The Cross and the Black Read online

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  Supper was a lovely affair over the bounties of fish. The apprentices Luc and Henri gobbled their portion of fish and bread in one gluttonous moment then played among themselves a game of stab-the-hand to the tune of fish, fish, fish. The table banged with their tedious glee. Claude suffered weary bites and long draughts, swearing and un-swearing never to buy fish again. Serge ate just as greedily, rapping his cup against the table and scrawling hyperactive thick fingers over bread. Fish was not on his mind. Dona Bonace, his soon-to-be mother-in-law, was going to visit the house in two days.

  Serge slammed his cup and said one more time, “Claude, you will be perfect. She will not have cause for complaint.”

  The table banged again. Claude glared at the happy fifteen-year-old boys. Serge glared at him. He decided he could not afford more mishaps, or Serge would turn him out too early.

  He refilled timidly Serge's cup of sour wine. "The house will be in order for the Dona."

  The house had been Serge’s father’s and his father’s before him. For a house of a carpenter, the common room was lacking in ornate furniture. The table was a simple construction of board and trestles. Claude and the apprentices sat on benches. Serge had the solitary chair at the head of the table. From the fireplace coursed a low warmth, and the scent of smoldering rosemary laced the air.

  After supper Claude put away the saltcellar and aquamanile, and cleared the plates and cups. In the adjoining kitchen, the reek of one-year-old encrusted sweat crowded at its backdoor. Beggars had gathered with their own bowls, waiting on leftovers, like piglets around a sow. They outstretched tattered arms and invoked the blessings and curses of various saints as they demanded the good wine and the good bread. Claude apportioned them sop all the same. They were arrogantly grateful. They shamed him into living more fully.

  “He needs a bigger member, yours needs to shrivel,” Claude said to a beggar who had complained of his generous portions to a boy Peyre. Cackles of laughter rippled the cold air. Peyre stuffed his mouth with little hands yet unstained, not yet winkled or weathered, free and innocent. Claude smiled and plopped more sop onto his bread.

  Far outside the circle of his stall side activity, the garden, his garden of herbs and vegetables lay before the moonless dark. A chestnut tree towered like a black mushroom, straddling the boundary between the yard and the neighbor’s. Two red globes floated among black leaves. Strange fruit. Blinking. Open, close, open.

  Claude squinted and lost himself to the red mystery, the Jacobin, the Angel of Death and their affinity for chestnuts.

  “I could use some fish. I know you have some fish,” the beggar insisted.

  Claude growled, gave more bread to Peyre, and had to look again at the tree. The stars twinkled the same. Nothing—in the neighbor’s yard, but by a supporting beam of the back stall…

  “Say Claude, what fish?” The beggar tugged on Claude’s tunic.

  A murmur frothed in the chill evening, demanding better food, claiming the neighbor gave better food. Claude was deaf to the grousing as his gaze wandered the darkness curdling over the neighboring yard. A conifer of shadows provided a low canopy over the shrubbery palisading a garden patch; and again save for the faint disturbances of whiffling leaves, nothing risible piqued. He turned back to the circle of haggard men, fresh with a desire to knock rotten teeth out the black mouths of ingrates.

  “More porridge?” Peyre said.

  Peyre’s delicate childlike voice, Claude thought hopefully, disarmed whatever bad omen lay out there in the indeterminable night. A smile crept onto Claude’s face, thawing his cold cast of a frown. For once, rude beggars were welcome.