Between Two Fires (9781101611616)

by Buehlman, Christopher

  No, the blood was not from the loss of her maidenhead.

  Sometime in the night, she had become a woman.

  She would have liked to speak to her mother about this, or to Annette. As soon as she remembered these two vacancies in her heart, she braced herself for sadness to overwhelm her. Instead, she imagined Père Matthieu trying to advise her on these matters, and the thought struck her so funny that she giggled. Her giggling turned to laughter, and even though she cupped her hand over her mouth, she woke the priest.

  “My, but you’re in a good mood this morning,” he said; but then he caught sight of the blood and turned the corners of his mouth down, saying, “Sweet heavens,” which seemed such a ridiculous oath to attach to the mess in her lap that she laughed even harder.

  “What’s so funny?” Thomas said, still scraping. The mule looked over, too.

  The priest went and washed his hands in rainwater even though he had not touched her, stammering a moment before he found his voice.

  “Well, er…it…it seems our kitten is a cat.”

  SIXTEEN

  Of the Maple Tree

  Delphine was too restless to sit in the cart, so she walked alongside while the two older men rode. The cloths she had bundled around her middle were coarse and chafed her, but she was glad to have found them in the farmhouse; the mother of the dead family inside had been halfway through sewing a dress for herself when the disease came and made her lay her needle aside. She had been found leaning out the window, dead a good month so she was mostly bone, the wattle under her dark as though she had melted into the wall. Delphine thought the woman’s fever might have made her want air at the end of it. She guessed, too, that the whole family had sickened at once; one small corpse hugged another in the corner opposite, the smaller of them clutching a cloth poppet with eyes of snail shell. The mother was already too weak to bury them when they died. And where was the man of the house? Was it the old man in the barn? Or was he the woman’s father? She guessed it was the father, and that he had been mad before and they kept him in the barn; but then it occurred to her that he might have hidden himself there to save his life, perhaps warning others away with that rusty scythe, and there lost his mind. And the husband? Was he dead before the plague came, in the war perhaps, or had he run off to save himself? She knew many such stories of betrayal and selfishness from her village, though she also knew stories of great faithfulness and courage. This pestilence cooked away pretense and showed people’s souls, as surely as it eventually showed their bones.

  “What are you thinking about over there?” Thomas said. Ever since the incident in the barn, he had been kinder to her. She wondered how long it would last.

  “Death,” she said.

  “That’s cheerful. Perhaps you’d like to sing us a song about it?”

  She ignored this.

  “No singing? Maybe you’ll dance us a merry brawl, then? The priest and I grow bored with watching this mule’s ass sway.”

  She wrinkled her mouth, trying not to encourage his vulgarity by smiling at it. Instead she bent down for a mud clot and threw it, though it sailed well behind and landed in the cart.

  “Ha!” he laughed at her. “Now that you’re a woman, you can’t do things boys can do, can you? A boy would have pelted me right between the eyes.”

  She snarled at him and walked faster, cutting in front of the mule.

  “Now I will watch the mule’s ass and he will watch yours, is that your remedy?”

  She walked faster, letting herself smile now that the coarse knight would not have the satisfaction of seeing it.

  The priest knew something had transpired between the knight and the girl, but the nature of the change puzzled him. If Thomas had forced himself upon her, would she still go with them? To keep herself alive, perhaps, but surely she would not jest and smile so much. What if she had allowed him? Or had gone to him? She was the right age to start thinking of such things, after all, now that she bore the mark of Eve. If that were the case, surely he would see it in a thoughtless caress or in a too-long glance; they did look at each other more, but almost as a father and daughter might where the father had picked the child as his favorite and teased her playfully. It did not seem carnal; he had taught himself to divine when his parishioners were fornicating so he could better coax them to lighten their souls with confession.

  But who was he to judge anyone, or propose any remedy for sin?

  He was such a profound sinner that he had considered leaving off his robes and stopping the pretense. He was just an old bugger who would sell his last possession for a barrel of good wine. Or any wine.

  And he was lonely.

  The most puzzling thing for him was his own reaction to the newfound, though seemingly platonic intimacy between his companions; Père Matthieu was jealous.

  On their fifth day since Paris, they camped near a swollen stream, up on a rocky bank that gave them a decent view of the country around them. Thomas and the priest sharpened long sticks to use as spears and spent the last hours of daylight trying to gig fish in the river. They got only one, and a small one. The frogs they had hunted eluded them easily, sheltering between rocks or hopping into thick river grass, and now mocked them with their buzzing evensong farther down the stream. The girl went to forage in the woods; she returned at twilight with a rusty, hole-ridden pot in which she carried two handfuls of acorns, several walnuts, and a broken horseshoe.

  “Goddamn it,” Thomas said, gazing at her small cache.

  “Maybe God would be more generous if you swore less.”

  “God starves babies sometimes, and they don’t swear at all.”

  Having no answer for that, Delphine found a tree stump and began pounding acorns with the horseshoe. They would make an awful, mouth-puckering companion to the two mouthfuls of trout they could each look forward to, but it would be marginally better than nothing.

  “Babies go straight to Heaven,” she said now.

  Thomas didn’t look up from his work setting river stones to make a fire. “Bad ones don’t,” he said.

  “There are no bad babies,” she said. “They don’t know any better.”

  “Sounds like you’ve never met a baby. Many of them are awful. I knew one in Picardy who stole his father’s money and crawled down the road to the whorehouse. “

  “It was you,” she said. “The only bad baby ever was you.”

  The priest sighed and went off to gather more sticks for the fire.

  They ate their awful dinner, sucking each slender bone and washing the bitter acorn meal down with water. The walnuts were last, least and best. Stomachs still rumbling, they each settled down, the men near the cart, the girl with her head against the tree stump. The only sounds were the stream, the frogs, and the mule munching his fill of grass.

  In the morning, as the men stirred, Delphine woke up at dawn, but the exhausted men slept later. She amused herself first by collecting river pebbles in her gathered gown front, and then sowing them as a farmer would with an apron full of seeds. When she was out of pebbles, she took up one of the fishing spears and, holding it butt end down, pretended to stir the rusty pot. The priest sat up, stiff from his night on the rocky ground, and noticed her at her game.

  “What are you cooking for us, daughter?” he said.

  “A stew!”

  “Christ, don’t start that,” Thomas said.

  “What kind of stew?” the priest asked, secretly happy to needle the knight’s hunger.

  “Cabbages and pepper.”

  “Real pepper?” the priest said. “Will the king be joining us?”

  “Yes,” she said, “and all his ministers. But I wasn’t done with the stew.”

  “Christ drowning in shit,” Thomas said, putting his straw hat over his face.

  “Mushrooms and turnips and even pork belly.”

  “And shit,” Thomas grumbled from his hat. “Don’t forget the shit.”

  “What a lovely meal,” the priest said. “May I have some?”<
br />
  Delphine nodded gravely, still stirring. The priest got up and held his wooden bowl out so she could pretend to fill it with her stick-ladle. He slurped air from a pretend spoon and said, “My compliments. It’s perfect.”

  Thomas peeked from under the hat to confirm what he thought he was hearing. Then he replaced the hat, saying, “Jesus wept.”

  Just before they left their camp, the priest found another walnut, which had escaped through a hole in the girl’s gathering pot. He found the broken horseshoe and looked around for the stump but couldn’t find it. Thinking nothing of it, he opened the nut against the cart and brought it to Delphine, who did her best to take exactly one-third of it. He shared the rest with Thomas, who said, “How can you stuff yourself so? Aren’t you full of shit and cabbage stew?”

  They climbed wearily into the cart and left.

  None of them noticed that the maple stump against which Delphine had slept had grown into a tree.

  SEVENTEEN

  Of St. Lazarus and the Rotten Fruit

  The soldiers passed them near the town of Nemours, just as deep, cold woods gave way to overgrown and deserted farms. They had just broken camp, and their hunger gnawed at them. They had begun to discuss the possibility of eating their mule. Rather, Thomas had started discussing it, provoking fierce resistance from Delphine and causing the priest to say, “I would rather starve than walk.”

  “We can all see our ribs. It isn’t right. We could smoke this bastard and eat like kings for a week.”

  “Did you see his ear twitch?” Delphine said. “He heard you.”

  “I don’t care if he did.”

  “You can’t really want to eat our friend? He’s been so faithful.”

  “I have to eat something. I’m losing my whoring mind.”

  “NOT the mule,” she said, and that put an end to it.

  The soldiers came then, just at first light. No fewer than six knights and another twenty men-at-arms rode up on them, the horses’ hooves shaking the road. A voice shouted, “Get that cart out of the way,” barely leaving them enough time to do so, startling Père Matthieu so that he reined the mule hard, taking one wheel off the road and causing them all to be buffeted by low branches. One of the knights called, “Hooo,” slowing his horse to a stop and obliging the rest to stop as well.

  “I know that man,” the knight said, wheeling his horse around to get another look at Thomas. Thomas recognized him, too, though he could not retrieve his name or title; his surcoat bore a red chevron bisecting a silver griffin rampant on a field of blue.

  “That man fought at Crécy, and bravely, too.”

  Thomas squirmed with shame at his shoddy armor and his mule cart, and wished the troop would ride on.

  “Am I right? You were beside the Comte de Givras when he fell.”

  “I was.”

  “Where is your coat of arms?”

  “I lost it at dice.”

  The man stared at him for a moment while he decided whether Thomas’s comment was a joke or an insult. He decided it was a joke.

  “Ha!” he barked. “What are you doing in that cart, man?”

  “We’re going to the Holy Land to fetch back the True Cross.”

  “Ha! This is a man of levity. He might lighten our journey with his japes if he were of a mind to come with us.”

  “Never mind him,” said a youthful knight with golden locks. “Can’t you see he’s fallen? This man is a brigand.”

  Thomas chafed, but Delphine put her hand on his before he could rest it on the hilt of his sword.

  “What is a brigand in these days? Which of you does not charge tolls on travelers? And woe to those who do not pay their due, eh? Besot me, I’ll not have you insult a man who rode up that hill while you dandled dolls in Évry.”

  The blond knight grimaced but did not respond.

  “What say, man? We’ve got a spare horse. It’s yours if you’ll ride with us.”

  Delphine’s hand gripped Thomas’s harder, but he pulled away from her.

  “Where are you bound?”

  “Avignon. His Holiness has summoned certain knights to him. There’s talk of a new crusade.”

  “Jerusalem?”

  “Aye. So it is whispered. He will not issue a bull until the English have declared they will join us, though it is said their king already gave his word.”

  Thomas considered this.

  “We are also bound for Avignon.”

  “Then it is decided! Bring up the bay.”

  An acneous squire in saffron yellow rode up now, holding the reins of a handsome bay stallion.

  “Where may my companions ride?”

  The knight leaned closer, looking the priest and the girl over.

  “In the cart, of course, as befits their station. We will be in Avignon before a fortnight. This cart will still be clopping about at Christmastime. On your horse, man, and let them meet you there.”

  “I…”

  “I, I, I. This is not the time for speeches, sir. On your horse and piss standing up, or in your cart and squat for it.”

  “Go your ways,” Thomas said coolly, “and I will go mine.”

  Did that knight’s nose just wrinkle like a lion’s?

  His surcoat was different now; behind the chevron, a lion rampant tore an old man in an arena.

  Monkeys eating a wild-eyed horse.

  The dead woman’s moley back in the pit.

  “Who is the girl?” the knight said.

  “Just an orphan.”

  “Who is she really?”

  “Ask your mother.”

  “Ha.”

  Thomas’s hand drifted for the handle again, and again Delphine steered it away, saying under her breath, “It’s what they want. These are only shades, but your anger is feeding them. Get rid of it.”

  “Ha,” Thomas said. Then he imagined the knight’s nose was the tail of a horse. He pictured it lifting and a pile of road apples falling out of the knight’s mouth. His defiant “Ha” turned into an actual laugh, and he let himself laugh freely.

  The knight’s face reddened.

  He showed his teeth for just an instant.

  Thomas laughed harder.

  The knight gathered himself enough to speak again, his voice trembling.

  “Would that we had more time. I would like to discuss this further with you. But we are stayed for. Perhaps our paths will cross again, when we may linger in knightly fellowship.”

  “Good luck on your crusade,” the priest offered.

  “Go to Hell,” the squire in yellow said, unconsciously fingering one of his pimples.

  They turned their horses and thundered down the road leading to Nemours, tramping autumn’s first golden leaves into the black mud beneath them.

  They were not out of sight the length of a troubadour’s verse before the sun peeked between the trees.

  Nemours would not let the three of them in. The gates were barred, and the very skinny man at the parapet told them they would be shot if they rode closer.

  “Where may we ford the river, then? If we may not use your bridge?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Where may we find food?”

  “Wait till one of you starves,” he advised. “Then eat that one. That’s how we’re managing. We call it Gigot de Nemours. But no one comes in, and by God no one goes out.”

  On the other side of the town, near the banks of the Loing, they came across an encampment of twenty or so men and women hauling in nets and working little patches of field. It was unusual to see such industry now. Something was cooking in a large stew pot, and it smelled like hot, greasy heaven. The priest pulled the cart up to the rough-hewn new-wood fence.

  A woman with very red cheeks and a veiny nose motioned two men over. They had been working a two-man saw, but now they put that down and hefted wood axes, holding them casually over their shoulders, standing near the woman.

  The trio walked uncommonly close to the cart—people just didn’t walk up to
strangers like this anymore. The priest unconsciously leaned back from them.

  “Are you healthy?” the priest asked.

  “I don’t give a shit if they aren’t,” Thomas said, “We’re asking them for food if I have to eat it from a leper’s hands.”

  “We’re healthy now,” the woman said.

  “If you don’t mind my asking, what does that mean?”

  “It means we’ve already had it here.”

  “And it’s gone?”

  “It’s never gone. I mean we’ve all had it. And lived. Nobody gets it twice. We call our town Saint Lazarus; the bastards behind the walls wouldn’t let my husband and me in. He died. I didn’t, and neither did my boys. The girls died, though. Four of them. Others came. Now Nemours is full of scarecrows and cannibals and we get survivors every week or so. We’ll let you move in if you’re willing to spend the first night in a sick-blanket. Have any of you had it?”

  “Just him,” the priest said, indicating Thomas.

  “Yep. He looks strong, though you can’t always tell by that. We think it’s one in five gets through, as long as it’s the swelling kind. The blood coughers all die. The ones who turn black die, too. And quick.”

  “We didn’t have any of those in my town.”

  “Lucky you.”

  “We’re starving. Can you help us?”

  The woman scratched her chin, looking them over.

  “Will you work for it?”

  “God, yes.”

  “What can you do?”

  “He kills people. I read Latin. The little girl asks questions. And also reads Latin.”

  “All right. The big one helps build the fence. You, too. And the girl mends nets. You give us a half day of work and we’ll feed you tonight. But then you’re on your way tomorrow. We don’t want to start liking you and have you up and die on us.”

  “You’ve got a deal. Would you like me to say a Mass for you in the morning?”

  “What, God-in-Heaven? The only thing I say to God is my daughters’ names. And it’s not a prayer. It’s a rebuke. We’ll thank you not to say any blessings at dinner.”