Lavender in Bloom

by Lily Velez

  14

  The day before the festival for Saint Agricola, Noah had installed himself in Jeremie’s bookshop, shelving the final shipment of books as well as any other tomes that surfaced as Jeremie cleaned out and organized the shop’s back room. The mood in the shop, therefore, was one of swift efficiency. And, surprisingly, the entire business was carried out in silence.

  Jeremie hadn’t spoken a word in hours. All morning, his eyes had been faraway, chasing thoughts. At times, he paced the bookshop, regarding the shelves and their books like a war general taking stock of his men, trying to determine if they were adequately prepared for war. Other times, he stood before a window, staring out at nothing. Then there were the few occasions when Noah would look up to find Jeremie watching him absently. Upon capture, Jeremie would simply extend a thin smile before busying himself with some small matter.

  In the afternoon, they lunched at a tiny café squeezed into the corner of a shady, overcrowded courtyard. Avignon was swelling with visitors of all ages who’d come for the festival, and the traffic thickened closer to the town center, making forward motion unbearably slow-moving. It was nothing short of miraculous that there were any open tables at all on the outdoor terraces of eateries. All around, people sat—on building steps, on fountain edges, over meals, fanning themselves with placards about the festival, tipping their heads together to hear each other over the buzz of other conversations.

  The café owner greeted Noah and Jeremie by name, but he wore a frown that formed brackets on either side of his mouth. “Did you hear about the robbery?” He went on to explain that elderly Monsieur Gagnier had been robbed at knifepoint at the mouth of the Pont d’Avignon the night prior.

  “My word,” Jeremie said. “Are such things common here?”

  “Only during festivals such as these, when pickpockets and their kind descend upon the town by and large to prey upon the unsuspecting. We’ll be rid of them soon enough, save for the devil or two who’ll linger behind to sniff out any missed opportunities. You’d do well to take extra precaution in securing your books in the meanwhile. Anyone with a handful of sense can guess at their value.”

  “Thank you, monsieur. I most certainly will.”

  After lunch, they roamed about Rue des Teinturiers, a sloping, cobbled street flanked by plane trees and the calm Canal de Vaucluse. The street boasted enormous water wheels and countless textile merchants. As they wandered, Jeremie clasped hands with those he knew, which amounted to practically everyone, reminding them his shop was soon to open, asking if they’d be so kind as to refer patrons his way. They all agreed, of course, and happily so. Still, Noah noted a difference in Jeremie. While his words were unquestionably genuine, he sounded fatigued, as if he’d lost days’ worth of sleep.

  At one point, they happened upon a storefront with bricks the color of sand and a weathered, plum awning. Above its doors hung a faded, wooden sign: Boutique de Lavande. All about the storefront’s walkway sat baskets overflowing with bouquets of lavender. Some baskets contained lavender sachets and others lavender soaps. There were also crates filled with summer wreaths of all sizes for doors and mantles.

  “It’s certainly the most pleasant-smelling shop in Avignon,” Jeremie said, and they breathed in the heady fragrance at the same time. It was strong, sweet, like a rich and full-bodied wine. It immediately transported a person to the countryside, where stretches of lavender fields flowered every summer and colored the plains violet.

  Jeremie lifted one of the smaller wreaths. It was fashioned from dried grapevines and twigs, and woven around its frame were daisies, flax seed pods, and dried lavender.

  “I once read,” he said, “that in times of old, the Capetian kings would crown their heirs young to protect the royal house’s claim to the throne. That way, should a monarch suddenly pass unexpectedly, things would remain as they should be.”

  He inspected the wreath for a few, quiet moments, fingering the lavender the way someone might caress a memento replete with bittersweet memories. Then, gently, and without a word, as if he were the holy man officiating a blessed coronation, he brought the lavender wreath to a soft rest upon Noah’s head. It became a crown.

  “As they should be,” he repeated softly, his eyes dropping to catch Noah’s for the briefest moment. His smile was faint.

  “Bonjour!” A heavyset woman hustled toward them from inside the shop, not wanting to lose a sale.

  Noah, face hot, quickly removed the wreath from his head, twigs scratching against his cheek as he did so, his breath trapped in the back of his throat.

  They spent the remainder of the afternoon readying the bookshop, which included hanging the specially crafted sign Jeremie had commissioned, delivered by its sweating, out-of-breath woodworker, and when it was all said and done, Jeremie stood back with his hands on his waist and absorbed the sight of it all. “At last,” he said.

  He invited Noah to the back room then—“I wanted to show you something before you leave”—and once there, he illuminated the room with the Carcel burner he’d brought with him from Paris.

  “It’s a most extraordinary contraption,” he’d told Noah on an earlier occasion. “It runs entirely on clockwork. Though I suppose that shouldn’t be at all surprising given that a watchmaker invented it.” According to Jeremie, the lamp could stay lit for sixteen hours on rapeseed oil without needing to be refilled.

  At a far wall, he lifted a stack of books from inside a trunk and set them upon a table, a plume of dust shooting out from underneath them. “These arrived early this morning. I didn’t want to put them out just yet.”

  Noah came to his side for a better look. The books were the most dazzling ones yet, with covers that might’ve passed for the colorful mosaics in a church. He watched as Jeremie opened one and pointed to an insignia on the first blank page.

  “They’re called binder’s marks,” he said. “Binders use them to identify themselves, almost like a signature. This is an example of one that appears on the front flyleaf. Ink-stamped.” He reached for another book. “This one’s on the spine.” He reached for another. “This one’s panel-stamped onto the cover.”

  The final book he handled with great ceremony, pausing as it lay before them.

  “I’ve given extensive thought to my own binder’s mark. I’ve decided I’d like it to be on the tail turn-in of the back board.” He flipped to the inside back cover and tapped at a thin strip of black at the bottom—excess leather that had been stretched past the book’s edges and folded over like the cuff of a too-long shirt sleeve.

  Noah touched the porous landscape, felt the scratches and grooves underneath his fingertips, the raised lettering of the binder’s mark.

  “Ideally, I’d like to develop a shape or symbol to accompany my name. I initially considered a fleur-de-lis but ultimately determined it’s been overdone by French binders for centuries. I’ll have to devise something unique. Whatever I create, however, will be written in gold tooling right at the turn-in’s center.”

  He reached over Noah’s hand to press his fingers to the very spot, his palm grazing Noah’s knuckles.

  Noah fixed his eyes on the area Jeremie indicated, but he couldn’t ignore the way his hand was trapped between the book and the heat under Jeremie’s palm…Jeremie’s palm which, of a sudden, slowly began to descend ever so slightly, little by little, until it at long last came to settle upon the back of Noah’s hand. Where it remained.

  A moment of silence passed. And then another. And still another.

  And then the unthinkable happened. Jeremie slowly, delicately, with great care curled his fingers around the edge of Noah’s hand and with those fingers gripped it. Tightly. Meaningfully. As if he never wished to let it go. As if he didn’t think he could.

  Noah forgot how to breathe.

  Was it him, or had the fire from the Carcel burner become brighter somehow, hotter? The air in the back room had been suddenly sucked away, as if the entire shop were holding its breath, and everything else faded
like a dream that recedes upon waking. Noah couldn’t think, couldn’t move. He felt as immobile as stone, as riveted in place as if roots had sprung from his soles deep into the earth.

  He could process nothing more than the simple fact that Jeremie’s hand, warm and soft that it was, lay upon his like a bird at home on its nest. Time stretched in a dizzying way, as if they were caught in the space between heartbeats, and when his chest began to ache, he had sense enough to take in a breath, and sense enough still to pull his hand away from Jeremie’s, away from the book, away from the table until his arm fell to his side, hanging like a dead man’s limb. He stepped back. He blinked.

  “Forgive me. I—” For once, Jeremie fumbled with his words.

  Noah avoided meeting his eyes. He stared at the Carcel burner instead. From where it sat, its flames seemed to lick at his face. The heat spread to his neck and chest an instant later.

  “Noah,” Jeremie started.

  Noah didn’t wait for him to finish, couldn’t. He turned away without a parting word or backward glance and hastened out the bookshop, his mind full of deafening chaos.

  15

  Once, a little over a year ago, Noah had accompanied his father to see about a draft horse a young family was selling. The head of the household, a seaman, often left to Marseille for work at the ports, and his wife struggled to make ends meet in his absence with so many mouths to feed.

  “When my husband returns, we feast,” she’d said, a crying, bare-chested baby on her hip and a second child hugging her leg in a tattered shift, “but when he’s gone, a famine comes upon us.”

  Her oldest daughter was Noah’s age, and she did what she could to assist her mother financially through dressmaking.

  “Bring her these fabrics,” Noah’s mother had said, depositing a heavy heap of textiles and lace into his arms. “We’ll commission a new dress for each of the girls. She’ll be delighted to have work, and it’s sure to keep her family fed for a time.”

  The daughter was overcome by the kind gesture, thanking Noah and his father with shining eyes. She eagerly received the fabrics from Noah, and for a breath of a moment, their fingers grazed each other as they made the exchange. The girl’s cheeks brightened with a hue of pink.

  “Excusez-moi,” she offered just above a whisper, eyes falling to the ground.

  Later, as they returned home with the new draft horse in tow, Noah’s father asked him what he’d thought of the eldest daughter.

  Noah only furrowed his brow.

  “She’s a pretty girl, yes?”

  Pretty? Honestly, Noah had been more taken by the draft horse. A black Percheron, its dark coat glistened in the sun like the feathers of a crow. The animal was like a creature of legend. It stood over eighteen hands tall and easily weighed more than every member of Noah’s family combined—double that amount even. Its muscular build and powerful hindquarters made it easy to see why such horses were originally bred for war.

  As soon as Noah had seen the animal’s impressive hooves, his mind was already at his anvil, hammering away, forging horseshoes with toe and heel caulks as he did for all their pulling horses. He only hoped the horse’s previous family had handled its feet regularly. Drafts could prove a nightmare when it came to shoeing if they weren’t well behaved. Noah had learned this the hard way on more occasions then he cared to remember. He rubbed at his left shoulder, recalling an old injury.

  “You mustn’t let your mother know I’ve told you this,” Noah’s father said then. “It would spoil her plans, you see. But she had come across this particular family in the market some weeks ago. The woman and her daughters made such an impression on her, and when she discovered the eldest was near you in age, she thought it would be wonderful if you became better acquainted with her. According to your mother, the girl has a sweet disposition and a soft-spoken nature, as I’m sure you noticed. She felt the two of you would make for a suitable match.”

  Noah came to a halt mid-stride and turned to him with a look that could’ve been dread.

  His father chuckled. “Do you disagree?”

  It wasn’t so much that Noah disagreed. Only that he never really considered such matters.

  Sometimes in town, Elliot or Colin would dare the other to introduce himself to a girl across the way, doubting his opponent could win her favor.

  “She’s too good for you,” Elliot would say, easily tossing sacks of feed onto the dray-cart as if handling pillows, flaunting his strength in hopes the girl would look his way.

  “And why would she give you the time of day?” Colin would counter. “You’d have more luck courting an old goat.” Not one to be outdone by his brother, he’d then pretend to notice something awry with one of the cart wheels and set to miming a fix, casting a glance or two in the girl’s direction.

  Noah had never participated in the sport. He’d never felt any pull to nor had he ever held any interest in it. He’d simply keep his head down and pretend he didn’t exist, hoping he could delay an inevitability like marriage for as long as possible.

  In his opinion, marriage was more so a union of convenience than anything else, especially in hard times such as the ones those in the countryside regularly knew. Love came later. Much later. People learned to love each other, and Noah resolved that this would be the case with him. His mother and father would find a bride for him one day, and over time, he would come to love her. Or at the very least like her. Or, at worst, tolerate his station in life. Still, he hoped such a sentence as that was many years off, or better yet, that it never came at all.

  “I think she could be good for you,” his father was saying. “Think on it, won’t you? And let me know what you decide.”

  Noah hadn’t needed to give it much thought. The girl was kind, yes, but the prospect of courting her for eventual marriage was inconceivable. His mother tried to reason with him. She wanted all her children to find love, and Noah was of the age where it was appropriate for him to call on the daughters of their farming neighbors in hopes of finding his future wife. To that end, she’d invited the girl to stay for supper when she delivered the commissioned dresses, encouraging Noah to start a conversation with her.

  “I don’t understand why you won’t,” Camilla had said. “Is she not agreeable enough for you?”

  It wasn’t that. The girl was tall, slender, healthy. She was clearly industrious, too, with her dressmaking and would be able to supplement her husband’s income during leaner months. Above all, she was kind. Noah had seen her talking sweetly to one of the horses in the barn that afternoon when she’d thought herself alone.

  But not even that had changed his mind. His mother was disappointed naturally, but his father patted his back to assure him she’d survive.

  These were the things buzzing like wasps inside Noah’s mind as his horse raced back home from town, the evening air whipping against his face and knifing at his lungs as a land of darkness blurred by.

  He thought about his fingers brushing against the girl’s and how he’d thought nothing of it even as she had blushed.

  He thought about the way Jeremie had gripped his hand and how, even now, his entire body felt as if it’d been set on fire.

  16

  Back at the farm, Camilla was the first to greet him, if interrogation could be counted as such a thing.

  “Where’s Jeremie? I thought he planned to return with you so that he could sup with us?”

  For someone who’d committed herself to convincing all others that she couldn’t care less about Jeremie’s comings and goings, Camilla certainly inquired into his whereabouts a great deal.

  Noah simply shook his head, undoing his horse’s cinch strap.

  “Why not? Jeremie’s never declined an invitation before.”

  He shrugged, hoisting the saddle off the horse’s back and setting it aside. He submerged a frayed towel into a nearby bucket of water and then pressed it against the horse’s sweaty backside. The horse, a black and white pinto, flicked its long, dark tail in an appre
ciative manner, though it also snorted when Camilla drew too close, causing her to warily sidestep it. Noah would’ve rewarded the horse with a carrot had there been one on his person.

  “How could you possibly not know? Surely he issued some sort of reason.”

  “He didn’t.”

  He brushed past her to lead the horse into its stall. Exposed as his hand was, he feared Camilla might glimpse what had transpired between him and Jeremie, and so once his horse was settled, he made straight for the farmhouse, where he was assailed by the savorous and spicy aroma of the chicken stew his mother prepared.

  Camilla stomped after him, practically on his heels. “Mamá! Would you please insist that Noah answer my questions? Jeremie isn’t joining us for supper, and I’d like to know why.”

  “He isn’t? Oh, but Noah, why not?” His mother frowned as she wiped her hands onto a scallop-trimmed apron. The fabric was stained with water marks, pieces of diced onion and chives, and a blot of tomato sauce.

  “That’s what I want to know.” Camilla crossed her arms.

  Noah was ultimately saved by the dog, which suddenly scrambled into the kitchen on muddy paws, causing Camilla and his mother to screech. By the time the dog had been contained and its brown prints cleaned from the floor, the matter had been forgotten, and feigning exhaustion, Noah passed up on supper altogether and sequestered himself in his room before Camilla could start up again.

  From here, the light chatter of his family’s conversations still reached him: his brothers harassing each other and his mother gently refereeing their repartee, his father speaking favorably of the crop yields, Camilla bemoaning her lot in life. Their utensils made low, grating sounds while moving against the dishware. Someone’s chair legs scraped against the wooden floor as they rose to fetch something. Colin exclaimed; Elliot must’ve stolen a portion of his food again.