The Frenchman Page 4

  “I do not believe it, sir, and I will not,” Darren snapped. “It’s preposterous all together and I don’t know how I could have ever thought any of this to be real. I’m still unconscious, somewhere in the forest and this is all a dream. Good day to you,”

  Darren stormed toward the door, but faster than he realized, Bartholomew blocked his path. “You can try and deny this all you want, but as the days, weeks, and months drag on and you haven’t woken up, you’ll know I am not lying to you.”

  Darren’s skin crawled as a fiery anger welled in his gut. “I am not a werewolf and my father was not a werewolf. I am not some murdering beast that prowls around in the moonlight. You, sir, are insane and I’ve had enough of this!”

  He forced the baker aside with one sweep of his arm and charged into the street without so much as a look backward. He slammed the bakery door shut behind him and stood in the street, immersing himself back into the biting words of the women and snide remarks of the men who watched Darren from a safe distance. He almost preferred the smell of dough over the suffocating city odors, but he could not bear the company that came along with it.

  Bartholomew did not chase after him as Darren hurried to find George’s trail again. Even as he did, the thought occurred to him that he was tracking, just as a wolf did, using a scent to find his target.

  No. Darren shook his head. He would not give in to such temptations. He was not a beast. This was all either a terrible and misleading dream, or a hallucinogenic effect of the tonic George prescribed. He had to make sense of this somehow. There had to be a better explanation than werewolves and monsters.

  Down the street, a commotion erupted. He turned to watch a cart careen down the lane, led by two mad horses who were not too concerned with trampling everything and everyone in their path. Darren jumped out of the way as the wagon loaded down with wooden crates, came rattling past him. Undeterred by the interruption, he carried on.

  Then he heard something else. A woman’s scream. Considering that the horses were plowing their way through the center of a crowded square, it wasn’t surprising to hear. What she screamed was more important and it snagged Darren’s attention.

  “My baby!”

  Darren turned and saw just the faintest flash of blonde hair down the lane, lying right in the destructive path of the rampaging horses. Without a second thought, Darren did what he knew he had to do. Being careful not to overshoot, he dashed forward, little more than a blur to anyone else’s sight.

  He quickly passed up the horses who were at a full gallop, and positioned himself in front of the little girl who had fallen onto the cobblestone streets. He could smell a bit of blood from her skinned knee. Looking back to the horses, he felt a primal and inexplicable shift in his chest.

  Without even meaning to, a deep growl rumbled from his throat and his eyes went cold as if wind were blasting them, but they didn’t go dry nor did they warm themselves again when he blinked. Instead of grabbing the girl like he had intended, Darren stood his ground and braced himself to take on the horses himself.

  What had come over him?

  The horses spotted Darren, their crazed eyes rolling in their skulls as their necks and haunches frothed up a good sweat. They reared and quickly turned to escape the man who blocked their path. They skittered to the side and he thought he could smell something emanate from them as potent as the stench of dung that floated through the streets. It was a peppery, savory smell that only encouraged the rising of this primitive notion that he could easily tear these horses apart if he wanted. Some intuitive sense told him it was fear that he smelled. Fear of death from the human who dared to step in front of them.

  Darren’s lips curled up in a snarl as the horses turned. The wagon, however, could not be stopped so easily. The hitch that kept the horses strapped to the cart snapped against the force of their change of direction.

  The wagon wheels first skidded along the stony streets, and then caught at some point, causing the contents to tumble out, barreling toward him, their sharp edges spinning with each turn. Darren turned his shoulder to the crates and crouched down to shield the child he endeavored to protect.

  Oak collided with flesh and splintered into his skin, but he stood firm as the little girl screamed beneath him. When the collision was over and the dust had settled, Darren and the child were surrounded by crates that were cracked open and broken apart, their contents spilled onto the street. With a few great thrusts, Darren pushed the heavy crates away from them and sent them flying in the square. Shrieks and gasps of alarm exploded among the nearby citizens.

  Onward the horses sped, dragging the remaining parts of their harnesses as men tried to wrangle them to a stop. A crowd had gathered to assist in pulling the crates off, and the mother of the child rushed forward to claim the girl.

  With tears in her eyes, the woman gathered up her frightened and confused daughter. She did not offer a thank you or a promise to repay the debt she now owed to Darren for saving the life of her child. Instead, she took one look at him and fled with a horror-stricken look on her face.

  The animalistic urge to growl and snap his teeth disappeared, but his eyes still felt cold and his muscles tensed to danger. He looked to the townsfolk, shards of wood sticking out from his tunic with dribbles of blood seeping through the cloth.

  With each pair of eyes he met, disturbed sounds of alarm poured out of their mouths. Women ran away and men gapped, their hands reaching for the hilt of their daggers that were strapped to their belts. If the men didn’t have a weapon, they picked up whatever they could find to wield.

  “Beast!” they cried.

  “Witch!” gasped another.

  Darren picked out the splinters as he backed away from the mob that accused him of something he did not do. He pried each of them out, but when he inspected the wounds, he found no holes or puncture wounds. Yet there was blood all the same.

  “I’m not a beast!” he argued, sweeping the last bit of dust from his tunic.

  Still, they persisted and one man pulled out a gun, the shaking barrel pointed at his chest. Once more perplexed and frightened, Darren hurried from the scene at a fast pace, but not a supernatural one as he had before. He needed to disappear, to become inconspicuous somehow before these men were out for his head. What had he done? Yes, it might have been unnatural the way he blocked the crates from crushing the child, but shouldn’t they have been cheering instead of scorning him?

  Bartholomew emerged from his shop, probably hearing the disorder in the square. Darren made to steer around him, but the baker quickly grabbed him just as he had before. Their eyes met, but he did not have the same reaction as the others. “Run as far as you can from here and keep your eyes down until they’re warm again.”

  It was then that Darren looked to the darkened window of the bakery. Between the framed panes, he could see his face and the golden eyes that stared back.

  It couldn’t be. He rubbed at them, trying to erase the truth he could not accept. This was just a dream. Just a dream.

  “I will come to you this evening. Go!” Bartholomew pushed him further down the street as the shouts of men grew closer.

  There was no time to protest. Darren lowered his head and hustled away after he regained his footing. Taking the shortest path out of town and ducking through alley after alley, Darren finally arrived back to the spacious, rolling hills of the farmlands that surrounded Warminster.

  He breathed in the fresh air, but nothing would ease his troubled mind. His eyes had turned gold, just like Bartholomew’s. Was that why they were cold? It had to be why the townspeople ran and shouted the way they did. What made them gold?

  Darren remembered the way he felt staring down the horses, how he had been completely prepared to wrestle them to the ground to keep them from trampling the little girl. Such heroic impulses were not new to Darren. There were many times when he wanted to step in and stop a fight or help a man who was being robbed on the streets, but Darren had been unable to do anything
about it because he wasn’t strong enough to contend with such brutes. Now, he was the brute, and he could do so much more than toss rocks over rivers. He could help people and save lives, just like he saved that girl, but was it worth it?

  What if every time he stepped out to help someone, he turned into a beast with wolfish eyes?

  Darren caught himself on an oak tree and pounded his fist into the bark until his knuckles bled. Angry tears leaked from the corners of his eyes. What was he to do? Who had the answers he needed so dearly?

  No, he was not a werewolf. They didn’t exist.

  Back and forth, his mind warred against him, battling for one truth over the other. Monsters were not real, not like those spoken of in fairytales and folklore. Surely, there were evil people in the world, tyrants and warlords who killed people for the pleasure of it. But it was not possible that a man could change shape and become an animal. He couldn’t… could he?

  Chapter 4

  “Mistress!” shouted one of the maid servants. “Your son is back!”

  Martha bolted from her chair, knocking it clean to the ground as she hurried out of the study and into the hall. The maidservant continued to blubber about something, but Martha wasn’t paying attention. When she reached the top of the stairs that overlooked the foyer, she found a man standing there that she almost didn’t recognize.

  Her trembling fingers found her lips somehow as her knees went weak. This couldn’t be her son. This wasn’t the same boy that left the estate in a hurry the evening before. It couldn’t be. She took one step down the stairs, but Darren hurried to meet her instead.

  No servant was in sight, no other person to confirm the man’s identity. Yet, as he came closer, she knew it was indeed her son. She would know those brown eyes anywhere, the same eyes of his father, the same eyes she had fallen in love with years ago.

  She ran to meet him and felt dwarfed in his strong embrace.

  “I didn’t know where you had gone,” she whimpered, stricken by joyful tears.

  Darren was home, that was all that mattered for the moment.

  “I’m sorry, mother,” he said, his voice somehow deeper than she remembered. “I didn’t mean to be away this long.”

  She pulled away and patted her thin hands upon his arms, her smile wavering for a faint second. “That’s fine, son. Come, let’s get you something to eat and we can talk, yes?”

  Martha moved away to shout for a servant to bring them whatever was left over from breakfast. She might have to get cook started on their noonday meal sooner than expected. Before she could open her mouth or wander too far, Darren tightened his grip over her hand.

  She looked back into the eyes she had loved since she first held her son in her arms. Yet these eyes, as familiar as they were, held a new emotion that she had never seen before. Grief. Utter mortification and grief. It was then she realized that she wasn’t the only one trembling. This was not just one of his moods, either. He had his days when he moped about the estate, wishing he could do more. This, however, was something new entirely.

  “What’s wrong?”

  Darren took a deep breath, his broad chest rising and falling. “Mother, I don’t know if I can stay. Something happened in town and –“

  Martha waved her hand to silence him, just as she did whenever he would go on about some melancholy thing that she didn’t care to hear. “None of that. We will have a meal and we will talk. We have many things to discuss.” Her eyes flitted from his feet to the crown of his head.

  Yes, something certainly had happened. Even his hair, which had been matted and oily, seemed to have adopted a healthier luster. His face, now half-covered in a layer of beard that she thought he couldn’t grow, took on a bolder shape, more masculine and strong. Just like his father.

  Martha gave her orders to the servants and led her son to one of the chambers that she reserved for their quiet evenings alone. The baron had gone out on business, so they wouldn’t be disturbed. She seated Darren on the sofa, confident than his weight might crack the legs of his usual chair, whose fabric had been worn thin by years of sitting.

  Darren’s hand fidgeted over his knees as he sat like a boy who was ready to receive bad news or a reprimand. Martha would give neither. Yes, she had been angry that he left without a word the day before, but the total bliss of seeing him alive and more than well was enough now.

  “Did George do this?” she finally asked, unable to keep the question at bay for much longer.

  Darren’s eyes went wide. “You know about George?”

  Martha tried to laugh in that carefree way she did when asked a silly or troubling question. “Everyone knows about George, my dear. I know you’ve been going to him for help. I never minded because you would always come back better. But, this…” She gestured to his body. “It’s a little remarkable, isn’t it?”

  In the back of Martha’s mind, a war took place that she would never let her son see. She knew the fanatical rumors about George’s practice, how it could be considered witchcraft. Martha hoped against everything that her son had not given into some black magic. She knew his frustration with being unable to do the things that everyone else could, but would Darren stoop to such sinful lows as to make a pact with the devil?

  The other faction, her motherly nature, wanted to disregard such assumptions. Darren was still the same boy she raised, the same one she had cared for and loved all these years. Even if he did sell his soul to Satan, Martha would still love him. Even at the cost of her own soul, should God deem to not have mercy on her for accepting such blasphemy.

  “Mother, I… I don’t know if George did this or not,” Darren confessed, offering his hands out in supplication to her. “At first, I thought he did. It was the only thing that made sense, but I’m not so sure now. I spoke with Bartholomew, the baker, and he –“

  “Bartholomew?”

  “Yes, he said this has something to do with my father.”

  Martha froze. No, this couldn’t have anything to do with Hugo, could it? There were many strange things about the man who had stolen her heart and left her just as quickly as he had appeared. He, too, was strong, but strong men begot strong boys. It could not explain Darren’s sudden growth and coming into himself, so to speak.

  There was the way that Hugo sometimes disappeared at night and wouldn’t come back until the morning, just as Darren had done. No matter how much Martha begged him to stay, he refused. When he was with her, however, everything in her world was all right. He often said he would take a thousand arrows for her, run across the country just to bring her anything she wanted. Hugo would have gathered the very stars of the heavens into his arms and given them to her if she had asked.

  Then, he left. Without a word, without warning, he and his brother, Geoffrey, had left her alone with their child. Perhaps his demeanor had been warning enough. Martha recalled the solemn look in his eyes, the way his voice dropped when they spoke of the future that they could never have. Darren was too young to remember the last time Hugo visited them.

  If she married him, like they wanted all along, she would lose almost everything she had from her first husband’s inheritance. Hugo was poor, a lowly scholar just like his brother, but he could not bear to bring her into his poverty, neither would she wish it.

  They were once comfortable in their unholy arrangement. Hugo visited when he could and stayed for days, maybe weeks at a time, then he would have to go away for a while. When he left the last time, Martha assumed he would return. Weeks passed, then months. Slowly the years trickled by and Darren grew up without his father, and she without a true lover to keep her warm at night.

  Whatever Darren believed, whatever the villagers gossiped about, Martha had never known a real love quite like Hugo’s. All the rest were just play things, distractions for the lonely nights when she worried about the fate of the farm or the health of her son. Hugo had been her rock and when he left, he dashed her into innumerable pieces.

  To hear that Hugo might have committed
some other heinous act without even being in Warminster, Martha didn’t know how to respond.

  “Your father did nothing,” she whispered, hoping to convince herself as well. Perhaps George wasn’t the sorcerer, but Hugo. Could that even be possible? Nothing in her recollection could verify such a claim. Though, she would never deny that he had indeed bewitched her beyond mortal understanding.

  “Bartholomew said… he said that my father might have been something unnatural and I have inherited whatever it was.” Darren swallowed hard. “Was my father… a werewolf?”

  Martha gasped. “Certainly not. Darren, werewolves don’t exist. Don’t you know that?”

  He ran his hands through his hair and gripped at his scalp in agony. “I know they’re not, mother, but please humor me. I don’t know what has happened.” Darren looked to her with imploring eyes. “Please, do you know where he is?”

  Martha straightened in her chair, her delicate hands folded neatly in her lap. “I don’t know where your father is, Darren. I’d advise you to not find him, though.”

  “Why not?” he pleaded. “If he has the answer to this, then –“

  “Promise me you won’t try to find him!” she snapped. “My heart cannot bear to lose you, too.”

  Before Martha even realized she was weeping, Darren had clasped his hands arounds hers and knelt at her feet.

  “You won’t lose me, mother,” he said, his voice a soothing balm to her broken heart. “Can you tell me anything about him? About my father?”

  Taking stuttered, sniffling breaths, Martha shook her head. “There is nothing to tell beyond what I’ve already told you.”

  Darren’s hands gripped tighter over her fingers. “Can you even give me his name? Perhaps Bartholomew will know him.”

  “Bartholomew?” she questioned as she peered at her son quizzically. “How would he have known your father? He’s only been in Warminster for a few years, long after your father left us.”