The two of them stared at each other.
"Just like that?" she asked abruptly.
"At the time, yes. Just like that. In the time to come, of course, it will be different. I will spend many hours of my life thinking about the deed. And praying that I did not transgress His boundaries."
Noelle looked away, for a few seconds. "Yes," she said. "I understand."
She handed him the shovel and climbed out of the shallow pit. "I will give you my parole, Captain Drugeth."
"The others?"
"Eddie will too. So will Lannie and Keenan, probably, but I wouldn't believe Lannie or Keenan if they told me the sun rose in the east. It's not that they're dishonest. Just… forgetful."
He smiled. "Much like several of my cousins."
Now, he looked at Denise.
"You can take her word for anything," said Noelle. "If you don't mind it coming with vulgar qualifiers."
Denise scowled. "Well, thank you very much."
Drugeth just looked at her, saying nothing.
After a while, Denise shrugged. "Sure, why not? You've got my fucking word I'll be a good little girl."
He stroked his mustache. "Qualifiers, indeed," he said mildly. "Do I need to insist on qualifying the terms? No attempt to escape. No attempt to overwhelm us by force."
He even said that last with a straight face. "That sort of thing?"
Denise thought about it. "Nah," she said. "I hate all that legal dotting-the-I's and crossing-the-T's bullshit. But I'm okay with the spirit of stuff."
He studied her for a bit longer. Denise was primed to strip his hide if he started nattering about her potty mouth. Or asked her if her father knew the sort of language she used, when who the hell did he think she'd learned it from in the first place?
But all he said was, "I believe that will do quite nicely."
By nightfall, they were well into the Fichtelgebirge. They made camp just before nightfall.
Three camps, really, separated by a few yards from each other. One for the defectors, one for Drugeth and his two cohorts, one for Denise, Noelle, Eddie, Lannie and Keenan.
After they ate, Lannie and Eddie fell asleep. Between their injuries and the rigors of walking or riding a wagon along mountain trails for several hours, they were exhausted.
Denise and Noelle and Keenan stayed awake a while longer, mostly just staring into the little fire they'd made. All three of the camps had fires going. Drugeth had given permission to make them. He didn't seem too concerned they'd be spotted, given the thick woods around them.
And who'd spot them anyway? The ever-vigilant and non-existing USE park rangers? Overflying aircraft, when they'd already crashed the only one in Grantville that could get off the ground, and Jesse Wood only let even the air force guys fly at night in extreme emergencies?
But Denise's sarcastic thoughts were just her way of coming to a decision.
"I've decided," she finally pronounced. "Drugeth's okay."
"Scary son-of-a-bitch," Keenan grunted. "But. Yeah. He's okay, I guess. What do you think, Noelle?"
But Noelle said nothing. Denise wasn't even sure she'd heard them talking. She seemed completely preoccupied by the sight of the flames.
Chapter 11. The Prayer
Two days later, after they'd made camp for the evening, Janos was approached by the Barclay couple and Allen O'Connor. They were the leaders of the up-time defectors, insofar as such a group could be said to have leaders.
The day before, Janos had heard Denise Beasley refer to them sarcastically as a "motley crew." The term being new to him, he'd asked for a translation. He'd found her explanation quite charming, especially the qualifiers that seemed to be inseparable from the girl's vocabulary. Even more amusing had been her pugnacious attitude. Clearly, she seemed to be expecting him at any moment to begin chastising her for her language.
Indeed, he was sometimes tempted to do so, when she lapsed into blasphemy. But he'd already learned from his weeks in Grantville that Americans had a casual attitude toward blasphemy, just as the rumors said they did. And despite his piety, Janos was skeptical-had been since he was a boy-that the way so many priests lumped all sins into unvarying categories was actually a reflection of God's will. Janos did not presume to understand the Lord's purpose in all things, and blasphemy was certainly listed as a transgression in the Ten Commandments. Still, he doubted that the Creator who had forged the sun and the moon made no distinction at all between blasphemy and murder.
As for the girl's profanity, he simply found it artful. Growing up as the scion of a Hungarian noble family in the countryside, he'd learned profanity from high-born father and low-born milkmaid alike. His were not a prissy folk. Janos himself avoided profanity, as a rule, but that was simply an expression of his austere personality. He didn't paint or write poetry, either. But he could still appreciate the skill and talent involved in all three of the arts.
Had Janos' father still been alive and been there, he might have had caustic remarks to say about the girl's language. But the old man would have criticized her for the sloppiness of the form, not the nature of the content. When it came to profanity, Janos' father had been a devotee of formal structure; Denise Beasley, of what the up-timers called free verse.
Jarring stuff, free verse, at first glance. But in the hands of a skilled poet, it could be effective. Janos had read some poems by an up-timer named e. e. cummings-he'd refused to capitalize even his name-and found them quite good. He'd even had a copy made of some of them to give to his uncle, Pal Nadasdy.
"We just wanted to tell you that Billie Jean's settling down," said Barclay. "We were a little worried there, for a while."
Janos nodded. He'd been somewhat concerned himself. Caryn Barlow seemed almost indifferent to the death of her father, but that wasn't particularly surprising. Their relationship had obviously not been close. In fact, it had seemed to verge on outright hostility. She'd joined the group because of her friendship with Suzi Barclay, not because of her father's involvement.
The Mase woman, on the other hand, was an odd one. Clearly intelligent, in most things, even quite intelligent. But it had been hard to analyze her attachment to such a man as Jay Barlow as being anything other than sheer stupidity. It was not simply that the man had been unpleasant, since that was true of many husbands and paramours. He'd been feckless and improvident as well.
Marina Barclay shook her head. "There's a history of abuse, there. I think it's got her all twisted up."
Janos couldn't quite follow the idiom. "Excuse me?"
"Billie Jean's father… Well. It was pretty bad. God knows why that got transferred over to an asshole like Barlow, but I think that's what happened."
"Ah." That was somewhat clearer. It was certainly as clear as Janos wanted it to be. Up-timers set great store by what they called "psychology." They claimed it was almost a science. Janos was dubious, but supposed it couldn't be any worse than the astrology which so many down-timers used to guide their way through life.
"The point is," said O'Connor, "we don't think she'll be a problem anymore. Now that she's cried herself out, we think she's actually kind of relieved. That was a bad situation."
Marina's expression darkened. "He beat her, sometimes, when he got drunk."
Janos looked from her, to her husband, to O'Connor. "Does she have possession of a weapon? A gun, I mean." He was not concerned, of course, that she might have a knife.
"No," said Peter Barclay firmly. "We took that away from her right away. We didn't… uh…"
Janos was tempted to scowl, but didn't. We didn't want her taking a shot at you because you'd slaughter all of us.
As if he himself couldn't make distinctions! They were truly annoying, sometimes, in the way they insulted without even realizing they did so.
Barclay's wife immediately demonstrated the talent anew. "And, uh, thanks for not killing her at the time."