The Cross and the Black-Episode II

By Luwa Wande

Claude Severin has left the life of servitude and gay prostitution, and embarks on the quiet life of a student in the countryside of Renaissance Southern France. Within weeks problems arise. Studying is dry and difficult. The city of Toulouse tempts him back to its carnal pleasures. And his tutor ... just might be a murderer.

What way now lies between the Cross and the Black?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Luwa Wande
• Release date: Mar 7, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301145942

Luwa Wande

Also known as Wando Wande, Wandu Wande, Wanda Wande. Luwo Wande, Luwe Wande... you get the idea. I fought barehanded against lions once in Serengeti Plains...

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The Cross and the Black-Episode II

Luwa Wande

Copyright Luwa Wande 2012

Smashwords Edition

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This is Episode II. Here is Episode I

Chapter One

Across the heavens were unfolded the clouds, foamy and thick, shaped like pillaged cathedrals and fallen castles after a ruinous siege. For half a day Claude and Guy plodded towards the grey and purple corrugating the eastern horizon. Guy did all talking. Claude did all the listening on Mamohedans and their strange Friday Sabbaths, men with skin black as ink or men with eyes like surly cats. His knapsack burdened heavier on each stride, and he felt moment by moment as though a pregnant goat about to give birth. In the infrequent moments of Guy’s purring silences, Claude held his breath to the vast landscape, which fanned from the broken walls of trees into the thin wrinkled fabric of brown farmland. The expansiveness of the flatlands would swallow him and spit him out another clay clump.

They took to a pathway feathered with wild ferns. As they passed through a copse of trees, light narrowed into a green darkness. Tree trunks framed over the blustery lilac of twilight an aperture, which viewed a cottage dusted in brown. The walls were daub and wattle, the roof a dull yellow thatch of damp reeds. Mapping a ragged mosaic over the brown soil, weeds were twisted out in clumps and irregular patches over the front yard. Dandelions grew out of dog’s bones, creeping around the leafless giant of a chestnut tree, tottering up ugly flowers in the crevices between the cottage wall and the ground.

Claude slowed down and watched disconcertingly as Guy veered to the front door of the cottage. Guy looked back, his black hair brushing over one eye, and gave him the ‘come along’ shake of the head, but Claude remained still and pensive, glowering at him quaveringly. How long have you lived here?

Long enough. Guy opened the front door, and Claude begrudgingly moved along.

A musty air washed over Claude’s face, and he had to open the window. Rats scampered in and out of the little mounds on the rushed floor. Open shelves hung high over the hearth. Dust as thick as his woolen cape. Dust over ladle and earthen plate, dulling the shine of a pewter cup. Claude whirled his gaze about the room, spinning a tattered view of cobwebs and a quick fabric of suspicions. Guy would be another Serge who promised advancement but offered wrinkled cock.

A sheathed sword and the lute lay side by side on the table—board over trestles. The thought that Guy had despoiled an unfortunate someone of his or her cottage flashed in Claude’s mind. But the sight of Guy in an aggressive sword stance against an opponent seemed like the high art of buffoonery. Claude shrugged off the inane image. Guy could not possibly be a swordsman. Not the man who wore white face paint like a woman and lamented the lack of Sabrine’s kisses.

Unlike poor Marsyas, my skills on the lute do rival Apollo’s. Guy laughed, patting his hand over his belly. Mirth would become him, but Claude could not reconcile the two faces of his mien: the laughter and the flinty eyes, the sword and the lute.

The sword had an ivory hilt, and its sheath was also of ivory, but inlaid with gold. Claude drew to examine it, but Guy snatched it before him. His eyes salt white and grave, he said, Humans are not allowed to touch it.

Claude shrugged and slapped out the back door, thinking he only had to play with the sword when Guy was not around.

The backyard stretched a wild and wasted greenery, terminating abruptly into a black rocky outcrop to the north and woody meadows to the east. Neither plow nor human had tamed the sagebrush and laurel interspersing the broom shrubs. A box pad placed for a vegetable plot was overgrown with inedibles.

The privy is over there. Guy pointed to a capsizing arrangement of rotting boards.

From the west the sound of a stream beckoned to Claude’s exasperated ear. A gust of cold wind tore at Claude’s exposed clavicle, and thoughts rushed their urgency. He needed to put the hearth in