XVII
Do not concern yourself,” Josef muttered to himself as he limped through Gród Narew. “Do not concern yourself.”
The thoughts he had for Komtur Heinrich were not those of a probationary member of the German Order. They had more in common with the black thoughts that had filled his head when he had seen Nürnberg decimated around him. But this was worse: this pestilence had a snarling face and could be seen coming.
In his mind he kept picturing innocents falling victim to the gold-furred demon, the life torn free of their bodies while Heinrich played diplomatic games with the Masovian nobility. He saw body upon body, and above them all his Komtur’s unmoved face.
Obedience before all.
Worse, perhaps, was the unease he felt about Maria. Everything about her drew feelings from him he thought had died with Sarah—her quiet strength, her voice, the gentle touch of her hand, the curve of her lower lip … At some point his thoughts had abandoned their pretense of propriety and he had accepted that he cared for her much more than Komtur Heinrich would find proper.
So, as his thoughts descended their dark spiral, the victims of the demon’s attack most often bore Maria’s face.
Though, at their darkest points, his thoughts also cast Maria into other roles. The suspicions raised by her healing face and her silver cross refused to go away.
Why do I keep thinking this? She bore the wound on her face for days before it healed. She was right; it had simply appeared worse than it was.
But the silver on her neck would impede such healing.
The thoughts were insane. There was no logic to them. What he hunted would not bind itself so.
So why does she lie about the source of the wound?
Yet if some man had struck her, how many women would admit such to a near stranger?
Whatever his suspicions, they were outweighed by his sense of the woman he had seen during her visits. The woman who’d lifted his heart, and showed him a gentle strength that seemed to bear much more than she was able to show. And he knew that she needed help. He felt, somehow, that she was more at risk from Komtur Heinrich’s demon than he was.
His gut tied itself into painful knots, and only partly because of the wound in his belly. But until he entered the great hall where the members of the szlachta took their meals, he was only guilty of sinful thoughts.
He stood in the doorway and looked at the Poles eating and talking and singing. To Josef, the sight bordered on unreal when compared to the Order’s tradition of taking meals silently as scriptures were read.
He stared at the chattering mass of Slavic nobility and began to have second thoughts. Who was he to place his fears and concerns above those of the Church and the Order?
He clutched at his stomach with his fist and turned to leave, but a man placed a hand on his shoulder, stopping him. “Are you looking for someone?” the man asked in comprehensible German. “You’ve wandered far from your brothers.”
Josef turned to face a man taller than he was and twice as broad. For an instant he thought he faced the lord of Gród Narew, Wojewoda Bolesław himself. But this man was younger than that and had a beard darker and more closly trimmed.
“I apologize for intruding.”
“No need. You are guests of our house.” Somehow he managed to say it with no trace of irony. “Perhaps there is something you need?”
Josef straightened. There was a reason he was here. “I wished to ask if my weapons might be returned to me.”
The man smiled. “Your master has talked to the Duke of this, I am sure. The Order’s weapons will be—”
“I talk only of my own,” Josef said.
“You are a member of the Order.”
“But I speak for myself.”
“Do you?” The man led him out of the hall and down a long corridor. As they walked, the man said, “I am curious why you might think anyone would return your weapons, in particular.”
“Perhaps Komtur Heinrich has not said everything about what it is we hunt in your lands.”
The man stopped and turned to face him, a questioning expression on his face. “Who are you, Brother?”
“Josef.”
“I am Telek. You sleep in my uncle’s bed.” He placed a hand on Josef’s shoulder and said, with a dire earnestness, “Do you know what you are offering to do?”
“Yes.”
Telek squeezed Josef’s shoulder and said, “Then perhaps some accommodation can be reached.”
He led Josef to a series of storerooms deep in the stronghold. No one challenged Telek’s presence, or asked about the pale German who accompanied him. He stopped Josef before a large door, banded with iron, and said, “Should anyone care to ask, say I dragged you down here to identify some inscriptions upon these weapons.”
“Do you not have men who read German?”
Telek muttered something in Polish that may have been a curse. “It’s a pretext, of course. It would be suspicious for us to be alone without some claim that I attempted to gain information from you. Better for you if I requested your presence with a transparent ploy.”
“I see.”
“I hope you do. Otherwise you would be a very short-lived spy.”
Josef’s gut clenched, trying to deny the truth of what Telek said. But was there any other word for it, whatever his motivations? He was betraying the Order. He tried to tell himself he wasn’t being traitorous; Heinrich himself had said that the Poles would work with them on this. If they were allies, could it be traitorous to inform them of exactly what they faced?
Telek opened the door, the thick slab of oak swinging past Josef on creaking hinges. The interior was dark, dotted with fragments of light—reflections from the lantern in the hallway. Telek retrieved a lantern and led Josef inside.
The room smelled of oiled steel and dry wood. Every wall was crowded with wooden racks holding as many implements of death as Josef could imagine. In the middle of the room sat several large wooden chests, a sheet of canvas draped across the top of them. On the canvas rested the Order’s weapons. The reflections from their blades had a different, softer character than those of the blades racked against the walls. Josef looked over the small arsenal of swords, daggers, and crossbows.
Telek picked up a dagger and held it up before him, the inscriptions bold in the reflection of the lamplight. “Ornate weapons for an Order that has taken vows of poverty.”
“They are necessary.”
“Then perhaps you can explain why.”
Telek stood and quietly listened to the German, and gradually he realized that, for whatever reason, this Josef was genuine. At first he’d thought this man was some feint by Heinrich, to get some weapons out of the stores; or perhaps Heinrich suspected Telek’s visit to his quarters and wanted to confirm it.
But this man went beyond anything Telek had expected. Not only did he confirm the nature of the beast the Order hunted, but he conveyed an urgency that Heinrich’s tome could not. Telek listened to the man and asked the questions he would have if he had not known much of this beforehand.
One thing he noted: there were gaps in Josef’s knowledge. He couldn’t answer some questions Telek asked that would be apparent to anyone who had read Heinrich’s tome. He never mentioned the name Semyon, and he didn’t know how long these creatures had been hunted by the Order. To Josef, these things were demonic and always had been.
He gave Telek a few new elements, though. A description of the beast: the golden fur, the ruthlessness. It was quite a different sense hearing about such a thing from a man who had seen it than reading a sterile description on the page. Hearing about how this beast had savaged a heavily armed and mounted contingent of the Order, armed precisely against such a creature …
Telek began to fear for his uncle and the men with him, armed only with the silver sword that Bolesław had taken from this room. We should have armed them all, Telek thought, cursing the impulse that had made his uncle keep their knowledge from the Duke and the Duke’s men.
When Josef had finished his confession, Telek set the dagger down and said, “Take what you need.”
Josef picked up a cleaning rag and wrapped one of the silver daggers inside it, so that he had a nondescript bundle that could have been anything. Telek was relieved that the man had chosen something he could carry away without raising questions.
A wounded man is not going to go on a solo hunt for this thing with only a silver dagger.
“Tell me, Josef: Why is it that you need that now? Do you not think that your captain will convince the Duke to allow you to resume pursuit of this thing?”
“I—I need to protect myself,” he said. It was the only obvious lie he had spoken, but Telek decided that it was worth more to retain an ally in the Order than it was to ferret out that bit of information.
Telek left Josef with an assurance that they could “continue to help each other.” The massive Pole was obviously troubled by Josef’s tale; though what sane man wouldn’t be?
Josef shambled back to his sickbed, weighed down by the dagger in his hand. He wondered if the silver in the weapon was more or less than thirty pieces’ worth.
She needs something with which to defend herself, Josef thought.
But, if he was honest, she needed to not be here. The dagger was little more than a gesture—as Telek had said, a pretext. The Poles needed to know what they faced and what its weaknesses were. It was too great a monster to be taken down by Heinrich’s men alone. The dagger was an excuse not only to tell Bolesław’s nephew but to tell Maria.
She would not be safe until she knew what was out there, and he could not in good conscience keep the Order’s secrets. He would give her the dagger when she came with his evening meal, and he would tell her everything. If she left at daylight and then kept to the farm where she lived, he would be able to count her safe.
He had come to care for her more than any woman since Sarah. And, in the end, he would do for Maria what he had been unable to do for Sarah. Even if she could never be his—it was wrong for a member of the Order to think otherwise—just knowing that she lived was reward enough.
Even so, his pledge of chastity had begun to chafe as much as his pledge of obedience. Had he only turned away from worldly things because he had seen the world turn away from him?
He fell into his bed, aching from the exertion, unable to undress himself for the pain in his belly. He checked his dressing briefly but saw no blood seeping from the bandages, even though it felt as though there should be.
As he closed his eyes and waited for Maria to come, he thought of Sarah and the awful time in Nürnberg. He remembered entering the house of Sarah’s parents, dark and smelling of death. Her family and the servants had long since fled to the countryside. He remembered the goats that had wandered in from the fields to take up residence in the kitchen. He remembered her body, left in her bedchamber, where she had died. It sickened him that he remembered the smell in that room better than he remembered her face. Every time he tried to picture her smile, or hear her laugh, it was now Maria’s face he pictured, Maria’s voice he heard.
And it was Maria he kept seeing dead in her bedchamber.
And his grotesque imagination made it all the worse when Maria didn’t come with his evening meal.