Between Two Fires
by Christopher Buehlman
Contents
Two: Of the Honey and the Broken Cross
Overview
At dawn, Thomas subdues the talkative Jacquot and cripples his crossbow to delay pursuit. He forces Jacquot to bury the girl’s plague-dead father, then grudgingly agrees to escort the girl to the next town. Discoveries of honey and relics expose need, faith, and suspicion, while the girl’s unsettling vision hints at darkness shadowing Thomas.
Summary
Before dawn in the barn, Jacquot pesters Thomas for help and his weapons, provoking Thomas to beat him unconscious. The girl wakes from a nightmare mentioning devils; Thomas forbids such talk. Thomas spares Jacquot’s elegant Italian crossbow but smashes its crank so Jacquot cannot load it, then debates the bow’s use, killing from afar, and the girl’s insistence on traveling with him.
They argue about swearing and duty. The girl asks Thomas to bury her father; he refuses until she appeals to his conscience, and he relents. Thomas sets Jacquot to the work at swordpoint. Jacquot, half-mad with fear of plague air, drags the corpse out; the girl places a small cross in her father’s hand and kisses him goodbye. Jacquot tips the body into the shallow grave and shovels it closed.
While Jacquot digs, the girl gathers possessions. Thomas declares he will take her only to the next town and hand her to nuns if possible. In her bundle they find beeswax candles and pots of honey from her beekeeper-lawyer father; Thomas doles a taste to Jacquot to make him finish digging. Thomas examines a heavy Aquinas volume and a birdsong whistle the girl keeps for comfort; he allows the whistle but argues the book and trinkets are burdens.
Thomas rejects a clumsy pine-and-lead cross as needless weight, throwing and finally breaking it despite the girl’s protests. She weeps, then claims she saw Thomas’s soul and says a devil is always near him. Disturbed and dismissive, Thomas calls her a witch yet prepares to take her along, ordering her to fetch and use her mother’s comb as they ready to head south or east, away from the ruined west.
Who Appears
- ThomasGrim soldier; beats Jacquot, disables his crossbow crank, forces the burial, rations honey, agrees to escort the girl one town, rejects her heavy cross.
- The girlOrphaned village girl; insists on traveling with Thomas, bids her father farewell, salvages goods, keeps a whistle, claims to see a devil near Thomas.
- JacquotDroopy-eyed archer spared by Thomas; chatters nervously, forced to bury the father, denied his loaded crossbow, begs for honey, fears plague miasma.
- The girl's fatherPlague victim; a lawyer and beekeeper. His body is interred by Jacquot at Thomas’s command after the girl’s farewell.