Lapvona(66)

* * *




*

‘Merry Christmas,’ Villiam said as he trudged into the great room. He took his seat at the head of the table. He was disappointed by the look of the guests, who were in turn disappointed by the absence of the nun and Ina. Grigor, especially, had hoped they would have a chance to see one another. Villiam sensed their displeasure. Later he would have to complain to Klarek that he ought to have invited more cheerful visitors. These were haggard and ugly. The girl’s cap was crooked, and she looked bald underneath, and the boy’s face was grouchy. The old man reminded him of his own father, spiteful and suspicious, and so Villiam forgot to say a prayer, and reached for his wine to refresh himself.

The priest, completely distracted, was already slurping his soup. He’d had a rough night’s sleep. His head hurt. The approaching miracle of the new Christ had been gnawing at his nerves, so much so that he had begun to hear things. First, strange growling noises that he thought came from the barracks—dogs or goats. He wasn’t very smart about animals. But recently, as the holidays began, he’d been awakened each night by what he was sure was the barking of dogs. Their voices echoed from afar, sometimes yipping and reffing, other times howling long notes in harmonies that twisted painfully in his ears. He’d slept through most of the fire last night, but had woken to huge black clouds of smoke hanging in the air. They seemed to extend infinitely toward the horizon, like a road in the sky. The barking of dogs was louder than it had ever been, so loud that Barnabas couldn’t hear the crackling of the fire or the calls of the stableboys as they conveyed the buckets of water down from the reservoir. He only heard the snarling reffs and calls, which scared him, so he drank more spirit of elder. He kept a bottle by the bed for such troubled nights. He drifted off for a moment, covering his ears with his pillows, only to be awoken by a deafening howl that seemed to be calling for Barnabas specifically. There was something familiar to its tenor. It got louder and louder, as though the howling dog were riding up the road of smoke in the sky. Barnabas couldn’t stand it. Eventually he gave up on sleep and lay there listening, surrendering to the bellows and pondering the meaning of such dogs, recalling as best he could the teachings of the church. One story—he barely remembered it—had to do with hunting dogs, he thought, and ghouls on horses chasing souls into hell. He wondered if he’d been right all this time about the Devil roaming free. If God had locked heaven’s gate to keep the Devil out, the wicked one might lead a wild hunt and take whomever he could with him back to hell. ‘This must be the Devil’s cavalry,’ Barnabas thought. Now they were coming for him. He had risen from bed and opened his window to the cold night to get a better listen. There he saw, lit by the stars, the wild hunt, a thunderous crowd of animals trampling across the smoke in the sky, heading straight toward him. Barnabas ran back to bed and clutched his pillow and his cross, as though its power suddenly meant something to him. After that he didn’t sleep at all. He barely moved until the sun broke into dawn and the echoes of hooves and howling had retreated, and he could hear his own heart beating again. ‘I’ve gone insane,’ he thought.

In the morning, he wandered down to the great room before the guests arrived and found a gift on the side table, a bottle wrapped in red cloth. He asked Petra where it had come from. One of the guards had delivered it for Villiam that morning, she’d said. It was a bottle of wine from Ivan, Dibra’s brother. Father Barnabas stashed it in the cellar, afraid of its power, certain that it was poisoned. He didn’t tell Villiam about it, nor did he hide it very well. He simply placed it on a stool in the corner of the cellar, sniffed the sulfurous air, then scrambled up the stairs, afraid to be alone down there. He’d sat in the great room in a stupor, grateful for the footsteps and mundane chatter of the servants as they set the table and swept the floor.

‘This is my son, Marek,’ Villiam said now to the visitors, nodding to the boy.

‘Hello,’ Grigor said. Jon and Vuna smiled.

Marek sat with his head in his hand, already spooning the thin soup up and spilling it back into the bowl to cool it. Marek, too, was hung over and tired from poor sleep. He didn’t acknowledge the guests.

‘Let’s eat,’ Villiam said. He snapped for Lispeth to refill his cup with wine.

‘Our Father,’ Grigor said, determined to make good on this day of God’s gift of His son to the world. So he prayed while the priest slurped and Villiam gulped his wine. Jon and Vuna bowed their heads but kept their eyes open, glancing at each other, their eyes widening as though to say, ‘What is wrong with these people? Is it not right to pray before you eat?’ Grigor was unperturbed. He had been prepared for any weirdness. Finally, he reached the end of his prayer and Father Barnabas reached the end of his soup.

‘Amen,’ Grigor said.

‘Amen,’ said Jon and Vuna, and crossed themselves and lifted their heads.

‘Amen,’ said Marek and dropped his spoon. His soup tasted gamey. There were chunks of mutton at the bottom.

The priest waited for his empty bowl to be cleared away, staring down at the bits of herbs and carrot stuck to the bottom. While the rest slurped their soup now, he was debating with himself about what to do about the gift from Ivan. With that wine, he knew, he could kill whomever he pleased. He could do the Devil’s work. Perhaps that was what his vision of the cavalry was meant to tell him: ‘Kill. Be a hunter. Join us.’ Maybe he should, he thought. Better that than to be endlessly harassed. He’d never really believed in such things before—spirits, messages, anything beyond the trite reality of the world around him—but his sleeplessness had indeed made him susceptible. For the first time, he entertained the possibility that there was some deep meaning to life. Was he destined to be a killer? He looked around the table to test whether he was tempted. Of course, Villiam’s scowl was what caught his eye first. The priest considered this, sitting back in his chair while the servants now removed the bowls and replaced the dark linen tablecloth with a blue silk one. Or he could kill himself, he thought, yawning. Or no one. Perhaps that was the best choice, to do nothing.