The Cross and the Black Read online

  Chapter Three

  Claude met with Auguste Seyr. Auguste was not Serge Mirepoix. When he prayed for healthy children, God answered him faithfully nine times. He was not Serge Mirepoix. He insisted Claude keep a virtuous life, hence a strict curfew that would be enforced by his soldier wife. He was not Serge Mirepoix. Claude would work sun up till sun down, earning nothing. He was not Serge Mirepoix. Claude would certainly not have a cell to himself or his evenings free for carousing.

  Alighting from Seyr’s abode, Claude caught a glimpse of a wagon driving towards the cragged peaks of a church. The wagoner was but a grey hunched blur, until the wagon stopped and his carved face peered at him. He looked as if masticated by the hounds of want, toil, and duty. Claude shivered, and off fell away any desire to move to Seyr’s.

  As Claude walked home, he went over the calculus of his options. The good men with good houses were married. Other friends or lovers lived in slipshod cramped arrangements ever warded by the miserly eyes of demon landlords. After two years of frittering away his meager earnings, he himself could not afford these slipshod arrangements. Claude cursed the heavens, the stars, sun and moon and bemoaned, Serge had ruined him truly.

  After supper, he ran into Clovis on the westerns banks of the Garonne. The badger offered Esteban at ten sous. Claude obliged; he might as well start saving. Esteban kissed and sucked while he lost himself in the tender hopes for a gaining fortune. He earned ten sous today. Serge would beg his forgiveness. A new hat would be his.

  Afterwards Clovis counted out payment. The coins were cold, glinted a dull silver, and nestled happily into the curve of Claude’s hands. Clovis trailed his finger on Claude’s temple. “You’re one gladsome bitch.”

  “Find yourself another. A master offers to teach me wood carving,” Claude said curtly.

  “Indeed, woodcarving is much like being tupped.” Clovis rubbed his nose like a lucky coin. 

  Glaring and seething, Claude contemplated slicing off the nose. Clovis slapped him on the back and smiled in a vague air of reproach and puzzlement. “You aim to be a serious man with a serious trade? Now, you’ve chosen the true path of wisdom,” his voice glided thin with insincerity.

  “Oc, a trade, mayhaps in due time a wife.”

  “A wife?” Clovis’ voice pitched higher with surprise. Then he had to laugh and so he did, puffing noisome prophecies on Claude’s life. “You shall ever need me, now or married…” Claude’s life promised to be his evergreen tree of coins whether he was a wood carver or a married man. He finished with a flourish. “In you, virginity lost its virtue—”

  Claude grabbed Clovis in a brotherly embrace, and at once remembered the last few moments seriously considering Seyr’s offer. The very thought inflamed his spleen and cracked his fingers. In what dark circle of hell could living with the hollowed Seyr and his spindle wife be judged good for a man such as himself? And why now of all times did God focus on him? His reason fractured, and then he kneed Clovis in the groin.

  Clovis folded over like honey. Claude felt cool again and pleased, as if he had gone to the privy and passed water. He strode out the door warmly tingled, leaving behind Clovis a mound of groans and spittle.

  The night buried the church facades, the belfries, the monasteries in the mass grave of darkness. Black was indiscriminate, rolling over the corbels, conquering the little fires of footmen leading their masters home. Yet, it did not hasten Claude home. The glow of his strident victory over Clovis dulled away as his gait shortened and shuffled. Quivers seeded and budded in his soul. He paused. The tenebrous putrid air breathed over him, and the quivers were growing into great gnarled trees. Serge. The carpenter would be waiting, and in savage want. On any other night he would have laughed off his master’s dull pretensions, and do whatever Serge hinted all too plainly. But not tonight or any future night, for how could he fluff and giggle when his heart was naked?

  Across the street a creature of the dark swooped onto another form of the dark. “Ow! Please … take the boots … by the Virgin’s mercy!” More helpless croaks sputtered from across the street.

  Claude measured the man’s bad luck in his groans. For three years he had lived on the streets before moving to Serge's. And those kicks and punches across street asserted dominion, asserted the fairness of his exchange with Serge. Fair, yes fair that he so willingly traded his manhood for a roof and regular meals. Now he must again move onto another arrangement; leastways Seyr would not demand base things from him. Certainly, this was a good thing: a sure roof over his head, a continent master, a clear avenue for gainful work. This was it finally, life demanding him to be serious. What now ailed him so?

  Claude gulped a burr of bitterness. He tramped across the street, cracking his knuckles, spitting curses on the perfidious carpenter who had once promised him an apprenticeship. There was no need to accept crooked gifts from Serge. He could survive on the streets once more. He would spurn easy restricted living and embrace the bravado of unencumbered hard living. He could tackle the rogue and fend him off the poor sod.

  But his punches against the rogue were domestic, his vengeance weak. He limped back to across the street again, this time, sans his ten sous, sans his boots. The other victim had taken the opportunity of his pale intervention to sail away on the raft of Claude’s rotten luck.

  Nursing his jaw, he plodded home. It was decided: wood carving, a roof, and a virtuous arse.

  He was about a few paces from the door when a silent blackness slid to his right—the shadow of a sudden friend. Violently, he jumped aside.

  The stranger peered at him then at the door. “This is your abode, isn’t it?”

  The side buildings towered like gorges over the narrow street, over the stranger edging taller. Claude took a deep breath and swayed his head in exaggerated motions of ease and peace even as his fingers trembled.

  “Bless my cock, your face, your shoes, your money? The raggamuffin did you kindly,” the stranger said. “You know well how to run but not how to fight.”

  Claude tensed, holding inwardly a bursting breath. Carefully and deliberately, he turned away from the door to face him. “Senher, pray tell, who might you be?”

  The stranger neighed a dry laugh. “You steal my hat and forget me so easily. Not one woman has yet to hurt me so.”

  “Get thee to your tawpie wenches, and I shall to my bed—”

  “Verily my tawpie wenches, but these customers of yours … they do mistake dross for gold. How does Esteban pay ten sous for hairy rakes? Humans … they fuddle me.”

  Claude glared bewilderment. “First you speak silly fancies, now you pitch lies on my person.”

  The stranger laughed. “Would you spill blood and sweat to defend a lie?”

  It was the nature of the times. Claude would die just to defend the lie of his nature before Toulouse and God but not now, for his jaw still glowed with pain, and Lady Fortuna preferred men with virgin buttocks. Whatever the reasons there should be for propriety, he could not stop glowering at the stranger.

  The stranger stepped in and leered. “Bless my cock, I relent. By Christ, Esteban did not take you.”

  Not a fight he could win, Claude thought. He deflated.

  “My Sabrine wasn’t amused to hear a human stole from me, sent me on a silly chase, and lived. I was about to spill my seed in her good cunny then she turned me out of her bed. I find you here, the cause of my woe.” The stranger would have sounded pitiful, if not for the silver crescent grin.

  Claude felt a tremble in his fingers and a tingle of dread. He opted to be irritated. “Why trouble me? Around the Bazacle mills, you may find yourself a more docile goat and a bigger member.”

  The stranger stared at the ground momentarily. He raised a smirk. “Ah, that’s why Serge found a good wife. Verily ’tis less tiring to ride a wife than a hairy goat.” His eyes flashed ivory, and there was the ominous hint of a grin on his lips. “I forget. We’re to pretend that you’re good and chaste.”

  Claude squ
inted into the black eyes and calculated messy sums of just how much the stranger knew of his life. Claude’s heart stopped for a mind-reeling moment. A strange, foreign torch in his closet, a childish idiotic light in his dark closet. He clenched his fists and glared at the dangerous man simpering and wobbling his head like a baby. “Enough defamation and state your want.”

  “My want?” The stranger leered into Claude, one eyebrow higher than the other. Claude shrank back into the door, away from the stench on his breath. “What shall I do with you, Claude?”

  Claude shuddered—verily, the man knew his name. He could see it now, the man peering from corners and spying on him cruelly through shaded windows, peeping on his private exertions, listening on his blasphemous utterings. Yes, a veritable busybody. Busybodies were like fleas, stealing his sleep and dealing death. His friend Antoine Le Salle died because of a busybody. The other day a busybody offered a man to the stake at Le Place de Salin. It was said he was an atheist, hated the Virgin, turned into a gargoyle and tired out the maid every night. The man burned mostly because he tired out the maid every night. Given his fortune lately, Claude must be demure, or he would end up roast pig at Le Place de Salin.

  Claude took another deep breath and strained for calm to seep into his lungs. It did not look like the grinning man would speak to the wrong person, but his grin hinted other kinds of trouble. Claude gritted his teeth as he beat into himself some pleasant feeling for his stranger.

  “Forgive my rudeness.” Claude’s voice quivered up a higher unnatural register.

  “Oc, your body would do for an apology.” The stranger’s voice deepened into an exuberant baritone.

  “You want me? Methinks, your Sabrine would geld you.”

  “She doesn’t mind me taking other humans.”

  Claude furrowed his brow, thinking on the sordidness of their relationship. No woman he knew would idly let their men burn with heretical passions.

  “Did she not chase you out of her bed?” he said.

  “If I bring you to her … you before us … that would be a good apology.”

  “Senher …” Claude, said, gathering his words in Occitan.

  “Guy Sewell.”

  Strange name. “I do not entertain with a third party, and I shall be paid.”

  “You insolent little human,” Guy said coyly. “You tried to steal my hat and now I pay you?”

  “’Tis you who’s in need of me.”

  Guy laughed till he cried. “My implement inspires good things in others. I never pay, but I shall make an exception for you. Sabrine will be pleased.”

  Guy strutted closer, leaning forward presumably for a kiss. Claude pulled away. “Just you and me only, and in an alley of my choosing. My master objects to deviant men so close to his abode.”

  “Fie on that. I want a good bed, a view of the moon, and sweet coupling all night till dawn.”

  “You’ll have to woo me first,” Claude said absentmindedly.

  “Perfect, you and I shall meet Sabrine. She loves stubborn little humans.”

  Claude bit his lip. ‘Human’ finally rankled him, and he had done enough to poke God in the eye this Lent.

  “I have no interest in strange congresses and mannish women,” Claude said.

  “You do owe me.”

  “I owe you naught.”

  "In sooth, you do." Smiling, Guy gave a tick of the head before leaving. His footsteps clopped step-by-step down the lengths of cursed thoughts, and away into silence.

  Claude shrugged, opening the door a crack then paused to be dismayed. There was something odious about a man returning to claim offense after said offense had been allayed. Oc, he did try to steal his hat, but Guy got the hat back. The matter was as good as settled. Or was it? Guy would surely return just as suddenly as his last appearance.

  Claude did what he usually did during moments of unease: chucked the niggling fears to the unclaimed dark of the streets before stepping inside. Confidently, he felt his way through the unlit corridor and to the bottom of a stairwell, which led up to Serge and the apprentices' rooms. It was quiet, and it seemed Serge was already asleep. He forced himself to feel nothing about that and tiptoed to his cell.