Lavender in Bloom

by Lily Velez

  “He’s a working man’s son. He’s good for nothing if he only shadows you all the day. His is not meant to be a life of comfort and leisure. It’s time he become acquainted with hard labor.”

  “But a factory, Mainard? They’ll work his fingers to the bone. There must be another way to satisfy our debts.”

  They never found out.

  Paris had turned barbaric earlier that day with the storming of the Bastille. By nightfall, protesters had overcome the city like wraiths out of a nightmare, brandishing weapons, decapitating or lynching opponents, calling for the bloodshed of those who stood in the way of social equality. Their cries rose and fell from avenue to avenue like a sacrilegious call-and-response, and all around, young men zipped past like foxhounds on the scent, sticks and knives fastened to their hands as they exulted: “Vive la France! Vive la France!”

  “He’s our only son,” Noah’s mother had wailed, striking out at her husband’s shoulders and back. “Let him go, Mainard! Don’t do this terrible thing.”

  Mainard paused in the middle of a street and roughly gripped her arm to stop her, eliciting another cry from her.

  Noah, heart beating furiously like the fluttering wings of a newly-caged bird, pressed his heels into the pavement then, leaning back against his father’s hold, spurred on by his mother’s heartache. He hadn’t wished to be parted from her any more than she did him.

  His parents meanwhile continued warring with one another, deaf to the horse coach violently barreling down the avenue straight toward them.

  Noah had seen it, though, and a coldness had instantly shot through his limbs. “Papá!” Eyes trained on the coach as it grew larger and larger, he’d yanked and pulled at the man’s hand to clear his parents from the oncoming danger.

  “Papá! Mamá!” He’d cried out again and again, tugging urgently at their shirts, but they’d been too absorbed in their anger and grief. He’d pulled against his father one final time with all his might, believing he might save them yet.

  At the very last moment, his wrist had slipped free from the man’s clammy fingers, the momentum shoving Noah backwards just in time to see the coach slam into his mother and father, crushing them under its wheels.

  “Vive la France,” the coach drivers had shouted, raising decanters as if in toast, too inebriated to realize they’d slaughter innocents.

  Noah didn’t know how long he’d lain beside their bodies that night, keeping watch over them as their skin grew cold and ashen, fitting his hand into his mother’s grasp as if he thought he might be able to keep her soul earthbound.

  How different his childhood must’ve been from Jeremie’s. What had even brought Jeremie to return to the farm? Surely he was accustomed to social circles of a far different breeding. It was a well-known fact that princes simply didn’t commune with paupers. The way that they dressed should’ve been indication enough that they were from entirely different worlds. Noah wore the faded, nearly tattered shirts and trousers he’d inherited from his brothers. Jeremie, on the other hand, dressed every bit the part of a gentleman with his crisp garments and tailored jackets and sophisticated ascots.

  Noah’s brothers found his lingering about strange as well.

  “He’s not the usual sort that falls into Camilla’s ring of admirers,” Elliot had said when Jeremie had left the farm after supper.

  “I agree,” said Colin. “How did Camilla even get him in her claws? You’d think he’d pay her little mind after meeting her in the bookshop, not go out of his way to visit the farm.”

  “Give it time. He’ll realize the grave he’s dug for himself eventually, and then he won’t be able to leave Avignon fast enough.”

  “I read parts,” Noah said to Jeremie, with regard to the book of poems.

  “And? What did you think?”

  “What did I think of what?”

  Jeremie laughed.

  Noah winced at the sound. He dipped his chin, refocusing on the ewe, letting his hair fall over his eyes, as if it might make him invisible.

  “Camilla’s inside,” he said then. “My father’s in the barn.” As Elliot had said, the sooner Jeremie realized how ill-suited a match Camilla was, the sooner he’d be on his way.

  Jeremie crouched down to stroke a sheep’s ears. “I’ve always wondered what a life like this would be like, if it would at all resemble the shepherd boy David’s life: keeping watch over his herd, writing psalms. It must be incredibly peaceful.”

  Noah wasn’t certain what to say to that. He started clipping at the ewe’s wool once he’d steadied her, careful not to startle her with the soft crunch of the blades, her white mass easily falling away from her like a shed skin.

  “You seem to enjoy the work at least. Or so I’ve heard.”

  That snagged Noah’s attention. He looked up. “Heard?”

  “From a great many people. After making your acquaintance, I inquired about your family from Monsieur Dufort of the bakery. I only hoped to learn how I might find your family’s farm so I could give you your book, but he and his then-present patrons certainly didn’t hold back their applause. ‘Monsieur Capet and his sons are incredibly hard workers,’ they all said. ‘Avignon is blessed to count such a family among its numbers.’ They praised you especially as an exemplary craftsman. ‘A most talented farrier.’”

  Noah’s face couldn’t have been hotter had he held it over a fire. “I’m sure they were only being kind.”

  “I’m sure they weren’t.”

  Noah clipped away at the ewe, possible responses tumbling over each other in his mind. Amazing how Jeremie had only been in Avignon for days and had already birthed conversations with God only knew how many townspeople while Noah had spent his entire adolescence here and had barely spoken a single word to anyone. How did people achieve such feats?

  “I see, however, that your humility won’t allow you to acknowledge these accolades. So I’ll simply have to see your work for myself.” He stood, dusting off his hands. “When can you see my horse?”

  Noah stared at him again.

  “The beast could use new shoes, and if he’s to have them, then far be it from me to bring him to anyone but the best farrier in Avignon.”

  Noah blanked. His mouth was open, but nothing fell out. This was absurd. He didn’t have time to humor Camilla’s would-be suitor. She’d been the one to lure him here. Let her be the one to entertain him.

  The ewe in his hold bleated then, and he remembered himself. “The sheep,” he said. It was a fragment of a sentence, but it would have to do.

  “The sheep?”

  “This will take days.” He gestured to the herd.

  “Rest assured, I’m in no particular rush.”

  Noah hesitated and then recommended another farrier in a neighboring commune. He came highly recommended. Jeremie would be pleased with his work.

  “That’s quite all right. I think I’ve found my farrier of choice.”

  “But I haven’t the supplies,” Noah said, his heart twitching at the lie. Even with the recent commission behind him—the most horses he’d shod in one afternoon—he still had plenty of iron bars left over for plenty more clients.

  “I can bring whatever you need.”

  Noah faltered.

  Jeremie smiled, convinced the matter was settled. “I’ll return on the first of May to allow you time to finish with your sheep. I’m very much looking forward to it.”

  5

  Jeremie proved a man of his word.

  When May dawned, the farmland brightly holding the sunshine on its lap, Jeremie returned with his horse and a small rucksack of iron rods. “The blacksmith said this is all you’d require.”

  Guilt nipped at Noah as he received the sack, the jangle of iron against iron singing out as if in accusation, but he said nothing and took the reins to lead the horse into the barn. It was a beautiful creature; a tall, white stallion with a gray muzzle and strong, muscled thighs. Its chest was wide and strong, and it walked with poise, as if it knew it was a ho
rse of importance.

  As Noah neared the barn, a troop of ducks waddled onto the path, slowing at the sight of him, no doubt hoping he had portions of baguette to surrender in offering. He didn’t, so he continued forward, slowly as to not frighten them.

  When he realized Jeremie was still following him, he halted. “You can wait inside the house,” he offered.

  “I’m fine, thank you.”

  Noah paused. This was new. Already familiar with Noah’s taciturn nature, those who brought their horses in for shoeing always left the animal in his care before going on to catch up with his father. To them, being alone with a silent man was like being alone with a dead one. Unnerving.

  “This will take some time,” he said, by way of warning. It wasn’t that he was a slow worker. He was only a perfectionist. He took pride in his work.

  “Fortunately, time is something I have an abundance of,” Jeremie said.

  After a moment, it struck Noah. Jeremie meant to observe the shoeing. At the realization, he frowned. The men abandoned their horses to him for their convenience, but Noah found convenience in the arrangement as well. It made him uneasy when others watched him work. He found himself more apt to make mistakes under the watchful gaze of another’s scrutiny.

  He worried at the horse’s reins as he continued toward the barn, trying to conceive of a way to deter Jeremie. He might say it was tedious work, a task that would hold little interest to Jeremie, that he would make better use of his time elsewhere on the farm. Or he could say his mother wished to see Jeremie again, which was not untrue. She’d asked after him every day over the past week.

  “How is Jeremie doing?”

  “Is the bookshop coming along?”

  “He knows he can share a meal with us any time, doesn’t he?”

  Noah knew her interest had more to do with his seemingly incurable aloneness. She’d therefore continue celebrating their would-be friendship in an effort to kindle it, lest her poor boy be lonely all the days of his life. Wanting everyone to simply move past the matter, Noah had bargained with his brothers to ride into town to trade in his place. They often bartered in the currency of chores and extra portions of supper, so it was hardly any trouble, and besides, his brothers were better equipped to combat Camilla’s unreasonable demands, thus freeing Noah as a grudging chaperone, allowing him to return to his solitary work on the farm, and sparing him from encounters with Jeremie that his mother would only later fuss over.

  “Are you at all familiar with the legend of Saint Dunstan?” Jeremie asked then.

  It took Noah a few steps to realize the question was directed at him. He shook his head. He hadn’t heard the story.

  “He was the Archbishop of Canterbury in the tenth century. He was also a blacksmith. It’s said that one evening, the devil visited Dunstan to have his horse shod. Dunstan instead nailed a horseshoe to the devil’s own hoof. Then he chained him up and made the devil promise to never enter a place that had a horseshoe hanging above its doors. And so the luck of the horseshoe was born. I always found it to be a charming tale."

  Jeremie wasn’t only full of stories. He was full of questions as well. As Noah began to tend to the horse, Jeremie inquired into every last step and every tool employed, as if the information were vital to his very existence.

  “Is that hurting him?”

  “Of course not,” Noah said as he bent over the hoof trapped between his legs, pincers in hand. “I’m only removing the shoe.”

  And, “What does that do?”

  “It’s a hoof pick. It cleans the debris out from his soles.”

  And, “What is all that?”

  Noah shook the debris from the metal hook of the pick. “Mud, manure, rocks.”

  And, “What are you doing now?”

  “I’m resting my back.”

  He was, having stepped away to stand at a distance, but he was also studying the way the horse stood, checking to see how level its feet were. He was also massaging his hands. He’d dropped a tool twice already, unnerved by Jeremie’s careful study, and he hoped to rub the anxiety out of his fingers.

  For the duration of the entire process, Jeremie stayed close, engrossed in the work, and when Noah had nailed on the final shoe and had put out the hot, blazing fire dancing on the coals of his forge, Jeremie shook his head as if in amazement.

  “You are a man in his element.”

  Noah dropped a pair of tongs, their ends still glowing red from the fire, into a bucket. The water inside hissed.

  “Tell me, do you make all these tools yourself?”

  “Some.” Others he preferred the blacksmith to forge.

  “I suppose I can now verify what they say about you. You are indeed a gifted craftsman. Is your father a farrier as well?”

  Noah shook his head.

  “No? I was under the impression trades like these were inherited. What drove you to become a farrier then?”

  Noah used a kerchief to dry the sweat from his face. He shrugged, saying he simply enjoyed caring for horses. As he did, an image surfaced. He saw himself as a child, playing under his birth father’s worktable, handling the very first wooden figurine the man had ever made him: a horse. He shoved the memory back into the corners of his mind.

  “And it doesn’t displease your father that you’ve pursued a trade of your own?”

  What a strange question. Noah returned his tools to their rightful homes, setting his work space back into order. “It doesn’t, no.”

  “I see,” Jeremie said. “You are quite lucky then.”

  Noah caught the peculiar tone of his words and glanced over in time to witness a distant look come over Jeremie’s eyes, but once the other realized he’d gained an audience, he straightened beside his horse, smoothing his features as he produced an effortless smile.

  A practiced dance, not unlike returning an all-too-familiar mask to one’s face.

  6

  The month of May fell into a certain routine.

  Jeremie became a habitué of the Capet farm, visiting once or twice weekly. For whatever reason, he’d become utterly fascinated by their way of life. He inquired into every aspect of it, asking Noah’s father and brothers especially about their work and its demands. He spent the majority of his time, however, shadowing Noah.

  “He’s said nothing of his intentions?” Colin asked one day as they cut firewood in the forest.

  It was a cloudy day, the sky the color of milk. Leaves shivered in the breeze, and birds vaulted from their perches to take to the air, tree branches bouncing in their wake.

  Colin raised an axe high over his head and brought it down in a swift, graceful arc, the air splitting in half under the blade in a rush of wind. The log easily divided itself into two perfect halves.

  Noah shook his head in reply.

  “He would’ve spoken to Father by now, don’t you think? Unless he’s intimidated.”

  Noah couldn’t see that being the case. For one, their father wasn’t exactly a terror. A former militiaman, he walked with a proud and confident gait and held his shoulders in a way that commanded attention and respect when he entered a room, but those who knew him well called him, “One of the kindest men you could ever meet.”

  Besides that, Jeremie had somehow managed to establish an admirable rapport with Noah’s father.

  It had begun one evening when Jeremie, over supper, had asked, “Monsieur Capet, I must know: Are you at all descended from the royal House of Capet?”

  Noah’s father smiled as he drank. A playful light danced in his eyes. “Anything is possible, I suppose.”

  It was spoken in jest, of course. The direct line of the House of Capet had come to an end centuries ago when its last kings had all died without surviving male heirs. But Jeremie had sensed an opening and had begun reciting tales about the royal family, from King Louis IX and the construction of the Sainte-Chapelle to house his Passion relics to the Hundred Years’ War and England’s thirst for the French throne. Noah’s father knew the histories inti
mately, but he listened on with a smile, like someone enduring a story they’d heard a thousand times before, except he did it with delight—with amusement even, no doubt pleased to see someone Jeremie’s age remember the kings of old.

  Noah further doubted any intimidation on Jeremie’s behalf because it simply didn’t appear to be his nature. He seemed to be the type who feared very little. Always, he presented himself as a happy, carefree sort who loved life and all its vast opportunities. Noah often thought back to the day he’d seen something like sadness in Jeremie’s eyes. He hadn’t seen it since, and the transformation had occurred so quickly, he now wondered if he’d only imagined it. He’d conducted a careful observation, thinking he might find a crack once more in Jeremie’s well-placed armor, but he never did.

  “Maybe he’s changed his mind about Camilla,” Elliot suggested, loading the firewood onto the waiting dray-cart.

  “Then why continue visiting?”

  “You’d rather he abandon his dear friend?”

  Colin laughed and looked to Noah. “Be honest. Would you call him your friend? Mother may believe what she will, but we all know you were dragged into that charade against your will. He must be driving you mad with all that talk.”

  All that talk indeed. Noah hadn’t thought it possible for a man to talk so much. In the wake of each of Jeremie’s visits, all Noah wished to do was collapse onto his bed, his faculties utterly spent.

  He’d tried everything to drive Jeremie to one of the others. When crafting horseshoes, he hammered longer than necessary against the anvil, counting on the noise to fatigue Jeremie. He’d applied the gimmick on Camilla several times in the past, and she’d stomp out the barn with her hands pressed against her ears, threatening to tell their mother.

  When that didn’t work with Jeremie, who simply waited with the utmost patience for the hammering to finish before resuming with his talk, Noah experimented with the brevity of his answers, attempting to gauge how little he could speak before Jeremie grew bored with the languishing conversation. Half the time, he didn’t speak at all. He’d only shrug or nod or shake his head or make a sound like “hmm” as if trying to solve baffling arithmetic visible only to him.