Between Two Fires

But it will be harder for you if you remember. Love is always harder. Love means weathering blows for another’s sake and not counting them. Love is loss of self, loss of other, and faith in the death of loss.

One scene stayed with de Chauliac forever, obsessing him, even though, mercifully, the rest would blur; he saw a devil with wide black wings gripped by two angels, who drove it down and seemed to speak in its ears as they fell; they hit the bend of the Rhone, sending up a great, illuminated plume of water visible from Orange. Two angels and a devil had tumbled into the water. Three angels came up. Forgiveness, then, was possible even for the worst.

Man is born into sin. All because of Adam.” Guillaume said, “Mostly Eve, my priest told us.” Delphine looked up from the water now. “That’s not fair.” “How’s that?” said Guillaume. “She was tempted by something stronger than her. Adam was tempted by a weaker creature. Or so we are told. If Eve was his inferior, his sin was greater. You can’t have it both ways.

Well, I do what I say. Which is why I don’t say much.

Hell, like prison, is worse when you don’t feel you earned it.

Some righteous men and women yet held faith, but they were scattered so far that none could see the other’s light, and it seemed the darkness had no end.

Thomas looked at her standing with her delicate arms and legs and thought how odd it was that children were small, and that they found this normal. He could not remember being small. What must he look like to her, standing so far above her, holding that murderous hammer? What did it feel like to know you lived or died at the whim of the giants around you?

She had seen him once, smiling a little through another friar’s sermon about Hell, saying after the other left that fear of Hell is one of many paths to it. Forget Hell and love one another. That is all He wants of you.

Love is always harder. Love means weathering blows for another’s sake and not counting them.

How did Heaven come into all of this? Heaven was life, not death. Heaven was a woman holding your head in the crook of her arm and looking down at you. Heaven was a warm hand on your cheek and the smell of soup with garlic on the fire.

God should be your comfort, but you have made comfort your god.

Goddamn it,” Thomas said, gazing at her small cache. “Maybe God would be more generous if you swore less.” “God starves babies sometimes, and they don’t swear at all.

Thomas had never been so afraid. I can’t I can’t I can’t, he thought, even as he drove his legs forward through the muck to meet it.

The injuries of spring are forgotten in the summer, but remembered in the winter.

She was tempted by something stronger than her. Adam was tempted by a weaker creature. Or so we are told. If Eve was his inferior, his sin was greater. You can’t have it both ways.

And at precisely that moment a sparrow in the tree above Thomas shat in his.

A dark-haired little boy just in pants stood bewildered near the blaze, saying, as if there had been some mistake, "We live here. We live here.

This pestilence cooked away pretense and showed people’s souls, as surely as it eventually showed their bones.

When Delphine saw the knight's eyes soften, she reached her small hand out, and he took it in his large one. And she led him down to the stream, and, with its cool water, washed his head and his feet, and helped him wash the anger from his heart

Go back to Picardy and ask the bishop to pardon you, if he's still alive. He'll send you on pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostella, or maybe on crusade, if there's anyone left to make war on in the east; and back you'll come to the bishop, and you'll say words you don't mean and he'll say words he doesn't mean, and you'll get your castle back. If you can find anyone to run it. And be a seigneur, if anyone's alive to grow the wheat. And you won't have to forgive anyone or be merciful, or thoughtful or courteous, because devils will rule here. They'll kill the good ones first, and when all the good men are dead, they'll come for men like you, who were almost sound, but not quite; the bowls that leaked. And when you're gone, the worst of men will find themselves in the teeth of their masters, because those that fell have no love for man. And they'll take good and bad alike to Hell, because there won't be anyplace but Hell anymore. Not without love. Not without forgiveness.

How was she to believe man was anything special when he looked so much like any other animal in death?

So one of the fallen, whose name was Baal-Zebuth, said, “Let us wear their greatest men like skins, and when they speak, they will speak our words; they will speak of wars and purgings, and of dashing the babe’s head. We will turn their understanding so they make their Christ a god of war, and we will cause them to set navies to the seas and armies under the moon with generals whose eyes glow like brands, and we will stir Turk and Christian alike to madness by our own deeds, and by our own hands will we hasten the death of men.” And great was the noise of flies around him as he walked the earth.

The girl noticed her eyes. They seemed kind to her, despite the woman's rough look. Out of nowhere, she wanted the woman to hold her. It had been so long since she had smelled a woman's skin that even a dirty woman's embrace would have been welcome. She was still disturbed by the sight of the dead young nuns near the hospital and she wanted a woman to hold her and tell her that the whole world didn't yet belong to Death, masculine Death with his hourglass and his holes for eyes. Death with his bony arms that only embraced to take you away, like a lamb from the market. Like the pig on La Bucherie. How did Heaven come into all of this? Heaven was life, not death. Heaven was a woman holding your head in the crook of her arm and looking down at you. Heaven was a warm hand on your cheek and the smell of soup with garlic on the fire. How could people enjoy anything in heaven with their noses rotted off and their ears full of mud and worms, and no cheeks, and no hands to lay on cheeks?

I dreamed my brother had no legs." "The one in Avignon? The catamite?" "I have only one brother.

The room smelled like hot cunt and red wine vomit.

Two angels and a devil had tumbled into the water. Three angels came up. Forgiveness, then, was possible even for the worst.

She was a bad age to meet these men; just too old to be safe and just too young to know why.