Between Two Fires (9781101611616)

by Buehlman, Christopher

  It wasn’t her who played.

  Later that night, while the old man and Thomas stole a few hours’ sleep, Delphine went to Matthieu’s cold body. She put her finger below his nose and felt nothing. She sensed herself on the verge of some great blasphemy but felt so angered at the sweet priest’s death that she didn’t care if she made God angry now.

  It would serve Him right.

  I can’t think like that.

  She prayed.

  “Let me do this, please, work through me.”

  She pried open the priest’s waxy mouth and breathed into it, as if she were God Himself breathing life into Adam’s dead clay.

  Nothing.

  She tried to conjure the feeling of the sparrow fluttering in her chest, and she thought she did, but wasn’t sure. She sensed that she could almost do this, that with just a little help…

  Is this a sin?

  Delphine breathed into his mouth again.

  His big, cool hand, into which she had slipped her fingers, squeezed hers gently.

  Her heart beat like a rabbit’s in her chest.

  She almost laughed with joy.

  And then the hand relaxed.

  No!

  She breathed into his mouth again.

  Nothing.

  PLEASE, she thought, he’s so good I need him please I love him!

  Now the fluttering, different from her racing heart.

  Now her answer.

  Leave him with us, little moon.

  You’re not strong enough for that.

  Not yet.

  She shook her head against this denial.

  She blew into the dead man’s mouth a dozen more times, but his fingers never moved again, and, when she began to have the feeling she was troubling him, she went to a corner and sobbed until she washed the whites out of her eyes.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Of Delphine, and of the Scarecrow

  Delphine traced her fingers on the sleeping knight’s face.

  ThomasThomasThomasThomas.

  She touched him lightly enough that she knew he would not stir; he slept like a soldier, always set to spring awake at a strange sound, but he seemed to know it was her hand upon his face, and that she was no threat to him.

  But I am.

  The land was drier now, rockier. Warmer. The sky blazoned its unquenchable Provençal blue over plane trees with yellow-green leaves and bark like linen. It had not rained since they left the old man’s house, and the vines were still green here. They had stopped in a shallow cave near a stream, exhausted after two days on foot. They had sold the goat to a Provençal family the day before, Thomas gesturing his way through much of the exchange, getting in return a hot meal and a small pouch of silver that wouldn’t get them far.

  Thomas had told her flatly that he intended to steal the first horse they saw, but they saw horses only when troops of men, sometimes soldiers, sometimes laborers, headed south and past them. It had not seemed plausible that any of these groups would turn their horses over to one man, no matter how big and dangerous he looked, so Thomas stole nothing.

  It wasn’t going to work like this.

  She had been thinking about it for both days as they walked.

  She had prayed, and prayed hard, for a dream to tell her what to do. In the dream, she saw the city of Avignon lying before her, a little below her as if she were a bird; and then the city filled with birds that flew about and ate a multitude of flies. She did not see herself or Thomas, nor did she have any sense of what she was supposed to do there.

  It made her angry.

  She tried to imagine what her father would do, but she already knew, and it scared her. Her father would not want to bring harm to another. How many were gone now because of her? Annette and her husband, the soldier on the raft.

  And now funny, sad-eyed Père Matthieu.

  Even an angel of God.

  This was not counting the three men Thomas had slain.

  Her father would not bring this knight any farther to kill or, worse, get killed himself. And what was she becoming now, to think it better if Thomas killed another than that any harm should come to him? That was the way everyone thought, protecting the beloved at the cost of the stranger.

  She would go on alone.

  Her fingers lingered just below his nostrils, and the feel of his living breath pleased and thrilled her.

  If God wanted her in Avignon, He would have to get her there safely without using Thomas and then casting him away when he was no longer needed.

  Am I tempting God or doing His will?

  Mother Mary, help me.

  * * *

  She climbed to the top of a rocky outjut full of ocher and crowned with thorny bushes and bushes whose leaves flashed silver undersides when the wind blew. And the wind did blow here, not quite cool, but neither warm. Just hard. She gathered her new horse blanket, the one from the old man’s stable, around her shoulders. A mountain rose to the south, slightly blurred with haze, protected by a pack of smaller, sharp mountains that seemed ready to intercept anyone who tried to approach the large one. She saw the Rhône snaking south to her right, deceptively blue.

  Come get your raft dear

  Follow me to the city of your dying

  She wanted to cry but pushed that down and lifted her chin.

  Her shoes were nearly worn through. The road that had been punishing her feet lay close to the river.

  Romans made that.

  How do I know this?

  I’m becoming something.

  She turned now and looked for Thomas, conflicted about whether she hoped to see him. She knew he would be following her—there was no mystery about where she was going—but she was sure she had a long head start. Her heart sank just a little to see that the road behind her was empty.

  She wanted to play her bird flute, but it had fallen out of her pouch in the river. Her mother’s comb had not, and she put it to her lips now, blowing through its teeth, but unable to get anything like music out of it.

  She walked on.

  As late afternoon came on, she found a pretty little farmhouse roofed with the lazy U-shaped tiles they used here. Whoever had been here must have left; she found nothing in the house but furniture and tools. She went to the well in the back, her throat parched, and started lowering the bucket. She stopped, though, when she first smelled, then saw how rancid the well was.

  Very little water pooled in that well, not at all enough to cover a man’s mostly skeletal remains bunched at the bottom, his back twisted so his skull and torso faced the wrong way, the eye sockets drilling up at her.

  An accident? Did people still die of those?

  Then she saw the child’s skull, just the top and one eye visible, one small foot perched on a rock.

  No. He threw the body in and jumped.

  May God forgive him, since he couldn’t forgive God.

  Can I?

  She crossed herself.

  Did the child’s skull move?

  Were two eye-pits now visible?

  Join us! Tell us stories about the world where the sun shines all day!

  She went back toward the road.

  The bucket’s rope creaked.

  Her hand went to the flute-shaped box around her neck.

  She walked faster.

  She couldn’t find any water near the road or in the several houses she visited. She did, however, spend nearly an hour crouching in a vineyard where the dark little grapes had missed their harvest time, some of them beginning to pucker at the stem. She stuffed her mouth with them almost to the peril of her fingers until she vomited, then slowed down, eating a little more and napping under an iron-wheeled cart; she got her strength back, but after another hour on the road her thirst returned.

  Still no Thomas.

  She chided herself for looking.

  One house was occupied, its shutters flung wide, but two men quarreled there; she saw their shapes move in the darkness of the house, their angry, bearded faces illuminated in
flashes as they circled each other and took turns passing through a swath of sunlight where roof tiles were missing. Likewise, she could understand only flashes of their southern language, which was like French but not French:

  “Hate you…your…kill you…No, no, You…MINE…CHRIST…last time…”

  She hugged the limestone wall near the house and kept on, tempted by their well but not wanting to risk being seen. A skinny pig in an enclosure of twined-together branches saw her and snuffed the air at her, but then rolled in the little bit of mud near its trough. She leaned over and stole a palmful of water from that trough, and then scurried on, her thirst worsened.

  It was only when she was out of earshot that her fear gave way to pain and her limp returned.

  She went to the Rhône an hour before sunset—she would want to be away from it before the sun slipped behind the hills.

  No bodies floated there, and no monsters shouldered up from the river’s middle. She saw nothing but weeds on the sandy bottom near the shore; half of a wrecked fishing boat mudded in the shallows looked to have been there a long time, perhaps since before the world and Hell began to couple.

  The wind stung her with grit and chopped the surface of the river, but she knelt in the shallows, happy for the cool water lapping at her knees. She cupped her hands to her mouth and slurped, her lips stinging insignificantly just before she swallowed and her cooled, slaked throat became the glad center of her awareness.

  She took off her stiff, almost formless shoes, delicately so as not to snap what was left of the thong that wrapped around her ankles, and put her feet in the water.

  It was good.

  She felt herself smiling for the first time since Père Matthieu died.

  Delphine started awake with the feeling that someone was watching her. She opened her eyes, but the night was so dark they were useless.

  Where am I?

  Think!

  The old man’s house?

  No.

  She remembered now; the priest was dead and she had left Thomas—she was alone. But where?

  The convent.

  The wind whipped outside, moaning in little nooks of the stone building. She panted, scared of the dark, scared of her solitude.

  But someone was watching her—she was sure of it.

  Who or what could see in this pitch?

  “I hear you breathing, child.”

  A woman’s voice. Not unfriendly.

  But all the nuns in this little grotto convent were dead; she had seen them arranged in the garden, their faces wrapped tightly in cloths, nearly skeletal arms clasped as if in prayer and wound with wooden rosaries. She remembered that several of these cadavers had no arms on them, but she had seen the human body so abused in so many ways in the last three months that she gave it no further thought.

  Despite the sadness in the garden, the building itself had been empty and had offered protection from the wind. She liked the stone cross over the chapel.

  But now.

  Who was in the room with her?

  “You needn’t breathe like a hunted thing. You rest in the arms of the Lord tonight.”

  She was in the chapel. She remembered now, an old stone dome near rows of lavender past its blooming time, and a palm tree! She had never seen a palm tree before. The wind made its leaves rattle, and it was browner than she thought a healthy one should be, though not from thirst, surely? It inclined gently toward a statue of Mary with neither crown nor scepter nor babe.

  “Who are you?” the girl asked.

  “A sister. Sister Broom, if you like. I clean up here.”

  “Will you light a lamp, Sister?”

  “I haven’t one. I see quite well in the dark. The older sisters who did not see so well have no need of lamps now.”

  Delphine forced herself to breathe more easily.

  “That’s better,” the other said.

  She felt a hand on her chest, patting her as if in reassurance, but it seemed to be feeling its way toward what she carried around her neck. She shifted away from the hand. The hand was withdrawn.

  “My, but you’re a nervous little thing.”

  “Forgive me. I am…Forgive me.”

  “What is it that you’re so worried about?”

  “A gift. My father gave it to me.”

  “I love gifts. What kind of gift is it?”

  She struggled to see but could make nothing out.

  “A…an instrument.”

  “Of song?”

  “…Yes.”

  “May I see it?”

  Delphine swallowed hard, trying to think of a response, but she couldn’t. Then she remembered not to think at all, but just to speak and see what came out.

  “My father told me not to let anyone touch it.”

  “That’s too bad. Well, I shouldn’t be selfish. All the things of the convent are mine to amuse myself with now.”

  Delphine heard what sounded like a sack being dragged closer, and then the sound of someone fishing around in that sack.

  “Here,” the woman’s voice said, “what do you imagine this is?”

  An object was placed in Delphine’s hand. It was round and thin and made of metal.

  “A bracelet?”

  “Yes. The Mother Superior bought it with money from the convent treasury. She wore it over her elbow where the others could not see it, and looked at herself nude in a glass, imagining she was Salomé. Can you imagine? It’s silver with little grape vines and jeweled grapes on it. It was from the time when this place was called Gaul. I do wish I had a lamp. Can you feel the vines in the metal? They’re exquisite, aren’t they?”

  Delphine grew afraid again and panted, but she managed to nod, not thinking about the darkness.

  She was seen.

  “Clever thing,” Sister Broom said.

  The hand was on her chest again, but she twisted away.

  The hand was withdrawn.

  “But what is in that case?”

  “I want to go outside.”

  Silence.

  Delphine started to get to her feet.

  The woman’s voice spoke before she stood.

  “I’ll be angry if you stand up.”

  She stayed sitting on her heels, sweating and trying not to pass out from fear, wishing she could see well enough to run somewhere. Wasn’t there a window in this place? Yes, past the altar. She should at least be able to make out a window by the stars, unless clouds had come. Was the other in front of it?

  “I don’t want to make you angry.”

  “And I don’t want to be angry. We’re friends, aren’t we?”

  “As you say.”

  A hand moved again in the sack. Now a cold, round object went into Delphine’s hand, the hand that placed it there brushing hers, dry and cool.

  “What is that, do you think?”

  She struggled to control her breathing.

  “A coin.”

  “Good! A piece of silver. One of thirty Judas received for the betrayal of the Nazarene. This convent kept it in a box of cedar, but the Mother Superior broke it and took it out, took it for herself. How selfish she was! Can you imagine what they’d pay for it in Avignon? Would you like to keep it? I’ll give it to you for what’s around your neck.”

  “No…” she managed to mew. “The coin belongs to you now.”

  The cold, dry hand took the coin back, and a sound like very dry hissing or rattling came from the other in the room.

  “May I please go outside now?”

  “Not unless you wish to end our friendship. Is that what you want?”

  “No.”

  “I agree. Let us be loving with each other. There’s so little love anywhere.”

  Now another object was removed from the sack.

  She heard the sound of sawing near her.

  She smelled the dust of very old wood.

  Now the saw was placed in her hand.

  “I know you know what that is, but can you guess its significance?”

 
“Something…something to do with the Mother Superior?”

  “Of course! She used this to build something very special before she left this place. Her lord told her to. Her new lord.”

  “Where is she? Now? Are you…”

  “No, child, you flatter me! I am not the Mother Superior! She went to Avignon. Or, that’s where she thought she was going. But as she packed her sack, what she made came to life. It had orders of its own to follow. She is still here now, part of her at least, and that part is past vanity and greed.”

  Delphine shivered now and could not stop.

  This thing was going to kill her.

  She reached for the case and began to open its tiny latches.

  “If you open that case, I’ll bite your fucking thumbs off.”

  She withdrew her hands.

  “Now give it to me.”

  Something occurred to Delphine.

  Her breathing calmed.

  “Why don’t you take it?” she said, her voice trembling.

  Silence.

  “You wouldn’t like that very much.”

  “Well, I don’t like being threatened very much, either. I repeat my question. If you’re capable of hurting me, why do you ask me for what you want? Why not just take it?”

  “Because that wouldn’t be friendly.”

  Delphine took a deep breath. When she spoke again, her voice was steady.

  “Friends don’t terrorize one another. If you’re really my friend, leave me in peace.”

  The rattling hiss came.

  The thing in the room dropped the pretense of human voice.

  Give me that fucking case.

  “I refuse.”

  Something bit in front of her face, the smell of mold and dust and stale death washing over her.

  Delphine stood up now. Hands groped and clutched at her, more than two hands, but she pushed them off and stood up anyway. Now she opened the case and took the spearhead out. The thing scuttled back with a dry, scratching sound.

  “I believe you are only able to do to me what I permit. I forbid you to touch me again.”

  The room now exploded in a fury of flung objects as something moved around the room, banging on the altar, punching what glass was left out of the windows, and a dry scream bounced off the walls, hurting Delphine’s ears.

  She felt her way to the door and stepped out into the wind; the stars were out, and she could see well enough to walk toward a tree. She climbed it, the spear in her teeth, and found a branch she could sleep on.