Paradise for the Damned. - 15. Claude raises the ante.

It was a day of fiendish weather when the feast of Corpus Christi came upon Aurin. Paire Dennis led a procession through puddles and gray clouds, bearing the Sacred Host in a gilded pyx as if it weighed more than sky. The body of Christ to the wheat fields. The body of Christ to the dogs limping after a bitch. The body of Christ to the wind gust lifting off a roof thatch. Claude and Guy plodded along to the din of fifes and tambourines.

Guy had lifted out of gloom to the wonderful idea of gifting wonderful oranges to Yvette de St. Jean. Since Sabrine was free to play with Alphonse, he was free to give Yvette oranges everyday for the next two months. Oranges were a good deposit towards a virgin’s cunny, or so he prated, while, under the same canopy sheltering Priest and Host, Sabrine was fluttering baleful eyes at Alphonse.

Guy’s words were as slurry in Claude’s ears. Study and study were his days, static, stiff, continent. And study and study he did of Aeneas wooing Dido while presumably Sabrine munched on Alphonse’s lovely turnip. And while Dido pierced her breast and abandoned her to the funeral pyre, they must have abandoned the restraints of clothes, and to lust. Claude shook his head lividly but then slid into helpless moping over Sabrine inclining her demon ear to Alphonse’s fair cheek. He plucked strand after strand at his tattered beard. Luring Alphonse away with oranges seemed more and more a splendid idea. As the procession veered to present the body of Christ to the swollen stream, he stamped his hands together as if to exorcise ungainly ideas.

“Guy,” Claude tried for a suppliant tone in French, “Wherefore does your woman hawk around Aurin a giglet?”

“She may bed whomever she pleases. I bind no one to me except for wives and sheep.”

“Marry her!”

Guy fleered. He went on to say Sabrine had bedded Gigot. Apparently the old man had a fire cock but a bad heart. And it was so pitiful to see the old man stumbling around the cottage naked, clutching his sagging left breast. He had to take his blood to exorcise the miserable sight. But there should be no worries. Alphonse should have a fire cock and fire heart. Good for Sabrine. Claude should not fear for Alphonse’s safety as long as Alphonse kept fire well.

“You did kill the old man,” Claude cried.

“Enough humans live after I bite them. Not my wrong he was old and weak.”

Claude nodded in disgust. “And this raining of bodies upon the church door?”

“He needed a good Christian burial.”

No one glared outrage or denounced him murderer. The drums marched on. Corpus Christie. Corpus Christie. The procession stopped in front of the granary—Body of Christ to the stonewall crawling with greasy-looking moss.

“I do remember a Marcel survived Sabrine’s lust, and only because he begged me for deliverance,” Guy said.

Exasperated, Claude clucked. “If more hail of corpses cause a witch hunt?”

“Fret not. No one can take you from my hand.”

Indeed, prideful possessiveness sounded more pleasant in French. The sound of Alphonse’s laughter skipped over baldheads, the coifed heads, the braided heads, and to Claude’s soggy heart.

“Your honor’s a loose cunny, it takes all things and keeps to naught,” Claude felt his head spin. “Yvette you would rain her body from sky likewise?”

“Bless me Claude, I am no base runnion. I like humans in my bed pleasant and screaming, not dead and useless. I’d have them would return to me pleasant and in want of more screams.”

“For sooth the man you chased to the river and stole his blood strutted to your bed a pleasant ghost and in want of screams.”

“His honor was looser than your arse,” Guy offered coolly.

A dreadful tightness seized Claude, what if Guy had taken him and he knew nothing about it? That was an unsettling thought. “What know you of my arse?”

“’Tis twice-damnéd.”

And Claude decided on his own brand of defiance.

Seven

It was another Wednesday, another afternoon of barren study, another secret Latin lesson for Paire Dennis who degenerated into a guff about Protestants and their taste for tabby cat meat. Claude was slumped against the church door in the thick heat of the day. Hack the pudgy priest’s head? Yank his nails off? Take a cleaver to his member? What would duty demand of him this afternoon? However, Sabrine and Amaline were strolling by the church’s high stonewall, arm in arm like fresh niece and wrinkled aunt. She answered Amaline’s multiplying questions about Paris, silk, Paris, silk, Paris. A yellow jacket waved in and out of her gesticulating hands then fluttered brazenly over Sabrine’s polished nose. With bat of a black-gloved hand, she snatched the insect in an expertly graceful manner and crushed it under her feet. The spectacle of insect murder did not dampen Amaline’s excitement; now she wanted know what was the Latin word for bees. Claude sighed painfully, carrying away from them onto the path rocky and sandy. But, but, but, he burst with an idea.

“Walk with me home, Na,” Claude said to Sabrine.

Sabrine agreed despite Amaline’s glum protestations. On the quiet walk home, Claude hoped Guy would not be at home. Indeed the hut was empty, and he swept onto the bench, crooning like a kittenish harlot.

With a sculptured look of eminence, she sat across from him, stiff-necked, as stiffly as her black dreary garb might allow. But her head shone a crown of tiny gleams, the ill-conceived dazzles of pearls set in the black coif. Verily she was the widow who, at the funeral of her husband, cried tears of grief with one eye and tears of relief in the other.

“How fares it in Toulouse?” Claude did not know whatever she did in Toulouse and assumed it all the magnificent idleness usual to dotty women.

“Aurin holds my interest. Amaline is such a delightful human. Alphonse is…” Her face relaxed with a smile of triumph. “He’s a true man.”

Oc, very true, very man unlike himself, Claude mused as he retrieved his dagger from his belt and slit his left wrist with a decisive flourish. Blood, a marvelous red, so magnificent an ambrosia that he, a wormy sissy, would offer to her an honored guest.

She bolted upright in her seat. Crows feet fanned more lines, thick and tight over her temples.

Claude was pleased, very pleased. “Take it and cease your foolish idling amongst the villagers.” Red swirled in the whites of her eyes and a fang jagged her lower lip. Claude grinned, proud he could still attract wanton attention. “Guy has yet to drink it.”

“What would I with the blood of a harlot?” she asked.

“Sabrine, you cower. Guy commands your thirst and your spirit, but what of him do you command? Methinks, he takes and takes from you and gives not.” He refrained from citing to his long bravery against Guy’s injunctions or she might just stab him with his own dagger.

As if gathering to leave, she smoothed, rather kneaded the prickly-looking skirt over her lap. More creases mottled her white cheeks, painting her more and more the grey crone. Claude would not wait for her to waffle as he went round to sit by her side. She flinched a good arm length away.

“Little whore, you take me for a base cur.”

“I take you for a craven cur.” He dipped his finger on in the blood and licked it whorishly up, down the length of the forefinger. The gesture soothed her, softened her into slackening her mouth, and her tongue, in imitative motions, curled and moved over the points of her fangs.

Her face was beautiful, he thought as childlike wonder overcame him. Need in the eyes, need in the mouth half agape, lolling forward to his arm like a puppy lowering its nose to ground in submission before its mother. He said, “Take it. I am whom you want to devour, to punish, to own—”

She flashed out of her seat to door. Beauty was gone. Grace was gone. Just the black bald skeleton of a woman who had lived too long. Her eyes hardened into marbles of red intent in the cavernous sockets. “Little whore, you do not move me to spurn the man who saved me.” Her voice rode to a high roar.

Claude fleered. “Saved you? You mean some rogues demons happened upon you, and he killed all but you alone to serve his pride?”

Taken aback, she floundered gaily against the doorframe, hands folded over her black bosom. She was herself again—tight and malicious. “I see your stratagems.”

Claude waved his bloody hand dismissively at her. “I’m but a common-kissing rabbit, not a wily Sulla.”

She laughed, a delicate white hand wilting over her mouth as required for a widow in grief. “Why offer me spoilt blood? My desires are modest. Leave Guy. Take your wicked self away from his person. Find you own way.”

“Why? He feeds me and teaches me.”

“Life would not be so merry if Alphonse dies.”

Claude reddened in uncontrollable fright. Duty was so starkly simple yet so unduly heavy.

“You would stay?” she asked. “Yes you would. You live in cheer with demons because you’re a reprobate demon yourself.”

“Mayhaps.” Claude chuckled. “Swear upon your blood honor to leave the villagers alone, and I shall leave.”

“Stay and watch death or leave and spare yourself. I swear no oaths to filthy sluts. My honor is mine to uphold.”

Claude laughed, licked more blood, laughed at the day so bright with its metallic hues, laughed at the way Sabrine fled away from him just the way Serge did on their last night together. Serge’s denunciations thundered in his ears, blackening his bright day. Laughter died, rather was strangled in his chest as his chest seized into whoops and coughs. What was it with these soiled people who claimed more honor than him? Serge and his heretical passions. Sabrine and her ledger thick with names fallen to her dark lust. And Guy ... Books, blunt quills, half-opened inkwells were littered around Claude eyeless and earless to defend his scraps of honor. It meant nothing, he thought desperately, it meant nothing. And he forced himself into wide, comfortable smiles. But Sabrine clawed to the front door, waiting.

Silence lay but for a moment when a soft wind soughed from the backdoor. Guy had appeared at the doorway. Slivers of grass matted to the cloak draping his wide chest that seemed more ox than human.

“Claude, I was discussing the ways in which demons ravish virgins with Paire Dennis when the smell of your blood troubled me …” His voice faltered as his eyes beheld the red gleam ringing Claude’s wrist.

“Ah Guy, be you glad. Your minging cunt is virtuous for you only,” Claude said as the realization that he was no closer to assuring the peace in Aurin sank momentously down his throat.

Between Guy and Sabrine lay the table strewn with the books, the lute and sword upon the wall, the smoldering hearth, and the cool air thick with hatred.

“Your sheep needs a fence, and a bridle, and shackles.” And Sabrine turned away.

Guy looked hard at Claude diffidently wiping his wrist on his hose.

“Truly you are strong. But you aren’t God. You cannot control the chaos that will happen if Sabrine goes unrestrained.”

“I say to you again. I give no care for humans apart from sheep.”

“In sooth. Perchance I offer myself to them as murderer.”

“Perchance, I cause the mayhem you so declaim when next you defy me?”

“Diamhin, where’s the honor in that?” Claude arose decisively from the table and to the hearthside to tend to his wrist.

“Ah yes, I’m your equal that you address me by my given name.”

“You are base. I am base. We are of the same corruption in the dung heap.”

Guy dragged to the table, made various mouth motions as deep thoughts were hewn in his mind. “Methinks you want to die, and I happen to be your instrument.”

Claude stiffened as he reached for the pitchers on the overhead shelves. The sudden quiet lent gravity and iron to the air. The light barreling from the backdoor assaulted heat and brilliance upon his fainting eyes. He had just tried to give himself to Sabrine to save others. The idiocy of service and sacrifice revealed itself, and he grabbed the airs of a bouffant, chuckling and smacking hands over shelves mindlessly for wine or was it water?

“I give no care to dying. That is very different from wanting to die,” he said too cheerfully—an eureka for wine.

“Little whore, where lies the difference of wanting to die and not caring about dying?” Guy looked on, a dazed gargoyle upon the bench.

“Now must I teach you logic? You rage after Roland with no care for dying. Not because you want to die.”

Guy turned his gaze upon the table, sober, in the thrall of long thoughts. “Mayhaps I do want to die when I rage after Edjya and the mountains that would impose on my path.” Claude fell still a moment as he thought he sighted something old and fetid in the youthful face. “But God’s ever merciful,” Guy added, “Giving me strength over my enemies. Granting me grace from Edjya who forgives my tantrums.”

Poppycock. “Kneel, stay still and l shall run a sword through your heart,” Claude said.

Guy was alive again “Now why would I let you a rank black chamber pot do that?”

“Because you want to die?”

“The man or woman who kills me will be the one who surpasses me in strength and in honor.”

“Go run over a sword then.”

“Why? I like Sabrine praising me a glorious Apollo. I like warm blood on my tongue—”

“You not one moment before said you wanted to die.”

“Oc, a contradiction for you to untangle.”

Claude’s spirit drooped as the warmth of wine spread over his chest. His wrist, he remembered. Blood spiraled a jagged ribbon down his hand.

“Here, have it,” Claude forwarded his arm towards Guy.

He turned away. “I shall wait for the blessed day.”

Claude guzzled another draught of wine. A hot sensation buzzed thinly over his lips. He felt his cheeks taut over the mask of his face. In the muddle of wine and with his heart pattering a rhythm of secret dread, he droned, “Why these of hearts and blood? We could endeavor to live in paradise where the wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard with the kid?”

“And be the lion that eats straw. Do you eat straw?” Guy burst out laughing, his eyes still hard ellipsoids of green. “Your heart warm and bloody in my hand is the only way.”

Guy proceeded to sing of gloomy skies and inconstant maidens on his lute. Its feathery sounds tottered and dithered a flimsy cheer upon Claude’s ears. Another minuet and then a plaintive pavane followed, and he was released in spirit from the earth of dread and decay into a firmament of loose cares—a paradise for the damned.