by David Leslie Johnson; David Leslie Johnson; Catherine Hardwicke Sarah Blakley-Cartwright
“Now hardly seems the time.” He shook his head.
Suddenly, feeling the depth of her own hurt, she wanted to hurt him.
“You heard the Reeve. The Wolf is dead. Let’s all get back to our lives.” She instantly hated herself. He had voiced exactly what she’d felt, and she’d attacked him for it. Valerie didn’t feel she was in her right mind.
She turned to apologize, but he’d already disappeared.
William ran by, wearing Claude’s hat. Valerie saw Claude was again hanging back, around the square, still embarrassed and unsure of what to do. It had been a hard night for him. She moved to his side.
“William’s an ass. We’ll get your hat back.”
Trying hard not to seem childish, he couldn’t help stammering, “M-my sister made it.”
Valerie patted his arm and looked after William, anywhere but at Peter. She turned her eyes to the fire. As the music got louder, the flames heaved higher and higher into the night sky. Then Valerie saw that her father had slipped in the mud and was unable to get up. A girl leapt over him, the ribbons on her boots rudely grazing his face.
“Excuse me, Claude.” As she approached, she saw that a man in a ratty wolf costume was standing over Cesaire, beating him with his flat tail, blowing in his face.
“I’ll huff and I’ll puff and—”
“Get off him!” Valerie shouted.
When he didn’t, Valerie ran over, grabbed a firewood log, and fiercely whacked him with it. A few women quieted their taunting and stepped back, impressed.
“I said get off!” she shouted, too loud over the music. The man scampered back into the howling crowd.
“Blow my eardrum out, why don’t you?” Cesaire laughed from the ground, his face hugging the mud, apparently unaware of what had happened to him. Cesaire had clearly seen the night as an occasion to drink as much as he could, whatever he could, until he was too inebriated to get his hands on anything else.
“I’m serious.” Usually, Valerie put up with his merrymaking. But tonight, she couldn’t do it. With all the heightened attention on the family, she wanted to get him safely inside. At the moment, Valerie felt the loss of Lucie more acutely than she had yet; Lucie would’ve helped her take care of their father.
Valerie saw, with shame, that he was lying in a pool of his own vomit.
“Papa…”
“I’m getting up, I’m getting up.”
He managed to sit up, but he couldn’t go any farther.
“I think I chipped off a bit of tooth,” Cesaire noted from his seat, rubbing his cheek.
Valerie helped to ease him onto his unsteady feet. He was drunk and trying very hard. She held both his hands as he rocked back and forth, trying to balance his weight.
“The things that seem so easy in the day…”
Valerie let him lean on her as she dragged him away from the crowd and pointed him toward home.
He looked down at his shirt, at the vomit.
“Just flick this off and I’ll be fit to see the king,” he said, attempting a flick.
They passed a group of teenagers.
“Did the bearded lady faint?” a teenager called out in a lilting voice.
“Damsel in distress!” sang another.
Valerie’s jaw clenched. She felt the weight of her father like a stone around her neck.
“Don’t worry about them, Valerie,” Cesaire muttered.
As he lurched along beside her, Valerie was ashamed for feeling ashamed of him. She knew he was aware of it, and she knew it hurt him.
“You’re my good girl,” he got out, getting teary-eyed, fragile in his drunken state. He tried to pat her with his free arm but missed.
He turned and this time managed to find Valerie’s head. She knew he needed to get away from the infernal wreckage of the festival, a celebration in spite of his daughter’s death.
He looked around, wondering where home was, finding it.
He jerked free of her.
“… gwanback havfun,” he commanded her. It was all the fatherly wisdom he could muster. And without so much as a glance more in her direction, he floundered onward, looking like maybe he ought to have a little rest under the house before attempting the ladder.
Making her way back to the square, Valerie saw two little girls arm in arm, careful not to lose each other in the crowd. Valerie thought of a festival her family had gone to when she and Lucie were young girls, whirling around in their father’s arms, and later, their mother reaching down to feed bite-size pieces of meat into their mouths, as though they were baby birds.
“I wish I could feel as free as Rose does.” Prudence sashayed up to her, shouting over the music, maintaining her perfect posture even as she danced.
Already knowing to what she was referring, Valerie turned uneasily to face Peter and Rose. She was reaching around and wrapping her hands around his neck. He held his hands to her face and reached into her dark hair that was similar to his own, which was somehow more intimate, a deeper betrayal, than whatever their bodies were doing. The band played, whooping and jeering every so often at the pair, which was only fuel for Rose to grind harder. Peter kept his head down. She felt like Rose was punishing her for Henry—which hadn’t even been Valerie’s choice.
Valerie wished they would die. She couldn’t decide which one she hated more, Peter or Rose. Her vision blurred as she watched them.
“Are you all right?” Prudence asked, her hand on Valerie’s back.
“Yes.”
“I wonder if we should stop her. She’s ruining whatever’s left of her reputation dancing with him.” Prudence pushed a strand of brown hair behind her ear.
Valerie saw that the bonfire had grown. The flames shot up high and sent elongated shadows dancing across the ground.
“No,” she said darkly. “Let her do what she wants.”
Just then, a glass worker passed by guzzling ale, barely recognizable beneath the mess of leaves pasted onto his face.
Valerie reached for the man’s bottle and, leaning back, let the spicy brew meet the tip of her tongue with a surge. She let the whole of the bottle’s contents burn down the back of her throat. Looking up, Valerie felt she was swimming through the air.
She grabbed Prudence and pulled her into a wild dance, the two girls lit up by the ecstatic flames.
They leaned forward, keeping their legs wide. Facing each other, they dipped down, letting their long hair spin out around them as they came up. Two stomps forward, one stomp back. Then three stomps forward, so that they were eye to eye, chest to chest. Never having given much thought to her body, Valerie was more free than Prudence and the other girls, and she shook like she was inhabited by a powerful spirit.
Valerie and Prudence didn’t think about which way to turn, or about which way the other would. They just did it, and it worked. Loose-limbed, they spun in rapturous circles, and they lifted up their skirts and floated their hands to meet each other’s. They stared each other down, and their eyes shone with secrets. Valerie felt exhilarated with the communion she and her friend shared.
Meanwhile, Peter hovered over Rose, his body resting on hers as she flared her skirt, showed her legs. Though Valerie and Peter were dancing differently, their bodies moving in different ways, they were both doing the same dance. It was a jealousy dance, old as the human race.
Catching glances threaded through the whirring bodies of a couple who danced between them, Valerie watched Peter watching her, both pretending not to. The energy flowed between them, carried by the lines of vision that made sure never to meet.
Slam!
Without Valerie realizing it, Henry had come stumbling toward her, ale spilling sloppily out of his cup, clearly the latest in a long string of drinks. Peter had moved protectively to block Henry’s path.
She felt some satisfaction that Peter must have been as aware of her as she had been of him.
Working hard to make sense of things through his blur of drunkenness, Henry finally realized that it had been Peter. He whipped
around, breathing heavily, heading straight for his rival, pushing a drunken trio of masked piggy men out of the way.
Seeing the wild look in Henry’s eyes as he charged, Rose moved aside to cling to Prudence. Henry shoved Peter hard enough that he staggered backward.
“Take it easy, friend,” said Peter, regaining his balance, quickly understanding the condition Henry was in.
“Friend? You left us. In the caves.” Henry’s muscles tensed.
Peter stepped back cautiously. Henry didn’t look like himself.
“Seems someone can’t hold his drink,” Peter said. He didn’t go further, sensing then that Valerie might be thinking of her father.
“And now,” Henry continued on his own track, stepping closer to meet him, the smell of alcohol on his breath, “my father, too, is dead.”
Valerie moved to Henry. “Please, don’t do this,” she said, stepping in. “It’s not worth it.”
Henry pushed past her, not realizing his own weight. The force knocked her back. Peter grabbed Henry’s arm and twisted it. Overreacting, Henry reared back his fist and landed a punch in the hollow of Peter’s eye. The crowd laughed as Peter fell hard to the ground.
Henry scrambled on top of him, held him by the collar, forced Peter to face him as he’d never done. He looked into the eyes of the man he wanted to blame for his parents’ deaths, because it was a shelter from the terrible thought that everything could be lost to a simple slip of fate. “You filth,” he spat out.
This really got the villagers going. But Peter didn’t laugh. He pulled a knife from his boot and leapt up, thrusting it viciously in Henry’s face.
“Keep your hands off her or I’ll cut them off.” The knife shivered in front of Henry, inches from his face, Peter looking as if he might cut them off anyway.
Henry, ready to take him, did not look afraid.
“Peter, please…” Valerie said softly. Henry was looking for a boyish tumble, but Peter, she knew, was out for blood. Valerie’s voice caught as she was struck with the fierce beauty of it, of being loved that much. She thrilled with guilt and pride at the thought of her own power, at the thought of being loved murderously.
Hearing her voice, Peter backed away slowly but stopped to direct the knife at Henry once more. “You will be sorry for this.” Then he disappeared from the square.
Henry stood mute as Valerie glanced at him for a moment in disappointment before turning to run after Peter.
She followed him into the dark shelter of an alley. The enclosed space dampened the noise of the festival to a murmur.
Peter waited against a wall, chest heaving, eyes wild and dangerous.
“Leave me alone.”
But she felt too powerful for that. She would not be told what to do.
“You’re bleeding.” She reached up to tenderly touch his eye.
“So what?” he said, brushing her hand aside roughly. “Jesus, Valerie. What’s the matter with you? What do I have to do to make you stop?”
Valerie wouldn’t take no for an answer, because she knew how wonderful yes would be. Although Valerie had sworn off her feelings for him earlier, she could not deny what now felt so real. She felt the drink coursing through her, carrying her on its tide.
“Peter,” she began. He looked up at her, and she could see the pain in his eyes. “I love you,” she said freely. With Peter, she was laid bare; he extracted her from herself.
Peter didn’t know what to say. His eyes glimmered, bright and burning. He only let her see them a moment before he turned away. He took in a ragged breath.
“What were you doing with Rose anyway?” she demanded, asking a lot of him.
Peter darkened again. He turned his back to her, took a step farther into the alley, and said in a dead voice, “I don’t have to like her to get what I want.”
“I don’t believe you,” Valerie said, reaching for his face again. Peter pulled away from her. “You’re lying.”
Valerie wanted to touch him so badly, to feel the beat of his heart, to know that it was in there, that this was her Peter. Before he could stop her, she’d swiftly wrapped her arm around him from behind and laid her hand to his chest. She said, “Your heartbeat is so fast. I know you feel the same way.”
Spinning around, he grabbed at the bracelet Henry had given her. She didn’t let him have it.
“Valerie, you know I can’t give you anything like that. I can’t now, and I never will.”
“You think I care about his money?”
“Valerie,” he said, giving her another chance to back out, “I’m wrong for you.”
“So what?”
He finally turned to face her, daring to believe, and she suddenly found herself kissing him on his soft lips, full and fast. He hesitated, struggling with his promise to her mother, and yet as Valerie wrapped her cool arms around him, her fingers tangling in his hair, he could not fight back. He had held out shakily, like a tree that had been hacked down to its breaking point. But that kiss was the last swing, the final impact, and he gave in finally, felled.
His fingers, roughened by work, stroked her cheek as they breathed together.
“I’ve been hungry for you for so long.” He inhaled, combing fingers through her long corn-silk hair.
But just then, Valerie felt that same gaze she’d felt at the festival, those grape eyes, the weight of being watched. She heard something move at the mouth of the alley. This time, it was not a boar’s head.
“Peter, did you hear that?”
He didn’t even bother answering. He moved his warm hands to lift her, to carry her into the nearby granary and up the stairs, and then to press her against the roughness of the wall, and Valerie forgot everything else.
“Better?” he managed to get out.
Valerie couldn’t reply. She felt every inch of his body pushing against hers as he lightly ran his hands over her waist. His hands searched for the laces on her bodice. Finding them, he tugged until they loosened.
Peter’s face wasn’t smooth; his hands weren’t soft.
“Peter…” Her hand roamed, then rested high on his thigh. She was there and he was there, and his body was pressing up hard against her. She wanted to stamp her body upon his forever, to feel the imprint. His clothes, hers, everything that was between them, felt suddenly unbearable, and she longed to touch him, to really touch him, with her hands and her being and her everything.
Peter lowered her onto the straw lining the granary loft. Valerie looked up at the tall, shadowy interior of the dome. It was dizzying, like being inside the paneled chambers of an oak kaleidoscope.
His breath was ragged and uneven against her neck. The heat reverberated through her body like a flood let loose. Valerie had to remind herself to breathe.
He was opening her blouse, which had come untucked from her skirt. Rough fingers traversed her skin as his hands made their way inside. It was too much, she realized. She gasped, thinking she had to get away, unprepared for the intensity of his desire, when a clatter sounded from down below.
They pulled apart.
“Quick,” Peter said, pulling her up and ushering her behind a post, so that only he was visible to the intruder.
“Peter!” someone called. He peered down. Two woodcutters were loading a keg into a wheelbarrow.
“Peter, give us a hand, would you?”
Peter cast Valerie a desperate look. She beckoned him over a moment. Peter leaned over and pretended to shake a pebble from his boot as Valerie whispered, “The only life I want is with you,” before pulling him to her and giving him charged, fiery kisses, one after the other. Peter reeled, touched her burning cheek, and took off.
Leaning against the post, Valerie still sensed the hot, lingering trace of his skin on hers. It had been overwhelming, and yet she wanted to hold the moment safe forever.
Valerie felt the sensation again that she was being watched. Instinctively, she looked up. A beady-eyed crow perched at the top of the tower cast down its searching black look, unfolde
d its wings, and took flight.
From behind his post, Henry Lazar saw Valerie sense his presence and look up. Shame pooled inside him like something wet. His feelings were cut off, snipped, like a length of ribbon. Watching her and Peter, he had tried to leave but couldn’t look away. Instead, he stood frozen, horrified, transfixed by the intensity of the wretched, beautiful sight.
He stood a moment more, tensed the muscles in his jaw, and crept away.
17
Valerie waited until the men’s voices had died down, become faint, and disappeared. Only then did she put her weight back on her feet and steal out the side door to return to the celebration, glad to get away.
She saw no sign of Peter. A line of figures was backlit by the tall pink flames, pulsing to the throb of the music. It seemed no one had noticed her absence. Even Roxanne was busy, watching in awe as fire walkers spun around, doing backflips, walking on their palms across the coals, kicking their feet high in the air. Everything was suddenly so beautiful.
Charged with an animal’s ferocity, Valerie felt she could do anything. The tavern owner lumbered by wearing a pair of goat horns tied under his chin. Pulling her hair out of her face, she quickly wound it into a loose braid, her hands working instinctively. Then she grabbed the horns right off his head and strapped them onto her own.
Metal goblets were strewn atop the stacked bales of hay, ale seeping slowly through the tightly packed bundles and trickling out the bottom. Hearing laughter overhead, Valerie looked up. A few men were sitting in a tree and sloshing their drinks between parted boughs onto those people walking by underneath. One of the victims considered being angry but decided to laugh instead. Someone keeled into the bushes, and a brave soul went in after him. Some farmers hacked drunkenly at branches, and every now and then a big one came crashing down. People heard it, but in the night’s clamor, they didn’t even bother to look.
Suddenly, the smoldering coals of the bonfire stood for everything Valerie had been through, for the losses, the failures, the regrets. The music pounded as she ran past Roxanne and over to the red embers on the ground. As she danced across them, she was weightless, existing only as movement. The feeling was over just as soon as Valerie realized it had begun, and she ran off the coals onto the ground and looked behind her, at where she had just been.
