The Cross and the Black
By Luwa Wande
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Meanwhile, a stranger, the tall and pale-faced Guy, hounds Claude about a mysterious debt. The debt is a bit of poppycock as far as Claude is concerned, but the stubborn Guy would hear none of that. Guy’s even willing to compromise on the nature of payment. And if Claude is careful enough, 'payment' might just be the solution to all his problems, but all for a mysterious price.
Amid the squalor and the excitement, the sacred and the profane of Renaissance France, The Cross and the Black serves up a jocular tale of bumshoving, blasphemy, and bumptious fellows. Episode one of a four part serial.
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The Cross and the Black - Luwa Wande
The Cross and the Black
Luwa Wande
Copyright By Luwa Wande 2012
http://omnifish.wordpress.com
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IMPORTANT
This story contains Christian blasphemy and non-explicit depictions of homosexual desire. Additionally, this installment of the serial novel has 17,000 words, which makes about 60 pages of paperback reading.
E-Book Distribution: XinXii
http://www.xinxii.com
One
It was Lent, the season of grieving and repenting and braying sententious monks. Enter here, Claude Severin ambling to the wine shop, grinning like a happy baboon on this feast day of St. Joseph, patron saint of manly losers. The melody of a gavotte sloshed in his heart, its rhythm light in his fingers. Passersby gave no eye to his threadbare tunic or his ragged hose; nor did they stop to admire his hat lined with velvet and a red plume—a gift from an apothecary for times sweaty and jaunty.
Claudi, Claudi,
came the strident trill of Tomasa and Simo rushing from behind him.
Claude, clutching his money purse, clucked silently. Turning to face the brother-sister duo, he made ready to harden himself. But the sight of Tomasa’s scrawny bosom heaving behind a tattered bodice and Simo’s little hands squamous with scabies scars broke a dam in his heart. He gritted his teeth and willed himself strong. You had to be or you would find yourself poorer than a grave if you gave ear to every pauper in Toulouse.
I have no coin for you,
Claude said.
Tomasa’s steely eyes worked him over. A few denier for Simo’s bread—
This coin,
Claude shook the coin pouch before their ripening eyes, is for the good wine my master had ordered me to buy.
He growled at the thought of justifying his nineteen-year-old self to a thirteen-year-old wench.
Was it not two weeks ago, your master paid you last—
My coin is for my person.
"Oc, yours to throw away to the demons of wine and sloth."
Claude growled at the sky hoary and grey. No, the demons of wine and sloth did not haunt him, but lately that cow-faced, grass-lipped demoness, so called Lady Fortuna, had been a sully wench. Of the thirty sous his master had given him two weeks ago, five sous remained after his settlement of various gambling debts and charitable contributions to other vagrants. And there was a matter of the five sous gambling debt to god-raped student sissies. He shuddered, quirked a glance up the street, and hoped the God-raped sissies were not hiding in the approaching blur of wagons and liveried servants.
Impatient, Claude shifted from one foot to another, and still Simo’s face rounded the perfect fruit of sweetness and grace. He grumbled to Tomasa, Already you lust after another man’s coin. You’re growing up to be a little whore—Ow.
Sharp-lipped, Simo had stamped on his foot. My sister is not like you, you frog sissy—
Tomasa muffled his mouth, and Claude glowered at every second of the boy fighting to free from her strong brace.
Claude sighed. Let him be. Truth is truth.
Before the boy would speak too openly about his heretical vice, he made his bid to dive away, but Tomasa held back his elbow.
You will let us some scraps from your master’s wedding feast, please?
she asked.
Claude was at once hot and cold. What wedding?
Claudi, you ever jest. I overheard during mass.
Claude laughed a little, raised his hat to let the air cool his overheating head. Yes, yes, you’re all welcome to come. I’ll give you more than scraps.
Her face plumped now with a smile. Claude marveled at how a smile could make the gauntest of faces a comeliest image this side of Toulouse, could even turn an everlasting crone into the freshest of maidens. He dug through his purse angrily and shoved a one sou coin into her hand. You had better keep away from me for the next six months, and I shall drown you both in the Garonne.
St Etienne keep you strong. St Sernin will keep your head ever full of blond lovely hair. St Dennis will grant you the prettiest wife…
cascaded the benedictions, which hurled Claude far away into the bramble of wagons.
The money, he reasoned, would be doubled on the morrow because God should at least wink at his charity even if he was a damned soul. God, yes, would take his judgment, but he could count on God to be fair. But of a sudden, a dastardly thought cut through his fluffy notions. This wine he would buy, good German wine, his master had demanded. Usually they drank pipette—a most terrible sour wine—and now this good wine in the middle of Lent? An evil feeling howled deep in his bones—No, it could not be. Church gossip had yielded some spectacular news over the months: Lisette’s bastard baby was born with three arms, Jean-Simon won a duel only to be struck dead by a chamber pot full of shit, and now Serge was getting married? Poppycock! The man was unsmiling in a school of maidens.