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The Cross and the Black

  Luwa Wande

  Copyright By Luwa Wande 2012

  https://omnifish.wordpress.com

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  Chapter One

  It was Lent, the time of grieving and repenting, and braying sententious monks. Enter here, Claude Severin ambling home, grinning like a happy baboon. The melody of a gavotte sloshed in his heart, its rhythm light in his fingers. Passersby gave no eye to his threadbare tunic or his ragged hose; nor did they stop to admire his hat—lined with velvet, decorated with a red plume, a gift from an apothecary for times sweaty and jaunty.

  The feast day of St. Joseph, patron saint of manly losers, was drawing to an end. The bell of St. Sernin, St. Etienne, St. Nicholas, rippled across the heavens a meandering, exuberant tirade, counting the hour of vespers. And Toulouse began to gather its horses, its hunger, toil and tiredness for the peace of home and hearth.

  By the square in front of the Collège de Foix, three youths strode their boisterous way around a peddler. The men were draped in the brown copes of university students, hilts of illegal swords poking from their waists. Claude recognized Benoit—the stupid one—amongst them. His face looked like mangled dough and sported a prominent forehead, and a dimple for a nose. God had punched his face in before he was born.

  What more, Claude owed him five sous—a gambling debt from a tennis game, which had promised the lucky chance of “mammon and victuals.” The burden of debt roiled queasily in Claude’s mind. A cramp raced up his left side, grounding him to a halt. His mind drew a thousand places at once as he stifled the urge to yelp.

  But by the Virgin, no God-raped sissy was going to catch him, for Claude whirled away southward towards the Garonne. But barely had he moved a few paces when another unlucky sight stopped him.

  In the twilight view upon the cobbled streets, Bearitz Aleçon cowered before a trio of maidens bound in an unrequited love for the gallant Isarn. It was a familiar occurrence for the daughter of a seamstress. The maidens yanked at her auburn hair and poked flinty fingers at her kerchief shielding her humble bosom. But Bearitz stood mute and pale, like Mary Magdalene before her accusers.

  “You dare lift your haggish countenance on our Isarn again.”

  “Your sallow color isn’t good enough for our Isarn.”

  “Cheeks like maggots and you dare bewitch our Isarn.”

  Isarn, Isarn, the words stamped in Claude’s mind. Bearitz’s piteous face unnerved him to the point of shuffling elbows and twisting gazes. Isarn, he thought, a rakehell of broad shoulders and tawny lovelocks, a thief of his good peace. The man, on every opportunity, rammed down his ears of his love conquests. And on this grand show of passivity from Bearitz—Claude fisted a hand to his lips—silliness from wenches who should kiss more and swoon less. 

  Those maidens now were imperiously smacking Bearitz’s shoulders.

  “Isarn doesn’t want a lame sow,” another screech scrawled on his peace.

  Fight back, you coxcomb wench, Claude thought maddeningly. But this was no time for intervention, not with Benoit and friends approaching closer from behind. He swallowed hard. Flittering nervous gazes, he determined that Bearitz would have to learn of courage all by herself.

  To his left, right by an ass nuzzling its head against the supporting beam of a stall, a cart rolled away from the entrance of a sparse-looking alley. And that was it, his golden chance. Claude bounded one step to freedom, but only to view a magnificent slap upon Bearitz’s face. Her lips rippled in a tremolo of umbrage and tears, and Claude was thrust into a fluster of fury.

  “Thou rump-fed toadstools!” he cried,“Why you demonesses slap her for?”

  The women lifted their venomous eyes onto him, and so did the three other men.

  “Marry, is that the sissy who owes me five sous?”

  “For Certes!”

  The students brandished blades and annoyance; the wild metallic whine sliced through the barbarous air. The evening crowd scarcely gasped or shrugged as the clatter of their hard boots charged for Claude. In the moment it took to sigh at his fate and huff an athletic breath, Claude sprinted and traversed through the row of the Isarn-addled wenches, grabbing Bearitz as his prize.

  “Raaaaaat!” The students bellowed at the escaping duo in the square of L’Église des Cordeliers.

  “Dog.” By the Collège de Narbonne.

  “Devil-buggered sheep.” By L’Église de St. Pierre de Cuisines.

  All the while Claude’s maiden expended more energy spitting, “Bon Dieu, bon Dieu” rather than running her fair share. They darted around the wagons immobile with barrels and the footmen leading home ungainly masters. Those idle in contemplation over the setting sun knew instinctively to step aside. Even the throng of monks marching barefoot in Lenten procession to vespers parted easily before them like the miracle of the Red Sea.

  They ducked into a small street tucked in amongst the rose hues of brick houses. Bearitz’s home was a narrow tall two-story building with a carved door. He swung her against it and told her to open quickly. Worn out and blue-lipped, she hung her hand on the handle and plopped her head against the door.

  “Open it!”

  She did not budge. Footsteps flitted past them.

  Claude immediately hunkered over Bearitz and pressed forehead to forehead, embraced her tightly. The pose was scandalous in the not yet dim evening and more so unthinkable, for he had no feeling desirous of her fluttering eyes. But there were only a few moments to be borrowed from the rich storehouse of impropriety and discomfiture; he hoped and waited and panted.

  Claude’s lips quivered.

  Bearitz’s eyes fluttered.

  Claude’s lips quivered.

  “Where did that effeminate oaf go?” A foreign male voice echoed down the length of the street.

  Claude’s face twitched up fireworks, and he wanted to demand who was this lady oaf. But the door opened, and the couple fell over like a sack of flour into the conical figure of Dona Aleçon. Such a lovely couple they were, Bearitz and Claude, rolling and rolling their noses in what seemed like a downy pillow—much too perfumed with musk and flesh.

  “Claaaaude Severinnnn,” Dona Aleçon growled.

  Claude kicked off to the side and jumped to his feet. He bowed repeatedly. “God keep you, Na.” With a quick one-two glance at both ends of the street, he scurried away before she would fetch her itching powder reserved for the lubberly suitors, who asked after her daughters.

  Enter here, Claude Severin kicking lazily down Le Rue de la Bourse. He felt safe, safe from the gnarly hands of creditors, safe from Dona Aleçon’s violent fatty hands. He did wonder if the good of saving a maiden from bullies made up for the sin of gambling and absconding from creditors. Answers were not readily available, and he gave up thinking. The priest should have something to say about that during his next confession.

  As he thought of other theological things to ask his confessor, his blond hair swirled in a sudden updraft. The crest of his ears bit with cold. He reached for his hat.

  No hat.

  “Jhesu Christz!” Claude cursed some more, ‘the Virgin’s fingers’ and then hotfooted through a gushing stream of blasphemies, “The Virgin’s fingers, toes, nose”. When he was about to defame the beloved womb that birthed his Lord and Savior, God conspired to suffer him some reverence and bumped him into dogs playing jingle with their jewels or sooty children with greedy stares. Holy reverence was necessary, the day being St. Joseph's day and all.

  Claude calmed down as his troubles came to focus. Benoit was not his only creditor. There were two other debts outstanding.
He nodded his head thoughtfully, “Should I or shouldn’t I?” The innkeeper Picard would have work for him.

  For moral and godly reasons, he should keep away from the vicious Picard at least during Lent, but coin beckoned with its tinkles of pleasures and satiety. Money. The desire for it was like an unreachable itch.

  It was decided. Resolutely, he turned around for Picard’s inn in St. Cyprien quarter on the west banks of the Garonne.

  Against the canvasses of red brick, evening shadows lengthened their pall. The charcoal stains and brown handprints on the walls blended into the familiar black. The ever-present stink of urine bothered him none, nor did the rot chopped up with the heady aroma of supper bread. The Garonne painted a serpentine grave of spit, sewage, and sand banks. Tournis Island floated to the south. The Basilique de Notre Dame de la Daurade stood sentry over the Le Pont de la Daurade, which spanned a covered bridge across the river. The Hotel Dieu and l’Hopital de la Grave towered jointly like a colossus at the eastern end of the bridge.

  Just before crossing the river, Claude covered his ears as he passed by the bellows of a one-eyed Jacobin. The black-robed monk spoke of his fervent vigils before the statue of the Black Virgin in the Daurade church. He testified of the statue crying milk tears. A sign, he wailed, of another summer of plague and dust that would befall Toulouse, just like the last summer of plague and dust. Claude mouthed, “Oc, yes, yes … hell, very hot. Yes, yes … no heaven for me,” and shambled into the St. Cyprien district.

  The cold, dry air herded him past the busy square of St. Nicholas and swiftly into the warmth of Picard's inn. The room was roaring with a crackling fire, a sonorous troubadour, and men with impatient appetites. Rubbing his hands and jumping in anticipation, he was delighted for the livelier songs rocking the inn and not the dirges of repentance usual for Lent.

  From a counter Picard raised his eyebrows, his chest swelling in uplift as though he were going to announce something triumphant and biting. Claude scurried to the counter before Picard could yell his ‘I-told-you-so.’

  Picard grinned, blunt nose and hairy ears lifted. “More than glad to be your stumbling block.”

  “I need a new hat,” Claude said morosely.

  “Spend you less than you earn, you wouldn’t lack, you’d be able to keep pious for forty days and forty nights,”

  Forty days and forty nights were how long Jesus spent in the desert where He was tempted in everyway man could be tempted and yet prevailed. Never Claude to prevail. Not Claude to eschew uncleanliness. He needed money, he needed men.

  Claude leaned into Picard, smiling with the airs of a coy thing. “It is St. Joseph’s day. I must be like Christ in his cheer, not only in his suffering.”

  “Deo Gratias, you’re in my employ.” Picard motioned him to take the stairs.

  Space was dear, bedding scarce, heating too expensive. Picard demanded his guests bundle up in the beds bespeckled with rat turd. Thrice the fleas, twice the warmth, he proclaimed. However, Claude was headed for the special room meant for single guests.

  A rope bed padded with a mattress stuffed with straw took center view of the room. The windows were shut to the cold. A lamp lit up pale shadows on the wall, permeating the air with the acrid smell of burning tallow. Claude sat on the prickly softness of the bed and waited. Perhaps the porter who swore women carried the plague? Or the tanner who grunted yes, grunted no, grunted the same during his horse-like exertions? He fell back into the bed and allowed ease to roll over him. Curiosity mused itself such an aphrodisiac.

  The door opened. Benoit’s doughy face appeared. He was without a sword, newly appareled with a womanishly ornate stomacher over his chest. Claude shot to his feet, half to flee, half to gather his wits on what to tell Picard. But it was a transaction, a trade, and he could not renege, or Picard would catapult his hacked bits to the Garonne. Oh misfortune. God had tuned His tail in his way today.

  Benoit’s upper lip curled. Stupid one could not decide whether to jeer or wring the neck of the stringy, but handsome bean.

  He parted his mouth open. “You owe me money. Now I would pay for you, a hag?”

  Claude blinked for precious furious moments. Men were all the same. He was twenty, and that was too old. Sixteen was middle-aged, thirteen was perfect, but not twelve that was just pure evil. Oc, this was Toulouse, the most Catholic city in France.

  Claude strutted to him, childlike, free, quite content with his Toulouse. He dragged Benoit’s hands over his buttocks. Feel the twenty-year old suppleness. Feel the twenty-year old moistness.

  Claude’s lips lingered over his ear. “Who needs money when you have me?”

  Benoit’s eyes slit shadows. Bony fingers gripped his forearm and twisted him around to face the door. The roughness was all too familiar but still surprising. Claude’s thoughts fled to the honey-brown eyes of the tanner, his satin palms, his velvet kisses.

  “Be gentle and St. Joseph shall keep you in his favor, and St. Sernin, and St. Georges,” Claude said. “At least, kiss—”

  Benoit crashed him against the door and heaved inside with a careless thrust. Claude sighed. God was punishing him for not being a good Catholic this Lent. Benoit gasping. Why did God hate his tail? Benoit squealing. God made his hat fly away. God—A loud dissonant note walloped his senses, and Claude burst into laughter.

  Bang, bang, bang. Benoit thrusting away. Sweaty fingers dug into Claude's pelvic bone.

  And the silly sound was the bard downstairs singing about the Virgin and her grace, her beauty, her mercy. Claude laughed on, desperately now, painfully, against the branch scouring inside him.

  “Harder.” He wanted it to end soon, so very soon in a merciful oblivion of seed and sin.