Curse of a Winter Moon Read online

  I moved through the crowd swiftly.

  “You there!”

  “That’s the blacksmith’s son,” a shaggy-browed man said as I passed.

  “The blacksmith,” said another. “Father of the loup garou? Ha! Emanuel Poyet must be the devil himself.”

  My face flared with heat and I spun around. “My father is no such—” I wanted to find whoever had spoken those words, but when I glanced back, the mercenary, now standing on the wagon’s wooden seat, mug lifted high, sword unsheathed, was watching me like a falcon.

  JEAN-PIERRE

  Trying to not draw attention to myself, I slipped away past the gallows on the edge of the square, up one street, down another, then bounded through the archway and up the stairs, three at a time, to my home.

  Madame Troubène was still in bed, her head turned toward me, eyes closed. She was murmuring. I rushed to her side and placed my hand on her forehead, hot as fire. “The pain—” she moaned.

  “Where is Jean-Pierre?” I stroked her forehead lightly.

  “We can hide him,” she managed, “but that won’t stop the curse.” She raised her trembling hand and pointed toward the stone wall. I had nearly forgotten the place for hiding Jean-Pierre. Years ago, my father had chiseled out a large stone from the wall, right next to a support beam.

  I left her bedside, walked over, found the rough edge of mortar and the hairline crack. I knelt, gripped the large stone, eased it out from the wall, and found Jean-Pierre.

  He was tucked into a tight ball, head on his knees in the cramped space. He looked up awkwardly, his eyes red, his cheeks tear-streaked.

  A breath of relief rushed from my chest.

  His lower lip trembled as he opened his mouth. “They …” His shoulders shook. “At Papa’s shop … they threw everything around. I was so scared. But see?” He edged out of his tiny cave, his hair salted with mortar. “You always find me.”

  I brushed his hair with my fingers. “You’re right, Jean-Pierre. I always find you.”

  “Why did they come in?” he asked, on the verge of tears. “Because of me?”

  I avoided his question. “Right now, you must help me. Where’s Papa?” I asked.

  Jean-Pierre looked around the room. I followed his upward gaze. The chickens ruffled their feathers, clucked, then settled again. “He was up there, but now he’s gone.”

  I knew things were not good, if my father had to hide in the rafters of our home. “Did he say anything?”

  I turned to Madame Troubène. “Did he say when he would be back, where he had gone?”

  She swallowed and winced, as if she had gravel in her throat. Her eyes were closed and sunken. She spoke, her lips chalky white. “I know nothing.”

  I ran my hand through my hair. Nothing in my twelve years had prepared me for this. “If only I could ask him … What am I supposed to do?”

  Jean-Pierre tugged on the edge of my rope belt. “Where’s Papa?”

  I didn’t know what to say. I walked to the shutters, opened them, and looked out. The street was dark, the air frozen. I quickly closed the shutters.

  I poured a mug of water from the pitcher, drank deeply, then wiped my mouth. I walked around the room, then slumped against the door.

  “I don’t know, Jean-Pierre.”

  “Is it because of me?” Jean-Pierre looked steadily into my eyes. “Is it because I’m a loup garou, as everyone says?”

  People had always whispered, but I thought that I had kept their rumors from Jean-Pierre. Of course, I couldn’t protect him from the village talk forever. I held the mug out to Jean-Pierre, who took it in his small hands and drained it.

  “See? Even the child knows,” came Madame Troubène’s voice. “The wolves have been howling at night … calling him.”

  I jumped from my knees and stood. “No!” I said. “That’s not true!” I combed my fingers through my hair and paced.

  “When I carried Jean-Pierre back in my arms, it’s true, the wolves had been howling, but I didn’t see a single wolf as I returned to the village. If Jean-Pierre was truly being called, then why hasn’t he changed shape by now?” My voice grew louder. “Jean-Pierre hurt himself, that’s all! The wolves were calling to one another. Nothing more. You know what I think? I think perhaps there is no loup garou, none at all.”

  I suddenly froze. To say this thought out loud. Not to believe in the loup garou was … was by itself heresy.

  Jean-Pierre had crunched himself into a little ball against the wall, his arms wrapped around his knees, head tucked down. “I want Papa,” he said.

  My own limbs trembled, but I knelt beside my brother and touched his cheek. “Look at me.”

  Jean-Pierre slowly lifted his head. Tears brimmed in his eyes. “Beautiful, haunting eyes,” my father had said of my mother. Jean-Pierre’s were just like hers, framed with thick lashes.

  “Listen to me,” I said. I lifted my brother’s chin. I met his eyes and held them. “You’re Jean-Pierre.”

  His chin puckered, then quivered. “But the people were shouting, Marius. Even Madame Troubène believes …”

  I tried to smile. “Who is with you every day?”

  “You.”

  “And am I afraid of you?”

  Jean-Pierre wiped his eyes with his small fist. Still they filled with tears. He shook his head.

  “That’s because you’re my brother. And all that other talk is foolishness.”

  “Careful,” croaked Madame Troubène from her bed. “That talk is trouble …” She breathed hard. “You should know …” she managed, then fell silent.

  I held Jean-Pierre’s gaze and squeezed his shoulders. “You must promise me two things. First, that you’ll stay close to me. You must not go running off. Second, if anyone asks you, ‘Are you the loup garou?’ you say, ‘No, I’m Jean-Pierre.’ Do you understand?”

  Jean-Pierre didn’t say anything. “But why … why do I …”

  “Promise me,” I said sternly, sounding almost like my father.

  Jean-Pierre blinked his large deer eyes. “I promise, Marius,” he whispered.

  “Good. Now we must get some sleep. Tomorrow will come quickly.”

  I led Jean-Pierre to our shared mattress. I covered him with the thin blanket, then turned and walked to the window. For just a moment, I opened the shutters again, and peered out.

  Like goose feathers, snow was falling again.

  I shivered and began to close the shutters. As I did, eerily, on the breeze came the distant sound of wolves howling. One cry, then two, then countless more. Their song caught in my chest. I waited. Their howling lasted a short time, then dropped away into the silence from which their song had come.

  I hoped I was right about Jean-Pierre. God above, I hoped I was. Morning. I would focus on that. Everything would be better in the morning. I’d find my father, and I would find a way to keep Jean-Pierre safe. A plan. At the first streak of light, I wanted to be the only one on the streets of Venyre.

  MY FATHER

  I woke in the middle of the night to Madame Troubène’s coughing. She was in her bed, lying on her side, with a cough that seemed to shake the whole room.

  The fire that I’d stoked to roaring before going to bed was nearly out. Reluctantly, I rose from the warmth of my mattress, dressed quickly, and added a few logs to the flickering embers.

  Jean-Pierre still slept soundly. My father’s mattress lay in the opposite corner, empty.

  Quietly, I slipped out into the night and tiptoed down the stairs to the street. I clung to the shadows of our arched entrance. Moonlight spilled like fresh milk into the streets and lit up thin patches of snow. From the far end of a street, muffled sounds floated from the tavern. Otherwise, the village was quiet.

  If my father was anywhere in Venyre, he had to be in his smithy. I touched the cool iron door handle, turned it, and stepped in. “Papa?” I whispered.

  “Close the door, Marius,” came a familiar voice, “and bolt it.” All the anger, all the resentment I’d
felt earlier on this threshold vanished. Relief washed over me.

  The room was dark until my father lit a candle. The flame illuminated his worry-filled eyes, his bearded face. Still, he smiled. “Marius,” he said and reached for me.

  “I hoped to find you here,” I said.

  “I couldn’t let thieves steal my tools without a fight.”

  I hugged my father tightly, breathed in the smoky smell of his hair, and welcomed his scratchy beard against my forehead.

  My father stepped back and brought the candle between us. “I must meet with the others,” he said. “There is much to tell, but precious little time.”

  “Brother Gabriel told me,” I whispered. “He said you can read.”

  My father, with a distant gaze, looked past me. I wished I could see into his thoughts, understand what lay behind his shadowed eyes. Then a brief smile played on his face, and I saw something there. A glint of pride.

  “Yes,” he said. “It’s true. And reading is only the start. Books lead to learning, and learning leads to knowing more than …” He paused and glanced toward the door. “More than the Church would have a simple man like me know. Indulgences, for instance. Paying your way into heaven. It’s rubbish.”

  To hear him speak so boldly, so defiantly … My blood quickened.

  “Do you want to know what the Bible does say?”

  I waited, not sure I wanted to know. This talk scared me.

  “It says: ‘And what does the Lord require of you, but to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.’ Simple enough for a goat to understand.”

  My father had never spoken so boldly, or so much. I suddenly felt awkward. “Why … why did they destroy your shop? Is that why you had me take the books?”

  “Yes. But even without the books, they found parchment—with my writing on it. But they couldn’t ruin everything,” he said. “My tools are sound. When we get resettled, I will be back to my trade.”

  “But what of… are you … a Huguenot?”

  My father looked at me. The candle’s flame danced in the darkness. He rested a hand on my shoulder. “I aim to be a free man, Marius. To think for myself, to pray to God by myself, to pray in French, to read whatever I wish … and if these actions make me a Huguenot, then so be it. God knows I am not alone.”

  I leaned on my father’s confidence. I suddenly felt drawn, as if to a fire’s warmth. And at the same time, as in tales from the coast, I felt as if I were following him to the end of a ship’s plank, about to fall into fatal waters.

  “You’re trembling,” said my father. He removed his hand from my shoulder, cupped it around the candle’s flame, and blew it out. “We don’t want to attract attention,” he said. “As soon as possible, when the time is right, you and Jean-Pierre and I will leave Venyre.”

  “Leave?” This news was too much. “Venyre is our home,” I said. “And Madame Troubène … she’s old, and … like a storm, all that has happened will blow by … and we can stay here and—”

  “Marius.” My father’s tone was true as a bowman’s arrow. “This is what I meant when I said the times are not what they seem. Many of us, we live like rats between the walls, afraid of the rat catcher. It’s not the way to live.”

  Tears pooled hot in my eyes. Everything. It was everything on top of everything. I swallowed and cleared my throat. “I knew you married Mama for love. But why did you never tell me that she was from nobility?”

  “Would knowing the truth have helped?” my father answered. Then his voice grew lighter. “Would it have helped you escape the taunts of that fat, sniveling butcher who should keep his nose in his own business?”

  I laughed. He’d never called Monsieur Dubois “fat” and “sniveling” before. “No, I suppose not.”

  “You’ve had enough to carry on your shoulders with your brother’s curse,” he said. “And not a curse due to the hour of his birth—or by the full moon—but cursed instead by the ignorance, superstition, and fear of his own neighbors. The only monstrosities I see in Venyre are our own cruelties to one another.”

  “Then … you don’t believe he’s …”

  I felt my father’s hand on my head, heavy and strong. “Your brother is as good, as true, as the love your mother and I shared.”

  I bowed my head. “I feel as if all of Jean-Pierre’s life …” I struggled to find the right words. “I feel I have betrayed him, along with everyone else, by fearing him … by doubting his goodness.”

  “Ah, but that same goodness is solidly in you, Marius. And that’s why we must leave. I don’t want you to live like a rat, picking crumbs from the nobleman’s or the abbot’s table. Your heart is good, your mind is quick. A blacksmith’s life is a good life, especially if you take pride in your craft. But I want more for you than to stay in Venyre where learning is something to be feared.”

  “The abbot,” I blurted, remembering that I indeed had choices, that I wasn’t stuck, “he heard me play the lute …”

  “The abbot? He noticed your gift?”

  I nodded.

  “He heard your mother play here in the village—just once—and from that moment forward, your uncle Gabriel and she made sure the abbot never knew they were related.”

  “Why?”

  “The less Abbot Joseph knows, the better. He is a man who thrives on power, and will twist whatever he can to fulfill his own wants and desires. Avoid him. Soon we’ll leave for a place where you will be free to learn to read and write. To think for yourself. That’s my dream for you—your mother’s dream as well.”

  Suddenly, a soft knock, just once, then twice, came at the door.

  “You and I—at least we’re not alone in this,” my father said with a wry smile. “Many, many others share our views. Now I must go and meet with a few of them. And you—you must return to Jean-Pierre and keep him hidden.”

  He embraced me fiercely, then unbolted the door and whispered, “I’ll come for you. Soon.”

  Then my father stepped onto the snowy street, and along with two other caped shadows, disappeared around the street corner into the deep night.

  I stole home to the warmth of my bed.

  WOLF-TOOTH NECKLACE

  December 23

  At dawn, when light was only a shade above darkness, I climbed out of bed. Had I merely dreamed that I’d seen my father? My mind ran over our conversation the way a tongue explores the hole from a missing tooth. No, the entire encounter had been real. My father had talked more to me last night than he had in my whole life. The gap I’d felt between us for so many years was closing.

  I yanked on my breeches and jerkin and walked lightly past Madame Troubène.

  “Marius,” she croaked, and reached for my arm. “You’ve been like my own son. Your mother,” she began, then started wheezing hard, her lungs struggling for air, “she would be so proud of you.”

  I kissed her forehead, which was icy, deathly cold. “What can I do to help?”

  “Go to the apothecary,” she said. “Get something for the pain. Take my money,” she said, so softly that I had to lean closer to her mouth as she spoke, “what little there is … in the chest.”

  In the cedar chest at the foot of her bed were tablecloths, mugs, and jars of spices and herbs, as well as a small leather pouch. I slipped her pouch inside my belted tunic, not bothering to count its contents.

  “I’ll hurry,” I said and left.

  Outside, a flock of snow geese flew soundlessly overhead, white against gray, heading south toward the Mediterranean. They took turns in flight, the lead bird dropping back as another bird took the front, acting as a windbreak for the others. I breathed in the icy air and made my way through a covering of snow, choosing my steps carefully, not wanting to fall in dung again.

  The streets were quiet, windows shuttered, merchants’ booths covered until full daylight.

  “Bonjour, Marius,” came a voice from across the street. The butcher’s.

  I nearly leaped out of my jerkin.


  “Did you hear about your papa?” asked Monsieur Dubois, uncovering the meats at his shop. Then he faced me and rubbed his hands over and over on his apron, almost gleefully.

  “That they stormed his shop without cause?” I said angrily. “Yes, I heard.”

  “Oh, now you have your tongue,” he said with a chuckle. “And how is Madame Troubène? I haven’t seen her in days. Did she, too, simply disappear? Strange things going on at your home.”

  “She’s fallen ill. I’m on my way to the apothecary now,” I said.

  “Too bad about your father,” called the butcher. “If you should see him, warn him to be more careful. These are dangerous times.”

  I quickened my steps, rounded a corner, and walked halfway down the street. At the apothecary’s sign, I knocked on the door and waited for an answer. It finally came in the form of a man in skullcap and rumpled clothes who stood no taller than my chin.

  “What can be so important this early?”

  “Madame Troubène,” I said. “I think she’s dying.” And as soon as I spoke the words, the weight of what I had not wanted to admit struck me. She had given me her money, something she usually guarded like a dog with its bone. She had told me I was like her own son, when she was usually rather gruff and stingy with her affection.

  “She’s in pain,” I said, and my voice cracked. “She needs something powerful that will make her sleep better.” Suddenly, I had in mind that I’d give Jean-Pierre some of the medicine, as well, should anyone search the house again. Then he could remain perfectly quiet, in hiding.

  “Right now she is lying very still and very cold.”

  “She should be bled,” said the wiry man. “Talk to the barber as soon as he opens.” He began to close his door with a yawn.

  I had seen the barber’s special blades, used both for cutting hair and beards, and also for letting out bad blood. Sometimes bowls of it sat beneath a customer’s chair. “But she’s very weak. She can’t get out of her bed. I don’t think—”