Between Two Fires

Robert visits the horses in the stables to get away from Cardinal Cyriac. Robert hates being the cardinal’s lover, but he does not see any way out of his situation. Robert thinks about his brother, Matthieu, and decides to send Matthieu another barrel of wine when he gets the chance.

At the Grand Tinel, Robert admires the grandeur of the papal palace. The pope enters and sits between two fires that the physicians tell him will keep the disease away from him. The pope announces that there will be a new crusade to take Jerusalem back. The pope also decrees that there will be a pogrom against the Jewish community. Robert hates the thought of harm coming to the Jewish community. However, he loves that the pope makes him feel that he is part of something.

The page of the Comte d’Évreux (actually Delphine and Thomas, respectively) looks upset after the pope speaks. Delphine tells Thomas not to drink the wine. Servants create a fake forest in the hall, and nude women with stag masks walk through the forest. One of the naked women rubs her body against Thomas; he feels aroused, but something holds him back from touching her. Thomas and Delphine leave, and she asks him if he touched any of the women. He says no, which makes her glad. She looks down at his pants, where the woman pressed against him, and Thomas sees a maggot on the fabric.

Delphine visits Robert in the stables. She tells him that Matthieu died bringing her to Avignon. She asks him to saddle one of the horses because she wants to show him something. Delphine guides him to the vineyards outside of Avignon. Even though it is nighttime, the vineyard workers are in the fields. Robert accidentally bumps into one of the workers and realizes that the man is dead. Robert and Delphine run for the horse as the vineyard corpses chase after them. After they escape, Delphine tells him that the devils will turn him into one of the reanimated vineyard workers if he doesn’t help Delphine. Delphine asks Robert to get her and the Comte d’Évreux a meeting with the pope, and he agrees.

When Delphine returns, she tells Thomas that they will meet with the devil-pope the next day. She explains that the stag women at the feast were corpses. Thomas asks her the name of the devil pretending to be the pope, and she tells him it is Baal-Zebuth.

Robert meets with Pope Clement and tells him that a girl named Delphine, disguised as the Comte d’Évreux’s page, wants to hurt him. The pope thanks Robert for his honesty and tells him that he will make Robert a cardinal to reward him.

Thomas and Delphine sequester themselves in their room to prepare for their meeting with the pope. Later, solders bang on their door. Delphine jumps out of the window but does not hit the ground. Thomas fights the soldiers, but they break his legs and take him to the dungeons.

Tristan, the papal physician’s assistant, wakes up to the physician, Maître de Chauliac. De Chauliac takes Tristan down to the dungeon, explaining that he is acting on a vision. De Chauliac tells the jailer that the pope wants to release the prisoner: the Comte D’Évreux (really Thomas), who is hanging from the ceiling with broken legs. De Chauliac puts the Comte in a cart and wheels him out.

When Thomas wakes up, he sees a doctor talking to Delphine. Delphine puts her hand on his forehead, and he returns to his old form, completely healed. The Comte’s broken body lies in the cart instead now, and Thomas dumps it in the river.

Thomas and Delphine ride out of the city to a Franciscan monastery. Thomas borrows a habit from one of the monks. Afterward, Delphine takes Thomas’s sword and cuts herself on the blade deliberately. She covers it in her blood, and Thomas realizes that her blood is holy. He remembers when he fought the monster in the river; his blade was the only thing that hurt it because her blood was on it. Delphine hands him the spearhead. Thomas asks her what she is, and she says that she is two things but soon will become one.

Robert goes down to the stables on the night before his promotion. He feels glad that he will never have to sleep with the cardinal again. One of the serving boys tells him that he saw men in the house. Robert takes a sword from the stable and goes back into the house. Robert sees that the door to the cardinal’s room is open and that something in the form of a man is standing over the cardinal. The form has its arm down the cardinal’s mouth, and Robert thinks it has multiple eyes. The form tells Robert to go to sleep, saying Robert will receive his reward the next day. Robert goes back to his room and leaves the sword outside his door.

Thomas disguises himself as a friar. Thomas and Delphine follow a crowd to watch the ceremony to appoint Robert as a cardinal. As they walk into the courtyard of the papal palace, two Jewish men beg the pope for help against a monster in their section of the city. Pope Clement refuses to help them.

Delphine finds the wine cellar. She opens wine tubs and tells a body in one to rise. A hand reaches up from the wine, and Delphine grabs it. Delphine enters the perspective of the real Pope Clement several months before. The pope found the two fires that he sits between sweltering. He had a nightmare about four soldiers about to rape a girl in a barn near a half-eaten donkey, which he believed showed him his own sexual sins. When Clement fell back to sleep, he dreamed of children laughing. In his dream, the fresco on the wall next to him came to life. One of the children kissed him in his sleep, but Clement could not breathe. He woke up and heard flies buzzing while the children from the painting stood by his bed. He felt afraid as one of the children got on top of him and put its hand down his throat.

In the present day, Pope Clement sits up out of the wine tub. Delphine pulls him out and tells him that the war is about to begin.