Between Two Fires (9781101611616)

by Buehlman, Christopher

  The night was dark and cold.

  A stream. This loft was near a stream.

  He got to his feet, stepped over the knight, and eased himself past Delphine, who was also snoring, and louder than such a small creature should have been able to. He descended the rickety ladder. He pulled his robes aside, meaning to piss against a fence of sticks, but only groaned, unable to start.

  “God forgive me my excess,” he whispered, “and I will try never to drink so very much again.”

  “Try is the word that trips you, brother.”

  The priest fumbled his robes closed and looked for the source of the voice. A monk in Cistercian white stood near him, a silver-white ring of hair around his bald crown.

  “I know,” the priest said. “You are right to point out my evasion.”

  “God has no love for half measures. I believe you need water. Come with me.”

  The priest stumbled through the brush behind this man, who seemed to radiate a calm strength he found irresistible. He wanted to cry. They came to the stream, and both of them bent and sipped water from their cupped hands.

  “Are you with an abbey here?” Père Matthieu asked when both of them had slurped their fill.

  “I have come home.”

  “Did your abbey succumb?”

  “All I served with are gone to their reward. And you? I do not think you are Burgundian.”

  “No. Norman.”

  “You follow a girl.”

  “Yes.”

  “A girl who is not what she seems.”

  The priest chuckled fondly. “Quite so.”

  “She seems to be from God.”

  Père Matthieu lost his smile at the other man’s implication.

  “She is from God. I would stake my soul on it.”

  “And so you have.”

  The priest stared at the old monk.

  “Who are you?” he said after a long moment.

  The monk put his hand over the priest’s eyes and closed them, as one might close a dead man’s eyes. At that moment, his headache left him and a great sense of ease filled him.

  The old man turned and walked away.

  Père Matthieu followed.

  When next the old man stopped, he sat down on the side of a hill, the grass and wildflowers of which rippled in the cold breeze. The priest sat next to him, and they both looked out across the dark countryside. One house on the side of a hill opposite had a fire in the hearth. Everywhere else was dark, save above them, where the stars blazed with a sad, desperate light that seemed to Matthieu Hanicotte like the gaze of a mother watching her child wrestle with a killing fever. A comet with a long greenish tail chased two more near the constellation of the Cart.

  “What do you have against the girl?” asked the priest.

  “You should rather ask why you trust her.”

  “She has given me every reason to do so, and none to doubt her.”

  “Who was her father?”

  “A country lawyer.”

  “Or a heretic who fled justice in Langue d’Oc.”

  Père Matthieu rubbed his temples, even though they had long since stopped hurting.

  “She stopped devils in Auxerre.”

  “Or brought them there.”

  The priest shook his head and opened his mouth, closing it again.

  The weight of the old monk’s stare yoked him, and he rubbed his neck. At length he said, “She is good. We travel with a knight…”

  “A thief.”

  “A knight who has sinned.”

  “A knight who has been spat out by the church. A knight no longer.”

  “My point was…”

  “What was your point, brother?”

  “She is good. She…loves.”

  “As Salomé loved Herod.”

  “She always counsels peace.”

  “When the wicked are near, for she protects them. She will tell the thief to kill when it suits her. But we are wasting time.”

  “Who are you?”

  The old man got up and walked down the hill. He never looked back to see if the priest was following, and the priest almost did not follow him. Then he realized he was about to lose sight of him in the very dark night, and he would never find him again. So he got up and hurried after him.

  The old monk walked quickly now, so much so that the priest had to skip every third step to keep up. They crossed a low stone wall and walked past a living calf, something the priest had not seen for a long while. It was a white Charolais, and it moved away casually, unconcerned with them. Its mother lowed nearby, as faint in the night as a diurnal moon, and it went to her. He stared after the wondrous creature so long he nearly lost his guide.

  Who are you

  Who are you

  Who

  “Are you?” the old Cistercian said as the priest drew near him.

  “Pardon me?”

  “Are you prepared to see what God wants from you?”

  The priest did not answer but still followed him, uphill now, across another wall and around a hedge. Now the window that shone across the hill glowed warm before them and they approached a door. The old monk knocked and a woman opened; she was plain and modest, more handsome than pretty, her hair bound in a clean wimple, her apron stained with sauce. The smell of wine-stewed beef rose up and made the priest’s stomach rumble; he had put nothing in it since he had vacated his wine over the side of the cart that afternoon.

  “Come in,” she said, looking intimately upon the priest and taking his hand. “Papa!” a girl at the table said, bouncing excitedly on her bench; she was long-headed like him, like his brother. “Papa,” an even younger girl echoed, both of them ecstatic at the sight of him. “Mama said you weren’t coming!”

  They were not saying Papa as in priest, but Papa as in father.

  It was like a bad joke.

  The priest looked for the monk, but he was gone.

  The woman took his chasuble and robe off, throwing them in the fire.

  “Wait,” he said. “You can’t…”

  The woman put her finger to her lips to silence him.

  She brought him a coarse wool overshirt and helped him on with it. He had decided this was a dream and was now content to see where it led him. It was not unpleasant.

  Except that…

  “Mama said you almost went to Hell because you were a bugger. And that you were following a wicked little girl to commit murder. Is that true, Papa?”

  “Yes, dear,” he said, smiling at her.

  “Well, I’m glad you’re home,” the other one said, smiling and showing the gap where a baby tooth had fallen out.

  “I am too,” the mother-wife-woman said, ladling out a rich spoonful of beef and onions and mushrooms on Matthieu’s trencher.

  They all watched him.

  He ate.

  Then they ate as well.

  A ripple of gooseflesh went down his arm; nothing had ever tasted so good.

  Now his wife brought wine.

  At first his stomach quivered at the thought of it, but then a sense of peace came over him. He was about to reach for it, but then the older girl spoke up.

  “Papa?” she said.

  His hand hovered near the cup.

  “Yes?”

  “I want to live.”

  “Of course you do. We all do.”

  “But I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “I can’t be born unless you renounce your love of men.”

  “No…I suppose not. You’re a very smart child.”

  “And quit being a priest.”

  “I was never a very good priest.”

  “And stop that girl.”

  The room got just a little darker as smoke from his robes obscured the fire. He could smell them burning.

  “Excuse me?” he said.

  “Delphine. She calls herself Delphine. But that’s not her name.”

  “Did you say…stop her?”

  Both girls nodded now, and the elder spoke.<
br />
  “Stop her with a rusty old sword between her eyes. Or hold her head underwater. Or dash her brains out with a big stick.”

  The younger one hit the table three times with her fist for emphasis, making the serving vessels rattle, then smiled.

  “Because she’s wicked, Papa. Her father was a Cathar and she serves the devil. And she’s going to commit murder.”

  He looked down and reached for the wine, his brow furrowed.

  The old monk, who had reappeared at his side, grabbed his wrist before he took the cup and hauled him standing, hurting his shoulder. The monk slapped him hard.

  The children started crying, but the monk made the same gesture in the air that he had made on the priest’s eyes to banish his hangover. The girls stopped crying and sucked their thumbs like placid infants. The wife did as well.

  He hissed his next words at Matthieu Hanicotte.

  “Will you drink your wine before you agree to what is asked of you? God should be your comfort, but you have made comfort your god. What have you ever given up in His name, except the promise of a wife and family you never wanted?”

  “How can you ask me to kill a girl?”

  “Killing in God’s name is a holy thing.”

  The room seemed to spin.

  “Pick up that sword.”

  “What sword?”

  The room and the hearth winked out into darkness, and when Père Matthieu’s eyes adjusted, he was standing near the stream, struggling to start pissing.

  He managed.

  As relief came to him, he saw a sword, badly rusted, stuck in the bank of the stream. He finished, tucked himself away, and looked again at the sword. It repulsed him.

  “Pick it up, sweet Matthieu,” a voice behind him said. A gentle voice. A beautiful voice. “And take it up the ladder.”

  He turned now to see Michel Hébert standing nude and glorious before him, his feet in the stream, mud up to his shins as when Matthieu last saw him nude under the burned bridge. The priest walked through the stream to him and put his face quite close to the boy’s, trying to see if the freckle was still in his eye.

  The left eye.

  “Go up the ladder and do what you have to.”

  He could smell Michel’s breath, somewhere between a young dog’s breath and cloves. He could never get enough of that breath in his face.

  “But…”

  “The knight will sleep through it.”

  “Michel…I…”

  He tried to kiss the boy, but the boy smiled and moved his mouth away.

  “Do it. We’ll kiss, and more, when you get back.”

  The priest took the sword out of the bank. He felt the end of it, and it was sharp. He took it to the base of the ladder. If this was a dream, he might do what was asked for in the dream and dream a kiss from the only being for whom he had ever known carnal love.

  He was owed at least that.

  And perhaps more.

  He took the first step.

  And the second.

  At the third, his testicles turned to ice.

  The knight will kill me.

  THE FUCKING THIEF WILL FUCKING SLEEP NOW DO IT

  He took another rung. And another. And he stood in the loft, looking down at the girl.

  None of this is real

  He held the sword by the hilt, point down, one hand over the other, his knees bent like a man about to drive a stake into the ground.

  Quick so it doesn’t hurt

  How can it hurt if it’s not real

  Should have wiped the mud off the end at least

  The girl hiccupped in her sleep.

  He smiled despite himself even as tears ran down his cheeks.

  The light was growing less faint.

  He saw one of his tears run down the runnel in the blade and perch at the point swaying back and forth, threatening to drop on the child’s nose.

  He lifted the point carefully, taking care to lift the drop, until the sword pointed up and the drop ran back toward the hilt.

  He exhaled and came to himself.

  Good Lord what am I doing

  MISERABLE EUNUCH DO IT NOW OR DIE WITH THEM

  He went back down the ladder.

  The boy was gone.

  The monk had returned, but there was something wrong with him.

  His eyes were mouths.

  They spoke in unison while the mouth below his nose grinned like that of a father about to spank a richly deserving child.

  “Too weak, were you? You’ll have to give your gifts back.”

  He took the sword from the priest’s hand and threw it so it spun end over end out of sight.

  I’ll never hold a sword again.

  Then he grabbed the priest’s face with a hand as cold and hard as a horseshoe and forced the first two fingers of the other hand into the priest’s mouth and down his throat, making him gag.

  “I thought you liked this. Being penetrated.”

  The fingers jammed in hard.

  Matthieu vomited the stew he had eaten.

  It came out his nose as well as his mouth and burned.

  And the monk was gone.

  Breathing hard, he went to rest his head on the mule’s side, then climbed into the back of the cart.

  Before sleep took him, he saw the girl’s eyes as she peered over the side of the cart at him. Her bare feet must have been on the hub of the wheel.

  “What do you want?” he asked.

  “I had a bad dream,” she said.

  “Me too. What was yours about?”

  “Saint Bernard.”

  “Of Clairvaux?”

  She nodded, saying “His abbey was in Clairvaux. But he’s from here. Near here.”

  She waited for him to ask.

  “What happened in your dream, daughter?”

  “He made you kill me.”

  The priest shuddered.

  Despite the cold air, he broke into a sweat.

  “Why would he do that? I heard he was a very good man.”

  “My father said he condemned Abelard. He argued against the Cathars. He founded the order of the Templars and told men God wanted them to kill for him.”

  The priest’s testicles, which had only just warmed up, went cold again.

  “But, surely a saint…”

  “He’s not really a saint.”

  “No?”

  She shook her head.

  “Men made him a saint. Not God.”

  The priest said nothing.

  “He’s in Hell.”

  “Oh,” the priest said.

  “Or he was.”

  The girl blinked a couple of times, still looking at the priest.

  “He would hurt me if he could. You wouldn’t let him do that, would you? Hurt me?”

  “Not for all the world.”

  He could tell by the way her eyes turned up that she was smiling.

  “Not even for wine?”

  He smiled, too.

  “Not even for wine.”

  He looked down and noticed that his robes were still on; they had not burned. Though they did smell like a hearth fire.

  A rooster crowed, and Delphine went back up the ladder, looking just a little less like a child.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Of Monsters, and of Blessings

  Despite the wide berth they gave the city of Beaune, they did see evidence of Delphine’s monsters in the farmlands just south of the town; a tree in the middle of a field had all the leaves stripped from it, and now its branches hung with people and animals, all still as herrings. A fire twinkled at the base of the tree. They were being smoked. A heap of clothes lay nearby, as well as a separate pile of logs to feed the fire. A large, recently dug hole gaped in the side of a hillock not far from the tree; the darkness of this hole was preternatural, seeming to push back against the daylight. It was big enough for a man on stilts to have entered without ducking. At the entrance to the hole was a scattering of feet. Whatever it was, it didn’t like feet. Something moved in t
he darkness of the hole, and then they heard a sound that was somewhere between a rattling groan and an insect’s buzz. The mule sped up his trot with no encouragement from his driver.

  That night and the next day brought them tremendous luck.

  The town of Chagny had not admitted them, but three miles on they were able to find a functioning inn that was actually willing to rent them a room, and use of a dry stable. The man who ran the inn was a former Franciscan monk who had left orders and taken a wife, the very same who now served them watery radish soup with some bitter green in it. Outside, near the well, a statue of the saint, covered in little stone birds and well shat on by living ones, looked toward the gate; it was the innkeeper’s avowed belief that the saint himself protected his house from plague, as well as from the things that had hammered their way into Beaune, and sometimes ranged as far south as Chagny.

  “Have you seen them?” Thomas asked him.

  “Yes,” he said in a very final way, looking down. He said no more about them.

  One other guest shared the inn that night: a young merchant from Tuscany who was on his way home from Paris on foot. His French was terrible, but the priest figured out from his badly grafted snatches of Franco-Italian that his wife had gotten a letter to him saying she was still alive. He took it out and cried over it, and asked the priest to kiss it, and to touch it with a rosary. He did.

  His translation of news from home gave them a taste of Florentine dark humor; the mass graves, with their layers of bodies, lime, and dirt, had inspired less reverential Tuscans to say the dead had “gone to the lasagna.”

  Rinaldo Carbonelli had thick, well-shaped eyebrows over his almond eyes, and Delphine found herself wishing she were the wife who had sent him his letter, alive in Italy with a handsome man walking home to her. She found herself looking at his hands as he spoke, and wondering what those hands would feel like touching her hair; in her innocence, she imagined him petting her hair as if she were a kitten; she knew there was more after that, but she contented herself with letting her thoughts run to the edge of that cliff without looking over. Suffice it to say that she would have very much liked for the Italian to pet her hair.

  Her gaze was so intense that the Tuscan caught her looking, and smiled, indicating her to the others with a nod and a flick of his expressive eyes.