Between Two Fires

by Christopher Buehlman

“I don’t know what smart is anymore. More wine?” “With pleasure.” “Good, isn’t it?” “The best. Black as a woman’s heart and sweet as her . . .” “Yes?” the priest said, amused. “Other heart.”

“Do you want to make confession?” “No.” “Not to me, eh?” “I just don’t want to.” “I wouldn’t blame you if it was me.” “No, it’s . . . No. There’s no point.” “Kill the abomination in the river and God will make you a knight again.” “I’d rather He got me another goblet of this.” “No,” the priest said. “You wouldn’t rather a goblet of wine than your honor back. Your joking is pleasant, but it doesn’t hide the hole in you.” Thomas turned his eyes away from the priest’s warm gaze. He only just managed not to cry. He did this by angering himself at God for making him suffer and pay for sins he had been backed into. God ringed you round with hounds and cornered you, then speared you with your back against a tree. When Thomas spoke, he turned down the corners of his mouth, and his words came out as a quiet growl. “I’ll kill the whoring thing.”

“Do you want me to finish? Because I can’t when you keep interrupting me to show how clever you are.” “Ooooooh,” Thomas said. “I stand rebuked. So the naked knight.” “They give him a robe.” “So the knight with the robe.” “The knight is not important now.” “So the unimportant knight.” Delphine got up and walked away, folding her arms. Both men, giggling like boys at her irritation, now implored her to come back. “Sweet Delphine, tell us the story!” “Don’t take on so! The story, the story!” At length she took her place again but pointed her small finger at Thomas. He put his hand over his mouth.

The Great Death was coming. It had already begun devouring Avignon, where it was said the pope heard audiences between two fires to burn off pestilential air, and nibbling at Paris, where the first afflicted households were trying to hide their sick so they would not be shunned by their neighbors.

“This is exceptional stew,” the priest said. “What’s in it?” The woman told him. Cabbage. Turnips. Mushrooms. Pork belly. And a few pinches of real pepper. And at precisely that moment a sparrow in the tree above Thomas shat in his.

Thomas stopped walking now, transfixed by the spectacle taking place in the sky. And then he saw it. A great blackness against the sky. It circled twice, then stopped. How unlike a bird it was, though it had wings, or at least explained itself with them; no bird could just hang in the sky like a still image of itself. It peered down into the fields, its face almost feline, but wrong, its teeth black in a sickly glowing mouth. It roared, and its roar was familiar, that lion’s roar in grotesque. An angel of wrath

The idiot scream in his head formed into words. WHERE ARE YOU LITTLE WHORE WE’LL FIND YOU IF WE HAVE TO PRY UP EVERY ROOF FROM HERE TO THE SEA AND YANK UP EVERY TREE THAT’S IT ISN’T IT YOU’RE IN A TREE WE SMELL YOUR FEAR CLOSE YOUR THOUGHTS OF HOW YOUR DEATH WILL BE BUT IT WILL BE WORSE AND DEATH ISN’T THE END OF IT YES! HERE! We see you. Now a white hand A fucking hand! the size of a pony snaked down from the sky on the end of an arm with far too many joints. It pulled branches from their tree. Now the priest did scream. As did Delphine. More hands. Five? Six?

“Thomas!” the girl yelled at him. “Thomas!” She meant to make him spare the beaten man, if his life could still be saved at all, but her words had the opposite effect; the captain’s jab at the priest had clipped her below the mouth; not much, but enough to beard her chin in blood. When Thomas saw that the girl was cut, he breathed out like a bull, grabbed the dazed captain’s hair, yanked his head back and cut his throat with the long, notched blade. He took his time about it. The girl screamed, “Noooo!” and then she just said, “No,” and she let the priest take her in his arms even though the tears she thought herself about to shed didn’t come. The captain fell so his head lolled back and his open throat bled into the river. Thomas watched this for a moment, then wiped his sword. “I told you not to,” the girl said, but her face betrayed her relief that the hurtful man was gone.

He wanted to turn his gaze away at this talk of love between men, but couldn’t; he knew it was the last he would see of this flawed priest who had become so dear to him so quickly. This was harder than the comte’s death. For all his goodness, the comte was not gentle; he was of this world, and of the brutality of the world. This man, Matthieu Hanicotte, seemed to have been misplaced here. He hoped there was wine in his Heaven. Could a sodomite attain to Heaven? He remembered the priest holding the girl up out of the water as the abominations stung the life from him. Hoc est corpus meum. If that was not good enough, nothing would be.

Delphine shivered now and could not stop. This thing was going to kill her. She reached for the case and began to open its tiny latches. “If you open that case, I’ll bite your fucking thumbs off.”

The way my stomach DROPPED

It followed her outside and to the base of the tree, but it had drawn around itself her blanket, which she had forgotten inside, and she could not see what it was; she thought she saw a blackened face and a wisp of hair. You stupid Norman cunt you’ll die in your sleep tonight and fall from that tree like rotten fruit “I will not fall. And you will not be here in the morning. There are wicked things strong enough to harm me, but you are not one of them. You’re a scarecrow. You are made of lies, and you are not made well. I feared you, but now I pity your suffering. Good night.” The only sound that answered Delphine was the wind in the leaves around her. By and by she slept.

One scene stayed with de Chauliac forever, obsessing him, even though, mercifully, the rest would blur; he saw a devil with wide black wings gripped by two angels, who drove it down and seemed to speak in its ears as they fell; they hit the bend of the Rhône, sending up a great, illuminated plume of water visible from Orange. Two angels and a devil had tumbled into the water. Three angels came up. Forgiveness, then, was possible even for the worst.

Love is always harder. Love means weathering blows for another’s sake and not counting them. Love is loss of self, loss of other, and faith in the death of loss.