Page 10 of She, Wolf, Him.

The priest is waiting for me, or has arranged to be where I'll pass, which in a man like him is the same thing.

He comes out of the church as I cross the square, unhurried. He puts himself in my path without seeming to choose it. Close up and in daylight he's all economy, nothing on him moving that he hasn't sent, and what he sends is small. He folds his hands and lets a breath pass before he speaks. He's the dangerous kind of priest, the kind that's gone quiet because he's never needed to raise his voice to be obeyed.

"You were on the mountain before light." He says it flat, already knowing. He keeps a count of me. "I trust God sent you something for your trouble."

"Wolves," I say. "Sign of a pack, up in the high firs. Ordinary work. Give me a few days and a few steady men, and you'll have one less grave to dig."

"Wolves." He turns the word over and sets it down with care, meaning to break it later. "You've come a long road, monsieur, to tell us we are troubled by wolves. We are not children here. We know what walks our woods, and it is not a wolf."

"With respect, Father, I've put more wolves in the ground than you've buried men. I know one by what it leaves behind it."

"And I know a scourge by what it is for." His voice doesn't rise. It drops and gathers, and I understand the man works at this the same as I work at mine. "The Beast is not a trouble for a gun. It is a sentence. God does not loose such things on a people who have kept faith with Him. Repentance lifted it from Nineveh. A King's warrant and a pound of lead will not lift it from Saint-Élie, whatever you've promised them for their coin."

He needs the Beast to be God's, because a beast a stranger shoots for money is a beast that leaves God nothing to say, and leaves the priest a poor old man in a poor cold church with no terror left to rent. I've a contempt for his trade that I keep off my face with some effort.

I've met him before, is the truth of it, if not this one. I knew the type when I was a boy, and it doesn't change much from one black coat to the next. I see it in the certain mouth, in the patient cruelty of a man who has already settled which of his neighbours God would most like to see punished. I only mark that I'm the readiest stranger to hand.

"I'll kill it either way, Father," I tell him, and I keep it pleasant, because pleasant costs him more. "Wolf, devil, the wrath of God in fur. Bless the corpse when I'm done and tell them their repentance brought it down. I'll be too far off counting my coin to hear you."

"Coin," he repeats, tasting it. "The old shepherd bought your coin's worth, did he. And the man in the lower pastures." A pause like a drawn wire. "Tell me, monsieur. What does a corpse owe you, that it pays so well."

Nothing moves in his face. His hand goes to the wooden cross at his breast with the care I'd give my knife-hilt, checking it's still there.

"We shall see what you bring down," he says. "And what brings you down."

He stands aside to let me pass. I feel him at my back the length of the square. What he's at is as plain as a wolf's week in its scat. Let him. I've been a village's problem before and come out the far side of it on my own feet, which is more than one man in my family lived to say.

I can't abide hunting blind. So I give myself the answer again, plain enough to pass for truth. Wolves. A pack. And I'll be gone before anyone thinks to wonder why a wolf left a track no wolf could fill.

The wrong prints stay up in the mud where I found them, behind me, under the trees.

The smell doesn't. It came down in the wool of my coat, and it's there yet. I tell myself there's no difference between what rides home in wool and what rides home in the head. No difference worth a grown man's minding.

6

THE BETROTHED

AGNÈS

The banns were read. The priest gave his blessing. The bride did not smile.

— PARISH NOTE, SAINT-ÉLIE, AUGUST 1766

Father Reynaud reads the banns at the end of Mass, my name tied to Thibault's in front of God and the whole village, and Thibault's hand settles on my shoulder, the words making me a thing he's allowed to hold in the open now.

The church is cold as it always is, stone that never takes the summer in, and the incense hangs low and blue under the rafters. I fix my eyes on the candle-smoke going up, because it goes where it likes, and little else in here does. Reynaud's voice doesn't rise. It sinks, spreads, fills the cold room without effort, and when he comes to our names he lets a pause sit before each one, so the village has time to weigh the match and find it good.

Then the blessing. A few plain words asking God to make the union fruitful and obedient. His fingers lift from the black of his cassock, dry and unhurried, and though they never touch me, the words have already given me over to Thibault. When his eyes come down to mine they stay a beat past where a blessing needs them. They always do. I've never worked out what he hunts for in my face, only that he keeps hunting, and that the one safety I own is to give him nothing to find.

"Thank you, Father," I say, because it's mine to say, and I'm good at it. I've been thanking men for my life since I was old enough to understand it was never mine to begin with.

Then it's done, and the village comes for me with its kindness.

They file out into the late-summer morning and the congratulations come, the women pressing close, the old ones pleased. Berthe takes my hand in both of hers. "He'll keep you well," she says, warm and certain. "A man with a roof and no drink in him. Your mother would have rested easier for it." I take all of it. I say thank you until the word wears through and means nothing, until it's only a sound my mouth makes.

Behind the goodwill, not low enough, one of the old ones says, "She'll do. She's strong-hipped. She'll carry them easy and work between whiles." "She's getting a house with a window," one of the young wives says, envious and kind at once. "Cleared for her, he said so himself."

Thibault stands at my side through all of it with his broad face gone satisfied, nodding, accepting their goodwill as his due, because to him this morning is only the world agreeing with what he already knew.