Her tent wasn’t particularly near the other two. The three tents clustered around the cold fire pit, but the guys had purposely set them apart a bit so disturbances would be minimized.
And yet, the scuffling and growling were definitely human and male in timbre.
She wrestled around inside her mummy-style sleeping bag and stuck her arm out into the chilly air. Her flashlight was right beside her bed, and she clicked it on to the lowest brightness and squinted in the glare.
The tent lit up around her, revealing cardboard boxes she’d stacked at the far end. The temperature outside was below freezing, so she’d brought the boxes of vaccine inside where the air wasn’t quite so bitterly cold due to the little bit of her body heat escaping from her thick bedroll. The alpine-rated sleeping bag was so warm that she’d left it partially unzipped because she’d started to boil. Considering that the outside of the bag was burgundy fabric, she would’ve ended up looking like a steamed shrimp.
The pup tent was constructed to accommodate people sleeping in it and not much else, and she could only sit upright near the very middle where the tent poles raised the center to a triangle. Dree tugged her coat and boots on, not bothering to zip or lace them, and crawled to the far end of the tent with the opening. She unzipped the tent flap and stuck her head out, swinging her flashlight beam in the darkness.
The crisp air nipped her nose and cheeks. The rocks glistened with a crystalline film of ice.
The tent to her left where Father Booker and Batsa were sleeping was still and dark.
To her right, however—
That tent was undulating like three raccoons fighting in a burlap sack.
Dree belly-crawled out of her tent in the cold air, stretched to her feet, and walked toward it. A chill crept into her loose boots and jacket and trickled around her ankles and tummy.
More rustling, more scratching, and a very masculine whisper, “Hey. Seriously.”
“I’m allergic to something in Nepal. I took an allergy pill.”
“But if you move over there—”
“I can’t sleep curled up in a ball.”
“Well, I can’t sleep with my head hanging out of the tent, either.”
“Roll your sleeping bag that way. Keep rolling. I’ll try sleeping over there. Roll. Roll.”
“I haven’t been on the bottom of a pile like this since a theater-department cast party in college.”
“Maybe if we slept head-to-toe.”
“We were sleeping head-to-toe. That’s how I got kicked in the eye.”
“Move over. You’re hogging the tent.”
“Me? You need to move. Your ass is in my face.”
“Bite me.”
“It smells like an open cesspool in here. Did someone trump?”
“Alfonso’s lentils upset my stomach. We French have delicate digestive tracts.”
“Yeah, right. That’s why you eat eels and old cheese and stuff. Keep moving. You’re lying right on top of me.”
“Hey! That had better be your elbow.”
“No, just happy to see you.”
“Isaak, keep your hands to yourself and try wedging under that tent eave some more.”
“I can’t. There’s a big rock over there. Make Alfonso move over.”
Her flashlight beam lit up the side of the tent.
“Shit,” said one male voice, probably Isaak. “You woke someone up.”
Another masculine voice—and Dree was pretty sure she recognized Augustine’s, no, Maxence’s voice—said, “It’s no one’s fault. I’ll apologize to them.”
Dree settled to her knees and whisper-asked, “What is going on in there?”
“Nothing,” Alfonso’s tenor voice said.
Dree shook her head. “My feet are getting cold. I’m coming in.”
All three of them said, “No!”
Alfonso said, “No, Andrea Catherine. There is no room.”
Isaak’s deep, French-accented voice teased, “I’m willing to share.”
Someone in the tent actually growled like a bear.
She unzipped the tent flap and stuck her head inside, shining the flashlight under her chin like she was telling ghost stories and then turning it on the men.
Their burgundy mummy bags piled on top of each other in the tiny tent, tangled, and they looked like a cup of nightcrawlers with men’s faces.
She said, “Jeez, guys.”
Maxence said, “We were merely adjusting.”
“This is crazy. This tent isn’t big enough for three grown men.”
“That is what I was saying,” Isaak said, grinning hugely. His bright blue eyes sparkled in the flashlight beam. “But if you have room in your tent—”
She sighed. “Yeah, one of you should bunk with me. Come on.”
“I’ll go,” Isaak said and started slithering toward the tent flap.
“No,” Maxence said, glowering. “Dree should choose. Who would you be comfortable with?”
She sighed. “Fine. I’ll take Deacon Father Maxence.”
“I’d be more fun,” Isaak said, still grinning. His fingers wiggled by his cheek, peeking out of the face hole of his mummy bag as he waved to her.
She told Isaak, “Yeah, but I need to get some sleep tonight. Maxence is an ordained deacon, so he’s harmless.”
The other two guys cracked up, their deep, masculine laughter ringing in the night.
Maxence glowered. “I’m not harmless.”
The two guys laughed as Maxence gathered up his sleeping bag and followed Dree into the night.
Back in her tent, Maxence kneeled and flipped his sleeping bag over the tent’s ground fabric. “Thanks for getting me out of there.”
“It’s okay. Sounded like there really wasn’t enough room.”
“We tried all sleeping on our sides, but Isaak rolled over and knocked Alfonso and me over like dominos.”
“I can see that happening.” She shucked her coat and boots, and then she wiggled back inside her sleeping bag. The fluffy bedroll was still warm inside. Ah. She placed her flashlight back where she could reach it and clicked it off.
The glare in the tent subsided, though Max’s flashlight still lit up the back wall.
“But you were right,” Maxence said, zipping his bag up to his chest. He reached out with one hand and extinguished his flashlight.
Darkness snapped into being, instantly filling the tent to the center peak. Dree couldn’t see her own nose, let alone if she’d wiggled her fingers in the dark.
She said, “Of course, I was right. What about?”
“That I’m the harmless one.”
She scoffed, “I’ve got four nights in Paris that say different.”
“That wasn’t really me.”
“Sure, it was. It was all you. It was every last inch of you. As a matter of fact, I’ll bet it was ten inches. Felt like more. We never did do butt stuff.”
“Dree, please.”
“I understand there are all kinds of personal conflict going on up in your noggin, but that was you. You weren’t faking it.”
“I wasn’t faking it, no. But it’s not who I want to be.”
She said into the dark, “Sure seemed like you wanted to be there.”
“That’s not what I meant. Of course, I wanted to be there. I desperately wanted to be there.”
“I’ll bet if I offered, you’d crawl right inside this mummy bag with me right now.”
His voice lowered still further. “You’re not making this easier.”
“Hey, it’s not my problem. I’m not the one who took an oath of celibacy.”
“Dree, I’m doing my best. Don’t make this more difficult, okay?”
“Hey, Mr. Deacon Father Grimaldi, you’re the one who’s supposed to be celibate. But since you can’t keep it in your pants—”
He muttered, “I can keep it in my pants. Can you keep your sleeping bag zipped?”
“Oh, I can keep my sleeping bag zipped up tight, but it doesn’t matter if I do
n’t. You’re the one who ‘slips’ every chance you get.”
“Yeah,” he sighed. “I do.”
His voice sounded choked.
Oh, jeez. She’d wanted to piss him off, not make him feel bad. “All right, fine. I’ll quit sexually harassing you, but the point is that Paris was not my fault. This is between you, your conscience, and the Big Guy upstairs. I’m just the woman you didn’t mention your ethics conflict to.”
“I am sorry about that,” he said, his voice low.
“You should be. I mean, I knew we didn’t have a future together, that it was just those four days and then we’d go our separate ways. You didn’t lead me on. But I think the fact that you’d taken Holy Orders, even if you’re not exactly a priest, should have been in the conversation before we knew each other ‘biblically.’”
“That first night, things were a bit of a blur.”
“Yeah,” she admitted, “and they were even blurrier for me, but you should have told me the next day. We shouldn’t have kept doing it. I didn’t know you were breaking sacred vows. I just thought I’d had a wonderful four days with an incredible man.”
His whisper slid through the dark and around the curls of her ear, “I think you’re incredible, too.”
Dree paused, gathering herself, and she whispered, “I don’t know why we did what we did in Paris, but I can see why you should be a priest.”
Maxence’s sleeping bag susurrated on the nylon tent floor like he was turning over. He whispered, “Why?”
“I was at the Mass on Saturday. I saw you do the Scripture reading.”
Again, silence, until he whispered even more softly, “And?”
“When I told Sister Mariam and Mother Superior that you were going to be officiating at the Saturday Mass, Mother Superior said that she would reserve the school bus so all the sisters could go. I thought it was just because you’re hot. I mean, what het-leaning woman doesn’t like to fantasize about a hot priest? It’s so naughty. And a hot priest can take you to Heaven because he knows the way, am I right?”
“I don’t know what to say to that,” Maxence muttered.
Dree said, “But that wasn’t it. That wasn’t why they were there. When you read the Scripture, everyone was enthralled. Your voice went through us. No one could breathe. That’s why they went. I couldn’t believe what I was feeling. It felt like encountering God.”
She needed to gather herself.
His breathing didn’t change to the soft rhythm of sleep, and he drew in a breath like he might say something, and then sighed, and then did it again.
Dree sucked a deep breath for courage and asked the darkness, “Are you—something else?”
“—Like what?” Confusion filled his voice.
“Like—” She felt stupid saying it, so she rushed. “Like a saint. Or an angel. Or part-angel, like I’m one-eighth German.”
“No,” Maxence said. His voice was firm. “I’m just a guy. I’m not anything else. There isn’t anything else.”
“What does it feel like to you?” she asked, a creak of desperation in her voice.
Again, the inhale, a sigh like his breath brushing her shoulder, and he said, “It’s like light rolls through me. Or love. Maybe it’s more like love. When I’m in it, I can feel the whole church. Not individual people. Not like reading minds. I’m looking at the Bible page and the verses, and I’m breathing air and projecting my voice, but I am my voice. I am the air that moves through me. I am the vibrations of sound that reach people.”
Dree stared into the darkness. “And that’s why you have to be a priest.”
He paused again. “It’s part of it. But it’s this. I can feel when I’m doing it. Sometimes, when there’s something important, I can make it happen, like with that Black English baron at the charity event at the Versailles Palace last week, Sir Marvin Meriwether-Stone.”
“Yeah,” Dree said. “The investor guy who was with your friend Micah, the one who was suddenly very interested in Micah’s business deal.”
“Right. I did it then for Micah because he wanted that investment and Meriwether-Stone would have missed an excellent opportunity if he hadn’t done it, but sometimes it just happens. Sometimes, I don’t know I’m doing it until afterward. There have been times that it’s happened, and I convinced people to do things when I didn’t realize that I was influencing them. Sometimes, I make people do the wrong things.”
The thought of a person like Maxence being able to influence a crowd to do the wrong thing stilled Dree. It was terrifying.
“When I think about people who could influence other people as I can, who had this skill or innate ability or whatever because I don’t know what I’m doing, the names that come to mind are Charles Manson, Jim Jones, Osama bin Laden, and even Hitler.”
“But … those guys were all evil,” she said slowly, though cold air seemed to be seeping inside her sleeping bag and chilling her skin. “They were psychopaths who had no empathy and treated people like objects that were fun to manipulate. You aren’t like that, right?”
“That’s not the reason. I know I’m not a psychopath. My brother is, and I know I’m not like him. Living with an actual psychopath teaches you exactly what they are. He’s an empty pit of nothing with no human emotions except a taste for violence. He paints on a mask when he talks to people. He betrays people who think they are his friends, and he does not notice if they are hurt or if they are no longer his friends. He has the soul of a great white shark.”
“So, you aren’t like that,” Dree said. The chill was making her tremble inside her sleeping bag.
“But I should be a priest,” Maxence said, and his voice in the cold dark air had an anguished edge. “I should be assigned to do good works by a hierarchical organization that knows what they’re doing. I should be told what to say and what to do. If not, I am a deadly virus. I am a brandished gun.”
“You don’t trust yourself,” she said.
“It’s more than that. I should be anonymous. I should be just another interchangeable priest in a black soutane on the street or wearing vestments during Mass. If I’m someone important, I could be used as a weapon or fashion myself into one. I guess I don’t trust myself because no one should trust me.”
Dree said, “It’s not hypnosis. You’re not hypnotizing people, right?” It had felt different than hypnosis.
“It’s not. Father Moses calls it ‘the divine gift of charisma.’ My friend Casimir says that I’m ‘just really persuasive’ because he’s a lawyer, while Arthur calls it ‘a regal bearing.’ I’m not sure what to make of that one.”
She chuckled, relaxing a little. “Well, you’re a prince of Monagasquay, right?”
He chuffed a laugh. “Yeah, Monagasquay. Maybe that’s why. But the current sovereign prince doesn’t do it that I know of, and my brother, Pierre, certainly doesn’t. He convinces people to do things with blackmail or threats.”
“You talk about Monagasquay like it’s a real place.”
He laughed. “I must have a vivid imagination.”
“Or you’ve been describing real people this whole time.”
She could hear the smile in his voice when he said, “Maybe that’s it.”
“Your brother sounds creepy.”
Maxence laughed again, a little lighter this time. “Yeah, he is. I’m worried about what will happen to Monagasquay after he takes power, but I’m out of that. I plan to become a Jesuit. I will be a Jesuit. It’s best for me, and it’s best for the world.”
She waited for him to speak again, but his breathing slowed. The local time must have been after midnight, maybe much later.
Hours passed before Dree fell asleep.
When she opened her eyes, the tent sides glowed with morning sunlight, and Max was gone.
Chapter Seven
Monagasquay, Again
Maxence
Just after dawn, Maxence was awakened by the sunlight on the fabric walls of the tent, and he’d quietly unzipped the mummy bag and stru
ggled out of the tiny tent without waking Dree, who was still sleeping. Her lips were puffy and pink like she’d been kissed, and he tried not to think about that.
Father Booker had crawled out of his tent and bounded to his feet, his dark eyes bright and snappy, though one white eyebrow had drifted toward the clouds when he’d seen Max slowly emerging from Dree’s tent instead of the one where he was supposed to have slept.
The sun drifted above the horizon into the cold air. The sun’s warmth seemed to fade out somewhere in the pale sky, never reaching the black leather motorcycle gear Max wore. Wind whipped at his clothes. He didn’t feel the breeze because the leather was windproof, but the clothes lay cold on his skin.
Father Booker and Maxence knelt off to the side of the camp and prayed the Office of Readings and the morning prayer, Lauds, together. Priests and deacons are obliged to “fill their days with prayer,” and the Divine Office or Liturgy of the Hours is the prescribed form of those prayers. In this case, the word office is a holdover from Latin, where officium means service, duty, or ceremony. The Holy Office is all of these. It is the work and ceremonial form of prayer for priests and other people who have devoted their lives to the Catholic Church.
While Maxence and Booker were off to the side, murmuring and reciting the prayers to each other from their phones, Batsa scrambled out of the tent and set to acting as a sous chef for Alfonso, who’d already started to cook breakfast. Maxence watched with his peripheral vision while Batsa interpreted for a lady who delivered warm naan at the crack of dawn in the hopes they would want to buy more. They did.
After they finished, Maxence and Booker approached the fire, warming their hands in the chilly morning.
Alfonso offered them breakfast sizzling in his skillet, which appeared to be scrambled eggs with onions and peppers and smelled delicious. They dished up.
Max ripped off another piece of flatbread and used it to pick up a morsel of fluffy scrambled eggs. “Seriously? These are the powdered eggs? They’re perfect.”
Alfonso nodded from where he squatted beside the campfire, tending a gently simmering pan of coffee. “I didn’t want to put too much strain on the villagers’ supplies. It’s early winter, and nothing is going to grow here for a while.”
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