Paradise for the Damned. - 16. Finches

While Claude was worrying about Alphonse fucking his way to his death, the Huguenots worried about prosecution unto death. The treaty of Nemours had just been signed, and it dispossessed them of wealth and standing. Between the King affectionately known as the Sodomite, the Duke de Guise the leader of Catholic League and Henri de Navarre the disputed Protestant heir to the Throne, France became their ragged ball being kicked about in a playground of searing sentiment, war and pestilence. Catholic high persons came to Aurin in search of secret Protestants and their good wealth. Rumors of Protestant low persons looting villages passed from peddler to bluff farmer ever thinking about the weather’s surliness.

Chatter, gleeful chatter, poisonous chatter filled the church square on St. Micheal’s day. The wheat crop would be poor despite Guy’s proclamation of glorious sun, glorious harvest. Praise St. Catherine, Martis Algais had expressed formal interest in Amaline. Yvette still refused the charms of the tutor. That wench was more chaste than the Virgin. Learning has turned the scholar’s reason hollow. Did you see him at the granary, yelling that our good Dona Lefevre was Satan’s harlot?

The whore she is! Claude spat to the wind, kicked that way, kicked this way, flicked his chin at the dumb stares of stray dogs on his way home.

The day was niggardly hot and niggardly in want of rich white clouds. Claude’s irritation was whisked away upon the familiar view of the chestnut tree in the front yard and the oval shadow cast underneath, pricked with south-leaning corn poppies. Over at the open window to the inner chamber was the tall sight of Guy’s back and his black pigtail pooling over the white linen of his shoulders.

Claude shrugged at his tutor being puerile in the open, but then a high moan from window raked his senses. He shuddered.

Tittering, Guy beckoned to him. “Come and see.”

Claude did see. Alphonse. Alphonse and Sabrine.

Claude’s eyes walked the line of his spine compressing and rarefying, undulating and fanning to the copper buttocks. White arms were splayed from underneath his bulk. And her hands gripped the sheets, loosened on “Oh Dona, you ever good to me”, tightened on a crease and another moan littered, “Steady little boy. Steady.” Orders were lost on Alphonse’s drenched ears, and the room panted and quaked and groaned. Those white hands clawed to the linens, those sheets Claude had freshly spread that morning.

Putana. His fornicating linen sheets. Quivers and shivers ripped through Claude as he carved medieval retribution upon Alphonse’s arse. He twisted away before a volcanic eruption of unnamable blasphemies would spew forth. The church spire was so high, so rigid against the clear sky.

Guy had been watching him with uncontrollable relish. He pulled Claude to himself and whispered in his ear, “I shall give him to you, my gift … if the deed sees him alive.” He nudged and winked in a spirit rakish and convivial. “I could save him … ask … beg teacher to save his carrot.”

The bed blared at Claude.

“Would all of Aurin be corpses to your pride?” Guy asked.

"I save him myself!" Claude swelled his chest about to shout for Alphonse to flee from demon cunny.

"Be thou silent. We must enjoy the joyful noise of flesh upon flesh." Guy clasped his hand over Claude’s mouth and gripped on his upper arm. Claude wrestled mightily, more to escape the sight of his fresh linens drenched with blood than the slimy coldness Guy’s cheeks roughing against his cheeks. Guy hunkered him down to keep quiet and enjoy the show.

“Imp!”

The commotion brought a frazzled Alphonse to the window. His face was a blotchy mosaic of red and pink. Something exploded in the back of Claude’s throat as he realized that below the windowsill, a long and hard fantasy had come to pass. His mind cleared of linens and laundering and inflamed his loins to gambol.

“Paire Dennis troubled me about your virtue, but you’re another hungry monk,” Alphonse grunted.

Claude swallowed hard, bile rose forth. “And you bed a hag in my bed. Get your own bed for fornication.”

“You call her a hag one more time, I shall break your face.”

The possibility that Alphonse might climb out of the window, naked, hard and glistening possessed Claude with choleric bravado. “Come break my face, you hag-fucker.”

Guy sank against the wall and pondered morosely the loss of joyful noises. Similarly colored with disappointment, Sabrine proceeded to touch herself while Claude and Alphonse exchanged glares and twitches, waiting for a pin drop to implode the afternoon.

“Claaaaude.” A girlish voice besieged the standoff.

“Alphoooonse,” and another female voice called.

Amaline and Clarisse loomed towards them, swaying arms furiously, bonded in lament over idiotic men. A veritable invasion of the weaker sex.

“You rave about town slandering Dona Lefevre a whore. I knew thou art a canker blossom of loose honor!” Amaline stomped little strides up to Claude. On seeing Alphonse not quite ducking under the window fast enough, she flew up hands over her face, gasping. “Alphonse, where’s your chemise? Art thou bare-bottomed?”

Sabrine squealed one last throe of passion.

Claude broke up into fluffs of laughter. Not today, he thought. No death today on his bed.

***

Claude was God’s warrior marching round the great bed and defending the integrity of linens and eiderdown against demons and licentiousness. When he was tired of defending the stead, he sought out Sabrine in the village and demanded the sneering passersby to keep from her. He returned home more concerned about Sabrine’s cold lips on Alphonse’s hard neck than of strangers falling prey to fangs. A fog of gloom billowed around the foot of the bed, creeping up the bedposts and buried the coverlets and linens with the pervasive stink of Sabrine’s perfume and blurred his books and blunted his attempts to wring philosophy from Aurelius. Two weeks of sophistries on stoicism were enough. Imperial exhortations to continence did nothing against the shredding dread of Alphonse quaking the bed again. He at last floundered over pillows and failed philosophies.

Valiantly he stood against Guy, proudly he snubbed God, and yet men were his masters. Quentin called him lumpish stranger. Amaline called him canker blossom. Leo called him boar scholar. And Sabrine was evermore the graceful Dona Lefevre.

At the town feast of St. Martin, he fantasized a bravery against Man as he quaffed cup after cup of new wine. The sky was autumn dull. Tables and benches were laid out in the church square to toddlers’ giggles and the bounty of the harvest. Men and women spinning to the melodies spun his threads of desire. A few tables over Amaline shunted him indignant scowls in between brushing off the many prankish hands of her little brothers.

Guy dropped into a seat by him, plopped over a pair of die and an ornately carved comb. “For certes this comb will be the way to Yvette’s cunny.”

“And the die?”

“Sabrine was in need of it.”

Fangs and pricks invaded Claude’s drenched mind. Another torrent of wine was enough to flush away choler.

Leo came by with a bravado allowed by his scruffy jaws and deep-set eyes—a worthy Ganymede if only he did not resemble Quentin. Clarisse was on his mind, not the new reputation of the constipated scholar. Now that Alphonse had unequivocally disavowed her, (Claude quaffed another cup) she was his for the plucking.

“Waste no presents on the wenches,” Guy said, eyes hovering on Leo’s neck. “Delight them with a tale of the finch ascending Mount Olympus and whereupon falls into a cave buried underneath the leaves of autumns. Deeper and deeper it bores a way amongst the leaves, and then suddenly the cave leads to the celestial globes above. Upon the heavenly arrival of the finch, Venus sheds tears of joy.”

Leo squirmed, looked to Claude for aid. “What’s a finch? What you mean caves and globes?”

“Human, she doesn’t know either. But she’ll plump red and sweet over your hot breaths of clever words and sweet tales. And my tale would reel in the hardiest of fish,” said the tutor who had yet to conquer Yvette.

“I’m no scholar.” Leo spun an empty maser in a bored and defeated manner.

“Fret not. Unlike you, my student has no finches in his cave or perching on his tree.”

“You call me finch-less?” Claude muttered.

“Everyone calls you the scholar who is so yellow of humor. You ever raves about Dona Lefevre. Aye, finch-less,” Guy said.

Claude burped in a moment of frustration.

“What’s a finch?” Leo asked.

Guy accommodated Claude’s sigh to idiocy. “There now Claude, you only need to crawl on your knees and ask for my finch.”

“What’s a finch?” Leo demanded.

“You clotpole, ’tis a bird,” Amaline yelled from her table.

Guy nodded. “Claude, you teach her well. Or was it Sabrine who taught her that?” Claude kicked him under the table.

“What are birds doing among leaves of autumn?” she asked.

“They like trees, silly virgin,” Guy said.

Leo had since stopped spinning the maser and had taken to rapping it wildly against the table.

“Regard me not,” Claude said to Leo, “’Tis Guy who spits of finches.”

But Guy was already gone to pester Paire Dennis on the secret birthmarks of men who commune with the Devil.

The whore She is, Claude cursed as Leo’s rapping banged louder.

Sighing, Claude took the die and gaped at the shadow sliding down wool over Leo’s groin. “The gift of a lovely comb ’tis much better than a tale that confounds even the wise ones.”

Leo reached for the comb, but Claude swiped it and rolled it in and out of his fingers. The rich storehouse of impropriety and mischief unveiled opportunity, and he sparkled.

“A double sixes upon the die for it,” Claude said.

“You knave, I have no coin.”

“Would you be naked first before you win for double sixes?”

“By St. Dennis I shall not!”

Lady Fortuna, though vain and fickle, she was not without symmetry. Claude was assured that Leo would hit any of the thirty-five possibilities before hitting a double six. He could only manage a breathless, “Oh yes,” as he tumbled die towards Leo.

Leo swiped up the bone cubes and tossed a wild play upon the table.

Two, four.

“Take off the hose,” Claude said coldly.

“No. We start with shoes.”

“Hose.”

“Shoes.” And off flew Leo’s shoes.

Claude stilled himself to be patient. Chance was on his side.

Another tinkle of bones. A moment of dilated glares.

Double Sixes.

“Deo Gratias!”

Verily it was. Six dots against bone, bone against wood. As sure as St. Apollonia’s grace upon Aurin.

Claude held fast to the comb and a twitchy amazement on Lady Fortuna’s whorish ways. Crone with a thunder cunt. All he achieved from the parlay were feet—black nails and furry toes.

Then Guy flurried in from nowhere, scooped up the die and wrested comb from Claude’s lifeless and strode purposefully towards Yvette arriving with her parents.

Leo, wide-eyed in loss, cried, “That’s mine.”

Guy stopped as if obliged to give attention to something insignificant. His glance cracked a lightning whip of submission upon Leo. He froze. Shrinking small and smaller still, Leo crumpled in his seat.

As soon as Guy was gone, Leo nudged Claude demandingly. “He took the comb.”

Claude shrugged. “Fight him for his comb.”

“His comb?”

Claude dove nose-deep into a maser of insipid wine.

Leo arose, quaking table and bench, as though he would do battle with behemoths. “Thou art a currish canker blossom. ’Tis true what everyone says. Learning did rot your manners.” He veered away from the imposing spot of Guy and Yvette and to the yapping corner of Alphonse and friends.

What canker blossoms, Claude wondered irately as he pulled fingers through his beard. No canker afflictions there. Could use the barber’s blade though.

“You were cozened into the berdache’s games,” insisted the polluted Ganymede to Leo at their faraway corner.

“What berdache?” Leo asked.

Claude still was patting his haggard beard and cheeks for canker sores and phantom afflictions. Could be lice in his beard though.

“How Leo? Does not Paire Dennis tire you of Claude’s exercises in holiness? ‘Take heed of the scholar who thinks not of gentle flowers but of Latin and heaven.’” Alphonse smirked approvingly, nodding to the circle of straw-hatted men around.

“The scholar does have the manners of a sow … at times,” Leo said, scratching his oiled black hair as if for lice or to dig for sense. “Underneath it all there is good character. He grows good cabbages.”

Claude drank more wine and rolled eyes to acrid unconcern. Sabrine would bite off Alphonse’s cock soon enough.

“Good character? Diamhin and the scholar are as man and whore,” Alphonse spat. “All that Latin he learnt as they all learn, mouth-to-mouth.” He gave a laugh that soon passed around his friends as if sharing a communion bread. Leo mused dumber still.

Knowledge that would be passed mouth-to-mouth? Claude recalled a certain monk’s cowardly but coy prattle about a teacher trying to persuade an innocent student to the heretical corruptions. Guy had been flippant to the villagers? No. Guy was glaring at Alphonse, blood trickling from his hard lip. Sabrine. Had to be Sabrine.

Suddenly around Claude were black mouths and accusing faces with black hats. Who else did she talk to? Amaline? The warmth and glow of wine seeped from the mask of his face as he inched his gaze to the illicit corner of brawls. More laughs thundered over the wet and cold humors of the sissy who thirsted for a rod of heat.

Claude rose to his feet deliberately and took a deep strong breath. He negotiated about the men and women dancing a bransle and planted himself in front of the mind-whirling trunk of Alphonse. The youth sported a new forelock dangling over the shoulder, like those effete city gallants serenading toothless maidens.

“How fare thee, Claude?” The deformed braid of a smile faced Claude.

“How goes Dona Lefevre?”

“Resting after my efforts.” Alphonse slapped on his knees a fleshy rhythm of jocosity.

“Praise St. Catherine, you found a cunny big and loose enough.”

More laughter sputtered in assent. Claude snorted in ridicule himself, looked aside to a beetle crawling over a plate of black bread, and then spun on Alphonse and jabbed the neck with the flesh of his palm.

Alphonse’s head bounced back, the brown hair jostling to the wind and the rondo of gasps. He did not fall, instead stuttered on his feet, eyes fluttering. Claude grabbed him by the upper arms and thumped a knee to the groin. Allowed him to slink freely to the floor, then climbed over the body of longing. Fair eyes became crimson crimpled folds. Full lips he had dreamed of so soft on his chest were bloodied rings. The nose was a smashed beet. Rhythm connected with flesh and blood and punched beats to the requiem of his fantasy.

Someone screamed but Claude persisted especially in pummeling the ear he licked every morning. It took the brawn of many men to pull him off and fling him aside. His chin skidded on the dry clumpy grass, and his tongue smashed against the roof of his mouth. Tottering to stand one foot, he could see amongst the paralyzed poses of opprobrium Amaline with her febrile hands clasped over her mouth. Sabrine told her. His hold on the ground swayed, and he struggled drunkenly to find grit. The circle of onlookers contracted tighter. A circle of bearded mouths agape. A circle of coifed head with muffled mouths. A thicket of black lilies with yellow blinking eyes. Only the sun and its particular sunny attentions on him seemed to give praise to his cause for personal honor.

Something stamped on his shoulders. He flinched to Guy bracing him upright.

“Human, I, with much longsuffering, taught you all manner of ways to kill a man, and you give me this pitiful theatre.”

Claude stared at the blinking eyes and the moving mouth. Nothing made sense. He pushed Guy aside and staggered a fly’s path home.

Stones and fish appeared as black globules under the swishing spirals tightening and waxing over the dips and mounds of the stream. Crickets chirped in call and response to his antiphon of rationalizations over honor, over esteem, over his good name. He did forswear whores and whoring, committed himself study and industry only for an ugly witch to ruin him. Dogs barked unseen and unfettered. He waited for beasts to seed from the wall of woods into black forms and tentacles and engulf him whole. Waiting lasted a long while till the sun disappeared behind the ochre horizon.

He had cared. Cared for his threadbare name amongst benighted lads. Cared for said benighted lads being caught in demon’s teeth. Cared for women’s virtue. Cared for a ragamuffin who would not look at him. Cared that a demon would claim more piety than him. Cared when all caring was for naught, when his end would be a sure blood offering.

His weak legs bowelled him over to the stream. He performed bloody ablutions in the frosty water. The trembling hands were white, for now. Tomorrow they would be black; henceforth, he would give no care for trite morality, no matter how high the ziggurat of corpses it may cost him.