#i cant even describe lucien's terror at the IDEA of grimaldi

[deluxewhump]

The Northern Front III

part I

part 2

III: Lucien as General Louviere’s plaything. Reintroducing Captain Grimaldi.

Lucien keeps his eyes down. It’s easier than wondering if anyone is looking at him. It’s easier than seeing anyone he knows from before. He can feel the way some of the soldiers look at him from the way their feet slow as they pass by. He doesn’t glance up at their faces and they don’t dare stop or say anything— not as long they are in earshot General Louviere.

He thinks something is off, something is different about the town and the military camp set up within its crumbling stone walls, but he can’t put his finger on it. His muscles are not quite right yet, his arms still ache and his legs are stiff and hurt around the hips. He has to wince and bear it to keep up with the General’s long, easy strides. It took his eyes days to adjust back to sunlight, and he still blinks heavily when they leave the tents. 

“Down.” Louviere snaps when they enter his tents, and Lucien drops to the floor beside the long table in the center of the dirt floor. The General takes a seat behind it, as he does when he is going to accept visitors.

Soon, Lucien recognizes the voice of one of the priests— of course not the High Priest they had thrown off the tower on that first day, but one of the younger clergy. He can feel the priest’s gaze on him. The recognition. The horror— horror, or pity? Something in his voice wavers with it as he petitions for permission to worship. 

“Tell them to worship in their homes.” The General says curtly.

“It...it is custom they worship together. As part of our belief.”

 “They may gather, but not all together. Not in one place.”

The priest hesitates. “They need… they need guidance, General. Leadership.”

Lucien glances up through his lashes in time to see the coldness settle over the General’s features.

“They have leadership.”

“O-of course. I only meant…. I meant spiritual guidance…”

“Then you should consider making housecalls.” General Louviere waves a hand in dismissal. 

Lucien remembers his baptism, in his seventeenth summer, how they’d dunked him in the cold river though he was not one of their own. After, as before, he had not felt clean. 

The hand that touches his head makes him jump. 

“Easy.”

By way of apology, Lucien leans into the touch.

***

He can live this way, from hour to hour, day to day. It doesn’t take much thought. That’s alright. He doesn’t have much thought except for reading General Louviere’s mood and body language, the smallest word or command. 

It isn’t long, though, before the General leads him under the cool stone arch of the castle. Lucien hesitates at the smell of damp stone and mildew, at the blinking darkness of the keep. 

He can’t help but feel ice in his veins at the prospect, and his legs simply stop carrying him. 

The General understands Lucien is no longer a half step from his side and pauses, turns to face the boy. He raises his eyebrows. “Forget something?”

Lucien tries to speak but only opens his mouth. 

General Louviere’s face actually softens. “You’re not going down cellar. I have a meeting to attend. Nothing to do with you.”

Lucien is momentarily able to breathe, still wondering if it could be a trick but having no real choice but to follow the General even if it is. 

“Come along now.” Louviere pats the side of his leg like he’s calling a dog. “Before my patience runs up.”

They climb a wide, short flight of stairs and enter a long stone room with a fireplace large enough to roast an elk, the threadbare remnants of a centuries old tapestry on the wall like cobwebs.  A perisan rug spreads over the stone floor, sunbleached where the windows let in the light. 

“Captain.” Louviere says, bowing. Before Lucien can clumsily copy his movements he is shoved forward toward the table. As General Louviere takes a seat Lucien can’t help but to glance at the Captain at the table's head.

He hasn’t seen Captain Grimaldi since the day the tanks broke through. His face is less impassive than when he was surveying the villagers. Still, Lucien can’t help but feel he is in the presence of some wrathful God, or perhaps the Devil himself. He wonders if Constance would warn him of signing his Book. At his heels is a large hound, long snouted and pointy-eared. Lucien drops his eyes quickly, standing at General Louviere’s side until he receives further instruction. 

“Well, Captain?” The General asks. “You've been gone three months. How does it look?”

“Like it’ll stand another hundred years.” The Captain replies. Lucien thinks there’s something ironic in his tone, or bored. He remembers the burnt-out city, the screaming sounds the planes had made as they fell out of the blue sky. He tries to pretend he’s somewhere else as the men talk, that he’s an object with no ears to hear or eyes to see. 

“The wine please, pup.”

He jumps to attention at that, finding both men looking at him. He scans the table and finds a pewter pitcher to his right. That must be it. There’s cups at every place setting, so he simply picks up the pitcher and brings it first to the General, who is closest to him. As he pours, he wonders if he should’ve served Captain Grimaldi first and his face gets hot at the thought he’s done wrong. They don’t seem interested in ettiquette. 

“They starved Leningrad for 900 days.” Louviere warns. 

“This little hamlet doesn’t have three million people to feed.”

“Even so. In winter they tell me it’s scarce.”

“In winter I plan to have won this war.” The Captain deadpans. Lucien’s hands shake but he doesn’t spill a drop as he fills the Captain’s cup. “And it is only just midsummer.”

Midsummer. Lucien’s mind clamps on the word like a bear trap. It had been winter when the army had arrived, when they’d caught him hunting in the blue dark of dawn and brought him back to the General, accused of running away. 

Midsummer. He’d been in the cells below the keep for some five months, then. That’s what was off around camp. It was no longer winter. For a horrible moment he wonders if it is even midsummer of the same year, or if it has been an entire year, or two, and he’s gone so mad from the cells he lost all sense of time.

“Are you alright?”

Lucien’s hearing buzzes when he realizes Captain Grimaldi has spoken to him. He’s too close, close enough to smell the leather of his boots and the aftershave on his neck. He stares for a moment at the chrome insignia of the Regime on the Captain’s black collar, nods jerkily. 

“Fuck’s sake.” General Louviere grabs him by the elbow, hauling him back and upsetting his grip on the pewter wine pitcher. Lucien’s knee bangs into a table leg and the pitcher flies from his hands to the faded persian carpet, bringing its anemic pinks back to rich burgundy. The hound at the Captain’s feet jumps up, snarling. 

General Louviere stands so quickly he upsets his chair, and the clatter makes Lucien flinch before the hand does, striking fast across his face. The General’s broad palm cracks against his nose, catches his lip and makes his brain feel like it’s been shaken inside his skull. 

He cries out, reaching a hand to the stinging spot just in time for the General to hit him again, this time from the other side. He yelps and cringes, wondering if it’s going to continue, if he is going to switch to fists or be kicked to death like the kitchen boy in the yard the other day, a flurry of polished black boots until the General’s hair was out of place, his face red with exertion. It felt like an inevitibility, that Louviere would find the end of his patience with him and decide to kill him. 

The hound snarls until its master raises a hand. The beast immediately heels. Louviere grabs a fistful of Lucien’s hair, shoving him to the ground so his hands sprawl in the soaked carpet. Instinctively, he protects his head for a blow. 

“Alright.” Captain Grimaldi drawls. “That’s enough.”

The General straightens, tugs his uniform.

“Forgive the boy. I thought he’d received sufficient training.” He growls that last word in Lucien’s direction. 

Grimaldi sips his wine. “I hope you didn’t allocate too much time to terrorizing kitchen boys, General. While rebellion took root under your nose.”

The General falters, chastised. He has to upright his chair to sit in it again. 

Slowly, gingerly, Lucien begins to climb to his feet. He’s never seen General Louviere behave that way, never seen him with his tail between his legs. 

“Boy.” Says Captain Grimaldi. Lucien feels as if he’s been dunked in cold water from head to foot. 

“Come. Sit, before you end up on the floor again.” 

Lucien doesn’t know if that’s a threat or a criticism of his clumsiness, but he pulls out a chair and sits with his head bowed. 

“They tell me a grain silo will only rot the wares, even if we brought it dry from the south.”

Captain Grimaldi nods, brushing his thumb over the scar that splits one eyebrow, spills onto his right cheek. “When in Rome. Another root cellar, then.”

“And the artillery?”

“Taken care of. You keep my troops alive, General. I’ll arm them.”

Captain Grimaldi stands and General Louviere mirrors him. Lucien feels it is a sign of disrespect to remain seated and pushes back his own chair. Even the dog stands, waiting for its master’s next move.

“One more thing.” Grimaldi grins. Lucien can see the years of weather on his face beneath the salt-and-pepper stubble. The little smile goes up to his dark eyes and crinkles the crows feet around them. “I’d like to borrow your boy.”

Lucien stares at the wood grain of the table, one giant slab from some ancient oak. They probably needed a whole team of horses to drag it up the hill in one piece, five feet in diameter. His hands begin to shake.

“The…the boy?”

 Lucien can feel the General’s irritation like radio waves in the air. He knows it well, knows to avoid it, to fear it. The only thing he fears more than Louviere is Grimaldi.  

“I have a few questions for him.” The Captain says, bored. 

“He… he doesn’t know anything about the traitors.” The General scoffs. “He’s been in a cell since the Solstice. He barely knows his own name.”

Grimaldi half-shrugs, unbothered. “You’ll get him back.”

General Louviere must hear the condescension in the Captain’s reply. He remembers himself, clasps his hands behind his back and bows at the waist. 

“Of course, Sir.”

For the first time since he laid eyes on General Louviere, Lucien wants to run to him, to stay close to his side. Better the Devil you know…

“Come.” Grimaldi says simply, to Lucien or to the hound is unclear. Both follow him out.