Battlesaurus (9 page)

“They think it is God's doing,” Willem says, indicating the audience.

“Not all of them,” Monsieur Lejeune says. “And you may not realize it, but my brother, the priest, did you a favor tonight.”

“A favor! How so?”

“These are not the sophisticated intellects of Paris, Moscow, or Berlin,” Monsieur Lejeune says. “They are simple farming folk, and such a trick is so far beyond their comprehension that to them it can only be a miracle. Had my brother not claimed it for God, they would have thought this the work of the devil.”

In the end it doesn't matter, magic or miracle—either way, Willem is a hero. All the girls of the village want to dance with him, Cosette most of all. Jean joins in the dance circle with Cosette's older sister, Ang
é
lique.

Cosette is a natural and artful dancer. Each time the circles bring them back together that slight quickening of his heartbeat tells him he is happy with the prospect of a further dance with her, if only for a moment. Again the thought occurs to him: What is love? Is this love?

During the dancing she asks him, with lips moistened by tongue, if he will tell her the secret of the pistol trick.

Despite the allure of those lips he replies firmly that he is sorry, but he will not.

The music changes to a waltz and Willem bows to Cosette and holds out his hand before any other young man can claim her for the dance.

Jean dances with Ang
é
lique, closer than would have been considered proper in more elegant society in the towns, or the cities. But here in Gaillemarde, in the flickering light of the bonfire, burning away the hardships of the winter months, the mood is light, and if the dancing is close, what of it?

Monsieur Antonescu's trumpet-violin sings, the other instruments provide accompaniment, and the rest of the dancers seem to slip away, leaving just Willem and Cosette with the bonfire, dancing to its own music, and the stars of the sky above.

As the dance finishes he sees that Fran
ç
ois also found a partner for the dance. It is H
é
lo
ï
se, which is a great surprise to Willem.

He hadn't known she could dance.

*   *   *

The second sour note of the f
ê
te is quite late in the evening, just before midnight. It is the last dance, before the grand finale of the fireworks display.

Again Willem offers Cosette his hand.

She turns away, and his heart stops for a moment, but then she turns back and looks up at him through lowered eyelids, and he takes her hand for the dance.

Fran
ç
ois, who is usually one of the first to claim a dance partner, does not even rise from his seat, and would have sat out the dance if not for H
é
lo
ï
se, who stands in front of him and waits until he offers her his hand. It is very forward, and had it been any other young lady of the village it would have been quite unseemly, but H
é
lo
ï
se is somehow outside of those normal conventions.

Willem looks at Cosette. At the powdered skin, the delicately brushed hair, the pretty dress, the graceful and delicate movements. Then he looks at H
é
lo
ï
se prancing clumsily behind her. They are opposites, yet once they were alike. Fate has chosen a very different path for each of them.

Jean dances with Marie
É
toile, a girl from outside the village who is staying with her aunt and uncle.

Fran
ç
ois's father, as village priest, does not join in any of the dancing, so he sits on a chair near the stage and benevolently presides over the dance area.

When Willem looks around to see who else is dancing with whom, always a favorite game during the final dance, he sees that Madame Agathe, Fran
ç
ois's mother, is dancing with Monsieur Claude, the mayor. That does not strike him as particularly odd; they are both without natural partners for the dance, as the stout and shortsighted Madame Claude never dances, claiming a bad ankle.

But Willem sees Fran
ç
ois watching Monsieur Claude with narrowed eyes. Willem is just glad that his own mother has not been chosen by the village's lecherous leader. He looks around to see who she is dancing with, but cannot see her.

The dance finishes. Cosette dips her head and smiles at him as she turns away. It is quite girlish and unlike her.

But then he sees Monsieur Claude reach out a hand and cup the buttocks of his dance partner. It is perhaps not unexpected from such a man, but her reaction is the surprise. A frown, a scold, even a slap across the face is the appropriate response. But Madame Agathe dips her head and smiles just as Cosette had a few seconds earlier.

Fran
ç
ois turns abruptly and leaves the dancing area without bowing to H
é
lo
ï
se, who slinks off like a chastised dog.

Willem looks around for Jean but cannot see him in the swirling crowd. He takes off after Fran
ç
ois. When he finds him, Fran
ç
ois is returning to the square. In his hands, the new ax, still shiny and pristine. The tool is now a weapon.

Willem blocks his way, but Fran
ç
ois pushes past him.

“It is nothing, Fran
ç
ois,” Willem says. “Claude is a man with hands like creeping vines and always will be. He means nothing by it.”

“He means nothing?” Fran
ç
ois says. “What do you know? He comes to our house in the day, when I am out chopping wood in the forest. When I return, I smell his funk.”

There is a quiet fury in his voice, and something more than that. A derangement.

“Perhaps he just comes to check on her, to help her out,” Willem says. “You cannot know that he visits his desires upon her.”

“I know it,” Fran
ç
ois says, pushing forward.

“How could—”

“Because she is with child,” Fran
ç
ois says.

Willem is silent.

As soon as Fran
ç
ois says it Willem knows that it must be true. There is a slight bulge to the belly of Madame Agathe that he had not given any significance to, but now he realizes that in these lean times, it is not the belly of a well-fed person.

There is a hotness to Willem's cheeks, and his fingernails cut into his palms as his hands clench into fists. To his surprise and displeasure, he finds himself angry to discover that his mother is just one of the man's mistresses. That the mayor is cheating on the woman he is cheating on his wife with.

Fran
ç
ois has almost reached the square when Willem tackles him from behind. He means to wrestle the ax off him and hide it, but Fran
ç
ois is surprisingly quick and far too strong. He twists under Willem, rolling on top of him, rage seeping from his face. Now it is Willem who is pinned, under the larger, stronger boy, and Fran
ç
ois has the ax, held midshaft. There is no sense in his eyes. He raises the ax. Willem struggles, but his arms are pinned by Fran
ç
ois's knees.

“Fran
ç
ois!”

It is the voice of the blacksmith, Fran
ç
ois's uncle.

Fran
ç
ois stops. He looks at Willem, then at the ax in his hand, as if surprised to find it there. He drops it to the ground beside Willem's head, then slowly stands, releasing Willem. With a quick glance at Monsieur Lejeune from beneath a lowered brow, he runs off and does not return to the f
ê
te.

The band is packing up as Willem and Monsieur Lejeune return to the square, and the villagers are spreading out, finding comfortable spots from which to watch the fireworks display.

Jean sees them coming and queries them with a raised eyebrow.

“Fran
ç
ois has great anger inside,” Willem says.

“What did you do to incur his wrath?” Monsieur Lejeune asks.

“It was not about me.” Willem glances over at Monsieur Claude. “That peacock has been strutting in the wrong farmyard.”

“My brother's wife?” Monsieur Lejeune asks. He does not seem particularly surprised or angry, just seeking clarification. Most men in the village have mistresses at one time or another.

“What happened?” Jean asks.

Willem nods. “Fran
ç
ois went for his ax,” he says.

“My idiot cousin did what?” Jean asks.

“Just a moment of fever,” Willem says.

“I will conceal it until morning, when he is calmer,” Monsieur Lejeune says, holding up the ax.

“And has less wine in him,” Jean says.

“He will be all right,” Monsieur Lejeune says. “It is still the shock from the accident more than anything. I will talk to him in the morning.”

“And Monsieur Claude?” Jean asks. “Will you talk to him?”

Monsieur Lejeune shakes his head. “There is nothing to say.”

“But Aunt Agathe!” Jean says.

“Your aunt sees me as a friend,” Monsieur Lejeune says. “If she objected to his visits, she would come to me. She is a wife without a husband, thanks to my pious fool of a brother.”

Willem thinks of that haunted, bleeding look in his mother's eyes and decides that his dislike of Monsieur Claude has turned into hatred.

He again looks around the square for his mother. The subject of the mayor's visits to their house is not something he feels he can discuss with her, but he could share the gossip about Madame Agathe. Perhaps that will dissuade her from further assignations.

He cannot see her. Suddenly uncomfortable and not sure why, he looks again around the square, searching for Monsieur Claude. Have they…?

No. He is still there, holding court from his throne near the stage.

A series of loud bangs is followed by explosions overhead and the sky lights up with brilliant stars. More explosions; streaks of light shoot up from a paddock near the square, and sounds like cannonfire shake the houses of the village.

Willem begins to walk back to his home. Behind him the sky is alive and the air reeks of gunpowder.

That fades as he nears his home, but there is another smell, that of burning. His brisk walk turns into a run.

Smoke is curling out of the door of his house when he arrives. His first thought is that their house is on fire, but there is not enough smoke for that.

He runs to the kitchen and bursts inside.

His mother kneels at the baking oven, the fire door of which is open, smoke pouring out.

Empty chests lie around the oven. His father's chests.

“Mother! What are you doing?”

Mixtures and potions are crackling and popping inside the oven.

His mother slams the fire door shut.

“You think word of tonight will not spread? You've announced our presence here to the world. You have struck a flint and the fire will spread.”

There is a sudden cracking and popping sound from the oven, not the sound of wood burning, and a sulfurous smell leaks out.

“Mother!”

Willem races to the oven and opens the door of the firebox. Inside, all is flames. A bonfire of their former lives.

Thunder from the square shakes the stars, and bursts of light flash through the windows of the house.

“How could you do it?” Willem cries.

“How could
you
do it, Willem? This is all I had left of him,” his mother says through the start of tears.

Then the fireworks end, and there is only silence.

 

THE MONSTER

On the fourth day of the fourth month in the year of Our Lord, eighteen hundred and fifteen, more than three weeks after the f
ê
te, the monster came to the village of Gaillemarde.

Willem's mother always said that four was an accursed number. That it was the sign of death. And so it was.

But it was not a monster, just a saur. Neither devil nor demon, not mythical nor fantastical. A creature of flesh and blood: a wild creature from a wild and dangerous world.

It came at night, hunting in the moonlight.

First to be taken was Ang
é
lique Delvaux, the eldest daughter of the schoolmaster. She was walking back from the nearby township, well after midnight. There was no shame in what she had been doing. Wars had ravaged this part of the world for more than a decade. The country was like its people: emaciated, cadaverous. It was a time of great hardship. There were few in the village who could count on food for the next day.

Yet a young woman of a certain age could return from nearby Waterloo with a purse that jangled with coin. No one would judge her for it. If anything, those with empty tables and bellies envied those with something ripe and luscious to sell.

It would be many weeks before the remains of Ang
é
lique's naked, maggot-ridden body were found.

 

Book Two

WATERLOO

April 4–June 18, 1815

 

THE ARTILLERYMAN

G troop of the British Royal Horse Artillery is on the move.

The rain has stopped and the sun glares hot, but all that does is bake a thin crust on top of deep slush.

Three times on the way up the hill, the gun carriage, with its heavy nine-pounder cannon, breaks through the scab that looks like solid ground, and only the combined effort of all eight horses, and the men of the gun crew, straining against the wooden wagon wheels, convinces the carriage to start moving.

The fourth time the wheel sinks almost to its axle, releasing gas trapped deep in the mud. It smells like dead things. The gun carriage twists around as one wheel tries to continue forward, then stops.

“Ease off the horses,” Sergeant Roberts orders immediately, “or you'll snap the wheel.”