Christopher Buehlman - Between Two Fires

Yet he allowed the warmth in his heart to etch a small smile on his face. The pope’s words had so affected him that he felt, perhaps for the first time in his life, a part of something immense and wonderful.

The page of the Comte d’Évreux had turned so pale that the Valois Duc sitting to their right asked if the young man was well.

“Yes, my lord,” the page said. “I have… I have not slept as well as I should have, for excitement at the chance to see the Holy Father.”

“Eat a good piece of beef, boy; it will feed the blood. And throw a bit of wine on top of it, but not too much,” the great man said.

“We are undeserving of such kindness, my lord,” said the Comte d’Évreux, getting a hardy slap on his shoulder from the older lord just before they both looked up to see the feast that was coming from the dressing area.

It seemed that every creature that flew, swam, or walked had found its way to the trestle tables in the Grand Tinel. Swans with their necks twisted together as if in love floated amid armadas of game hens and quail, sails of swan, dove and peacock feathers jutting above them; these fleets cut through blue-plated “waters” of crabs and prawns and every imaginable fish, repeated every two yards so that each diner might reach his preferred dish. Before the diners ate, however, the steward walked both lengths of trestles, inclining over each plate a strange little coral tree hung with shark’s teeth and the horns of narwhal; the pendants were said to shiver in the presence of poison. They did not shiver. The pope rang a small bell calling for the meal to start, and conversation died in the room as the sounds of eating rose up.

For Thomas, this had more than a whiff of the feast in the devilish Norman castle about it. He ate, though, and ate well. A serving boy filled his wine goblet, and he felt Delphine’s hand on his wrist. He looked at her, with her shorn hair, wearing the livery of the dead Navarrese page, her nascent breasts bound tight beneath it. Her gray eyes speared him. She shook her head.

“What? Why?” he said.

She leaned close and whispered, “Just don’t.”

He whispered, too.

“Poison?”

“No.”

“Will it damn my soul?”

“I…I don’t think so.”

“What, then?”

Exasperated, she said, “Just drink it, then.”

He didn’t for a long while.

Then he forgot and drank.

It was good.

He heeled a drop from his lip just in time to see a viol player, who was introduced as the best in Aragon, stride into the middle of the hall, just at the end of tuning. He began, filling the room with his sad, exotic rhythms and complicated changes. Thomas knew the music, as well as the man. It was the very same one from the castle of the night tourney. As he had at that feast, the man went from guest to guest, and Thomas felt his insides go cold at the prospect of being recognized.

The musician did look Thomas directly in the face, but no longer than he had at the Valois Duc; he must have seen only the smug, youthful face of the Comte d’Évreux. When the man passed, his hips rolling with the music he bowed out of the viol, Thomas breathed out in relief and drained his goblet.

Delphine stepped on his foot and he glared at her.

She glared back.

Other musicians followed as the diners wrecked first this armada, then cross-shaped heaps of the finest pastries, nougats, and marchpanes Thomas or Delphine had ever seen. The tables were at last cleared of all but wine, and other entertainments commenced. A dancing bear capered to drum and fife; acrobats piled up on one another and tumbled. The steward apologized for the absence of a jester; a truly magnificent one had been expected from Dijon, but must have been delayed.

“I hope this will not dim your ardor, however, for, as baser men have said without error, a man may amuse himself without smiling…”

At this, the servers extinguished half of the torches lighting the hall.

“We should go,” Delphine said, though she knew there would be no way to leave early without drawing unwanted attention. She was fighting a full bladder; she had not wanted to go through the kitchen and into the latrine tower, as other guests had, for fear of exposing her sex.

“We can’t yet,” Thomas said, and she nodded, casting her eyes down.

The steward spoke again.

“Now let the forests of Provence grow beneath the stars, and let God’s friends have a foretaste of the delights that await them in the kingdom they have worked so hard to serve.”

Servants wheeled out a number of trees whose leaves had been replaced with very thin, masterfully worked leaves of gold; golden and silver fruits and other precious objects winked in their midst. Now tapestried couches were rolled out and placed in nooks of the golden forest such that they were partly or fully hidden.

“Let those among you with cooler blood seek gifts from the branches; let those with hotter humors enjoy the hunt…”

At that, the viol player returned and played a march that summoned forth a line of twenty women, all of them nude save for magnificent stag masks with golden antlers. Their bodies were perfect; lithe and firm, no one of them seemed younger than seventeen or older than twenty-five. They all struck poses beneath and among the trees, some leaning, some on all fours, one hanging upside down from a branch.

Thomas stared at this spectacle, a slow smile creeping onto his face.

Delphine shuddered.

Now the knights and cardinals began to file around the table.

Servants scooted back their benches.

“Come on, man!” the Valois Duc said, as drunk as any man still walking, “unless you mean to spend the whole night at whispers with your page.”

Thomas followed him before Delphine could speak again.

He walked out into the dim hall, afraid and excited.

He entered the grove, melting in with the red-robed cardinals and resplendent seigneurs; a white-gloved hand plucked a pear of emerald-studded gold from a tree. A younger knight rubbed the backside of a “stag” who wiggled, and then led him off to the near-privacy of a couch. One girl’s nude bottom now rubbed against Thomas’s hip, and she turned her stag mask to him; the hall was so dim he could see nothing but blackness in the holes cut for her eyes.

A wall of strong perfume hit his nose, eastern scents he could not name as cardamom and sandalwood and patchouli, but which pleased and thrilled him.

He began to stiffen against his silk and woolen tights, pushing at the bottom of his red cotehardie. The stag noticed and lined herself up to grind the center of her on that. She was very good at it. Had he been nude, he would have entered her; the tip of his verge had nearly entered her even through the cloth.

It felt so good, and it had been so long since he had enjoyed that sort of pleasure, that full release was imminent. With some effort, he pulled back from her, another knight laughing at him and clapping at his now-obvious excitement.

“With your permission, my good comte, I shall take your place,” he said. “I had an eye on that one the moment I saw her long legs.” So saying, he fumbled up his outers and down his inners and slid into the girl with a frisson, not even bothering to four-leg her to a couch, but taking her against a tree, the golden leaves of which were soon rattling against one another.

Thomas saw that some had taken gifts and returned to their tables, so he reached up for a whitish something-or-other that turned out to be a finely etched ivory comb trimmed with golden angels. He took it and hurried back to his spot, just as he saw Pope Clement, magnificent in his red and cloth-of-gold robes and triple crown, enter the grove. With each step, a golden cross flashed on the toe of one of his slippers. He smiled at Thomas, and Thomas smiled back.