Christopher Buehlman - Between Two Fires

“Ah,” the priest said. His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed hard twice, and his eyes moistened. He nodded. He looked as if he wanted to reach out for Thomas’s hand, but he didn’t.

“Anyway, nobody comes now. I haven’t even been in the church in two weeks. I’m as scared to go there as they are.”

“If you don’t go to church, how do you know they don’t go looking for you?”

The priest looked down at his hands, where the fingers were grabbing each other.

“They know where I live. Some still come for confession; they shout their sins from the path and I shout back their penance from my window. Though even that’s been nearly a week. No more Mass, in any event. And the wine may serve a holier purpose in your belly.”

“Oh?”

“I was hoping a cup or two might extract some knightly oath from you. You are a knight? Or were?”

“I was. I still am, I suppose. But it feels more like I was. It feels like a long time ago.”

“You could be one again.”

“I doubt it. I have done things.”

“Things?”

“I was cheated of my holdings.”

“The English?”

Thomas shook his head.

“Worse. A Norman. Le Comte d’Évreux, who treated with the English after our loss at Crécy. My keep was near Givras. I…despaired of justice. I took to the road and lived by the strength of my arm. I sought out even worse men than myself. I wanted revenge on him. I still do.”

Thomas fell silent.

“Do you want to make confession?”

“No.”

“Not to me, eh?”

“I just don’t want to.”

“I wouldn’t blame you if it was me.”

“No, it’s… No. There’s no point.”

“Kill the abomination in the river and God will make you a knight again.”

“I’d rather He got me another goblet of this.”

“No,” the priest said. “You wouldn’t rather a goblet of wine than your honor back. Your joking is pleasant, but it doesn’t hide the hole in you.”

Thomas turned his eyes away from the priest’s warm gaze.

He only just managed not to cry. He did this by angering himself at God for making him suffer and pay for sins he had been backed into. God ringed you round with hounds and cornered you, then speared you with your back against a tree. When Thomas spoke, he turned down the corners of his mouth, and his words came out as a quiet growl.

“I’ll kill the whoring thing.”

Thomas slept poorly; the wine had given him a burning stomach, and when he slept he dreamed of wading in mucky water, looking for things he had dropped. He gave up at first light, still belching sour wine, and began to put his armor on.

“Christ, it tasted good going in.”

He had slept in his filthy padded leather gambeson, as he had for months now, so he started right in putting on his armor, starting with his cuisses . He had finished buckling his second thigh piece when he stopped. The priest was sleeping heavily on his short bed with his knees drawn up and his ankles crossed. Thomas shook him awake. The smaller man looked frightened at first to see the large, strong shadow over him, but then he remembered he had a guest.

“Good morning,” the priest said.

“How deep is the river?”

“The river?”

“Where your monster is. How deep? Thighs? Tits? Chin?”

“Well… chin. On me. At the deepest. Perhaps to your shoulders.”

“Shit,” Thomas said.

“You’re really going to the river, then?”

“I said I would.”

“What we say and what we do are…”

“Well, I do what I say. Which is why I don’t say much.”

Thomas stood for a moment, considering the heavy, rusty mail coat in his hands.

“You’re wondering about your armor.”

“Yes.”

“You only half believe there’s a monster in the river. And you don’t want to drown looking for it.”

“I know of men who have been pulled under by their armor. That’s real. The thing you described? I don’t know. It seemed possible last night that a monster might be eating men in your river, though I’ve never in my life seen a monster. So this morning…Can such a thing exist in sunlight? And yet it seems these are the end days, and I think Hell has opened its doors.”

“I think that, too.”

“Spines, the boy said?”

“Spines.”

Thomas considered the priest’s soft hands and kind, almost comical face, what with his wild gray eyebrows and long head. He didn’t seem sick, though he was likely a bugger; not that Thomas had known many of the latter.

“Help me with the rest of this.”

The priest stood and helped Thomas wriggle into his mail shirt and buckle on his shoulder pieces.

“You should scour all that,” the priest said, smiling and showing Thomas his orange hands.

“Later. If your big eel eats me and shits me by the river, it should have rust for its spice.”

“What, saffron? It’s nearly that color.”

“Who can afford saffron? Mix it with blood and we’ll have paprika.”

The priest laughed.

Thomas put his surcoat on over everything; it was filthy and blue and had no coat of arms on it.

“Now get me your sword; you’ll want me to bless that.”

“Where is my sword?”

He had propped it against the wall, but now it was gone. As was the girl. Thomas banged the door open and went outside, where the sun was now rising, peering tentatively under a scud of clouds that would soon swallow it. He saw the girl sitting by a tree with his sword unsheathed next to her. She had blood on her gown. He stomped over to her, took the sword up with one hand, and yanked her up by the arm with the other.

“Jesus whoring Christ,” he said, looking at the cut on the meat of her hand. It was half the length of her smallest finger and not very deep, but it was still bleeding. “Do I have to watch you every second? Can’t I just sleep without you doing something stupid?”

“I’m sorry,” she said meekly.

“What was your idea, touching my sword? Nobody touches my sword but me.”

“I… I wanted to clean it for you.”

“Well, don’t! This is what you get.”

He bent her arm around hurtfully to show her dripping hand to her.

“I want to help.”

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

She nodded, trying not to cry, and he noticed he was still holding her wrist, which suddenly looked very small and fragile in his big hand. He let it go. She wanted to rub it, but she was embarrassed and hid it behind her instead, looking up at him. He was about to bark, What do you want now? at her, but he thought about it and saw that she was hoping to get some kind word from him. He fished around in his head for one.

“Go… go see the priest,” he said, as gently as he could. “He may have a cloth to bind that little cut. And put some yarrow in it, since you know what that is.”

She obeyed him.

He picked up his sword and saw that her blood was smeared on its point and the well-notched edge that had bitten her.

“Clumsy little witch,” he said.

It got darker.

A drop of rain fell in Thomas’s eye.

The priest went with Thomas, wearing his chasuble and a threadbare golden stole, holding the crosier over his head while the girl walked beside them swinging a censer with frankincense and rosemary in it. At the priest’s suggestion, Thomas held his sword by the blade, inverted so the quillons made a cross of it. The rain was light now, little more than a mist, but the road was muddy enough to coat the soldier’s boots and the priest’s simple shoes. The girl had left her shoes behind because she felt God liked bare feet better than shoes for holy work.