“You despise me,” said Streckenbach, “Your eyes make no secret of it, and I find it perfectly understandable. I don’t ask your goodwill, only your cooperation. Wine?”
He poured from a bottle and savored the bouquet and nodded quietly as Guillaume told him no. He then gulped like a Philistine at a stream and Guillaume hated that too.
“Occupying officers often seek out the mayors of the villages they enter,” the lieutenant told him. “That may be of value, but I find greater worth in men of God. You priests are natural born mediators, sworn to keep the peace. You know the hearts of your flock better than anyone. Better than I can ever hope to.”
Father Guillaume’s stomach curdled. “I’ll tell you nothing about a single one of them.”
Streckenbach refilled, toasted him ironically with the glass and poured it down. “Nor do I ask that of you. As I say, you hear their confessions and know their hearts. You know who lives peacefully, and you know who’s prone to impulsive behavior. What I require of you is to keep them pacified, any among them with, shall I say, ideas.
“Regardless of what you may think of me and the army I serve, I have no desire to leave dead villagers behind. Whether or not I do, is largely your responsibility. Understood?”
Guillaume shut his eyes and nodded slowly and agreed. How sad a day this was, and would that he’d been born deaf so that he would not have to hear himself acquiescing like a toady.
“Dismissed,” Streckenbach said, and of course that was but one more thing to hate.
*
As they were his people, and he their shepherd, he went from home to home to comfort whom he could. Some families had been forced out and into the cottages of neighbors, as their own homes were appropriated for makeshift barracks and, in one case, a ward for the wounded.
The pile of confiscated weapons grew, with hunting rifles and shotguns and pistols, even implements of daily life on the farm such as pitchforks and scythes. Their lives were no longer their own in Château-sur-Lac, and even God seemed very far away.
Late afternoon, Guillaume left the heart of the village and trudged back up the hill to his church and rectory. For a minute, at the very least, he stood over and contemplated ruts dug into the earth by a heedless motorcycle. He stamped them flat, smoothed them over until no trace of tire remained, then bypassed both home and church. Onward, to the cool dim recesses of the stable.
He found it inside, that hateful thing whose very existence mocked the divine creation beneath its feet. It stood in one of the stalls, stroking the sculpted neck of one of the horses and murmuring into its ear. Beside it the beast looked like a Shetland pony to a normal man.
Such was his first sight of this abomination: the ghastly face, the gigantic stature, the clothing that looked crudely sewn together from existing garments to meet the task of covering its outsize frame. Guillaume saw, and could believe in devils.
“You came,” it said, like a child who feared to trust its own delight.
Guillaume swallowed down his disgust and tried to offer a reassuring smile. “You doubted?”
Nomad patted the horse’s mane, then hurried out of the stall with great jerking movements. Crossing the stable with the self-conscious embarrassment of one who lived in the humblest of abodes yet sought still to be a proper host. The sight was a travesty of everything human, and at last it bid him join itself, seated on bales of hay.
“Giselle?” it asked. “Is she…?”
“Come to no harm.”
And how could something so appalling as that face show such relief? It must have been a trick of light.
“Not yet,” Guillaume added, and yes, that face showed its true wretchedness at once. “With the Germans, who can tell what they will do? Who can wake up each morning with the assurance that there’s no bullet or bayonet for them that day?”
Nomad plucked loose pieces of straw from the bale, let them fall to the floor. “Is there no love in them for anything good and kind and gentle?”
“None. They love only conquest.”
Guillaume watched the thing go through the motions of thought and anguish. These seeds he was planting were falling on fertile soil, he could tell, needing only the proper watering to bear the terrible fruits for which he hoped.
He pressed on: “You have a great and tremendous rage within you, do you not?”
“I once did,” said Nomad, in a voice of something lost. “I once, long ago, told my creator, ‘If I cannot inspire love, I will cause fear.’ And how I devoted myself to that heinous mission. But now I believe that even devils must tire of provoking suffering, when suffering faces are all they see. And I have even come to believe that those same devils must despair themselves as amateurs when compared to the likes of Mankind. You have, yourselves, taken over their task with so much more efficiency.” Nomad lifted his gaze, then his arm, to the stable door and beyond. “How many wars have I seen? I no longer remember. So what fear can I cause that would not be welcomed over an invading army?”
“Ah,” said Father Guillaume, and he must not be swayed by this creature’s pretense to remorse, “but what of the fear you might bring to the invading army itself? Is it possible that your natural inclinations might then be put to a greater good?” He let that sink in, then clinched it: “If for no other’s sake than that of Giselle’s.”
The thing turned a wide, watery eye upon him. “How can you wear those robes and ask this of me?”
“I care more for the oppressed than the oppressor. It’s no more complicated than that.” He drew a breath and tried not to choke on the next words. “And if you do this for me, for Giselle, I will then offer you my hand, in friendship … and in love.”
“Love,” said Nomad, musing the sound and taste of the word, as if something foreign. “Then I ask one thing of you beforehand. Please, allow what I do to be a holy task. Bring me your sacraments.”
Guillaume drew back, could not help himself. “What?”
“The bread, the wine. The blessing.”
This thing was asking too much, and for what? He doubted very much that it even possessed a soul, and surely, in all its years, no priest would have offered it baptism. He would play no part in desecrating the Eucharist. Would not see his church reduced to giving legitimacy to monstrosities which by all that was right and holy should not exist at all. He would not, would not—
“As you wish,” Guillaume heard himself say, and felt his feet take him to the door.
*
She came suddenly awake in the night, and moved only enough to reassure herself of the warm, familiar nest of her own bed. She blinked, then looked over at Sister Anna-Marie, whose slow and even breaths continued undisturbed.
Had she been dreaming? Something had pierced sleep.
There — again, and Giselle sat upright in her bed, as at once the world expanded beyond her to include the whole of her village.
From below, down the hill, came the crack of a rifle, lonely and desolate and full of terrible foreboding. A cry, then, of mortal anguish, and next a rip of machine pistol fire. The after-ring of each sound hung in the silent crystalline perfection of the November night.
Giselle cast aside the quilts and bolted from her bed, then wrapped her cloak about her and didn’t bother with shoes. For a moment she paused near Anna-Marie’s bed, in debate. The old nun slept deeply. Well, let her sleep on. Perhaps she was dreaming of fields in summer, and youth.
Giselle ran into the night, the grass chilly and damp beneath her feet, and as the sounds, with increasing frequency, continued to roll up the hill, she pounded on the Father’s door. There was but a moment’s pause before, calmly, he called for her to enter. He sounded as if he’d been awake all night.