by S. A. Swann
Then there was Darien himself. Frightening in his own right …
But an outlaw like that wouldn’t stay long within the sight of one of the Duke’s fortresses. He was likely far away by now, and she would probably never see him again.
So why had she lied to Josef?
The thought struck her as she entered Josef’s room with his supper; perhaps it was a fear that Josef would think less of her, knowing that she received the attentions, however unwanted, of someone like Lukasz.
As she stepped through the door, she told herself that Josef was not one to condemn her for something that was none of her own doing. If she was an honest woman who wished to do fairly by him, she should admit her lie and tell him of both Lukasz and Darien.
Josef must have read something in her face, because he asked her, “Did I offend you, my lady?”
“Sir?” It was hard to conceal how much the question flustered her. I need to tell him.
“Ever since I asked about your face, you’ve been distant. Please forgive me if I was too forward in my question.”
The words died in her throat. She could not find the strength within her to admit what had happened. Not only because of Lukasz, but because of Darien. And because if Josef would not condemn her for Lukasz’s actions, he certainly would for her dishonesty.
She unconsciously touched her still-tender cheek. The eye above it had grown a shadow of a bruise over the last two days, and still he was the only person who’d seen fit to comment upon it.
“Please, there was nothing wrong with your question,” she told him, sick at compounding her lie. “It was an honest mistake.”
“It was your affair. I have no place trespassing where I wasn’t invited.”
Her lies twisted into a sour ball in her stomach. She sucked in a breath and tried to put on a glad face she didn’t feel. “I bear no ill will for your concern, sir.”
He leaned back and stared at the ceiling. “Is there another reason for your silence, then?”
“I—” How could she answer that? “I do have other duties, and they must be occupying my mind as well as my time.”
“It is selfish of me,” Josef said, “but I spend most of my time alone in this room. The solitude wears on me.”
“You’ve seen none of your fellows?”
“My Komtur has come to pray with me.” He smiled weakly. “God forgive me, but while he offers me spiritual strength, fellowship is not his strong suit.”
She looked down at him and thought that he had not been the selfish one. She had been avoiding him, preoccupied with her own concerns. She had not once bothered to imagine what it must be like for him.
How would she have felt if someone had treated her father like this? At least, unlike her lies, this was something she could address.
She placed her hand on his, and said, “Why don’t you tell me about your Komtur?”
The tensions of her deception drained from her as she encouraged Josef to talk of himself. He needed little prompting, and listening to his stories were enough to push her own recent past out of her mind. He spoke mostly of the trials of a probationary member of the Order, the strong bonds of obedience, poverty, and chastity he’d sworn himself to. There was a bittersweet tone to his speech, as if abandoning earthly things wasn’t so much a vocation as a last resort.
When he talked of his service, Maria thought he spoke much like someone trying to convince himself that he was doing the right thing. She wondered how things might be different had he chosen to serve God some other way. Would the two of them be talking like this? Would she be able to hold his hand?
When he turned to his life in Nürnberg, shadows crossed his face that pained her to see. So when he started asking questions about her life, she answered him more fully and truthfully than she expected, leading him away from that dark place, and over-compensating for the one secret she still kept.
She told him of her farm, her family, and of the death of her father. She told him of her brothers, and of her German stepmother. She told him of her work at Gród Narew. She told him that she was a bastard child of her father and some long-departed mistress.
The words were out before she could think of what she’d said. It had so long been a part of her life, and was so publicly known, that it hadn’t occurred to her to hide it. She looked at Josef, trying to gauge his reaction.
What he said surprised her.
“Your father must have loved you very much.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Few men acknowledge such children, much less take them into their home. Even then, they usually wait until the child can make their own protests.”
Maria touched the cross through her chemise. “He was a strict man, but yes, he loved me.”
“I wish I could have met him.”
Maria didn’t know how to respond to that. What she’d told him should have pushed him away. She was a common peasant—a poor, plain, illegitimate woman. Even his Order’s tenets of charity wouldn’t require him to treat her as anything more than that.
He is hurt and alone. He has no one to talk to. That is all.
Perhaps it was just who he was. Perhaps when he was well and saw a crippled beggar in the street, he would speak to him just as kindly. Perhaps he was just a good man.
But why did thinking that make her feel worse about herself?
“Is there something wrong?” Josef asked.
Again, she had let her emotions leak into her expression. And, again, she had no words to explain them away. “I think Father might have liked to meet you,” she said. She reached up and took her cross out from under her chemise. She held it up, the chain still around her neck. “He gave me this when I was a child.”
Josef’s eyes narrowed. “May I look at that?”
He held out a hand, and Maria shrank back from him as if he had meant to strike her. “No.”
“Maria?”
“I-I promised him I would never take this off.” She put the cross away.
“You never take it off?”
“It protects me.”
“It protects you?” Josef said in a tone that implied some thought beyond that of a man of God contemplating a holy symbol. “It is silver? The chain as well?”
“My father told me that I had to wear it to keep the Devil away.”
“And it has?”
She thought of Lukasz and felt her cheek throb. “Yes. It has.”
Josef lowered his hand and nodded. “Then keep it with you, always. I suspect your father was a wise man.”
She placed her hand over her heart, pressing the cross into her flesh. “I intend to.”
A silver cross?
Josef’s thoughts were uneasy as he watched the light fade from the sky outside his window. He kept thinking of the cross around Maria’s neck, and what it might mean. It made him nervous about his own lack of a silver weapon, even in the nominal safety of this fortress. The devil he had faced was very specific, worldly, and deadly.
Could a cross and faith alone be protection from something like that? For a saint, perhaps.
He felt torn, deeper than his wounds, for not warning her about what was actually out there, even though to do so would be to go against his pledge of obedience to the Order. He should have said something, anything to convince her to avoid the woods, especially at night.
What did the cross mean?
Did the people here have experience with what the Order hunted? Did they know enough to bear silver talismans against it?
He should be relieved that Maria had at least some protection against the demon out there. But then, why was it so troubling to him?
Because of her talk with Josef, Maria left Gród Narew much later than she had intended to. The sun had just left the sky by the time she stepped onto the path into the woods. She walked into the shadows and stopped, barely into the woods, imagining Lukasz lurking, waiting for her.
It made no sense when she thought rationally. If he had meant to harass her further,
these paths weren’t greatly traveled. He could have just as easily attacked her in the daylight.
It was just, in the daylight, she could see that he wasn’t there. As the shadows grew, the larger part of the world around her was given over to her imagination, and of late her imagination had been consumed by fancies dark and terrifying.
I cannot stand here forever.
It was not a long walk if she moved quickly, but it would be interminable if she let fear rule her. So she started walking again, at a brisk pace.
The evening air was cold against her skin, chilled just short of drawing fog from her breath. The footing was dry from a week without rain, and the sound of leaves crackling under her feet soon overwhelmed that of the chirping insects around her. Her pace gradually accelerated until, as she passed the point where Lukasz had attacked her, she was running.
When Darien stepped out of the shadows in front of her, she came to a stumbling stop and thought her heart might burst from the shock.
He didn’t move, just stood there a dozen paces from her. He was mostly shadowed, but the moon had risen in a cloudless sky, shining its dappled light through the trees. The moonlight caught random bits of him: the curve of his cheek, hair draped across a shoulder, a pale blue eye.
She turned her lantern to face him; it chased away the shadow but made him even more of an apparition, standing out against the dark woods beyond. “Maria,” he said, and the sound of his voice nearly made her gasp. “I told you I would find you again.”
“You startled me,” she said, clutching her cross over her heart. Seeing him now, she realized that she had managed, over the past two days, to dissuade herself from the attraction she felt. The fact that he was here now was more frightening than anything else. When he stepped forward, she stepped back.
“You didn’t expect to see me?” he asked. “After what happened? After we finally met?” The puzzlement in his voice was disturbing, because she didn’t understand its origin.
“No. I expected you to return to whatever outlaw stronghold you call home …”
“You are injured,” he said, sounding shocked. He ran to her side before she could react, cupping her chin to raise her face toward his. “How is it your face is so marred?”
She pulled away and turned from him, hiding tears that were half anger and half grief. “You beast, you know exactly why my face is injured! You saw it happen.”
“That was two days ago.”
“You mock me now! Leave me.”
“No, I’m not wrong,” he said quietly to himself. Then, to her: “Maria, do you know what you are?”
“What I am?” She spun around and faced him. “What I am?” She raised her free hand to strike him as she had Lukasz. “You cad!” She swung, but he caught her hand, wrapping his own hand around her fist almost like a gesture of affection.
His eyes narrowed. “Tell me what you are.”
“You’re scaring me.” Her fist vibrated in his grip, the muscles in her arm straining.
“Tell me, how was it that you could nearly drop that oaf Lukasz with an idle blow? How is it that I can barely hold your arm in check, yet you don’t know what we are?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about!”
“What is that around your neck?” He reached out with his other hand and looped a finger around the chain, pulling her cross out from her chemise.
“Don’t touch that!” Her left hand swung out, and this time Darien was too distracted to block the blow. The lantern smashed against the side of his head, winking out and splashing sharp-smelling oil.
His head snapped back, and he took a backward step, letting go of her other hand.
She darted out of reach, grabbing her cross.
Darien rubbed oil off his now-shadowed face as he looked at her. “Why do you wear that thing? Don’t you know what it means?”
“It protects me.”
“It protects you? Who told you such nonsense? A priest? One of those pathetic German monks?”
“My father.”
“Your … father?”
Maria replaced the cross under her chemise and straightened herself in case Darien came close again.
Instead he shook his head. “You don’t just live with them. You were raised by them. They never told you where you came from, or what you are, did they?”
“And what would a stranger, an outlaw like you, know of who or what I am? You think me a whore because of Lukasz?”
Darien laughed, the sound nearly terrifying in its intensity.
“Is my virtue so amusing?” she asked quietly.
He choked off the laugh. “Maria, you have convinced me that you do have no idea what it is I am talking about. I’ve never dreamed of finding you at all, much less so … unenlightened.”
She started edging toward the side of the path. She was fast; if she slipped by him, she could probably outrun him. “Enlighten me then,” she said, trying to keep him focused on the conversation and not on her.
“It’s simple. Just remove that trinket.”
The suggestion caught her off guard. She shook her head and gave him a curt “No.” There was little else he might have asked that could so strongly convince her of his ill intent.
“You never remove it, do you? Your protection.” His tone gave the word such contempt that it was as vile in her ears as the worst blasphemy. “What do you think it protects you from?”
You. “The Devil.”
“And how many people around you wear such a thing? Your father, perhaps? The cattle that tend to that obnoxious pile of stone and wood on the hillside you walk to every day? Your departed friend Lukasz? Have you ever asked why it was that you alone required such protection?”
Her heart raced. Why? Why not her stepmother, her brothers? Why did her father give this to her? “Shut up!” she yelled at him.
“You are special, Maria. You’re different from those others, even if you don’t know it. That thing protects them, not you. They use those silver chains to drag you down.”
She ran, dodging around him, and he made no move to stop her.
“You’re better than they are,” he called after her. “You must know that. Take it off!”
XII
You’re better than they are.
The words echoed strangely in Maria’s head as she lay on her bed. Her brothers snored below, and the moon shone through cracks in the shutters to cast a pale blue light around the cottage.
Do you know what you are?
“What I am?” she whispered to herself. “What am I?”
She compiled a list: woman, Christian, Pole, servant, daughter, sister, virgin, bastard … Did Darien mean any of those things, or none of them?
And why was the cross so important to him? To Josef, too, it seemed. Was such a thing so unusual?
What would happen if she did take it off?
She felt it under her nightclothes, pressing into her skin. She fingered the small piece of metal, sliding it along the chain that looped around her neck.
She’d seen terrified anger in her father’s eyes when he had asked, “Why did you take it off?”
What would happen?
Her heart thudded, accelerating. She had never questioned it, the long habit of wearing this cross. She had never felt it weigh her down.
But she’d never questioned why only she had to wear it.
She pulled the cross out so that it dangled in front of her face. Josef was right. Her father had loved her and wanted her to be safe. The cross protected her.
That thing protects them.
Darien’s voice was like a worm in her brain.
You are special.
“I’m not special,” she whispered. “There is not one thing special or unique about me.”
Then why was she the only one who wore this?
Why did God need help to protect her from the Devil?
She closed the cross in her fist and prayed. The prayer was short, almost violent: “Lord, let me know why.”
<
br /> Her heart thudded in her ears, and sweat plastered her bedclothes to her skin. Her breaths came shallow and hot, and her hand squeezed the cross hard enough for the corners to bite into her palm. She slowly sat up in bed, and for a moment the air felt so still that it seemed even to mute her brothers’ snoring.
“God protects me,” she whispered. “Not this.”
She pulled the chain up over her head quickly, as if afraid that she might change her mind. She sat at the edge of her bed, her head a few fingers’ breadths from the rough-hewn rafters supporting the thatch roof.
She froze, waiting for the Devil to come claim her for defying her father. “God,” she whispered, “keep your child safe.”
The cross dangled from her fingers on its silver chain. Her palm stung where sweat seeped into the cuts she’d made by pressing the cross into her palm. The skin of her neck felt strange without the weight of the cross pulling against her. She held it up in front of her and looked at it. A plain silver cross on a plain silver chain.
She wondered if it had belonged to her mother.
Could that be it? Could this cross tie her to some other family, perhaps nobility? Could Darien have meant that when he’d spoken of her being special, better than everyone else?
When the Devil persisted in his nonappearance, she lay back on her bed, still holding up the cross and staring at it, trying to divine its mysteries.
And she fell asleep before she could replace it around her neck.
Darien ran though the midnight-dark woods, his muzzle pulled back in a snarl of frustration.
She doesn’t know.
The first time he had found a potential mate, a potential family, and she was so fully corrupted by her human keepers that she wasn’t even aware of what she was. The silver chain around her neck was more limiting than any prison humans might make for his kind.
And more frustrating because it was self-imposed.