Battlesaurus (12 page)

“So you bear it for him? Why is that your yoke?” Jean asks.

Willem sits back down on the edge of the bridge without answering. A tender breeze ruffles the flowering lavender, bringing a heady perfume. In the river, the body of the dead baby saur dislodges itself from the reeds and floats gently away on the current.

 

THE FUNERAL

The funeral of Ang
é
lique Delvaux is held on Saturday, April fifteenth, almost two weeks after her death.

Her body has still not been found, and with desperate but quite pathetic hope her father has refused to allow the service before that.

When she has still not returned in the second week, and with her soul in need of introduction to heaven, Father Ambroise convinces Monsieur Delvaux that it is time.

An official from Brussels arrives on that Friday afternoon in an official carriage with a team of white horses, declares her officially dead, then takes off almost without his feet touching the ground. It seems a curt and perfunctory end to seventeen years of life.

In another Gaillemarde tradition it rains on the day of the funeral, although, perhaps in a portent of the deaths that are yet to come, it is more like a tropical downpour than a spring shower: heavy belts of water whip the dirt of the riverbanks into mud and batter the side of the church.

The schoolmaster and his daughter sit alone in the front pew, as is customary. As he did with both of his daughters beside him some years ago when his wife took ill and died. Relatives, some who have journeyed from as far away as Nivelles, sit in the pews behind them. Villagers fill the rest of the church.

It is a strained and awkward occasion. A funeral without a body. A child taken before a parent. And there are other reasons for the discomfort of some present.

Madame Agathe does not lead the choir as she usually would. That is left to one of the Poulencs. Instead she sits at the back of the church where she can better conceal her growing belly.

The mayor sits next to his wife but there is a clear distance between them, and a tension behind their expressions of support and compassion.

After the service, in a ritual that seems cruel to the point of torture, Father Ambroise leads Monsieur Delvaux and his daughter down the aisle, past the mourners, so that every one of them can acknowledge and touch their grief.

Monsieur Delvaux seems determined to get through the ordeal with dignity and grace. In his mourning coat, he walks slowly behind the priest, nodding to the congregation, acknowledging their silent sharing of his pain.

Cosette walks beside him. Willem is seated at the end of a pew but she walks past without seeing him. He has ceased to exist.

Halfway down the aisle there is a minor disturbance, and when Willem turns to look he sees that H
é
lo
ï
se has stood and stepped in front of Cosette, wrapping her arms around her and clutching tightly.

After a moment Cosette's hands find their way around the shoulders of the wild girl, and that is how they stay for long awkward moments. Monsieur Delvaux stands silently, while Father Ambroise shuffles his feet impatiently.

Cosette begins to sob quietly, small sharp shudders that convulse her body in the arms of the other girl. Still H
é
lo
ï
se holds her, still everyone waits, until the tremors subside and Cosette slowly withdraws.

Their close friendship is a thing of the past. In the six years H
é
lo
ï
se was missing they grew apart in ways that cannot be rejoined. But H
é
lo
ï
se, more than anyone else in the village, understands what Cosette needs. A comforting touch, a poultice to draw out the pain and suffering inside.

Although their lives, once close, have taken very different paths, they have now, in a way, again converged.

Both have lost a loved one to a saur.

 

SENTRY

The sound of the church bell is an unrelenting steely clanging that cuts through the night like a bayonet, and through sleep just as easily.

Willem has barely enough time to register the noise and wonder what it is, and if it is real, or part of a dream, before it cuts off abruptly. It is the sudden silence, more than the sound itself, that jolts him awake.

Pieter has been curled up at the end of Willem's bed, but now stands erect, his ears and nostrils scanning the air for danger. In the other room, Willem's mother gasps with fright.

Willem explodes out of bed, propelled by a terrible fear. He is halfway to the door before he spins back around, groping in the darkness for the leather pouch that hangs from his bedpost.

Others have been quicker to wake and react. Through the windows he sees men with lamps and weapons spilling out of houses. Some have swords, a couple have muskets, but most have farming utensils, spades, pitchforks, or just sharpened spikes.

He takes the stairs three at a time and flings open the front door.

“Willem!” his mother screams from the top of the staircase, but he ignores her and runs out into the darkness. An overhead haze obscures the stars and even the quarter moon is no more than a vague, malevolent smirk pressed against charcoal clouds.

In confusion and uncertainty people are running in every direction, unsure what is happening, unsure where it is happening, sure of only one thing: danger has come to the village this night. Shouts and screams come from all sides, but the voices are those of fright, not of terror or pain.

Around the saur-fence, tallow brands are being lit, adding a string of flickering lights to the darting fireflies of lamps that swing in the hands of the villagers.

Willem ducks around the confused and milling crowd and runs with clarity and purpose.

Others have the same idea, and there is a congregation of lights around the church. It is there, too, that he finds Jean and Fran
ç
ois bearing weapons and frayed nerves.

Fran
ç
ois's lips are moving and without hearing the words Willem knows he is praying. Jean's face is expressionless, but his eyes are moving constantly, flicking between the church and the saur-fence.

Now Willem sees why: the hole in the fence that gapes like an open, jagged-toothed mouth, the wooden poles that lie, broken and twisted, among the lavender plants along the riverbank.

The tar pit has been lit and a low blue flame races along the narrow trench, erupting here and there into bursts of orange and yellow that quickly spread. Within a few moments a wall of flame rings the village, visible to Willem only through the gap in the fence. Black smoke glows like the devil's breath in the light of the flames below and brings with it an oily stench. One of the broken poles from the fence lies across the pit, and begins to burn.

“What could do this?” Willem wonders.

“Is it not clear?” François asks.

“Not to me,” Willem says.

“Nor me,” Jean says.

“It is the firebird,” Fran
ç
ois says. “It seeks revenge. It seeks us.”

“No firebird could do this,” Jean says, walking toward the hole in the fence.

“This part of the fence had not yet been replaced,” Fran
ç
ois says. “The wood is old and rotten.” He kicks at a broken pole, which looks neither old nor rotten to Willem.

“Get back from there.” It is Jean's father, his flintlock pistol in one hand, in the other a burning brand. He is naked from the waist up. Across his stomach are the marks of battle, the rewards for years in the service of the French emperor: deep scars, vivid, white, and angry in the flickering flame of his torch.

Willem and the cousins step backward as men push past them, grim-faced, some holding muskets, some guarding the hole in the fence, while others, including Monsieur Lejeune, search the riverbank by torchlight.

Willem looks up at the steeple of the church. It is empty and dark.

“Why did the bell stop so suddenly?” he asks. “And where is the sentry?”

“I don't know,” Jean says. “Who was the sentry tonight?”

Jean shakes his head, as does Fran
ç
ois. If there was no sentry, then who sounded the alarm? If there was a sentry, then where is he?

“Monsieur Antonescu was on watch tonight,” Monsieur Claude says.

“Then where is he?” Jean asks.

After a quick discussion, someone is sent to check Monsieur Antonescu's cottage.

Whispers flicker through the crowd as quickly as the flames spread on the tarred wood in the pits. Antonescu was old; he was drunk; he fell; he went home, or forgot his shift altogether.

The news comes back quickly. Monsieur Antonescu is not at his cottage.

It isn't until someone climbs up into the open-sided bell tower and leans out, holding a lamp, that the evidence becomes clear.

There are scratch marks, deep and dark, on the side of the steeple, decorated with bursting floral patterns, crimson in the lamplight: blood.

“It climbed up into the tower to get him,” Fran
ç
ois says, and crosses himself.

“Then it was not the firebird,” Willem says.

“Of course it was the firebird,” Fran
ç
ois says.

“A firebird cannot climb,” Willem says.

“This one can,” Jean says.

“Or it was some other kind of saur,” Fran
ç
ois says. “One that can climb, or fly.”

“Flying saurs don't attack humans,” Willem says.

“This one did,” Jean says.

“Nor would a winged saur have needed to make a hole in the fence,” Willem says.

“So it was not a flyer. But this saur was strong enough to break the fence, and can climb,” Fran
ç
ois says. “And that is how it took Antonescu.”

“Why was he even on watch?” Willem explodes. “He was old and blind.”

“He insisted.” Monsieur Claude speaks quietly. “And not without cause. His hearing and sense of smell were the worth of any pair of eyes.”

Jean nods. “At night, he was worth two men.”

“You are certain of that?” Willem asks, indicating the side of the steeple.

“Unless he had been drinking,” Fran
ç
ois says.

Whether or not he had been drinking, there is no question that he has been taken. The deep red spray patterns down the side of the bell tower lead to the discovery of a trail of blood on the dark ground. It runs from the church to the river through the crushed and splintered gap in the saur-fence.

“Are there any claw prints?” Willem asks.

“If there were, they are long gone,” Jean says.

The lavender beds outside the fence are flattened, but whether that is from the saur or the footprints of men, it is impossible to tell.

Monsieur Lejeune reappears at the gap in the fence.

“Get the dogs,” he says. “Quickly, we must give chase.”

“In the darkness?” Monsieur Claude asks.

“Before it is too late,” Monsieur Lejeune says.

“It is already too late,” Monsieur Claude says. “Saurs do not toy with their prey.”

There is silence. They all know it is true.

“We will hunt the beast!” Monsieur Lejeune says, gesturing with his pistol at the woods on the far side of the river.

“And risk more lives?” Now it is Father Ambroise who is speaking.

“So we should wait for the next time it invades our village?” Monsieur Lejeune shouts. “How many more of us must die before its hunger is satisfied?”

“We will send a message to Brussels,” Monsieur Claude says calmly. “The English army, under Wellington, is encamped there. They will find and kill this beast.”

Monsieur Lejeune is silent. He bows his head and takes three deep breaths. When he lifts his head, his eyes are firm and hard, and glint like steel in the torchlight.

“I did not call him friend,” he says, “but I called him neighbor. For many years Antonescu cut wood for my forge. He played music for our f
ê
tes. He drank with us at our celebrations and our funerals. He was a good man. He was…”

There is silence as Monsieur Lejeune gathers his words. The moon shuffles into a fissure in the clouds and lights up the old soldier's face.

“They are all gone now, the founders of our village,” he says. “Antonescu was the last of them. I will not sit by and let others avenge his death.”

“Nor I,” Jean calls out, and the shout ripples and echoes around the crowd.

Monsieur Claude looks about, like any politician, sensing the mood of his people. “I agree, but not now.” He holds up both hands for quiet. “The darkness is this creature's ally, and our enemy. We will go at dawn.”

“At first light,” Monsieur Lejeune says.

 

INTO THE FOREST

The dawn sky is a cold gray pan of gruel, colored only by a creeping redness to the east, like dripping blood diffusing in a bowl of dirty water. As it spreads, it reveals a morning ground fog choking the trees of the forest.

Ten men wait at the gap in the fence, reluctant to venture into the hazardous brew of darkness and mist. Four more stand guard until repairs can be made. The fence will have to be strengthened all around the village, judging by the ease with which this firebird has pushed through it.

Birds and winged saurs paint the air with sound, a discordant dawn chorus of screeches and caws, a preposterous orchestra playing a grotesque score of dread and awe.

Willem hasn't slept since the attack, and nor, he is sure, has anyone else. Sleep for Willem would have been a blessing. If he slept too long, he would miss the hunt for the raptor and no one could blame him for that, least of all himself.

But when the blackness of the sky turns to dull gray, he rises and quickly dresses, then holds open a canvas bag for Pieter, who clacks with innocent amusement as he scampers inside. Willem cannot look at him. He is carrying the simple, trusting animal to an uncertain fate.