Between Two Fires (9781101611616)

by Buehlman, Christopher

  The priest said, “I don’t see what’s wrong with fortifying ourselves, if they will share with us. I have a little coin.”

  The girl shook her head obstinately, but Thomas stopped the cart and looked for a long while at the strong castle, imagining where an attacker would place siege engines and try to dig tunnels if he came up against this toothy stone beast. The hill was steep, the ground was tough-boned, and the walls were well built and hung with wooden hoardings from which defenders could work all sorts of evil against attackers. The English would have the Devil’s own time trying to get in there, if they came.

  “Let’s goooo,” the girl whined, sounding less like a witch or a saint and more like a brat who needed the back of a hand.

  “Shut up,” Thomas said. “A rider’s coming.”

  Just as the sun went down, a man on a delicate-looking Arab horse issued from the open gate, pluming dust behind him.

  The priest smoothed his robes and held up his crosier. The girl knitted her brow. Thomas, seeing the splendid livery of the herald shining even in the failing light, suddenly remembered that he was in a cart, and felt ashamed. Carts were for peasants, not men-at-arms. He got out of it and stood, holding his hand up in salute.

  The herald of this castle was every bit as sunny and pleasant as the one in St. Martin-le-Preux had been haughty and contemptuous. His voice broke out of him like birds from a copse of trees.

  “Greetings to you, friends in God’s love. Are you come to see the tourney? Or,” he said, looking at Thomas, “to compete in it?”

  “Neither, friend,” said Thomas. “We are on our way to Paris.”

  “Paris? Have you heard no news from there?”

  “No.”

  “Perhaps because nobody is coming out alive. The Scourge is carrying off three hundred a day there. Death reigns in that city, and there is no law. And there is no food.”

  “There is little food anywhere.”

  “Our tables are well kept.”

  “And the plague?”

  “It has come and gone. We were touched, and then it sputtered and went out. Our seigneur has ordered us to be merry and gay, and to fear no strangers. And to make music. He has ordered fife, drum, and viol players to play at every hour, even through the night. He believes the sickness, like a dog, bites those who fear it.”

  “The dog I saw bites everyone and can’t hear music.”

  “I can only speak for what has happened here, my lord. Many fell, but now none fall. And jolly music plays all the time.”

  “I am no lord.”

  “A pity. You might have broken a lance tonight. In the night tourney.”

  “I thought tournaments were forbidden by the king.”

  “The king’s arm has grown short.”

  Thomas smiled, showing his white teeth. “I would like to see this tourney,” he said.

  “Can you ride?”

  “I have no horse.”

  “But can you ride?”

  “Well enough.”

  “We might find one for you. You look like a man who has spun a quintain or two, and, if the truth be told, we are not so well provisioned with knights that we will turn our noses up at any worthy horseman. Our lord has called for a tourney, and we shall make one as best we can. Will you fight?”

  “No!” the girl said, and Thomas shot her a cold look.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Excellent! In that case, I have the privilege of inviting you to my lord’s table this evening. Are you hungry?”

  “God, yes,” the priest said.

  The girl would not go to the castle.

  Thomas commanded, the priest entreated, and in the end she skittered up a tree.

  “For Christ’s sake,” Thomas said. “Get down from there.”

  Nothing.

  “We’ve been eating twigs and earwax for a week. Now we have the chance to really fill our bellies, and you do this.”

  Nothing.

  “Stop being headstrong and get in that cart! It’s getting dark. Goddamn it, don’t make me leave you out here. And don’t think I won’t.”

  Nothing.

  “Suit yourself,” Thomas said, and turned to follow the herald, who was politely waiting just out of earshot. The priest sat in the cart alone, torn between the two of them.

  “Go with him, Père Matthieu,” she said from her perch. He could see only her feet.

  “But…”

  “I’ll be safe here.”

  “It’s not safe.”

  “I’ll be all right. I know how to sleep in a tree without falling out. Go. You want to.”

  “Yes.”

  “He needs you,” she said, and disappeared farther up into the tree.

  The priest nodded and drove the cart behind the herald’s horse, upon which Thomas was now also mounted. The pale grass of the hillside was punctuated with thistles of the brightest purple, each flower of which seemed to have been issued exactly one bumblebee.

  “Simon will show you to your chambers,” the herald said, indicating a sullen but brightly liveried boy who met them once they were inside the portcullis.

  “What is the name of this place?” Thomas said.

  The herald smiled pleasantly, as if this were a joke.

  “Supper will be in an hour.”

  The serving boy had spoken very little, but had ushered them to a small but cozy room with a real bed in it. The most he said to them at once was, “The sire invites you to go wherever you wish before supper.”

  Thomas, who had been grinning broadly ever since they slipped between the strong walls of the castle, nevertheless decided to strip his armor, stay in his chambers, and close his eyes so he might be fresh for the meal. The priest went off to explore.

  Two men came and asked for Thomas’s armor.

  “The herald said you might want this cleaned?”

  Thomas hesitated while the wary man he had been since Crécy struggled with the man he was before. The earlier man won out. Thomas handed over his gear and was given a handsome green robe with cloth-of-gold stars to wear to dinner. He hung it from a nail and lay down to sleep in his stinking long shirt.

  The priest crawled into bed beside Thomas an hour later.

  “What did you think?”

  “A magnificent fortress, really! The tapestries! In the old style, but such colors. And such a mighty tower. I went atop the battlements and felt that, had it been daytime, I might have seen all the way to Avignon, and beyond. I tell you, I think I’ll see the Afric shores tomorrow.”

  “You lie, priest.”

  “I embellish. But the height was astonishing. In the morning, I’ll have to get the boy to take me to the chapel.”

  “I would have thought you’d go there first.”

  “I tried. I got confused in all the halls and couldn’t find it.”

  The boy showed up just before the feast and shook them both awake from where they snored on the bed. They followed him to the Great Hall, which rang with the sounds of music and cheerful speech as they approached. Thomas felt ten years younger than he was, up on the balls of his feet with anticipation. The tangy, earthy smells of cooked meat and pastries brought water to their mouths as they rounded the archway and saw the hall.

  “Thank you, my God, my merciful God, that the world is still sane and happy here at least,” whispered the priest, as he caught sight of wine going from a jar with a mouth like a lion into a lady’s goblet. The herald strode over to them and embraced Thomas before announcing them both.

  “Sire, I present Sir Thomas of Picardy, and Père Matthieu of St. Martin-le-Preux. Sir Thomas has agreed to try his skill at arms tonight for our amusement and his greater glory.”

  The lord of the castle, a stunted but ferocious leonine man with little black eyes, looked up from his conversation with a Germanic-looking knight and grinned a black-toothed grin at Thomas and the priest. A plump, black-haired young woman with a high forehead sat next to him, seeming half-asleep and indifferent to everything.

>   “Any man who has hardened himself with the practice of arms is welcome here. Next, any woman at all. After that, certain musicians and priests,” he said, following his jest with a roar of laughter that others around him quickly mimicked. “You are the fourth man. Now we can have our little sport tomorrow. I hear you ride a mule.”

  Thomas bristled at that but said, quietly, “My horse has died.”

  “That wouldn’t stop a proper horse! Well, then, you shall have one of mine. Have you an armorer?”

  “I have only my armor, my sword, and this priest.”

  “You can use my armorer. And my priest, if you like. Yours looks like a bugger.”

  “Is there a priest who isn’t?” asked the German-looking fellow, who turned out to be a Frenchman. The whole table laughed, as well as the hurdy-gurdy player, who had stopped turning his handle while the lord spoke.

  “Did I tell you to stop playing? Your job is to keep the plague out, not stand there and laugh at our jokes like they’re meant for you to hear. Turn that goddamned thing. And make it pretty. Or I’ll break your hands. Is there anything sadder than a hurdy-gurdy player with broken hands? Maybe a Jew who sneezes at the sight of gold.”

  Everyone laughed, except Thomas and the priest.

  The lord noted this, said, “How dull,” pointed at them, and flicked his hand. Little Simon sat them at one of the far arms of the great U-shaped table. The hurdy-gurdy played loudly, and conversation resumed. Kitchen women brought a basin around from person to person so hands might be washed, and then the herald announced, “Sir Théobald de Barentin and his squire, François.” Simon placed them at the other arm of the U, across from Thomas and the priest.

  This Théobald looked familiar; he was a little younger than Thomas, with sandy hair, a small patch of beard on his chin, and clever bug-eyes made for mockery. The squire was a dandy. Théobald saw Thomas looking at him, winked quickly, then whispered something to the squire. The squire snickered.

  Thomas’s hand dropped to where his sword hung on its belt. He just rested it on the pommel. This gesture was not lost on Théobald, however, who winked again, even more provocatively than the first time.

  Thomas grinned at him, suddenly boyishly happy at the probability that he would be swinging a weapon at this man in the wee hours of the morning.

  The food was beyond belief in its variety and in the skill of its presentation. The first course to appear was announced by the herald as “Cathar delight.” Pastries in the form of a small tower were shared out until a breach formed that revealed, within the tower, a painted almond-paste statue of a nude woman tied to a stake amid “flames” of crystallized honey and ginger that were to be broken off and sucked. The woman was crudely made, her chest flat, recognizable as a woman only by her vivid golden hair.

  “I’ll have you all know, my great-grandfather was a famous killer of heretics,” the seigneur boasted, “but he might have spared this one.” The flames were all gone, so he lifted the woman out and licked her sticky belly shamelessly, then bit off her legs.

  Fruits and cheeses came next, served in bowls painted with images of men and women copulating. The priest ate hungrily from them, and when Thomas pointed out the figures, the priest shrugged and said, “Perhaps this is as close as I get to being fruitful and multiplying.” Thomas kept looking at him, amused by his moral flexibility. “At least the sinful painter was a man of talent, wouldn’t you agree?” he said, and Thomas laughed.

  “I wonder how the girl’s getting on,” the priest said now.

  “As well as she deserves,” Thomas said. “I will not be governed by her in every little thing. If she wants me to go to Paris, fine, but she’ll learn to stay where I say and eat where I say.”

  “Eating from these bowls may not be a sin. But I should have stayed with her,” the priest said.

  “What, up her tree?”

  “I could have sat beneath it.”

  “You still can. No one’s keeping you here.”

  “Yes,” the priest said, then looked up at where the hurdy-gurdy player had come very near, staring at the priest while he played loudly and smiled. A woman filled the priest’s goblet with thick, red wine. The priest did not leave.

  Now vases and amphorae heaped with roasted eels and lampreys were brought to table, but Thomas thought of the thing in the river and could not bring himself to try these. He did notice Théobald of Barentin greedily heaping eels upon his platter; when he saw he had Thomas’s eye, he bit into one of the long fish, said, “Vengeance at last!” and laughed, though Thomas had no idea what he meant.

  The main course came next.

  “Three Kings,” the herald intoned, and women brought out a huge platter piled with venison and other exotic meats, and several boats of garlicky brown gravy. Peacock and pheasant feathers accented it artfully, and topping it were three large, roasted monkeys sitting on cedar thrones, wearing capes of ermine. They wore golden crowns, which the cook, a man with narrow eyes and very long fingers, proudly tipped back, letting steam rise from their open skulls, into which he placed three elegant spoons. The chamber burst into applause, and one fleshy woman actually wept, though whether for the beauty of the display or the pathos of the monkeys was unclear.

  The seigneur practically leapt from his chair; he took the spoon from the central monkey’s head and slurped the delicate meat, contorting his face in ecstasy.

  “Priest!” he said, “How do you say ‘This is my brain’?”

  The priest looked flabbergasted.

  “Well?”

  “Er…in Latin?”

  “No, in cunting Flemish. Latin, Latin! What else do you ask a bugger priest about?”

  “Well. Hoc est cerebrum meum. But that’s uncomfortably close to…”

  “A monkey may speak Latin, may he not?”

  “If a monkey may speak at all, I suppose.”

  The lord slurped again from the spoon, then said, “Hoc est cerebrum meum,” in the squeakiest monkey voice he could muster. Now he dipped the spoon back into the monkey’s head and walked a spoonful of brain purposefully over to the priest’s lips. “Say it,” he commanded.

  “I’d rather not,” the priest said, squirming uncomfortably.

  The nobleman pressed the spoon against the priest’s lower lip.

  “Say it!”

  “My lord,” Thomas said evenly but with a steady gaze.

  “I…I…forgive me, but no.”

  “My lord,” Thomas said, scooting his chair back a little. Across the hall, Théobald de Barentin scooted his chair back as well.

  The hall was silent now.

  The seigneur shot Thomas a look that made him suddenly see a lion killing an old man on sand with a hooting crowd looking on. The image left as quickly as it came.

  “Very well,” the seigneur said, in a mildly conciliatory tone, “the priest need not speak Latin for us. But he shall have no brains until he does. And no wine until he has brains.”

  So saying, he turned his back and walked the spoon back toward the Three Kings.

  The priest cleared his throat.

  “Hoc…Hoc est cerebrum meum,” he said quietly.

  The lord turned on his heel now, grinning mildly, and steered the spoon for the priest’s mouth, which he opened, accepting the spoonful of salty, garlic-scented meat.

  It was the best thing he’d ever tasted.

  His goblet was filled.

  At just that moment, the seigneur noticed that the hurdy-gurdy player had stopped playing to watch the standoff. He grabbed the little man’s closest arm, dragged him to the table, and, in three nauseating blows, broke his hand against it with a heavy pewter mug. The musician screamed and ran off, dropping his hurdy-gurdy, which broke as well.

  “Where’s the viol player?”

  “Sleeping, sire,” the herald said. “He played all last night for us.”

  “Wake him.”

  Thomas and the priest ate to bursting. Thomas ate no monkey, but he did fill his trencher with cuts o
f strange meat he drenched well in the intoxicating gravy. “What is this?” he asked a serving woman.

  “Deer, ram, wild boar,” she said. “It is all roasted together.”

  “Tastes boarish, but strange bones for a boar,” Thomas said.

  “Perhaps I am mistaken. My lord has beasts from many lands in his cages, and they are eaten when it pleases him. Or perhaps it is a Jew.”

  The man next to Thomas laughed so hard at this he nearly choked.

  The viol player, while pale with exhaustion, was very skilled. He looked Moorish, and moved his hips in strange and sensual rolls while he drew across the honey-sweet strings. Thomas was becoming drunk, and the priest was drunker. He noticed Père Matthieu watching the musician distractedly.

  “Jesus Christ, you are a bugger,” Thomas laughed, though there was no laughter in his eyes.

  “No! Just. The music. I am enraptured with it. I have never heard its equal,” the priest said. A fat drop of sweat fell from his nose. “Or, almost never.”

  Thomas noticed the bored gaze of the woman who sat beside the seigneur upon him now. The fire from the hearth and many torches made her headpiece twinkle hypnotically. She was beautiful, more so than he had noticed before. He raised his goblet slightly in salute to her, which she answered by dipping her thumb into a monkey’s head and putting that thumb into her mouth. Thomas saw her tongue flicker for just a moment and knew that the wound he got in St. Martin-le-Preux was completely healed.

  “I think the lord’s daughter likes you,” said the man next to Thomas.

  “Daughter? She’s past a maiden’s age. Where is her husband?”

  “She is newly widowed.”

  “How newly?”

  “He was killed at Crécy.”

  “That was two years ago.”

  “Are you quite sure?”

  “I was there.”

  “Oh, well. Seems like yesterday. She was quite attached to him. We all were.”

  “What was the knight’s name?”

  “You know, I have forgotten. I’ll just ask her. Euphémie! Ho!”

  The woman turned her head slowly and looked at the man. Her eyes were very large and green.

  “What do you want, Hubert?”

  “What was your husband’s name?”