Between Two Fires (9781101611616) (30 page)

And now this talk of a raft.

“Did you dream this, daughter?” the priest said, belching terribly at the end of it. His teeth were darker than his skin.

“No. I thought about it. The devil on the road said we would still be clip-clopping around at Christmas. I thought, too, about the wine. It’s very good wine.”

“It is,” both men agreed.

“But
what
about the wine?” Thomas asked.

“Oh. Yes. They ship it on the river. It would take too long on a cart. Rivers are fast.”

“Some rivers are fast.”

“They’re all faster than a mule because they don’t rest.”

The priest nodded, impressed.

“Agreed. But the Yonne doesn’t go to Avignon,” Thomas said, spitting out his leaf.

“The Rhône does,” said the priest.

The girl filled her bowl again, drinking while the men spoke. Thomas took the spoon of ram’s horn from his hat and chewed it, punctuating his words by poking its gently gnawed end at Père Matthieu.

“What’s the closest city on the Rhône?”

“Lyon.”

“That’s far.”

“A river feeds it, though. I can’t remember the name.”

“The name doesn’t matter. What near town sits on it?”

“I’m not sure.”

“You know wine. What wine comes from Burgundy?”

“Burgundy,” the priest said, blinking his bloodshot eyes.

“Don’t be funny. Think.”

“I’m too drunk to think.”

“Then just say something. A wine town. Burgundy. Quick!”

“Auxerre.”

Thomas winced, thinking about their exit across the Pont Roi Louis, where many of those fleeing the town had been hacked apart by something stronger than a man.

“We’re drinking the last from Auxerre. Name another.”

“Arbois? No, that’s Franche-Comté. And it’s straw-colored.”

“The river?”

“No. The wine. From Arbois.”

“What’s its river?”

“I don’t know.”

Thomas grunted. “Name another.”

“Beaune.”

“That’s Burgundy, all right. But what’s the river?”

“I don’t know.”

The conversation continued like that until the girl fell asleep, the priest got too drunk to guide the mule, and Thomas took the reins. Soon the road forked, and a sign stood by the right fork, which led into very pretty woods whose leaves were going soft yellow and startling red.

The priest was puking over the side, oblivious, trying vainly not to get any on his robes. Thomas had enough Latin for this one, though, and he mouthed each syllable.

“We won’t be going to Vézelay,” Thomas said, though only the mule, who twitched an ear in his direction, seemed to hear him. “Hope you weren’t counting on finding a nice jenny-ass there, you grass-eating bastard.”

The mule made no reply.

“I hope you don’t take this personally, but if we build a raft, you’re not coming aboard. Except in our bellies.”

“Not the mule,” the girl slurred, half asleep, halfheartedly striking Thomas with the back of her hand.

“The Saône,” she said.

“What?”

“The Saône feeds the Rhône,” she said dreamily. “This road goes to Beaune. Another road goes to Chalon-sur-Saône.
Beaune-Saône-Rhône.
”

“Beaune-Saône-Rhône,” Thomas repeated. “Even I can remember that.”

“But we’ll steer around Beaune.”

“Why?”

“Monsters there,” she said, drawing her blanket around her head against the chill.

And she slept.

Père Matthieu woke in the abandoned grain loft he shared with Thomas and the girl, putting his hands immediately to his head, which was splitting. Thomas’s snore, a deep, bullish noise, shook the priest to his bones, and his mouth was so dry he thought it was full of nettles.

The night was dark and cold.

A stream. This loft was near a stream.

He got to his feet, stepped over the knight, and eased himself past Delphine, who was also snoring, and louder than such a small creature
should have been able to. He descended the rickety ladder. He pulled his robes aside, meaning to piss against a fence of sticks, but only groaned, unable to start.

“God forgive me my excess,” he whispered, “and I will try never to drink so very much again.”

“
Try
is the word that trips you, brother.”

The priest fumbled his robes closed and looked for the source of the voice. A monk in Cistercian white stood near him, a silver-white ring of hair around his bald crown.

“I know,” the priest said. “You are right to point out my evasion.”

“God has no love for half measures. I believe you need water. Come with me.”

The priest stumbled through the brush behind this man, who seemed to radiate a calm strength he found irresistible. He wanted to cry. They came to the stream, and both of them bent and sipped water from their cupped hands.

“Are you with an abbey here?” Père Matthieu asked when both of them had slurped their fill.

“I have come home.”

“Did your abbey succumb?”

“All I served with are gone to their reward. And you? I do not think you are Burgundian.”

“No. Norman.”

“You follow a girl.”

“Yes.”

“A girl who is not what she seems.”

The priest chuckled fondly. “Quite so.”

“She seems to be from God.”

Père Matthieu lost his smile at the other man’s implication.

“She
is
from God. I would stake my soul on it.”

“And so you have.”

The priest stared at the old monk.

“Who are you?” he said after a long moment.

The monk put his hand over the priest’s eyes and closed them, as
one might close a dead man’s eyes. At that moment, his headache left him and a great sense of ease filled him.

The old man turned and walked away.

Père Matthieu followed.

When next the old man stopped, he sat down on the side of a hill, the grass and wildflowers of which rippled in the cold breeze. The priest sat next to him, and they both looked out across the dark countryside. One house on the side of a hill opposite had a fire in the hearth. Everywhere else was dark, save above them, where the stars blazed with a sad, desperate light that seemed to Matthieu Hanicotte like the gaze of a mother watching her child wrestle with a killing fever. A comet with a long greenish tail chased two more near the constellation of the Cart.

“What do you have against the girl?” asked the priest.

“You should rather ask why you trust her.”

“She has given me every reason to do so, and none to doubt her.”

“Who was her father?”

“A country lawyer.”

“Or a heretic who fled justice in Langue d’Oc.”

Père Matthieu rubbed his temples, even though they had long since stopped hurting.

“She stopped devils in Auxerre.”

“Or brought them there.”

The priest shook his head and opened his mouth, closing it again.

The weight of the old monk’s stare yoked him, and he rubbed his neck. At length he said, “She is good. We travel with a knight…”

“A thief.”

“A knight who has sinned.”

“A knight who has been spat out by the church. A knight no longer.”

“My point was…”

“What was your point, brother?”

“She is good. She…loves.”

“As Salomé loved Herod.”

“She always counsels peace.”

“When the wicked are near, for she protects them. She will tell the thief to kill when it suits her. But we are wasting time.”

“Who are you?”

The old man got up and walked down the hill. He never looked back to see if the priest was following, and the priest almost did not follow him. Then he realized he was about to lose sight of him in the very dark night, and he would never find him again. So he got up and hurried after him.

The old monk walked quickly now, so much so that the priest had to skip every third step to keep up. They crossed a low stone wall and walked past a living calf, something the priest had not seen for a long while. It was a white Charolais, and it moved away casually, unconcerned with them. Its mother lowed nearby, as faint in the night as a diurnal moon, and it went to her. He stared after the wondrous creature so long he nearly lost his guide.

Who are you

Who are you

Who

“Are you?” the old Cistercian said as the priest drew near him.

“Pardon me?”

“Are you prepared to see what God wants from you?”

The priest did not answer but still followed him, uphill now, across another wall and around a hedge. Now the window that shone across the hill glowed warm before them and they approached a door. The old monk knocked and a woman opened; she was plain and modest, more handsome than pretty, her hair bound in a clean wimple, her apron stained with sauce. The smell of wine-stewed beef rose up and made the priest’s stomach rumble; he had put nothing in it since he had vacated his wine over the side of the cart that afternoon.

“Come in,” she said, looking intimately upon the priest and taking his hand. “Papa!” a girl at the table said, bouncing excitedly on her
bench; she was long-headed like him, like his brother. “Papa,” an even younger girl echoed, both of them ecstatic at the sight of him. “Mama said you weren’t coming!”

They were not saying
Papa
as in priest, but
Papa
as in father.

It was like a bad joke.

The priest looked for the monk, but he was gone.

The woman took his chasuble and robe off, throwing them in the fire.

“Wait,” he said. “You can’t…”

The woman put her finger to her lips to silence him.

She brought him a coarse wool overshirt and helped him on with it. He had decided this was a dream and was now content to see where it led him. It was not unpleasant.

Except that…

“Mama said you almost went to Hell because you were a bugger. And that you were following a wicked little girl to commit murder. Is that true, Papa?”

“Yes, dear,” he said, smiling at her.

“Well, I’m glad you’re home,” the other one said, smiling and showing the gap where a baby tooth had fallen out.

“I am too,” the mother-wife-woman said, ladling out a rich spoonful of beef and onions and mushrooms on Matthieu’s trencher.

They all watched him.

He ate.

Then they ate as well.

A ripple of gooseflesh went down his arm; nothing had ever tasted so good.

Now his wife brought wine.

At first his stomach quivered at the thought of it, but then a sense of peace came over him. He was about to reach for it, but then the older girl spoke up.

“Papa?” she said.

His hand hovered near the cup.

“Yes?”

“I want to live.”

“Of course you do. We all do.”

“But I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“I can’t be born unless you renounce your love of men.”

“No…I suppose not. You’re a very smart child.”

“And quit being a priest.”

“I was never a very good priest.”

“And stop that girl.”

The room got just a little darker as smoke from his robes obscured the fire. He could smell them burning.

“Excuse me?” he said.

“Delphine. She calls herself Delphine. But that’s not her name.”

“Did you say…stop her?”

Both girls nodded now, and the elder spoke.

“Stop her with a rusty old sword between her eyes. Or hold her head underwater. Or dash her brains out with a big stick.”

The younger one hit the table three times with her fist for emphasis, making the serving vessels rattle, then smiled.

“Because she’s wicked, Papa. Her father was a Cathar and she serves the devil. And she’s going to commit murder.”

He looked down and reached for the wine, his brow furrowed.

The old monk, who had reappeared at his side, grabbed his wrist before he took the cup and hauled him standing, hurting his shoulder. The monk slapped him hard.

The children started crying, but the monk made the same gesture in the air that he had made on the priest’s eyes to banish his hangover. The girls stopped crying and sucked their thumbs like placid infants. The wife did as well.

He hissed his next words at Matthieu Hanicotte.

“Will you drink your wine before you agree to what is asked of you? God should be your comfort, but you have made comfort your god. What have you ever given up in His name, except the promise of a wife and family you never wanted?”

“How can you ask me to kill a girl?”

“Killing in God’s name is a holy thing.”

The room seemed to spin.

“Pick up that sword.”

“What sword?”

The room and the hearth winked out into darkness, and when Père Matthieu’s eyes adjusted, he was standing near the stream, struggling to start pissing.

He managed.

As relief came to him, he saw a sword, badly rusted, stuck in the bank of the stream. He finished, tucked himself away, and looked again at the sword. It repulsed him.

“Pick it up, sweet Matthieu,” a voice behind him said. A gentle voice. A beautiful voice. “And take it up the ladder.”

He turned now to see Michel Hébert standing nude and glorious before him, his feet in the stream, mud up to his shins as when Matthieu last saw him nude under the burned bridge. The priest walked through the stream to him and put his face quite close to the boy’s, trying to see if the freckle was still in his eye.

The left eye.

“Go up the ladder and do what you have to.”

He could smell Michel’s breath, somewhere between a young dog’s breath and cloves. He could never get enough of that breath in his face.

“But…”

“The knight will sleep through it.”

“Michel…I…”

He tried to kiss the boy, but the boy smiled and moved his mouth away.

“Do it. We’ll kiss, and more, when you get back.”

The priest took the sword out of the bank. He felt the end of it, and it was sharp. He took it to the base of the ladder. If this was a dream, he might do what was asked for in the dream and dream a kiss from the only being for whom he had ever known carnal love.

He was owed at least that.