The Cross and the Black

by Luwa Wande

  Chapter Four

  At the table in the common room, Claude was inspecting clothes to be mended while hammers from the adjacent Serge’s shop pounded the nail of a headache deep into his skull. Bang, bang, bang. His head would split and leak out a soul thin in loneliness. Bang, bang, bang. Merciless clangor, cold clangor hounded from the man who had cast him aside so easily. He stiffened, gritted his teeth. Bang, bang, bang. Claude abandoned the clothes on the table and decided to break his Lenten fast early. No good wallowing in hurt over an empty stomach.

  He placed a plate of bread and olives on a workbench for Serge and his apprentices. The hammers jolted the counter, jittering the plate into a fall. Serge and Claude reached simultaneously for the plate, and Serge’s hand ended on Claude’s. Momentarily, they looked askance at each other before Serge pulled his hand away.

  The stocky carpenter was a rabble of contradictions. Brown was his apron. Brown was his beard and brawny arms. Serge scorned his easy reprobation, flinched when he was close, and brooded when he was afar. This needy Serge demanded Claude’s erotic curiosity.

  However, Claude’s headache further pounded its annoyance. The sand-brown eyes of his master roved side to side over him. Claude clenched his teeth, damning dreams in which he sculptured his body against Serge’s. But this was reality: The carpenter would have his wife and his cold earth of propriety while he would have to slough off heartache and be confidently aloof.

  The apprentices took a break from banging to eat. Banter rocked on this and that order for a chair. Nodding in apparent agreement, the thirty-year old Serge popped olive after olive into his hair-ringed mouth. Any moment now, Claude thought, a good priest would walk by and transubstantiate those olives into something of his choosing.

  Serge spat a line of pits at Claude. “When does Seyr have need of you?”

  “Not until after the wedding.”

  Two weeks till Easter then another two weeks till the wedding, four weeks in total stewing in bellicose want.

  Serge’s brow furrowed. “I shall speak to Seyr to have you sooner.”

  At once Claude regretted his sorry self that clung to bits and scraps of his master. Huffing away, he dismissed Serge’s serious timbre that tinted a shade droll and decided to get on with the business of the day.

  Outside, the sky would be beautiful, would be blue, would be a firmament of wonder if Claude could raise his throbbing head and admire it. Instead, he had to admire the stink assault of rotten cabbages in his nostrils, burrowing a frothy trail of nastiness up into his brain, and then compacting into another nail drilling a headache.

  Along Rue St. Sernin, the way thickened with trumpet dirges and the dark dolor of a funeral procession. Claude allowed a moment to forget his foul headache and then crossed himself in begrudging reverence for the dead. It was only a moment to be spared before the haunting thoughts of life and death, respect and love, would engulf him and demand he bow his head in shame over his twenty years of ineffective existence. Let the dead bury the dead, he huffed, shrugging and resuming irritation over his headache.

  But someone nudged his side, and Claude turned to an arrogant smile tucked in a trimmed black beard.

  “God rest his soul. They say he fell in the privy and drowned in shit,” the man said. “In what way would you like to die?”

  Claude shuddered. The voice … His mind scrambled to remember as the funeral drums beat a slow march rhythm for the bereaved. The man grinned, white teeth shone. Claude shuddered wilder.

  “Claude, we must speak of your debt.”

  Guy Sewell. In the robust light of day, his irises were an opalescent green. His hair bowed onto the shoulders, glancing black strands over the gold and blue embroidered doublet. His cheeks were ivory and smooth. His hands looked filtered through a white emulsion. Claude deemed him a dapper, who painted his face like those gaudy Donas strutting in the frippery of silk and black lace to Sunday Mass.

  “Sabrine still refuses the ink from my pen because of you,” Guy said.

  It must be his headache, he thought. Shaking his head vigorously, Claude sidestepped him into the maze of onlookers. But Guy kept abreast of him on his right turns and left turns. The man said nothing as Claude bandied here and there with acquaintances, or when he bought candied chestnuts from a maiden with red hair. Then he stopped before the greatly carved door of Bearitz’s house.

  Bearitz took half the candied chestnuts and returned with mended clothes and the unneeded news of her mother’s copious joy when she heard that Serge was getting married. Claude regretted offering the sweets and hoped for a quick calamity. Guy fluttered his eyes, ready to foment this quick calamity.

  “I hope to see you at the wedding.” Her voice was hollow as her hazel eyes were wide on Guy.

  Slightly taken aback with Bearitz’s distant air, Claude said, “I will not be there. I shall be with Auguste.”

  “Senher Seyr?”

  “Oc, Senher Seyr. The new Dona prefers her own servants. Alas, I must change masters.”

  Her auburn head drooped a broken stalk of disappointment. At the call of her mother, she slugged inside with the same dim eyes.

  “Bless me. Auguste had a nasty look about him.” Guy spoke as if speaking to a longsuffering friend. “He esteems himself one who thinks cocks goes inside cunts only, not on hands, or thighs, or bosoms, certainly not inside mouths, or rubbing against firm bums or waists—and for certes no sodomy, female or … male.”

  This rogue smattering about his life was not his headache. Claude turned to his new and shiny friend. “What more do you want?”

  Laughing a little, Guy smoothed back his black hair. “Auguste might relent his prickly commandments if he saw this fair Bearitz. Such a sweet virgin she is. Methinks she wants you to cover her.”

  The thought of kissing Bearitz’s prim lips, especially now that Guy was grinning pawkily, pushed Claude into a muddle of vexation.

  “Not long now, and I’ll break your face in,” he muttered.

  “You shall?”

  The green eyes regarded him like a tethered falcon studying his prey. The stare burrowed deep into him, and Claude felt as though his soul would be rent asunder. When Bearitz returned with a round of plum cake, he snatched it in an overly excited manner, smiling and spilling, "Lovely cake ... good cake."

  The cake made up for her gaff mentioning Serge’s wedding and the unease stemming from Guy until she said, “Maman wished to congratulate your master,” and shut the door.

  Claude trod on his way of angry musing on how the cake of felicitations was more a cake of refuse to the pigeons.

  Then something yapped liked a demon perched at his shoulder. “Fret not. ’Tis simple to know a woman ... must be gentle … flick her little member …”

  In front of the Collège de Foix, Claude stopped walking and glared at Guy merrily gabbing his treatise on cunnilingus. He ended, “You’re a lusty youth. You can please a woman.”

  “Get thee away from me,” Claude bellowed.

  “You owe me, and Sabrine refuses me.”

  “Find a better woman.”

  “And forswear love? Youth, silly youth. You wouldn’t know love even if it took you. Love never did have golden balls.”

  Guy stood back, smiling, waiting. Claude glowered, waiting. A voice called from behind him. It was the stupid one.

  “Came to work off your five sous?” Benoit, then, showered his attentions on the tall broad-shouldered gallant, and the conversation switched into Latin pleasantries.

  Claude was surprised Guy was educated. But chagrin soon overrode his admiration. Guy did not look much older, and yet he had an education, good clothes, and the pale skin of indolence while he could only claim a sore arse and the superb skill in supper making.

  Claude shuddered. He thought he saw Guy’s eyes flash red. On the other hand, Benoit had abandoned his tall pose of garrulous schoolboy dispensing with conquests. He bowed repeatedly before Guy, “Parce mihi. Forgive me.” He tripped as he spun arou
nd for the college gates and darted into the sun, like a fox with its tail on fire.

  “I asked about the goodness of your autumnal garden. He said it was the loose thing of a woman who had given birth to ten children. Verily it’d be, but the human asked about mine. I allow only one human to abscond with disrespect, or Sabrine would forswear me.” There was a glimmer of charm and hardness in the eyes as he smiled.

  Claude interlaced and flexed his fingers, preparing himself to chase after the stupid one for the insult. But Guy’s teeth … perfect and dazzlingly white. Claude never thought seriously about the truth of this Sabrine, but under the light of the Guy’s cheer, he began to suspect it was a lie. He wiped his palms on his thighs, remembering Guy’s demand from a week ago. His hands began to tremble against the woolen fabric. He clenched the stupid hands into angry fists. No one would bend him, not even God.

  “No one bends my knee,” he mumbled.

  “You lie. You knelt before Esteban and he grew long in your mouth.”

  Gratefully, Claude laughed. Then a conspiracy of boyish sounds rose to a crescendo from the façade of the college. Justinian codes. Justinian codes. One student pleaded to his ignorance. Tomorrow he had disputations and he still did not know what the codes had to say about the rights of widows or bastards.

  Amidst the jocular wails of ruin, Claude had to admit being a student sounded better than being an apprentice to a chewed-out thing even though those blue cassocked students did look like lazy ladies.

  Guy turned away from the youthful ejaculations. “Being an apprentice to a half-dead human does not suit you.”

  Claude winced on the oft-used term, ‘human,’ but he said, “’Tis time to put the childish things away and learn a trade.”

  It was definitive. It was settled. Claude walked home in awe of the glow of finality in his heart. When they veered into a street leading to his house, Guy said, “You don’t want to live with Seyr. He’s … dry.”

  Claude agreed but agreeing with Guy would ruin his glow and ruin his belly. “Yes I do.”

  “You could be a student.”

  Claude had to stop and at least think about it. “What do students do?”

  “Let me remember my time at Oxford.”

  “Oxford?”

  “In England.”

  “Oh.” Claude never ventured past the Languedoc region of France. He had not even seen the sea.

  “Dueled aplenty, fucked aplenty, prayed aplenty. Those years were good.” And good they must have been. Guy’s gaze was lost to the sky spotted with black wings.

  Claude liked the idea of fucking and fighting.

  Guy looked down towards the soiled earth. “You know your letters?”

  “No,” Claude said. He had never had use for them.

  “You need to know your Latin.”

  Never thought his illiteracy could stand between him and his gold-plated entitlement to fucking and fighting.

  “I could teach you,” Guy said, like the Tempter.

  “You can?”

  “For certes, you, Sabrine, I, we shall be together, learning and drinking.”

  Claude’s fingers tingled with that same dread of the new friend. “No.” And he marched for his door.

  Guy kept apace. “Oh, you do owe me.” Before Claude would bellow aggravation on this ‘owing,’ Guy gave a singsong of the scholar’s life. His eyes darted right and left with possibilities. “Away in my quiet cottage for lessons, and all the heretical things I would do to you…”

  “You want my arse for Latin?”

  “Your lovely mouth suffices, or your neck…”

  Claude’s mind rotated clockwise then anticlockwise, imagining how his neck could be used to extract pleasure. He shuddered furiously at the vision of a panting, naked Guy and came back to reality, to Guy’s awed stare.

  “I shall be a wood carver.” Claude finally stopped at his door.

  “Your master sends you away to another, and you yield. Oh that you would be that soft to me.”

  Before Claude could snort at Guy’s notions, he rethought the fairness of his exchange with Serge, and a dull sense of shame seeped into him.

  “Ah.” Guy nodded some secret truth to himself. “Verily you would be an apprentice. Sneer at Auguste, at his wife. When comes evening, you slip out of the house and seek after men with golden balls. But Auguste is no Serge, he would send you out.” He paused to leer at a woman prancing by in the full glory of a bosom bursting deliciously under a sheer partlet. He mumbled, “Useless in life, but a very useful chamber pot. Mayhaps you’re no good to be my student.”

  Claude blinked. It all came back to him, the pincers of fate that plucked him from a good home, dropped him into vagrancy, then into Serge’s company. His life had never being purposefully directed before. More distressingly, it seemed he could not order his life himself. He shifted and was a little relieved to see a woman stooped over a female grocer in anxious conversation. Perhaps it was the sight of her ill-fitting hat that returned to Claude some color. The hat would fall off any moment into the basket of turnips.

  Claude moaned cynically, “What this about letters and debt? Speak truth and say you wish me to be your catamite.”

  “Men give you pittance and milk tears. I offer you the world.”

  “I trust Auguste. I trust neither cuckolds nor sissies.”

  “Then you may trust me, a good gallant.”

  Claude grunted at the quibble. Then the door opened to a human boulder, tall and big-framed, Serge in a brown doublet and off-white trunk hose, his lips crimping in a frown at Guy.

  “St. Sernin! Are you ever surly,” Claude muttered.

  Serge still glared at Guy. The man strode away, waving and bobbing his head to cheer. Serge turned his quizzical stare to Claude. The servant shoved him a plum cake. “Dona wished you glad tidings on your betrothal.” Claude left Serge to comprehend the incomprehensible cake on his chest.

  Climbing the stairs rutilant in late afternoon glow, he remembered to skip over the fifth step, which was a particularly creaky one. Then he halted, leaned over on the balustrade and stared ahead at the rectangle of open light on the top floor. Unease layered, and questions grasped for answers. After all the strikes and counterstrikes between Serge and him, why was he so ruffled? In the end, Serge owed him nothing. Their relationship had been entirely practical. But the funeral, its inconsolable black, its incomprehensible sorrow weighed on him. The deceased must have been respected, wanted, loved—so unlike him. In the past two years with Serge, he had been content without the need of respect or love. As long as his day-to-day desires were fulfilled, he could ignore the demands or esteem of God and men. Now, Serge’s announcement has forced him to brave the callous world and wrestle for its respect and love. How now, when heaven was denied him, a rank black catamite?