Beast

by Thomas Castle

  “What’s this to do with me?”

  “Nothing. Even the devil owes him nothing. But you see, it’s just not the image that we councilman want to portray. We have to intervene from time to time, cutting ribbons, holding babes, visiting the sick.”

  “And this bloke?”

  “Just to lift his spirits.”

  “Why don’t you make it your business?”

  “I would have except I am too squeamish. I would have made a fantastic doctor if I weren’t so ail at the sight of blood and the fluids and-”.

  “Let someone else.” Philippe bit his tongue and held the silence until it coughed back an idea.

  “There’s word that the council might draft a permit for a harbor.”

  “Jolly” Cyril spat.

  “And if they do I will commandeer a shipment of liquor for you. As a thank you. And I bet that it will be worth much more than its weight in coin.” Cyril grew flush, exorcised of reason, and found entertainment with this adversary.

  “Where say you was this man?” Philippe smiled, stepping deeper into the cloud of goulash and alcoholic vapor buzzing on Cyril’s breath.

  “I’ll take you.” This will shame the mayor, Philippe thought. It will show his incompetence to care for the impaired, to safeguard the citizens of the village. He will be left to resign. This bungling would get La Noir impeached, having Hagar run amok, terrorizing the quiet town.

  “Well I don’t know how to say no” Cyril laughed.

  “Thank you!” Philippe shook Cyril’s hand and clasped the lock with his other hand. “All this goodwill begins with you.”

  ~ 15

  The sun sank into the hills, bringing Fierro into a cold town as he pulled the knapsack off his shoulder. Something about the air changed, and as he kicked the dust and wondered what he might eat first, he couldn’t help lamenting his return. The old bandwagons brandished with fowl skins went unchanged. The town lacked innovation, pride, all things intimate to a veteran. Everything was mute. The wind swept the roads in the same tawny dust clouds and the same dismal faces came out to the bazaars. Children sang age old lore’s, flogging pebbles with wooden canes, and cast ivory di in a wager for grubs, all to grow into the mold of their fathers as theirs did before them.

  The captain entered a tavern, greeting the plaque of the wild boar he slew as a child with a grim nod, and pulled up a stool at the bar. The bartender belched and spit in the mug, gave it a run-through with a rag, then belched again as he placed the jar back onto the shelf. Fierro set his sack down and counted a full set of teeth between five patrons that laughed and slapped the counter. He rolled a silver coin across the bar where it stopped against a bottle of moonshine with an ominous tink. The bartender raised his eyes and saw the young face grown handsome.

  “Fierro!” The bartender pushed back the coin and opened the tourniquet, pouring foam into the mug. “Good Jove, boy. You’ve come home.” Men gathered, warming his back with a blanket of hands, laughing while Fierro smiled back, unable to understand the drunken banter.

  Then his heart became flayed by the work of his eyes. Gabrielle sat cater-corner, nuzzling Da Vinci’s journal and nibbling beignets with absolute no mind to him. He tried to raise his hand but it was pulled back down into firm shakes by men lauding their war hero. Veterans stretched their shirts at the collar to exhibit their battle scars and others plugged horns into their ears, raising qualms about hearing loss from war. The sailors felt obliged that seaman stick to their own, and so shoved their peons aside, spitting and swatting till the sots conceded back to their sour bowls of broth. Strangers shared menial thoughts and Fierro begrudgingly thanked every one of them.

  Gabrielle raised her eyes, pale of interest, and caught Fierro's gaze for a moment, then turned back to the journal and wondered if the girl was as beautiful as his portrait. Fierro thanked the men again, pulling them aside as he shook one hand upon another, and came out the crowd in a vest of cheers.

  “We’re something grand, aren’t we” Willem asked, placing a jug of malt in Fierro’s hand. He lifted his glass as the tavern reciprocated in a wave suds raised above their heads. “I propose a toast to our hero, a welcome home to those who left boys and returned men.” The pub cheered and soared with laughter, clinking glasses as sailor lashed the air with obscenities. “I once saw this very man do the impossible, a feat no man loyal to life would venture. We were pulling against the tide, the winds blowing in choppy blocks, as mean as rotted liver, when the sails ripped down their stitching and we lost the hold. The enemy surrounded us, packed us in like we were Shackleton’s cub”, every sailor bowed their head as a moment of silence fumbled across the saloon. “But Fierro, nay, he wasn’t to die that treacherous night. He climbed the mast amid the rain and winds and musket fire and cannon fire and the ores bashing about and he nicked the sail to the bow and pulled across a new one. He brought life back into the ship and we rapped those dogface swabbies as they turned yellow bellied. We chased them to high hell and to low hell, and sunk every last one of them bastards. Aye, as the good captain’s chantey goes, ‘fall to the seaboard, above the seashore / bury my skeletal sand, sea Lord, on the seafloor’.” He turned toward Fierro, his eyes crystal balls, séances that attempted to read his soul, and raised his glass. “To my captain and friend, the nautical’s best.”

  “Aye” the lodge echoed as Fierro lifted his mug in response. The crowd cheered and broke, folding into a sorbet of merriment and insobriety and dancing. Fierro thanked the patrons while he put the mug to his mouth, the rum grazing his lips, and walked up to Gabrielle.

  “Hello, Gabrielle” Fierro said. She licked her finger as a hot poker steaming against coal, and turned the page. Fierro felt himself in those pages; a chapter read and passed, a puny stepping stone in the story of her life. “May I take a seat?”

  “Of course” she said. “A hero can sit wherever he wants.” She set the book down, pressed the cover shut, and picked the beignets into quarters. Fierro took the stool and flushed his mouth with the sour drink, then turned toward the pastry.

  “Luzenac?” he asked. “He finally opened that bakery.”

  “Nothing escapes you” she replied. “Except rain and wind and musket fire and cannon fire and ores. Ores are the tricky ones, aren’t they?”

  “They are. And they’re all the tricky I’ll ever want to handle.” He stood and tucked his stool in when she pushed half her plate to his side. He turned toward her as she ripped a tuft for herself and pulled his seat out.

  “You are the same boy, Fierro. I thought sailors grew sea-legs.” He sat again and picked the bread into morsels, capping his tongue with the first strain of fresh bread since going underway. She reached over and took the last piece and ripped it asunder, then fed herself both.

  “We only use them when we are at sea.”

  “So did you find what you were looking for? Hidden treasures, fortunes in remote crypts, the sacred journal of Mahan?”

  “Exhausting the library again, I see.” He pushed the last of the bun into his mouth and washed it down till the ends of his cup slid with fluff. “Is that girl, Gabrielle something, still your favorite author?”

  “She is and she’s amazing. Mademoiselle Barbot de Villeneuve” she rattled off with glimmer in her eyes. “Love, for her, was not to last. But her princes are charming. I’ve just passed chapter three.” She gathered her book, leaned in and kissed Fierro on the cheek, then walked out the door.

  “Does anything exciting ever happen” Fierro mumbled as he lifted his mug, contrived a smile, and toasted an incompetent people. Willem took Gabrielle’s seat, throwing himself against the counter where a mug of beer sloshed and spit foam over the floor.

  “Life is good” Willum hiccupped. He bit into the glass as the malt drained from the corners of his mouth and poured off his chin. “These ladies have found our vices, mea culpa. Just look at them.” Fierro turned to the throng of courtesans and thought, have you ever seen elder sin on cherubim? Then he looked back to the doorw
ay and stood from his stool.

  “Where are you going?” Willem asked as he brought an empty mug to his lips and shook the last drops to his tongue. “Don’t go turning salty on me.” Fierro patted his friend on the back, took the mug from his hands and set it on the counter, then retired from the bar.

  A burden lifted off his shoulders as he entered the street. Mules roved through the dirt lanes as children sat in the trees, casting stones at the chickens that pecked and scattered. He sought to confront his desire and divulge his love for her. Nothing would triumph his spirits if war could not ruin him. His love was battle-borne, foraged of time, altogether standing true over a trial of absence. He went up the street where the sun slid off the dirt in waves of gold, then turned around and ran down the road till his shadow touched the wall of the farmost building.

  Gabrielle was gone.

  ~ 16

  Fierro entered the forest with a rucksack secured to his waist and pulled the coat across his chest. He gathered berries off the trail and sorted them with the bandages dipped in cerate and sterilized tweezers buckled beneath his gear. Daybreak warmed the morning, turning the heavens cobalt and salting the sky with clouds, leaving the ice to wean into pearl drops that fell and broke the dew off budding leaves.

  Fierro tracked the family, following a trail depressed by snowfall, wary of ever finding them. One evening passed since they entered the woods and by some tribulation became deadlocked in the wild overnight. The townspeople sent Fierro after them with wishes unbecoming of reality, wading through snow, snapping clusters of mulberry, packing his pouch for the worst. He collected sap from shaved bark and slathered it on leather strips, rolling it shut with twine, then set them in his sack with the other medicinal kit. The family would be in a bad way, but he hoped, against dismay, that lady fortune would bestow her favor on them one last time.

  Fierro continued to the outskirt where the tracks terminated in a lowland routed with snow. He opened the passage with a hatchet and leaned over the cliff where the blizzard sheared the face off the wall, dropping the ravine another pace. He rested is satchel and took out a loop of rope, fastening one end around the tree and the other about his waist. He tucked a hooked knife into his belt and with a pick and stave descended into the gully.

  He landed at the base and scored the ice, then shattered the first sheet with a pickaxe. Shavings sprung off the surface while cracks drew into the crystal. He slammed the tool again when the block opened to a dark body. Fierro pulled back and wiped his mouth, forcing his breath through a heart crucified with sorrow. I can’t stop till I find the children. Frost turned into razors on his brow as he leaned back in and chiseled around the ice till a lanky branch shown beneath the surface. Fierro sat back, catching his breath, unbalanced with relief and impasse. He packed his tools into their sacks, took a reassuring glance at the wooden bodies beneath the surface, and returned to above.

  He thought of his childhood, of the days his father spent teaching him to track wounded animals and the predators that ensued. During the war he scouted men, the wounded and missing, then grew into a hunter of his enemies. It registered with him as he stared at the paths of snow that life completed a circle, storing him back into the woods where he once hunted as a child; now he was tracking the most dangerous game.

  The sun turned like a chrome dial, burning the ice off the first half of morning as Fierro searched for the family. Willem wanted to escort him, but Fierro declined; he was too volatile, earnest for one more taste of the soldier’s enterprise.

  Fierro broke through an atrium of branches just as his heart molted with abandonment. There lay the mother coddling her two newborn sons, and beside them the father in the throes of death. His ribcage was like briar wrapped taut in blue flesh, and shallow breath churned the frost. Fierro swaddled the infants in his vest, then placed them back in theirs mother’s keep. He then took the rifle off his shoulder and disappeared into the forest. The mother dipped in and out of consciousness when gunfire stirred her. Fierro pulled a doe from the woods and brought it to the mother. The creatures watched her through black marble eyes. Blood fell out its hide until Fierro packed the wound with black powder and sparked flint to cauterize it. He slid the game closer to the mother and stretched out his arms.

  “May I?” he asked and she returned a nod. Fierro drew the doe open to its navel and pulled the spool of intestine from its cage. Then he cut the arteries stitching the heart till the beat sauntered out like a windless chime. Undressing the infants, he set them in the carcass, stapled two pins through the pelt and fastened it close with naught but two heads protruding its bowels.

  “You and your children will survive” Fierro told the mother. “I’ll get you home. But first” he said as he draped the vest over the mother, opened his sack and removed the leather straps lathered in sap, the jars of berries and salve, “first you need some mending; you’re bleeding. You’re going to feel sick but I need you to eat these. I need your strength. Your children need your strength.” He handed her a fistful of berries and she kneaded them, wincing, swallowing each tart kernel as he sutured the wound, cured the skin, then brought her to her feet. He took cloth lined in taffeta and braced the twins heads, then raised the young doe on his shoulders.

  “Follow me. Keep your hands on the hare. All I want you to think about are your babies’ feet kicking beneath your hands, just as if they were still in the womb. Set the pace; lean on me if I’m going too slow, and pull me if I’m going too fast. But keep your hands on your young bucks’ feet.”

  Fierro reached into his pocket and withdrew several mauve berries. He knelt beside the man with an outstretched hand and said, “Take these. They aren’t poison, but after a minute you’ll feel alright as your mind changes courses. It’ll take you somewhere else until the darkness comes, keeping you none-the-wiser. It’s a sedative; I’m sorry there’s nothing more I can do.”

  “No” the man groaned as he looked to his sons’ faces for the eternity that would last for seconds. “My boys.” Fierro nodded. He placed the mother’s hands over her pups and left the furrow while the father’s eyes blessed their last sight with the faces of his young, then went dim.

  Fierro entered the village with the woman and her younglings by evening. The townspeople praised the mother for her strength, shoving one another to get a peek at the babes, and thanked Fierro as the doctor confided them to his office to sew good spirits back into their hearts.

  “You’re the greatest hunter in the world” Willem yelled, bringing Fierro's hand up, raising the crowd with mirth. “Nothing stands a chance against you.” The captain smiled and waved at the people, shaking the same hands he held at the bar.

  Gabrielle stood at the back of the crowd, a rose among weeds, while Fierro pushed the people aside who reached out to touch him. She smiled, turning his heart as pure as crystal, when Sir James Walden stepped out from the lobby.

  “Fierro, cheers my good man” Sir James said. “Felicitations! Superb work! I’ve been keeping note of you, our war hero and partisan of the lost. I want you to be my constable. It’s been long overdue, and I must apologize. This town needs men like you, me,” he lowered his voice, “men who can make a difference in this ratty village.” Fierro shifted his eyes from the councilman to find Gabrielle gone. Sir James words fell like snowflake into the flame, extinguishing in his ears. He searched the crowds for her. “I won’t accept any other answer” Sir James voice came back. “This town and I will have you.” Fierro turned toward Sir James with a feeling of horror, riveted by how scrawny the delegate was, this death incarnate, and settled the offer with a handshake.

  “Thank you, sir” Fierro said with one last side glance for Gabrielle.

  “Don’t disappoint me” Sir James lowered his voice as his eyes grew slit. Fierro walked away, wiping his hand against his pants, trying to nullify the compromise he made with the king of cons.

  ~ 17

  Beatrice entered the king’s quarters and threw back the curtains, shattering the dar
kness with a pole of light. Adam stirred in his sheets as she placed a tray at the foot of the bed and walked over to his pillow. The servant girl pulled back the comforter and set her hand over his shoulders, rolling the knots in his neck, detangling the cluster of hair in her fingers.

  “Time to rise” she said. Adam stretched his feet while she set the platter of old bread and mint leaves. “Eat. You are looking frail. What will a kingdom do with a frail king?”

  “What will a king do with a frail people? Or even a frail servant girl?” Beatrice took the saucepan of oil and broke the mint leaves over it, then dipped the bread into the pomade and brought it to the king’s mouth. He ate like a beggar savoring a delicacy, while Beatrice looked on, mulling her lip. Adam divided the bread, offering her half, but she set her hand on his and pushed it back into his lap.

  “It is for my king.” Adam betrayed her with an apathetic scoff. That girl from the village, he thought. She leaned in to kiss his cheek when he turned away and bit into the bread. Her eyes watered. The fink! Beatrice thought. Does love scatter like the wind?

  “Is there something the matter?” she asked, laying aside the tray. She brought her hand under his jaw and turned his gaze into hers. “You were always a puss when you got hungry. And now I must suffer a starving puss. Don’t you have any other appetites besides the one ruled by the tongue?” All he could see in her was that she wasn’t the beautiful girl from the village.

  “I’m just tired” he mumbled, turning back into the sheets. “And cold.” Beatrice lay atop the blankets beside him and ran her hands through his hair.

  “This use to tickle when we were children. All that scruff for such a little boy. Oh, how my little cheeks would lose themselves in it. I never thought there was anything more delightful.”