“Bloody” he said, pulling his shirt back down over his lap. Fierro tucked the knife into his belt and cracked his eye open. An orb of light sifted in the mist and rocked to the harmony of creaking wheels. The warm scent of fresh baked bread followed the musk of horses. Fierro sucked deep, a learned soldier that any aroma mixed with stench is still good, anything besides sweat and blood and the defecate. He leaned forward, drawing a stool to his feet, and released the twine sealing the leather bound entry. His teeth chattered as the warmth from the chair left his back and stiffened his legs. He bent his arm to loosen the joint and saluted with the pads of his fingers flat against his forehead. Fierro stretched his jaw and rubbed his neck.
“Morning sir” he repeated, clearing the grog from his voice. “Quite the hour, isn’t it.” He felt a wave of sleep in his eyes as he bit down on his yawn. Then the orb disappeared into the earth. Maybe the fire burned out. But why did it drop? Maybe someone was walking and fumbled it. But then what about the creaking?
The orb arose from the earth. Did the ground open and carriage return from hell? Cold sweat dripped behind his ears. Fog and war brought on similar characteristics; horror and blindness, both producing enchanted stories. Didn’t his general keep the men occupied at night with tales of fear? Yes, now recalling, yes the ornery lass did. He rode a black stallion whose breath furled smoke in the winter air. His cadence was sinister, his words the last to be heard before death. He would slow his horse from a mope, making sure his voice never ferried too far for the next man to hear, and caution them of the Hessian.
A sack the size of a head lay fixed to the pillion, and by night the soldiers saw a black stallion running in a dark veil. Could he be, they wondered, the one? He would disappear in the thick of battle, and when the soldiers thought themselves abandoned, each would see in his own moment the general surrounded in an ambush, slaying men in fright, an unfettered demon of war. No sooner would he disappear, wrapped in abeyance by a soldier’s blink, an eruption of cannon fire, and return at night to admonish the men of the Hessian. Fear marinated their dreams with terrors unfathomable, creeping into the wake of their sheets, into the idle sleep in their beds back home, feeling the cool crawl of death always nipping at their souls.
Nonsense! Fierro broke from his rumination. The fool only knew how to play his soldiers well with the warfare of fear. Bless him we survived, but curse his soul that we did not do so without terror.
Fierro turned toward the carriage where a silhouette of two horses emerged from the haze. A small man sat on the narrow bench with reigns pouring from his hands to the horses bridles. The smell of bread congested the air as the carriage pulled up to the guard box.
“Quite the hour, isn’t it” Fierro said, fighting to keep the smile on his face when dreary silence returned. The old man yawned, showing gums fused in rot, while the smell of food molded in his breath. Fierro winced as the old man dribbled a bead of spit that stretched into string.
“I’ll sign you through” Fierro took a quail pen. “You’re free to go.” Clatter spread through the old man’s jaw as he stared into the floor. “Move along. The town is just ahead.” The old man’s teeth began to rack inside his skull. Fierro slammed the book back on the stool and wrenched his fingers around the rail, leaning over to face the old man.
“I said–”
“Watch for the Hessian” he rasped. Fierro lurched back, trembling. The ghost of the general? Inconceivable! But who fathomed that hell could temper the reach of his madness, his cruelty. The cart carried onward while Fierro stood at the back of the post, feeling an unmerited sense of security away from the window.
The Hessian is not real, Fierro repeated.
Fierro awoke in sweat. The sea breeze gagged him as the hammock, stained with wine and fish gut, tilted back and forth over the rolling waves. The taste of dried brandy sat sour on his lips. He reached for the bottle when a burp bolstered up his gut and unfurled through his nose.
“May Neptune save us all.” Fierro rubbed the pulsing ache in his forehead. Even from the deepest pits of Hades he lurks in his men’s dreams, the solitary place in which he may still find some semblance of life. So too, than, must our minds become his hell.
He went topside, met by the grunts of the men pulling the ship oars, and lifted his eyes to the blue vault. Spate slammed the starboard and broke into mist. Strapping weather, Fierro thought. They sailed the backside of the isle, a cliff faced parcel, trailing the coast to the only port on the remote end. The day was young, but as every seasoned salty dog knows, arrival depends on the mercy of the ocean.
Then Fierro saw a magnificent castle resting atop the cliff. Bleak walls made it a catacomb and low hanging clouds scraped the towers. A high wall built on the cusp, guarding its back. Why? He wondered. No ship can navigate the waters so close to the cliff; the waves would decimate anyone against the rocks. Impregnable from cannon fire, the tide, the height of the castle from sea level, the robust walls. If only we could create such fortresses on the sea, Neptune and Poseidon be cursed. The general imparted wisdom to his captains; manipulate men with superstition, humor, sheer idiocy, anything to make them compliant.
Its steeples grew gray from the damning seasons, and Fierro surmised that using the cliff as a foundation was a wager; the ocean erodes everything, even iron, the most sacred in hardness of all elements. He scanned the break. Waves rushed the side and drubbed the rocks, spraying low resonating mists and scores of seaweeds on the promontory. Then Fierro captured a moment of a small hole formed in the side, when the waves rushed in and pooled too high to hold any real belief that it was there. The tide receded to an orifice gathered by a spatter of logs. Maybe dead seals caught at high water. Poor creatures, Fierro thought.
Wind raced around the sails, crackling like a cannonade over the port, and carried the smell of fish seeping from the barrels tied to the back rail of the ship. Fierro looked to having quail again, or fowl, or any air breathing, heaven soaring creature. He even desired crepes, the most distasteful green, because the sea can cure sailors of any measure of fastidiousness. He stood at the bow where he rated the orchards, letting the stack of fruiting trees pull slaver from his pallet. It is good to be home.
But what was most pertinent, would Gabrielle still be there? And whatever came of her father? Didn’t science make him mad, or the pursuit of it? He once knew, before leaving for the war. Has the young girl grown to be a beautiful woman? Did she marry? The thought stung the joy from returning home.
“Captain” Willem called. Fierro met his old friend with a sea gaze, returning the salute to his coxswain. The look on his face was undeniable; it would be good to set foot on dry land. They each laughed, like two men possessed of simony.
Fierro lead his coxswain by the shoulder to the hull where drams of rum and spiced mead stacked the walls in barrels. A cloud of pungent air whisked into Willem’s nostrils, looming from the dried garlic and fennel that corrugated the cabin. Fierro pulled a shoe-horn tobacco pipe from his jacket, packed the mouth with leaves, then struck a match and fanned the cinder. He offered the vile to Willem who returned a smile that gestured the sea air was bad enough.
“We never thought we’d come back” Willem said as he hitched his boots onto a crate and tightened the leather straps through the buckles.
“We never thought we’d make it.” Fierro loosened a scarf of smoke from his lips and meditated the thought. “But I guess a soldier never really comes home.”
“I think things will turn for the better for us. Nowadays the military returns men, and war, heroes. The people will love us. They will parade us. Who dares say what the women will want with us. Before we left they wouldn’t take us; when we return they won’t be without us. And of the men, we will turns their hearts widow, every other man be damned.”
“Every other man be damned.” Fierro brought Willem under his arm, and took the pipe out of his mouth, letting it hang dead in his hands. “Have you anyone in mind?” Willem looked at him, one hangman to anoth
er, the look that said you can’t bury two bodies in the same lot, and turned away in a chuckle.
“You’re still that boy. And I’m sure she’s still that girl.”
“We’ll see.” Fierro set his pipe aside and pulled out a crate stowed under the stairs. Dust slid off the lid, opening to dynamite cradled in hay. Fierro removed a stick and bounced it in his palm. Willem licked the perspiration from his lips and watched the bar cry sweat. The beads flicked across the room where compact explosions left charred tinder the size of a knot holes in the floorboard. Fierro wiped down the ordinance with a handkerchief before placing it back into the crate.
“If she’s still the same girl you’ll have to bury that hatch.” Willem brought down a bulb of garlic, crushed it until the cloves fell on the floor, and drew a deep breath. “Maybe it’s time for a new male in her life. I’m just saying, Fierro- captain, it has been a long, long time.”
“You know, Willem, during the war we buried old dynamite. They sweat what’s called glycerin; think of it as devils sap, it bleeds a little hellfire. We bury the box, because if artillery goes off around it or another concussion, the shockwave is just enough to set it off.” Fierro placed the tobacco pipe in his mouth and tucked the rag back into his vest. He held the door as Willem walked past his old friend smitten for words. “Remember, Willem, like dynamite, if love’s not buried deep enough in the past and something happens”, boom he mouthed as his hands opened like pedal bloom.
“Right, captain.” Willem placed his foot on the stairs when Fierro took his arm.
“If you got your eyes set on any girl, you let me know.”
~ 12
Gabrielle read to the hum of a pot simmering on the stovetop. So dreadful was her reading, keeping old novelettes whose bindings sprung into coils, that she picked up one book after another to avoid people, those Shylocks. She didn’t think much of the them. Gabrielle wanted to like the townsfolk, but they were never impartial. And so she forwent every occasion of meeting them, honing enough excuses to make a charlatan tacit.
But, capricious as it is, Gabrielle visited the town on occasion. She could expect men to endow her with flowers, love saturated letters, many denoting self flagellation by the tears and blood staining the pages. Women avoided her with gossip and eyes that reflected jealousy. But children appeased her, for their innocent was kind and made perfect by their forthright natures. Gabrielle tried to think little of the denizen though. Every man was a professed suitor, envious of her glances. Every woman felt their self-worth to be harems, scornful of the attention they believed to be stolen from them. Gabrielle knew it and wished the world sane.
And so she sighed behind her books and read to the gentle hum of the teapot rattling, thinking about her father. Where did Jakob go? And why? After all this time he neither returned nor sent for her.
Then something fanciful entered her mind. She would go out. Her wish, more profound than all the rest, was that the La Noire couple would abstain from visiting the town. They weren’t any more inclined to the people, though for differing reasons, yet they still went out to make their presence known, whereas Gabrielle wanted to know if the town was still present. Her cottage was the only place anyone allowed her to keep peace. Boys use to lay bouquets at her doorstep, and men gave presents of meat and sachet, but soon all came to a halt when they realized how poor themselves were.
Gabrielle left her home and watched the birds clip pedals from the field. The scent of fresh cut crop opened the morning where loose straw scuttled across the grove, dancing on the breeze, and chimney stacks hanging by blackened sires dangled above the village. A young boy sitting on the edge of town caught sight of Gabrielle; his freckled cheeks widened and exposed a toothless grin. She adored children for their simplicity, so simple she thought them hapless.
But then came vexation. She entered the town and butchers swamped her with meats from animals she couldn’t distinguish and perfumers choked the sweet breeze with cologne. Gabrielle drew her hood, listening to the women clout the air with sneers, and pressed her way through men wanting to be her consorts.
Then, as the people pressed in, gleam filled her eyes. A man in a green cap, parsed down the middle with two rugged flaps warming his ears, approached her. A hunched shoulder turned his balance off center, so that anyone seeing him without knowing would think he carried a clubbed foot. He carried a child swaddled in his arms.
“May I?” Gabrielle asked, drawing back the blanket. The child cooed as its fingers gripped in spasms. He bore his gums in a smile, and Gabrielle saw the spark that unveils eternity through this child’s eyes. She leaned in to kiss the babe.
“Away! Away!” the woman with a hideous scowl shouted. She dragged a cudgel through the street, wound it back and drummed the club into the man’s side. “See here, Lawrence!”
“I wish you’d stop calling me that, Burma” he yelled, rubbing his side.
“She!” Burma said, turning the butt of the cudgel to Gabrielle. “She’ll make my poor son pot marked like his father. Do you honestly want that, another face like yours?”
“She won’t.”
“She will!” Her eyes flared, confounded by her husband's suspicious bout of courage. “Don’t you know that those hideous marks are transferred by dimples? Look there!” The wife drove a pudgy finger into her cheeks, creasing the folds of fat on her face. “They spread across the face. It’s good that a person has one, maybe two, but pecking a baby all over the face only spreads them.”
“I don’t see that probable.”
“It is true.”
“How so?”
“If it weren’t then why do people say so?”
“Well that can’t be quite true” he mumbled, casting his eyes to his sandals. “I mean what of babies that don’t have parents? Are they perfect little cherubs, their faces? Well I’ve seen babies that could have been born kings, and by threat of the devil's fire I swear they are as ugly as a horse. So ugly they would be made peasant.”
“Even those dimpled children someone kisses, even if it be by a horse.”
“Don’t be dotty now; horses don’t take to children.”
Gabrielle slipped away as her heart murmured. She pined for her father. People were wont to be crazed with moonlight siphoning hellfire into their souls. Men howled at the stars, barking themselves into violent tirades, and wives swept the floors till sunrise like witches digging up the bones of children. Strange, she thought, so strange.
“Gabrielle.” Before it registered in her mind her spine wrapped inside her; the voice was unmistakable. Sir James. She turned, staging a polite smile, and curtsied.
“Signor” Gabrielle replied. She looked into his pale blue eyes and swam with feelings of repulsion. They looked like two orbs of the moon; but wasn’t the moon beautiful? Gabrielle thought. A thin green vein wrapped around his forehead and sleek fingers wafted the cologne he wore for these occasions.
“The blossoming flower” he greeted. Every reception varied, some days, as was today, the contour of flowers. Other days he equated her to a beautiful scent, some days the power of tides, and other days the gentleness of cubs. Gabrielle grew fatigued always having to divide the sincerity from their desire.
“You are too kind. And the madam?” A grimace hid in his smile.
“As dead as ever. Age has killed every morsel of life in the biddy, and yet she finds it necessary to breathe and follow me, that drudging corpse. But it is fate; I am her gravekeeper, I suppose.” She wrinkled her nose, searching the horizon for salvation, then turned back to the councilman with a gleam in her eyes.
“And the child Wellock?” she asked, watching Sir James jar his lip with yellow teeth.
“A spawn.” He paused. “But not the child’s fault. His crafty mother should think more wisely before receiving a man.” Gabrielle feigned a naive look. She’s just a child, he thought. Oh, but this child is a woman. On the hounds of hell I would ride to madness. What man wouldn’t pay the price for beauty?
“It
is the work of man that drives a woman morbid” she curtsied, then continued along the road into town. She gloated, knowing his disposition would never allow him to bicker with her; it was a crude perk of beauty that made men foolish. Sir James clenched his fist, brazen with desire, feeling lured; she drew his love, the passion of youth, and hid once it was exposed, denying older men as younger women are prone to do.
The debate of larruping babies subsided as Gabrielle walked away wondering if anything about it were true, and entered the bakery where the warm scent of bread greeted her. Luzenac, the owner and chief baker, slid a stone pan into the brazier and pulled the apron free from the crevices of his gut. Gabrielle cleared her throat, watching the chef’s hat jingle and halt. He backed through the narrow stack of pots and slicked his mustache not once but twice for good measure. He rolled his tongue over his teeth, clearing grit left from the pea soup, then turned to face the young girl. His cheeks glowed like tomato skins, shiny and swollen. The tiny stones he had for teeth clenched into a smile, something she found endearing unlike other women.
“Luzenac” she laughed as he leaned over the counter and hugged her.
“My girl” he replied. “Soon we will have only autumn breads. The busy bees, they will be gone in a week, at summer’s end. Do you want the last of our honey loaf?” Gabrielle’s smile widened knowing his love for her was as true as any others, but better managed. he respected her beauty without hiding the comfort he found in it. She searched the loaves, humming her lips against her finger as her eyes judged, with blind disproportion, the size of her stomach.
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