I was hoping to fix such things so you would never know.
Something told him that she was telling the truth.
But he couldn’t focus on that now, as much as he wanted to. He had a situation on his hands and men were waiting for his judgment. Still clutching the necklace, he returned his attention to St. Lo and the weeping prisoner.
Val took a good look at Mat d’Avignon; shaggy, dirty, stocky, he barely looked human. He looked like an animal, in fact, and fully capable of doing what his sister and father said he did. He took a step in the man’s direction.
“Are you Mat d’Avignon?” he asked in an authoritative tone.
The prisoner was weeping profoundly. “I want to go home!”
“Tell me who you are.”
The prisoner either didn’t understand the question or didn’t want to answer. “Where is my papa going?”
It was obvious to Val that everything he’d been told was true– this was McCloud’s son. Hearing the man speak, it was also clear that he was, indeed, a simple-minded man. His speech was slurred, inelegant.
“Matins d’Avignon,” Val said, louder. “Did you murder children this morning?”
Mat continued to weep, trying to see where McCloud had gone. Val moved so that he was blocking Mat’s view of the crowd and of his father, so he was the only thing filling up Mat’s vision. He grabbed the man by the chin and forced Mat to look at him.
“Did you kill those children this morning?” he asked again. “Answer me.”
Mat looked at him as if he didn’t understand the question. “Where is my papa?”
“Your papa is not returning unless you tell me what happened. What did you do this morning?”
Mat understood the threat of his father not returning. In fact, the young man had been living in terror for the past few weeks, ever since his father left him. He didn’t understand why McCloud had to leave and he was terrified of being left alone, so he was obsessed by his recent glimpse of his father.His world. But he took Val’s threat very seriously.
“They… they had food,” he finally stammered. “I could smell their food!”
“What did you do?”
“I was hungry!”
“Whatdid you do?”
Mat frowned, confused by the question, trying to remember what he’d done. He was so frightened that he could hardly think. “I took it,” he said. “They hurt me. I hurt them back!”
“You killed them.”
“They hurt me!”
“What about the others you killed? Do you remember them?”
Mat’s brow furrowed as he seriously considered the question. “They would not give me their food,” he said. “I wanted it. They would not give it to me.”
“So you took it.”
“I took it.”
“This is not the first time you have stolen. Do you remember how many people you have stolen from?”
Mat couldn’t grasp that question. He began to whine again, panicking. “Where is my papa? I want my papa!”
It was all Mat was capable of saying. To Val, he had his confession but he was greatly distressed over the situation now for an entirely new reason– he had a simpleton who was a murderer. He was coming to think that the man had no grasp of what he’d done, only that he was justified in whatever had happened. He was hungry, he took their food, they obviously fought back, and he killed them. In Mat’s mind, that was evidently all that happened and he was perfectly right to do what he did.
But Val knew, upon hearing those words, that Mat had consigned himself to death.
