Something Red (34 page)

Only Father Baudoin, after his initial fright had worn off, began to suffer from fear that Molly’s abilities came from some pact with Satan or one of his demons, and that by remaining silent he was condoning this, and so sinning himself, as well as betraying his flock.

Sir Balthasar heard murmurs of this, and undertook to fulfill his own vow of “myself between you and all priests.” He accosted the young cleric one brisk March morning, up on the wall-walk where Father Baudoin was accustomed to tell his beads. The priest would pace up and down while praying, muffled to the ears against the constant wind that swept from the treetops to vault the parapets, the wind that made the wall-walk sentries curse and stamp their feet and blow on their reddened knuckles.

The keep backed up flush with the eastern curtain wall, and a strengthened door high in the stronghold’s side opened onto the wall-walk that ran the circuit of the curtain walls; this allowed a quick sally from high in the keep to flood the walls with defenders. The eastern wall-walk, with its view down the sheer drop into the little river valley that ran along behind the castle and rendered it impregnable from the east, was Father Baudoin’s particular place to walk and tell his beads each morning, fair weather or foul, his overbright eyes downcast, his thin dry lips moving silently. His lean figure—even swathed in a heavy cloak he presented a narrow silhouette—was a familiar sight to all: the bent head, the tense pacing to and fro, the carved wooden beads moving one by one through his gloved fingers.

A castle is like a small village: the inhabitants provide one another’s entertainment, and gossip is a kind of local currency. One day, down in the kitchen perfumed with bread, a man-at-arms was telling of the meeting that he and his mates, standing sentry duty on the wall, had witnessed between Sir Balthasar and Father Baudoin.

This occurred one morning perhaps a week or two after the Lietuvans’ ashes had been pitched, without any ceremony save some prayers
to ward off evil, into the snow-swollen Derwent, the river that rushed along far below that eastern wall. The wall sentries noted that as Father Baudoin was at his devotions, Sir Balthasar stepped from the keep and approached the priest.

After a moment’s conversation, the knight was seen to lay a heavy leather-gloved hand on Father Baudoin’s shoulder. He contrived to turn the priest toward the parapet; he pointed to the drop into the river beneath; he smiled into the young priest’s face.

The sentry’s tale had earned him a seat by the kitchen fire, a slice of the hashed-fish pie called narrois, a bumper of ale, and a rapt audience of a dozen cooks, serving men and women, and men-at-arms. At this juncture in the story, a soldier said, “I seen him go into a rage when he heard what Father was sayin’, about them two queens and all. Was I to find meself alone up there with the mareschal, and he angry at me? I’d have me arse back in the keep inside two breaths.”

“Nay, one,” said another.

“Inside one, then.”

Roger was leaning against the wall with an arm around his Lucinda. He said, to general nods and grunts of agreement, “Bad as he is when he’s dour, he’s worse when merry. Yon smile would frighten a fucking bear.”

The sentry had taken the opportunity afforded by this commentary to sample the narrois pie; now he resumed his tale, somewhat hampered by the necessity to chew. He had seen the priest and the knight gazing through a crenel down at the plunging side of the coomb, the trees clinging precariously to the near-vertical slope, the rock-girt little river foaming far below. The gloved hand slid off the priest’s shoulder toward his neck. Father Baudoin turned a startled face to the knight as Sir Balthasar spoke, gesturing with his free hand as though pointing out sights of interest, and always smiling, smiling. Shortly thereafter Sir Balthasar clapped the young priest on the back, and returned to the keep.

The sentry reported that Father Baudoin remained awhile, lost in thought, or perhaps prayer, although the beads dangled forgotten from his hands. After a time he also returned to the keep.

“I would that I had seen that,” said a cook.

Roger said, laughing, “I can all but see it now.” His laughter gradually quieted; he looked into the fire; his face became still. He said, very low, perhaps to Lucinda, perhaps not: “I would that I could tell Olivier of it.”

The sentry was retelling the story again. The details became more vivid; this time the priest kept dropping his beads on the wall-walk after Sir Balthasar had spoken with him, nearly slipping into the bailey below when he bent to pick them up.

“Frighten a fucking bear,” Roger said again.

N
OW WITH THEIR TROUBLES
receding into the past, and their immediate future assured, safe in Blanchefontaine under Sir Jehan’s protection, life should have been pleasant. It was at this time, though, that Hob became haunted.

Others had been visited in this way, women, children, even hardened men-at-arms. “That-un seeks to return,” was how it was told, the castle folk unwilling to name the Fox further, unable to shake the fear of that night. Father Baudoin spoke to some, and prayed over them, and anointed them; but he himself had been shaken, and his fiery nature burned low. Some recovered under his care; those that did not sought out Molly.

Molly dealt with each in turn, and ministered to them, and her cures did not fail, and slowly the troubles abated among the castle dwellers. Molly was especially concerned for Nemain and for Hob, who had both witnessed horror at first hand, and who, young and vulnerable, might yet feel some lingering effect of Vytautas’s spell.

Nemain, that steely girl, had passed through that terrible night and emerged as yellow-hot steel emerged from Thierry’s cold-water tempering barrel: hard but flexible, chilly, strong—a warrior queen-in-waiting. She was untouched by the daylight nightmares. After a week had passed, Molly had come to think that Hob might escape unscathed as well.

But within the fortnight, sleep began to be a torment: no sooner had he closed his eyes than he was back in the corridor with Gintaras’s sword poised above his head, or watching the Beast reach down toward Vytautas’s thigh, or seeing the dead and dying men sprawled in the Fox’s wake. Often he found himself following Nemain down the corridor past the dead Olivier, and just as he came abreast the soldier would give a low and sinister snicker, and Hob would sit up in his bed, his hair drenched in sweat.

The haunting followed him into the daylight. In the great kitchen, as Hob stood by the hearth gazing into the broad fire, chewing on a greasy chop that a cook had given him—for the whole castle spoiled him and Nemain outrageously—a dropped ladle landed with an iron clang on the flags of the floor. At once he was looking at the dying Gintaras, on his knees with his heart’s blood spreading in a broad stain across his stomach, the corridor echoing with the sound of his sword sliding to a halt, steel on stone. Hob stepped back with a loud panicked cry, and the blond head resolved once again into yellow flame, and the cooks stood frozen, looking at him in shock.

Hob began to lose weight; dark semicircles appeared beneath his eyes, and he sat listlessly. Jack he avoided, as though afraid of him.

At last Molly noticed, and on a bright chilly day, as the winter wound its way toward spring, took him up to the wall-walk by the southern tower, where they were alone with the brisk wind and the clouds scudding rapidly across the blue expanse.

Molly leaned her shoulder against a merlon. She produced a little clay jug from beneath the fluttering edges of her cloak, pulled the
carved-wood stopper with its leather wrapping, and took a swallow. She gave it to Hob and he sipped, and then choked a little: it was like liquid fire. He sipped a second time, gave it back. Molly drank again, and looking out through the crenel across the countryside, said in an unremarkable voice, “There is something that oppresses you,
a rún,
and I would have you tell me of it.”

“I, uh . . . ” He cleared his throat. Still Molly looked out over the sea of bare trees in the forest below, as though looking for a fairy ship to sail the treetops toward her. The drink began to spread warmth through his belly.

He spoke again. “I have terrible dreams, Mistress, of, of the . . . the things that happened. And sometimes I see things, for a moment, that are not there.”

She nodded, still looking toward the horizon. “I thought as much: it was a terrible time, and these things leave their mark, as a bear leaves claw marks on the trees. I will come to you tonight, and give you something to ease this dolor; nor will you be troubled again.”

“Thank you, Mistress.” He smiled, for he knew she was capable of much, and he believed her capable of still more that he did not know. And even as he smiled, the smile began to fade, and a shadow came once again across his features. “But, Mistress, it’s Jack as well: if, if Jack . . . ”

She put the stopper back into the bottle with a little squeaking thump; the bottle vanished beneath her cloak. “What then of Jack, lad?”

He did not meet her eyes; he stared at the brooch that secured her cloak. This was a pin-backed silver disk. On its face was a ring of three cats, their bodies formed of complex interlaced ribbons that yet suggested the swell of the musculature, the articulation of the joints, of the powerful limbs. Each cat was depicted with staring eyes and ears back; each gripped the tail of the next in its fangs. The brooch caught the sun and flashed amid the green wool folds of Molly’s cloak.

Hob looked away abruptly. He felt that he had seen his fill of
powerful limbs and gripping fangs. He gazed out over the parapet; he spoke in a low voice, asking as one asks news of kin gone off to war: hesitant but determined. “If Jack is one of them, one of those, those . . . does that mean that again, that Jack will . . . will need to eat . . . ”

“No, he will not. I needed him to change, but ’twas only the once. You
know
Jack. Jack is Jack, and will stay Jack from here to forever, and I’ll see to that.” She turned away, and then suddenly she was back and clasping his shoulders. He caught the perfume of strong drink on her breath.

“How can you know what it was for him?” She shook him lightly; she spoke in a low fierce voice. “He’s told me things. . . . The wind bringing him a thousand scents, and the creak of a twig beneath the linnet’s foot! And then the strength, the strength of it! Like being ten men at once! What’s to come, and what was, just dropping away. To live like an animal, that way they have: no thought for anything, the
hereness
of it all, the
nowness,
the day burning like a bonfire! The terrible hunger for human blood and meat, and the terrible joy of eating!”

A lock of her hair fell forward in a silver curve over one eye as she shook him. He looked at her, his own eyes troubled, the corners of his mouth turned down.

“Ah, Hob,
a chuisle . . .
” She ran her hand along his jaw, where new down was coming in; she folded him in her arms and held him. A strong wind moved in the tops of the sea of trees stretching away, down there below the castle wall: a hushed roaring, a desolate sound.

After a while, in his new voice that cracked and wobbled between high and low, he asked, “But, Mistress, where did . . . all the rest of him come from? And of the, the Fox? Where did it go?”

She pushed him away a little and looked at him. “They are creatures of blood and dream,” she said gravely, and then would say no more, but fell to hugging him gently, and gently stroking his hair, until finally he grew calm beneath her touch.

*   *   *

T
HAT NIGHT, AS HE LAY ABED
dreading sleep, Molly came in and sat on the side of his cot. She produced another bottle, even smaller than the one she’d had that afternoon. She pulled the stopper and said to Hob, “Drink without ceasing, till all is done.”

Hob put the cool ceramic neck to his lips and drank steadily. It was by no means as strong as the sip she had given him on the windswept parapet, and it had a faint taste of berries. He finished it easily, and she took the bottle away and pushed him tenderly back to his pillow. She placed her big warm hand, strong and soft, no longer chapped after weeks indoors, on his forehead. She stroked back over his brow a few times, and then let her hand lie still.

She began to hum, almost under her breath. He could barely hear her voice, that sweet deep woman’s voice, now almost a whisper. He thought to hear words in it, although not any that he recognized; and then again he decided that there were no words. He drifted along on the lake of her voice, his eyes closed, his brow gently warmed beneath her hand. The lake on which he sailed rose and fell in wavelets; he drifted far out over the darkening waters, and presently he came to a shore where the little lapping waves broke on gravel, and he slid up on the pebbly land, and opened his eyes, and it was day, and he lay alone in his bed.

Molly was gone, and from that day, so was his haunting, and his fear of Jack. Hob could feel that the trouble in his heart was gone the very moment he opened his eyes; he felt rested and strong. He swung his legs over and reached down for his shoes, thinking about searching out some food from the cooks.

O
NCE HOB HAD BEEN RELEASED
from the recurring nightmare of Fox Night, he found that, as his fear subsided, his curiosity increased.
One afternoon, Molly in the inner room with the door closed, tending to Jack, he sat on a bench in the outer room, watching Nemain sort through clothing in her chest; occasionally he was called upon to hold up two garments side by side while she stood a few paces off, looking from one to the other.

He asked at one point, as he stood there with overgowns of different colors, cramoisy in one hand and perse in the other, “Why is Jack so sick? Is it from being a Beast? Was he weak like this at St. Audrey’s Fair, when Herself met him?”

“Nay,” she said, “it’s from stopping being a Beast that he is sick. He was not weak at Ely, but every day he was less a man, and more a Beast; changing more and more often: he was disappearing into the Beast, and ’twas harder to hide it from other folk.” Her eyes darkened; she said very low, “He may have killed now and then, driven by that hunger they have.”