Christopher Buehlman - Between Two Fires

“No!” the girl said, and Thomas shot her a cold look.

“Yes,” he said.

“Excellent! In that case, I have the privilege of inviting you to my lord’s table this evening. Are you hungry?”

“God, yes,” the priest said.

The girl would not go to the castle.

Thomas commanded, the priest entreated, and in the end she skittered up a tree.

“For Christ’s sake,” Thomas said. “Get down from there.”

Nothing.

“We’ve been eating twigs and earwax for a week. Now we have the chance to really fill our bellies, and you do this.”

Nothing.

“Stop being headstrong and get in that cart! It’s getting dark. Goddamn it, don’t make me leave you out here. And don’t think I won’t.”

Nothing.

“Suit yourself,” Thomas said, and turned to follow the herald, who was politely waiting just out of earshot. The priest sat in the cart alone, torn between the two of them.

“Go with him, Père Matthieu,” she said from her perch. He could see only her feet.

“But…”

“I’ll be safe here.”

“It’s not safe.”

“I’ll be all right. I know how to sleep in a tree without falling out. Go. You want to.”

“Yes.”

“He needs you,” she said, and disappeared farther up into the tree.

The priest nodded and drove the cart behind the herald’s horse, upon which Thomas was now also mounted. The pale grass of the hillside was punctuated with thistles of the brightest purple, each flower of which seemed to have been issued exactly one bumblebee.

“Simon will show you to your chambers,” the herald said, indicating a sullen but brightly liveried boy who met them once they were inside the portcullis.

“What is the name of this place?” Thomas said.

The herald smiled pleasantly, as if this were a joke.

“Supper will be in an hour.”

The serving boy had spoken very little, but had ushered them to a small but cozy room with a real bed in it. The most he said to them at once was, “The sire invites you to go wherever you wish before supper.”

Thomas, who had been grinning broadly ever since they slipped between the strong walls of the castle, nevertheless decided to strip his armor, stay in his chambers, and close his eyes so he might be fresh for the meal. The priest went off to explore.

Two men came and asked for Thomas’s armor.

“The herald said you might want this cleaned?”

Thomas hesitated while the wary man he had been since Crécy struggled with the man he was before. The earlier man won out. Thomas handed over his gear and was given a handsome green robe with cloth-of-gold stars to wear to dinner. He hung it from a nail and lay down to sleep in his stinking long shirt.

The priest crawled into bed beside Thomas an hour later.

“What did you think?”

“A magnificent fortress, really! The tapestries! In the old style, but such colors. And such a mighty tower. I went atop the battlements and felt that, had it been daytime, I might have seen all the way to Avignon, and beyond. I tell you, I think I’ll see the Afric shores tomorrow.”

“You lie, priest.”

“I embellish. But the height was astonishing. In the morning, I’ll have to get the boy to take me to the chapel.”

“I would have thought you’d go there first.”

“I tried. I got confused in all the halls and couldn’t find it.”

The boy showed up just before the feast and shook them both awake from where they snored on the bed. They followed him to the Great Hall, which rang with the sounds of music and cheerful speech as they approached. Thomas felt ten years younger than he was, up on the balls of his feet with anticipation. The tangy, earthy smells of cooked meat and pastries brought water to their mouths as they rounded the archway and saw the hall.

“Thank you, my God, my merciful God, that the world is still sane and happy here at least,” whispered the priest, as he caught sight of wine going from a jar with a mouth like a lion into a lady’s goblet. The herald strode over to them and embraced Thomas before announcing them both.

“Sire, I present Sir Thomas of Picardy, and Père Matthieu of St. Martin-le-Preux. Sir Thomas has agreed to try his skill at arms tonight for our amusement and his greater glory.”

The lord of the castle, a stunted but ferocious leonine man with little black eyes, looked up from his conversation with a Germanic-looking knight and grinned a black-toothed grin at Thomas and the priest. A plump, black-haired young woman with a high forehead sat next to him, seeming half-asleep and indifferent to everything.

“Any man who has hardened himself with the practice of arms is welcome here. Next, any woman at all. After that, certain musicians and priests,” he said, following his jest with a roar of laughter that others around him quickly mimicked. “You are the fourth man. Now we can have our little sport tomorrow. I hear you ride a mule.”

Thomas bristled at that but said, quietly, “My horse has died.”

“That wouldn’t stop a proper horse! Well, then, you shall have one of mine. Have you an armorer?”

“I have only my armor, my sword, and this priest.”

“You can use my armorer. And my priest, if you like. Yours looks like a bugger.”

“Is there a priest who isn’t?” asked the German-looking fellow, who turned out to be a Frenchman. The whole table laughed, as well as the hurdy-gurdy player, who had stopped turning his handle while the lord spoke.

“Did I tell you to stop playing? Your job is to keep the plague out, not stand there and laugh at our jokes like they’re meant for you to hear. Turn that goddamned thing. And make it pretty. Or I’ll break your hands. Is there anything sadder than a hurdy-gurdy player with broken hands? Maybe a Jew who sneezes at the sight of gold.”

Everyone laughed, except Thomas and the priest.

The lord noted this, said, “How dull,” pointed at them, and flicked his hand. Little Simon sat them at one of the far arms of the great U-shaped table. The hurdy-gurdy played loudly, and conversation resumed. Kitchen women brought a basin around from person to person so hands might be washed, and then the herald announced, “Sir Théobald de Barentin and his squire, François.” Simon placed them at the other arm of the U, across from Thomas and the priest.

This Théobald looked familiar; he was a little younger than Thomas, with sandy hair, a small patch of beard on his chin, and clever bug-eyes made for mockery. The squire was a dandy. Théobald saw Thomas looking at him, winked quickly, then whispered something to the squire. The squire snickered.

Thomas’s hand dropped to where his sword hung on its belt. He just rested it on the pommel. This gesture was not lost on Théobald, however, who winked again, even more provocatively than the first time.

Thomas grinned at him, suddenly boyishly happy at the probability that he would be swinging a weapon at this man in the wee hours of the morning.

The food was beyond belief in its variety and in the skill of its presentation. The first course to appear was announced by the herald as “Cathar delight.” Pastries in the form of a small tower were shared out until a breach formed that revealed, within the tower, a painted almond-paste statue of a nude woman tied to a stake amid “flames” of crystallized honey and ginger that were to be broken off and sucked. The woman was crudely made, her chest flat, recognizable as a woman only by her vivid golden hair.

“I’ll have you all know, my great-grandfather was a famous killer of heretics,” the seigneur boasted, “but he might have spared this one.” The flames were all gone, so he lifted the woman out and licked her sticky belly shamelessly, then bit off her legs.