Christopher Buehlman - Between Two Fires

Fruits and cheeses came next, served in bowls painted with images of men and women copulating. The priest ate hungrily from them, and when Thomas pointed out the figures, the priest shrugged and said, “Perhaps this is as close as I get to being fruitful and multiplying.” Thomas kept looking at him, amused by his moral flexibility. “At least the sinful painter was a man of talent, wouldn’t you agree?” he said, and Thomas laughed.

“I wonder how the girl’s getting on,” the priest said now.

“As well as she deserves,” Thomas said. “I will not be governed by her in every little thing. If she wants me to go to Paris, fine, but she’ll learn to stay where I say and eat where I say.”

“Eating from these bowls may not be a sin. But I should have stayed with her,” the priest said.

“What, up her tree?”

“I could have sat beneath it.”

“You still can. No one’s keeping you here.”

“Yes,” the priest said, then looked up at where the hurdy-gurdy player had come very near, staring at the priest while he played loudly and smiled. A woman filled the priest’s goblet with thick, red wine. The priest did not leave.

Now vases and amphorae heaped with roasted eels and lampreys were brought to table, but Thomas thought of the thing in the river and could not bring himself to try these. He did notice Théobald of Barentin greedily heaping eels upon his platter; when he saw he had Thomas’s eye, he bit into one of the long fish, said, “Vengeance at last!” and laughed, though Thomas had no idea what he meant.

The main course came next.

“Three Kings,” the herald intoned, and women brought out a huge platter piled with venison and other exotic meats, and several boats of garlicky brown gravy. Peacock and pheasant feathers accented it artfully, and topping it were three large, roasted monkeys sitting on cedar thrones, wearing capes of ermine. They wore golden crowns, which the cook, a man with narrow eyes and very long fingers, proudly tipped back, letting steam rise from their open skulls, into which he placed three elegant spoons. The chamber burst into applause, and one fleshy woman actually wept, though whether for the beauty of the display or the pathos of the monkeys was unclear.

The seigneur practically leapt from his chair; he took the spoon from the central monkey’s head and slurped the delicate meat, contorting his face in ecstasy.

“Priest!” he said, “How do you say ‘This is my brain’?”

The priest looked flabbergasted.

“Well?”

“Er… in Latin?”

“No, in cunting Flemish. Latin, Latin! What else do you ask a bugger priest about?”

“Well. Hoc est cerebrum meum. But that’s uncomfortably close to…”

“A monkey may speak Latin, may he not?”

“If a monkey may speak at all, I suppose.”

The lord slurped again from the spoon, then said, “Hoc est cerebrum meum,” in the squeakiest monkey voice he could muster. Now he dipped the spoon back into the monkey’s head and walked a spoonful of brain purposefully over to the priest’s lips. “Say it,” he commanded.

“I’d rather not,” the priest said, squirming uncomfortably.

The nobleman pressed the spoon against the priest’s lower lip.

“Say it!”

“My lord,” Thomas said evenly but with a steady gaze.

“I… I… forgive me, but no.”

“My lord ,” Thomas said, scooting his chair back a little. Across the hall, Théobald de Barentin scooted his chair back as well.

The hall was silent now.

The seigneur shot Thomas a look that made him suddenly see a lion killing an old man on sand with a hooting crowd looking on. The image left as quickly as it came.

“Very well,” the seigneur said, in a mildly conciliatory tone, “the priest need not speak Latin for us. But he shall have no brains until he does. And no wine until he has brains.”

So saying, he turned his back and walked the spoon back toward the Three Kings.

The priest cleared his throat.

“Hoc… Hoc est cerebrum meum,” he said quietly.

The lord turned on his heel now, grinning mildly, and steered the spoon for the priest’s mouth, which he opened, accepting the spoonful of salty, garlic-scented meat.

It was the best thing he’d ever tasted.

His goblet was filled.

At just that moment, the seigneur noticed that the hurdy-gurdy player had stopped playing to watch the standoff. He grabbed the little man’s closest arm, dragged him to the table, and, in three nauseating blows, broke his hand against it with a heavy pewter mug. The musician screamed and ran off, dropping his hurdy-gurdy, which broke as well.

“Where’s the viol player?”

“Sleeping, sire,” the herald said. “He played all last night for us.”

“Wake him.”

Thomas and the priest ate to bursting. Thomas ate no monkey, but he did fill his trencher with cuts of strange meat he drenched well in the intoxicating gravy. “What is this?” he asked a serving woman.

“Deer, ram, wild boar,” she said. “It is all roasted together.”

“Tastes boarish, but strange bones for a boar,” Thomas said.

“Perhaps I am mistaken. My lord has beasts from many lands in his cages, and they are eaten when it pleases him. Or perhaps it is a Jew.”

The man next to Thomas laughed so hard at this he nearly choked.

The viol player, while pale with exhaustion, was very skilled. He looked Moorish, and moved his hips in strange and sensual rolls while he drew across the honey-sweet strings. Thomas was becoming drunk, and the priest was drunker. He noticed Père Matthieu watching the musician distractedly.

“Jesus Christ, you are a bugger,” Thomas laughed, though there was no laughter in his eyes.

“No! Just. The music. I am enraptured with it. I have never heard its equal,” the priest said. A fat drop of sweat fell from his nose. “Or, almost never.”

Thomas noticed the bored gaze of the woman who sat beside the seigneur upon him now. The fire from the hearth and many torches made her headpiece twinkle hypnotically. She was beautiful, more so than he had noticed before. He raised his goblet slightly in salute to her, which she answered by dipping her thumb into a monkey’s head and putting that thumb into her mouth. Thomas saw her tongue flicker for just a moment and knew that the wound he got in St. Martin-le-Preux was completely healed.

“I think the lord’s daughter likes you,” said the man next to Thomas.

“Daughter? She’s past a maiden’s age. Where is her husband?”

“She is newly widowed.”

“How newly?”

“He was killed at Crécy.”

“That was two years ago.”

“Are you quite sure?”

“I was there.”

“Oh, well. Seems like yesterday. She was quite attached to him. We all were.”

“What was the knight’s name?”

“You know, I have forgotten. I’ll just ask her. Euphémie! Ho!”

The woman turned her head slowly and looked at the man. Her eyes were very large and green.

“What do you want, Hubert?”

“What was your husband’s name?”

“My husband?”

“Yes, you know. The very tall, handsome one who gave you several stillbirths, then went off to die in Picardy.”

“Ah. Him. His name was…”

“Horace?” barked her father.

“No.”

“It was Pierrot?” suggested the viol player with a decidedly Aragonés inflection, never missing a stroke on his instrument or a turn of his waspish hips.

“No, you silly hedge-cock, I would never spread my legs for anyone named Pierrot. No, it was…”

She opened her mouth now and issued a deep, manly belch. One heartbeat after it was finished, the whole room erupted in exuberant laughter.