There’s a pony, Hugo thought. And a groom.

“I’m sorry there are just two gifts for you,” Aarne finally said, indicating the crossbow and the flask. “Tradition calls for three gifts.” He didn’t say the obvious: that Hugo had declined the most precious gift of them all.

Hugo snuffled wetly. “Why did you think there were Bolos coming tonight?”

Aarne said, “Here, maybe this handkerchief can be the third gift, Monsieur Hugo. Your nose …”

“I’m sorry,” he whispered.

“For what?” Aarne chuckled. “You rescued princesses. Zuhp, zuhp!,” he said. “Take your handkerchief and your crossbow and your flask.”

Hugo asked, “What’s in it?”

“Didn’t I tell you?”

“No.”

“Just a little Chartreuse.”

“Chartreuse?”

“The liqueur is called Chartreuse. In the grand scheme of all the troubles, it’s nothing, it’s …” Aarne looked directly at Hugo for the first time since they’d come outside. He did not understand why this soldier was so miserable, or so stupid as to leave, but he decided to show him some mercy. “Well, I suppose it’s quite special.” He continued: It was made by monks, but not the monks who had once been here. There were over 130 herbs involved, and every monk knew only a handful of ingredients. Rather a delicacy, but he had managed to hold on to a few bottles throughout the troubles here.

Hugo looked at his flask with new respect. Aarne tapped it with his fingertips, and nodded: yes, this was quite a treasure. In fact, they had Chartreuse in France, but it wasn’t the real thing. If one were in Paris, what one had to do, of course, in the right places, of course, where there were no menus, one would never order Chartreuse, for you would be brought an inferior imitation. No, one would ask for Tarragona, which was the name of the secret distillery in Spain where the monks now toiled in isolation. That was what Hugo had in his flask, Aarne declared. It was said never to be the same for two consecutive sips. It was the taste of possibility.

When Aarne had finished, Hugo impulsively hugged him. Aarne bore it stiffly, patting Hugo on the side the way one would a dog who had hunted well, then poorly.

“You’re actually going?” Aarne said.

Hugo nodded.

Aarne looked back toward the abbot’s house as if it might shimmer away like a mirage. He blew on his hands sadly. “Well, I suppose this has all been une fausse idée claire.”

It had been the first time all evening Hugo had been unable to understand a phrase. Fausse? He asked what Aarne meant, and the tiny man stumbled around a definition before landing on “a beautiful idea that doesn’t work.”