Paradise for the Damned. - 3. Chapter 3

At the table in the common room, Claude was perusing clothes to be mended while hammers from the adjacent Serge’s shop pounded the nail of a headache deep into his skull. Bang, bang, bang. His head would split and leak a soul thin in loneliness. Bang, bang, bang. Merciless clangor, cold clangor hounded from the man who had cast him aside. He stiffened, gritted his teeth. Bang, bang, bang. Claude abandoned the clothes on the table and decided to break his Lenten fast early. No good wallowing in hurt over an empty stomach.

He placed a plate of bread and olives on a workbench in the shop for Serge and his apprentices. The hammers jolted the counter, jittering the plate into a fall. Serge and Claude reached simultaneously for the plate, and Serge’s hand ended on Claude’s. Momentarily, they looked askance at each other before Serge pulled his hand away.

Claude’s headache further pounded its annoyance. The stocky carpenter was a rabble of contradictions. Brown was his apron. Brown was his beard and brawny arms. He scorned Claude’s easy reprobation, stared at him with the needy eyes of a man lost in a desert sands of desire, flinched when Claude was close, and brooded when Claude was far. The man had effected the impossible: He made Claude want. After all the strikes and counterstrikes between them, curiosity birthed in Claude dreams of Serge sculpturing his body onto his.

The apprentices took a break to eat. Ignoring the banter on this and that order for a chair, Claude concentrated on the thirty-year old Serge popping olive after olive into his hair-ringed mouth. It could be something firm and long in that virgin mouth, and not macerated, purple oviods. Any moment now, a good priest would walk by and transubstantiate olives into something of his choosing.

Serge spat a line of pits at Claude. “When does Seyr have need of you?”

“Not until after the wedding.”

Two weeks till Easter, then another two weeks till the wedding, four weeks in total stewing in bellicose want. Serge’s brow furrowed. “I shall speak to Seyr to have you sooner.” He fidgeted gazes about the shop.

Dismissing Serge’s serious timbre that tinted a shade droll, Claude walked away and retrieved a wicker bag before stepping out the front door and into Guy’s smiling face. In the robust light of day, his green irises framed windows into murky, endless rivers. His hair bowed onto the shoulders, glancing black strands over the gold and blue embroidered doublet. His cheeks were ivory and smooth. His hands looked filtered through a white emulsion. Claude deemed him a dapper, who painted his face like those gaudy Donas strutting in the frippery of silk and black lace to Sunday Mass.

“Sabrine still refuses to kiss my pen,” Guy said.

Claude sidestepped him, shaking his head vigorously. It must be his headache, he thought.

The sky would be beautiful, would be blue, would be a firmament of wonder if Claude inched up his throbbing head and admired it. Instead, he had to admire the stink assault of rotten cabbages in his nostrils, burrowing a frothy trail of nastiness up into his brain, and then compacting into another nail drilling a headache.

Guy kept abreast of him on his right turns and left turns. Even after Claude stopped to buy candied chestnuts, Guy stuck with him.

“Serge likes sweets?”

That was not his headache. Claude turned to his new and shiny friend. “What more do you want?”

“I wanted to know if Serge likes sweets.”

Claude grunted. “His apprentices do.” Guy insisted on accompanying him to Bearitz’s house.

She took half the candied chestnuts and returned with mended clothes and unneeded news of her mother’s copious joy in learning that Serge was getting married. Claude regretted offering the sweets and hoped for a quick calamity. Guy fluttered his eyes, ready to foment this quick calamity.

“I hope to see you at the wedding.” Her voice was hollow, as her hazel eyes were wide on Guy.

Slightly taken aback with Bearitz’s distant air, Claude said, “I will not be there. I shall be with Auguste.”

“Senher Seyr?”

“Oc, Senher Seyr. The new Dona prefers her own servants. Alas, I must change masters.”

Her auburn head drooped a broken stalk of disappointment. At the call of her mother, she slugged inside with the same dim eyes.

“Such a sweet virgin. She wants you to cover her,” Guy said.

The thought of kissing Bearitz’s prim lips, especially now that Guy was grinning pawkily, pushed Claude into a muddle of vexation. “Not long now, and I’ll break your face in,” he muttered.

“You shall?”

The green eyes regarded him like a tethered falcon studying his prey. The stare burrowed deep into him, and Claude felt as though his soul would be rent asunder. When Bearitz returned with a round of plum cake, he snatched it in an overly excited manner, smiling and spilling, "Lovely cake... good cake."

The cake made up for her gaff mentioning Serge’s wedding and the unease stemming from Guy until she said, “Mama wished to congratulate your master,” and shut the door.

Claude trod on his way of angry musing on how the cake of felicitations was more a cake of refuse to the pigeons.

Then something yapped liked a demon perched at his shoulder. “Fret not. ’Tis simple to know a woman... must be gentle … flick her little member …”

In front of the College de Foix, Claude stopped walking and glared at Guy merrily gabbing his treatise on cunnilingus. He ended, “You are a lusty youth. You can please a woman.”

“Get thee away from me,” Claude bellowed.

“You owe me, and Sabrine refuses me.”

“Find a better woman.”

“And forswear love? Youth, silly youth. You would not know love even if it took you. Love never did have golden balls.”

Guy stood back, smiling, waiting. Claude glowered, waiting. A voice called from behind him. It was the stupid one.

“Came to work off your five sous?” Benoit, then, showered his attentions on the tall broad-shouldered gallant, and the conversation switched into Latin pleasantries.

Claude was surprised Guy was educated. A shapeless chagrin overrode his admiration. Guy did not look much older, and yet he had an education, good clothes, and the pale skin of indolence while he could only claim a sore arse and the superb skill in supper making.

Claude shuddered. He thought he saw Guy’s eyes flash red. On the other hand, Benoit had abandoned his tall pose of garrulous schoolboy dispensing with conquests. He bowed repeatedly before Guy, “Parce mihi. Forgive me.” He tripped as he spun around for the college gates and darted into the sun, as though a fox with its tail on fire.

“I asked about the goodness of your autumnal garden. He said it was the loose thing of a woman who had given birth to ten children. Verily it would be, but the human asked about mine. I allow only one human to abscond with disrespect, or Sabrine would forswear me.” There was a glimmer of charm and hardness in the eyes slitting as he smiled.

Claude interlaced and flexed his fingers, preparing himself to chase after the stupid one for the insult. But Guy’s teeth … perfect and dazzlingly white. Claude never thought seriously about the truth of this Sabrine, but under the light of the Guy’s cheer, he began to suspect it was a lie. He wiped his palms on his thighs, remembering Guy’s demand from a week ago. His hands began to tremble against the woolen fabric. He clenched the stupid hands into angry fists. No one would bend him, not even God.

“No one bends my knee,” he mumbled.

“You lie. You knelt before Esteban and he grew long in your mouth.”

Claude gratefully laughed. Then a conspiracy of boyish sounds rose to a crescendo from the façade of the college. Justinian codes. Justinian codes. One student pleaded to his ignorance. Tomorrow he had disputations and he still did not know what the codes had to say about the rights of widows or bastards.

Claude had to admit to himself being a student sounded better than being an apprentice even though those blue cassocked students did look like lazy ladies.

Guy turned away from the youthful ejaculations. “Being an apprentice to a half-dead human does not suit you.”

Claude winced on the oft-used term, ‘human,’ but he said, “’Tis time to put the childish things away and learn a trade.”

It was definitive. It was settled. Claude walked home in awe of the glow of finality in his heart. When they veered into a street leading to his house, Guy said, “You do not want to be with the half-dead Seyr.”

Claude agreed but agreeing with Guy would ruin his glow and roil his belly. “Yes I do.”

“You could be a student.”

Claude had to stop and at least think about it. “What do students do?”

“Let me remember my time at Oxford.”

“Oxford?”

“In England.”

“Oh.” Claude never ventured past the Languedoc region of France. He had not even seen the sea.

“Dueled aplenty, fucked aplenty, prayed aplenty. Those years were good.” And good they must have been. Guy’s gaze was lost to the sky spotted with black winged dots.

Claude liked the idea of fucking and fighting.

Guy looked down towards the soiled earth. “You know your letters?”

“No,” Claude said. He had never had use for them.

“You need to know your Latin.”

Never thought his illiteracy could stand between him and his gold-plated entitlement to fucking and fighting.

“I could teach you,” Guy said like the Tempter.

“You can?”

“For certes, you, Sabrine, I, we shall be together, learning and drinking.”

Claude’s fingers tingled that a dread of the new friend. “No.” And he marched for his door.

Guy kept apace. “Oh, you do owe me.” Before Claude would bellow aggravation on this ‘owing,’ Guy gave a singsong of the scholar’s life. His eyes darted right and left with possibilities. “Away in my quiet cottage for lessons, and all the heretical things I would do to you…”

“You want my arse for Latin?”

“Your lovely mouth suffices, or your neck…”

Claude’s mind rotated clockwise and anticlockwise, imagining how his neck could be used to extract pleasure. He shuddered furiously at the vision of a panting, naked Guy and came back to reality, to Guy’s awed stare.

“I shall be a wood carver.” Claude finally stopped at his door.

“Your master sends you away to another, and you yield. Oh that you would be that pliant to me.”

Before Claude could snort at Guy’s notions, he rethought the fairness of his exchange with Serge, and a dull sense of shame seeped into him.

“Ah.” Guy nodded some secret truth to himself. “Verily you would be an apprentice. Sneer at Auguste, at his wife. When comes evening, you slip out of the house and seek after men with golden balls. But Auguste is no Serge, he would send you out.” He paused to leer at a woman prancing by in the full glory of a bosom bursting deliciously under a sheer partlet. He mumbled, “Useless in life, but a very useful chamber pot. Mayhap you’re no good to be my student.”

Claude blinked. It all came back to him, the pincers of fate that plucked him from a good home and dropped him into vagrancy and Serge’s company. His life had never being purposefully directed before. More distressingly it seemed he could not order his life himself. He shifted and was little relieved to sight a woman stooped over a female grocer in anxious conversation. Perhaps it was the sight of her ill-fitting hat that returned to Claude some color. The hat would fall off any moment into the basket of turnips.

Claude moaned cynically, “What this about letters and debt? Speak true and say you wish me to be your catamite.”

“Men give you pittance and milk tears. I offer you the world.”

“I trust Auguste. I trust neither cuckolds nor sissies.”

“Then you may trust me, a literate gallant.”

Claude grunted at the quibble. Then the door opened to a human boulder, tall and big-framed, Serge in a brown doublet and off-white breeches, his lips crimping in a frown at Guy.

“St Sernin! Are you ever surly,” Claude muttered.

Serge still glared at Guy. The man strode away, waving and bobbing his head to cheer. Serge turned his quizzical stare to Claude. The servant shoved him a plum cake. “Dona Alecon wished you glad tidings on your betrothal.” He slapped to the hearth to prepare supper.

***

That night, Serge had wandered into Claude’s room again. Claude did not turn to acknowledge his presence. As though a gargoyle, Serge perched at the door, weighing Claude’s declared intentions to insubordinately shoot volleys of errant kisses on his face. But this night was not to be another night lost to silence and indecision.

“Who was he?” Serge demanded.

Claude turned in his sheets. “Come to bed, and I shall tell you.”

“Enough perversion.”

“’Tis not I who came down here.”

“Who is he?” His voice was at once pleading and aggressive.

Claude liked the idea of a jealous Serge although it was a little unsettling that Serge would choose to be jealous about Guy and not his numerous friends. Still, he liked it. The fleeting tingle on his groin quite liked it. In full view to Serge, he spread-eagled his legs, and hands slid over his thighs with a mind of its own.

“Serge, come hither,” Claude groaned. “Come and touch it. Come and play with it.”

Sounds, rustling, shuffling, flapping, etched Serge into a hard place at the door. “You demon.” His voice was dry and cracked. “You demon … they’ll come for you in time, the guards of the Senachausée, the rabid dogs of the Carivarri.”

“In another month, you shall worry no longer. But I worry about you and your betrothed,” he said easily as hands searched lazily for his pleasure. “You would spend your nuptial night seeking after me, rather than your wife. I should stay … my wedding gift.” The darkness swathed Claude’s body with heat. He gasped, his eyes wide on the black figure at the door. His breaths stirred the wind, stirred Serge to grip on the door handle.

Serge said, his voice thin and tight, “Ever since Antoine died, you abandoned yourself to the Devil’s hand.”

Claude stopped. All feeling died as memory betrayed him to the image of the brown-haired, brown-eyed Antoine asleep in death. Antoine’s voice prickled his ears. “You insensitive prune. You would wake one morning and find your face has turned to stone.” He heard himself hiss, “Sissy,” as Antoine had talked him to extreme vexation. He felt the Antoine’s spit drenching his face because Antoine had demanded that he take back the insult. Eventually Antoine would take his weary eyes, the tired ears, and the resigned lips for apology.

Claude covered his face against the darkness that would mar it. His fingers slid down to his groin glowing again with need. Inexpressible grief was a powerful aphrodisiac, more potent when it was inadmissible. All was well, for Serge was still at the door, superiorly needy.

“Your foolhardiness makes me want.” Claude snorted into cheeky laughter. He started stroking himself again and mouthed the moans of an obnoxious virgin newly awakened to lust. Then he spilled white with a high plume of laughter and taunts for the Serge who would watch rather than taste.

“Have you no care for hell’s perdition?” Serge demanded.

“Why? Antoine would be there. Who awaits me in heaven?”

Serge slunk out the door and silence was complete.

A rush of heat, a sudden profusion of sweat, and Claude collapsed into the cool bed. The release had been too quick. He scratched through his limp damp hair, scratched and scrubbed. Lice. No one would nestle him in between the thighs and delouse his head like Antoine did. Not Serge. Not anyone. Bearitz might. Claude jumped to his feet and to the window, scoffing the idea of Bearitz handling his blond hair. Out there, beyond the paper-shielded window, a sky sparkled with star and sheltered a peeping Guy. He rolled away from window, held his chest, and laughed. But his body tensed then relaxed in its febrile motions, and his legs felt as without the spine of bone, and laughter spilled forth a thin gruel. Then it was strangled into a grunt. Guy would not be as perfidious as Serge, would he?

His heart was too blind to reveal an answer, his instincts mute. Claude trudged to bed and dumped himself to sleep. In truth, his heart had always been blind, deaf, and mute.