Chapter V
V
By late afternoon, Jacques’s exhaustion had returned. His distracted muttering, which had become almost constant, was now punctuated with pained grunts.
“Pardon me, sir,” I said aloud. “There is a place nearby where we can bathe and set up camp for the night.” He only nodded and motioned for me to lead the way.
The land sloped away on one side of the road, down to the riverbank.
I guided our horses along a run of shallow water and through a screen of thick brush.
We emerged on a sheltered, sandy beach. Here the Po skipped and kneaded over smooth stones and the current peeled around a high, white boulder partway across, creating a shallow eddy.
We stopped under a stand of willows that appeared to be stepping into the rapids with thick roots.
We were hidden from the road, and the far bank was a thorny tangle of blackberry woodland, resplendent in autumn foliage.
Excellent.
Be careful, Sebastian, said Sarmodel. We’re not alone.
The ghost of a Roman legionnaire stood on the crest of the white boulder, looking down into the river with spear in hand.
He had started to forget himself, losing color and definition.
His armor glinted in the sun but it was a cold, distant light.
Only his tunic was still clear, a slash of vivid red above the white water.
He ignored us and I did not acknowledge him.
“A perfect place to bathe,” Jacques remarked weakly. A heavy slant of afternoon sunlight hit the surface of the water through the trees. “You were right.”
“Take your time, sir,” I said. “I will make camp.”
Jacques undressed with leaden limbs as I secured the horses and strung up a sheet of oiled sailcloth for shelter. I busied myself among the items on my wagon, retrieving some cheese and smoked pork, as Jacques waded into the water, gasping.
I watched him sidelong. Jacques kept himself turned to one side, attempting to hide the blood-crusted bandage on his shoulder from me. He ducked his head below the water and I took my chance.
I whispered a Litany of the Dusk and drew the shadows into myself like a long, cold breath.
The warm shaft of afternoon light flickered. To Jacques it must have seemed that a cloud had raced across the face of the sun. He looked back to the riverbank. Only the horses moved there now.
“Professor?” Had he looked down, he might have seen my shadow gliding between the roots of the willows. “Professor Grave?”
“I am here, sir.”
Jacques turned to find me seated cross-legged on a thick branch, high out above the current.
In my hand, I held his cameo brooch. His confusion was almost comical.
Jacques looked to the riverbank, then back up at me, then back to the horses, then down to the water, as though he might find some trace of my passage on the surface.
“The pastor was right. You are a man of unnatural gifts.” He crossed himself 1 but did not move.
“I have seldom been so abused for climbing a tree, sir, and if I may respond in kind—you are a man of unnatural obstinacy.” My tone was pleasant, and I began to flip the cameo back and forth across my knuckles like a coin.
2 Jacques’s eyes widened and he drew himself up, watching the flickering jewel with palpable concern.
“Return that to me, now,” Jacques replied, his voice thick with fury. “You are not fit to touch it.”
“I will return it as soon as we have had a frank discussion, young sir. I am in the business of Truth, and it seems I’ve had little of it from you yet.”
He looked at me with real malice, the first I had seen from him. “Very well. I am glad that you finally show your true face. I do not fear you, Sebastian Grave, but I do welcome an end to this game of yours.”
“You—game of mine?”
The young man has some pluck, remarked Sarmodel. I clenched my teeth against his laughter.
“Indeed. You do not charm me with your fine speech and manners,” Jacques went on.
“You are insolent. For every ‘sir’ that leaves your mouth there are a dozen baser words unsaid. This I can abide; you are not giving your assistance for love of me.” His lemon-sucking grimace as he looked at me was most insulting.
“But you are unwholesome. You defile the dead. You do not sleep. You steal. I do not know how, but I believe you were responsible for unhorsing me. You are not a godly man—or a professor for that matter.”
“Then why, sir, have you come to me for help? There must be any number of godly men in Gévaudan who could better serve you.”
“I came to you, Professor, because my lord father would accept help from nobody else,” replied Jacques grimly.
“You are the only one who was able to defeat the Beast during the Red Winter. If we were not in such dire need, I would see you clapped in irons and drowned in the sea. In truth, I expected you to refuse.”
“Refuse? Your father summoned me,” I snapped, “and—as you have taken great care to remind me—I made a commitment to your family in this matter, thanks to the contract you hold. I will honor it.”3
“You do not seem the sort of man who places any meaning on honor.” That was unfair.
I was silent with shock and he continued his barrage.
“But I will give you your ‘discussion’ if I must. I know why you paid the farrier and it will please you to hear that your suspicions are correct—until we reach Gévaudan, I am a pauper in all but name.”
“The truth at last! Now tell me how and why your father sent you here with no escort and half a florin. Did he give you no money for the journey? You do not seem the type to spend it all on whores and liquor.”
“No indeed. Though the men of my escort are likely doing just that.”
That was a surprise.
“You were robbed by your own men?”
Jacques was shivering now. He looked down at his hands, nodding. “In the mountains. I caught them stealing from my saddlebag, and we fought. I woke bloodied with only my horse, the money in my purse and a shot wound.” He gestured to the dirty bandage on his shoulder.
“I see. And why didn’t they kill you?”
“Because, Professor, we were friends,” he said, his voice harsh with pain. “Gévaudan kept its children close after the Red Winter, and Gerard and Henri were the brothers my parents never gave me.”
“Brothers who beat you, shot you, robbed you and left you to freeze to death in the Alps?”
“It is bitter, but I understand them. They are commoners and there was only hardship waiting for them back in Ocerne. Even without the recent troubles, it has become a place of misery and fear for the common folk, ever since the Red Winter. And my father—my father does nothing about it. He will not see and he does not listen.” Jacques wrapped his arms around himself, and not only for the cold.
“They asked me to go with them, to start anew somewhere else with the money, but I refused.”
“I see.” I studied him, noting the ribs showing through his pale skin, his feverish eyes and the red streaks emerging from beneath his bandages. “And why—for the love of Almighty God—why did you not tell me any of this?”
“Because it does not concern you!” he almost screamed. “I was sent to retrieve a dubious acquaintance of my lord father’s. I made no promise to take him into my confidence. And nor would I, if he were anything but a base charlatan holding me to ransom with my own belongings.”
“Even a charlatan likes the truth sometimes,” I replied. “And did you expect us to make it to Gévaudan with three livres and a handful of crumbs?”
“I . . . I admit I had avoided the thought. I intended to travel as quickly as possible, through the night if necessary, to return home and be done with you before things grew too desperate.”
“You are a man standing naked, shot and I suspect dangerously ill in a very cold river, with nothing but a tired horse and some stale oats to feed it.” I tossed the cameo down to him.
“Desperate? I would say that fruit has fallen. Now wash yourself properly and I’ll prepare something to eat.
I’m going to have a look at that wound.” I walked easily back along the branch and swung down onto the sand. “And I am a professor.”4
1. A gesture which, like nose-picking, has endured through the centuries and serves only to lower my regard for mankind.
2. Childish, perhaps. Effective, certainly.
3. My own motives aside, it was indeed prudent for me to return and assess the state of affairs in Gévaudan. A powerful Spirit was potentially a very dangerous thing to leave behind—if indeed it still lived—never mind my signature under the king’s letterhead.
4. I lost most of my curriculum vitae in the various fires in the Museum of Alexandria, around the time of the Roman conquest. Julius Caesar was a passable statesman, but he had absolutely no respect for culture.