The Cross and the Black Read online

  ***

  Claude leaned on the main counter, eagerly awaiting the heavy feel of coins to vouchsafe him satisfaction for a job well done and relief to his sore buttocks. Thick veins lined his forearms and bulged against his taut skin. His fingers trembled against the wood of the counter, and he stared down Picard’s wife standing across from him. Her cheeks were like a dog’s lolling tongue. A charcoal line of hairs rimmed her hard lips. He could see in those grey-circled eyes, his future, concern and condemnation. He divined his fading youth, the fundamental uselessness of his life. Perchance it was time he threatened his master to take him on as a carpenter’s apprentice.

  He deemed quickly the idea a fool’s prattle. He did not care for carpentry or gainful work. Being a servant with free evenings was the good life.

  Picard waddled to her side, and she made a clicking noise of contempt. “Whores are not enough—” Her eyelashes swept up, down Claude. “You must also keep a half-man, a gelded goat.”

  Claude turned away brusquely, only to see Benoit striding towards him. He hissed. Benoit gave the I-just-fucked-you smile. The air sank stiffly as everyone swept their gazes to the window tabernacle of the Blessed Mother on the east wall, pretending heresy against the body had not taken place.

  “The sissy owes me money, a gambling debt,” Benoit said to Picard.

  “I do not!” Claude yelled.

  Picard pitched a warning stare at Claude and groaned, “How much?”

  “One sou,” Claude interrupted.

  “Five sous,” Benoit said.

  Picard looked at Claude then questioningly at the client. He wondered if the client a good-for-nothing sodomite or a tattletale to the Palais de Justice, who lately have being pyromaniacs condemning all manner of heretics to the stake?

  “Claude, you shall earn your keep next time,” Picard said.

  “You’re welcome to the Collège de Foix to earn it back.” Benoit kissed the air at Claude.

  Claude grunted those anguished noises of men who came so jubilantly close to kissing Lady Fortuna’s lips, only for her to traipse away to another man already arrayed with fortune. Putana. The whore she was. He stomped to the exit but hurriedly clenched at the pain in his buttocks. Had he just offered his virtue so painstakingly saved up for the past three weeks for free?

  “Christ’s blood,” Claude muttered. He then eased into limping gentle step after gentle step to the door.

  But the grinning Clovis blocked his exit. His nose was bulbous and wrinkly. A patch of unnatural white hair darted from his temple to the back of his head. A garbage-dwelling badger or a besotted crone? Claude could never decide on the man who plotted riches over the fortune of his anal sphincter.

  “Where is that foppish hat of yours?” Clovis said.

  Claude tossed his sweet smirk of evasion and sidestepped him for the exit. Clovis took him by the shoulder and turned him back inside the inn. They did not stray from the exit, instead idling by a wooden stanchion and overlooking the busybody ministrations of harried servants. Serving porridge with sparse strings of green beans. Serving the evil eyes to the guest ruminating aloud on which infirm goat had micturated the supper.

  Clovis patted Claude’s back and said, “Offer me some wine for this feast day. He is your patron saint.”

  Claude glared. The cuckolded St. Joseph was not his saint.

  “How else could he keep fidelity to our Blessed Mother? A cherub here, a boy there,” Clovis said.

  Claude shrugged off the arm. “Then you beg him for your coin.”

  Clovis ignored him; his eyes wandered everywhere but on Claude. The fireplace crackling its heat. The bard crooning strained with feeling. All the men humming and oinking over the too-weak wine.

  Clovis leaned into Claude, business-like, and whispered, “Esteban wants more blond musings.”

  “Imagine his Easter, so joyful when he proclaims Christus Resurrexit with a risen cock.”

  Clovis puffed a short air of derision but remained aloofly business-like, which prompted Claude to laugh and nudge him to be at ease.

  “How much did he offer you?” Claude said.

  “Ask you the baker how much he earns on his bread?”

  “Yes, if I’m his bread.”

  Clovis slid his hand around his shoulders again and shook with the familiarity of friendship. “See how your veins pulse and plump. Your Easter shall be in want of rejoicing. Esteban can’t wait till Easter. One sou to relieve him of his torment?”

  Claude shrugged off Clovis’ arm, but the arm held firmly. “Ten sous.”

  “Brother, I must eat.”

  “Ten sous.”

  “One sou. Take it or leave it.”

  “Methinks, I’ll find Esteban myself.”

  “And you shan’t find him.”

  “Then deliver him to your pillicocks on the riverbank. I’ll do without your widow’s mites.”

  Straining to be gentle, Clovis pushed him aside. He smoothed the sides of his head then laughed away frustration. “Esteban did prefer younger blonds, handsomer blonds without beards.” Content with his insult, he walked away to a table crowded with forelocked men.

  Claude felt his chin and cheeks. Sandy and unwelcome. The hatchet-faced badger.

  From afar, Picard's wife glared her sermon of thrift and industry. Claude winked at her, defiant. Youth was still his caged pet, not hers.