Christopher Buehlman - Between Two Fires

Of the Pope’s Garden

Robert Hanicotte held the bright little flower in his hand, noting its fragility; he had seen this variety before, of course, jabs of them clustered in vivid yellow in this garden or that, but he had never had a mind for herbs and flowers. He struggled to remember its name.

“Tansy,” the pope said. “Crush it, Robert.”

He did as he was told, then put his nose to the palm of his hand.

Pope Clement smiled at the face he made, which betrayed a reaction somewhere between revelation and distaste.

“That’s it exactly. Its fragrance rushes at us, strikes us, and leaves us uncertain how to feel about it. So much power in something so tiny. Orange blossoms are similarly potent; I had the pleasure of smelling some brought from Naples when Queen Joanna was here; but they simply please where tansy bewilders. You seem bewildered, young Robert. What is it that you wanted to see me about?”

The air was cool in the garden, whose high walls thankfully sheltered it from the wind whipping through the alleys of Avignon and blinding its citizens with grit.

In the distance, in the duller section of the papal gardens where food was grown, women gathered onions and turnips bound for the pignotte , where the pope showed his magnanimity by feeding Avignon’s poor. An easier task now that the plague had thinned them so; it had raged mercilessly in the poorer quarters, leaving some streets entirely empty of the living.

A lion roared.

A second lion, in a cage neighboring the first one, paced discontentedly and then curled up at the rear of his enclosure. The cardinal had been meaning to ask where the new one came from; it was larger than Misericord, the good-natured male the pope had received from the king of Bohemia before his death at Crécy, and Misericord did not like his neighbor. The new lion had too much black in its mane and its eyes were set too wide—something one might not notice without a well-made lion next to it, although Misericord was never precisely next to the new one; he tended now to sulk in the farthest corner of his cage.

Robert glanced over at Cardinal Cyriac, who was waiting politely out of earshot, watching a snow-white peacock trundle its carriage of feathers almost over his slippered foot. The cardinal did not like the intimacy between the great man and the man who once saw to his candles, not least because he feared that the boy (hardly a boy, but boyish in body and energies) would ask to be removed from his household. He knew he had been less than generous toward his concubine of late, but seemed unable to stop himself; intellectually, the boy had something about him of the dog who feared so much to be kicked that kicking it seemed obligatory.

“Your Holiness, I had a dream that troubled me. I should perhaps not let such matters disturb my peace.”

The pope floated his hand before Robert’s gaze, which was focused somewhere left of the Holy Father’s foot, and lifted that hand gracefully, taking the younger man’s attention with it until he found himself looking into the pope’s ocean-blue eyes. It was a gesture he knew from his days as cubicular; this pope did not insist on the same sort of deference other powerful men did.

He wanted men to look into his eyes, which were powerful instruments of persuasion, benevolence, or, more rarely, blame.

“Dreams are sometimes folly and sometimes fact. If we could choose between the two, we would not need our Josephs and Daniels, would we?”

Robert shook his head.

A manicured bush full of some exquisite blue-and-white flower moved in the cold breeze behind Clement’s head. He was waiting to be told about the dream.

So Robert told him.

He omitted the fact that he had awakened in his clothes with his stockings wet from dew. The dew of the vineyards.

The pope tilted his head just a little, a paternal smile coming to his lips and his eyes.

“Are you sure this was a dream, Robert?”

“What else could it have been, Papa?”

Something tickled his hand, and he lifted it to see a fly with a body of brilliant gold rubbing its forelegs. It flew off again as if it had never been there. The smell of tansy welled up again in his nose.

“I hate to pronounce the word,” the Holy Father said, “but I think you can guess it.”

Witchcraft.

The word leapt into being and disappeared again as swiftly as the fly had.

The pope’s eyes gleamed just a little as if in confirmation.

“It is no secret that we move in strength against the Arrogant One’s hold on this world. Is it so unlikely that He would seek to stop our enterprise? And is it unlikely that He would seek to blacken our good name with His sorceries? The girl in your dream will have shown you her own villainies to confound you.”

“Do you think they mean you some harm, Papa?”

“It would serve the Cruel One’s purpose; I am turning mighty wheels against Him. Surely He trembles at the thought that we might seize from Him the city of Christ and David. Surely He dreads the check He will suffer when we remove from us His agents, the Jews.”

“I believe,” Robert said, nodding, “I believe the little girl in the dream is pretending to be the page to Chrétien de Navarre, the Comte d’Évreux.”

The pope’s eyes registered something.

The older man stepped closer.

Robert watched the white silk glove rise again, the weak sun flashing in the sapphires of the pope’s rings as he laid his hand upon his former cubicular’s shoulder. He was struck again by the majesty of this man, with his robes the color of aubergine, the pure white zucchetto on his head; he felt the warmth of the man even through the silk glove, even through his own vestments. His father had seemed mighty to him, but he only laid hands on Matthieu and Robert to strike them or yank them out of his way.

He wanted to cry at how deeply accepted he felt.

“You are perceptive and brave. And you are loyal, Robert. You have our gratitude,” the pope said, the smile lines around his eyes deepening. “And you will have much more than that.”

Robert’s breath caught in his throat with excitement and gladness.

“Cardinal Cyriac,” the pope said, calling the red-robed figure to him. “It is our pleasure to elevate this faithful servant, though to what position we have not yet determined; be as a father to him, and know that we shall return your every kindness to him tenfold.”

Dismissed, the cardinal and the young man walked out of the garden, passing by the cages of the pope’s zoo.

We shall return your every kindness to him tenfold

The cardinal moved his lips as he silently repeated the pope’s words, trying to plumb them for their true meaning. He glanced past his self-satisfied lover, whose expression was not so bold it could be called a smile, and at the enclosures of the Holy Father’s bestiary. Something was wrong with the lions. It took him a moment to register what it was.

They were both in the same cage now.

The new, black-maned one sat kingly on its haunches while Misericord hunched miserably in his corner with something like fear in his demeanor.

A chill passed down the cardinal’s left side.

Those cages don’t communicate.

He blinked his eyes, sure they must have deceived him earlier.

He looked back at the black-maned lion, which yawned, curling its tongue lazily. When it noticed him looking at it, it did a very curious thing.

It stared directly at him, its mouth standing open, and moved its tongue over its teeth as if counting them.