Dark and Deepest Red(65)

Men surrounded them. One holding the young woman still. Two on either side of the young man, one of them probably an executioner.

Executioner. A misnomer for a man whose job in medieval Strasbourg was not only to kill but to torment, torture, plague until the moment of death.

And one more man, a far shorter one, this one in priest’s garb. But why would he be here? Why would he not be waiting at the Pont du Corbeau to give them confession before their deaths?

Fear lit the young man’s and the young woman’s eyes.

But something else came with it.

A hard set to the young man’s.

A defiance in the young woman’s, a vicious will.

A look as though, if they were going to burn her and this young man, she was going to burn the city down with them.

Emil had no way to know, but in the next moment, the woman flinched in a way he swore was from feeling Emil’s watch on her back.

She turned her gaze, as much as she could. For a second, he thought maybe she saw him.

Then the priest commanded her attention again.

The cathedral’s high stained glass threw deep blue down to where they stood.

Emil looked down at Rosella’s shoes, turned purple in the blue light.

Rosella didn’t know what his mother had told him. The red shoes at Saverne. The dyed cloth crafted into dozens or hundreds of pairs. How they were meant to cure the fever.

How history had grabbed hold of her.

From the way she stared at the scene in front of them, her breath held still on her tongue, he thought she understood. The weight of his own rage seemed shared between their bodies, his grief over this girl and boy about to die, who had already died.

Emil wanted to set a dozen colors of fire to the bridge so everyone else would scatter in wonder and horror, and they would live.

But no one saw them except his relative. They were really here no more than he was in the history that played through his dreams.

There was no crossing the wide river of five hundred years between him and this boy and girl about to die. No altering what had already been.

All there was, was watching.





Strasbourg, 1518


The priest casts pronouncements with more certainty than Lala has ever heard from this humble man.

Any who follow her are the legion of the devil within her. If they are saints possessed, they will return when the demons have left them.

The canon priests’ rage is bright as their jeweled rings.

But the dancers block them from reaching Lala and the sergeants.

They watch, but can do nothing.

“We do not make deals with the devil’s children,” the friar calls out.

“Burn her,” a canon priest shouts, his head bobbing to see between the dancers.

Lala’s heart pleats, folding in her bristling terror that they will kill her rather than bargain with demons.

The newest dancers move in a wave, their leaping bodies barring the way as they call out for the priest to help them, to free them from the devils within them.

The canon priests step back, hesitation and scorn in their eyes. Of course, they must think, those possessed by demons would insulate their demon queen. Of course her legion would not want the canon priests reaching her.

The chorus rises, sharp and sudden and miraculous as an appearance of the Virgin. More voices sound than Lala and Geruscha and Henne could have begged to join.

Make her leave us, they shout.

Do it, please.

Save us.

A few words come in voices Lala knows.

Melisende and Agnesona cast their arms to heaven, shrieking. They wail and dance with such fervor that their circlets and veils fall away, their red hair tumbling about their shoulders. Agnesona throws herself on the ground, writhing and turning.

Melisende, and Agnesona, and Lala. All three of them missing the girl who was their anchoring point, like the center jewel in a brooch.

The sisters turn themselves into a chaos of tormented limbs and pained voices.

Please, they beg, their words overlapping. Cast her out and her demons with her. Please. Make them leave this city!

The canons hold fearful sneers on their faces.

“Get on with it,” one yells over the dancers’ heads.

“Fulfill your office,” another adds, “before she curses them all.”

“Please,” the kind priest says, glancing at Alifair, seeding so much desperation into his voice that Lala would believe him as an entertainer in a king’s court. “Perhaps he can still be saved with prayer and confession. Perhaps we need not lose him.”

It is a performance so beautiful Lala could kiss the ground at the priest’s feet.

Lala’s heart catches to see the skittishness in Alifair’s face, the way he shudders at these voices because he does not realize she has bid them. She wants nothing but to kiss his eyelashes and brush his hair with her fingers. It is an ache as deep as the soreness between her hips each month.

But Lala hardens her voice, the way she imagines a sorceress in a fairy story would. “My demon prince will follow only me.”

Confusion dims Alifair’s features as he takes in the oddness of her speech.

“You need not follow, young man,” the priest says, making a fine act of his pleading.

Lala tips her head down slowly, opening her eyes to Alifair, to try to tell him, Trust me, you must trust me.

His shoulders settle, and Lala breathes with the hope that he understands.