Between Two Fires

Four soldiers (later revealed to be thieves) rest in a barn, where they kill a donkey to eat. As they eat, a young girl tells them that they are eating her donkey, Parsnip. Godefroy, the leader of the group, tells her she can eat with them. The girl, named Delphine, knows that the soldiers may rape her, but an angel told her to come to the barn. She asks the men to help her bury her father. One of the soldiers, Thomas, tells her to go back to the house. Godefroy grabs Delphine, but Thomas steps in between them, and Delphine escapes. One of the other men, Jacquot, catches Delphine and carries her back to the barn. When he opens the barn door, Godefroy and the other thief are dead. Thomas stands over them with his sword and tells Jacquot to put Delphine down. Delphine asks Thomas not to kill Jacquot.

Thomas ties Jacquot up in the barn. Delphine tells Thomas that she wants to come with him, but Thomas says she can only accompany him to the next village. Delphine tells him that her father used to call her his “little moon.” Thomas makes Jacquot bury Delphine’s father. Afterward, Delphine cries because she sees a devil near Thomas’s soul.

Delphine and Thomas travel to the next town. When Delphine wakes up from sleeping, she tells him that they need to go to Paris and then to Avignon, although she is not sure why. Thomas thinks she might be a witch. Thomas decides that he should leave her because she will only slow him down. Yet, as he is about to leave, he steps on a mask of a devil. Believing this to be an omen, he stays with her.

Delphine and Thomas travel to a town called St. Martin-le-Preux. A priest invites them inside for some wine. The priest (later identified as Père Matthieu) tells them that the villagers dumped the bodies of plague victims in the river, where the eels ate them. Before long, a monster moved into the river, eating both the eels and the corpses. The priest says that the seigneur locked himself and his retinue in his tower to protect themselves from the plague, leaving the townspeople to die alone.

Matthieu tells Thomas that the wine comes from his younger brother, who lives in Avignon. Matthieu’s brother is a companion to a cardinal, which Thomas realizes means that he is the cardinal’s lover. Matthieu asks Thomas if he is a knight, and Thomas tells him that he used to be one. He tells Matthieu that the Comte d’Évreux, who sided with the English after the battle of Crécy, took his land. After that, Thomas became a brigand because he wanted revenge on the Comte. Matthieu tells him that if he kills the monster in the river, he will be a knight again.

In the morning, Thomas prepares to fight the monster in the river. Thomas sees that Delphine cut herself on his sword while trying to clean it and that her blood is all over it. Matthieu walks Thomas down to the river, accompanied by a farmer who wants to help Thomas. Delphine comes with them, carrying a censer.

The monster has a large head with long whiskers that feel around the shore’s edge. Thomas trips into the water and drops his sword, and the monster attacks. Delphine picks up his sword, cutting herself on the blade again, and Thomas grabs the sword, pushing her out of the water. The monster pulls its tail out of the water and Thomas sees that at the end of the tail is a human hand, translucent and white. The hand picks up a spear. Thomas shoves the farmer, trying to save him, as the monster throws the spear at him. The spear hits the farmer through the mouth, and the man screams. To Thomas’s horror, the monster mimics the farmer’s scream. Thomas feels terrified as he watches the monster swallow the man. As the beast eats the farmer, Thomas attacks it, pushing the sword toward its heart. The monster tries to swallow Thomas whole but ends up vomiting Thomas into the river. Thomas does not have the strength to check if the beast is dead, instead passing out on the shore.

A woman with the plague stumbles down to the river and drinks from it. When she finishes drinking, she sees that there is a dead knight on the shore. She kisses the knight but realizes that he is still breathing. Thomas wakes up in Matthieu’s house. He feels pain in his groin and realizes that he has a lump there, signifying the plague. Matthieu tells him that a woman from the village died on top of him. Matthieu tells Thomas that he succeeded in killing the monster, and Thomas falls asleep. Thomas wakes up in the night and hears Delphine speaking to a man. Thomas sees that the man has arrows coming out of his body and he realizes that it is Saint Sebastian.

In the morning, Delphine tells Matthieu that they need to take Thomas to a shrine of the Virgin of the White Rock. When they arrive at the shrine, they find a mob of peasants fighting over the shrine, ultimately breaking it. Afterward, Delphine finds one of the Virgin’s hands and presses it to Thomas’s forehead, healing him. After Thomas recovers, Matthieu agrees to travel with them. A few weeks later, the seigneur sends soldiers to Matthieu’s house. A few days later, everyone in the castle dies from the plague.

On the way to Paris, they pass a castle. Thomas and Matthieu decide to go to the castle, Thomas agreeing to participate in the tournament that will take place that night. However, Delphine refuses. At night, Thomas and Matthieu enter the great hall for a feast. They meet the seigneur and his daughter as well as a knight named Théobald de Barentin, whom Thomas recognizes. The seigneur serves Matthieu and Thomas monkey heads with the skull cut open. The seigneur takes a piece of the monkey brain and asks Matthieu how to say “this is my brain” (90), mocking the words that accompany communion. Matthieu refuses, and the seigneur says that until Matthieu tells him the words, he will not be allowed any more wine. Matthieu says the words in Latin, and the seigneur feeds the monkey brain to Matthieu.

Later that night, Thomas watches as the seigneur decapitates a man in the tournament. A monkey runs out from the stands and eats the man’s brains. Thomas and Théobald face each other for their duel. When Thomas hits Théobald, he notices that water leaks from Théobald’s helmet. Thomas recognizes Théobald’s hand as the same translucent white hand from the monster in the river. Théobald screams, but it is the scream from the farmer in the river. Théobald smiles, and suddenly Thomas remembers that Théobald died by drowning (meaning that this is not truly Théobald). Out of the corner of his eye, Thomas sees the seigneur’s head morph into the head of a lion. Thomas stabs Théobald in the face and turns to meet the seigneur, who he realizes is a devil. As Thomas raises his sword, the sun comes up and suddenly everything disappears. Thomas wakes up in a field next to Matthieu; he realizes that the members of the court were dead and that the lion-devil was using them to tempt him and Matthieu. Delphine comes up to him, and Thomas tells her that he is ready to go to Paris.