Christopher Buehlman - Between Two Fires

“I’ve had worse.”

“Well, I haven’t. I’m just a soft priest in a cozy village. Or was. At least there’s a little salt. I spared a pinch of salt so we could choke the rest down.”

The girl changed the water in Thomas’s cloth and rubbed his temples again. It was so cool and so good. He closed his eyes and breathed a long, contented sigh. This was the best he had felt since… since something awful happened. What? Something in a river.

“What I can’t stop thinking about,” the priest went on, “is wine. I never thought it would just run out. I thought men would always make wine, as bees make honey and cows make milk. That I would one day find nobody, not one person, with a skin or cask or pitcher of wine to sell, had never occurred to me.”

“I pray for you, Père Matthieu,” she said.

“That I’ll find good wine?”

“That God will fill you so full with His love that you will not need wine.”

“That’s a fine prayer, girl. But, if it’s no trouble, ask the Lord to send me a little wine along with His love. I promise to be grateful for both.”

Thomas got better slowly, but more quickly than any of those few the priest had seen survive the plague. He took walks in the priest’s yard, slurped bad soup, cracked the few stray almonds left in the cart, and savored the last of the girl’s honey.

By the end of August she was asking if he felt well enough to travel.

“Let me guess. Paris, then Avignon.”

“Yes.”

“For mysterious reasons that will come to you later.”

“Yes.”

“It must have to do with the pope.”

“I don’t know.”

“Because the pope lives there.”

“And you lived in Picardy. Was everyone who came to Picardy coming to see you?”

“Hey, priest. Is this little girl a witch or a saint?”

“A saint, I think,” Père Matthieu said.

“But you’re not sure.”

“No, actually, I’m not.”

“Would you like to go to Paris with us?”

“No.”

“So you’ll stay here, then.”

“No.”

“Which is it?”

“I’ll go to Paris. You asked me if I would like to go to Paris. I would not. But I’m out of food, wine, and parishioners. So, like it or not, I have to leave my pleasant little house. If she’s a saint, this is a holy pilgrimage. If she’s a witch, I might try to mitigate her wickedness.”

They left on the first day of September.

On the third of September, against the wishes of his wife, the seigneur of St. Martin-le-Preux at last gave in to the yapping of his herald and seneschal, who claimed the priest was harboring a coarse man who had insulted the lord’s honor and broken his bell, as well as having provoked the foulness in the river to kill numerous peasants, on one of whom it seemed to have choked and burst itself.

The lord reluctantly sent his last three men-at-arms down to search the priest’s house, but they found that the priest had left. Knowing the priest’s brother to be a servant in the house of His Holiness in Avignon, the men searched the house for treasures Père Matthieu might have left behind. One of them poked in the dirt of the yard with his pole-arm. One went through his trunk, his pot, and his few tools.

The other turned up the straw of the bed.

The next day, this man had a fever.

Four days later, everyone in the castle was dead.

The new seneschal was last, crying at his own image in a polished piece of brass, trying with a shaking hand to paint fine eyebrows on the ruin he had become.

The castle was deceptive in its proximity; it floated on its pale green hill for the last half of the day, seeming as distant as a celestial body, and then at dusk it was upon them, with its proud white walls and turrets. The banners of the seigneur flew from the square keep, and men walked at ease atop the gatehouse, where the drawbridge was down in welcome. Perhaps the plague had spared this place.

“Let’s stop here and see if we can get a meal,” Thomas said.

“I have to get to Paris,” said the girl.

“And still you won’t say why.”

“I don’t know yet.”

“I counter what you don’t know with what I do know. We are hungry, and being fed is better than being hungry.”

“Not always,” she said.

“Yes, always,” said Thomas.

The priest said, “I don’t see what’s wrong with fortifying ourselves, if they will share with us. I have a little coin.”

The girl shook her head obstinately, but Thomas stopped the cart and looked for a long while at the strong castle, imagining where an attacker would place siege engines and try to dig tunnels if he came up against this toothy stone beast. The hill was steep, the ground was tough-boned, and the walls were well built and hung with wooden hoardings from which defenders could work all sorts of evil against attackers. The English would have the Devil’s own time trying to get in there, if they came.

“Let’s goooo,” the girl whined, sounding less like a witch or a saint and more like a brat who needed the back of a hand.

“Shut up,” Thomas said. “A rider’s coming.”

Just as the sun went down, a man on a delicate-looking Arab horse issued from the open gate, pluming dust behind him.

The priest smoothed his robes and held up his crosier. The girl knitted her brow. Thomas, seeing the splendid livery of the herald shining even in the failing light, suddenly remembered that he was in a cart, and felt ashamed. Carts were for peasants, not men-at-arms. He got out of it and stood, holding his hand up in salute.

The herald of this castle was every bit as sunny and pleasant as the one in St. Martin-le-Preux had been haughty and contemptuous. His voice broke out of him like birds from a copse of trees.

“Greetings to you, friends in God’s love. Are you come to see the tourney? Or,” he said, looking at Thomas, “to compete in it?”

“Neither, friend,” said Thomas. “We are on our way to Paris.”

“Paris? Have you heard no news from there?”

“No.”

“Perhaps because nobody is coming out alive. The Scourge is carrying off three hundred a day there. Death reigns in that city, and there is no law. And there is no food.”

“There is little food anywhere.”

“Our tables are well kept.”

“And the plague?”

“It has come and gone. We were touched, and then it sputtered and went out. Our seigneur has ordered us to be merry and gay, and to fear no strangers. And to make music. He has ordered fife, drum, and viol players to play at every hour, even through the night. He believes the sickness, like a dog, bites those who fear it.”

“The dog I saw bites everyone and can’t hear music.”

“I can only speak for what has happened here, my lord. Many fell, but now none fall. And jolly music plays all the time.”

“I am no lord.”

“A pity. You might have broken a lance tonight. In the night tourney.”

“I thought tournaments were forbidden by the king.”

“The king’s arm has grown short.”

Thomas smiled, showing his white teeth. “I would like to see this tourney,” he said.

“Can you ride?”

“I have no horse.”

“But can you ride?”

“Well enough.”

“We might find one for you. You look like a man who has spun a quintain or two, and, if the truth be told, we are not so well provisioned with knights that we will turn our noses up at any worthy horseman. Our lord has called for a tourney, and we shall make one as best we can. Will you fight?”