Christopher Buehlman - Between Two Fires

“At sunset,” the criers had cried, and now they watched the sky in the west; the sun’s departure was sweet to many of them already, as it called them every day to lay down hammers, scythes, and buckets and go to their hearths to eat and tell stories, but this was the first public feast since the Pest had fallen on the city.

This would be something.

As the last pale blue in the sky darkened to indigo, the herald bearing the crossed keys blew a trumpet note, and the doors leading to the Courtyard of Honor swung back.

The crowd surged in, managing not to trample one another, but edging as close to the front as possible for the first pick of the feast. Words came first of course, words in Latin, censers swung with strange and heady smoke, words in French about how the coming war would be seen from Heaven. Words about Cardinal Hanicotte and how the Lord knew his own and called them forward to be raised.

Now a commotion rose up.

Two men in yellow hats, bearing yellow circles sewn on their breasts, pushed forward, crying for help; they removed their hats. One of the men had dried blood on his head and a face streaked with grime from where he had hastily tried to remove plaster dust with his hand. They were Jews, they said. Children of Abraham and loyal citizens of Avignon. An abomination had risen. Something wicked had broken into the ghetto and was pulling down houses.

“It is made of men! A monster made of men!”

The crowd gasped, and, in the silence following their gasp, sounds of distress and terror sounded in the distance.

The crowd began to mutter.

“If we call God a different name, we share the same Devil! Help us against him, Your Holiness! We beg you!”

At this, both men went to their knees and extended their hands in supplication.

The people in the courtyard began to yell, “Yes,” and, “Help them!” and, “Please!” and they moved and rippled like a living thing wanting to react to threat.

The Holy Father stood and calmed them, calling forward a small group of soldiers and speaking privately to their sergent , whose eyes bugged at what he heard; but then he lowered his head and nodded.

“Those are not enough!” the man with the bloodied crown despaired. “You have not seen it!”

Cardinal Cyriac stood and said, “If the Devil is here, soldiers of the church will give chase to him. If these were the hysterics of a deceived people, they will wish for the Devil.”

One or two in the crowd laughed, but most were too disturbed by the sincerity and horror of the plea they had heard.

Now the soldiers marched off toward the Jewish quarter, bringing the men with them.

A woman’s scream, far away but distinct, rose up past the new wing of the palace.

“If the Devil is in their quarter,” said the pope, “perhaps this will be the argument that leads them to recognize that their Messiah awaits their recognition and stands ready to help them against him whose bidding they have foolishly done for so long.”

Musicians came with drum and cornemuse, covering any further noise from beyond the walls.

And now, at a nod from the pope’s steward, soldiers near the front uncrossed their pole-arms and let the crowd flow past them at something more than a walk but less than a run. The large friar waited patiently, letting others go before him. He favored his right side, curling around what might have been some stiffness, or some painfully withered limb, which he kept beneath his large habit. The girl he had entered with had slipped away some time ago, and no eye had followed her where she went.

Delphine made her way first into the garden, with its smells of night flowers and the calls of strange birds, and she skimmed the wall until she came to a door at the bottom of a tower.

Is it here?

Yes.

She kissed the iron lock and the studded door swung open.

The room she entered served as storehouse for the pope’s wine; candles flickered on sconces (it would not be long before the butler’s boy came to tend them), revealing graceful vaulted ceilings in the same exquisite limestone that composed the rest of the palace. Barrels hunched together, looking short beneath this ceiling, though each of them was taller than she. She stepped uncertainly to one barrel, laying her cheek against its cool oak and listening.

Quem quaeritis? the cool walls seemed to ask.

Whom do you seek?

You won’t hear anything.

Feel him.

She now crawled on top of one of the huge tuns and curled on it like a kitten settling in for a nap.

Not this one.

She did this again and again until she came to one very near the back, one that had been waiting since August.

Here

He’s here

You can’t do this you can’t this is a dream

She looked around and saw a rack of tools, pulling out a prying bar that felt much too heavy for her.

I’m too weak

No little moon not tonight

We’re coming

Our strength is yours

She lifted the bar and brought it down with great force, nearly falling in as the lid began to give. She laughed at herself and stood on a neighboring tun to finish.

She got the lid off, throwing the broken disk aside, and a sour-sweet wall of scent hit her.

The wine looked black.

Splinters floating in it.

Say “Rise.”

She opened her mouth, but no sound came out.

Say it he will hear

THAT CUNT FROM PARIS IS IN THE CELLAR WITH HIM

Hurry

“Rise,” she whispered.

Nothing.

At first.

Then a ripple.

Nothing.

Another ripple.

Then a white finger.

The hand followed it.

Pinkish-white, waxy, shocking beneath its splendid rings.

She took it in hers.

God don’t let it come apart in my hand I can’t take it I can’t

It squeezed.

That night in August. He could not sleep. The braziers on either side of him lit his bedroom with a fierce light, illuminating the curls and spirals of the fresco of the oak tree that embraced all four walls. Squirrels and birds perched there, and acorns, all on the slender branches that looped over a frescoed sky of the rarest blue. Pierre Roger, known as Clement, was sweating in his silk sleeping-gown, the cord of his sleeping cap wet beneath his chin. He called for Luquin, his cubicular, to bring him a little watered wine. The young man, an angelic blond from Bordeaux, had been charged by Maître de Chauliac not only to keep the braziers hot enough so fire might be seen (this to keep the Holy Father free of plague), no matter how uncomfortable the heat, but also, and more urgently, to watch that neither coverlet nor pillow should be pushed by sleeping hand or knee into the flame.

This was the hottest night since the fires had been prescribed. Clement felt he was suffocating and said as much, but then said, “Yet I withdraw my complaint; it is not for you to choose between love for me or fidelity to my good doctor’s instruction. Is it, Luquin?”

“My first loyalty is to you.”

“And mine is to God, whom I serve through ministering to his flock. And whom the doctor serves through ministering to me. It will not do for me to defy God’s purpose by thwarting another of his servants, will it, Luquin?”

“Yet it seems to me, Holy Father, that by this argument no two Christians might honestly disagree. Could God not be served in different ways by men with different minds?” the young man said, wiping sweat from his face with his sleeve.

“Ah. Not wholly unsound. But your discomfort skews your argument, for you want the fires out. The maître ’s métier is fighting illness, a field in which I am ignorant; humility demands submission to those who know best. Keep the fires lit. I will go and nap in the room of the stag until I can stand to return.”