Abomination (37 page)

“My lord.” Cuthbert watched from behind his desk, a look of concern visible in the warm green light.

Edgard stopped at the door and looked back.

“You and I have differed on this in the past,” said Cuthbert. “I concede that perhaps it was avoidable before. But no longer. You have to—”

Edgard silenced him with a raised palm and a look so stern that the shadow he cast on the wall seemed to grow larger around
him. “We have had this conversation before, too many times. Do not bring up the subject again.”

And then he was gone, the door swinging closed behind him. Cuthbert slumped back into his chair and twisted the knob on his desk lamp, bringing the unburning flame down to its lowest setting. At times like this, when he needed to think, darkness was better.

They had eaten together in silence, Wulfric somewhat hesitant, and Indra, for all her desire, knowing it was wiser not to press him to talk further. Though Venator did most of their hunting, she had done her share, and she had come to see Wulfric as much like the wild deer she had learned to stalk; they so easily took flight if you were careless and allowed them to sense that you were coming too close.

To Wulfric, unlike the deer, she meant no harm. And therein lay the irony: he
wanted
her to harm him, to kill him; it was her offer of help that disconcerted him so.

And she so wanted to help him. Never before in her life had she encountered such a pitiable soul, and in this day and age that was no meager claim. Yet for all her promises and protestations, she had no idea what she could actually do for him. For all she knew, he was right, and he was beyond any form of aid other than a merciful death. Though the church forbade it as a remedy for those blighted by maladies beyond the help of medicine, warriors grievously crippled or maimed beyond salvation in battle were routinely dispatched by their comrades to put an end to their suffering.

Whether Wulfric could be considered such a case, Indra did not know; all she knew was that his proposed solution revolted her. There had to be a better way. Wulfric was cursed by such magick
as she had never seen, but she felt certain—or at least hoped so strongly that it felt to her like certainty—that someone within the Order would know how to help him. That was why she had sent Venator back to Canterbury. There was one man in particular she was pinning her hopes on, the cleverest man she knew, the man who had taught her everything she knew about magick. Surely Cuthbert would know what to do. Surely.

She looked up at the sky, where the sun rose toward its noonday zenith. She could not be sure when Venator might have reached Canterbury or how long the help she had requested might take to get here. All she could hope to do was stay close to Wulfric, to keep him from taking flight before they arrived. She was certain that she would lose him if she told him the truth. It had been hard enough keeping him here this morning as things were; if he knew others were coming, that would surely be the last she would see of him. No, it was better this way.

Still, the problem of her father remained. Though she had not specifically requested he come in person, she knew that he would. It would be a reunion difficult enough under the best of circumstances. But this . . . She had known the man her entire life, had believed she knew him well enough, but as she thought on it now she realized she could not predict how he would react to this unique conundrum.

She herself had started out on a quest to hunt and kill an abomination, yet the one she had found confounded all her expectations and caused her to see things differently. What would her father see? He was a man of war, set in his ways, who always returned from the Order’s hunting expeditions with a look of satisfied glee—the look of a man who took pleasure in something that should be seen only as a grim but necessary duty. But then, hadn’t she set out on her own quest relishing the prospect of killing such a beast? Her father had been assigned the task of killing abominations by royal command, while she had sought it out, had asked for it eagerly. More than that, she had demanded it, despite her father’s repeated
attempts to dissuade her, even forbid her. She had wanted so much to kill one; what made her any better than him?

That was different
, she told herself. She had her reasons, the very best there were.

But the more she thought, the more she began to worry that she had made a mistake. Her father would come with a force of men, chosen from the best under his command. Veterans who would obey his orders—and his alone. Once they arrived, her ability to control the situation would depend solely on persuading her father to see things as she did, and she realized now that she had little faith in that endeavor. What had she done? In her haste to help this man, had she inadvertently condemned him?

She looked up at the sun again, wondering how much time she had before they would arrive. She needed to think. Stern and unyielding though her father was, she had proven a match for him before, or she would not be here. She might yet convince him to help this man—convince him that Wulfric was different from all the abominations her father had killed without a moment’s thought—if she had the time and freedom to do so. If she could meet him and speak with him on terms that were favorable to her, that would prevent him from acting rashly, even if she failed to persuade him. But how? Her eyes drifted over to her twin swords, propped against the rock, their blades gleaming in the light of the sun. Perhaps—

“What exactly did you do to me?”

Wulfric’s voice snapped Indra from her thoughts. She looked up to see him holding his arms out before him, examining them as though the sight of his own skin was strange to him. Something about that amused her.

“I unchained you and pulled you from the ashes while you still slept, washed you with water from the stream,” she said. “Is that not—I mean to say, do you not normally . . .” She floundered, realizing suddenly how awkward it is to ask a man how often he bathes.

Wulfric seemed to understand her anyway. “At first, I washed off what I could each day. But I soon realized it was a waste of time. The ashes return each morning, cover me anew.” He looked now at his hands, pink and clean as a newborn baby. “After a while I came to see it as just part of my skin. Part of me.”

“Well, if I may,” said Indra, “you are much improved this way. Before, you looked like some kind of ghost, all covered in gray. But I suspected there was a man underneath there somewhere. I’m glad to have been proven right.”

And it was true; the difference was remarkable. The filth that had covered Wulfric from head to foot had aged him deceptively. Though something in those haunted eyes seemed to belong to a much older soul, it was clear that he could be little older than thirty. Aethelred had been dead fifteen years, so Wulfric must have been little more than a boy soldier when the mad archbishop’s curse befell him. Just another tragic detail to add to an already sorry tale.

“Here,” said Indra, “see for yourself.” She took one of her swords from the rock it was propped against and offered it to Wulfric. He looked at it and blinked but made no move to take it. “I pride myself on keeping my blades polished bright as a mirror,” she said, prompting Wulfric again to take it. “Go on, have a look.”

Gingerly, Wulfric reached out and took the sword, then held it up, its blade gleaming in the sun. Indra watched him keenly as he regarded himself in the narrow sliver of steel, turning it this way and that so that he might see his whole face. She hoped for some sign of pleasant surprise, but all she saw was the disquieted look of a man who seemed not to recognize his own reflection. Or, perhaps, one who did but did not like what he saw. After a moment, his eyes grew distant and his hands limp, and he let the blade sag into the dirt.

Indra took the sword gently from him. “Now, if you would only do something about that rat’s nest of a beard,” she said, trying to lighten the mood and offering Wulfric a smile, but it did not
prove contagious. He just gazed down at his hands with that faraway look, still ill at ease, still somehow strangely at odds with all of this. He glanced back at the tree where he had spent the night, the iron chain that had bitten into its trunk and shredded its bark now spooled loose around it. Indra could sense a question, but he seemed hesitant to ask it.

“You want to know what becomes of the beast?” she asked.

Wulfric looked back to her. “You saw it?”

Indra nodded. “As dawn broke, it began to howl in pain, and it grew weaker until finally it lost all strength and simply died. For a moment it was still, then its body glowed as though a fire were burning within it. And then it was ablaze, consumed by flames stranger than I have ever seen, until nothing was left of it but a great pile of smoldering ash. And at the center of it, you, sleeping like a newborn child. After the ashes cooled, I pulled you out of there and tried to wake you, but you were dead to the world. Since I could think of no other way to make myself useful, I thought I’d clean you up.”

Silence. Wulfric looked down at his robe, his fingers playing along the tears that Indra had mended with needle and thread. Her stitching was good, stronger probably than that which held the rest of it together.

“Why did you do all this?” he asked her.

“I thought that perhaps someone who spends only part of his life as a human should look like one while he was.” Her eyes widened. “That reminds me!” she said, jumping to her feet. “I have something for you.”

Wulfric watched as Indra walked around to the side of the rock, then returned holding a pile of clothes—shirt, tunic, breeches—neatly folded, with a pair of boots on top. They looked old and worn, and there was a bloodstain on the shirt surrounding a slit made by a blade. That had also been neatly stitched.

“What is this?” asked Wulfric.

“I took them from one of the men we killed. One of mine as I recall. He seemed to have no further use for them. It’s not much, but far better surely than that flea-bitten old cloak. The boots, I think, are nearly new. Why don’t you try them on?” She made a move toward him, but Wulfric scrambled to his feet and recoiled as though her gift were toxic.

“What’s wrong?” she said. “There’s no guilt in it. The man who wore these was scum. I doubt he acquired them any differently.”

“No,” said Wulfric. “It is not that. You are too kind. Far too kind.” He wheeled around and made his way across the clearing to the tree, where he unwound the chain from around its base and made fast work of hauling it up onto his body, crisscrossing it over his shoulders. Indra followed him, still holding the pile of clothes. “They only go to waste if you refuse them. At least—”

“No!” Wulfric barked at her, and she startled and stopped in her tracks. He seemed to regret it instantly and softened his tone. “No. If I wanted to look like a man, to live like a man, I would have done so already. But that is not what I am. It is not what I deserve to be.”

Wulfric had almost finished taking up the chain. There was still a length of it to go, but already he was laden with a burden heavier than any man should be able to carry, or should ever have to. Try as she might, Indra could not understand this man. “Why do you punish yourself like this?” she asked him.

“It is God who punishes me,” said Wulfric as he wrapped the last of the chain around him and tucked it between the rest to hold it fast. “It is not for me to question his judgment.”

As Wulfric checked that the chain was secure, Indra took a moment to contemplate what he had said.

“I, too, am a Christian, so forgive me when I say this,” she began. “But that is quite possibly the stupidest thing that I have ever heard.”

Wulfric looked up at Indra in surprise. She glared back at him, her expression confirming that she had, indeed, said what he thought she had.

“Punishing you for what?” she said. “What sin could you have committed that could possibly warrant . . . 
this
?”

“Perhaps you did not read the same book I did,” said Wulfric. “In mine, God’s capacity for wrath is infinite.”

“So, too, is his forgiveness,” said Indra, taking a tentative step closer. “In my experience, it is men who have too much of one and too little of the other. No one would doubt the misery of your curse, but why must you compound it like this? You refuse all help, reject all hope, and seem intent on living the most abject existence possible. If anyone is punishing you, look inward, not upward.”

Wulfric glared at her silently, the links of the iron chain across his body clinking gently against one another as his chest rose and fell with each breath. Indra stiffened her muscles, girding herself against a possible attack. But Wulfric only reached down and picked up the padlock and key from the ground at his feet, fastening it to the chain. “I thank you for your help, truly. But no more is needed,” he said in a calm, measured tone that suggested some effort was required to maintain it. “Nor is it welcome. Good day to you.” He turned his back on her.

Indra took a hesitant step after him, then stopped. “Why must you go?” she called after him.

“Do not waste your time attempting to follow me,” Wulfric said without looking back. “I have eluded trackers far better than you.” Wulfric reached the edge of the clearing and stepped into the dense and tangled wood, the trees’ branches closing behind him like a curtain as he moved deeper into the forest, and was gone.

Indra stood there for a moment, alone, paralyzed by indecision. She thought again of her concern for what her father might decide when he arrived with his men, and she considered letting Wulfric go. But if the Order did not find him here when they arrived, they would surely search for him. And now they knew
what to look for. Who to look for. Wulfric’s one advantage, his ability to hide in plain sight by day, had been undone by a few lines in a note that she had written. She was now responsible for his fate, and his best chance—his only chance—was with her, the one person who might sway her father not to hunt down the beast, but to help the man.

As hopes went, relying on her father to do the right thing was a thin one, but that was not all she had. She had her wits, and if her luck improved just a little, one other thing that could make all the difference.
Please let Cuthbert be with them. He will know what to do
.