Maze of Moonlight by Gael Baudino (read with me TXT) 📕

He thought about wearing a sword, but he did not have any really splendid swords anymore, and the occasion demanded splendor. Better none at all, then. “Thank you, Raffalda, no. Jerome and I will continue our battle alone. You can go and help Vanessa get ready.”

Raffalda curtsied again and departed, shutting the door behind her.

Jerome passed a hand across his face. “My lord, Pytor and I are concerned. The girl is a definite liability to Aurverelle. The castle folk's morale . . .”

“What about my morale, Jerome? When was the last time you saw me dressed up like a properly noble idiot?”

“I admit that she has had some positive effects, my lord, but I think you can see my point.”

Yes, disagreeable though the admission was, he could see. For a while, he had allowed himself to ignore the fact that Vanessa, feral and strange, had no place in Aurverelle. For a while, he had immersed himself in her care, in his own care. But there were futures to think about, both Vanessa's and his own.

He did not love her. Even had he still been capable of love, he could sooner have loved a fox, or a beech tree, or a thunderstorm as exhibit romantic inclinations towards the strange elemental creature that he had rescued from the streets of the town. Nor could Vanessa, caught up as she was in an inner pandemonium of vision and knowledge, ever love him.

But there was more to it than love. Christopher sat down, idly examining the polished toes of his boots. He had found hope. Vanessa, perhaps, could find hope, too. She would have to leave—indeed, he had himself established the nearness of her departure by removing her bandages—but maybe he could give her something before she went, something that might sustain her.

“Do you hate Vanessa for being strange, Jerome?”

“Why . . . no.”

“Is she damned, do you think?”

“I confess I don't know, my lord.”

“Could you care about someone, Jerome, even if that someone was damned?”

The friar stood, speechless.

Christopher propped his feet up on the chest. “When I was still taking the sacraments, I heard a great deal from the priests about the Kingdom of God. About how it included everyone from the lowliest peasant to the greatest monarch. But what about Vanessa? What about all the people like her? They didn't make any choices about what they became. They didn't have any choices to make. Does the Kingdom not include them?”

Jerome's eyes were on the floor. “I . . . am not sure that I am equipped to speak of such things, Baron Christopher. Perhaps the learned Doctor of Aquino might have been able to answer your question.”

“But he's dead.” Christopher stood up. “So I'll answer it myself. My Kingdom included Vanessa. My Kingdom includes all the Hobs and Jakes and Tims and Toms, all the madmen and all the seers . . . maybe even the bears and the horses. Because, you see, that's all we have. Each other. Those people kept me alive with their black bread and beans, and I helped them in their fields and slept in their ditches and picked them up out of the street and put them to bed in my castle. And that's what I call the Kingdom of God.”

Jerome bowed low.

“Vanessa will leave when she's healed a bit more, Jerome.” When I'm healed a bit more. “She has her life, and I have mine. But I'll tell you: as much as you condemn her, as heretical as you might think she is, she's helped me. She's given me something to believe in, and she'll always have a place in my Kingdom.”

And at dinner that night, with David's brilliantly decorated and splendidly served foods adorning the table like so many edible gems, with Pytor and Efram providing the humble entertainment by singing carols throughout the evening, Christopher found that his belief was beginning to be justified; for though Vanessa was as wide-eyed and feral as ever, she spoke in measured words about . . . commonplaces. The weather. The books she had read. The flowers in the garden.

She complimented Pytor and Efram on their singing and thanked them over and over again, her dairyland speech contrasting quaintly with her glittering gown; and when Christopher offered her his hand for a dance, she accepted with tears in her eyes. Yes, there was belief. Yes, there was hope. The patterns only indicated, they did not compel. She could learn to keep silent. Maybe . . . maybe she could learn other things, too.

Not even when Christopher felt the first, queasy stirrings of nausea did she say anything. The baron's stomach, confronted with rich sauces, sugar, and fat after a six-month diet of northing more extravagant than black bread, beans, onions, and water, was beginning to rebel, but he continued to eat and be merry. He saw that Vanessa sensed his distress and knew the inevitable outcome, but he saw also that she did not speak of it.

And so, later that night, though he was racked by alternate fits of vomiting and diarrhea, Christopher did not mind the discomfort in the least. Sitting in the privy as the chapel bells tolled lauds, holding a bowl full of half-digested grease and bile in his lap, he felt, instead, rather triumphant.

Chapter Eleven

Triumphant though it was, the banquet marked the end of the charade. Vanessa was well. She had been well, in fact, since Mirya and Terrill had healed her, but the baron, caught up in h is pursuit and a vicarious and less physical healing, had been content to follow the strange physicians' instructions to as much of a letter as his inborn willfulness would allow.

But now it was over. Vanessa would be leaving. Indeed, she had to leave, for though Christopher had made inroads into her fatalism, a few weeks appeared to be too short a time for any real change, and she was still convinced that her destiny lay in Saint Blaise. He tried to console himself