Even if Enberch had poisoned the wheat to seize control of Tereo, even if the townspeople recognized Holo’s miracle, and even if they accepted her judgment on the good wheat and the bad, they would still not buy back the wheat they had returned.
This meant that wheat would still need to be turned to cash somehow.
If it came to that point, this fell within the purview of a merchant.
And Lawrence was a merchant.
“Right. Let us return,” said Lawrence.
“Hmph. And here sit I, freezing my tail off.”
Holo stood, blocking Lawrence’s vision with a quick swish of her tail – and in that instant, she was a wolf again.
“You seem disappointed,” she said with a grin of bared teeth.
Lawrence shrugged. “You seem happy.”
They caught up with Elsa and Evan very quickly.
It was midday when the group arrived in Tereo.
Elsa had been unexpectedly quick to accept Lawrence’s proposal.
Perhaps she had understood that without a plan, her resolve alone would not be enough to save the village.
Even a day earlier, she would have been unable to make such a decision.
“I still believe in my God – the God who is supreme among gods and creator of all,” she said firmly, standing before Holo’s wolf form – a form she had seen for the first time just hours earlier.
She displayed no fear in the face of a being that could swallow her in one bite or rip her to shreds with a wave of its paw.
Holo glared at Elsa wordlessly, showing her rows of sharp teeth.
Evan swallowed and looked on, but Holo knew the world well enough to understand that she did not stand at its peak.
She soon closed her terrible jaws and turned away indignantly.
“Now we must determine just how we will show this to the villagers.”
“Have you any ideas?”
They were gathered at the peak of a hill outside Tereo, near Evan’s millhouse. Holo stood watch.
“No matter the product, purchasing it at the source yields the greatest gain,” said Lawrence.
“So, once the village has been cornered–?” asked Evan.
Lawrence nodded.
Evan continued. “Based on what we saw this morning, it looks like Bishop Van has come as well.”
“Bishop Van, eh?”
The bishop’s arrival meant that Enberch planned to corner Tereo both financially and religiously, but it also meant that there might be an opportunity to turn the situation around – a situation that earlier in the morning had seemed utterly hopeless.
It was even better, in fact, if the Church leader of Enberch was present.
No one was more qualified to witness a miracle than Bishop Van, after all.
“The group from Enberch brought spearmen with them – they will have no patience for any objections from Tereo. I highly doubt the negotiations will happen in a civilized fashion,” said Lawrence.
“I do not think Elder Sem will incite the villagers to take up arms, either,” said Elsa.
“Not that the villagers would have courage enough to do that anyway,” added Evan. His criticism was not inaccurate.
Given all that, the best time for Lawrence and company to make their appearance was clear.
“Then we should go in after Sem has bowed to Enberch’s demands,” said Elsa.
“The miracle will happen as I’ve just explained,” said Lawrence.
Elsa nodded, looking at Evan. “Evan, will you be all right?”
She referred to the task that had fallen to him.
More than anyone else’s, his life was at risk.
And more than anyone else, he had to trust Holo.
He looked at Holo. “Why, it’s nothing – if I should eat the poisoned wheat, you have but to kill me before I die of the poison.” His fingers trembled slightly.
He had no doubt said this to appear strong before Elsa, but Holo did not fault him for that.
“I shall swallow you in a single bite. It won’t hurt a bit,” she answered gleefully.
“Then once we’ve produced this miracle, we’ll leave the financial dealings to you, Mr. Lawrence,” said Elsa.
“Obviously we hope they will simply take the wheat back on the spot, but yes – I’ll handle it.”
Elsa nodded and put her hands together. “May God’s blessing go with us.”
Holo then spoke quietly.
“They have come.”
Chapter Six
In total, sixteen horse-drawn wagons rolled into Tereo, each one carrying three or four large burlap sacks.
There were twenty-three spearmen, along with men equipped with shields and gauntlets who looked very much like foot soldiers in the company of knights.
There were four clergymen on foot near a wagon. It was impossible to know how many were within their covered carriage, though Elsa said it probably contained Bishop Van and his assistant.
Also traveling with the procession was a pudgy man who appeared to be a merchant. “Ah,” Lawrence muttered to himself upon recognizing him.
Riendott was the most successful flour merchant in Enberch. It was hardly a surprise that he had been the one to purchase all of Tereo’s wheat. If that was so, then it would be easy to point to Tereo as the source for the wheat when someone died after eating bread made from it.
If Riendott was truly the man at the center of this plan, then he had purposely avoided buying Lawrence’s wheat when Lawrence passed through Enberch.
In fact, that might have been the precise moment Riendott had decided to set his plan in motion.
Darkness lay but a step ahead, and none could say where human malice might be hidden.
Lawrence sighed slowly.
He lay prone atop the hill watching the proceedings, and Holo reassumed her human form and quickly put her clothes back on.
Then the four of them took the long way around the village to Truyeo’s den.
While it was possible that Iima had locked the cellar door, it was also just as possible that she had merely closed it, leaving it unlocked.
They were betting on the latter.
“Is this what you meant by God’s blessing?” Holo asked.
They had won the bet.
“Is there anyone inside?”
“Nay. It’s deserted,” said Holo.
Since Elsa and Evan had escaped, the villagers had no further business with the church, and it was empty.
Lawrence pushed up against the pedestal. The statue of the Holy Mother tipped over and onto the floor with a clunk. The sound gave him a thrill of fear, but it was followed only by silence. He gave the pedestal a firm shove. Evan slipped through the gap that opened, and lifted the door properly open from the outside.
“Right, now… Yes, we’ll need a sickle and a chalice,” said Lawrence.
These were the tools needed for the plan the group was about to execute.
Now out of the cellar, Elsa gave a quick nod and ran off with Evan in tow.
Lawrence gave Holo, who remained in the basement, a small smile. “If everything goes well, you’ll have all the time you want to read.”
Holo seemed to give up and finally climbed the steps out of the cellar. “So… how does it look outside?”
“The window wasn’t broken fortunately. We’ll be able to see clearly.”
Once Lawrence and company had made their escape, Iima had found an opportunity to open the front door.
The bar that had hung on the tightly closed door now leaned against a wall, unbroken.
Lawrence peered out through a crack in the window and saw that the procession had already arrived in the village square, where a man in the garments of a high-ranking clergyman – surely Bishop Van – and Riendott, the flour merchant, both confronted Elder Sem.
“Mr. Lawrence,” said Elsa. She and Evan approached from behind him as quietly as they could.
They brought a chalice that on its best day hadn’t been made of pure silver,
along with a rusty old sickle.
But for demonstrating a miracle, the older and dingier the instruments, the better.
“Good. Now we just wait for the right moment.”
Elsa and Evan swallowed nervously and nodded.
Lawrence couldn’t hear what the men were saying, but given Sem’s frantic gestures, it looked like he was desperately trying to explain something to Bishop Van.
Sem would occasionally point at the church, causing everyone gathered in the square to look in its direction, which Lawrence found unnerving.
But no one approached the church since they seemed to assume it was completely empty.
Bishop Van responded to Sem calmly, occasionally pausing to consult with the elderly assistant priest at his side.
It seemed as though he considered the feelings of Elder Sem and the assembled villagers to be no more important than the wings of a fly that buzzed around his head.
When Bishop Van produced a few sheets of parchment, Elder Sem was stunned into silence.
“Can you hear what they’re saying?” Lawrence asked Holo.
“They are demanding money,” came the answer.
Just then a great clamor arose – Lawrence could see a spearman subduing a villager who had charged the proceedings.
Seeing this, several other villagers charged, though the outcome was no different.
Though their clothes were not uniform and they seemed little more than an impromptu militia, the spearmen seemed to have some discipline. They formed a ragged circle, spears out and at the ready.
“Mm. The man Sem has stopped resisting. He is beginning to yield.”
If he gave an inch, Bishop Van and Riendott would take a mile.
Bishop Van would corner Sem until nothing could help him.
“Who’s that?”
Another villager had joined the discussion. He exchanged some words with Riendott, then soon became enraged and had to be restrained by Sem.
Evan answered Lawrence’s question. “That’s the baker. He speaks ill of me the most.”
Riendott, like Bishop Van, produced a sheet of parchment from his pocket and held it up proudly, causing the villagers to fall silent.
He seemed quite happy to have silenced them so.
“I suppose Father Franz was just too good,” said Lawrence vaguely, which elicited a slight nod from Elsa.
Finally Sem fell to his knees on the stone. The villagers who had been glaring at Bishop Van now hurried to help him.
Watching this, Lawrence heard a fist being clenched.
When he looked, he saw it was Elsa.
Though her face was calm, her feelings were all too evident.
No villager had ever reached out to help her.
“They are finished. A final decision has been given,” said Holo suddenly. Lawrence knew immediately what she meant.
All at once, Sem and the other villagers looked at the building opposite the church – Sem’s house.
Lawrence needed only to look at their backs to know what they were thinking.
Next, two guards climbed atop the large, flat meeting stone.
In their hands, they held the idol of Truyeo that Lawrence had seen in Sem’s house.
“If you but burn this abomination and embrace the true faith, all shall be resolved. If not, Tereo will be guilty of heresy,” Holo said – no doubt repeating Bishop Van’s words.
Sem and the rest of the people looked at the church, as though they could hear her speak.
“Humans – always depending on others in times of need,” said Holo with a sigh, stepping back from the window. “Still, I have depended on humans in my time. Shall we?”
Evan’s face made it plain that he could barely stand to forgive the selfishness of the villagers.
But he swallowed his anger and looked at Elsa.
Elsa stood quickly. “As a servant of righteousness, I cannot abandon the village,” she said shortly.
Lawrence nodded. “Let’s go.”
On that cue, the four of them opened the church’s front door.
Apparently silence could indeed descend.
That was what struck Lawrence about this particular silence.
He would never forget the imploring look that Sem gave him as he stood before the stuffed snakeskin totem of Truyeo.
“Elsa!” It was Iima who broke the silence.
Iima was not standing on the meeting stone – perhaps because she had aided Elsa – but instead watched the proceedings with the rest of the villagers. Unconcerned with the villagers’ questioning glances, she ran toward the people she had tried to protect.
“Elsa, why–”
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Iima.”
Iima turned to Lawrence, her face uncomprehending.
Before Lawrence could reply, Bishop Van spoke from his place on the stone. “Goodness, what have we here? None other than Miss Elsa, the successor to Father Franz!”
“It has been some time, Bishop Van,” said Elsa.
“I was led to believe that you had snuck out of Tereo. Was the weight of your sin too much for your conscience to bear?”
“God is always forgiving.”
Bishop Van seemed momentarily cowed by Elsa’s firm answer, but he composed himself quickly and whispered something into the ear of the priest who stood next to him.
The priest cleared his throat, then produced a sheet of parchment, and holding it up, read it aloud.
“We, the Enberch Church of St. Rio, believe and declare that the village of Tereo has prayed to pagan deities and has moreover added the liquor of Khepas to their wheat in order to harm the believers of the one true faith. While believers of the one true faith suffer and die, not a single citizen of Tereo has fallen ill. As they eat of the same wheat, this can be nothing but proof that the village is protected by the evil deities they worship.”
When the priest finished his pronouncement, Bishop Van continued. “As stipulated in the contract signed with Father Franz, we will first return this wheat. Moreover, we shall reestablish a righteous holy church. As for the false servant of God, who wears the skin of a lamb but underneath is a lying serpent, she shall face the judgment of the most high God.”
When he finished, the soldiers with shields drew their swords and pointed them at Lawrence and company.
But Elsa did not take so much as a single step back. “That will not be necessary,” she said coldly. “It is true that my faith has at times been misplaced. But almighty God has shown me the true path. I have met one of His divine messengers!”
Bishop Van flinched, then glanced to the priest at his side, his brow furrowed.
The priest said something to him quietly and briefly.
Van raised one hand. “That you would claim so readily to have encountered a divine messenger is merely proof of your heresy! If I am wrong, then bring the proof before me!”
The fish had swallowed the bait.
Elsa looked first at Evan, then Holo.
The miller and the wolf girl both nodded.
“If you have doubts, let us show you!”
Evan and Holo headed straight for the wagons that were loaded with wheat, but as they approached, the spearmen prepared to stave them off.
Van gave a derisive snort. “Let them through!” he said.
Evan held in his hand a grain of wheat he had received from Holo.
Elsa watch the two of them go, then made her way to the gathering stone, ignoring Iima’s protests.
“Worship of Truyeo the serpent god is indeed a mistake,” she said.
The villagers that stood atop the meeting stone glared at Elsa as though she had forced them to swallow a rock.
“However, that mistake is not itself a fundamental one.”
She climbed the steps that led to the stone, walked directly past Bishop Van, and knelt down before the totem of Truyeo.
In the church, she had been unwilling to lie even after having been trapped by Lawrence and Holo.
She was still that girl, every inc
h a clergywoman.
So why did she not denounce the snake totem as a false idol, and why was she kneeling before it?
“It is my belief that Truyeo itself is one of God’s miracles.”
Sem’s eyes widened, and the villagers were visibly disturbed.
Elsa’s words neither denied nor acknowledged Truyeo.
But Van smiled. “The words of men do not keep close company with the truth. Can you prove that your words were not whispered into your ears by a demon?” he sneered.
“The divine messenger has promised to reveal a sign that will guide the wayward lambs back to the true path.”
Holo and Evan looked to Elsa. It was the signal that their preparations were done.
Even though he knew all was well, Lawrence was keenly aware of his own nervousness.
Elsa, too, must have felt the overwhelming pressure of all those gazes – the villagers’ and Bishop Van’s.
But her voice was still clear and strong.
She had inherited the teachings of Father Franz and trusted in Holo’s supernatural power, which gave her new faith in the righteousness of the God that had created the world.
“Hmph, you would presume to display the power of God…” began Van, but his voice was drowned out by the cries of fear and surprise that arose from the people who surrounded the wagons.
“Th-the wheat, it’s–!”
The crowd’s cries crew louder.
From within the bags of wheat loaded on the wagons, ears of wheat began to sprout and grow skyward.
Sem and the rest looked on, their faces as expressionless as badly made dolls, and Van was stunned into silence by the miracle before him.
As the wheat stalks continued to grow, the people’s cries echoed throughout the square, at times sounding almost dismayed.
“It’s God! God has created a miracle!” The shouting spread like wildfire, and in the end, even the clergymen bowed down.
Only Bishop Van remained standing stock-still as he took in the sight.
Another cry arose as one of the green stalks of wheat matured.
Of the wheat that sprouted in the sixteen wagons, only one wagon’s wheat was different. Instead of ripening honey brown, it withered and turned to dust.
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