Christopher Buehlman - Between Two Fires

I don’t know if she was good or evil I can’t know that

Another thought that he had to step on from time to time was the knowledge that he was completely unfit for high ecclesiastic office. Oh, he had been a priest briefly; the pope liked to discuss biblical matters before bed, so it pleased him to seek cubiculars from among the monasteries and minor clergy. Robert’s good looks inspired even those not given to love men to a sort of instant warmth and familiarity, and his years under a tyrannical father had clarified his mild, pleasant manner. His bishop had sent the newly minted priest south with Clement in mind. Now so long had passed since his studies that he dreaded the first letter he might be asked to draft or, worse, the first Latin discourse he might be expected to give.

He might have despaired were it not for the example of Pierre Roger de Beaufort, the pope’s dull-eyed, fatling nephew, as one of the last batch of cardinals created before the plague rose up. The boy was eighteen years old, and had to be reminded hourly to shut his trapezoidal mouth and breathe through his nose. Robert could do as well as he, please God, at least that well.

He left the pallet he had set up in the study—he would not bed next to the belly-sleeper again—and walked down the spiral stairs to the garden. He had fought with the cardinal after the departure of their guests, making it clear to him that further indecency between them would be unbecoming to his new office. The old man wanted to throw him out on his ear, and would have but for his fear to displease Pope Clement, who had taken precipitate steps in Robert’s favor.

The Holy Father loves me

That is not him and you know it

I don’t know and I don’t care

He heard one of the Arabs whinny and wondered if it was Guêpe; he wanted to go and see, but what if the little witch was there again, waiting to reprove him (at best) and perhaps to wither his manhood with some spell?

He shuddered at the thought and steered instead for the olive trees, running his hand through their slender, silver-green leaves and considering the pitted fruit hanging there. He wandered near the huge stone well, running his finger along its lip. He looked at the sky. The moon had a red edge now, much talked about in the city, like the rim of a drunkard’s eye.

He did not pretend to understand the caprices of celestial clockwork; if these were, in fact, the end times, there was nothing to be done about it.

Something passed in front of the moon.

Quickly.

Not a bird.

He felt chill now; the cold hadn’t taken long to work through his sleeping-gown and cloak. His feet might as well have been bare for the thinness of his slippers.

He looked toward the house, drawn to the warmth of the still-glowing hearth and the candles in the lower rooms. He would find another cup of wine and try again to sleep.

A small silhouette now eclipsed the doorway. Young Vincent, the serving boy, waited for him.

“Père Robert,” the boy whispered, agitated.

While Robert had not held up the wafer in more than ten years, Père was the best title the boy could hang on his master’s concubine.

“Yes?”

“There are men in the house.”

Robert’s blood ran cold.

“What men?”

“I don’t know. It was too dark to see them well.”

His mind raced.

He remembered the squire whose duty it was to protect the cardinal.

“Where is Gilon?”

“He drank a pitcher to himself tonight; I could not wake him. But I have his sword.”

He saw it now.

It was nearly as big as the boy.

“Put that down,” he said.

He thought of the stable boy, a big lad, and he hurried to the stables, clutching his coat around him.

The horses whinnied and tramped about their stables; something had agitated them.

He found the boy, who normally slept like the dead at this time of night, sitting wide-eyed on his shoeing bench; despite the darkness, he could see the boy’s outline, and saw that he was gripping a pitchfork.

“Come with me to the house,” Robert said. “Vincent thinks he saw something.”

The boy shook his head in the near-darkness.

“I command you to come with me.”

“Command as you like,” the boy said in a choked voice, “but I saw something, too. And I’m not going near that house.”

“You’ll force me to tell the cardinal.”

“You can tell the Devil for all I care. And I think I know where you can find him.”

“I command you…”

“Get out!” the boy said, standing now, leveling the pitchfork.

Robert got out.

Vincent was gone.

Robert found the sword the boy had left behind and picked it up, feeling ridiculous. He barely knew how to hold it, let alone swing it at someone. He put it back down.

He walked into the house now, going to the dressing area near the kitchen hearth and taking up a carving knife. He clutched it to his chest and stood there, unsure what to do. He listened. Hearing nothing, he made for the stairs, taking them slowly, quietly.

He heard a floorboard creak, but not from the staircase; it had come from the cardinal’s bedroom.

He tried to think of where else he might go and hated his own cowardice; he could go the falconer’s apartment, but what would he say? I think someone may have broken into the house, but I decided to leave the cardinal and save myself?

There was nothing for it but to go and see.

He crept down the hallway.

The door stood open, the light from a candle casting a wavering glow.

He edged up to the door and peeked in.

A man, or something man-shaped if not man-colored, stood over the cardinal. Impossibly, it had its arm down the cardinal’s mouth all the way to the elbow. It looked up at Robert, its mouth full of dirty teeth, its eyes black but somehow luminous; were there twelve of them?

No, six.

Now two.

Its skin blushed from sickly white to baby pink and then began to sag and wrinkle.

It was becoming more like the cardinal every instant.

It spoke with the cardinal’s voice.

“Go back to bed, my darling. Don’t leave the house. Be sweet and you’ll get your hat tomorrow.”

The cardinal’s eyes stared dead at the ceiling, his crammed mouth open so wide it bled at the corners, his soft neck wrinkled back on itself like gills.

“Please don’t make me tell you again.”

The cardinal twitched under the thing.

Robert dropped the knife and walked away.

He lay on his pallet listening to soft noises coming from the other room.

By morning, he had convinced himself he had not heard them.

The cardinal came to him near first light, asking if he’d had a bad dream. Yes, he most certainly had. The cardinal pulled him gently into his bedroom and he allowed it.

He allowed everything.

Everything seemed normal.

Except that Cardinal Cyriac now slept on his back.

The large, hooded friar and the short-haired girl packed in with the poor of Avignon, who flowed toward the palace like a second Rhône of cowls and mantles and hats of many colors. If many wore the clothes of the wealthy dead, all of them bore their own hunger; it made them forget their fear of the Great Death, or, at least, to concede no more to it than rags held over faces while they pressed in together toward the pope’s table. They had already tasted the pope’s generosity at the pignotte , but there they got vegetables and bread, and not enough for all; here, in the square outside the hulking palace, beneath the little pointed towers that jabbed up like goats’ horns, the smell of roasted meat maddened them and brought water to their mouths.