Devil at Midnight (32 page)

“God’s teeth,” Christian said, breaking into a run. He could not have said what kept him from stumbling on rocks and roots: perhaps a lifetime of having to function in the thick of danger. When he was close enough to see clearly, he cursed again. Hans’s gut was ravaged, his intestines bloody and exposed. The veteran turned his head to him.

“Christian,” he said weakly.

Christian’s first thought was that Hans was as good as dead. His second was that someone must rouse Nim Wei. She had said she could share her healing gift with humans. Maybe, if she could be woken, she could save Hans.

Christian’s body acted independently of his mind. His legs gave way, dropping him to his knees beside Mace. Shaking like a leaf, he reached out to touch Hans’s weathered face.

“Hans,” he said, his voice as broken as a child’s. ‟
Hans.”

Hans’s eyes glittered up at him. “Sorry, son,” he rasped. “Wanted ... to stay with you longer.”

Then he was gone, as if a pair of fingers had snapped. His eyes went blank, and his body sagged. Christian’s throat felt like it was both on fire and spasming. The hardest thing he had ever done was choke back his sob.

“It was a boar,” Mace said, his voice as raw as Christian knew his would be. “I could not move fast enough to block it. It ran at us from nowhere.”

The stream chuckled over the rocks inside it, mingling with the sound of Christian’s harsh breathing. His hands were fisted on his thighs. He looked up, not wanting to see his own white knuckles, not wanting to know why the ground beneath his knees was stained dark. Hans’s death was a terrible stench in his nose.

His gaze stopped on Lavaux’s face. His father’s man was looking down at Hans’s body, unaware of Christian’s eyes on him. Something in the set of his lips was at once sly and pleased.

Rage exploded in Christian’s head. He launched himself straight over Hans’s corpse, barreling the smaller man backward. Lavaux did not have a chance to defend himself. Christian’s hands were on his throat before they hit the ground.

“What did you do?” Christian demanded, slamming Lavaux’s skull down into the squelching mud. “I know you are behind this!”

“I did nothing!” Lavaux protested. “A wild pig gored him.”

“You worked on an estate before you signed on with my father. You were a gamekeeper!”

Lavaux’s face was purple from lack of air. “I kept deer and grouse,” he choked. “No man can control a boar.”

Christian growled and squeezed his neck harder. Hands grabbed his wrists, forced his wrapped fingers to uncurl.

“Christian,” Michael snapped, joining William in hauling him off his victim. “Now is not the time for this.”

Weakness fell on him like a wall. Suddenly, William and Michael had to support him. Lavaux had regained his feet and was dragging one sleeve across his mud-splashed face. Christian’s father had Lavaux by the elbow, though Lavaux was not trying to get away. Evidently, he knew better than to give Christian another chance at him right now. Unlike William, Gregori’s son would show no mercy. A snort broke from Christian’s nose, his scorn for Lavaux’s cowardice causing anger to flare in the other man’s slitted eyes.

“You will regret this,” Lavaux promised. “Sooner than you may believe.”

Christian did not think he imagined Gregori’s hold on Lavaux’s arm tightening warningly.

“Go, son,” his father said, his face showing nothing but what it ought. “All of us need to mourn this loss.”

 

 

T
hey did not wait to bury Hans. It was not practical to carry a dead body, so Christian’s men dug a grave in the forest and put him to rest in it. Charles fashioned the cross that surmounted it. It was nicer than might have been expected. Charles was clever at carpentry.

Christian stood staring at the marker after the others left. Their group would not journey on tonight, no matter what Nim Wei preferred.

No one interrupted him. He was alone with the lengthening shadows, with the birdsong and the crickets and the rustle of the autumn wind through the pine needles. He remembered the day Hans expressed his willingness to fight under Christian’s young captaincy. Before that day, the men had obeyed him. After, they began to respect. He had never thanked Hans for his trust, but he doubted Hans would have wanted thanks. If the older man had not been a friend, Christian would have said he was a kind of father. Could a father be a friend? Christian shook his head to himself. Maybe other men’s sons could fathom such wonders.

‟Christian.”

Grace’s soft voice was so close he started. She had crept up on him like the ghost she was. Her hand rubbed a gentle tingle into his upper arm, her eyes searching his until he had to turn his away. She seemed to understand what he was feeling. Her hold squeezed once and released.

“Your father’s men are talking about what happened. Mace and Oswald the cook are wondering if your father could have put Lavaux up to this. The others say it would have been impossible to know the opportunity would arise, but it’s hard to tell what they really believe inside.”

Christian nodded. Maybe later this would seem important. He dug the toe of his boot into the recently tamped-down earth. He could not smell Hans now, only damp soil and decaying leaves.

“I know you probably aren’t comfortable with my sympathy ...” Grace began.

Christian stiffened without thinking, and she stopped speaking. He looked at her profile. She was gazing out at the trees, clearly trying to seem composed. Despite the attempt, the pleat between her eyebrows betrayed her concern for him.

She is still with me, he reminded himself. So many he loved were.

“I value your kindness,” he said stiffly.

She slid a sidelong glance at him, her smile a bittersweet twitching of her lips. “I value yours,” she said.

Her hand curled around his, not solid but still warm. The touch loosened something inside of him.

“I wanted to call the minstrel,” he confessed. “When I saw Hans dying, all I could think was maybe she could save him.”

“I’m sure that’s natural.”

“It frightened me. How strong can my principles be if they crumble so easily?”

Grace stepped in front of him, both hands holding his now. His eyes burned at the conviction her face conveyed. “Nothing about losing a friend is easy.”

Christian sighed and let his forehead pretend to rest on hers. His longing to embrace her was an alarming clutch in his throat.

“I saw Matthaus and Philippe walk off together,” she said. “I think hearing what Nim Wei did is helping Matthaus forgive him.”

“That is good,” Christian said, though he could not truly feel the sensation of gratitude. “Someone should find happiness in all this.”

Grace’s ghostly arms slid around his back.

“I love you,” she said.

He could not answer, but this time he knew he did not have to.

 

 

I
n the days that followed, Grace wished she knew how to help Christian. He ate, he slept, he fulfilled his duties like a sleepwalker. Somewhat to her relief—though the change also made her nervous—Nim Wei no longer tried to talk to him. Hans’s death lay like a pall over all of them, the mystery that swirled around it causing even Gregori’s men to snipe at each other. Lavaux was shunned and Timkin avoided, while Christian’s father was handled with more than the usual kid gloves.

It gave Grace hope to see it. Hans had been well liked. Maybe Gregori’s men would turn against him, and this would end peaceably.

And then, just as the tension looked like it might ease, Nim Wei asked Lavaux to her tent. He emerged, hours later, smug and swaggering. Regardless of their suspicions about their leader, Gregori’s men weren’t going to refuse her if she invited them. Her enchantments were hardly needed. She was female, and beautiful, and they’d spent too long resenting her partiality to Christian.

The other side’s ascendancy seemed to wake Christian up.

He called his men together as he had the day Hans died. Grace watched him meet each pair of waiting eyes in turn.

“We make a stand,” he said quietly. “Whatever my father starts, we finish.”

“Agreed,” said Michael.

“Agreed,” said Matthaus.

Philippe smiled at his lover.

“What about Mace and Oswald?” Charles asked.

“Win them to our side if you can,” Christian said. “If you cannot...”

When he shrugged, everyone seemed to know what he meant.

“And Mistress Wei?” William asked cautiously.

Christian’s jaw muscle ticked grimly. “She is making her bed. For the sake of Hans’s memory, she will have to face the consequences of her choice.”

T
hey reached the village of Fiesole, north of Florence, amidst a stretch of beautiful weather. Clear and sunny, the air felt more like spring than autumn to Grace—or it did when she managed to materialize a bit. Between her bouts of spying, and encouraged by her success at turning visible, she was working on becoming solid more reliably. The spying was going better than the materializing, though saying that was good would be stretching it.

In public, Gregori’s men hid Nim Wei’s effect on them. In private, when they didn’t know Grace was watching, she could tell they were stronger. Lavaux and another man—Jürgen, she thought he was called—had been practicing knife fights at lightning speed. Forsaking his namesake weapon, Mace had swung a spiked iron ball on a chain with no more effort than if it were a feather. Maybe most impressive, Oswald the one-eyed cook accidentally tore off a goat’s head with his bare hands. Christian’s men were also training, which meant no one was sleeping much. The difference was that Gregori’s men looked like daisies and Christian’s, at best, seemed grim.

Christian’s father should have been delighted, but whenever Grace invisibly crossed his path, his manner was brooding.

“That would be my doing,” Charles had said, laughing softly when she brought it up. “I have almost convinced Mace and Oswald that Gregori would order them killed as readily as he did Hans.”

“Do not push them too hard,” Michael warned him. “Mace and Oswald are no one’s fools.”

“I am subtlety itself,” Charles said. “And it helps that I am not lying. Gregori would kill them if it suited his purposes.”

Grace tried to ignore how ragged Christian’s fighters looked. She made sure he slept, humming songs from South Pacific when he collapsed in her arms at last. His favorite was the wistful serenade “Bali Ha’i.” Interestingly, the tune to “I’m Gonna Wash That Man Right Outta My Hair” did absolutely nothing for him.

He slept this morning as she trailed Gregori and his group of six up a hill a short walk outside their camp. They were moving stealthily, not speaking as they picked their way through long brown grasses and scattered stones. Grace thought the stones might be the ruins of an ancient building, maybe a theater. She wondered if Gregori brought his men here to meet an ally. If so, she definitely wanted to know what was said. It was bad enough that Christian was down a man. Her one consolation was that neither Mace nor Oswald looked happy to be there.

Because it wasn’t spring but autumn, the surrounding woodland formed a rolling carpet of red and gold. At the top of the hill, Gregori gave his men a signal, directing them to crouch behind a line of brush. First one man stiffened and then another as they peered through the scarlet screen. Needing to know what they saw, Grace drew nearer.

And then she heard it: the low but distinctive moans of people having sex. It was Philippe and Matthaus, stealing a moment to make up for their time apart.

“Do you see?” Gregori murmured, the light breeze carrying his voice to her. “These are the perversions my son condones. Switch allegiances to him and risk this taint sullying you. Men cannot fight side by side when such horrors are allowed.”

Grace’s heart sank as she looked around the watchers. Mace’s and Oswald’s expressions were just as shocked as the rest.

“We should kill them now,” Lavaux said, hoarse and excited.

Silver-haired Timkin shook his head. “We should wait. Those sodomites can be taken care of in the battle.”

The shiver that gripped Grace’s shoulders was cold as ice. Timkin must mean the test of arms Gregori had promised would humble Christian.

“Timkin is right,” Gregori said. “If we punish them before the pieces are in place, my son’s twisted sense of justice will compel him to go after whoever was involved.”

“We are stronger now,” Lavaux said. “He would fail.”

“Christian’s rage would fortify him.” Gregori laid his blockish hand on Lavaux’s shoulder. “I am sorry. Perhaps I should not want to save him, but he is my son. When he is defeated, I pray God opens his eyes to his sins.”

Christian’s father appeared to mean every word. From where Grace stood, he actually looked devout.

You’re
the devil, she snarled to herself, not believing for a second that piety was behind the acts Gregori planned. He was worse than her father, maybe worse than the vampire. Grace wanted to rip off his head like Oswald had the goat’s.
I’d
shower in your blood, she swore. And
I’d
enjoy it.