Christopher Buehlman - Between Two Fires

The priest stopped the cart.

They had to go past this church to get to the bridge.

“It’s nearly dawn,” said the girl. “I don’t think they move in daytime.”

The priest urged the mule forward, but it took its steps slowly, as though it reserved the right to stop the moment it felt inclined to.

The church was ghastly; if it had once belonged to Heaven, it did not now, and the air around it swarmed with flies. The mule swished his tail or jerked the skin of his flanks constantly against the many flies that landed on him. Flies crawled maddeningly in the priest’s arm hair or landed near Thomas’s mouth.

They drew closer, hugging as tightly as they could to the shops on the other side of the narrow street, but still coming uncomfortably close to the spoiled église .

Besides the gruesome Virgin, other statues of saints, kings, and apostles stood on their pedestals, lighter in color than the greenish-black growth quilting the walls, their limbs and faces also spattered here and there with blood. Although it was hard to see in the gray of first light, the blood looked bright and fresh; they had only just returned from their hunt. Did an angel with a missing wing just shift itself? Did a gargoyle lick its forepaw as a dog might? Several of them held small forms that, as the cart drew closer, the knight, the priest, and the girl were sickened to recognize as dead children. A blood-mouthed St. Paul the apostle held his stone book in one hand and, with the other, dangled a limp boy-child aloft by the head as if the saint were being fellated, the boy’s arms gone entirely, his pale legs swinging gently like a hanged man’s.

St. Paul turned his stone head and looked squarely at Père Matthieu. The priest felt an icy finger in his heart, and then his head exploded in pain as St. Paul assaulted him with a wordless shout:

DO YOU LIKE THIS BUGGER PRIEST WE DID THIS FOR YOU YOU FILTHY BUGGER SODOMITE DRUNK WHO THE FUCK DO YOU THINK YOU’RE FOOLING WOULD YOU LIKE TO CLIMB UP HERE WITH ME AND HOIST THOSE ROBES HOC EST ENIM VERGUM MEUM

The priest let drop the reins and put his hands over his ears, but it didn’t help. At the same time, a statue of St. Martin pointed his sword at Thomas and split his head with:

COWARD HAVE YOU RAPED THE GIRL YET BECAUSE YOU WILL WE WILL MAKE YOU RAPE HER IN THE ASS BUT NOT THE CUNT BECAUSE SHE WILL BE A VIRGIN WHEN YOU CUT HER THROAT FOR YOUR MASTER AND YOU KNOW WHO THAT IS DON’T YOU

St. Anne crouched as though she might leap at the girl and thought-screamed into her head:

EVERYONE YOU LOVE WILL DIE THIS PRIEST AND THIS KNIGHT BOTH OF THEM WILL DIE BECAUSE OF YOU WE WILL KILL THEM WE DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU ARE BUT WE WILL FIND OUT EVEN IF WE HAVE TO CUT YOU OPEN AND THAT TOY WON’T HELP YOU

The cart wandered unguided as the three of them writhed under the words hurled at them. Then, beyond the buildings to the east and behind the clouds, the sun rose unseen and the voices stopped. The priest collapsed against the good weight of the knight and did something like sleeping.

Delphine, who had begun to feel nauseated and had a pain in her lower belly, comforted herself by leaning forward to stroke the priest’s hair.

Thomas took his chain mail gloves off his shaking hands and took up the reins.

The only sounds as they left the Latin Quarter were the clop of the mule’s hooves and, somewhere, the barking of a dog.

The rain started almost as soon as they went out the Port St. Bernard and left Paris behind, the girl thinking of the tale of Lot’s wife, telling herself not to look back at the dying city and then doing it anyway. A column of smoke above Paris bade them farewell, as another column of smoke had once greeted them; this one, however, was in the city, where the fire at the woodcarver’s would burn his whole block, sending the healthy into the streets, consuming the sick and the dead. The drops of cold rain that fell on Delphine’s face were the vanguard of the deluge that would save the Left Bank from burning but flood the marshy land on the Right Bank all the way to the Place de Grèves. Bells tolled in the Latin Quarter; there were enough hands, at least, to pull a rope or two. Delphine tried to picture the people ringing those bells; a lone Dominican monk or a paid ringer for the convent; another priest like Père Matthieu, too scared to minister to his flock but trying to save what was left of his soul by warning them about fire. Or were the dead ringing their own bells? If statues could walk, why not them? She felt more tears coming for Annette, and also for herself; when would she feel a woman’s love again? Had Annette died because Delphine had wanted to stay with her? The words of the wicked statues rang in her head again, and she looked at the men in the front of the cart.

Please don’t let them die because of me, God.

And now the rain fell, and fell, and fell.

On the third day of it, and their second day without food, the priest saw a stone barn and a cottage and hoped they would be deserted. What had things come to when a man of God wished misfortune on a family because he coveted their roof?

The door to the cottage was open, but they made for the barn, as they would have more room for the mule, and none of them were in the mood to find bodies.

The barn was not deserted.

The priest walked in first and found a naked man on all fours, stuffing hay into his mouth. An abundance of hay and grasses were knotted into his white beard and hair. His ribs were showing, and he was grimed over and wet, whether with rain or the sweat of some fever was unclear. His eyes were wild, though. And he was not frail. He picked up a rusty scythe with a broken shaft from a pile of farming tools and started toward the priest.

Good God, he means to eat me.

Then Thomas and Delphine walked in, Thomas with his sword unsheathed, and the man bolted out the other door, falling when the edge of the scythe clipped the door frame and slipped from his hand, but scampering to his feet again almost instantly. He ran straight across the puddled field and kept running, his bare feet kicking up water all the way, disappearing not in the direction of the house, but toward the tree line past the field.

Thomas broke the silence that followed by saying, “So that’s what the reaper looks like without his robes.”

The priest laughed after a pause, but the girl just blinked rain out of her eyes and looked at them for an explanation.

“Death, girl. Death,” said the priest.

Now she laughed, too, and the sound of it was good in the barn.

They built a fire and took off as many of their clothes as decency allowed, hanging these on sticks to dry. When they had, they changed out of their underlinens and then hung them, putting the cozy, dry ones back on, glad for once not to be cold and soaked. The weather had changed, and where the days had been warm and the nights cool, now the days were cool and the nights cold. They agreed to stay in the barn until morning, then scout the fields for fruit or nut trees, or whatever they could find. In the meantime, they set out their cups and bowls, as well as Thomas’s helmet and thigh armor, to catch enough water to keep their bellies full, which somewhat eased the pain of their hunger.

“I wish we had music,” the priest said, poking at the glowing logs with the broken end of the scythe he was nearly killed with.

“I don’t. You might be tempted to sing,” Thomas said, inspecting his leg where the thing had hit him with her scepter. He suspected the bone of the shin was chipped; a truly ugly bruise had formed, and the flesh around his ankle was swollen and bruised as well. The damned thing had gotten him right where the horse had broken his leg at Crécy.