took the dare. The two groups bludgeoned, stabbed, cut, and gouged each other while dust flew and screams rang out. When, at last, the people of Chanson were nearly overcome, the woman with the fork dropped it and picked up a fallen hammer, jumping up into the cart with the Virgin.

  “If we won’t have her, you won’t either! Fuck her,” she said, and smashed the Virgin’s arm from her body.

  Back in Père Matthieu’s cart, the girl screamed.

  The fighting stopped and everyone watched, stunned.

  “Fuck her! Fuck her!” the woman screamed, wide-eyed.

  The hammer fell again and the Virgin’s nose was busted.

  Two more strokes and the statue, once so beautiful that men wept to see her, was nothing but rocks. White dust covered the Chanson woman’s face.

  Something laughed, but only the girl saw what.

  “Death!” screamed a Rochelle man.

  And Death answered his summons.

  None from Chanson-des-Anges was left alive.

  The last one, the cow-eyed priest, was killed with the same brick that killed the little boy.

  Afterward, the survivors took the wounded off and the people of Rochelle-la-Blanche cleared as far away from the killing field as they could. The girl tore herself away from Père Matthieu and walked through the twisted bodies, toward the ruin of the Virgin of the White Rock. She was shaking and weeping, looking far smaller and younger than she had. She bent near the cart and picked up the statue’s arm, hugging it to her.

  The priest helped her up into his cart now, where Thomas lay very still, breathing his last. He had the impression that something with a cold, fishy mouth was tugging at him. His bladder loosed and he breathed out, his chest rattling. He did not inhale.

  The girl took the Virgin’s hand and forearm up and pressed the two stone fingers, held out in benediction, against the knight’s forehead, just where he had felt St. Sebastian’s thumb the night before.

  She pressed hard.

  The thing with the fishy mouth left.

  Thomas gasped and opened his eyes.

  And then he slept.

  Thomas woke up and thought something was horribly wrong. A dream in which his mother wove at her loom and sung a chanson de toile about a common woman who loved a great seigneur dissolved; now an angel was rubbing his head with a cool cloth; he had died, he was sure of that, but under no circumstances should he be in Heaven.

  He turned his eyes to look at the angel, and saw that it was only the girl. Her very gray eyes were on him, waiting to see if he would speak.

  “I died,” he said.

  “Almost.”

  “You…saved me?”

  “God did. With the hand of the Virgin. It was her last miracle.”

  Thomas coughed, but less horribly than he had before the end.

  “I stink,” he said.

  The priest, who was near the hearth, said, “Not like you did. What’s stinking now is just the bedstraw. Some of your sickness went into that, I think. One thing you never get used to is the way the sick ones smell. As if we needed any further proof this curse fell from the heavens to show us how corrupt we are.” He went back to stirring the pot on the fire.

  “What’s there to eat?” Thomas said.

  “Oh, he has an appetite, there’s a hopeful sign. Of course, having received last rites and lived, you’re supposed to fast perpetually now. And go barefoot. And remain chaste.”

  Thomas grunted.

  “But I won’t tell anyone if you won’t. ‘What’s to eat?’ he says. Nothing but the worst soup in Christendom; grasses, flowers, twigs, some fungus from the sides of trees, a blighted radish, and, the best of all, four baby birds I broke free from their eggs. I was hoping just to get the yolks and whites, but the chicks were nearly ready to enter this sad world. Now they’re in soup. You’ll have to eat one, bones and all.”

  “I’ve had worse.”

  “Well, I haven’t. I’m just a soft priest in a cozy village. Or was. At least there’s a little salt. I spared a pinch of salt so we could choke the rest down.”

  The girl changed the water in Thomas’s cloth and rubbed his temples again. It was so cool and so good. He closed his eyes and breathed a long, contented sigh. This was the best he had felt since…since something awful happened. What? Something in a river.

  “What I can’t stop thinking about,” the priest went on, “is wine. I never thought it would just run out. I thought men would always make wine, as bees make honey and cows make milk. That I would one day find nobody, not one person, with a skin or cask or pitcher of wine to sell, had never occurred to me.”

  “I pray for you, Père Matthieu,” she said.

  “That I’ll find good wine?”

  “That God will fill you so full with His love that you will not need wine.”

  “That’s a fine prayer, girl. But, if it’s no trouble, ask the Lord to send me a little wine along with His love. I promise to be grateful for both.”

  Thomas got better slowly, but more quickly than any of those few the priest had seen survive the plague. He took walks in the priest’s yard, slurped bad soup, cracked the few stray almonds left in the cart, and savored the last of the girl’s honey.

  By the end of August she was asking if he felt well enough to travel.

  “Let me guess. Paris, then Avignon.”

  “Yes.”

  “For mysterious reasons that will come to you later.”

  “Yes.”

  “It must have to do with the pope.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Because the pope lives there.”

  “And you lived in Picardy. Was everyone who came to Picardy coming to see you?”

  “Hey, priest. Is this little girl a witch or a saint?”

  “A saint, I think,” Père Matthieu said.

  “But you’re not sure.”

  “No, actually, I’m not.”

  “Would you like to go to Paris with us?”

  “No.”

  “So you’ll stay here, then.”

  “No.”

  “Which is it?”

  “I’ll go to Paris. You asked me if I would like to go to Paris. I would not. But I’m out of food, wine, and parishioners. So, like it or not, I have to leave my pleasant little house. If she’s a saint, this is a holy pilgrimage. If she’s a witch, I might try to mitigate her wickedness.”

  They left on the first day of September.

  On the third of September, against the wishes of his wife, the seigneur of St. Martin-le-Preux at last gave in to the yapping of his herald and seneschal, who claimed the priest was harboring a coar
se man who had insulted the lord’s honor and broken his bell, as well as having provoked the foulness in the river to kill numerous peasants, on one of whom it seemed to have choked and burst itself.

  The lord reluctantly sent his last three men-at-arms down to search the priest’s house, but they found that the priest had left. Knowing the priest’s brother to be a servant in the house of His Holiness in Avignon, the men searched the house for treasures Père Matthieu might have left behind. One of them poked in the dirt of the yard with his pole-arm. One went through his trunk, his pot, and his few tools.

  The other turned up the straw of the bed.

  The next day, this man had a fever.

  Four days later, everyone in the castle was dead.

  The new seneschal was last, crying at his own image in a polished piece of brass, trying with a shaking hand to paint fine eyebrows on the ruin he had become.

  EIGHT

  Of the Feast, and of the Night Tourney

  The castle was deceptive in its proximity; it floated on its pale green hill for the last half of the day, seeming as distant as a celestial body, and then at dusk it was upon them, with its proud white walls and turrets. The banners of the seigneur flew from the square keep, and men walked at ease atop the gatehouse, where the drawbridge was down in welcome. Perhaps the plague had spared this place.

  “Let’s stop here and see if we can get a meal,” Thomas said.

  “I have to get to Paris,” said the girl.

  “And still you won’t say why.”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  “I counter what you don’t know with what I do know. We are hungry, and being fed is better than being hungry.”

  “Not always,” she said.

  “Yes, always,” said Thomas.