“Decide for me.” He wallowed in pleasure, hopping around the loaves, trailing endless scents. Honey? He wondered. Maybe barley, or oat, or long grain, or sour, or rye, or cheese for dipping bread, or soup bread? “Please, take a sample. If I sold you an unsuitable loaf, my bakery would make bad business.”
“Oh no, Luzenac. You are a superb baker. I’m sure anything you make will be wonderful.” It was true. Even his bread, stale and cold, was worth its coin. Knowing this, he took a loaf off the shelf and bundled it in a sheet of paper, then again in red cloth.
“Here” he said, handing her the sleeve of bread. “It will keep it warm till you get home. Bring it back, the wrap, and next time I will discount your bread. It will be our arrangement.”
“Thank you.” Gabrielle kissed him on the cheek which tightened with a boyish smile, leaving his bushy mustache bristling over his lip.
“Watch yourself, Gabrielle. You are beautiful, and all these school boys know it.”
“Thank you” she smiled again as he waved her goodbye.
Gabrielle tucked the bread against her chest as the smell of the cattle returned outside, and looked back through the baker’s window. While Luzenac sat with his nose buried in a mound of flour Gabrielle wondered what Mrs. Luzenac was like. Yes, she knew the secret; he is a widower. Luzenac, contrary to everyone’s investigation, wasn’t always homely. Of course no one could discover this, which made this town the most opportune for him to reside in, wanting to remain a celibate. He came from overseas, hence his girth and brusque features. In his homeland such an audacious build was seen as masculine, not the chiseled tight features that the townspeople preferred, even extolled. But his bread was good and prices equitable, so with a bitter tooth, they accepted him. However, Luzenac brother felt different.
Hagar resented the people. He found it unbecoming that a small man who couldn’t even lift an instrument demands how it should be used, equating it to how a general who never fired a shot should never be head of the execution squad. Why would it be different; a man who has never milled cannot be a foreman for lumberjacks, or a man who never plowed dictate farming. Such suggestion was insane, but that was Hagar’s share of brilliance, shallow and dim, altogether wanting.
But Luzenac took a liking to the order, becoming quite fond of it, although the citizens could be tight with their fists. The difference between them, Luzenac suggested, was that they were half-brothers, and anything common between them was shared through their mother. It was a subtle way of keeping peace between the siblings.
Gabrielle left the town, its clamor of men cheering in drunken stupor, the cowls and caws stemming from the pens, the scents of iron forged mastery and freshwater fish. She was free, in the open where nature respected her with silence. Then a thought roused her heart. Her father. What a wonderful, kind man, she reminisced. She wondered what the nature of his work was, knowing it was for him. The letter from Jakob were few, but they were telling.
She broke from the path and entered a field tilled with maroon cabbage, admiring the little plumes of purple smoke nestled against the ground. She took a seat, and unwinding the wrap broke off a piece of bread. It was sweet smelling, its skin smooth. She bit into it when spice rushed down her throat, and coughed and spat. It is good, she thought, rubbing her neck. But it would be better with tomato soup. She tucked the loaf back into its sack and poised herself, feeling the earth’s warmth cool against her fingers as they burrowed down with the roots.
The sunset was something beyond what Picasso could pen with a brush. She imagined that the sky was a veil drawn over the world, where each dawn it was torn away and drawn anew every morning. She’d never seen an artist recreate his work as beautiful as nature did its sky. Clouds like orange blossom sat toed beneath the thunderheads, turning the sky into wispy ripples that dyed the horizon merlot. The mountains were east facing, providing a longer view of the falling sun. Gabrielle bundled her bread, dusted her simple dress, and carried homeward when she noticed something on her little oval door. As she neared, Gabrielle saw a dagger ran through the center of an envelope. Her breath quickened. Now? So long! So silent! What could it be? What could it mean? He has not forgotten. She pulled the chit from the door and tucked it under her arm; the skies allure dried on her heart as the forlorn reality manifested inside the envelope. Gabrielle stepped inside, turned over the letter enclosed with a lion’s crest stamped in the wax seal, and broke it with a paring blade. Red rose petals fell to the floor, showering her home with a beautiful fragrance.
She began to weep.
~ 13
Fierro made port by midday. The white washed beaches returned memories of his youth, chasing sea creatures into the waves; it was a time before the war, before strife fertilized his life. Seagulls sprang from the coastline as the tides folded, racking the rocks, turning the sand into clay. A pungent note loomed in the air above the harbor, a musk reminding Fierro of home. The dock rested on the ocean, dressed in layers of scallops, and although rugged it was welcoming to a sailor lost for the sea, stranded in a fairway of childhood memories.
The captain set foot on the first dry land he’d seen in months, recalling that while in war he longed for the seas and in peace longed for the land. Fierro held the leather bound dagger at his side and bent down to scoop loam into his hand, then poured it out like holy salt. His men came dockside, pulling cargo offboard with rotten cables, when Willem came to deck, seeing the goods teeter on the hull.
“Steady!” the coxswain yelled. The men pulled when the ropes snapped, releasing the crate on the plank, sending straw and jars of brown rum bubbling down the bridge.
“Mind your selves, sea crabs!” Fierro shouted. “You scallywags want to wallow in the gut of the ship another month?” The men acknowledged it with grousing, the necessary respect of sailors, while Fierro turned back in the direction of the village.
The captain reached into his satchel. He brought out a letter penned in the trenches as howitzer rounds shelled around him, spreading his camp into fire and carnage, leaving his friends in the ashes of Pompeii. He held the blood stained note in between his fingers and rent it like the child of Solomon, letting the shaving take their liberty in the wind. Fierro watched as the note shuffled across the sea in darkened dots, believing his love best left clandestine. Fierro left Willem to regulate the workload and departed with words of admonition; the men eyed the captain then spat on the floor when he turned his back.
As Fierro entered the woods, leaving the ship behind with the magnitude of the ocean shrinking into an echo, he felt compunction. He journeyed the world, followed the routes of Bonaparte, conquered enemies of foreign lands, all to return to the provincial town he escaped half a decade before. Wasn’t there more to gain? To accomplish? Gabrielle will never know my love, he swore as he took his knife and split an apple taken from his sack. I was just a dumb boy and she a girl.
Fierro sat against a tree, kicked his boots off at the heel, and packed his mouth with moss plucked from a rock. Earthy tones rolled down his throat; what a wonderful thing it is to be stateside. Seaweed and mussel, seagull and shark took on the taste of expired dairy after months of foraging the ocean for food. He tired of the marine life, wanting to feast on the medley of roots and herbs, bitter vegetables and fatty meats.
Willem left the village, following in the captain’s shadow. Fierro aspired to grandeur, but found the same mediocrity around the world. Then his thoughts shifted to his coxswain and the innumerable times he saved him from bargains with swindlers, mortar fire, falling overboard into rogue waves. The man dragged heavier than a mainstay in a storm. Yet Fierro felt obligated to see him home, protecting this stray, seeing to it that no harm become him. A coyote’s yip woke him from his reverie. He packed his satchel, strapped his boots, and took one more shot of the moss before continuing homeward with the half bitten apple in hand.
He entered the village alone at daybreak. A stone cobble bridge stood over the dry creek to his childhood village, and he wondered h
ow many souls passed over it, swearing they’d never look back lest they turn to ash. An eternity transpired since he’d been there, in flesh and in heart. Even with living bodies it became a ghost town to him, desolate and forgotten; all but one soul.
Gabrielle. She was the only sweetness to be succored before the life of the town extinguished into an abyss of empty walls and racked carts. A nervousness plagued him from his gut to the swollen toes racking inside his boots. Strange, he thought. Feelings return the same in love and war. He picked up the sack, empty save a few frostbitten apples and a stick of cinnamon to mask the rot, and continued on. The same old wranglers filled the air with hoots, and the scowling women looked older but no less bitter, whereas the boys became young men and babes the boys.
Why come back, Fierro wondered. Would Gabrielle remember me?
~ 14
“Doris.” Philippe summoned the young maid sitting on her tuffet. She stitched her blouse, careful not to tangle the delicate necklace scattering the beads of sweat dressing her chest. Philippe breathed the perfume careening from her hair and coiled his finger around a stocking left in the sheets. “Luis has become handsome with his uncle’s generosity” he said, pulling the legging taut. “That brigand, he’s been given an inestimable gift and yet he indulges mediocrity. The riches will be spoiled before the day.”
“What do you care? You have wealth of your own.” Doris tied back her hair, slid a pearl earring into her earlobe, then turned and searched his eyes, hearing him grind his jaw. She went to the bedpost and wrapped her arms about it, finding the shameful attempt the sheets made to mask him. “Philippe, Philippe.”
“Don’t start with that.” He threw the stocking, leapt from the bed with his frizzled ponytail and slammed the palms of his hands on the rustic window frame.
“Get back from there.” Doris lifted her dress as her tiny white shoes pattered across the floor. “For decency, Philippe, people may see.” He turned toward her with arms drawn wide.
“Then let them. The boy should be of concern to you as well. His uncle grants him wealth, Doris, so much that a position on our council will be his when he comes of age. The uncle will be sure to see to that. What is youth but canting and brash? How do you think lassies like you will be treated? Dandelions in the meadow, plucked and placed in a home? Hardly befitting a strumpet.” Her lips puckered as her hands wrapped deep into her dress. “Don’t be mistaken, Doris. Reserve that enmity for him. I have brought you to a home, whereas he will take you from it.” Doris turned away and lavished herself with fragrance, masking the sensuous bouquet, preparing for the next conjugate.
“I’d be better off dead” she quipped. Oh the possibilities he smiled. Doris left without as so much a kiss or word, parting with hushed, resolute lips. Philippe returned to the window and searched the fields for the boy.
“Luis, Luis.” Philippe rolled his tongue and grated his teeth. That stag stood in appointment to a chair on the council, and the very thought of sharing a title with that imp fueled Philippe’s hatred. Luis is the child with no mind for power. What does La Noire want with-.
Then Philippe reasoned it. All was shifting sand. Power changes hands. Favors change allegiance. Titles change owners. But somewhere in the mix, in the crags of transition, lies opportunity. Nothing is transferred without something being misplaced, forgotten, stolen. Philippe hung on the windowsill and thought of how this arrangement might play out. Somewhere in every plan is a fault, and inside that is born opportunity for the odd man out. Now was the time to calculate what Luis’ role might be, usurp it, then take the reins from the mayor’s hands and lock them in his own.
But first he needed to find out what that conference was about. He slid his pants over his legs, leaving his skivvies in the sheets, and threw on an old shirt. Once outside he stood at the door, waiting for the mayor and his nephew to part ways. Philippe leaned against the light post, bracing his vengeance, when his wife turned the corner. He bit his lip, switching back and forth between her and the mayor’s protégé, when she stepped up and slapped Philippe across the face.
“How dare you” she grit her teeth. She primed again when he took her wrist.
“Calm down” Philippe growled. “You want to make a spectacle, you crazy bat? What devil has gotten into you?”
“You mongrel!” she cried. “I saw her leave. I saw that whore. You can’t deny me that. Why, Philippe? Is my bed too cold? Is my love a dead thing?”
“Quiet!” Philippe shook her, and when her head fell into his chest he raised his eyes to the fields and saw the mayor patting the boy on the shoulder. “She’s none of your business. I was here getting a receipt.”
“You’re a liar.” She clawed into his chest, throwing her head like a dog killing its prey, and hammered her fists. “You are a bastard, Philippe. Curse the womb that bore you.”
“Shut up!” he said as humdrum as asking for tea, turning toward her with a coldly murderous look. “You don’t know what you saw. You words are noise, just noise. If I was with her I would never return to you. Grant me some reason, some notion of logic, for this fallacy. Otherwise I never want to hear these childish allegations again. You saw me beside a woman. I’ve seen you in the company of men. Have I ever accused you? Your boredom, maybe your lack of fidelity, has corrupted you. If you yearn to leave, do not project your lack of complacency on me. Leave me to my business, or leave and never return.”
“I’m sorry, Philippe.” She clung to his shirt while he eyed the simple gold ring around her finger, threatening to bite it off. “My love, I don’t know what came over me. Forgive me. I was wrong. I beg you. Forgive me.”
“Go away.” Philippe shoved her back, orphaning her. “I’m finished with you.” She wiped her eyes and returned to the street. Philippe looked at her, the petite wife, the daughter of a rich entrepreneur, then turned his gaze back to see Luis and his uncle bid each other farewell. Philippe felt predatorial, the cub was stray, and he hurried across the grove until the nephew was within a stone’s throw.
“Luis!” Philippe called. “Luis!” He flagged the boy with a hand hailed high and Luis waved back, waiting until the two came face to face.
“Philippe.” Luis shadowed his eyes from the sun. “What are you doing out here?”
“I was just about to ask you the same, my good boy.” Philippe patted him on the arm. “Well, actually, I came to applaud you. I was passing when I noticed the good mayor standing out in the brush. Then I saw you at his side and it came to me; you are being commissioned. Congratulations, my dear son. Bravo! I anticipated the day that we might share the incumbent with you.”
“Well, about that, my uncle said there’s a short while to go before I am prepared for it.”
“That’s preposterous.” Philippe took Luis underarm and lead him deeper into the field. He raised his hands, like a minister blessing the congregation of liars, and stood the boy in front of him. “You’re a man just as any other. He’s just a mother hen, over protective of his brood. What we need to show him, what you need to show him, is that you have the chutzpah to handle your own.”
“I do!” Uncle Elton didn’t understand, but Philippe did, and that was initiative enough to prove himself.
“Good! Your mayor and I, as every man in this town has done, took upon ourselves to go into the woods and prove our strength. This was the badge of our manhood, our fierce independence, the way in which we proved to our fathers, our uncles, the people, that we were men. It was our rite, our passage, and through it we not only demanded respect, but fear from lesser men, men who would not fathom the trial of masculinity. Not only can anyone ever snicker at you, but the women will fawn over you.” Luis took Philippe’s hand and shook it, thanking him, praising him, bowing to kiss the ring on his finger.
“I won’t forget this” Luis said, running back into town. “I won’t forget.” Philippe waved him off with a smile then turned toward the woods.
“Neither will I, my stupid boy. Neither will I.” After some musing Phil
ippe turned back and saw the councilman Cyril hobbling down the street, singing to a flask of brandy. He bowed to the men and women as they passed, and wiggled his fingers like wingless butterflies at the babes pushed in their buggies. Philippe watched the bloat stagger side to side, waiting for him to drop shoulder deep into the dust just so that his son, the cheat, could take his stead just as Cyril intercepted the office from his father. They are a hoax, gluts. Nothing is more spurious than bequeathing a seat in office.
Philippe needed to make holes in the council; they were disbanded with cupidity for power, paranoia. The iron of morality was molten, and he would strike with pestilence. Elton La Noire was on the cusp of his fall, bringing in the dull boy. The nephew would be a menace, a tornado among straw, he was the fuel and the tinder, and Philippe had just the match to kindle the blaze.
“Good morning, Cyril” Philippe called. The councilman turned around and hiccupped, squinting as the blur formed into a man.
“Who’s there?” Cyril answered. He tucked the flask into his pants and took a step closer. “Mind you!”
"Good cheers, councilman.”
“Is that you, Philippe?”
“Has the groundhog seen its shadow and come out of hiding?” he laughed. “I haven’t seen you in ages. By Jove, Cyril, you’re an ace.”
“Why thank you” he slurred, turning his head till the sunlight bore against Philippe’s back. “What’s your charge?”
“Nothing. Nothing at all. I just saw a fellow member and I thought I’d spread some cheer.”
“Well than jolly ho to you” he said as he flapped his hand and turned away.
“Just a tad more.” Philippe reached out and took Cyril by the shoulder. The drunkard shivered and belched, then shrugged his hand off.
“Aye?”
“I would be duly grateful if I could ask a favor. You see, a gentleman in our town is very ill. And it's a nasty thing to ask but I need someone to tend him; he’s bedridden, not by illness but by force. We need a councilman to unbind him. All that stagnant air is just making his ordeal worse; the doctors are savage and won’t allow the poor fellow a bit of fresh air.”
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