The Burning Road

by Ann Benson

  “ ’Tis rare, I know,” she said, “and in some, Père says it is simply the will of God that keeps the sufferer alive. Some seem to muster defenses against the pest. Their bodies fight, as well as if they wielded swords. He does not understand why.”

  “He cannot understand everything.”

  “You must not underestimate him. I was so afflicted that I would not have been among those who lived. My sickness was grave, very grave.” She looked away pensively for a moment, then glanced back at him. “I remember little of it, only that Père was constantly at my side, as was …” She paused, and released a tightly held breath. “For me, it was the medicine that did it. You see, he had learned of a cure.”

  The great conviction in her voice gave curious credence to the nearly impossible story she told. And though he was certain that Kate was upset by the separation from her supposed father, Karle did not think her insane. “You do not seem to be suffering from the typical weaknesses of female temperament that lead to delusion,” he observed. “I daresay you believe what you are telling me to be true.”

  She gave him a defiant look, tinged with wariness. “What gain might I realize by telling you lies?” she asked.

  “I cannot say,” Karle answered. But such a fantastic story! He wanted to ask more, but reluctantly held his tongue. I must not frighten or badger her into silence, he warned himself, for it seems there is much to be learned from her. For a moment, he satisfied himself by simply looking at her, this cream-skinned, golden-haired, impossibly curved girl-woman into whose company he had suddenly been thrust. He found himself thinking, Rarely does nature work such marvels as this. He turned his eyes away from her, and back to the horses again.

  “I am terribly hungry,” she said. “Now that we are finally at rest, my stomach screams for me to fill it. Have you any food?”

  “Not a morsel,” he said. They had run through an orchard, but he had not thought it wise to stop until they were certain that they were not being pursued. The fruit had been left behind with great regret.

  “Have you a weapon to hunt?” she asked.

  “Only my sword.”

  “Then we shall have to make do with this.” She lifted her skirt and pulled a knife out of the edge of her stocking. It was small and slender, but the blade nearly gleamed and Karle imagined that it was very sharp.

  “You are full of surprises, maiden,” Karle said.

  “Père has always told me that I must be prepared to leave in the space of a breath. He says I must always expect that which is unexpected.”

  “Is there nothing but wisdom pouring out of this man’s mouth? Does he say nothing stupid or inane? Ever?”

  She chuckled lightly. “He is a man of few words. Most are gems. But let us not speak of that now. I will skin what you can catch,” she said, and then taking from her skirt pocket a small piece of glass for fire-starting, she added, “And roast it, as well.”

  “I lack practice in hunting, I fear,” he said. “This sword has swung at the necks of more men lately than beasts.”

  “And before you carried a sword, did you not carry a bow?”

  “Not since my boyhood,” he confessed unhappily. “I was indentured to an accountant who was in the service of a Picard nobleman. Before I took to this rebellion, I worked more at the figures than in the woods. I was provided with much learning, on account, my master said, of my superior intelligence. I know some bits of French and Latin letters, and I am most clever at the ledgers.”

  “No doubt your modesty also served to convince him of your worth,” Kate said wryly.

  “I did the work as well as any man.”

  “I doubt not that you did,” Kate said, “and more cheaply, I am sure. Much to your master’s benefit.”

  “Indeed,” Karle said. “It is always the lords and ladies who benefit from the labors of their underlings. I saved my pennies, and often went to him with an offer to buy out the remainder of my servitude. It was fortunate that I was not married and obligated to the support of a wife and young ones. But still, I wanted to advance myself. In preparation for a time when I might have a family of my own. Always he refused me my freedom.”

  Kate heard great bitterness and regret in his voice and she felt sympathy for his plight. “You have been ill-used by his refusal, it seems to me,” she said gently. “But right at this moment we need to slay us some food. If you have forgotten those skills, you must say so.”

  His silence spoke more clearly than any words he might have said, and with a sigh of resignation, Kate rose up from her rest to do what needed to be done. “I shall make a blind trap, and if God is watching over us, we shall have a rabbit. I am especially fond of a well-roasted doe. I do not like it when I find little ones inside her still, but we need not eat them. Although if we are hungry enough, I am sure you will find them quite tasty.…”

  He was glad when she slipped off into the bushes and thus ceased her discourse on the delights of eating fetal rabbits, but he kept an eye on her as she went about her business. He listened as she rustled about, cutting small branches, and watched with great curiosity as she easily formed them into a bucket-shaped trap. Then with a shhh and a wave, she motioned him to back away. He stepped out of sight in the brush, and a few moments later he heard her thrashing about, creating an unholy noise. Soon a fat rabbit bounded out of the underbrush, directly into her tangle of twigs. She was on it in a second, and its throat was slit. “A jack,” she said as she examined its underside. “Pity. Well, it will fill our bellies nevertheless.”

  Karle stared in dumbfounded astonishment as the golden-haired goddess-maiden, the young woman he was supposed to be protecting, lit a fire and prepared the food that she, by her own clever efforts, had caught and killed. She had the unlucky beast skinned, gutted, and impaled on a sharpened green stick before Karle could even salivate. “The fur is so soft,” she said, stroking the still-warm pelt against her cheek as its former wearer sizzled over the flame. “A pity it cannot be saved for gloves. But where would it be stored? We are too much on the move.” She wrapped the feet and the viscera inside the pelt and tossed them far across the stream. “Monsieur le Renard will enjoy them after we have departed from here,” she said with a smile.

  Soon the intoxicating aroma of the roasting meat filled the air, and Karle worried aloud that it would bring unwanted attention to them. “We should take this feast away from here to eat it,” he said. “The smell is such that we are likely to attract inquiry.”

  She nodded, and poked at the meat with her knife. “It seems well enough done,” she said, and pulled the spit off the fire. The meat still sizzled as she climbed onto her horse with the stick in hand. “Are we to fear bears or nobles?” she asked.

  “Both would be equally unwelcome,” he answered. “And truth be told, maiden, I would eat the rabbit raw were it not cooked.”

  “Pere says meat must always be well cooked because there are—”

  “Tiny beasts living within the beasts?” he asked mockingly.

  “Aye,” she said with all seriousness. “How did you know? Especially within the small furry creatures. I am forbidden entirely to eat rats. He says I must starve first. You see, by eating the larger beast, we risk taking in the smaller ones—”

  He interrupted her again. “Larger beasts will always eat smaller beasts,” he said. “Regardless of what poisons they hold. And seldom do they have the luxury of cooking them first. It is the will of God. No one need have great learning to understand this.” He turned and rode off to find a more secluded spot in which they might enjoy the rabbit’s tender flesh, as he was certain God intended for them to do, tiny beasts or no.

  “Surely,” Karle said as the drippings from the juicy meat ran down his chin, “this is what God must eat. That is why He is God. Because He has eaten food this delicious.”

  Kate tossed away a denuded bone and licked the fat that clung to her fingers. “One wishes that whatever God rules small things would have seen fit to make rabbits a bit larger. I could e
at another.”

  “Or two,” Karle agreed.

  “And now I must see to some womanly things,” she said, rising up.

  What could she mean? What womanly things? “Where are you going?” he asked.

  “To the pond nearby,” she said, pointing west.

  “There is a pond? How do you know this?”

  She laughed. “The geese. Can you not hear them? Perhaps if we are very fortunate, we shall catch one to roast.”

  He listened for a moment and became aware of the dull honking sounds. Of course he had heard them in the background, but in his hunger he had given no thought to what they obviously meant, that there would be some body of water nearby. He tossed aside the bone he had been gnawing and stood up. “I will go with you.”

  She blushed a bit and said, “I desire some privacy, sir.”

  Karle was flustered. “But I am to watch over you. I promised your père.”

  “I will return quite whole and sound, I assure you. I only wish to clean myself. In decent privacy.”

  “I will stay near you. I will turn away.”

  She gave him a look of great displeasure. “As you wish,” she said, “but do please honor me. A woman needs her peace now and then.”

  He was about to say, You are yet a girl, but she had already turned and was walking in the direction she’d pointed, and as he followed with his eyes, he could not fail to notice that she moved in a distinctly ungirlish manner. Before there was too much distance between them, he untethered the horses and pulled them along, pursuing her through the long grass.

  They came through a thicket of brush to the edge of a small pond, and in the fading light they could see steam rising from the surface of the still water. It was a beautiful sight, and Kate made a small sigh as she looked at it. “Père says air loses its heat more quickly than the water, and that it wants the heat, so it pulls it up from the water. This is why he enjoys bathing at this time of day. As do I.”

  “You are going to bathe?” he said in surprise. “You said only that you wished to clean yourself.”

  “How better to do it than bathing?”

  He seemed flustered. “But will this not be harmful to your health?”

  “I assure you,” she replied to his stare, “I shall be all the more healthy for it. Now, you promised me privacy, or have you forgotten?”

  Without another word he turned away, and soon heard the rustle of cloth as she removed her filthy skirt and shift. Then came the soft splash of her feet entering the water. Before long he heard the sounds of swimming, and he thought, She is fully immersed, so now I may look. Just as he began to turn his head, something large and gray and wet came whizzing by; he ducked, and the wiggling object narrowly missed him. The flat, roundish fish landed with a flopping thud in the grass and began to thrash about.

  “Breakfast,” she said in a sweet, laughing voice, with her curiously English accent. “While I finish bathing, see that Monsieur le Poisson does not flop back into the water. Or you shall have to catch your own petit déjeuner.”

  Kate’s hair, from which she had earlier wrung all the water, was now drying in the warmth of the small fire they had built. They were secreted in a small clearing surrounded by very tall trees, so the smoke from their fire would dissipate among the branches before being noticed, should anyone be watching from a castle wall. She was wrapped in only her shawl while her other garments hung on a nearby branch, drying from a hasty but sorely needed laundering in the waters of the pond. “May God grant that we are not interrupted in the night, or I shall have to flee on horseback with only my hair and shawl to cover me.”

  Karle imagined such a scene with a touch of silent pleasure and whispered to himself, “May God forbid it.”

  They had come across a lone apple tree not far from the pond, and had gathered as many fruits as could be bundled into her wet clothing. By the time they settled on their sleeping spot, their hands and faces were sticky with the juice of the tart fruits, and their stomachs bulging. Kate cut one in half with her knife and skillfully hollowed out the centers, creating two small cups from which they could drink. Water dripped from the filled silk cloth into one of those apple cups, and when it was full, Kate handed it to Karle, who drank thirstily.

  “Père has told me that I must never pass by fresh water without having my fill. Though with my stomach so full of apples, there hardly even seems room for water.”

  Karle said nothing for a moment. He set his applecup back under the dripping silk, then looked directly into her eyes and said firmly, “He is not your père. He cannot be. Kin cannot be so unalike as you and he.”

  She squirmed uncomfortably and pulled the large shawl closer around herself. She looked away, suddenly unwilling to meet his glance. “How can you say this?” she said. “You know nothing of us.”

  “Where is your mère?” he asked.

  She seemed caught off-guard by the question, but answered after a moment’s hesitation, “She is dead.”

  “How?”

  Her voice, when she answered, was flat and dry. “Of the plague,” she said.

  And by the distant, hurt look on Kate’s face, Karle knew she was telling him the truth. Yet he did not doubt that she had also spoken the truth when she claimed that this man had cured her, and himself, of plague. So why not the mother?

  It was as if she had heard his thought. “It was before he perfected the cure. But she lived a fortnight before she passed over,” she hastened to add. “A whole fortnight!”

  For a moment, it seemed to him that she glowed with a cherished memory, and then the warmth of it faded from her face. She had avoided responding to his original challenge, so he repeated it. “I say again he is not your père.”

  She glared at him over the glow of the fire. Her face was caught in its ghoulish orange light, and it was filled with something like hatred. He was surprised by how much it stung him. He tried desperately to see beyond the mask she wore, but she would not let him through it. Finally, when he could no longer stand the silent void, he filled it, foolishly, with accusations. “There is not a drop of his dark blood flowing in your fair body. And the daughters of mere physicians are not educated as you have been. You sound English, you look English, you even speak the vile language. Your French is of the sort spoken at Court. And you have said that you can read. Women do not read, unless they are very wellborn, indeed!”

  “Père taught me. And I assure you, he is not wellborn.”

  “But he is an educated man. And his French is tinged with the sound of Spanish, and with the Christian name Alejandro, it seems only natural that he must be of that heritage.”

  Her eyes were locked on his; then she suddenly lowered her head and looked away, as if she could no longer bear the weight of his scrutiny. But when her eyes met his again, her expression was pure defiance.

  “You are a shrewd man to notice all these things.”

  “I am an honorable man, trying to understand the nature of a maiden whose well-being has been placed in my care. I mean to keep my word to this man who gave you into my care, whoever he might be to you, and I will be far better able to do it if I have some knowledge of your circumstances.” He poked at the embers with a stick to release some of their heat into the cooling air. “And I will admit,” he said in a quiet tone, “I am curious. You seem an unusual pair.”

  Kate watched as he rearranged the charred bits of wood to bring forth their full warmth. His movements were assured but careful, and he managed to do what was needed without releasing a swarm of glowing sparks that might give away their position. When she finally answered, there was still an edge of bitterness in her voice, but it was softer. “You are right—he is not my true father,” she told him. “But the man who spilled his seed between the unwilling thighs of my lady mother, may she rest in peace, was no more a father to me than a rat might be to a lily. Yes, I am wellborn, but in the home of the man who sired me, I was dust under the feather bed—and just as quickly swept aside. Père has done everything
for me that the truest father would, and more! And he did it all only because he cherishes me. He was obligated by nothing more than the goodness and mercy in his own heart. I am a blessed woman to have been fostered by such a father as he.”

  She turned away from him and lay down in the pine needles, an unmistakable sign that their discussion was finished. He noticed that her shawl, though large, was made of thin fabric, and though it provided well enough for modesty, it could not be giving her much warmth. Her garments were still damp, and Guillaume Karle began to worry that she might take a chill. Alive and well was the challenge the man she called Père had given him. For all her bravery and skill, she was in truth just a maiden on the run, alone with a man she barely knew, hoping to regain the family she had lost, which family consisted solely of one enigmatic man who was not her true father.

  She bears a great deal for one of such tender age, he thought with great sympathy. But too many secrets. He spoke gently to her. “I apologize if my inquiries have caused you distress. I was merely curious. Your circumstances seem … unique.”

  “Oh, they are different, indeed,” she sighed. “That much is surely true.” She shivered again in the night air.

  “The air grows colder,” he said. “By now the heat of the pond is leaping out into the air in great white clouds.” He laughed a little, hoping she would find amusement in his comment. But she remained quiet.

  “And you are shivering,” he said, drawing closer to her.

  “It seems I am always cold,” she answered with a small, muffled sniff. “I can never find enough warmth.” Then she began to weep in earnest.