Between Two Fires (9781101611616) Read Free Page A

believe you are.”
    “I’m afraid I am.”
    “But you don’t have to be!”
    “Sorry. Already am. Now I see a bunch of lovely stones by the stream. What say I go get them and throw them at you until you come down?”
    The foliage wouldn’t allow for much stone-throwing, and he wasn’t sure he could make himself throw a stone at her in any case, but he said it as if he meant it. He sensed he had to get her to the barn quickly.
    “Please don’t.”
    “Then come down.”
    “It’s the other one. He’s the bad one. Tell him you couldn’t find me.”
    “He has a temper.”
    “So does my father.”
    “He’s dead.”
    “No, he’s not.”
    “Enough games. Come down or I knock you down with stones.”
    She was crying now. He thought she would call his bluff, but soon she probed for a lower branch with her long, ungainly foot. He helped her down and felt her trembling. He felt sick about what he was doing, but hardened his heart. He decided to talk to her about it while he hoisted her up on his shoulder and walked back toward the barn.
    “I know this seems awful, but it really isn’t. If God wanted order and goodness in the world, He shouldn’t have made things quite so hard on us. We’re all dead men, and women. He wants chaos and death? He gets them, and what say do we have in it? All we can do is try to have a little fun before the mower comes for us, eh? And he will come for us. If you relax, you might not have such a bad time.”
    “You’re just saying these things to make yourself feel better,” she said, breathing hard in fear for what was about to happen.
    “You’re a smart girl. Too smart. This world’s not made for smart girls. Here we are.”
    So saying, he used his free hand to open the barn door.
    “Mary, Mother of God,” he said.
    Godefroy was breathing his last, rough breaths facedown in the dirt with a hole in his head that was pouring an arc of blood like a hole in a tight wineskin. His hands were shaking. The fat one was slumped against the wall and looked like a sleepy child with his chin on his chest, except he was drenched in blood and the head sat wrong because it was barely attached. His hand was off just below where the chain mail ended. It was nearby, still clutching his wicked hammer. His killer had put the sword exactly where he wanted it, and with great strength.
    “Put her down,” Thomas said.
    “I will.”
    The sword’s point poked Jacquot’s woolen hood and settled just behind his ear. He knew the man wielding it could drive it through both hood and skull as easily as into a squash.
    “Please don’t kill me,” Jacquot said.
    “I have to, or I can’t sleep here.”
    “I’ll leave.”
    “You’ll come back and cut my throat at night out of love for Godefroy. He is your cousin.”
    “On my mother’s side. And I didn’t like my mother.”
    “Sorry, Jacquot.”
    “You could leave.”
    “I’m too tired. And you would find me.”
    “No.”
    “Put her down so she doesn’t get hurt.”
    “No.”
    “Do you really want your last earthly act to be trying to hide behind a girl you nearly raped?”
    He put her down, then put his hands over his eyes. But while Thomas was trying to work up the will to strike, the girl stood in front of the smaller man.
    “Don’t kill him,” she said.
    She looked up at Thomas, and he noticed how very light and gray her eyes were. Like the flint in the walls of the barn, but luminous. Like an overcast sky on the verge of turning blue.
    Thomas lowered his sword.
    The rain stopped.
    “Don’t kill anybody else again.”

TWO
Of the Honey and the Broken Cross
    Thomas and the girl slept in the barn on separate piles of rotten hay with the droopy-eyed man tied up in the donkey’s old stall. He didn’t make trouble in the evening because he knew how close to dying he had been, but near morning he forgot and woke Thomas up.
    “What?” Thomas growled.
    “My undershirt. Would you help me so I don’t soil it? I have to