by Nancy Holder
Edmund sighed and manfully picked up his spoon. Marie-Christine did the same.
But after a moment’s hesitation, she put the spoon back down. She couldn’t do it. She didn’t have to, and she wouldn’t.
Slurping his soup, Edmund began chatting with the men, and soon the three were engrossed in conversation about meaningless things—whether there was work to be found, and how much bread cost these days. It was then that Marie-Christine realized someone was watching them.
Her Slayer’s acuities focused, she turned slowly to stare at a man who sat alone in the shadows. He was very tall, and his face was sharply chiseled and very white. Black eyes gazed at her; blue-black hair tumbled past his shoulders. He wore a black coat and a rough workman’s cravat over a muslin shirt. He was smoking a pipe, and the smoke eddied around his head, and he stared boldly at her.
His were eyes that were alive. His, a smile that made her swallow as it creased his face.
It is he, she thought. It is L’Hero.
Slowly she rose and walked to him through the crowded, close room. His eyes glowed ruby; she blinked, suddenly dizzy, feeling awkwardly for the stake concealed in the crisscross of her shawl. Something overcame her; she stumbled to the right, bracing herself against the back of an empty chair. Her eyes closed, and her knees gave way.
When she came to, she was sitting in the same chair, and the innkeeper was wafting a glass of brandy beneath her nose. She touched her forehead, aware she should not say a word, as Edmund studied her face. She tapped her mouth where a vampire’s fang would protrude, then slowly turned her head where the vampire had sat, smoking his pipe.
She was not at all surprised that he was no longer there.
* * *
Their original plan had been to rendezvous with their coach and return to the palace for the night, but Marie-Christine’s fainting
spell had made them the center of attention. Edmund negotiated for a room, and he led Marie-Christine into a low, dingy attic room in which slept three other people in two beds. There was one more bed, and it was for the two of them.
They took off none of their clothes, not even their shoes, and pulled a coverlet matted with mold over themselves. Marie-Christine shivered as a sharp wind whistled through holes in the thatch overhead. Mice rustled in the straw, and she reminded herself that the palace was home to plenty of mice.
Edmund rolled toward her, whispering into her ear, “What happened?”
“I saw him. He was in the room,” she whispered back. A rotund man in the next bed over began to snore like a trumpet.
“The . . . one?”
“Oui. He put me into a trance, I think.”
“In the morning, tell me. For now, you’re mute,” he cautioned.
They lay side by side; slowly, Edmund’s body heat warmed her right side, but by morning she had an abominable headache from shivering the whole night long. The rotund man never did stop snoring.
Downstairs, they had porridge for breakfast, and there were small white things in it that Marie-Christine tried not to see. Edmund took a few meager bites, paid their bill, and they left.
Outside, he said, “I’m poisoned, Marie-Christine. First that soup last night, and then that abomination. . . .” He clutched his stomach. “How can they eat such swill?”
“Perhaps we should ask the queen to reconsider,” she ventured, “and kill us instead.”
They shared an ironic chuckle, then moved into the busy Parisian morning. The sun was dull and the people as lifeless as they had been the night before. There were scores of beggar children, whimpering for coins from people who obviously had none to spare. Marie-Christine thought of the well-scrubbed faces of the children of the palace servants. These little ones were like creatures from a nightmare. With their thin faces and enormous eyes, they were barely human.
“Now tell me about him,” Edmund said, once they had put some distance between themselves and the inn.
“Mon Dieu.” She crossed herself. “Truly, he is a king of demons. We must be on our guard, Edmund.”
Nodding thoughtfully, he steered her around a steaming mound of horse manure, through which a mangy dog trotted quite joyfully. A heap of rags staggered beneath thick cords of firewood loaded on its back. It was an old woman, who pointed at Marie-Christine and cackled, then spat in the muddy dirt.
“She says you’re a witch, because of your red hair,” Edmund told her.
“How absurd.” The Slayer pulled her shawl over her head. She wiped her face, feeling grimy and unclean. “This place is appalling, Edmund. The rudeness, the ignorance.” She lowered her hand. “These aren’t people, they’re animals.”
* * *
They spent the day surveying the filthy alleys and cramped rooms that passed for public dining places. Marie-Christine recoiled in horror when what they thought had been a pile of garbage turned out to be the remains of an old man. No one had taken his body for burial; he had simply been left in the gutter to rot.
As the sun sank and the cold winds blew, mobs of children scattered down the causeways and over bridges. Edmund asked a passerby who they were, and learned they were newly come from the workhouse.
“They are employed, and still have no shoes?” Marie-Christine asked, making a face at their cracked, bleeding feet. “It’s so cold. Their toes must be frozen.”
Edmund moved his shoulders with disinterest and said, “Let’s make for the rendezvous with the coach. I swear I shall not spend another night in this hellhole.” He scratched absently at his chest, then gave a little cry of indignation. “I have fleas!”
Marie-Christine jumped away from him. “Then keep away from me.”
Something sharp nipped her collarbone. She slapped it, and held it between her fingernails. It was a flea.
Marie-Christine the Vampire Slayer shuddered with revulsion.
* * *
Their coach arrived, and they bundled into it beneath fur wraps and raced for home. Later that night, bathed and scented, tucked into her soft, warm bed, Marie-Christine began to doze. Her mind wandered. Everywhere, there were children with no shoes; mothers with gaunt faces; the cadaver of the old man, a decomposing obscenity in full view of an uncaring mob. . . .
A dull, ashen-colored fog pervaded the dream, leeching each tableau of its color and life. The streets, the cracks in the buildings, the tumbledown shacks, were coated with a hue of vast, bottomless despair. Rain fell, heavy: Christ was weeping. The bells of Notre Dame tolled Bring out your dead, bring out your dead.
Alas, a voice whispered. Alas.
Marie-Christine shifted, drifting more deeply into slumber. Behind her mind’s eye, the merest whisper of a ruby glow brought the only color to the vast landscape of hovels and degradation. Rosy dawn, the first petals of a rose—the color was shockingly beautiful in a world utterly devoid of any warmth or comfort.
When she awoke, she was more tired than the day before. Knowing they must return to the streets of Paris, she forced herself to breakfast on buttery croissants and hot chocolate.
If the people knew they could dine like this, instead of wasting their sous on drink and lechery, she thought, they would not allow themselves to be so base.
Edmund joined her in his peasant clothes. They were the same ones he had worn the day before, and they had not been cleaned. She realized that she would have to wear her own peasant costume again as well, instead of exchanging it for clean rags and tatters. They had been far too well-groomed yesterday to fully blend in.
That was why L’Hero found me, she decided.
The Watcher declared, “I am grim but determined.” She nodded, and they dined together in dreary anticipation of the distasteful hours that lay ahead.
When the coach let them off at the same place as before, they maneuvered with more confidence into the sloth and filth that was this quarter of Paris. Fortified with a good sleep and breakfast, Marie-Christine managed to avoid the piles of dog and horse dung, curling her lip at the lack of sanitation. Really, it woul
d only take a moment to clean up after one’s animals.
It’s so typical of these people that they can’t expend the slightest amount of effort to improve their lot.
Then she heard an odd sound, something low and breathy, and nudged Edmund in the ribs. He nodded, indicating that he had heard it, too, and together they moved into a wretched, tiny alley littered with refuse. As before, the Slayer had not come unprepared for battle; she had several fine stakes, an assortment of knives, and other weaponry concealed in her clothing.
It was a small girl, perhaps four, although she was emaciated and her features looked very old. Dressed in tatters, she was weeping and staring down at a broken doll.
Marie-Christine had no idea what moved her to the child’s plight, but she squatted beside the child and said, “Your dolly’s broken.”
The waif stared at her, not comprehending, and Edmund spoke next, in gutter language. The girl replied, lifting the doll off her lap and dropping it in the mud.
“She says that she can’t eat a doll. She has not eaten since yesterday morning,” Edmund informed Marie-Christine.
“Where is her maman?”
Edmund spoke to the girl. When she answered, his eyes lit up.
“She is fighting for justice,” he replied.
“Do you think . . . ?” the Slayer asked.
Edmund spoke to the girl, asking questions, receiving answers.
“She is with a band led by a tall man. They are in ‘a dark place,’ near the river. I think she means the sewers.”
The girl added something, and Edmund said, “Ah. A series of round bridges. I know exactly where she’s speaking of.”
“Then let’s go.”
Marie-Christine rose and turned on her heel, then paused. She looked at the little girl, staring up at them so trustingly, then at Edmund and said, “We should give her some money. For the information.”
He frowned slightly, then pulled a coin from his pocket. The little girl’s eyes widened.
“Give her another,” Marie-Christine said.
He did so. The girl stared down at the coins, holding one in each palm. With a little cry she flung herself at Edmund’s legs and wrapped herself around them, sobbing.
“She is thanking me.” His voice was stiff. “Mon Dieu, I shall have fleas again.”
Marie-Christine’s heart tugged strangely as she watched the girl. Astonished with herself, she reached out a hand. The child studied it, then peered up at Marie-Christine, and very tentatively placed her tiny fingers against Marie-Christine’s, at the first knuckle, as if she didn’t quite dare to make full contact.
“Marie-Christine,” Edmund admonished, “you’re sure to contract a terrible disease from this little rodent.”
“We may need her,” the Slayer said slowly. “She can be our guide to her mother.”
“Indeed.” Edmund looked thoughtful. “How convenient. Do you suppose he sent her to collect us?”
“Oui, I do suppose,” Marie-Christine shot back. ‘But that doesn’t make her any less hungry.”
Edmund spoke to the girl, who babbled back at him. She tilted her head and grinned shyly up at Marie-Christine, then murmured a few additional words.
Edmund translated. “She thinks you are an angel, or possibly, the queen.”
“Petite ange,” said the Chosen One to the girl. “Little angel.”
The girl appeared to understand, slipping her hand more firmly into Marie-Christine’s grasp. The three began to walk out of the alley.
“First of all, we must feed her,” Marie-Christine announced.
“Oh, very well.” Edmund’s tone was grudging but compliant. For no reason that she could tell, Marie-Christine felt a wash of giddy happiness.
“She must have hot chocolate. I would wager a thousand sous she has never had it,” she added.
* * *
The Slayer was correct: the girl, whose name was Mathilde, had never had hot chocolate, or croissants, or tender pieces of chicken simmered in wine. She had never, in her entire life, been unable to clean every morsel of food off her plate. In the café, she started to choke on a piece of cheese, and Marie-Christine had to physically stop her from overeating.
When the girl wailed in protest, kicking her ankles against the edge of the seat of her wooden chair, the Slayer said to her Watcher, “Tell her we will buy her more food later.”
“She won’t understand,” Edmund insisted. “These people are incapable of planning for the future. That’s why they live as they do.”
“Tell her,” Marie-Christine said, still restraining the girl. “It might even be true.”
Edmund grumbled but did as she asked, and the girl looked dubious. She pointed to the food, and then to Marie-Christine’s folded shawl, and the Slayer realized the chit wanted to hoard the leftovers.
“Explain to her that that’s not done,” the Slayer said.
The child must have understood her; she burst into tears and threw her arms across the meager chunk of cheese and a half-eaten slab of thick, sour peasant bread.
“Well . . .” Edmund said.
The child stared at the Slayer, whose sacred duty of course, was to protect. But not to protect such as she, she reminded herself. I was put on earth to protect those who matter to the world. Still, Marie-Christine’s irritation was mollified by the creeping realization that the girl was truly terrified of starving.
She had been warned by the fashionable ladies of the court that frowning created wrinkles, but she couldn’t help her scowl as she watched the panicked urchin protecting the scraps. “What an awful mother she has. This poor thing has been terribly neglected.”
“Their women are like turtles. They hatch their eggs on the beach, and wander off,” Edmund snipped as the Slayer picked up the cheese and handed it to the child. Her grubby fingers closed around it, grasping Marie-Christine’s finger. He grimaced. “Now you shall surely contract a disease.”
Marie-Christine surveyed the child’s clothing for a pocket, saw none, and plucked up the piece of bread. She carefully tucked it into her shawl. Smiling at the girl, she gave the bulge a pat and held her hand out for the cheese. Tears slid down the littie one’s cheeks, but she bravely handed it over, and the Slayer added the cheese to the portable larder.
The girl stared longingly at the concealed treasure, then sighed with a depth of resignation one might hear from a condemned prisoner.
“C’est bon, ma petite,” the Slayer assured her. The girl appeared not to hear. Marie-Christine reached a hand toward her chin; the child flinched, and Marie-Christine put her hand in her lap. “Oh, Edmund, do you suppose they beat her?”
“They probably do,” he grumbled. When the Chosen One glanced at him, he cleared his throat. “We must go. We’re not Sisters of Charity, we’re warriors, and we must engage the enemy.”
“Oui.” With firm resolve, she pushed back her chair and rose. The girl scrambled off her own chair, her eyes enormous as she stared up at Marie-Christine.
The trio left the café, the child, Mathilde, trailing timidly behind. They walked at a brisk pace, past squalid old buildings of mildewed stone and eons of grime. The buildings were uniformly so broken-down and filthy that it was difficult, though not impossible, to distinguish one from another. Brick, mortar, wood, and rock had ground against one another for so long that the tumble-down structures appeared to melt into one another, as though they constituted an enormous loaf of bread half devoured by rats.
Patches of the street revealed worn cobblestones, overlaid with coatings of rutted dirt. Willful orange geraniums sprouted from the cracks, and the desiccated bloom of a crimson rose lay in the gutter.
She wondered if a previous Slayer had ever walked these same streets. That other Slayers had risen from the soil of France, she had no doubt. She herself believed that Joan of Arc had been a Slayer.
Slayers were God’s anointed, as were the kings and queens of Europe. It made perfect sense to her that there should be a hereditary legacy in her lofty
role, as there was in theirs. Otherwise, there would be an inevitable and unending jostling for power, preoccupying those who had more important matters to pursue.
The world serves the mighty for a reason, she thought. How else could civilization progress?
Mathilde blurted out something in her unintelligible French, darting ahead toward a beggar propped up against a wall. The chit stumbled and almost fell, but clambered on, calling to the bundle of rags.
“What’s going on?” Marie-Christine asked Edmund.
“I think she knows him.” The Watcher cocked his head. “I can’t be sure. Her French is a disaster.”
The beggar had one leg; the other had been cut off at the knee, and the stump was wrapped in filthy bandages. The creature’s head hung against his chest; slowly, like the lifting of a portcullis at the entrance to a drawbridge, he raised it as Mathilde darted up to him.
The girl spoke to him hurriedly, gesturing at Edmund and Marie-Christine. The man’s eyes were dull and rheumy. Marie-Christine suspected he was blind.
She said sharply, “Get away from him, child,” but Mathilde paid her no heed. Then she bobbed upright, hurried to Marie-Christine, and gestured toward her chest. The Slayer stared at her without a trace of comprehension, glancing to Edmund for aid.
“She wants the food. To give to the man,” Edmund explained.
“Certainly not. Mais, non,” Marie-Christine told the girl, touching her shawl. “If I’m to smell of Camembert all day, it will be for her, and her only.”
Still gesturing, Mathilde looked at Edmund, speaking to him, and the beggar on the ground growled something in decent French about kings and lies.
“He is a veteran,” Edmund explained. “His leg was shattered by a cannonball. The army discharged him and he has no pension.”
Marie-Christine moved her shoulders. “What has that to do with us? Certainly he understood the risks of his profession. I’m no lawyer. Perhaps he wasn’t deserving of a pension. I don’t have one, and I shall certainly die in my line of work.” She looked down at the thin little face, whose eyes were spilling with tears. “Mathilde, stop it.”