“It fell out,” she explained simply.
Then she amazed and horrified both men by kissing the bloated figure on the cheek.
“Good-bye, Papa,” she said. “Now Mother will look out for you and this knight will look out for me.”
“Are you quite done?” Jacquot said.
She nodded. He tilted the table and Papa fell in the hole, breaking open like rotten fruit. The girl didn’t watch this, but she did watch Jacquot’s face as he watched it.
“It’s all right,” she said. “That’s not really him anymore.”
“No shit,” he said, and coughed into his face cloth, which he was about to remove when Thomas motioned to the dirt pile.
“Oh, come on. Let me take a rest.”
“After you shovel.”
While the man with the drooping eye sweated and complained and by and by filled the grave behind the little house, the girl went back inside and soon returned bearing over her shoulder a tied sheet full of goods she clearly meant to salvage.
“Where are we going?” she asked Thomas.
“Well, I am going south, or maybe east. I haven’t decided.”
“What is there to the south, besides the pope?” she said.
“I don’t know. I only know it’s not the west.”
“What’s in the west?”
“More of this,” he said, gesturing to the still, broken land around them.
“All right then. South,” she said.
“One town,” Thomas said, holding up a thick, callused finger. “I’ll take you along until we come to the next town, and keep you safe until then. But if you cry, bitch, or moan on the way there, I’ll leave you flat. If you behave tolerably, I’ll dump you in the lap of the first live abbess or even whoring novice nun I see.”
She squinted her eyes at his profanity, but he moved his finger closer to her face, saying, “And I’ll swear as I please. By the Virgin, by her sour milk, by the hair of dead pigs, whatever the devil puts in my mouth. And the more you complain about it, the worse I’ll get.”
She narrowed her eyes yet further at him, which made him think her papa had a slow hand for hitting.
“Don’t pull a face at me. Hand me that sack you brought out.”
“Why?”
“It’s too heavy for you and we don’t have a horse,” he said, snatching it out of her grasp.
“You could have had a donkey.”
“What?”
“You ate my donkey.”
He grunted at her and began pulling things out, starting with a sextet of yellow beeswax candles.
“Fancy,” he said. “No serf has wax candles. What did your papa do?”
“He’s a lawyer. And he keeps bees. Kept bees, I mean. He traded honey and comb for them with the chandler. Soon after people started getting sick, some apprentices came and burned the hives up, saying that the bees had brought it here, flying to sick towns, and towns where Jews were. Later, they came back starving and asking for honey, but Papa told them they burned it up, so they threatened to kill him, but only hit him. But he wasn’t hurt much. Only he did have some left.”
“So he did,” Thomas said, tasting his finger as he pulled out a sticky pot. And then another one. He darted his eye to Jacquot, who had already seen the pots and was coming over quickly, forgetting that he was still holding the shovel.
Thomas stood up and leveled his sword at the man, who remembered the shovel, dropped it, and dropped to his knees, clasping his hands before his chest. He opened his mouth as if waiting for communion. Thomas stood over him with the honey pot and the sword.
“Please?” Jacquot said in the smallest voice he could muster.
“All right, all right, baby bird. Stop your peeping,” Thomas said, sheathing his sword. He tipped the pot of thick, amber stuff and held it over the smaller man’s mouth so a string of it fell slowly in. Jacquot made glad noises and swallowed it, grinning, getting it nastily in his beard. But there wasn’t a second dripping, even though he opened his mouth expectantly again.
“Dig.”
“It’s done.”
“It’s almost done. Dig.”
Thomas pulled a large book from the girl’s pack.
“What’s this?”
She just looked up at him.
He squinted at the letters and sounded them out.
“Thomas Aquinas? Really?”
She nodded.
“Can’t you read?” she asked.
“Not Thomas Aquinas.”
“I thought knights could read.”
“Who said I was a knight?”
“You look like a knight.”
“You haven’t met many knights. Most can write enough so they don’t have to draw a chicken for a signature, but nothing…scholarly.”
“Thomas Aquinas is Papa’s favorite. Because he could have been a lord but chose to renounce the world. Although I much prefer Saint Francis.”
“I thought Aquinas was fat.”
“I don’t know.”
“He was. He was great and fat. So he renounced tits on women, then ate cakes until he got tits of his own.”
“You shouldn’t mock a great man.”
“Even his book is fat. It weighs as much as a calf.”
“I’ll carry it.”
“You’ll begin by carrying it and then I’ll carry it. If your papa loved it, leave it with him. And this? What the hell is this?”
He held up a small deer-bone instrument of sorts with a stem and a bulb at the end. She took it from him, took it to the water pail, and put some in. Then she blew into the stem and it chirped agreeably, sounding just like a bird.
“Leave it,” he said, taking it from her.
He was about to snap it, but she put her hand on his.
“Why? It doesn’t weigh a thing. And it makes me happy.”
“Making you happy is not my job.”
“I know. That’s why I want the whistle.”
He grunted and gave it back to her.
“Don’t you do anything but grunt?”
He grunted again.
She answered him by blowing into her toy, managing to look both innocent and defiant, the whistle sputtering out its cheerful birdsong.
“But you’re leaving this,” he said, displaying for her a cross of pine and lead.
She stopped chirping.
“No,” she said.
“The real one weighed less.”
“It was given to us by a Franciscan.”
“For a fistful of silver and a long leer at your mother, if I know my Franciscans.”
“Please don’t talk dirtily about my mother. For all your other swearing, please don’t do that.”
“Fine. But this goes.”
So saying, Thomas stood and chucked the cross into a muddy field. No sooner had he thrown it than the girl took off on her broomstick legs and fetched it out of the mud, clutching it to her breast, further dirtying her once-white gown. He took it from her and threw it again. She ran again to fetch it.
“Goddamn it,” he said when she brought it back. He took it from her again and threw it against a tree, where it split into two pieces. The girl looked at him and sobbed and put her wrist to her mouth.
“It’s just the weight of it,” he said. “We’ll find you a smaller one.”
Still she sobbed.
“Don’t cry for the thing. It’s just junk.”
“I’m not crying for that.”
“Jesus, what then?”
“Just for a moment. I saw it.”
“You saw what?”
“Your soul.”
“Souls are invisible.”
“Not always.”
“Yes, always. But not for you, eh? Well, how was it? Horns and little goat’s feet? Am I a devil?”
“No. But there’s one near you. There’s always one near you. They want you.”
“A witch. Jesus Christ bleeding, I’m about to go on the road with a small, weird witch.”
She wiped tear
s from her cheeks with the insides of her wrists. She looked like a wild little peasant brat. Who would ever agree to take her in?
“Do you have a comb in that bag?”
“No.”
“Is there one in the house?”
“Yes. It was my mother’s.”
“Bring it. And start using it.”
THREE
Of the Tower and the Looted Church
An old tower stared down at them from a hill with its narrow windows; some minor seigneur’s keep inherited from Norman days, not unlike the one Thomas had left behind in Picardy. In better times a horseman might have ridden out from this one and charged them a toll for use of the road, but horse and horseman were likely in the bellies of the crows that cawed down at them from the battlements. The shadow of the tower crept down the hill of burnished grass toward them, and Thomas thought they might have three hours of light left.
“What’s this town called?” he asked the girl, fanning himself with his hat.
“Fleur-de-Roche,” she said. “Would you like to know my name as well?”
“No.”
“Is it because you don’t want to feel affection for me?”
“I don’t.”
“But you might if you knew my name and other things about me so I wasn’t just ‘girl.’ Is that why?”
“Shut up.”
It was a small town, but bigger than the one he had found the girl in. Down the hill from the tower, a stone church dominated a collection of shops and a few score houses. Blue jabs of chicory grew wild in a field lying fallow, while all around it untended barley and spelt waved in the warm breeze. The harvest festival of Lammas had come and gone uncelebrated here.
He looked back up at the tower. It would be useful to get up that hill and survey the road and the town. The tower was compelling, but risky. The heavy door seemed to be ajar. An invitation? It would be a delightful ambush spot if anybody had the inclination; nine chances in ten said it was empty—it was that tenth time that caused so much grief.
I’m not carrying anything worth robbing
The girl looked up at him, her hair more gold than flaxen now that it was dry, now that the sun shone on it.
Yes you are
Thomas left the girl near the road, handing her his straw hat. He fitted the conical helm that hung from his belt on top of his chain hood, then hiked up the hill to the foot of the tower, unsheathing his sword and yoking it over his shoulders.
He might have gone in to search the tower, but he didn’t want to pass the two dead scullery women sitting near the gate. The crows had been at them and they grinned black-eyed at him, their heads touching almost tenderly. He walked along the wall with the crows mocking him until he came to a point where he could see the road they had just traveled. He sat down in the shadow of the wall for several moments and watched the road, making sure nobody was following them.
It was unlikely that Jacquot had gotten loose so quickly. Thomas had found him stuffing his underpants with the gold chains from around Godefroy’s neck and the silver coins left in the fat one’s leather bag; another beating had followed, mitigated by the girl, but then Thomas had decided it would be fitting to leave Jacquot tied to the tree he had fetched the girl out of. He also posed a wooden sign around his neck, which the girl wrote upon in charcoal at Thomas’s instruction.
DO WITH ME
AS SEEMS RIGHT TO YOU
TO DO WITH THIEVES
That was what Thomas commanded her to write, at least. Knowing he could read, but not well, she translated this somewhat liberally.
WE THIEVES SHALL DO
THE SAME TO YOU
IF WE CATCH YOU
Jacquot’s crossbow had been hidden in the tree near him, hanging like evil fruit with the little sack of quarrels. He had bitched at them while Thomas bound his limbs with rope the girl got from the house, crying that it was too tight, that he wouldn’t live the night out, or that wild dogs would come and eat him.
“What dogs? They’re all dead. You’re more likely to be eaten by starving farmers.”
Then Jacquot had switched tactics and reminded Thomas what good times they’d had together dancing brawls and dansas at the Candlemas feast near Évreux.
“You passed out and I had to carry you back to camp. You’re the one who had the good time.”
He said three would be better than two if there was trouble.
“Not if one of those three causes the trouble.”
Then Thomas had turned his back.
“PLEASE!” Jacquot had yelled, causing the girl to stop.
“Mightn’t we…?” she had started, but he cut her off.
“If you go back, you’re his to take care of.”
She had hung her head and kept walking.
As the girl and Thomas were nearly out of earshot, Jacquot had finished by calling out nastily “God bless you both for this,” and then shouting until he was hoarse.
As they passed a house with a yellow-green, newly thatched roof, a woman coughed wetly from inside and then launched into a loud Pater Noster punctuated with more coughing. The girl went toward the window, but Thomas plucked her back by the sleeve.
“I know her,” the girl said. “She puts out a table on feast days and sells cakes with honey and walnuts. She’s nice.”
“The plague doesn’t care about nice. Stay away from there.”
“I can’t remember her name.”
“She doesn’t have one anymore.”
The girl looked as if she were about to cry, then crossed herself and they moved down toward the church.
“Do you know anyone else here?”
“The priest is Père Raoul. Papa brought me here to see mystery plays in the spring. It was Adam and Eve, and then Lot’s Wife. The players always invite the village priest to take part; Père Raoul played the serpent, and then the wicked man of Sodom, and then the devil. He had a pair of red horns. I think he liked being bad as long as it was for pretend.”
“Do you know where his house is?”
“No.”
“If we find him, I’m leaving you with him.”
Fresh graves pocked the churchyard, and just past that a big pit yawned with a heap of dirt near it. He knew what was in the pit. Every town had something similar. The first dead had been given Christian burials, and then the ones who had buried them needed burying, and then there were so many a pit was dug, and then there was nobody willing even to take them to the pit.
“Everyone’s dead here,” she said.
“Maybe. More likely that they’re hiding. I would hide from strangers, wouldn’t you?”
She shook her head no.
“No, I guess we know you don’t do that.”
Thomas pulled his scarf up over his nose and mouth as they passed the pit and went to look in the church. It was a simple church with a dirt floor. The cross and everything else of value had been taken from the altar.
“I think your priest is dead,” Thomas said, looking back at her.
The girl knitted her brow.
“He was so good. Why would God kill good priests?”
“The plague kills everything. Only the priests who won’t visit the sick have a chance of living.”
“Then he’s dead,” she said.
“Looks like I’m stuck with you for a while longer. We’ll sleep in the church. Maybe nobody died in here.”
During the night he heard the girl speaking, but not in French. Latin. He thought he heard her say “Avignon.” He thought about shaking her, but instead got up and went outside to walk in the cool air and look at the stars. A comet had appeared last week, near Cygnus, and he looked to see where it was moving. It would not be long before it cut the neck of the pretty swan in the east. He knew it was wicked, a plague token in a sick sky, but it was so beautiful he couldn’t stop looking at it. There had been others before it. Three at once had shared April’s sky, one so bright it washed out the stars near it; this was before the plague had come to Normandy, but it had
already started spreading elsewhere, and everyone was talking about Judgment Day. He remembered the tales of the travelers they met, and often robbed; an earthquake in Italy, dwarfed by the earthquakes and freak storms that punished India; how the earth had cracked in the land of the Mongols, all the way down to Hell, and it was Hell that burped up this pestilence.
The comets had been just another indication that something in Heaven’s mechanism was sprung. Several of the other brigands under Godefroy had melted away before the sickness pared them down from twenty to the four they had been when they found the girl’s donkey. Those who left had thought to save their souls by quitting the pack of thieves but had probably saved their lives. The company had gotten sick after robbing merchants with a wagonload of furs; no sooner had they abandoned one sick one to his death than another started whimpering in his sleep from a swelling in his armpit or groin.
Twelve died in two weeks.
He thought further back, to the days after his injury and betrayal, when he first came to Normandy, meaning to damn himself and grow rich. A whore had warned him not to take the road from Normanville to Évreux that particular spring night because she knew men who lay in ambush there. Thomas paid her to take him on that road, which smelled of all spring’s gaudy notes, but honeysuckle most of all, and to introduce him to those men.
To Godefroy.
The most feared brigand in Normandy, for a year or two.
The man he had just killed.
When he went back in the church, the girl was sitting up.
“We are going to Paris. And then to Avignon,” she said.
“The hell we are.”
“I have to go to Avignon. I’m not sure why. I have something I have to do. And you have to make sure I get there safely.”
“I don’t like your dreams. Someone’s going to call you a witch and turn you over to the church.”
“Do you think I’m a witch?”
“They’ll put the tongs to you. Would you like that?”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“I don’t know if you’re a witch.”
“What does your heart tell you?”
Thomas put his hands on his hips and walked in a slow circle, his head down.
“My heart lies,” he said.
Between Two Fires (9781101611616) Page 3