Between Two Fires (9781101611616)

by Buehlman, Christopher

  He licked his lips.

  An ivory comb.

  “It has angels painted on it.”

  Isnard liked angels.

  In fact, he thought he’d seen one last night.

  Delphine and Thomas rode past the tanners and parchment makers on the banks of the canal fed by a branch of the river Sorgues, smelling the stink of their industry. He rode Jibreel and she rode her little palfrey. The horse felt good under his hips. He thought this might be the last time he ever rode a horse, but he didn’t mind. He had died this morning, and he knew what it was now.

  Tonight would bring more death, probably his.

  He was ready.

  This would be worse than Crécy, but sweet where that was bitter.

  The fine armor he had worn in another body mostly fit him, though the chest was tight and the belly loose. The breastplate and leg armor were all Delphine could get out of the house, so his own rusty chain sat beneath them. He had also left behind the Navarrese surcoat and rode with his breastplate gleaming, though dented, and his head bare—nobody would take him for the Comte d’Évreux now.

  They left the city by the Imbert Gate, but they did not travel far. In fact, they called at the first large building they found, just by the river.

  The Franciscan brotherhood lived in a large, proud building, as befit the large, proud city it served; this did not sit well with all of the brothers, whose attraction to the order had more to do with Christian poverty than ecclesiastic pomp. And yet, here was the capital of Christianity, and here they could do the most to protect their order from charges of heresy. Better to let the popes build them fine churches than to be burned on humble pyres. They allowed the rich to bury their dead in the churchyard, as though the Devil were too simple to find a bad onion in good soil; and when the affluent tried to buy back their wasted lives, showering the monks with money from their deathbeds, the brothers used their wealth to spread the word of the impoverished Christ.

  They never closed their doors to anyone, and their hospitality during these months of pestilence had exacted a heavy toll.

  Only seven brothers remained of forty.

  Brother Albrecht, an Alsatian with the beginnings of cataracts, welcomed the knight and his daughter.

  He helped them stable their horses.

  He showed them to a room where they could sleep through midday, and then showed them to the altar of the Virgin, where they could pray.

  They told him they wished to have strong bodies and pure hearts.

  They were going to the feast in the Courtyard of Honor.

  Some lad of dubious merit was to be given a cardinal’s hat.

  It seemed curious that the knight wished to borrow a friar’s habit, but Brother Albrecht was used to the vanities of the worldly—many men asked to be buried in the brown of St. Francis (as though a feathered stone might fly!). Brother Albrecht felt the man’s chest and cheeks (was he preparing himself for the day he would need his hands to read faces as well as hearts?) and found no harm in him, but rather a long-buried goodness. So what if he wore rusty armor beneath his shiny breastplate; so what if his beard was unkempt and his fingernails long? Who refuses a gold coin because it has a little mud on it?

  He gave him the new habit Brother Egidius had never gotten to wear, having caught the Pest the day it was given to him.

  God knew they had more habits now than living men to fill them.

  “You’re not going to do anything to shame the order, are you?”

  “No,” the big man said.

  “How about you, little one?”

  She shook her head, smiling.

  She had been smiling since she got here.

  Brother Albrecht understood.

  Blessed Francis just called some to him.

  It was getting dark.

  Delphine took Thomas’s sword from its sheath.

  “What are you going to do, break it so I won’t hurt anybody?” he joked. She gave him that dry, tight-lipped head shake he knew so well. Then she did something that made him gasp.

  She cut her hands on the blade.

  Quite deliberately.

  She smeared her blood up one side of it and down the other, massaging it into the runnel, on the point, on quillons and pommel, and into every notch it had gathered in the tiltyard and on the field and in the furtherance of theft.

  As if it were a holy oil.

  It is.

  He gasped again, but this was a gasp of recognition.

  Jesus whoring Christ, do I have to watch you every second?

  You bleeding all over my things doesn’t help me, you, or anybody. Understand?

  The thing in the murk had not been bothered by the billhook or the boar spear; it recoiled only when struck by his sword. His sword had killed it.

  Her blood killed it.

  Her blood in its heart.

  The armorer at the night tourney would not touch it.

  Christ, what the hell is on this thing?

  I killed something foul in a river.

  Hey, Jacmel, you want any of this?

  He kissed the bloody sword now, and put it in its sheath.

  She took the spear from its case and gave him that, too.

  He threw his dagger to the floor and wedged the spear into the sheath at the back of his belt. He smiled to think he had just shoved a relic worth the whole of Avignon into a piece of greasy leather near his ass.

  She bent him down and kissed his cheeks.

  Daughter witch page saint prophet angel what are you what are you You

  Delphine

  “What are you?” he said.

  “Two things, I think. But soon I’ll be just one.”

  He shook his head to keep from crying.

  He could not, he would not watch her be hurt.

  Not if it meant his soul.

  “Am I still not to kill anyone?”

  “Not men.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “We won’t be facing men.”

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  Of the Visitation at Villeneuve

  Robert Hanicotte spent the night before his elevation in a state of bliss only mildly tempered by the memory of the things he had seen in the vineyard. He ate the game fowl and sausages and even drank the wine, sweet from its late harvest, and with just a hint of something

  dead feet corpses’ feet

  else. The something else was easily forgotten, though it tended to bob back up again, requiring further attention at inattention. So much of life demanded a kind of truce with perceived facts—one could not allow the suffering of the kitchen women, for example, to spoil the taste of capon. Neither would those women trouble themselves about the gnawings of a rat at the summer sausage; just cut that end off and serve the rest.

  Silently.

  He did not know, now, what he had seen at Châteauneuf-du-Pape, but it did not bear further thought. He had done the right thing warning His Holiness about the little witch.

  goodness came from her she was benevolent like Matthieu her priest you betrayed one of your brother’s flock

  I don’t know if she was good or evil I can’t know that

  Another thought that he had to step on from time to time was the knowledge that he was completely unfit for high ecclesiastic office. Oh, he had been a priest briefly; the pope liked to discuss biblical matters before bed, so it pleased him to seek cubiculars from among the monasteries and minor clergy. Robert’s good looks inspired even those not given to love men to a sort of instant warmth and familiarity, and his years under a tyrannical father had clarified his mild, pleasant manner. His bishop had sent the newly minted priest south with Clement in mind. Now so long had passed since his studies that he dreaded the first letter he might be asked to draft or, worse, the first Latin discourse he might be expected to give.

  He might have despaired were it not for the example of Pierre Roger de Beaufort, the pope’s dull-eyed, fatling nephew, as one of the last batch of cardinals created before the plague rose up
. The boy was eighteen years old, and had to be reminded hourly to shut his trapezoidal mouth and breathe through his nose. Robert could do as well as he, please God, at least that well.

  He left the pallet he had set up in the study—he would not bed next to the belly-sleeper again—and walked down the spiral stairs to the garden. He had fought with the cardinal after the departure of their guests, making it clear to him that further indecency between them would be unbecoming to his new office. The old man wanted to throw him out on his ear, and would have but for his fear to displease Pope Clement, who had taken precipitate steps in Robert’s favor.

  The Holy Father loves me

  That is not him and you know it

  I don’t know and I don’t care

  He heard one of the Arabs whinny and wondered if it was Guêpe; he wanted to go and see, but what if the little witch was there again, waiting to reprove him (at best) and perhaps to wither his manhood with some spell?

  He shuddered at the thought and steered instead for the olive trees, running his hand through their slender, silver-green leaves and considering the pitted fruit hanging there. He wandered near the huge stone well, running his finger along its lip. He looked at the sky. The moon had a red edge now, much talked about in the city, like the rim of a drunkard’s eye.

  He did not pretend to understand the caprices of celestial clockwork; if these were, in fact, the end times, there was nothing to be done about it.

  Something passed in front of the moon.

  Quickly.

  Not a bird.

  He felt chill now; the cold hadn’t taken long to work through his sleeping-gown and cloak. His feet might as well have been bare for the thinness of his slippers.

  He looked toward the house, drawn to the warmth of the still-glowing hearth and the candles in the lower rooms. He would find another cup of wine and try again to sleep.

  A small silhouette now eclipsed the doorway. Young Vincent, the serving boy, waited for him.

  “Père Robert,” the boy whispered, agitated.

  While Robert had not held up the wafer in more than ten years, Père was the best title the boy could hang on his master’s concubine.

  “Yes?”

  “There are men in the house.”

  Robert’s blood ran cold.

  “What men?”

  “I don’t know. It was too dark to see them well.”

  His mind raced.

  He remembered the squire whose duty it was to protect the cardinal.

  “Where is Gilon?”

  “He drank a pitcher to himself tonight; I could not wake him. But I have his sword.”

  He saw it now.

  It was nearly as big as the boy.

  “Put that down,” he said.

  He thought of the stable boy, a big lad, and he hurried to the stables, clutching his coat around him.

  The horses whinnied and tramped about their stables; something had agitated them.

  He found the boy, who normally slept like the dead at this time of night, sitting wide-eyed on his shoeing bench; despite the darkness, he could see the boy’s outline, and saw that he was gripping a pitchfork.

  “Come with me to the house,” Robert said. “Vincent thinks he saw something.”

  The boy shook his head in the near-darkness.

  “I command you to come with me.”

  “Command as you like,” the boy said in a choked voice, “but I saw something, too. And I’m not going near that house.”

  “You’ll force me to tell the cardinal.”

  “You can tell the Devil for all I care. And I think I know where you can find him.”

  “I command you…”

  “Get out!” the boy said, standing now, leveling the pitchfork.

  Robert got out.

  Vincent was gone.

  Robert found the sword the boy had left behind and picked it up, feeling ridiculous. He barely knew how to hold it, let alone swing it at someone. He put it back down.

  He walked into the house now, going to the dressing area near the kitchen hearth and taking up a carving knife. He clutched it to his chest and stood there, unsure what to do. He listened. Hearing nothing, he made for the stairs, taking them slowly, quietly.

  He heard a floorboard creak, but not from the staircase; it had come from the cardinal’s bedroom.

  He tried to think of where else he might go and hated his own cowardice; he could go the falconer’s apartment, but what would he say? I think someone may have broken into the house, but I decided to leave the cardinal and save myself?

  There was nothing for it but to go and see.

  He crept down the hallway.

  The door stood open, the light from a candle casting a wavering glow.

  He edged up to the door and peeked in.

  A man, or something man-shaped if not man-colored, stood over the cardinal. Impossibly, it had its arm down the cardinal’s mouth all the way to the elbow. It looked up at Robert, its mouth full of dirty teeth, its eyes black but somehow luminous; were there twelve of them?

  No, six.

  Now two.

  Its skin blushed from sickly white to baby pink and then began to sag and wrinkle.

  It was becoming more like the cardinal every instant.

  It spoke with the cardinal’s voice.

  “Go back to bed, my darling. Don’t leave the house. Be sweet and you’ll get your hat tomorrow.”

  The cardinal’s eyes stared dead at the ceiling, his crammed mouth open so wide it bled at the corners, his soft neck wrinkled back on itself like gills.

  “Please don’t make me tell you again.”

  The cardinal twitched under the thing.

  Robert dropped the knife and walked away.

  He lay on his pallet listening to soft noises coming from the other room.

  By morning, he had convinced himself he had not heard them.

  The cardinal came to him near first light, asking if he’d had a bad dream. Yes, he most certainly had. The cardinal pulled him gently into his bedroom and he allowed it.

  He allowed everything.

  Everything seemed normal.

  Except that Cardinal Cyriac now slept on his back.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  Of the Rings of Lazarus, and of the Bathers

  The large, hooded friar and the short-haired girl packed in with the poor of Avignon, who flowed toward the palace like a second Rhône of cowls and mantles and hats of many colors. If many wore the clothes of the wealthy dead, all of them bore their own hunger; it made them forget their fear of the Great Death, or, at least, to concede no more to it than rags held over faces while they pressed in together toward the pope’s table. They had already tasted the pope’s generosity at the pignotte, but there they got vegetables and bread, and not enough for all; here, in the square outside the hulking palace, beneath the little pointed towers that jabbed up like goats’ horns, the smell of roasted meat maddened them and brought water to their mouths.

  “At sunset,” the criers had cried, and now they watched the sky in the west; the sun’s departure was sweet to many of them already, as it called them every day to lay down hammers, scythes, and buckets and go to their hearths to eat and tell stories, but this was the first public feast since the Pest had fallen on the city.

  This would be something.

  As the last pale blue in the sky darkened to indigo, the herald bearing the crossed keys blew a trumpet note, and the doors leading to the Courtyard of Honor swung back.

  The crowd surged in, managing not to trample one another, but edging as close to the front as possible for the first pick of the feast. Words came first of course, words in Latin, censers swung with strange and heady smoke, words in French about how the coming war would be seen from Heaven. Words about Cardinal Hanicotte and how the Lord knew his own and called them forward to be raised.

  Now a commotion rose up.

  Two men in yellow hats, bearing yellow circles sewn on their breasts, pushed forward, crying for help;
they removed their hats. One of the men had dried blood on his head and a face streaked with grime from where he had hastily tried to remove plaster dust with his hand. They were Jews, they said. Children of Abraham and loyal citizens of Avignon. An abomination had risen. Something wicked had broken into the ghetto and was pulling down houses.

  “It is made of men! A monster made of men!”

  The crowd gasped, and, in the silence following their gasp, sounds of distress and terror sounded in the distance.

  The crowd began to mutter.

  “If we call God a different name, we share the same Devil! Help us against him, Your Holiness! We beg you!”

  At this, both men went to their knees and extended their hands in supplication.

  The people in the courtyard began to yell, “Yes,” and, “Help them!” and, “Please!” and they moved and rippled like a living thing wanting to react to threat.

  The Holy Father stood and calmed them, calling forward a small group of soldiers and speaking privately to their sergent, whose eyes bugged at what he heard; but then he lowered his head and nodded.

  “Those are not enough!” the man with the bloodied crown despaired. “You have not seen it!”

  Cardinal Cyriac stood and said, “If the Devil is here, soldiers of the church will give chase to him. If these were the hysterics of a deceived people, they will wish for the Devil.”

  One or two in the crowd laughed, but most were too disturbed by the sincerity and horror of the plea they had heard.

  Now the soldiers marched off toward the Jewish quarter, bringing the men with them.

  A woman’s scream, far away but distinct, rose up past the new wing of the palace.

  “If the Devil is in their quarter,” said the pope, “perhaps this will be the argument that leads them to recognize that their Messiah awaits their recognition and stands ready to help them against him whose bidding they have foolishly done for so long.”

  Musicians came with drum and cornemuse, covering any further noise from beyond the walls.

  And now, at a nod from the pope’s steward, soldiers near the front uncrossed their pole-arms and let the crowd flow past them at something more than a walk but less than a run. The large friar waited patiently, letting others go before him. He favored his right side, curling around what might have been some stiffness, or some painfully withered limb, which he kept beneath his large habit. The girl he had entered with had slipped away some time ago, and no eye had followed her where she went.