Across the heavens were unfolded the clouds, foamy and thick, shaped like pillaged cathedrals and fallen castles after a ruinous siege. For half a day Claude and Guy plodded towards the grey and purple corrugating the eastern horizon. Guy did all talking. Claude did all the listening on Mamohedans and their strange Friday Sabbaths, men with skin black as ink or men with eyes like surly cats. His knapsack burdened heavier on each stride, and he felt moment by moment as though a pregnant goat about to give birth. In the infrequent moments of Guy’s purring silences, Claude held his breath to the vast landscape, which fanned from the broken walls of trees into the thin wrinkled fabric of brown farmland. The expansiveness of the flatlands would swallow him and spit him out another clay clump.

They took to a pathway feathered with wild ferns. As they passed through a copse of trees, light narrowed into a green darkness. Tree trunks framed over the blustery lilac of twilight an aperture, which viewed a cottage dusted in brown. The walls were daub and wattle, the roof a dull yellow thatch of damp reeds. Mapping a ragged mosaic over the brown soil, weeds were twisted out in clumps and irregular patches over the front yard. Dandelions grew out of dog’s bones, creeping around the leafless giant of a chestnut tree, tottering up ugly flowers in the crevices between the cottage wall and the ground.

Claude slowed down and watched disconcertingly as Guy veered to the front door of the cottage. Guy looked back, his black hair brushing over one eye, and gave him the ‘come along’ shake of the head, but Claude remained still and pensive, glowering at him quaveringly. “How long have you lived here?”

“Long enough.” Guy opened the front door, and Claude begrudgingly moved along.

A musty air washed over Claude’s face, and he had to open the window. Rats scampered in and out of the little mounds on the rushed floor. Open shelves hung high over the hearth. Dust as thick as his woolen cape. Dust over ladle and earthen plate, dulling the shine of a pewter cup. Claude whirled his gaze about the room, spinning a tattered view of cobwebs and a quick fabric of suspicions. Guy would be another Serge who promised advancement but offered wrinkled cock.

A sheathed sword and the lute lay side by side on the table—board over trestles. The thought that Guy had despoiled an unfortunate someone of his or her cottage flashed in Claude’s mind. But the sight of Guy in an aggressive sword stance against an opponent seemed like the high art of buffoonery. Claude shrugged off the inane image. Guy could not possibly be a swordsman. Not the man who wore white face paint like a woman and lamented the lack of Sabrine’s kisses.

“Unlike poor Marsyas, my skills on the lute do rival Apollo’s.” Guy laughed, patting his hand over his belly. Mirth would become him, but Claude could not reconcile the two faces of his mien: the laughter and the flinty eyes, the sword and the lute.

The sword had an ivory hilt, and its sheath was also of ivory, but inlaid with gold. Claude drew to examine it, but Guy snatched it before him. His eyes salt white and grave, he said, “Humans are not allowed to touch it.”

Claude shrugged and slapped out the back door, thinking he only had to play with the sword when Guy was not around.

The backyard stretched a wild and wasted greenery, terminating abruptly into a black rocky outcrop to the north and woody meadows to the east. Neither plow nor human had tamed the sagebrush and laurel interspersing the broom shrubs. A box pad placed for a vegetable plot was overgrown with inedibles.

“The privy is over there.” Guy pointed to a capsizing arrangement of rotting boards.

From the west the sound of a stream beckoned to Claude’s exasperated ear. A gust of cold wind tore at Claude’s exposed clavicle, and thoughts rushed their urgency. He needed to put the hearth in order, clean out the floors and re-thatch the roof, re-board the rotten woods of the privy, till the vegetable plot. His stomach growled, he needed bread.

The sun held its blood red eye just above the horizon. Guy’s face wobbled dreamily, the lips thinned in a smirk. “Come, let us to the bed … our bed.”

Light crept into the door-less opening and illuminated an inner chamber choked with the haggard vines of linens creeping over bed and ground. Doublets and shoes littered over the lacquered surface of a long chest lining a wall. Claude was too tired and too hungry to wonder why there was a giant canopied bed in a peasant’s hut.

Claude was thrust into the rot of a slogging day, the rot of Guy’s exhausting company, the rot of his night with Serge. Bankrupt and barren. Still deep beneath the odium churning, stray feelings grasped for second chances. It was not too late to run Auguste, beg him to forgive his haughtiness, and get on with the task of a dull adulthood.

“Where are the books, the horses, the lords?” Claude demanded. “You did bring me here to be your servant.”

“You ever hurt me so,” Guy’s face drooped in a dull look of hurt, “I am not your riders who do lie and take. I do what I say I will do. You will learn. You will go to University. You will meet lords. And in the fullness of time, I shall be paid what is owed me.”

A little chastised, Claude blurted, “Deny me your promises, and I will pay you naught. My body will be denied you. ”

Guy neighed a laugh. “I take what I want when I want.”

Claude snorted. “I will not be the servant who warms your bed only.”

“Good, we are in agreement as I have no need for a servant.” Guy picked the doublets and hoses off the floor and beat them into a chest. There was a manner of violence in those hands pounding on the gentle wool and slipper. Then he kicked close the chest, jumped onto the bed, and bounced in lewd delight.

Claude was startled and just as soon felt too tired for whatever Guy had in mind. “Where do you buy bread?”

“Ah oui, you do need to eat. What do you want? I’ll fetch them at Toulouse.”

“We took half a day’s sojourn to get here.”

“You’re the slow walker. It never takes me half a day.”

Claude scratched his head, gave up thinking, and plopped over in the bed.

Tiredness, tension seeped from his fingers, down the ends of his hair, off the contact of skin against coverlet, and into the downy softness of the bed. Overhead on the canopy, there was an ornate carving of birds fluttering around shrubs and grapes. The headboard was another slab of a wood-carver’s masterpiece. It was a good bed, perfect for a rich man, perfect for sleep and sex. Sabrine and Guy must have fornicated on the bed. Claude rolled over and banished the visions of Guy’s exertions shaking the bedposts. But Guy … regarding wantonly him with those eyes green flecked with brown.

Another Serge, Claude thought. Another man who would look and not touch, who would glow and shrivel in lust. Claude stirred to attention and resolved quickly to forget Serge once and for all.

“Sabrine sleeps here?” Claude asked brightly.

“She has a house in the college quarter in Toulouse.”

“Good. I would not sleep with you both.”

“You want me alone?” Guy thumbed Claude’s neck, stroking and caressing.

The hands were cold, as cold as Antoine when he was sprawled in mud, broken by the gates of the Senachausée. Perhaps the hands were warmer than the feel of Antoine’s dead cheeks. The room darkened on a duller shade of memory. Claude winced, squeezed off the hand, and looked forward to opening the window.

“I have spoken at length on Sabrine. Now you must tell me of Serge," Guy said.

Serge’s frantic assertion, ‘I am not like you’ sliced through Claude, and he gulped a feeling of nausea.

“Ah, he's a fine gallant with expert technique?” Guy batted his eyelashes, in the manner of an innocent maiden, or rather a devil in pretty makeup. “You would be gentle to me. ’Tis my first time.”

Claude snarled.

His face full of hurt, Guy turned his head away. “The whore likes a half-dead scut over supple youth—”

“Serge and I partook in no shame.”

Guy bloomed into a grin and fingered loops over Claude’s lips. “Verily, as virtuous as the Pope.”

Guy’s fingers were cold but still pleasant over his stubbly chin. Claude wanted the fingers do more that scribble. But Serge’s violent warmth, the violent assertions descended on him again, as though a whirlwind ripping through a vale, flattening whatever was green or lovely, and ushering chaos. Claude’s eyes twitched as he tried to hold on to the pleasures of the moment.

“Do you ever speak truth to yourself or to anyone?” Guy said.

The unexpected sterility in his voice was just what was needed for Claude to regain color. He swiped away the hands and growled, “Make haste with it. I am tired.”

“The whore you are. Sabrine suffers me sweet words.”

“Pfft romance! ’Tis my arse I trade for letters.”

“No romance, no lessons.”

Claude took that as the cue to jump from the bed and open the window. The vista of weeds and gnarled branches glared back to him. He sighed.

“What do you eat?” Guy asked, a bit labored.

“Whatever you eat.”

“I like rotten horse flesh—”

“Bread. Lots of bread,” Claude said, “just empty a kitchen cellar and bring it here. Where do you eat anyway?”

Guy smiled sweetly. “Sabrine feeds me, and Francois and Clarisse and Clemens, a few humans at the tavern.”

“’Tis no wonder your kitchen is dry. Whores, left and right, attend you.”

Guy arose from bed, more weary than enthusiastic. “You ever have a proud tongue. I pay for your upkeep. Would I that you were more a human in fear.”

“Ha, fear? That pleases you? I have met many a man who would only have me if I were weak and whimper like a lame bitch.” Claude laughed dryly as he sat down on the bed again.

Guy smacked Claude’s cheeks softly, cold fingers over the gritty chin. “If I am to teach and feed you, you will keep faithful for me only.”

“No,” Claude ejaculated.

“I pay for your upkeep, I demand loyalty.”

“Just like Serge, you!” Claude bounced on the bed and thought he would do what he wanted anyway.

“Unlike Serge, I intend to keep you very obedient.”

“How so? ’Tis your woman who refuses to kiss your shameful parts.”

“But she bends when I command it,” Guy raked thoughtful fingers through his long hair, “Will I have to break you to make you bend the knee?”

Claude tossed off the sudden gravity in Guy’s voice. “I need to eat.”

Guy left, mumbling something about raffish humans and delicious punishments. The air loosened its scent of nutty earth, and Claude rolled heavily to the end of the bed and back towards the headboard. Thoughts, long thoughts, tired thoughts tried to ascertain his free spirit and sketched out Guy’s untrustworthiness. Unease about the green stare held fast as he closed his eyes to the sky dull and grey in twilight.

***

It was alight with the twits of birds when Claude awoke to voices stronger than whispers floating in from the common room.

“Lambs are soft and obedient,” a female voice said.

“One does not cover lambs, you cover sheep.”

“I prefer lambs.”

“You are a woman, you can’t very well cover them.”

“Your eye hath not seen what is possible between me and a good lamb.”

“Not with mine. My lamb will grow into a rich fat sheep.”

Lambs, sheep, food. Claude had had enough of women speaking mannishly and so slapped on clothes and proceeded to the common room. There was a bounty of bread and olives, a few flagons of wine, and a leg of ham on the table.

“I raided a kitchen for you,” Guy said.

Claude wasted one moment, hoping Guy was not being literal before plunging to his feast of ham. He paused. Not meat. In two days would be Good Friday, and he had abstained from meat all Lent long. Sodomy was damnation enough, eating meat would be like spitting in God’s eye. The brown rump shaped itself into something hard and long in his eyes. His mouth flooded with saliva, and his fingers quickened for the plate. By chance he glanced up and met the sight of strange flesh on Guy’s lap—a woman looking a ten years older than Guy, a naked woman with hair like tar over nacreous skin.

Claude's fingers cramped. The injunctions were too damning, meat, sodomy, and popping eyes at a female flesh. A naked woman was always a damnable sight, a grievous and unpleasant sin and utterly discomfiting. Now he would have to confess truthfully to a priest without a hint of irony that he had looked at a woman wrong. He pushed the meat away painfully and reached for the bread and olives and forced upon himself the peace of grace.

“The whore has never seen a naked woman before,” she said.

“Sabrine, we agreed to pretend he’s a virgin.”

Claude grunted, “She agreed to kiss your shameful parts after all.”

“What does he prattle about?” she asked, pulling her head away and looking at Guy in a puzzled stare.

“Mind him not. His words shape no reason.” Guy kissed Sabrine, his hand cupping a breast. The kisses did not failed to stop.

Flushed, Claude broke a piece of bread. “My peace you ruined, complaining Sabrine refused to kiss you. You liar.”

“Lies are fair when my aim is conquest.” Claude flinched on this ‘conquest.’ Guy added, “I wanted your lovely neck in my abode.”

“But not for long.” She straddled Guy’s lap.

“Not for long.” Noisily kissing, Guy hoisted her and carried her towards the inner chamber. He stopped at the doorway. Still, her rose lips whispered over his clean chin. “Claude, you are content to eat and listen to us high in passion?”

“I leave you to sin in peace,” Claude said. “I would learn my letters.”

“A good sheep he is. He aims to be a serious student,” Sabrine said.

“Shush, find your own lamb.” Guy smacked her chalk white buttocks, ushering her inside.

Claude popped more olives, refused to think about what was meant by 'not for long', and waited for odious noises from the bedroom, but Guy returned somehow cheerier and placed a small slate board and chalk on the table

“I’d have you stay and hear how good I give her while learning your letters,” Guy said with a crystal glimmer in his eyes, “Here are the next three letters, D, E, F.”

“I don’t know the first three.”

“What happened to the parchment?”

“I tore it up.”

“Bless me. You tore up Francois’ good work modeling for me.”

Claude’s face darkened on Guy’s fickle fidelity. “Your ways did vex me.”

Guy sat on the bench beside Claude, wiped the slate vigorously and scrawled letters. White fingers wiggled over the black slate. “There.”

“I didn’t see clearly.”

“Ah, I forget ’tis men’s milk that fills your skull.”

“Guy?” Sabrine swooned from inside.

“Go be with your wench, and let me be,” retorted Claude.

“She can wait. We take a while.”

Claude necessarily rolled his eyes and poured more wine for himself. Guy grabbed his hand, and together they traced the letters on the board. “A, your leaky arse, B, hairy balls C, limp cock, D, the dog you are. E, my lovely green eyes. F, the sweet fucking you wish you will be having in a moment. By the way, we could use another member in bed.”

Claude yanked his hands away. “Your hand feels too cold.”

“The doctors say I have an excess of cold humor.” Guy ruffled Claude’s hair. “Nothing to worry your pretty blond head about. I am not dead yet.” Claude stamped on the hands rubbing illicit caresses over the crown of his head. “Learn that by the time we are done.”

Claude’s hand kept slipping in a quest to make the curve of an ‘a’ while Sabrine moaned, “Bite me.” The shutters rattled. His plate of half-eaten bread rattled against the table, and he grew hard on Guy’s grunts. On the high notes of Sabrine’s passion, it struck him, the village, its simple peasants with simple morals, was half a day from Toulouse. Guy had him where he wanted him, isolated and wanting. Guy had his fidelity from him already. Claude shook his head on the incredibility of his day so far and stroked himself to spilling and went for a walk.

Two

Claude followed the stream trail west to the heart of the village. Behind him the marigold sun was awakening, and bird chirps thrilled the cold spring morning. The jagged-edged dandelion leaves, the unopened buds glittering with dew, hardworking ants, were crushed underneath his feet. There were the ash trees and its damp branches budding with young spring leaves. The scenery changed as trees with the diameters of human waists became trees with the diameters no bigger than forearms. The low-lying bramble of dogwoods and spindle shrubs gave way to the cleared flats of ordered plots. Thatched houses stood singly in these demarcated boxes of farmland. In the north the stone bell tower of a church speared into the white sky. Aurin had no main seignuerial Lord, or rights wielding monastery or canons. Only the parish church and King lay claim to the labors of the farmers. Their hard work had tilled the land into the regular ridges in preparation for the spring planting of wheat.

Wasps and winged termites swirled around, particularly loved the canal of his ear. Claude slapped and batted at the wind, imagining God’s special unholy designs for his virgin ears. His eyes drifted closed for a moment. It was quiet. The air was clean. The paths were free and clear. Just like his home village in the Pyrenees Mountains, life held its purity and its innocence, not like the clogged and deafening Toulouse.

He followed his nose to a communal bakery where a battery of brown-clothed women trapped him, offering to sell their loaves for very little. The matron of the bakery who looked drenched in sweat for a cold morning threw him a free loaf and shooed him away. As he continued on gratefully towards the church square, a woman called his attention from behind. Claude brushed off the feathery tones of “Young man, here, young man.” As a rule, he ignored the conversation of women. In the city one did well to avoid the little girl crying real tears to buy her dolls, or the toothless old man peddling tonics. But the woman tugged on his doublet and would not let go.

Matheva Sobacca, she called herself. Claude gave the evasive smile reserved for uncomely women, veil-buried, Devil-burnt women. Any moment now, the breeze would blow away her willowy frame, but now he would have to oblige her desperate hawking.

“Passing through? What need have you? We have it.” She pushed her head up and stared into his blue eyes.

Claude stepped back and wrapped his cloak tighter around himself. “I have taken domicile upstream. I have no want, Na”

“Upstream? There is nothing there.” She mumbled to herself for a moment. “You are squatting in old Gigot’s place?”

“My tutor—What happened to old Gigot?”

“Christmastide last, after Sunday Mass, his body stolen of his heart and blood rained down from heaven upon the church door.” She crossed herself hurriedly.

“God rest his soul,” Claude said with a fainting breath.

Her ferrous cheeks plumped as she smiled. “You are safe if you lodge with us. I will let you live cheaply too, two livres per week.” She marched ahead. Claude paused, lost in thought over the demon and his Angel of Death. “Come Stranger.” She beckoned and led away to her farmhouse, her strides imperceptible inside her long skirt.

They approached a cottage made of stone standing like it alone held up the sky from colliding into the fields. A maiden greeted them at the door, fresher looking; her smile revealed intact off-white teeth unlike Matheva’s yellow and black teeth.

“This young man is squatting at Gigot’s old cottage,” Matheva said.

“Some young men would hasten to dying,” the maiden said, looking perturbed over Claude.

“Not if he lives with us.” Matheva turned to Claude. “Never mind Amaline. She is given to black melancholy.” Amaline pouted in response.

The master of the house, the dominus of the ostal, Quentin Sobacca stood commandingly at the doorway to the cottage and almost snarling at the lanky Claude. The man of haggard eyes was half a head taller than Claude. The hard living, though, did slightly stoop his stature and burn his full black beard with grey. Shakily, Claude willed himself to grow tall as he defended his indolent interests in studying rather than being a farmhand.

“He had best get his flour, his own cow, and his own roof,” Quentin said to his wife now beside him.

Buggered sheep Claude gritted his teeth. “I do well on my own, Na.”

Matheva would have none of that and insisted on regular transactions for bread and olives. His patronage, his wealth, entirely of her hopeful imagination, would lift her family to fame and fortune. The four sons squeaked by the bulky figure of Quentin and crowded around Claude. The men in the house were of one sort: the type that would not pay for Claude’s services.

The eldest Leo stood by his father, with hand to chin. “Fret not, Papa. He won’t steal Amaline’s virtue, at least not before the demon takes him,” he said with the affectations of a landless master. Still, the young man could be handsome with his scruffy jaws, deep-set eyes, an uneven pageboy’s haircut.

“Demons like lazy students, I hear,” Amaline said, shoving her plump face into Claude’s nose. He backed up. She scuttled closer and nodded affirmatively. “Demons like lazy louts very much.

Matheva pulled her aside. “You are being uncaring again, Amaline.” Her leathery cheeks failed to round in a smile. “Claude, I would not leave you to the evil sprite.”

The talk of demons and their dinner choices so rankled Claude that he took wiping his forehead repeatedly. He said, “Surely Gigot’s body did not rain from the sky upon the church door.”

Amaline gave him the look of a mother to an idiot. “You would argue with us over what we saw with our own eyes?”

Claude demurred from her sharp stare. “I’ll see about this animal myself.” He further thought he would have to talk to Guy about the whereabouts of Gigot’s heart.

“He’s a real man after all,” Leo said. “Say, where are you from?”

“Garanac,” Claude said. “Up in the Pyrenees.”

“Chestnut eaters,” Quentin muttered. “And pigfuckers.”

Claude agreed on chestnut eating but not the pigs. Goats were more suitable for mountain terrain.

“Amaline, you are forbidden to see him,” Quentin said.

“What would I with a dead man?” Amaline asked.

Incestuous whore. Incestuous dealings in the dank house could only be the explanation for her sallow humor. Claude left, feeling a little pleased over the mental defamation.

***

In the common room, Claude broached the subject of murder before Guy, who was cooing and purring over Sabrine, as man and wench in a tavern of iniquity.

“What of Gigot? Humans die, isn’t that what they do?” Guy said finally.

“Wherefore you call men ‘human’? ’Tis a base manner,” Claude yelled.

“You are human, are you not?”

“As are you.”

Sabrine broke into a fluttering plume of laughter. Claude glared back at her.

“Now tell me since I am human as you say how I stole upon Gigot like a thief in night, grew the fangs of a bat, drained him of his blood. Gained beastly strength in my arm and ripped into his chest and took his heart. And in full of light of day, the Lord’s holy day at that, I threw the body upon the church door, all of Aurin’s eyes witnessing this wondrous event.” Guy’s blank stare hovered over Claude. “Never tell me. My task of tutelage will be long and hard indeed. I must teach you logic, and inference, and the proper method of reason.”

“And Aristotle,” Sabrine added

“Oc that. First our whore must suck milk before feasting on meat.”

Twisting his mouth, Claude brooded. “You did steal the house of a poor man.”

“A dead man.” And Guy and Sabrine left for a merry day, they called it.

A merry day stretched into merry days, and in the meanwhile Claude sawed and mowed, muttered and cursed to make the new home fit for human living.

On Easter Sunday Claude opened his eyes to a sinking feeling of loss. Serge, he had dreamed of, kneeling before him and sucking and gripping for essence and relief. His eyes swept from the canopy to the chest’s gleam and over to the mirror, in search for someone to latch onto. The room was nothing but a hollow of sunlight. The glum feelings he pushed off onto the bed before he dressed himself for Mass.

The church, Eglise Ste Apollanie, was a stark edifice of bland stone without choirs or didactic frescoes, no resplendent statues of saints, no variegated stained glass windows. The incense transported you to the smoky kitchen instead of the Alleluias of the cherubim and seraphim. The Jesus on the crucifix hanging over the altar had eyes that were too red, lips curling in an asymmetrical pout. Jesus looked less pained and more vexed, seemingly ready to leap off the cross and yell at the faithful.

Paire Dennis had intoned a soporific Latin to celebrate the Mass then during the homily his voice jumped down several octaves and scaled the massive peaks of volume. “The Huguenots spit on the Eucharist.” Paire Dennis descended from the pulpit. “They trample on the images of Virgin with their club feet.” He stamped his feet on the ground and trampled on imaginary virgins and real demons.

Catholics, Huguenots, Claude yawned. They would equally damn his sodomy. He was just grateful for the Sacred Host, the only one he would receive all year. In preparation for taking the Eucharist, he had to confess his sins. The lascivious eye for a woman, his lust of meat, his frequent blasphemy, his slothful disposition, he confessed all but his sodomy.

Chewing on the sacred host, he waited for the clerestory windows to shatter, the walls to cave in, and for God to smite him for consuming the Sacred Host when he was yet un-cleansed of sin. The body of Christ would mingle with his damned soul and should commence a sudden putrefaction of flesh. Instead Claude felt the poverty of the church, artistic and spiritual, invade his soul. The murmurs and foot shuffling of the faithful did not thunder or condemn him. An acolyte offered him the communion wine rudely. He glanced at Paire Dennis’ jowls and smiled. Not this year. Perchance next year, God would damn him.

After Mass Quentin told everyone of the stranger who ravished maidens. Amaline had spread word of the student who tempted God’s providence. Women, the veiled ones, whispered excitedly among themselves, pointing snappy fingers, and men came up to him in rapid succession and demanded name, origin and business. Claude chafed at the small-mindedness of twiggy women and rat-faced men.

Claude walked home in no hurry. Upon arriving at the inner chamber, he found Guy in the arms of Sabrine—naked bodies entwined like a creeping vine on a faltering stem. Deo Gratias. Claude’s loins glowed in the heat of praise. His gaze sought the mystery of pockmarks on the brown walls for relief. Useless. As if possessed with a will of their own, eyes fell again on the twisting braid of flesh and bone.

“’Tis Easter,” Claude said breathlessly. “Did you not go to Mass?”

“We are Huguenot. Did I not tell you the Catholic Mass is a ceremony of idolatry and illogical cannibalism?” Guy’s voice sounded low and dull, newly awoken from pleasure’s lull. Seeking restraint, Claude tried to frown on the obvious lie. “See here, we are celebrating. Christ is risen?” Thrust, thrust, thrust.

Claude shifted his weight from foot to foot. Guy or Sabrine? Female mouth agape and voiceless to pleasure’s cry? Or the royal chest aflame with sweat’s gloss and body hair? Guy, definitely Guy.

“Shall I roll aside and you take over?” Guy asked.

“I would not be party to strange congresses.”

“Who speaks of strange congress? I play my lute, you bore her.”

“No human takes me,” Sabrine shrieked, turning over to crawl on all fours on the bed. “He’s welcome to lick my cunny.”

Sabrine calling human pricked him. It did surprise Claude to think, he had unconsciously deemed Guy the only one fit to call him human. The woman of burnished high cheekbones suddenly seemed a filthy whore. “I am no figlicker,” he said with the force of defamation.

“Ah you do want me,” Guy said. “Do as I say, and perhaps, you have the honor of praying before me?” He kneeled upright on the bed, and a mighty tree shot out of the earth.

Claude trembled in need for Guy. Catching himself, he rubbed his eyes and pulsed breaths as mauve circles squirted underneath his eyelids. The knave. He turned away, deciding on his self-pride.

“When does the human bleed for us?” Sabrine asked.

“Us?”

Feeling something snap in the air, Claude twisted back to them. Mirth had leaked from Guy’s rounded cheeks and coin eyes, and the face was assuming the flat hard mien of ghastly scorn. Guy’s hairy chest was recoiling from the curve of her beasts.

“Leave my bed,” Guy ordered.

“How now, Guy?” Emitting thin threads of laughter, she flung her arms over his shoulders in an attempt to reclaim lust. “Surely, he’s not for you alone?”

Guy grabbed her arms and held her off sharply. She gasped something flutteringly suggestive pain or pleasure. Blood trickled where his fingertips buried into white skin. Then her gasps became whimpers, her eyes flew wide, her mouth parted to terror. Claude’s jaw slacked open.

“Forgive me,” she cried. “Yours alone, yours alone.”

Palliated, Guy threw her aside with a shrug. Black hair and a smooth back and a teary face jostled lifelessly unto the bed. “You can have her now,” he said, breaking through Claude’s stupor.

Claude shrank from the sight of Sabrine curled in a mournful fetal position. Black strands of hair lined a crescent over her wilting eyes.

“No,” Claude cried, “You just hurt her—” Guy’s eyes. Savagely green. The force of them had mysteriously burdened. They were sucking him down a tarry sticky precipice into a chasm brimmed with oily dread. A gunky mass sunk in the back of his throat. It burned and burned and radiated shards of heat that were now wildly fracturing his skull.

A smile curved Guy’s lips, and he looked away. “Claude, how will I deal with you?”

It was then Claude felt the nasty dampness of his chemise clinging to the sides of his chest. It was then he grasped a daggered meaning to Guy’s claim of a debt. He turned away shakily and slithered a tight way to a seat in the common room. The sword arm of the Lord was closer than he had thought, and he was no ready for judgment.