He looked everywhere for the girl, asked everyone twice, but nobody had seen her since that night, the events of which had dulled in all men’s memories but his; he asked soldiers he had seen standing near His Holiness in the Courtyard of Honor, just as he confronted his false double. She had been with them then, they remembered her, but no one could say what became of her.
He thought about seeking an audience with the pope himself, but his station was so low and the pontiff had so many cares now.
He saw the Holy Father several times, blessing the dead, his breath steaming in the cold October air. This Clement was not the same man who had lorded over the feast in the Grand Tinel and called forth the dead stags. This pope radiated benevolence, and his smile now began in his heart, not on his face. He gave an address in front of St. Peter’s asking all men to pray for God’s mercy, and for a swift rebuilding. He said he had been in the grips of a long fever and begged their forgiveness for his folly. There would be no crusade in this time of pestilence, when seigneurs were needed in their demesnes. There would be no pogrom against the Jews, and any who harmed a child of Israel would be cut off from the salve of the church. The pope had already commanded de Chauliac, his faithful doctor, to marshal other doctors, Christians and Jews together, who were putting right a forest of broken bones and stitching the howls of countless lacerations into grim consonants.
On Thomas’s last day in Avignon, he found his sword.
It had fallen in a gutter and broken.
He looked at the blade, the notches in it, trying to remember where the deepest ones had come from. Blurry images of brigandage and war came to him, but he did not try to sharpen them. He let them fall away. Thomas pressed his lips to the ruined blade, not in fondness for the harm it had done, but for the trace of the girl’s blood that still remained on it. After a long crouch, he left it where it lay; some peddler would find it and sell it for scrap, all of it; blade, quillons, tang, pommel, the wooden handle, and the deerskin wrap.
He hoped he would prove so useful.
He wandered north.
November came.
The plague left France for England.
Thomas sold his labor where he could; he turned down an offer to serve with a seigneur’s guard, saying he had no sword and wanted none. Instead, he sold these men his horse and went to the fields, where working men, so scarce now, could come and go as they pleased, and sell their sweat dearly.
Money was lord here now.
Most were heading south for climate’s sake, but he would go where the fewest laborers were.
And, eventually, he would go home.
He learned farming, making up in strength what he lacked in knowledge. But then he gained knowledge, too. He made friends.
Three of these came with him to Normandy.
She saw the four men in their rags and aprons coming down the road, bearing tools and sacks. When the rain came, they went to her barn to shelter. They could be forgiven for thinking her land deserted; the field was wild, and all the farms for miles around were silent. It had fallen on this part of Normandy in the summer, taking first her mother and then her sweet father. That was the last she remembered.
She had awakened in her tree this morning, bitterly cold.
It was August no more.
Her father still lay on the bed where he lost his struggle with the plague, but now skeletal, long dead. Where the months had gone was beyond her understanding.
She was hungry.
The clay and wicker beehives were burned.
Two pots of honey were all she had.
And Parsnip, heehawing by the willow tree.
She had to decide whether to seek her father’s people in the south, though she did not know where to look beyond the name of a village, or whether to stay here and try to get through the winter alone.
But she knew what she had to do first.
She had to approach the strangers.
Her father had spoken with the neighbors in the spring, saying it was likely brigands would come, men who were once soldiers, but who now lived by robbery.
The men in the barn were none of these.
Just peasants.
She poked her head around the door.
“Hello,” she said.
“Hello yourself,” said the plumpest of them, amiably.
The tallest of them, a strong-looking fellow with long hair and a nearly white beard, had blanched pale at the sight of her. He looked familiar to her, as though she had dreamed of him.
“I need help burying my father,” she said.
The tall one stared at her and cried, trying to hide it.
The plump one said they would help, and they did.
When the work was done, they made a fire in the barn and shared roasted chestnuts with her. They were warm and good.
In the morning, she left with them, riding her donkey as they walked around her.
The tall one walked nearest.
The one with the dark hair, just graying.
He wore a wide straw hat with a spoon through it.
She liked him very much.
It would be too bold to ask him on only a day’s acquaintance, but she prayed for some sign that she could trust him; her dearest and wildest hope was that this man would be a second father to her. She would need one.
He was not a learned man, as her father had been, but goodness shone from him as from an unseen sun.
“What is your name, good sir?” she said.
“Thomas. And not a ‘sir.’”
“May I ask where you come from?”
He turned a mirthful eye to her.
“A town.”
“Yes, but what is the town called?”
“Town.”
“No town is called town.”
“Mine is. Townville-sur-…Town.”
She laughed.
“Is it near a mountain, this town?”
“Givras,” he said. “I am from Givras.”
“Which rhymes with Thomas. Would you like to know my name?” she said.
“I already do.”
She smiled impishly.
She liked games.
“Then tell me.”
He bent toward her.
This would be a secret.
Little Moon.
Epilogue
The old friar mounted the road leading up to the tower’s gate. The guard called for and received permission to let him pass.
“The kitchens are that way.” He pointed, but the friar didn’t look up for directions. He just nodded at him and thanked him, making his way painfully around the west side of the keep, where a young boy in fine clothes waved a wooden sword at him. The friar mocked fear for the boy, making him giggle and gallop closer, pressing his attack.
“We don’t charge at men of God,” said a young nobleman. The lord of the castle, a minor seigneur. A big man, broad through the chest, fearsome in aspect, yet shod in the fashionable long-toed poulaines that had become the object of ridicule for older knights and a frequent subject of sermons. Perhaps he expected to receive one from the friar; his verdant gaze was wary, dismissive. Or perhaps he feared the itinerant might carry more than a begging bowl; the plague had returned, though not in its former strength. Only the lumps, not the blood-coughing. Villages were tithing a tenth of their number, not two-thirds, but the tenth it chose was especially hard. Some were already calling this the children’s plague. Carpenters all over France had grown skilled at making small coffins.
“The door’s there. Marie will fill your bowl. Prayers are welcome, but keep them short. And don’t touch anything.”
The friar waved that he understood and went to the kitchen.
Marie, a youngish, formless woman with teeth in only half her mouth, filled the friar’s bowl with soft turnips and leeks. She also filled his battered pewter mug with beer. She had seen him before, in town, though he had never come to the castle. She had seen him once, smiling a little through another friar’s sermon about Hell, saying
after the other left that fear of Hell is one of many paths to it. Forget Hell and love one another. That is all He wants of you.
He was the only friar she had seen who meant the things he said.
“I’m expecting,” she said. “A prayer for the baby? And for the little ones at home?”
She placed his huge hand on her belly.
He smiled, then granted her a warm benediction.
“Father?” a chamber woman said from the kitchen door.
“Yes?”
“The lady of the house, my lord’s mother, craves a word.”
The friar blushed.
“She lives, then?”
The chamber woman laughed, then spoke low.
“Of course she lives! The reaper fears to bend his scythe on Lady Marguerite.”
He closed his eyes and nodded.
“Of course.”
The stairs were hard for him, but he followed his guide faithfully.
“Are you well, Father?”
“Ah. Yes. The injuries of spring are forgotten in the summer, but remembered in the winter.”
She looked back at him, noting again the pit in his cheek. Injuries, indeed. Probably an old soldier. He had the size, even if old age had stooped him.
The lady waited in her parlor, an open book next to her, yet the old woman had the eyes of the blind. An impression in a near cushion told the friar the chamber woman had been reading to her.
She did not see him duck just a little to enter the room.
Not with those milk-white eyes with just a hint of green.
“Leave us, Jacqueline,” she commanded.
The chamber woman left.
The friar entered the room alone. His nostrils flared as he filled his nose with familiar scents, bergamot chief among them. He glanced at the far door, which led to the bedchamber.
Now he looked at her.
“You wanted to speak with me, my lady?”
She tilted her head at the sound of his voice.
“I always ask those of Saint Francis’s order to come to me. Although I myself have fallen short of Christ’s example, I believe the cordeliers approach it quite closely. So I fill your bellies and solicit your prayers.”
“My prayers are no better than yours, though I will lend them as you ask.”
He waited. Her hands clenched gently in her lap, as though she wanted rosary beads, or a quill pen, or dice.
At length, she spoke.
“I do not want my grandson dead of this scourge.”
“I will pray for his safety.”
Silence.
“Would you like at least to know his name?”
“If you wish me to know it.”
She told him.
“His father, my son, spoke rudely to you in the tiltyard. I will inform him of my displeasure.”
“I did not find him rude, my lady.”
“Then your hearing is not as good as mine. He is not so wise or kind as he is brave. His voice is harsh, like his father’s before him. Did you know the lord of this place? My late husband?”
That head tilt.
The friar smiled.
“Scarcely. I knew the man’s face, but little more.”
Now the lady smiled.
“You have a kind voice, Father. Were you married, before you took orders?”
“Yes.”
“And your lady wife?”
Silence.
“She has gone to her reward.”
“Ah.”
Though the eyes were blind, they kept the habit of looking down.
She spoke again.
“Did you have children?”
The old man fidgeted.
Now his hands wanted something.
“A daughter. She lives. We were farmers, and worked where we could. I planned to follow Saint Francis after I saw her wed, but she, too, wed the church. We took orders the same month.”
Silence.
“Will you stay tonight, Father? I keep a comfortable room for men of God. You may pray unmolested.”
“I am yours to command, though I am on my way to see her. My daughter. I visit her at her convent in Amiens each month, as I can, and I do not wish to be late.”
“Then go in peace. She is lucky. To have such a father, I mean.”
“Do you believe in luck, my lady?”
“The dart of the Implacable One struck your wife and my husband, and spared my son and your daughter. What divides the four?”
“God’s will.”
“And if God’s mind is unknowable, how does His will differ from luck?”
“It is a question of faith. When I pray for the boy, shall I pray for luck?”
“I am a careful woman. I will pray for luck. You, good Father, pray for God’s benevolence. Between the two of us, perhaps the boy will live.”
“We are at common purpose, if our means differ.”
Silence.
He rose.
“With your permission.”
“Of course.”
He was nearly out the door when she tapped her ring three times on the bench.
Bull.
Fox.
Lamb.
He stopped and swallowed hard.
He smiled despite himself, his eyes moistening.
He tapped his bowl on the wall three times.
And then the old Franciscan left the castle of Arpentel, and made for Amiens, where his daughter even now tended the convent garden, eyeing the sorrel she would pick for him in the morning.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I wish to extend my deepest thanks to those who helped midwife this novel: First, to Michelle Brower at Folio, whose positivity, energy, and arcane agenting alchemy never fail to astound me. Next, and posthumously, to Barbara Tuchman, without whose masterpiece A Distant Mirror, fourteenth-century France would be much more distant indeed. Somewhat less posthumous thanks are due to Michael J. E. Reilly, whose knowledge of things ecclesiastical proved indispensable to this effort. Paul Dubro of Legacy Forge answered questions about armor, and, if you visit YouTube, you can watch longbow experts Nick Birmingham and Martin Harvey of the Company of Holyrood show how English archers used hundred-pound war bows to punch holes in that armor; these two also read and commented usefully on the chapter concerning the battle of Crécy. Allen Hutton, who knows more about the late-medieval sword than a living man has the right to, helped choreograph the fight by the creek; and if the hunting scene seems credible, that’s because I know Bob Haeuser, who makes Eastern Louisiana unsafe for deer. Teresa DeWitt, high-school French-class neighbor, prom date, and now CSI investigator, turned me green with descriptions of what prolonged submersion does to the human body, and Professor Sylvie Lefevre of Columbia University graciously answered a stranger’s query about medieval French names. Michael Gartner of Volgemut and Owain Phyfe (whose voice sounds as hot blown glass looks) were two of the many musicians whose work accompanied my writing, and since I am lucky enough to call them friends, it is my pleasure to acknowledge their excellence here. The Cistercian garden would have been bare dirt without another good friend, “Plant Man” Terry Hollembaek, with whom I have stained my teeth purple more than once. Medievalist Christine Axen did a difficult thing and made Avignon even more charming during my research there. On the subject of travel, although it was composed on the road, in many places, I set down a good eighth of Between Two Fires at Rochambo coffeehouse on East Brady Street in Milwaukee, which is a hell of a good place to write a book. Thanks again, and always, to readers Allison Williams, Jamie Haeuser, Ciara Carinci, and to listeners Ron Scot Fry, Susan Fry, Damaris Wilcox, Roxanna Wilcox-Keller, Noelle Burk, and especially Kelly Cochran Davis. Lastly, thanks and adoration to Danielle Dupont, whose self-appointed position on this project was “Advocate for Good.” Her counsel on the nature of angels seems more like firsthand knowledge than supposition, and she is, in many ways, Delphine’s mentor and close cousin.
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