“You mean the winter solstice,” Louis said, lifting a spoonful of beef stew with a soaked piece of bread to his mouth.
“Yes. Assuming you have not banned the religious celebrations.”
Though he remembered his friend to be a deist, the Revolution had wiped out all Christian symbols to replace them with patriotic ones. However, the Cult of the Supreme Being would sound as much as a nonsense to those people as it would to Selen. As for himself, this society could as well be compelled to pray Taranis that he would still keep Jesus in his heart.
“Not at all,” Louis replied with a casualness that indicated he wasn’t a stickler concerning the people’s private beliefs. “Last year, the people celebrated the solstice with candles and grilled pork. They gathered around bonfires and sang in patois until morning. It was…”
“Boring,” Selen said, rolling his green eyes. “You have no idea.”
“This is why I thought we could present something new this year. I am sure we could inspire ourselves once again from your culture,” Louis said, turning to Selen. “That would delight the spirits. Didn’t you use to recite poetry?”
“Yes, Selen. Tell us how your civilization used to celebrate the solstice,” Lissandro teased, knowing the answer.
Selen put down his bowl of soup. “I’m sorry, but there is no poetry. At that time of the year, during Poseidon’s cycle, it’s the rural Dionysia. Drunken young men sing and dance while carrying a giant phallus. People share lewd jokes and drink with each other while eating the meat of the sacrifices. It’s very convivial.” He turned to Lissandro. “Oh, it’s also during those celebrations that we perform the dances you asked me about once—where we use our bodies.”
Lissandro grinned, but inwardly he laughed his guts out. Louis’s indignant, gaping face was priceless. “Come on, Louis. It’s not as if you were prudish.” Louis turned to him with such a look of anger that Lissandro understood he had hit the mask at the right place. You haven’t told him. Anyway, let’s add a layer, he thought. “You could open the celebrations with an orgy.”
“No,” Selen retorted, serious. “This never happens during the opening,” he said, candid as usual. “Later…but I never stayed that long. I hate such things.”
The touching ingenuousness of the Cretan, Lissandro thought with a mocking smile. “We could take the dances,” Lissandro said. He had not given up hope to see Selen perform a pagan dance.
Selen’s face brightened. “I’d love it. I could train a few dancers and perform between bonfires. We need a lot of wine, goatskins for the costumes, and horse manes for the tails. I will also need someone to carve me a wooden dil—” Lissandro hung on his lips, but Selen looked at Louis and lost his words.
“Or we could hear what your period has to propose, Lissandro,” Louis said with a look at Selen still tainted with reproach.
“In my period, Christmas is a time where a family reestablishes the values of love, generosity, and community. Everyone gathers around a homemade meal and sings carols, before sharing gifts under the adorned Christmas tree. You can go out to help the less fortunate and show the virtues of humility and friendship towards your fellow citizens,” Lissandro recited with his best apple-polishing voice. Selen narrowed his eyes to show he was not fooled. Lissandro would have sneered at Selen if Louis hadn’t been watching him with approval.
“Well, I think we have found…”
The customers’ screams interrupted Louis. People rose around them. Lissandro bent forward and saw that a man lay on the floor, shaking with spasms. “There is someone sick,” he muttered.
Selen got up and moved towards the table where the man had fallen. Lissandro followed him. The waitress hastened to put herself in Selen’s way.
“Your Majesty, you should not approach him,” she whispered, her head bowed, uncertain of how far she could oppose her queen. “The man looks sick.”
“I can help him,” Selen retorted. “Let me have a look.”
The woman moved to the side, along with the crowd of curious. Lissandro put his hand on his mouth. The skin of the man lying on the floor was greenish. His features were covered in sweat and his tongue stuck out, swollen. The man lay in a pool of his own vomit.
“He probably strangles with something,” Selen said, rolling up the sleeves of his tunic. Before he touched the man, Louis grasped Selen’s wrist, his knuckles tense. Selen swiveled his head.
“Don’t! Look at his neck.”
Lissandro bent closer to see. Under the collar of the man’s cloak, white lumps poked out. Lissandro stepped back with fright. Louis pulled Selen up and turned to the crowd.
“Everyone out! Now!” Louis turned to the waitress. “All he touched. Burn everything. And send a lad to fetch Brother Benedict in the palace. Lissandro, take your cloak. We all wait outside.”
Lissandro glanced down again. His face a gnarled, petrified mask, his aghast gaze fixed far above their heads, the man was dead.
2
Louis had dragged him out of the restaurant in a rush. Some of the customers walked away, while some curious lingered to see what would happen, rousing the curiosity of passerby. As Lissandro slipped his cloak on, Selen turned towards his friends.
“Will you finally tell me what’s going on?”
“Haven’t you seen the marks on his neck?” Louis asked.
“Yes, I had. The man was sick, but he would not bite. Why such a fright?”
Lissandro and Louis shared puzzled looks. “You mean you don’t know what symptom it is?” Lissandro asked Selen.
“Well, maybe we were a bit quick on the conclusions,” Louis objected in a low voice.
“Quick or not, I won’t take any risk,” Lissandro said with a tinge of irritation as he turned to Louis again.
“Me neither,” Louis said, rubbing his arms. He had left his cloak inside. Selen unfastened his and put it on his friend’s shoulders. “Thank you.” He nodded. “There is no need for you to worry right now, Selen. Not until we know what it is.”
Selen stayed silent but his teeth gnashed. Though he mildly appreciated their consideration, this pampering exasperated him. Lissandro might be smarter than him, but they could give him a chance to learn.
In the cold night, they waited against the restaurant’s wall. Disappointed by the inaction, the crowd dispersed. A while later, two horses turned the corner of the street and approached them.
“How can I help Your Majesty at such a late hour?” Brother Benedict asked while dismounting. The monk turned to them, displaying his jovial smile despite his disheveled, white hair erected on his neck and his tired features.
Selen glimpsed at the young man behind the monk. He had never seen him before. His face was smooth, and his eyes were as narrow and angular as the ones of cats. Though longer as it should be, his auburn hair was shaved at the top of his skull in a tonsure. The ephebe’s lips curved into a smile, but it wasn’t a genuine one like the monk’s or a mischievous one like Lissandro’s. It made Selen feel uneasy, and he surprised himself by grasping Louis’s wrist.
“Yes, Brother, we need your help,” Louis said. He craned his neck. “Who is that boy?”
“Your Majesty, let me present to you my assistant, Eliot,” Brother Benedict said as he tied his mount’s reins to a post. “He came three weeks ago from Tremeven Abbey. He…”
“You take in assistants without informing me?” Louis interrupted him. The monk squirmed. “We will talk about it later. We need your expertise on something.”
They returned inside the restaurant. The dead man’s corpse lay where they had left it. His features were distorted with pain as if he had fought for air in his last moment. It smelled of piss and cold spew. Brother Benedict bent over the man and put his gloves on.
“I would say he choked on something, but this green bile in the corner of his mouth may be the sign of a liver failure,” the monk said. He pressed the throat between two fingers.
“He bled from the ears as well, Brother,” Eliot said, turning the ma
n’s head to the side.
“And the lumps?” Louis asked.
“I know what you are thinking, Your Majesty, but the infection of the lymph nodes can be one of the symptoms of several diseases,” Brother Benedict replied. “Yet, we lack important information like how long he has been sick or how he caught it. Who has been in contact with him?”
“I don’t know. I sent everyone home,” Louis said, lowering his voice as he realized his mistake.
Brother Benedict frowned. With one hand on the table at his side, he pushed himself up. A joint in his leg made a soft plop. “We will see if more cases show up. In the meanwhile, I suggest we bury the body with care and disinfect the place.”
“Do what you consider best,” Louis said.
Selen, Louis, and Lissandro fastened their cloaks and went out. They rode back to the palace in silence, each of them lost in his thoughts. Selen pondered what he had seen. By the monk’s diagnostic, his friends’ mysterious disease was known in this world as well. Selen glanced around and waited for an explanation that never came.
“Are you afraid it can be pox?” he asked out loud as his patience ran dry.
“We are afraid it may be something serious, indeed,” Lissandro said, “but not pox.”
“Brother Benedict said it could be a liver disease,” Louis said.
Lissandro looked at him with a grimace. “You know as well as I—”
“That if such a thing spread through our city, it will be a disaster we are not prepared to face,” Louis interrupted him.
As they passed under the palace’s gatehouse, Lissandro halted his mount, letting Louis carry on forwards alone. Selen stopped next to Lissandro and bent over to see what he was looking at.
“It’s only a dead rat,” Selen whispered, waiting for Lissandro to reassure him.
“Yes, it is. Just don’t mention it to him.” Lissandro kicked his horse again.
A shiver ran through Selen’s spine. He did not need to know the disease his friends were referring to to understand this was a bad omen.
3
“Here is your harness, Your Majesty.”
Selen finished fastening his long, lilac braid and picked up his chest protection. “You’re new in the palace?” he asked. The leather was still sticky from the olive oil he had applied on it as conditioner.
“Yes, Your Majesty. I arrived last week from Millhaven,” the guard answered. One step at his side, he stood at attention.
“Then you should know to drop the particulars when I am here,” Selen said. He fastened the leather straps on his flanks and shortened the longest ones he twisted in a V on his back. “Because when you will raise your sword against me, I want you to see the enemy, not the queen.” Selen gave a short smile and passed in front of the guard. He picked up his helmet and exited the guards’ room.
On the inner courtyard, the guards were already aligned in rows. Selen took his place between two of them, on the second line a few steps behind Folc. The winter sun grazed the east bailey’s ridge and cast long shadows of the men up to the smithy shacks. In the morning breeze, only an occasional whinny from the stables echoed to the hammers’ bangs on the anvils. After a while, the combat instructor, Merrik, stepped out of the north tower. Merrik towered over each one of them. His chin was as close-shaved as his scalp. It contrasted with the shaggy, black sheep furs on his shoulders. He was the only one in the yard in full plate armor. The aligned guards of the palace and the royal guards wore plain gambesons and hoses.
Selen was the other exception. Whatever the weather, he would never separate himself from his leather breastplate and his knee-laced sandals. His loincloth—he had overheard some guards call it a skirt—was a compromise he had come to with the instructor. He had reduced his equipment to the minimum tolerated. He had less comfort than the others but was freer of his moves. Besides, he had trained naked all his previous life. Though he had to admit that the loincloth was an improvement, the stifling gambeson had turned him mad after two séances, and he had tossed it away.
As the solstice got nearer, he envied the hairy bodies of his comrades. The low walls in the shadow were still covered with frost. His breastplate and forearms protections broke the wind and kept him warm, but gooseflesh ran over his legs to his toes. Impatient to start the warm-up, he shifted his helmet from one hand to the other. The helmet had been Louis’s idea. It covered his whole head, and only a slit was cut for the eyes and down to a sharp point further down his chin. An abundant, thick horse mane rose as a crest from the top to the back and cascaded behind. Selen would never wear it on a battlefield, but a highly reduced vision was a good training. As for the rest of his material, it was in a perfect state. It wasn’t rare he took his training suit home to the solar. He grazed a finger on the cold metal while he fancied. Maybe today. The instructor’s voice dragged him out of his musings.
“Move your arses, you lazy goat-suckers!” Merrik barked. “On your neighbor and pump up those bony arms of yours!”
Selen turned to the guard at his side. Fortunately, the man was shoulder-height. “I start.”
Selen put his helmet next to him and stretched down with his arms and legs spread, his palms on the ground. In the same position, the guard weighted heavily across his back. Selen lifted his chest up, stretching his arms as well as he could. The guard wasn’t cheating and pressed the other way down.
When he had asked to join the training, at first, no one had wanted to touch him. Selen didn’t know if it had been for his status or for another reason he had long been used to. With time, and some yelling from the instructor, the guards had gotten used to his presence and treated him as a peer.
The instructor’s boots halted at his eyes’ level. “You call that stretching, Cherry? My old nan is stronger than that, and she is three times your age!” Merrik crouched next to him. “I want to see your pal meet the sky. Is that clear, Pussy?” he spat.
“Yes,” Selen murmured, fighting for breath.
He didn’t mind the insults. It was part of the game. And there were tacit terms now. The instructor had called him s-cumbag once. Two hours later, the man had been called by Louis into the council room. The incident had never happened again.
After ten stretches, Selen didn’t feel the cold anymore. The other guard offered his hand and pulled him up to his feet. They changed places and repeated the exercise.
“Get up, you skamelars! On your sticks or I’ll beat the shit out of you!”
Selen jumped up and brushed his hands on his thighs. He picked up his helmet, put it on and hustled to the racks on the wall where he picked a long stick among the heap of material. The guards agglutinated around him, fighting for a weapon. Two sticks were missing, and no one wanted to be the fools standing empty-handed. As he stepped away, wood hit his shoulder. One of the guards had challenged him.
Through the slit, Selen peered around. A heavy blow knocked his helmet. It resounded to his brain like in the inside of a bell. He refrained from putting his hands to the sides and positioned them on his stick instead.
Left. He pulled himself together and turned. He sighed at the sight of the bulging muscles. The Beef was a merry fellow, but he had taken him as a personal challenge and kept hitting on him at every occasion. Probably until one of them bit the dust, and Selen wouldn’t have bet a jug of ale on himself.
His grip on his stick relaxed, and his feet spread. The Beef’s stick lashed up in the air. Selen dodged. He raised his stick, was blocked in his move, and got hit on the hip. And one bruise. The Beef slashed down. Selen escaped. Once. Twice. Blocked. Returned a blow. His heart raced. His adversary waved the stick in his face and disappeared from his vision. The wood hit his flank. Right. Selen heard a whiz but saw nothing. He swiveled and felt pain on his back. His stick spun in the air. He froze on the defensive. A crack on the left. He hit. Touched. Sweat moistened his cheeks. His own panting was deafening. A blow on his leg. He straightened. A mass in front of him. His lashes rubbed against the edge of the slit. Don’t aim
for the wood. Aim for the hands. The mass moved. Selen crouched, rotated the stick, smashed two of The Beef’s fingers.
“Hey! That hurts!” The Beef exclaimed.
Selen froze. “I’m sor—”
The blow got him above the neck and sent him flying to the ground, face first. Dust rose and slipped inside the helmet and into his eyes. Drat. He had probably scratched his legs as well. A large paw grabbed him by the harness.
“C’mon, Majesty,” The Beef exclaimed. He dropped him onto his feet. “T’was a nice one you gave me there.” The guard gave him a tap on his back which would have expelled anything stuck in his throat.
Selen managed not to stumble. He removed his helmet. The cold air dried his sweat. “Could we say you won? You’re no match for me.” Rubbing his eyes, he shuffled over to the benches where some guards were having a break. Selen flopped down on the corner of a bench.
“Ah! You’re just too kind, Your Majesty,” The Beef said cheerfully. “I was just feeling lucky today.” He handed him the water skin. “Tomorrow, I’ll be victorious.” The guard grinned.
Selen took the water, drank, and rinsed his face. “I just can’t wait,” he whispered.
Tiny stones were stuck under his lashes. He blinked a few times to remove the red from his vision. It felt good to breathe without the helmet. He stretched his legs. The damage was superficial. Glancing around the courtyard, he saw a cart parked near the gates. At the side of his dray, the driver held the bridle and craned his neck in their direction. Poking out of his long sleeve, his hand waved for attention. Selen passed the water skin back to The Beef, rose, and walked towards the man.
“Can I help you?” Selen asked.
“Someone should have met me here,” the man answered. His fingers combed his white, tow hair from over his eyes. “Lord Lissandro?”
Light from Aphelion 2 - Tears of Winter Page 2