Paradise for the Damned. - 17. Chapter 17

Over the next few days, Claude had to contend with the sympathies over Alphonse’s broken nose and the clamors for restitution. Claude acknowledged nothing, only more hours poring over Donatus’ sprawling tomes on Latin grammar. Then Sabrine descended on the cottage with all the temerity afforded by a black dress and a black coif and demanded her due restitution because Guy’s sheep hurt her sheep.

Claude shifted in his seat but refrained from calling her a cow.

Guy’s grunts and chords of jolly took sway a moment as Sabrine waddled obtrusively at the front door. Her shadow stretched over rushed floor to about mid-way the room to where Claude’s feet were kicking against the table. He wondered why, even though Jean-Baptiste had claimed the sun was hurtful to blood-drinkers, it did not melt the blob of earwax stealing his light.

“Your sheep called me a goat with bellow cunt at the church square,” she continued.

“Your sheep called my sheep a catamite,” Guy said, plucking bright chords on his lute.

“That is no lie. Or we pretend still on his virtue?”

“Bless me, I have two kids in my care.” Guy’s fingers slid a happy glissando up the fret board of the lute. His lips were crimped in show of effort.

A moment loomed with unbridled reflection. “I see now. You’ve grown craven and in want of honor.”

An arpeggio degenerated suddenly into the discord of missed notes. Claude held his breath and blinked for air.

“Challenge me and claim my blood, or be thou silent on my honor,” Guy warned.

Sabrine folded her arms resolutely across her chest. “Oc, Yvette, same name of your human wife, yes?” Her voice colored a new edge of bitterness.

A wife? A wife named Yvette? Claude pricked his ears for more gossip.

“You envy maggots and bones now?” Guy asked.

“I remember now,” she said, “you killed her because Roland willed it.”

“And?”

“If he so wills it with your sheep here? Would you be swift? Or would you droop yellow-eyed at your slut’s arse and grumble?”

Guy’s nimble fingers twanged a plosive hammer-ons on the lute as he looked round the room in remembrance of something. “Bless my good idol, your reason faints. I fear for your students.”

Students? Claude looked at the black widow once over for the emblems of scholarship.

“Francois would be hurt,” Sabrine continued unhindered. “You boasted no man has conquered you. And you fall for a boy slut.”

Guy raised his eyes from the lute, clinging to a slight smile. “If you find my company wanting, leave me. I have no need of you.”

Sabrine’s head moved spasmodically as though it were stuck inside a resonating bell. Claude kept eye and a triumphant face to his book by Donatus.

“Weak things become you. You’re unfit to be Edjya’s scion.”

Resonant thump of a hard hand slapping against the lute body shook the air. “Be thou silent on Edjya,” he said. “If we must quarrel, let’s talk of your sheep, who called me a sodomite and profaned my given name. By due right, his blood is mine.”

Sabrine lifted with a smile. “And you sit merry and play with women while the chamber pot defends you?”

“Well then, that’s decided. You want my swift judgment? You shall have my swift judgment. No more sheep raising in Aurin.”

“Alphonse is mine.”

“The thing owes me a debt as a result of your gossip. He’s mine now. For that matter all of Aurin is.”

“I have stood by you, and now you spurn me for your cum-fed harlot.”

“Marry, what you want from me? I to brawl and bray in show of mad bravery? I to keel over to your whimsy?” Guy shifted, stirred, and bent over his lute again. “I’m not your ox to bellow on command. Better yet, leave me. Go fuck sheep in Toulouse.”

Claude’s glee leaked away as he palled at the disturbing prospect of Guy without the Sabrine who refused to kiss his cock. “She did defend your blood honor when I was being a naughty rake-hell. Be you kind and gentle, Guy. She might leave you forever.”

“Never tell me.” Guy said, “If she wants not my bed , you may take her place. I’ll take a slattern’s arse over a debased cunny.”

Sabrine paused, undecided on the best look to face the umbrage. Blood pooled slowly over the whites of her eyes as her trembling hands clutched the doorway. “The great Diamhin Nagollach hath besotted himself with a hat-thieving bearded slut. Edjya will have much to say.”

Guy’s face tightened. “Defame me if you must. Again speak naught of Edjya.”

“Diamhin, hide from truth. Hide from truth when you bore shit and run after Yvette lookalikes.” Guy blinked and cradled his head to shield from the high talk from a nagging wife. “You’re not worthy of him,” Sabrine gave a dirty dry laugh. “He never did think you worthy. You’re just the clump he dug out of the peat bog. Like the dirt you are, you seek after shit. He would ne’er claim you as his own now, would he?”

In the moment when Claude would have turned a page and sighed a dour breath, praised Sabrine’s brave tongue, St. Sebastian’s arrows verily did strike him with inspiration. Love! That bond with Edjya was love. The impish dog drooled over master dog. Claude would yelp a delicious glee, expend all the arrows in his lowly quiver to mock him. But life fled from his face.

Guy’s eyes had become the leaky pits of oleaginous pitch. And Sabrine had fallen to her knees, her face a Vesuvius of blood.

Guy let out a resigned moan, and she fell over with a sickening thump. Lute in one hand, he arose and mulled a curious look at the clump on the floor. Her coif was displaced to one side of her head, and black hair matted with the runnels of blood leaking from her eyes and ears. Guy kicked the head softly. Whimpers ruffled, but she did not stir. He shook his head from side to side as though a charmed kitty wondering the myriad ways to unspool its yarn. “You bellow bravery but fall easily when I give a warning glance. How you fail me.” He kicked ferociously at the body, kicked, stomped. Fury growled louder as black lines thickened and glowed on his face. The lute in his hand was an inconvenience to the mad reverie, so he took a moment patiently to hang it on the wall next to his sword. “You bore me. Shall I kill you?” He turned his black-eyed glare unto Claude. Something dammed in Claude’s heart, cramped his vocal cords, doused him in oily fear. Claude was cold, helpless, and frozen before Death and its unconquered glare.

Guy picked up Sabrine, slung her over his shoulders, and went for the backdoor. Just before he stepped out, he paused, nodded to the daylight and its stark pellucidity, and said, “Human, when did you become so dear and demanding?” And he vanished from Claude’s frozen sight.

Claude lay flat his trembling hands on the table. He had prevailed, but at what cost and for how long?