The Bird King(79)

“And he’ll be watching,” said Gwennec. “From that peak, the Spaniards can see anything that comes and goes in this waterway. There’s a fortress up there where you see the lights, with walls ten feet thick and a ring of watchtowers. Always under guard, day and night.”

Fatima leaned over the railing to get a better look. Behind her, the gelding snuffled at the pocket of Hassan’s robe, hoping for an apple. It was an ugly beast, its fetlocks untrimmed, its coat a muddy roan: a packhorse, more than likely, before the Castilians had set Gwennec atop its back. Fatima craned her neck to study the monk. He was rubbing his wrists absently: the red marks had deepened to purple and blue.

“Tell me what happened,” said Fatima in a quiet voice.

Gwennec flushed and looked away.

“I didn’t—” His voice caught, and he made silent shapes with his mouth, as if trying to remember an unfamiliar word. “I think you ought to know that I tried to turn you in,” he continued evenly, his eyes fixed on nothing. Fatima went hot and cold by turns. She could still feel the points of heat on her face where Gwennec had kissed her, but a chilly knot in her chest told her hostis, hostis, and she reminded herself that he had drawn a line between them.

“You said you’d go to the monastery,” was all she offered, matching his tone.

“I never made it as far as the monastery. There were guards posted everywhere. But I never had a chance to give you up, because they already knew well enough where to expect you, as if they’d been here on this ship, listening at your elbow. They asked me who I was and where I’d been and it seemed foolish to lie. But I wouldn’t tell them your plan. Where you were headed, the map, all of that. Didn’t seem relevant, as you were sitting there in the harbor, nor was it my right to say anyhow. They didn’t like that. They took me to a public house somewhere up the main road, where the general and the lady were waiting.”

“The lady?” A chill rippled down Fatima’s arms. “Do you mean Luz?”

“Who else? So kind, she seemed at first—I’d met her before, of course, aboard this very cog on the way down the coast, but she took no notice of me then. This time, though—” Gwennec shifted on his feet and flushed again, turning crimson from neck to scalp. “She knew all sorts of things about me. Asked after my father, my three sisters, wanted to know whether the youngest was married yet. Spoke about this year’s catch, which was paltry compared with years past, and asked whether I thought the cod mightn’t be thinning out along the Breton seabeds. Fishermen’s talk. It was the oddest thing. She knew my father’d been furious when I told him I wanted to join the brothers at Saint Padarn’s. Said she’d pray for me and for him, that his heart might soften and come to accept my vocation.” Gwennec licked his chapped lips. “I asked her what she wanted. And what she wanted, apparently, was for me to tell her I’d seen our blev’ruz using his powers to commune with the Devil.”

Hassan spat out a laugh, startling the horse.

“I told her I’d seen no such thing. I told her the truth—that Hassan seemed ordinary enough, a bit delicate maybe, but as smart as they make ’em, and as good-hearted. And as for Fatima here—” He smiled at her lopsidedly. “I told her that if ever there was anyone as could put the Devil in his place, it was Fatima.”

Fatima could imagine it: she could see Luz sitting across from the baffled monk, smiling in her sympathetic way, her wintery eyes opaque, disguising whatever fury or fervor she might feel.

“Did you see it?” Fatima pressed. “The speck in her eye—her left eye.”

“A speck?” Gwennec looked puzzled. “I can’t say I remember any speck. Her eyes seemed regular enough to me. It’s what comes out of her mouth that’s so terrifying. Not even that—it’s the fact that people listen to her. That’s the most terrifying thing of all.”

Fatima pressed her hands against her sides to warm them. When she blinked, she could see the speck struggling and wriggling in its bed of flesh, and she turned toward the sun to blot it out. It unnerved her that Gwennec couldn’t see what she had seen. She thought for a moment that she might be mistaken, that in her terror she had imagined the parasite. Perhaps it had been only a fleck of ash or dirt after all. Yet Hassan had seen it too, and Hassan saw more than anyone else. Fatima wondered whether Gwennec simply hadn’t noticed the speck, or had disregarded it, or whether something else yet more unsettling was at play. He had risked much to help them, but some part of him, the largest part, still belonged to the world Luz inhabited: perhaps he could see only what he had been taught to see.

“Something’s wrong with her, anyway,” said Fatima, half to herself. “Something awful.”

Gwennec grunted in agreement, rubbing his wrists.

“But what happened then?” prompted Hassan.

“She bound me with her own little hands,” said Gwennec, and laughed strangely, as though to mask pain. “I didn’t move or protest. The general and the guards, none of ’em said anything. It was as if we were all transfixed. She said my faith was lacking and that I wasn’t to be trusted. Said she was taking me under guard for my own good. Then the general ordered his men to ready themselves and mount, and they threw me onto the back of this nag here. The rest you already know.”

The monk’s rough, guileless face went still. He watched Fatima intently, as though awaiting her judgment. Fatima reached out to touch the bruising on his wrists. He let her. She could feel his expression change with the pressure of her fingertips, though she was looking at his wounds and not at his face, and she smiled, for he was a man after all. Gwennec shook himself and drew away. He pulled his cowl up against the persistent breeze and leaned against the railing to look past the stern at the lacy, white-foam wake they left behind them.