Lapvona(67)

Next came a stew of wild leeks and fennel. Barnabas gazed at Vuna as he ate. Her cap was still crooked but her veil cast a shadow along her face that haunted her cheeks with wonder. Would he kill her? No, no. She was too easy. He would rather kiss her than kill her, if he had to. Had he kissed too many girls when he was a boy? Was that the problem? Was God torturing him in retribution? Was God capable of that? He could remember each girl he’d kissed back in Prepat: the black-haired girl with the harelip; the brown-haired girl with freckles in her dimples; another brown-haired girl with battered eyes. Even at the age of four or five, she’d looked as if she’d seen the fires of hell already. What had happened to those little girls he’d kissed and pinched? Had they hated him forever? Had they told their husbands, years later, ‘There was an awful boy who kissed me once, and they sent him up to the monastery?’ Did their husbands get jealous? Did those girls get beaten for his stolen kisses? He felt sorry for himself that he couldn’t see their faces now. He looked back up for a moment at Villiam, who was prattling on about something—‘Leeches are good for virility, unless you leech too much’—and watched his mouth move. Had Barnabas really dedicated himself to that spoiled rat? Was that the great tragedy of his life—had he traded in a life of kissing whomever he pleased to guard the rotten soul of a man who couldn’t clean the shit from his own asshole? He could have done better than that, the priest reckoned. Maybe that was the message he was meant to receive.

And then the servant girls took the bowls away again—the priest hadn’t even touched his, but no matter. They changed the tablecloth now to a mustard yellow linen and brought out herring and a tureen of eel soup and a platter of oysters and crab. The village guests looked horrified. They’d never seen such creatures of the sea, and truthfully they were not commonly served at the manor. Since the drought, the trade rate for seafood had gone quite high.

Grigor took a crab for himself and bit into it, shattering its exoskeleton between his teeth. He hadn’t realized that it was a dead animal. He thought it was a root vegetable, or maybe a strange bread. He spent the rest of the course surreptitiously picking the blades of broken shell out of his gums, which distracted him from the conversation, which was not a conversation but a monologue given by Villiam. He talked simply to keep himself from falling asleep, he was so tired, following any stray thought that entered his mind no matter how dull or ridiculous. ‘I try to lead a simple life,’ he was saying. ‘Health, wealth, and wisdom. No time for horseplay. Never. We really don’t like anything trifling, do we, hmm?’ Nobody was listening. He took a break from blathering and speared an entire eel, flayed it clean off its spine and sucked down the flesh.

Jon and Vuna were hesitant about the food. They didn’t want to appear rude, so they each had a few bites of the fish. Marek ate nothing. Grigor watched him, knowing full well that he was Jude’s boy. There was something menacing in his face, Grigor thought. And the red hair was troubling.

‘They say an eel on Christmas is good tidings,’ Villiam said.

Soon, legs of beef and capon, duck, plover, lark, and crane swirled around the table. Then the sow, and a peacock, roasted in its feathers, with a bowl of special gravy to pour on top. Villiam went after everything. Father Barnabas ate whatever was in front of him. The food distracted him from his thoughts. He dropped his napkin and stooped to pick it up. The rush of blood to his brain darkened his vision for a moment. As he lifted his head, he saw Jon and Vuna holding hands under the table, and it saddened him. He had never held anybody’s hand. Was there time yet? he wondered. If he ran out now, could he find love before the cavalry found him? Could he defy their order to kill and find himself some fair lady to sin with instead? Either way, Barnabas knew, he wouldn’t last long. The ghouls wouldn’t even get down off their horses, he knew. They’d pull their swords out and cut off his head and keep on. They wouldn’t bother to hang him. The Devil had no respect. That stung Barnabas. At least the villagers treated him with honor, didn’t they?

‘Your names?’ the priest asked the guests. He should have known their names. ‘Forgive an old man. I’ve had a headache,’ he said.

Grigor turned a bit red. He was baffled that the priest didn’t recognize him.

‘I am Grigor,’ he said. ‘This is my son, Jon, and his wife, Vuna.’

‘You come to Mass regularly?’

‘Every Sunday,’ Jon said, thinking this would win him some credit.

‘Except on the Sundays you’re not there,’ Grigor said to Barnabas. Jon threw him a hard look.

‘What happens when he’s not there?’ Villiam asked.

‘When you’re not there,’ Jon said, ‘we still worship. We try to remember the things you said last time, and we pray.’

‘Good boy,’ Barnabas said and went back to his food, satisfied momentarily that he was at least adored a little.

‘How is your wife?’ Grigor asked Villiam shakily. ‘Is Ina caring well for her?’

‘Ina, yes,’ Villiam answered. ‘The child of God is coming along just fine, I hear, but we don’t hear much, which is good, as you know. When there is nothing to say, there is nothing to worry about.’ He took a leg of heron and nodded and sucked at the slimy flesh. He was bored. The priest looked pale and drunk. Marek was useless. The visitors were provincial and banal. Villiam wasn’t used to being the one to entertain. Usually, on Christmas, the male servants would perform a mystery play, a reenactment of the shepherds coming to see Jesus. That always provided some good humor, and Villiam would critique them afterward, and they’d do the reenactment again and again, funnier and funnier, until the thing devolved into a play of Villiam’s own creation and had nothing to do with the story of Christmas at all. But that kind of entertainment was no longer appropriate. Villiam would have liked to brush off the strange sense of foreboding and dread in the air with a good joke. He looked over at Clod, who stood with his back against the wall.