Devil at Midnight (3 page)

“You don’t have to stay,” Michael said. “Everything is voluntary.”

“You want me to stay. You want me to be like you.”

“No,” he countered very firmly. “Neither choice is wrong. Neither choice is less.”

Grace’s eyes strayed toward the place where the movie screen should have been.

“I can show you your life again,” he offered. “If you think that would help you make up your mind.”

Grace’s nose wrinkled with distaste. “Can you show me how my life would have turned out if I hadn’t died?”

“Mm,” he hummed.
“What if
is tricky. Even here, tomorrow hasn’t happened yet.”

“All right,” Grace said. “I just wondered ...”

“About the boy?”

“I wondered if we would have stayed together. If Johnny was my one true love.”

Her odd companion burst into a laugh. “Sorry.” He waved one hand in front of his contorted face. “It’s just the universe isn’t that stingy. For that matter, neither is the human heart. If you wanted, you could have quite a few ‘true loves.’ ”

“One is plenty when you’ve had none.”

“You think you’ve had none?” His grin grew broader. “You think this one brief life is all you get?”

Her human side might have been fading, but Grace was annoyed enough to fold her arms. “Show me then. Show me the loves I’ve had.”

Michael cocked his head at her, still smiling but thoughtful now. “Showing you all of them would take more time than you want to spend. Why don’t I show you your oldest friend? Maybe when he was last your age. The one who’s been more to you than a lover. The one you meet up with again and again.”

She looked into her guide’s sky blue eyes. His face with its lines and crinkles was just a mask. His eyes were the windows to the truth of him, to the kind of soul she could scarcely dream about having. Wiser. Sweeter. Forever joyful and never tired. For just a moment he seemed familiar, as if
he
were her oldest friend, as if he never left her side. But that was impossible. She wasn’t important enough for that.

Still, the word called to her. A friend was better than a lover. Better than a parent or a spouse. A friend was Grace’s personal holy grail.

“Yes,” she said, convinced this was what she wanted. “Show me the boy I meet up with again and again.”

D
espite the cool autumn breeze that blew off nearby Lac Léman, sweat ran down Christian’s muscles in steady streams, soaking his padded gambeson and causing it to itch liked Hades against his skin. He had been training his father’s men since morning. He was young for the responsibility—maybe too young—but Gregori Durand preferred to leave his own flesh and blood in charge. Since Christian was his only living son, that meant the honor was his.

Though currently engaged in blocking a downward cut from a six-foot blade, Christian caught sight of trouble from the corner of his eye.

“Hold,” he said to his training partner.

“Gladly,” William laughed, allowing the blunted tip of his weapon to drop to the bailey dirt.

They fought in chain mail rather than plate armor, plate being more expensive to repair. Conveniently, depending on your point of view, the iron-ringed hauberks were no lighter than forged steel. Added to that, the two-handed swords they swung were twice as heavy as normal blades. The reason for this was simple. Stamina in battle spelled the difference between life and death. If they used more weight during practice, normal weapons felt easier. To gain that advantage, today they suffered. Though William was larger than Christian, his face was just as red and sweaty beneath his helm.

“Left arm!” Christian called to Charles, who was struggling ineffectually against a taller veteran.

“Merde,”
Charles cursed. The soles of his boots slipped in the dirt as he went down flat.

With a happy chortle, Hans—the veteran—pressed the axe head of his halberd into Charles’s mail-clad chest. Charles’s orange hair—the bane of his existence, according to him—had straggled from beneath his coif to plaster his face.

“He is stronger than me,” Charles said as Christian came to stand over him. “And Christ knows how many stones heavier.”

“You would not notice if you remembered you had two arms. In any case, you are faster than he is. Why did you let him close with you that way?”

“We have been at this for hours,” Charles complained. “Forgive me if I grew weary.”

“Battles do not halt because you are weary,” Hans and Christian chimed in unison.

Laughing, Hans offered his felled opponent a hand up. The numerous scars that seamed his cheeks made his grin a fierce thing to see.

“Walk until you catch your wind,” Christian said to Charles. “Then go work with the pell.”

Charles groaned, because the pell was a hacking post and—while not as dangerous as combat—it was one of the more grueling exercises he could be set to.

“Left arm strikes only,” Christian clarified. “I shall tell you when you may cease.”

“I shall tell you when you may cease,”
Charles repeated in mincing tones, but Christian knew he would obey. Charles only pretended to be contumacious. When the need arose, he always fought valiantly.

“You stay with me,” Christian said to Hans, which wiped the grin from the warrior’s face. “Charles did not give you enough of a challenge.”

“Ha!” Hans barked, recovering his humor. “The day you challenge me is the day I retire.” With his hands spread wide on his halberd’s shaft, he brought up the weapon and began to circle. At forty and a few years of age, he was built like an old prize bull. Even through his chain mail chausses, Christian saw his thigh muscles bulge. “Do you worst, stripling.”

“Christian,” someone hissed through the continuing clatter of mock combat. “Your father comes to the yard.”

Christian lowered his sword and turned. His father was indeed entering the bailey of their fortified hillside house. Like his son, Gregori Durand was swarthy from his mingled French and Italian blood—a common enough mixture here in Switzerland. Thanks to his departed mother, who had been a Habsburg by-blow, Christian was a mite taller than his father but far less broad. In contrast to his offspring’s litheness, Christian’s bearlike sire walked as if each step ought to shake the ground.

Today he dangled a writhing burlap sack from one meaty hand.

The frightened yelps that issued from it had Christian’s stomach sinking like a stone.

“Scheisse,”
Hans muttered beside him. “He found Lucy.”

Knowing there could be no delaying this confrontation, Christian closed the distance between him and his father. Gregori’s expression was, as always, icy. His father never showed his temper by losing it.

“Would you care to explain this?” he asked coolly.

“She is but a hound,” Christian said, striving for equal calm even as his heart thudded in his chest. At this point, any pretense of continuing to practice ceased. All the men were turned to him and his father, not drawing closer but watching. Whether by accident or design, the five who most often fought in Christian’s
rotte
stood nearest. Hans was the exception among his silent supporters. Hans served in whatever group needed him.

Wanting to prove he was worthy of their espousal, Christian squared his shoulders. “I thought the vineyard owner’s children might like to play with her.”

“I gave you an order,” his father said. “Are you saying you cannot obey me any better than this dog?”

“She is still young, Father. She did not mean to ruin your hunt.”

“What she meant does not matter. She acted without discipline, and she cost me my prey. The other dogs did not fail me the way she did.”

The other dogs lacked Lucy’s spirit—and her love for humans. She was smart and playful and brought out the boy in men who had earned their keep killing strangers for more years than Christian had drawn breath. Lucy had slept on one or another of the mercenaries’ pallets since she was a puppy, had shared their food and sent them into gales of laughter over her antics. Christian did not know a single member of their household who had not slipped her a treat or two.

Except his father, of course. His father had no love for any creature that Christian knew.

“I will take the whipping,” Christian said. “This is my fault for letting the men make a pet of her.”

His father stared at him, his eyes as black as wet stones. The back of Christian’s neck tightened. Too late, he saw he should not have offered this.

“You will take the whipping,” his father repeated, his face gone blank.

Not knowing what else to say, Christian bowed his head in submission.

“Very well,” said his father. His hand gestured toward the men. “Hans, tie him to the pell.”

The veteran soldier cursed too softly to make out which saint he was blaspheming. He did not, however, hesitate to lead Christian off. All of them knew better than to stand against their commander, for each other’s sake as well as their own. Christian did not resist his mail tunic and shirt being stripped from him, nor did he protest when his best friend Michael was ordered to wield the single-strand raw-hide lash. This was simply another in the endless series of tests his father was forever requiring them to pass.
Whip your friend. Kill this dog. Grovel until your knees grind down.
The reward was never approval, but just living another day. Christian even understood why his father did it. This world was a hard and bloodthirsty place. Only those who commanded fealty could survive.

Hans’s motions were brisk as he bound Christian’s wrists together with a thick hemp cord. Christian hugged the pell, the hacked wood post a support he would be grateful for soon enough.

“Ready?” Michael asked, the single kindness he would permit himself to give.

Christian nodded and clenched his jaw.

His father ordered him to take twenty strokes, and Michael’s strong right arm ensured they were hard enough to suit the elder Durand’s taste. Once destined to become a monk, Christian’s golden-haired friend grunted with the force it took to break Christian’s skin. Luckily, Michael’s aim was precise. The leather stayed on his back and shoulders and away from kidneys and spine. This whipping would neither kill him nor leave a disabling scar. Christian would live to earn other ones.

His breath whined through his teeth by the fifteenth lash, his body jerking helplessly at the pain. Christian tried to contain any other noises, not only because they would betray weakness to his father, but because the evidence of his suffering would distress his friend. Though Michael was a few years older than Christian, his heart would never be as hard. Keeping silent was a luxury Christian fought for. Salt-sweat stung his wounds like acid as Michael was obliged to cross stripes he had already made.

“Nineteen,” he counted, his voice ringing out as if he, too, were being struck.

Then he brought the last blow down.

Christian’s back was throbbing, the fiery heat of the lashes like snakes writhing on his skin. He flinched when the blood from one rolled into the next.

“Water,” someone said quietly. A moment later, a bucket of blessed coolness was poured on him.

Hans cut his wrists free, gripping Christian’s elbow just long enough to help him lock his buckling knees and stand. The scarred old warrior’s face was angry, but only if you looked closely. Nostrils flaring, Hans stepped away and stood at attention as soon as Christian faced his father. Christian was shaky, but his head was high. He blinked until the sweat cleared from his vision.

To his amazement, his father laughed.

“I give you this, son,” he said, almost sounding pleased, “you are no swooning lad.”

Christian had one shocked heartbeat to enjoy this rare piece of praise. His father’s expression sobered as he once again lifted Lucy’s sack. He thrust it squirming in Christian’s direction with his usual flinty look.

“Now,” he said. “Kill the dog.”

 

 

A
fterward, Christian sat in the dirt with Lucy cradled in his lap. She was ... She
had been
a short-haired hound, white with liver-colored splotches. Her once perpetually wagging tail hung limp, her body cooling under his petting hands.

Christian’s eyes were dry. If he had cried even as a child, he could not remember it.

“We will take her,” Philippe said. “Matthaus and I will bury her outside the walls under a nice tree.”

“Bury her deep.” Christian’s instruction was distant but steady. “Else, some animal will dig her up.”

“We will,” Philippe promised, easing Lucy’s slight weight from him. He glanced back over his shoulder to where Matthaus waited, slim and tall ... or perhaps his gaze scanned the shadowed archway where Christian’s father might again emerge.

Christian found it difficult to care. Other hands helped him up, careful to support him without touching his bleeding back. Christian’s eyes met Michael’s. His friend’s face was tight and angry over the beating he had been forced to inflict. Christian suddenly felt exhausted, as if he could drop where he stood and never get up again.