Wolf's Cross (7 page)

Where he lived, the plague had come four years ago. It had taken his father, his grandfather, his siblings, and the woman to whom he had pledged his heart. The only member of his family to survive was a maiden aunt who had retreated to a convent so strict that she was not even allowed to speak to her nephew.

It had been a sign. Josef had given his family’s lands over to the Church and had taken on the mantle of the Order.

When he finished the story, Maria found that her breath had caught; she’d been thinking of the loss of her own father, along
with the loss she had read in Josef’s sleeping face. This man had known her own loss, and so much else besides. She wanted to somehow acknowledge their shared pain, but all she managed was a whispered “I’m so sorry.”

Even that, she said in Polish.

He glanced up at her quizzically. “What did you say?”

She bent over and took his empty bowl. “It is time for you to sleep, sir. You still need your rest.”

He leaned his head back and said, “Yes, I suppose I do.”

J
osef needed human contact. He might be devout, but being alone talking only to God and himself wore on his soul.

So when Maria had come with his evening meal, he had talked of his life, and everything that had led him to serve the Order.

As he talked, he thought it was a good thing that he had not entered a less worldly Order than the Hospital of St. Mary; he didn’t have the strength of spirit to commit to an ascetic life filled only with the contemplation of God. It might be admirable, but he was not his aunt.

Talking to Maria also reminded him that he had pledged himself to God, and why. He needed the constant reminder, because in Maria’s presence he had the uncomfortable habit of thinking as he had before he joined the ranks of the Order, when he could allow a kind word or a gentle touch to lead to thoughts of something more.

But nothing was as it had been before. Not himself, and not the world. If nothing else, he spoke to Maria about his past to remind himself of that. He told her of his callow youth and his expectations of a title and an inheritance, and he told her of the pestilence when it came to Nürnberg, and the devastation the plague wrought on his family and estates.

Yet when he spoke of that evil time, he saw his grief reflected in Maria’s face, and he almost stopped for fear of further distressing her, afraid that if tears came he would feel the urge to comfort her—and knowing that, despite his vows, any comfort he provided would be more for himself than for Maria.

Sensing that within himself, he kept talking even more earnestly. Talking of the woman to whom he had been betrothed, to remind him of who and what he was, what he had lost, and to push this poor woman away. Sarah had been the daughter of a powerful Nürnberg family that would have added to his own line’s wealth and power. The child he had been at the time was smitten with her. Sarah was a young beauty at sixteen, always with a smile or a kind word for him, whatever dubious adventure he had become involved in. He had long ago convinced himself that Sarah would always be the limit of his earthly loves. Losing her was the final event that made him turn to the Order.

When he said that, and told Maria of Sarah’s death, her face was drawn in an expression of grief as if it had been her own family lost in Nürnberg. She said something quietly to him in Polish, but before he could ask her what it was, she was telling him to go to sleep.

He leaned back and closed his eyes, and briefly imagined that she had touched his cheek. He didn’t open his eyes for fear of dispelling the illusion—or confirming it.

But as he drifted off, he mused that while they looked little alike, perhaps, if she had lived, Sarah might have grown into someone like Maria.

J
osef’s sleep was broken by the door to his room bursting inward.

His eyes snapped open to see a hairy, gap-toothed Pole standing
in the doorway, backlit by the lanterns in the hallway. The man strode in, followed by the scent of piss and ale, yelling in inarticulate Polish.

Before Josef could form a response, the invader had pulled his sheets off and had grabbed his arm. The smell of alcohol made Josef’s eyes water. That, the slurred speech, and the fact that he had broken in an unlocked door told Josef that this man was no representative of his Masovian hosts.

He winced as the man yanked his arm, dragging him half off the bed. It felt as if someone had plunged a glass dagger into his stomach, then broken the blade off.

“Enough!” Josef commanded the drunkard.

But the man continued pulling him off the bed, and the pain was becoming worse. He didn’t know what ill intent this man had in mind, but Josef wasn’t about to let those drunken plans come to fruition.

The man was facing away from Josef and the bed as he tugged on Josef’s right arm, so Josef rolled toward him, unbalancing the man’s already forward-leaning posture. Josef helped the man along by reaching down and sweeping his left arm in front of the man’s already precariously leaning legs.

The man tumbled face-first onto the floor, losing his grip on Josef as he landed next to the bed. He shook his head and started pushing himself upright, but Josef rolled on top of him. They both gasped—Josef’s visitor in drunken shock as the floor came up to strike him again, and Josef in a shiver of agony. It felt as if a demon was clawing his intestines out of his gut.

But that almost happened, didn’t it?

The man tried to buck Josef off his back, so Josef slammed all of his weight into the back of the man’s neck, as much to keep himself upright as to immobilize his opponent. The pain threatened to make him black out.

“Relax, my friend.” Josef spoke quietly, calmly, hoping his tone might calm things even if this man couldn’t understand the words. “It is time to rest and contemplate the path that has led us to this unfortunate point.”

The man below him uttered an unending stream of Polish that was most certainly obscene. Fortunately, he didn’t continue his attempts to dislodge Josef.

It didn’t take long before the alarm spread, and soon the doorway was crowded with a selection of Poles ranging from a trio whose clothing marked them as peers of the man underneath Josef to a lordly type with rich robes, a full beard, and a misshapen mouth who, Josef realized, must be the Wojewoda Bolesław himself.

Komtur Heinrich was in the middle of all of them, staring at the scene with rigid disapproval.

Lord Bolesław shouted a few things in Polish, and the man underneath Josef responded in kind, though Josef noticed a distinct change in his diction as he spoke to Bolesław, moderating his volume, speed, and, probably, his vocabulary.

Afterward, Bolesław addressed Josef in German: “You are Brother Josef, are you not?”

“Yes, my lord.”

Bolesław sighed and stroked his beard absently with one hand. “You are my guest, and I apologize for this. May I ask if there is anything to this incident you wish to explain? Or is it all as plain as my aged eyes make it out to be?”

“I was in my bed, and this man came in and tried to pull me out.”

“Tried?” Bolesław asked. “It appears he was successful.”

“Lord, I tripped him, and it seemed prudent to roll off and immobilize him. He appears drunk, and a danger to himself and others.”

One of the Poles in the hallway beyond the door started snickering. Bolesław looked pained, pulling his mouth into a grotesque frown. “This is unforgivable behavior. Whatever my people might think of Germans or the Order, you are my guests. I will have this man tied up and lashed to within an inch of his life.”

Heinrich asked, “Has this ordeal aggravated your injuries, Josef?”

Josef tried not to wince when he said, “No, Brother Heinrich.”

Heinrich turned to Bolesław and said, “The man is drunk; grant him some mercy. My man is unhurt.”

“One cannot say the same for my door.” Bolesław shook his head and, looking over to the other Poles, said something to the best-dressed of them. After a short conversation back and forth, Bolesław addressed Josef again: “If you would, please let him go back to his master. I’ve given him leave to discipline this wretch. I wash my hands of it.”

Heinrich walked in and helped Josef to his feet as his drunken visitor stumbled out of the room to join his fellows. As his Komtur helped him into bed, Heinrich asked, “Are you being treated well?”

“Yes.”

“No one has questioned you about our mission here?”

“No, sir.”

“Good. Rest, and gather your strength. Soon the lord here will grant us an audience with a bishop. I suspect that shortly after, we will be able to resume our work.” He placed a hand on Josef’s arm. “Then we’ll need every able man.”

“Yes, Brother Heinrich. I’ll be ready.”

As he turned to go, Josef asked, “Brother Heinrich?”

“Yes?”

“Do you know who that man was? What he wanted of me?”

“He was a stable hand who felt entitled to this particular room. I believe his name was Lukasz.”

“Should I have—”

“Don’t concern yourself. It is between him and his betters now. It no longer concerns you.”

“Thank you, sir.”

But it took a long while for Josef to get back to sleep.

M
aria left the walls of Gród Narew before sundown, but the sky hid behind a dense cloak of purple-black clouds too thick to hint where the sun might be. The light was gone quickly, and she soon found herself walking through woods blacker than the sky. The trees embraced her as if they were the personification of darkness itself.

She had always had excellent night vision, and usually she didn’t need the lantern she carried with her. Tonight, caught underneath a moonless sky, she had to use it just to see where the path might be.

The apprehension she felt was unusual. She had lived around these woods all her life, and the short distance between the fortress and her family’s farm was well traveled, the land itself well populated. The presence of men here had long ago chased the more dangerous animals to the fringes of Gród Narew’s demesne.

But the Germans had been savaged by some sort of animal.

Maria held her cross. Papa had told her, many times, that it was there to keep the Devil at bay. And this night, the Devil felt very close.

I should have stayed at the fortress
, she thought to herself. She
either had to stay at Gród Narew, where her work was, or stop prolonging her work there. Familiar or not, the woods at night were too dangerous for her to brave just to avoid the unspoken accusations that weighed upon her at home.

She walked slowly down the dark path, the trees drawing their shadows around themselves. She made her way home accompanied by the sounds of chirping insects and frogs. The sounds were as comforting as the darkness was ominous.

She sighed. However justified, fear was useless. She was on the path, and there was no leaving it now. She tried to force herself to think of something other than the shadows and what might be dwelling within them. So she found herself thinking of Josef, and what it must have been like for him to lose his family in the plague. She wondered about the woman he had lost. Some lady of the court. Tall and shapely, with long blond tresses, and dressed in fine fabrics. A woman who had no need to labor.

Everything Maria was not.

Was it jealousy, she thought suddenly, or did she envy this poor dead woman for once holding a heart she had no hope to touch? Either emotion was sinful, and a further indication of her own unworthiness.

“Why do I …” she began to ask herself, leaving the question to hang unfinished in the still night air.

The insects and the chirping frogs had fallen mute. The woods had gone as completely silent as they were dark. She stopped and wrinkled her nose at a sudden foul odor.

Ale?

Something grabbed her from behind and threw her against a tree. Phantom lights danced in front of her eyes as the side of her head slammed against the craggy bark. Her lantern fell to the road and guttered out.

“Hey now, don’t you miss me?”

She knew that voice too well. “Lukasz?”

“Why, that warms my heart, it does.” He was little more than a shadow next to her.