Was I too arrogant to refuse to marry Pierre? An aide that my father had trained in the arts of forging and who was welcomed into our home to make up for the lack of male children!?
Pierre was a pig - he smelled like one and had similar eating habits.
He was twice my age and just to watch him revolted me. His hands were always dirty with soot and grease and he had stinking breath made worse by too many beers drained down at the tavern.
One day when I was alone in the barn tending to the animals he took me from behind, squeezing my breasts and placing his hard member against my ass.
"Do you feel this tool! As soon as we're married I'll let you feel it every day, and I assure you it will wipe that arrogant smirk off your pretty face!"
Idiot - I would have stabbed him with my pitchfork rather than marry him.
One day I dared to rebel against his grip, his brusque manner, giving him a slap in the face with all the strength I had.
"You're a filly to tame, I like it!" He said, taking me by the neck and throwing me down onto the hay, "and now I'll give you a taste of what it means to have to deal with a real man!”
With one hand around my neck he loosened his pants while my arms wavedthrough the air in search of a place to grab and strike. If I had found his flesh I would have sunk my nails in until my fingers bled.
"Hold still bitch!" He said as he pushed his hand even harder onto my neck.
I gave up fearing that I would be suffocated
He lifted my dress and looked at my nakedness. He looked at the dark triangle of hair like a mirage, the eyes veiled by a desire that clouded reason and brought to light the animal mating instinct.
I began to feel that the air was flowing into my lungs with greater effort. Breathing seemed to me the only important thing.
In his hand I saw the thick hard tool that I had imagined to be as black as his hands.
In reality it wasn’t so clean. He moved his hand up and down his turgid member, more to check its rigidity than to find further excitement.
His hand went to caress my pubes.
"Are you still a virgin? Yeah, I guess so! Now I will teach you to respect a man and when I'm finished with you you’ll need to go around with your legs open for a few days."
The fingers of my hands found his naked arm. I dug so deep that I could feel accumulated bits of skin under the nails.
At that moment I realized that if he let go of my neck to spread my legs and grip my hands I could wriggle away, escaping his grasp.
"Open your mouth my beautiful filly!" He pushed his member against my lips to get me to open.
I felt the acrid smell of urine and sweat and I recoiled with disgust, turning my face to the side, trying to escape my fate.
"I’m suffocating," I said in a faint voice.
He relaxed his grip around my neck, a little reluctant to let me go and I spat on his dirty cock with all the hate I could muster.
His reaction was so fast that I did not see the back of his hand before it hit me in the face. I felt only the strong burning sensation when I tried to get up with difficulty from the hay.
My mother appeared, alarmed by my prolonged absence.
"What's going on here?" she said while Pierre re-adjusted his pants and I wiped the blood from my nose.
"Aquo's pas greu!”(No problem!) he replied in pure Occitan.
To me she said,
"Try not to make him mad! He will become your husband.”
Yeah, I thought. What a nice prospect.
In the seventeenth anniversary of my birth I decided to flee.
It was the feast day of the summer solstice, the longest day of the year. Everybody was intent on drinking and dancing around the dozens of fires lit in order to protect the fields. Taking advantage of a caravan of musicians that crossed the region every year I left the land of my birth.
As a girl and knowing the dangers that I ran, I bandaged my breasts tightly and cut my hair very short. I put on, not without disgust and repulsion, some old torn pants taken from Pierre and one of his shirts.
I stayed with the company for two solstices, until we came to a small village by the name of Aurillac in the Aquitaine region.
That day I came across some friars who were asking for offerings along the way. Driven by curiosity and an inexplicable attraction I jumped off the wagon without any hesitation and I followed them to the gates of a convent, fascinated by the solid stone building closed with a huge door of dark wood.
It looked like a castle, inviolable and strong. I decided then that I would enter the fortress.
The dawn of the next morning saw me at the convent door. I knocked with tears in my eyes. It was opened by a friar.
"My boy! What are you doing travelling around the countryside? Come, enter!"
"I'm lost father. I fled and a gang of robbers held me prisoner, forcing me to rob passers-by! I beg you, please give me succour!"
The good friar, believing my words, beckoned me inside. My plan was working. Now I had to convince them to keep me with them. I was taken into a large, long room where there were two long tables arranged in parallel.
It was a barren environment and not at all impressive. It made me not a little fearful.
The kindly monk mademe sit and brought me a cup of hot tasty soup.
“Tell me boy, how old are you?”asked the friar, looking at me intently, almost looking for a lie in my reply.
“I don’t know father, nobody has ever bothered to calculate the time from my birth.”
“Well, looking at you I would say you can’t be more than fifteen! You do look young.”
Well! I thought, I had tricked him well - he probably attributed me such a tender age due to a lack of facial hair.
He led me from room to room towards the study of the priory friar. The silence of the corridors was magical. There were no voices or sounds except our light footsteps on the stone floor.
The oil lamps on the walls drew our shadows on the ground, running before and behind us.
The smell was that of a room closed for years, but in the background there were also some particular perfumes I had never smelt before.
After meeting the head friar they decided I could stay for a brief period and they took me to a room where a young thin friar poured water into a tin bath.
He opened a small door at the base and inserted some hot embers, motioning me to sit down .
"Hot water?”I asked with wide eyes .
"This is a luxury that we reserve only for guests. For us it is a purely hygienic habit. Washing should be done quickly and with cold water without giving pleasure."
I immersed myself into that hot liquid made fragrant from some unknown herbs.
An unexpected pleasure enveloped my flesh and I sighed contentedly, remaining immersed until the water became too cold to resist further.
Still staring at the door with the fear that someone could enter I dressed in the dark gray habit left me by the gentle friar and tightened it at the waist with rope as I had seen the monks do.
Luckily the habit was large and my breasts were small so I had no fear of being discovered
To my surprise I found the monk who was looking after me right outside the door. He led me through an endless series of similar corridors towards my cell.
It was a small room with a mattress against the wall, a table and a wooden chair.
The figure of Jesus on a crucifix was hanging above the bed and dominated the entire cell.
The small crack in the wall allowed little light to enter the main illumination was from the oil lamp on the table which was not burning at present.
And so the months went by serenely. The convent became my home and my cell was my refuge.
It was only months later that I got to know brother Jean and I met him by chance in the herb garden.
"Look what the snails have done to you!" I said to a sorrel plant.
"It’s good to talk to the plants! They feel your love and benefit from it."
"What's your name?" he asked.
"My name is François" I said, bowing my head in respect.
I don’t know why but I was drawn to the friar, who many times I had seen only in passing. For me, despite not knowing (or perhaps knowing him?) he became the most important person in my life. The fulcrum on which my life was balanced. He was my destiny and I began to spend more and more time with him.
I followed him, admiring him and immersing myself in his words. He fed me his enthusiasm.
At first he took me with him only to the herb garden or to visit the vineyards to make sure that the presses would produce a special wine
He taught me something new every day, mysteries from antiquity and modern science.
Jean and I became as one being. He and I were always together quibbling about the laws of nature and the divine.
We crossed all dogmas and pushed ourselves beyond the known in order to advance constructive hypothesis. We laughed and joked, becoming serious when it came to spiritual matters.
For me he was a well to quench that thirst that only the lack of knowledge can bring.
He shut himself up for hours in a small room of the convent from which came strange odours and continuous black smoke.
I spent almost all my time with him, except when he went into his room which had for me now become a real mystery to be unravelled.
He taught me all the secrets and the healing properties of herbs, how to relieve the pain of stings with the bittersweet, soothe the pain with vervain, also known as St. John's wort or herb of the cross and understand the dangerous power of stramonium and belladonna; that spring he introduced me to a magical world.
In fact, as soon as we entered under the sign of Aries, at night we began to spread out large sheets on the grass and take them in before the dawn, squeezing and extracting the precious dew from them.
With container in hand he led me up to his secret room.
On entering I felt the unique sensation of being in a place where ordinary human beings cannot enter. Not because of physical laws, but because their minds were not ready.
The room, long and narrow, was brilliantly lit by oil lamps and contained objects which I could only imagine had never been seen before, containers of glass and porcelain and even pliers, hammers and bellows to stoke the fire. The smell that permeated the room was a mixture of sweet herbs and sulphorous substances.
In a corner in the back of the room there was a pallet.
"Do you sleep here Jean?"
Our intimacy over time had grown to the point that respect had become a deep friendship. He saw in me the perfect student - attentive, curious and not afraid to go beyond the known.
"Yes, sometimes. When the process of transformation requires long hours of work."
"What precisely is this room?”
I was by now accustomed to asking any type of question with the audacity of someone who is not afraid of the response.
“It’s a laboratory. There is the still and this is the melting pot,”he said, placing his hand delicately and almost fearfully on a small cylindrical construction which had a small door.
He said,
"The Atanor. And inside,”opening the small side door, "is placed the philosophical egg. The search for the Philosopher's Stone is an integral part of my life, but .... despite numerous attempts to transmute base metals into gold, mixing the raw material with the sun and the moon ... "
"Sun and moon?"
"Yes, François, sulphur and mercury. And many times I've seen the Lion become green, and I saw the seven eagles combat the Lion," he said as his eyes turned upward, intent on distant thoughts,
" ..... but in reality I realize that is not my main purpose.”
The words that came from his mouth seemed to me gibberish. Seeing me so doubtful he said,
"You see François, if I could find, through the practice of alchemy, the means to permanently unite the body and therefore matter with the soul and its incorruptible nature, then I could create an elixir that can keep our bodies free from corruption, heal and save, treat diseases and restore strength."
"I have to manage to create the fifth essence!"
"Fifth essence?”I asked, "but how can there be such a substance?"
"Distilling in a sealed jar, and subjected to repeated circulations, from wine I can create a new substance, transparent and crystalline. And since it is not an inert substance but retains the properties of that with which it comes into contact, I'm getting ready to merge it with thin sheets of gold, which itself incorporates all the properties of the celestial sun.”
"In a few days I'll be ready for my experiment. But alas I fear that little time remains to me in this place of peace," he said, stoking the wood fire.
He moved easily among all that strange equipment and I sat down on the mattress to listen to him.
"We live in dark times, my boy. Since the new pope Clement VI was elected we already have news of some members of our brotherhood who have been burned at the stake. Clement cannot stand us zealots and my writings on the advent of the Antichrist which will take place in the year 1366 has brought me many enemies. They will not allow me to live peacefully."
"You mean that they will try you for your writings?“
"I do not know, but time is short."
The next days passed in a general climate of tension felt by all and not clearly expressed.
My concern was such that one morning, doing my ablutions which I had already learned to do quickly with cold water, I forgot to draw the bolt.
I stood motionless and breathless when Jean came into the room, throwing open the door.
"Come quickly! We can proceed with the union of the gold leaves with .....! "
From that position he could see my naked body. We looked at each other for endless seconds before he swung shut the door violently.
I dressed quickly and joined him at the lab.
I made the sign of the cross when passing through the chapel and went immediately to him where I saw his look of disappointment.
He was sitting on the mattress and his eyes were sad.
"Why? Why did you do such a terrible thing? My eyes were blind not to see in that beautiful face .... a ..... a woman!"
"Forgive me, Jean. How could I tell you? You would have spurned me! I wanted to stay with you and learn, nourish myself with your wisdom. I did not do anything wrong."
I knelt at his feet.
"Please Jean, let me stay! This is my home. You are my family. I do not have a place to
go!"
He looked at me for some time before saying, "You can stay, but if you are discovered by another brother you must leave immediately."
"I promise you, it will not happen," I said, taking his soft white hands.
He recoiled from me as if the devil had touched him.
I realized that he was afraid of me. Of what I was - a woman.
In the following days he tried to avoid me, but the joy of success in the laboratory led him inevitably to move closer to me, and I knew that I understood his work more than anyone else. We began to work again side by side, his gaze was ever more inclusive and softer and his cheerful smile returned.
Finally came the day when all efforts should be rewarded. After an endless series of distillations we were ready to create the first drops of useable gold.
Our eyes were fixed on the small spout of the still, like two curious children.
When the drop started forming we smiled.
"There it is!" Jean whispered, looking ecstatically at the forming nectar .
In that one moment one bright drop fell into the small vessel below and our hearts were almost bursting with happiness.
Our faces were close to each other and we turned to look into the others eyes to rejoice together. Without any premeditation our mouths met in a little kiss, followed by another with the lips parted and our tongues met.
A hot and passionate kiss, the first for me
.
I did not know if he had already encountered those feelings during the period of study at the university of Toulouse, and before taking his vows. Only then did I realize I had always wanted him.
My hands went down to untie the knot in the cord that served as a belt. First his and then mine.
His mouth pulled away from mine and he tenderly stroked my cheek. He looked at me with love and also suspicion, undecided whether to continue.
A thousand thoughts were in my mind. First of all we were doing something wrong, immoral and forbidden.
But the attraction of our bodies was stronger than any moral restraint. At that moment what mattered was only a desire to caress the body of the other, to experience these unique emotions.
When he moved, I took off the robe and he looked at me carefully, assessing. His eyes rested on my legs, went up, and rested on my groin and then on my breasts and he finally looked at me straight in the eye.
"A beautiful and delicate flower," he said as his eyes became soft and sensual.
And our bodies united in a love that knows no constraints or constrictions.
He collapsed exhausted on my body and kissed me tenderly. He said,
"You know it’s not right what we did."
"I know Jean.”
"It will not happen again. We cannot allow that to happen again."
"Yes ..." I said with sadness in my eyes and the joy of a unique experience.
Seven weeks after Jean was arrested and taken to Avignon by order of Clement VI.
The laboratory philosopher's writings were seized and destroyed.
I left the convent seven months later, unable to remain in that place full of memories.
And the end of that experience came with my return to Roquetaillade. I was eager to see my mother and I undertook the journey of no return.
Planet-H: The End of the Beginning Page 18