Michele Hauf - Seraphim

“I shall take it without your leave. Did you scan the perimeter?”

“We will be safe here in the forest for the night.”

“Your horse wanders freely,” Baldwin commented.

“He does.” Having no intention of elaborating, Dominique moved between Sera and the squire and picked up a leafless elm branch to poke at the fire. A few jabs raised a flurry of red fire sprites over the blaze in a spiral of escape. “Have you ale or wine?”

“No supplies,” Baldwin said with a shudder.

“You should have filled your belly in Pontoise,” Sera commented. If the man craved drink he could melt down snow for all she cared. “We travel light, nothing to burden our journey.”

“Just wondering,” he said, a dismissive tone to his voice. Sera gauged that he was not a man to anger easily. Unless one tried to lie to him about their identity.

She leaned forward, propping her elbows on her knees, and unfocused her eyes upon the brilliant orange flames. In her peripheral view, the mercenary’s stallion did indeed roam freely. Curious. But she didn’t trouble over the reason. Instead she released a sigh and allowed her shoulders to sag. It felt good not to think. To relax before the blaze. The warmth brought a numbness that spread to her skull. This night she would not worry of what the morrow may bring.

But close, sat San Juste. Too close for the damsel to disregard.

Just one moment for my pleasure?

Very well, Sera thought, being much too tired to conjure an excuse.

From the corner of her eye, she studied the side of the mercenary’s face, as he, too, voided out on the flames. His jaw was so sharp as to be deadly. Not a single line of age creased the unnaturally smooth flesh. Though black stubble lended masculine roughness to an otherwise tender visage. Indeed, a handsome man. But she was not taken to swooning, as Baldwin liked to tease. Had Sera ever before favored a man, she had required but a look and a bend of her forefinger to bring him to her side.

That was me, the damsel cooed.

Enough then. Sera lowered her head onto her knees and closed her eyes, forcing the damsel back into the darkness. ’Twas risky to allow such thoughts.

“From where do you hail, San Juste?” Baldwin asked.

“East of Creil, but five hours on a slow horse. Deep in the Valois Wood where my father built a cottage for my mother, far away from any village.”

“Your parents await their son’s return from a successful mission?” Baldwin wondered.

“I have not been to the wood for over a year. What of you, squire? How long have you been at the d’Ange castle?”

“Let’s see…since the May Day festival, I believe. Aye, I remember sweet Margot and her plump—”

“Benwick.”

Baldwin quieted at Sera’s terse reprimand. He offered a shrug and slumped into his nest of cape and supplies.

“Did you lose parents,” Dominique wondered, “loved ones in the New Year’s ordeal?”

“I am an orphan since six. Spent all of my life living upon the discards of others, the swiftness of my fingers, and the finely tuned wit of my brain.”

At Baldwin’s boastful declaration Sera cast him the mongoose eye. And he saw.

With a resolute sigh, the squire said, “Very well, if you must know, before I became a squire, well, er…a postulant, I was…a toad-eater. Though you mustn’t hold it against me,” he rushed in. “I atone for my crimes every day. I was seeking orders, for heaven’s sake!”

“Toad-eater?” Dominique wondered. The flames danced in his dark eyes. Sera could not look away from the beguiling sight. No red demons there, only violet allure. “Are not toads poisonous?”

“Oh, aye,” Baldwin offered. Then with a wriggle of his thick brows, he added, “If you really eat them.”

“I don’t understand. You say you ate them, and then you say you did not.”

“Exactly.” Baldwin sat up a little straighter. A proud smile beamed beneath his wearied brown eyes.

Sera would allow him such pride, for she was the first to admit the man was not the sort of hardened criminal that belonged swinging at the end of a noose. He was the closest thing to family she had left. She needed family. A place to belong. A place to be loved.

The squire spread his hand open, the long fingers splaying to catch the heat. “You see, I used to work for a magician, Melmoth the Marvelous. You’ve heard of him? Known through all parts of France and England, also a small portion of the Irish Isle. Anyway, I helped him sell his elixirs at market every summer to unsuspecting dupes—er, patrons.”

“I think I begin to understand,” Dominique said. “The patrons would witness you eating a poisonous toad. You would go into convulsions or some form of grand death charade. The magician would rush an amazing cure-all elixir down your throat, therefore drawing the poison from your body and curing you before all eyes.”

“And only three sous per six drachms!” Baldwin declared in his best hawker’s voice. “I never did eat the toad. Well, there were occasions—hell, a man tends to build an immunity by slowly exposing himself to poison. I can munch a whole toad now without worry of dropping dead. Rather tasty roasted.”

Dominique leaned across the distance between he and the squire. “And just how were you such a success when I myself have witnessed your remarkable inability to cover a lie?”

Baldwin drew his hand over his eyes to simulate laying a blindfold over them. With a laugh, he announced, “I was blind!”

“That’s quite a skill, the fool that fools while acting the fool himself.”

“A skill.” The squire clutched his leather purse and squeezed the contents. A reassuring gesture. “But no more.”

“Why the change of heart?”

“For as much as I relied on the scarf to blind the fools to my dupe, it did not serve to blind me. I began to notice the lost hope, the tragedy in the eyes circling Melmoth’s stage. Their eyes were wide with the hopes of a magical cure to end all their woes, their pains. They were so much like the orphan boy that stood before them on the stage. And I was selling them snake oil. Abbe Belloc reassured me that dedicating my life to God was a noble effort.”

“Indeed, it is. If you are prepared for such sacrifice.”

“I am. Maybe. Hell…” He sighed, riffled his fingers through his this-way-and-that hair. “I’m working on it.” He gave his purse another squeeze. “I’m not yet ready to give up the bones.”

“Bones?”

Baldwin shrugged. “I bartered in bones as well. No longer. But I do have some excellent treasures.” He dug in the leather purse at his hip. “See here, St. Miranda’s finger bone. ’Tis an excellent charm against mud slides and natural disasters. And here!” He displayed a thin white bone before his glittering eyes. “The finger bone of St. Jude the Obscure, patron saint of Hopeless Causes—” he cast a glance Sera’s way “—which could certainly be put to use in our endeavors.”

Sera shook her head.

“Well, St. Eustache’s toe bone really does work!” Baldwin insisted. “I rubbed it both nights you rode into battle.”

“I see,” she said. “And so I suppose they do work, for I am yet all of one piece.”

Baldwin gave an exacting nod.

Sera reneged her challenge with a deftly concealed smirk behind her hand. The man needed some faith to cling to. And until he was ready to accept his own courage—for he did possess courage—he would need the false reassurance the bones offered him.

“And what of you?”

Sera lifted her chin at Dominique’s query. No mistaking he had addressed her.

“You lost your family. A tragedy. Was there also…a husband?”

The smirk grew wider, and Sera had to dip her head to keep San Juste from seeing the mirth she knew glittered in her eyes. The mercenary’s question came across as more personal than the man might like it to sound. Did he have an interest in her beyond his mission? She who slaughtered men, and stomped about in armor, and was more in resemblance to a man than a woman with long beautiful hair and a delicate step beneath flowing skirts?