Paradise for the Damned. - 8. Chapter 8

“Zeus,” Sabrine cried from the inner chamber

“Apollo,” Guy said.

“My stallion.” Her voice screamed higher in pitch, higher in passion.

“I am no woman’s steed.”

“Oh Diamhin.”

Thumping stopped. The air was stale and stiff and laden with sticky heat.

“What did you call me?”

Seated in the common room, Claude cringed, clasped his face, and held tight as he imagined the steel claws in Guy’s glare. Apparently the tutor had a secret name that was not to be uttered by humans or Sabrine.

“Forgive me, my liege,” she said.

Thumping commenced. And movement, the movement of the earthen walls crackling with dust and debris, Claude’s book bouncing on the table. The pots and pans hanging over the hearth, rattling and jangling in submission. He grabbed the book skittering towards his lap and banged it against his forehead in a rhythm irregular against Guy’s. Sanity, somehow, would be beat into him, either that or a merciful headache to blot out Sabrine’s moans.

“Credo in unum Deum, Patrem omnipoténtem, factorem cæli et terræ, visibílium ómnium et invisibílium,” Claude shouted over the frolicking wave then tossed the book aside.

Claude understood nothing. Guy taught him in the bastardly fashion: memorize first, understand later. French, Latin, Occitan were all a jumble of amore, amare, amour. A Latin psalter lay with a book of Occitan poetry stacked on a French romance. Occitan, he could read after much effort, but Latin and French were syllables of an alien and wasted imagination. He deflated against the table, sighing off the literary beauty of the moon, the light gliding off a maiden’s tresses, the sissy musings of a parched monk. He could write a better tome, and his book … Claude snatched the metallic-black quill and parchment, flushed with the hot air of fantasies of orgiastic bliss. His book … his eyes circled once over the room suddenly dulled of its inspiration. He had nothing. He would not even want to read his fantasies in a book. He did not care for reading or studying or working.

Sabrine grunted, an aching, powerful grunt, her last throes against Guy’s conquering cock. Claude’s hands slid to an angled pole in his lap.

“You sly fox, you spilling your seed in vain. You’re welcome to finish her off,” Guy yelled from the bed. “Sabrine loves little humans.”

Irritated, more so perplexed with Guy’s uncanny ability to keep him studious even while having sex, Claude read aloud the Credo again.

A few moments later Sabrine emerged from the room, clothed in a blue kirtle over a dull white smock, her black hair ragged over her shoulders. Slight wrinkles gathered at the corners of her lips and her eyes. Even after sex, her eyes never softened on Claude. She was worse than a whore, Claude thought. He would demand payment for accepting the hard gifts of sordid, difficult men, while she was the twiggy, needy, servile wench who returned week after week to Guy’s gravel company. At least he had the excuse of ‘studying’ to ignore Guy’s unsavory manners and his suspicions about Gigot.

Claude peered from his book to confirm the ugliness of her hooked nose. A murky emulsion was swirling in her eyes, streaking the whites with plumes of crimson. The red eyes in Serge’s garden came to mind and the rant from the Jacobin preacher about the Angel of Death. Dread flared up in him, and he mumbled, “Your eyes…”

“He is mine,” Guy bellowed from the chamber.

“Yes, yours,” Sabrine shut her eyes and opened them again. They were chestnuts set in milk.

Calm stole into his soul, and Claude said proudly now, “Nobody owns me.”

“Ah oui, he’s yours. I have no use for stubborn sheep.” And she traipsed out the door.

“You should marry her and keep her bridled.” Claude turned over quietly on the bench and tiptoed to the open door to escape books.

“Till eternity do us part—Where goes you? Read me a psalm.”

Claude wilted at the door. “For certes, you are training me to be a priest.”

“Oc, my priest to bless my wedding.”

Claude shuffled to the inner chamber with a mind to complain about the tutor who was more lascivious than learned. Guy was supine in bed, his head laying over the black fan of his hair flat on the green coverlet, his eyes open and blind to the canopy above. Incendiary emotions were stilled in an instant. A splinter of a shadow cut from Guy’s neck, darkening a hairy trail over the chest to the pubic hedge where hid sleepy jewels. Verily, the man was Antoine asleep in death.

“You aren’t thinking of my fine figure nor my fine implement,” Guy said as though awakened to awareness.

Claude took a moment to remember he was angry and that he had some grievance. “I have had enough letters—”

“I offer you Sabrine on every chance and you repay me by thinking on your sweet half-dead Serge,” Guy said, aggrieved.

Claude clenched to the force of memories. “Again, Serge and I lived in no shame.”

“As you say. Which lover held your mind this time?”

“What lover?”

“The one you were thinking of just now.”

Claude shook his head frustratedly. “Christ’s wounds.”

“Never tell me. Read me from the psalter.”

It felt like an order. Claude trembled a moment then forced on himself to ease up. It was just a green-eye twit, a green-eyed naked twit in the bed.

“Who has claimed the long thoughts of a whore?” Guy asked.

“I shall read your psalm now.”

“Whose was bigger?” And before Claude a star rose in the east.

Claude looked about dumbly to the window-sized portrait of shrubs yellowing in the fading sunlight, the staggered mess of candles on the linen table, anywhere but on Guy. Antoine’s droopy brown eyes lit up. The nasal voice dinged again in Claude’s ears. Lithe arms floundered pleasantly over him. In the haze of the Antoine bloom, Guy’s body slipped on silhouettes of vulgarity. Disgusted, Claude stumbled around for the doorway, and his weak legs managed him back to the table.

“You are a proud thing. All of Toulouse partakes of you, and yet you do not woo me.” Guy was leaning by the doorway, still looking vilely aroused.

“I beg no one. I woo no one,” Claude said.

“Because you are a whore?”

“Oc, because I am the whore. People come to me, not I to them.”

“But you wooed him and loved him.”

“I did not woo and most certainly did not love An—”

“Andre was his name. We must visit this Andre,” Guy said rather pleased with himself.

“Go forth and find this ‘Andre’.” And Claude decided on a stroll.

***

The stream gushed, sloshed and dazzled, and yet the air still felt gunky with heat. If Claude took the stream eastwards past St Sernin lake, past the plains of fallowed land, past towns destitute for its stimulation, he would be in Toulouse again. And what of it? More fucking and fighting on a hungry stomach and with a rudderless heart. He halted, wiped the sweat trickle over his eye, prayed for a little wind, and cursed the heavens for not bequeathing him a life free from the need of toil.

A shriek splintered his thin senses. And at the other side of the stream, a woman, hands grasping the untied strings of her kirtle, was flitting downstream towards the village.

The half-naked profile of Alphonse divided from a wall of heavy oaks. A chemise was hung over his freckled shoulders. His hairy hands clutched the waist seams of his loose joint hose. He took a few thoughtless harried steps in her direction and just as he might break into chasing after her, his gait slowed as his gaze became heavy and forlorn at the disappearing kernel of the woman.

Alphonse boasted the lusty spirit, the good looks of an almond-haired, full-teethed peasant, and yet had the misfortune of misdirected youth. Claude wanted him, though not today, not with Alphonse looking doleful at the woman’s swishing behind.

Alphonse noticed Claude and waded across the stream. “The hussy she is. Clarisse had me kissing and loving her tenderly on Mayday. Now she refuses my member, says it is too long. Her cunny is too small. A baby fits in there nicely but not my thing.”

Claude gulped. Keep the eyes up and level at the nose. Ignore the water droplets like a fleur de lis on the pink nipple. Ignore the hard vein lining the side of his neck.

A twist of pain ratcheted in his head along with the memories of Mayday. While the boys with ill-gotten bouquets of eglantines chased after the girls, he wrote the Pater Noster ten times to the lovely sounds of Sabrine crying for Zeus.

In the three months they had lived together, Guy had not touched him. In fact, it seemed to Claude that Guy rarely slept. He went bed alone and woke up to Guy sitting by the bedpost, staring at him in savage need of something that was obviously not his body. Staring at the brown ridge of hair peeking from Alphonse’s waist seams, Claude decided Guy owed him some pleasure. Guy supplied the shelter, the money, the lessons, and a good hard ravishment of his arse was in there somewhere as obligation.

“Find another hussy,” Claude muttered, turning away.

“But Clarisse pleases me.”

“A great roast boar pleases me.”

Alphonse pooled his curly hair one-handedly, smiling a little. “It will take time. Dear Blessed Mother, not too much time, or I hop on hags.”

“Hags before cows or lads, yes?”

“After calamity takes away the last of the crones, mayhap I consider a lad.”

Claude panted a small prayer to the Devil. And the Devil answered quickly. Alphonse slid his arm around his shoulders and shook gently.

“I would choose Amaline after Clarisse, but she has her eye on you,” Alphonse said.

“Take her,” Claude said despairingly. Amaline was the Our Lady of Doom, who never failed to remind him at each meeting that he was going to die; Lent was the very fabric of her soul.

Field of green wheat, not yet knee high, came into view. Alphonse talked about so and so Senher whose wife had been cuckolding him with the blacksmith. Claude nodded yes, never no, as long Alphonse kept his arm on his shoulders, never no.

From the village direction, A little woman waddled up to them with a heavy basket strapped to her back. Alphonse skipped away from Claude and began smoothing his hair.

The sudden coolness on his shoulders alerted Claude to the Our Lady of Doom. Not only did she proclaim doom, she insisted his lessons be her lessons, his tutor be her tutor, his time be all hers to declaim to scorn and vanity. Youth marked her not with a ruddy glow, but with a listlessness particular to maidens, who had quickly discerned of the tedium of life without having first being debauched by its distractions.

“Claude, what more lesson from your tutor?” Amaline had her face squarely on Claude, not Alphonse.

Black hair parted over her face, cradled her jawline, and drew attention to her reddish-brown lips. Her smock gathered above the neckline of her bodice, almost strangling her neck with a ribbon drawstring. The billows of her skirt padded out any shape to her female form.

Alphonse gawked and licked his lips. “You are fair.”

“Yes I am fair and fresh until I swell with your spawn. I would not be pretty then. No you would cozen another virgin and tell her she is the apple of your eye.”

“You are fair now, you are fair. Tell me I am handsome too.”

“There’s mud on your nose.”

Alphonse shot Claude an angry look before clawing at his face to clean off blemishes. “I have been working.”

“I’ve been working too. Do you see mud on my face?”

“Ah, you pay good heed to your looks, and so thou art fair.”

“Tell me ten times, and I would not be moved.”

Claude keyed in on his grievance with Amaline. She was sixteen and too knowledgeable but still retained innocence. The innocence was all the more frightening for its tenacity.

“Guy demands of me,” Claude said, turning about for the cottage.

“You promised to teach me how to spell Mama’s name.”

Claude took a few blinking moments. “What is the good of letters if all is vanity?”

“I would not be ignorant,” she said, like he was a fool.

Claude sighed on the irony of what she deemed ignorance. Perhaps he should recite an ode on the delights of sodomy, complete with euphemisms of roses and buds and branches. Those innocent eyes were big on him, ready to take anything he said as wisdom. Lenten austerity was gone; it was as though advent was dawning in her soul, and she would burst into a joyous Christmastide. Claude smiled, a little pleased with the softness in her. Mischief he chucked towards Alphonse as he sketched the curve of his groin, then he squatted and scrawled her mother’s name on the ground.

She nodded with a student’s eagerness and proceeded to scribble other words she had learned before. Claude felt some envy. She should be Guy’s pupil, not him. Nature was cruel in gifting her the aptitude, the will, but the wrong sex. He wanted to have her enthusiasm for a moment.

“How do I know it is right?” Amaline cried suddenly, heating up Claude’s cool thoughts.

In a masterstroke of maximum reversal, Claude mentally labeled her an incestuous whore, but he said, “A quandary, yours only to untangle.”

“A what?”

“Never mind.”

“’Tis true, you do feed me nonsense. Are you even learning in that cottage?”

Claude stood up wearily. “Woman, leave me. Go play with your hair.”

Amaline pushed her hands over her hips and her lips snouted. “Not long now, and the demon shall take you too.”

“Until then no more lessons from me.”

“Amaline, what you with the charlatan? Papa will curse me again,” Leo shouted, scrambling to reach her from behind. He hardly looked at the scribbles on the ground before kicking over ‘Matheva’ and ‘Christus’. Pleased with his manly and brotherly duty, he turned his billy-goat bearded gaze unto Claude. “Would you marry a cow that knows more than you?”

“I’d marry a cow if it had a large enough dowry,” Claude said.

“He called you a cow,” Leo said to Amaline. “He speaks truly, all village girls are cows.”

“You called me a cow,” Amaline said. “Ever since Papa allowed you peddle in Toulouse, you never stop about women. City women this, village girls that.”

“Village girls look like fresh mud. City girls…” Leo assumed the look of a charmed saint. His hand shook Claude’s arm. “You tell her how plump the girls are in the Toulouse.”

Claude would join in a fraternal lament with Leo and Alphonse over the backwardness of Aurin. But those hands, those calloused hands dispensing with filial love, no chance they would slip down his breeches?

Aurin was perfect, Claude cried inwardly. Aurin was perfect. He could not declare solidarity with a man who would refuse to kiss him.

“Leo, together we must visit Toulouse,” Alphonse said, his eyes wide in excitement

Leo and Alphonse leaned on each other’s arm and traded stories on the plumpness of city girls. Camaraderie boomed in their voices, exclusivity in their ringing jests. All was cheer, all was the joy that were a maiden’s breasts. Amaline stood apart, her nose tip the reddest Claude had ever seen, her lips in poutiest pout. Claude wanted to take her by arm and nod together reproachfully over the heaven-spurned reveries, but unwholesome physical contact with women was frowned upon in the simple village of simple morals. Men, however, could hold and kiss and hug each other till abandon in Christian charity. And Amaline was, well, Our Lady of Doom.

“The wenches in Toulouse are fresh … stubborn goats,” Claude growled.

“What? A woman chased you away with her ladle? And you hide behind letters?” Leo asked.

Before Claude could retort his defenses against rabid ladles, the group espied Quentin lumbering giddily down the path in a caprine gait. The children scattered to work before Quentin could inveigh against ‘the stranger’.

Claude himself did not walk very far before Quentin called him back. His eyes fell under the shadow of his wide-brimmed hat.

“Stranger, keep yourself and your tutor away from my daughter.”

And it was back to cryptic Latin, and to Guy whooping about Andre.

***

The next morning Claude awoke to his implement high and mighty to greet him. He scarcely gave a thought to Guy’s whereabouts before lovingly dreaming of Alphonse. Leo and Alphonse … the keys to the kingdom of heaven.

“Change up your hands.”

Claude jerked to Guy grinning at the doorway. He had not heard him move or stir. Now that he thought about it, Guy had a way of sneaking up on him.

“This learning fails me. I return to Toulouse.” Claude arose from the bed painfully as he thought of carving a little privacy to finish off the scene where Leo feeds his turnips to Alphonse.

“I cannot allow you to men with golden balls.”

Claude glared a wide look of defiance.

“It detracts from study. It was our agreement. It more sullies my pride,” Guy said.

Claude mimed to himself with a toss of the head, ‘Pride.’

“I give the money, food and lessons. By due right, even your blood is mine.”

Claude’s eyes flicked from the one end of the room to the other. “I offered my carnal company only.”

“Bless my cock, by what bastard scale of value would I trade things haemal for things proctal.” Guy plumped himself on the bed and widened his legs far apart, his hands stamped back on the bed. “My charity displeases you?”

Claude snorted.

“What need have you? Crawl on your knees and ask. You might receive.”

Claude dared to sit by him, dared to face the rapier of his stare. Even after three months together, he could not master Guy’s gaze. He either focused on the ivory polish of the nose or the long strands glancing his ears, never the eyes.

“A heady dream you must have had last night, I crawling on my knees like a she-cur in heat,” Claude said

Guy looked up to the ceiling then to Claude. “Humans do look better on their knees.”

Claude grunted and stirred to get away from the face blunted of its human edge and twisting into a lupine snout. But a hand, cold but quick, gripped his wrist and pulled him back to sitting. The grip, he imagined, to be a heretic’s shackle.

“Bless me, you trade mammon for virtue, and your pride is as great as my implement,” Guy said, his voice rising in emphatic volume.

“I please you now?” Claude’s voice thinned into a coy pitch.

The tutor continued in the same hard tone, “Even Lucifer fell from heaven. I break them all break in the end.”

“Like how you broke Sabrine?”

“Sabrine freely enjoys my company. I have no need to break her,” Guy said, “You however … everyone of those I claim breaks in the end.”

Claude remembered a Latin verse he had read the other day. ‘I shall break them with a rod of iron.’ A vague meaning held fast to the frames of his mind. Guy’s breaking was no simple sexual mechanics, not a promise of carnal bliss, but would leave him bereft and desolate. Feeling spurned now, Claude tried to twist his hand from the grip. Guy held firm, like iron. Just as the silhouette of fear dawned pale red shadows over Claude, Guy burst into laughter.

“First, you’ll have to delight me with this fantasy of strength.”

Guy’s grip never wavered even in the laughter. The hands were no bigger than Claude’s, the wrists the same size girth, and in his bright tremble of dread Claude could not discern the strength animating Guy’s forearm. It was clearer now. Guy called him human because Guy was somewhat beyond human. The red eyes of Serge’s garden hovered low in his mind and under its pall, Claude found himself scrabbling for novenas against demons.

Claude mumbled, “Angel of Death.”

“Angel of Death? You need your breakfast before all your reason flees.” Guy laughed a deeper thunder and smacked him softly on the buttock to set him off for the day.

Over the next few days, Claude re-asked questions from long ago. Guy stole money from his very rich guardian Roland Delayer who lived in Rouen. Guy did not drink wine because its taste lacked. Guy thought olives tasted bland. Guy would sleep, but surely Claude did not like sharing the bed unless, of course, Claude begged him to bed.

“Questions, questions, Claude. Now you must tell me about Andre and the power of his machine.”

Claude stopped asking questions and concentrated on the French canticle to St Eulalia.

“Eulalie était une bonne jeune fille,” Claude said out loud. “Elle avait le corps beau et l'âme plus belle encore.” He laid the book down. “What I am reading?”

“Nothing important. Read on.”

“It escapes meaning.”

“Do you commit to memory the word lists I gave you?”

Claude shifted from the table. “Christ’s wounds. They never stick to mind.”

“Eulalie was a good girl. You may guess the meaning by comparing to Occitan. She was beautiful and had a more beautiful spirit,” Guy rattled off.

Claude rubbed his eyes tiredly. “I am reading about some cunt?”

“Reverence, Claude,” Guy sighed. “A good saint who saved her virginity for God. She flew away to heaven a little bird when evil men demanded she remonstrate her faith and give up her chastity. A lesson for you there.”

Claude turned over the bench and went to the backdoor. The sun was high and bright. Before he would leave, Guy guided him back to the table and pressed down on his shoulders to sit. His touch felt like an illicit massage. Guy skipped to other end of the table and pushed a slate towards him.

“You understand prayers. Write down the Pater Noster for me.”

Claude fumbled on the slate. He felt too restless with Guy eying him strangely. He wrote the first line easily, Pater Noster on a slate board. He began the second line, Qui et in — He wiped away the line with the palm of his hand as if vigor could joggle memory. He glanced at him. Guy was grinning still. The words ‘qui est in celis’ flashed in his mind. Claude jotted them down.

He looked at Guy—the same grin—and cleaned off the board. The stinging in his palm helped none. It brought no order to the cauldron of words: Caelis, heaven, ciel heaven, cel, heaven. Letters, words, sentences roiled bubbling soup of disorder. Then Guy arose from the table. He relaxed, thinking Guy would leave him alone.

“Not enough milk in your head to help you think?”

Claude gritted his teeth, pushing the board aside on the table and said, “I give no care for this.” He was cool again. “I return to Toulouse.”

Guy bent over Claude’s ears. “If I suck you off, you will remember. Your tutor is here to help. Say it, worshipful Tutor help me remember…”

There that white smile again digging into Claude and tossing out the sensitive bits like a man plowing through a chest and throwing away gems. He wanted to smash the perfect face to teeth and eyeballs. Forget advancement or refinement. It was beneath him to take instruction from the knave who communed with ugly women and earned coin from somewhere criminal.

He pulled to his feet, all his might focused on clenching his fists and clawing to self-restraint. By the Virgin, he would not let the lout unseat the government of himself. He walked lightly now, his gaze skimming above the rim of Guy’s impish eyes to the welcome free doorway of the inner chamber. Clothes, all Guy’s, a handful of coins, all Guy’s, were bundled up in a knapsack.

Guy darkened the doorway, his smile taut. “You have yet to pay me for your constant dishonor.”

The steady strong voice chinked off something in Claude, and he lopped over the bed to Guy’s person and stamped the cold skeletal hands on his buttocks. “Take your payment, or you stop nagging.”

Green eyes narrowed in a stare, and as if an afterthought, a grin nestled in the wide moustache. Claude juddered, shifting away immediately from the eyes, but Guy gripped the back of his neck and forced their gazes to meet. Sweat trickled down Claude’s jaw, and a rod of heat lined his gullet. The eyes were his very stake of judgment.

“Run. Hide. Do not let me find you.” Guy laughed some more before turning out.

Claude shook out the fright and nodded some sense into himself. It was no matter, he was leaving once and for all.

The chestnut tree had lost its white bloom, and little prickly fruit dangled from the volant wings of leaves. Claude thought wistfully of the harvest to come and its happy bustle, but freedom whispered in the air thickly warm and turned his sights westwards beyond Sernin Lake. On his way he picked up Alphonse and Leo. Toulouse. The good women. The good wine. And three men, three booming men becrowned with lust’s gold, trekked for the city.