The Execution (27 page)

He held his head in shame, kneeling on
the stone floor before the older priest, his hands clasped tightly
in his lap. “Father, I don’t know what to say.” He looked up, his
tormented eyes damp. “I love her, father—I cannot bear to be away
from her.” He gestured with his palms up, adding hurriedly,
“Perhaps it is a horrible mistake that I have chosen this path. My
father may be mistaken too! I have prayed...” His dark eyes were
bloodshot, his face gaunt, his hair dulled from the emotional
anguish he so recently suffered.

“
Silence!” The monsignor
waved him quiet. “Don’t disrespect everything that has been done on
your behalf!” He shook a stubby finger penitently, “Have you any
idea the work that has gone into bringing you to this station!” He
slashed the air with his finger. “It is not open to debate—you will
accept your ordainment without argument!”

At long last, the Monsignor stopped,
breathing heavily. Missing his front teeth, his incisors intact, he
looked oddly to D’ata like a fat old walrus in a black dress,
complete with white collar. He shook the image from his mind and
cradled his face in his hands. “Please, just tell me,” he whispered
and implored the Monsignor with all the heartache in the world,
“where is she? Please?”

* * *

Upon their discovery, Monsignor
Leoceonne had flown into a fury. Part of his anger came from the
fact that he had been entrusted with the young man’s ordainment and
had evidently failed miserably. Part of his anger was that his
beloved church had been so flagrantly defiled. After he raged for a
good long while, he burned the lovely ornate Christ rug, with the
now truly bleeding heart, behind the sanctuary. The flames had
lapped hungrily at the thick wool and had burned scarlet
red—Satan’s fire.

Secretly, subconsciously, a certain
element of the monsignor’s hostility had been due to the carnality
of the situation, a desperate act that he himself would, should,
never taste.

The other priests had been summoned,
the girl had been removed. D’ata had been forced into his quarters
and locked inside until it could be decided what to do with
him.

Monsignor Leoceonne, after his initial
outrage at finding the two in such a compromising position, had
thought hard about what to do next. He met with the other priests
to decide what steps should be taken. It was without dispute that
the papacy in Rome must be notified. Monsieur Cezanne would have to
be notified of his son’s transgression as well.

It was a very volatile situation. The
church in Nimes could be punished and there was sure to be an
investigation, but the goal was not to remove D’ata from his
theological schooling. It was more prudent to force him into
submission, to break and rebuild his heart. If they could do that,
then his character would be more useful, more faithful than he
would have ever otherwise been.

“
What do you mean, ‘Where
is she?’” The monsignor yelled at D’ata, his fat jowls shaking as
he shook his head furiously. “She has been sent back to her family,
and her father will know of this! Believe me!” He ranted on, “You
have seen the last of her, D’ata! Furthermore, if I witness another
confession of the sorts which you have given me in the recent past,
it will be God’s will that you shall be blinded, never to look upon
one such as her again!”

“
I have only told the
truth!” D’ata insisted. “Surely truthfulness cannot be abominable
in the eyes of God?”

“
You, my son, are
arrogant, disobedient, and bent on destruction!” The monsignor
paused to gasp for air, licking his lips from between his toothless
gap. His tongue snaked out, curiously small for the size of the
rest of him, especially considering the volume of what must pass
over it daily. “Your disobedience has hurt many, not the least of
which is the young woman you profess to love so much!”

He whirled again, his robes brushing
D’ata’s knees. “And do not think that your honesty makes right with
our Father the abomination of your thoughts. I cannot allow you to
destroy yourself and damage so many others while you
do!”

D’ata pleaded, “Please forgive me—I
don’t mean to hurt anyone. It’s just that...” His head fell and he
shook it, falling silent, a desperate broken figure on the cold
stone floor. Outside, the winds died down, the storm fading with
melancholy sympathy.

Father Leoceonne harrumphed, accepting
the humbled gesture as contrition. “Good, it is a start. However,
do not think your repentance will right everything overnight. There
will be a summons, disciplinary measures, and your father has been
notified.” He gestured smugly, arms crossed, “This could go very
poorly for you, D’ata.”

The young priest looked up. “No! Dear
God, no—please don’t bring my father into this, not yet!” D’ata
begged,

The Monsignor would hear none of it.
“It is done. There is no one to blame but yourself!” Satisfied that
he’d chastened the younger man sufficiently for the evening, he
believed that the horror on the young man’s face was, in fact,
submissive remorse. Monsignor Leoceonne pressed his fat smooth
hands together in front of himself and swirled one last time,
sweeping from the room like a great juggernaut. He locked the door
behind him, pocketing the key.

* * *

D’ata rose from the floor. He moved
slowly to the window. For a long while he just stood, his sad,
slender hands resting gently against the plastered sill. His heart
broke as he remembered Julianne and the terrified look on her face
as they dragged her from the church. She’d reached for him and kept
saying, “No! No! You can’t!” She kicked and thrashed at the men,
berating them for their narrow-mindedness. She’d even called them
fourteenth century buffoons!

How could the heart ache so? For
D’ata, it was a crushing, suffocating ache. Once more, she was
gone. He’d promised her he would not let that happen! And after
she’d come so far to find him!

Looking out through the crack between
the wood of the hinged shutters, he squinted to see the night,
blinking to adjust his eyes to the darkness. There was no moon as
the night sky was blanketed behind what was left of the summer
storm.

The window was barred from the
outside. He sighed and lifted the candle to the window’s ledge.
Pulling the heavy, leaded crucifix from his neck, he began to use
the cross to pry loose the mortar that cemented the window hinges
to the wall. It crumbled away fairly easy. The plaster was a bad
mix; not enough sand had been used. Even so, it was well past
midnight when the heavy wooden sash finally fell away and the
window hung jauntily from the frame.

With one final heave, D’ata thrust the
offensive timber aside. For a quiet moment, he leaned on tiptoe,
straining to see left and right, listening.

Swilled with wine and most likely
masturbated to exhaustion, the remaining priests were slumbering
deeply. They would flagellate tomorrow for penance.

Satisfied that all was quiet, he
thrust the mangled crucifix into his pocket and hoisted himself
onto the window jamb, shimmying easily out the little opening. He
tumbled quietly to the blanket of wet leaves below and glancing
about, made softly into the night.

D’ata’s mind was made up, he must find
her and make them understand. Palming the crucifix, the chain
broken from the night’s work, he mouthed a silent prayer and stole
quietly into the night, praying that God would understand, forgive,
and—help him.

The bible remained face down on the
bedside table. The passage was Corinthians; “Love does not delight
in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always
trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.”

Julianne had found him. Now, he would
find her.

The young lover made his way
cautiously to the edge of the village before quickening his pace.
The black of the woods reached out her long fingers, wrapping them
delicately around the dark figure. The faintest smile spread across
his lips as he realized the eminence of his escape. Smiling gently
back at him, the forest received him, pulling him in, swallowing
him whole.

By morning, D’ata was well away from
the township and wandered south and west. He was many days from his
hometown of Marseille, but he possessed nothing but time and the
courage of a desperate heart. The fire in his soul fueled any
weakness in his legs.

He tripped along, staying well away
from any paths or roads, obscuring himself in the densest regions
of the forest. The beasts of the night only watched him pass,
giving him safe berth. D’ata was uncertain of his whereabouts, only
having a general idea of the proper direction, but this was
comforting to him. He felt safe and hidden in this uncertainty,
sure that each step brought him closer to his love.

It was well into the next afternoon
before D’ata paused, weary in his tracks. He sought a secluded spot
to rest. Finally, he came upon a particularly friendly forest
spruce with its branches reaching and brushing to the forest
floor.

Crawling beneath the blanketing
foliage, he scrambled up close against the trunk of the tree and
stretched out, completely concealed from any unlikely traveler who
may remotely pass by.

The dense umbrella of needles
effectively obscured any of the afternoon light from disturbing his
rest, and the forest became a friend to him, a keeper of his
secrets. It swept him into its silent, hidden arms.

With a last simple prayer, the young
priest pulled his robes over his head and lapsed into an exhausted
slumber, his belly empty and his heart full. He dreamed—of their
baby.

CHAPTER
TWENTY-TWO

†

Ravan awakened to the clanking of
armor and the ringing of swords in the yard. He groaned, sat
upright on the edge of the bed, and squinted against the daylight.
The dirty dishes remained on the settee from the evening before. He
reached for the water pitcher but had finished the last of it
midway through the night.

His battered body still objected to
standing full upright and he struggled to his feet. Leaning heavily
on the windowsill, he squinted and tried to make out the activity
outside.

Dinner had agreed with him and he felt
just the tiniest bit stronger this morning as he shifted his weight
from one leg to another. He was hungry again.

The corpses were gone from the
courtyard. Instead, a fire raged nearby, smoldering as the tissue
boiled from the bodies. He wondered if the men had been friend or
foe. Perhaps this was to be his eventual fate as well.

He watched as thirty to forty men
fought, mostly in pairs, sometimes three or four together. Their
weapons varied from sword to axe, spear to pike, and some fought
bare-fisted. There appeared to be watchers, referees of sorts, who
negotiated the rules. They appointed partners and when the fighters
were inadequate, flailed upon them with heavy staffs, without
apparent objection.

It seemed to Ravan a ridiculous sort
of conditioning. He scowled at the obscenity of it and turned his
thoughts instead to the archers.

At the far end, men with longbows
practiced. Their targets were rude, straw-stuffed replicas of human
beings. There was also a row of pumpkins on posts, emulating heads,
he presumed. The targets were varying distances, the farthest not
more than three hundred paces. He studied the archers, found them
average for the most part. They were fairly accurate at two hundred
paces—only a few were consistent at three.

These men were the most elite of
Duval’s soldiers—this Ravan knew. While anyone could point and
shoot a crossbow, the long-bowmen was the most accurate and highly
trained of all the soldiers, their training frequently beginning at
a very young age. While the crossbow could kill at two hundred
paces, in the right hands and with the right conditions, the
longbow could possibly kill at four.

Also, the longbow could be fired up to
five times more frequently in the span of a moment than a crossbow,
making it not only more precise, but more efficient. Both weapons
could penetrate all but the thickest of armor; however, it was a
skilled long-bowman who remained the most coveted in
battle.

Ravan wondered if Duval knew of his
skills at this craft, if that was what had landed him as a captive
at the encampment. It was a possibility, or perhaps he was simply
intended to be a foot soldier. He instantly decided that this was
not likely considering the sacrifices Duval had made to bring him
here.

Never mind Duval’s plans. Ravan had
plans of his own, many things to think through. He turned and sat
back down onto the end of the bed as he started to fabricate a
strategy.

Eventually, he rose to test the door,
still barred. Leaning his head against the heavy timber of the
jamb, he closed his eyes and listened. He could make out the
occasional soft scuffling of boots and the muttering of the guards
beyond the door. “You out there—I am hungry again.”

Unable to gain their attention, he
returned to stretch out on the bed and wait.

The room was cold and he pulled the
blanket up over his chest, crossing his arms beneath it. Slowly
straightening and retracting his leg, he willed the stiffness to
leave his thigh. He breathed in and out, slow deep breaths to test
his lungs, forcing gradual depth to the amount of air he could take
in. He pondered Duval and hatred immediately, reflexively, stirred
in his belly. It was a visceral, physical sensation, and he sucked
a quick breath in.