Falling Idols

“Because it is what Nomad does, Giselle. It is what Nomad is.” She sought his eyes but they were beyond seeing; his round spectacles were flat replicas of the moon. “In my own heart God is first, and my flock second. On their behalf, He did not answer. So I turned to one that would. Though perhaps Nomad was the answer to prayer.”

Bile rose in her throat and she forced it down. “How dare you presume such a thing.”

Father Guillaume spread his hands. “Samson slew an army of Philistines with the jawbone of an ass. Did it just happen to be there? And God smiled. So before you judge … listen.”

She had no more heart with which to argue — it hurt too much. Hers must be the same as the grieving hearts of mothers who see their sons grow out of playful innocence to be hanged as convicted murderers. All mourn for the dead, yes, but they mourn no less for the passing of what potential might have been fulfilled in the living.

And so she listened.

To the frantic cracks of rifles, the bursts of automatic fire. Here a scream, there the concussive blast of a grenade. And still the cries went on. The brittle sound of splintering, as she learned to distinguish wood from bone. Learned to distinguish cry of fear from cry of mortality, and the breaking point in a long, suffering wail when the former became the latter.

And so she listened.

As the deliverance of Chateau-sur-Lac went on, and on, and on.

*

They didn’t leave the table until after moonlight gave way to dawn, and for two hours or more it had done so in silence. Dawn came with none of its usual innocence and hope, but instead a pall of guilt and apprehension, heavy as clouds.

“Get up, come along,” Giselle told him. “At least see what you’ve done.”

They left the rectory and trudged out upon the hill, far enough beyond the church so that it did not block their view of the village below. Beneath the lightening sky they gazed down upon an eerie tableau where nothing moved but a wafting haze of smoke, and in a place or two, the licking tongues of dying fires. Several bodies in gray uniforms lay strewn about, more than one broken into impossible angles. Another hung limp in a charred black hole blasted through the stone wall of a cottage. Yet another had been slammed halfway through a roof. One in the street had been run through with a shattered length of timber. And the rest? Giselle hoped not to have to see them, inside their charnel houses.

“Where is everyone else?” said Father Guillaume. “I dared believe by now they would be rejoicing.”

“They’re terrified even to look out their windows. Would you be any different, if you didn’t know?” Giselle looked at him without pity. “Be proud. He served you well.”

She left him to dog her footsteps through the clinging mist, and returned to the rectory, the warmth of its fire that had fed well through the night. Giselle huddled at the table and wondered why she hadn’t gone back to the priory instead, then realized she had more to say. She waited until Guillaume hunkered at the fire to add a fresh log.

“Tell me,” she said. “How do you justify this before God? Aside from your feelings about the Germans — I know those well enough — but instead, Nomad? How do you justify condemning him to carry such added burdens to his soul?”

Father Guillaume straightened at the fireplace with a weary groan. “Nomad doesn’t have a soul, Giselle.”

“By what authority do you make that decision?” she cried.

“By the authority of the Church!” He returned to the table and sat heavily, angrily, in his chair.

“Then the Church is wrong!”

Guillaume pointed wildly in the direction of the village. “That creature was never conceived like a man. Even a horse, or an ox, or a dog comes into this world by natural birth, but we don’t consider them to possess souls. How much lesser a being than them is Nomad, then? In Nomad I endangered nothing. Because there is no soul within to endanger!”

She drew into herself then, feet like ice, heart like broken fragments of stone. There would be no arguing with the Father, for there was nothing in his mind left open. And what of Nomad? She could not believe that he too lay below in a cottage, one more casualty of the night. Had he wreaked his havoc, then fled, unable to face her? He had to know she could forgive him anything.

Sadly, though, there were more immediate and pressing matters to be concerned with.

“What of the Germans’ reinforcements?” she asked. “They will come, you know. Later today, tomorrow. How do you propose to explain where the first have gone?”

“It’s not our duty to explain anything a German decides to do,” he said. “We take the bodies and we bury them, or hide them beneath haystacks, or haul them by ox-cart to the lake and weight them with stones and sink them to the bottom. We clean up their blood. And they remain the secret of this village. For as long as it takes.” He shook his head. “They were here, and they left. That is all we know.”

Giselle tried to keep from shivering. Dawn was cold, but this priest’s heart was colder still. How gentle he’d seemed, for years, while concealing the scheming heart of a murderer.

She was about to leave his table when she heard a scraping outside the door. Heavy feet upon flagstones, unsteady, and then the door swung open.

He filled the doorway, Nomad did, then entered with the slow and painful gait of one who ignores wounds. She sought his eyes, and when their gazes met, the yellow smoldering fury in them seemed to soften, and she knew him capable of tears he would never allow. He had purpose, and now, at least, she was not it.

He strode past her, and after a brief pause to glance about the cottage, continued to the bookcase where Father Guillaume’s dusty and cherished volumes sat like wise old friends. One arm swung up, to add something to their company.

“For the love of God!” Father Guillaume screamed. “You brought that here? Here? ”

Giselle shut her eyes, quickly, grateful she could, so she didn’t have to see those of Lieutenant Streckenbach