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Of late, this past year and more, Darius had
found himself overrun by dirt. It was dry dirt engrained in his knuckles and
under his nails. It was powdery dust, white and coating his throat. It was
loam that crept into his sandals to crumble under his instep and heels. He
smelt it always and could not clean his hands or clear his nose.
It may have been the death of Blanca, hard on the passing of her youngest
grandchild, that first pushed the notice over the bank of his deep mind into
his eyes and between his teeth. The shovel handle was gritty. It grated
against his hands and when he began to dig, the blade turned on a frozen
clod and drove into his foot. In a rare fit of temper he cracked the haft
with his heel and retreated to evening prayers. It was Matthieu who cut her
grave from the bare ground under the staring moon. What tools he used,
Darius never saw.
It was right, natural, and unfair. Blanca was so full of life and sense.
Darius knew her from her second breath. She’d had no daughters, for wonder
and for pity. She’d mothered every maid of right age, to their great
consternation and benefit. She’d advised every mother and dame. She’d
let the elder women keep their counsel without her leadership. Yet she got
only boys, who had nothing of her black snap in their eyes or her chuckle in
their voice. In the dark of his bed, Darius imagined Matthieu’s advice.
“Her brood have thrown girls enough; if you don’t see her now, wait a
decade. Wait two.” He argued against salt and sense and the devil in his
dreams. When a quip about bosoms massive and missed was finally made, Darius
snapped, once, like a stick.
Blanca had made Matthieu a coverlet, the last of her life, with a wink and a
nod and possibly a charm for mortal increase in its hem. Like him, she had
no shame. Daughter of Earth, gone to Earth, in unfair, ungentle,
unseasonable Février.
So, Mars, dry and still. So Avril, sad. So quiet Mai, so Juin, so sere
Juillet.
+++
Other deaths came, as always, other women. It was a women’s year. The
witch died, at the edges of his knowledge, buried in secret by her sister.
The Miller’s promising bitch was trampled before she whelped. The
grapevine with the small, sweet purple grapes withered in the summer heat,
try as Matthieu would to save it. He lost a queen and her hive. No disease
invaded here -- that was Darius’s blessing on the village. Still, Death
ruled all lands, however humble or blessed. Under rock, gravel, dirt, dust,
and clay lay his final embrace.
If Darius had changed this past year, he never noticed. If anything, he was
more the same than ever. He preached the last several calendars’ sermons
in their turn. He ate the last year’s grains. He kept his gown, his bowl,
his blanket and bed. Matthieu slept undisturbed in his own cell warm and
tight against the stable wall. Ten years together and their silences and
rhythms had matured.
Matthieu tended the garden, as always, day in and day out. One hot noon, on
a fool’s day, he slipped an uncured olive into Darius’s dish. The
bitterness screwed his mouth into a grimace, even as he chewed it up.
“Thou child,” said Darius calmly, spitting out the pit.
“Thou monk,” said Matthieu. He reached across the table and took
Darius’s hand in his, pressing the sharp points of the pit into his palm.
“Are you ill, Father?”
“Of course not,” said Darius. Matthieu’s hand was cool and damp about
him. Darius sniffed. He smelled dust. “Where have you been?”
“As you’ve seen. In the garden. In the stable, in the house. Why, have
you missed me?” He smiled, like the olive, like the pit.
“Of course not,” said Darius. He pulled away his hand. “As well miss
the air or the ground.”
“And tumble if you do.”
“Into sin.” He scraped his bowl and chewed the last mouthful. Matthieu
scraped and chewed back at him.
Matthieu swallowed. He picked up his bowl and spoon. “Into some earthly
midden. You've staled, Father.” He left the house and left Darius blinking
after him. Darius sniffed again, and smelled only dust. He smelled his
wrist; he plucked his cassock out at the neck and smelled; he raised his
arm...he smelled dust and faded dirt. But true, his skin was ashen. True, he
barely recalled his last immersion, his last dousing wet to his hairs. He
wondered if water would stick to him, or turn to dust and puff away? He
rubbed the skin of his forearm. Threads of dirt rolled up and fell. Well,
then. If he was unclean, he must wash. When Matthieu was away.
Or not. What did Matthieu matter?
At the far side of the church, to the east, was a low-curbed well. Matthieu
commonly drew water, as Darius chopped wood. Matthieu cleaned the stable.
Darius dug. Matthieu cooked. Darius prayed.
Darius carried his leather bucket past Matthieu, who sat in the sun, sorting
and tying herbs. He uncovered the well's black depth. He hooked his bucket
to the rope and dropped it down, down, down...to a muted splot. He hauled
the bucket up, dark and full, and set it down as he unhooked and coiled the
rope and covered over the well. The bucket squatted like a toad against his
foot. The water had already gathered a skin of dust. He lifted it up in one
fist--it was a smallish bucket, but held enough--and walked back to the
house.
Was there soap? A gray lump he thought he remembered. Was he in need of
soap? The women had brought soap. The women had brought bread and cakes
baked with honey from his own hives, years before. Where did the women go?
He stepped over the threshold, and the bucket softly sloshed. They came to
Matthieu.
He set the bucket down before the cold hearth. He Baptized. He wed. He said
the Mass, he offered penance, he anointed the dying, he buried the dead. He
untied the cincture of his robe. Matthieu grew his herbs. The robe fell from
his shoulders. Matthieu as a lily of the field; Darius snorted. He looked
down the landscape of his scruffy, naked chest, at his ribs, his belly
sloping into the coarse woven clout around his hips. He scratched the ridge
of his pelvis under the cloth. No mysteries there. He untucked the end of
the clout and pulled.
"Père, Père, Père, Père, Père..."
Ah, hell, the door was open.
"Père Darius!" Piping, loud, and gummy nosed, Lisette's second
son stumbled in. And watched him gather up his robe, gabbling. "MèreMarette'ssickMamasayscome.
Says come bring Brother. Matthieu." Message complete, he smacked his
lips closed over his thumb, and contemplated the clout around Darius's
ankles.
"How sick?" asked Matthieu, coming up behind. He poked the
boy--Robert?--in the shoulder. The child hiccuped.
"You go with him," said Darius. He picked up the bucket and
carried it past them out into the garden. "Send if you need me."
He emptied the water under the pepper plants and broad bean strings.
He did not watch Matthieu gather his pots and bundles and leave with the
child. He did not pray. He could not ask "not Marette." He mended
the goat's tether and swept the vestry and when Matthieu had not yet
returned he took his staff and his wide straw hat and walked out the garden
gate. He walked past the turning that led to Marette's family. He walked
away from the stream, up the bare side of the hill. He walked not to think,
not to hear his own often offered counsel, not to know what he knew of so
much life lived so long. Matthieu knew medicine, simple and subtle; he
wasn't known for miracles. Up the bad side of the hill there were crackling
weeds and low brambles that clawed lines on his ankles. He walked and the
sun moved. At the top of the rocky field was a stretch of ancient wall.
Darius gave his steps a purpose. He remembered a spring on the other side of
the wall. Water had welled up long ago into a basin near the forge of the
old manor keep. The forge was abandoned and the land around was bad
pasturage but the basin must serve some purpose, still. He would find it, he
would drink and he would clean himself, away from unwanted eyes.
If Blanca was full with life, Marette was life compact. She was short,
slender, and straight, commanding her large family and a good part of the
village itself. There was blood from the old bad lord in that stock, if he
wasn't mistaken. She was curious, resilient... Darius grunted as he climbed
through a gap, over dead and crumbling moss on stones...intelligent, and a
shrewd judge of humanity. She married well. Darius dusted his cassock and
reseated his hat. Very well. After...after an alluring, near scandalous
youth, she settled with a solid, kind, and able man. He was older than the
boys she grew up with. There were no tears at her wedding, no rain. After
the blessing he’d set his hand on the curve of her cheek, apricot round
and ripe.
He spotted the chimney of the forge by a stand of scrubby trees. The area
within the walls was generally considered cursed, though not cursed enough
to prevent the scavenging of iron and dressed stone. Matthieu stole away
here in search of solitude or a few rare plants that ran wild from the
former garden. It attracted illicit lovers. Also lightning and occasional
fires. The basin should be around the side of the forge, to the north.
Darius crunched over gravel and weeds. Marette must be threescore and more.
Not seventy yet. Not possibly. Alive. Strong, at Blanca’s bed and burial.
He tried to remember how she looked the last time he saw her. At Mass. At
confession. Speaking with Matthieu at the garden gate. He saw her every
week. She looked like Marette, always Marette. Marette from the time he
closed his eyes to her. The edge of the little pool was there, barely
visible under a mat of plantain and ivy. Darius prodded the mass with his
stick. Under the clinging vines was a pile of rubble. The spring was choked.
He poked with the stick, and then dug harder, displacing rocks and leaves.
Their undersides were dark. A smell rose from the base of his staff, of
brown decay. How did this happen? Who would kill a spring? How would water
not still be here, be free flowing up, into its elegant home? Horses drank
here. Water was drawn for weapons quenched. He shoved his stick into the
mess and it grated and jammed among more rocks. No cleansing for Père
Darius, no drink, no grace from dirt. Only home, to his little leather
bucket and goat and the devil, to call him fool. He spat, from a dry mouth. Please.
Not Marette. Not yet.
+++
Darius walked down the gentler slope of the hill, the longer way around, the
way that would inevitably also bring him to that turn in the path. He paced
off fifty psalms, into the sinking sun. He saw Matthieu reclining under a
tree before the turn to Marette's from three psalms away. He paced and
composed himself and passed the tree, even as Matthieu stood and lifted his
bundle, even as Matthieu followed him. He stopped, perforce, when Matthieu
grasped the slack of his robe and held him back.
"Mule."
"Sloth."
"Where have you been? Lisette made you a sop of garlic and peas."
"God have mercy. Has it congealed yet?"
"To mortar, most likely. Stay, stay." Matthieu took hold of his
sleeve and blocked his way. "You'll scare their chickens with that
face. You'll sour the milk."
He took a bracing breath. The devil’s eyes were narrow, watching him.
"You didn't send; am I needed?"
"Always, Father." Matthieu peered at Darius, under the hat's brim.
"The boy went back for you, but you were gone. Be easy. Marette's at
rest..."
"Dead!"
"Asleep. Alive, certainly. What made you think otherwise? A vision on
the road?"
"What was the matter?"
"A spell." Matthieu pulled on the sleeve and walked as he spoke.
"A seizure felled her at her dye tubs. She's breathing easy and
speaking sense. She'll be composed tomorrow for any sacraments."
"I'll see her now," said Darius, stopping, but Matthieu tugged him
along.
"Tomorrow, tomorrow. I stayed half the day. She needs her sleep."
"I'll see her myself."
"Tomorrow. You haven't bathed; I thought you'd gone to the
stream."
"No. Let go of me."
"Come along then. We'll wallow together. I can taste the dust."
"Peter and Paul!" He jerked his arm. Dust and dirt and decaying
muck was their daily diet. Did Matthieu complain?
“Darius?”
“The sun is gone.” He croaked. His throat was closing, drying shut.
“How remarkable. Come along. I know just the place.” He tugged again and
Darius allowed himself to be led. The stream would do, in the dusk. He could
cool his feet and wet his mouth. They walked another half hour in near
silence, cutting across the bottom of Ponset’s vineyard, as the light
faded from yellow with suspended motes to pearly green to lavender.
The place Matthieu knew was known to every village boy who could steal time
from his chores or prayers and risk Ponset’s wrath. The stream curved here
around a massive tree and flat boulder and the bed dipped low. Someone had
left a peeled willow wand and squares of bark, abandoned play. Darius
brushed them carefully to one side and Matthieu dropped his bundle on them.
Matthieu stripped efficiently, quickly, as Darius fumbled with his knots. In
the blue light his body gleamed, like the willow wand. Like marble. Darius
lowered his eyes in needless decency to his belt and disrobed himself. The
air was hot and soft on his skin, soother here at the bank. He hung his hat
and clothing on the tree and turned to see his marble nude step gingerly
from the boulder into the stream, the water receiving him, rising above his
knees to lap at his thighs. He held out a hand to Darius. That turn of body,
that gesture, he’d seen in a funeral statue of an athlete from Chios.
"Come."
Darius declined death's offer and stepped from the boulder awkwardly. His
foot splashed down onto a mossy stone, and another stone, and something hard
and jagged. He rocked, trying for balance, and staggered off with his other
foot, stumbling through the wonder that was water, cool and shocking. He
pivoted and fell hard on his thigh and hip, submerged to his shoulder. He
laughed. It came out as a sob. He rolled onto his back and sank under,
letting the stream flow over and bury him. He spread his fingers and toes.
Methos kicked him in his side.
When the second kick came, and the fist grabbing for his hair, he shoved
against the stream bed and came gasping to the surface, face to shadowy face
with his old friend bending over him. “Methos,” he said. That fetched
him a soft wet slap to the cheek.
“Don't die,” said Methos. He hooked Darius under the armpit and hauled
him up, standing close. “I need you to wash my back.”
He knew what Methos’s eyes looked like, watching him. He rubbed dampened
fingers across his mouth. He reached out and touched the edge of Methos’s
jaw, the back of his neck, the slide of his shoulder. He curved his hand
around Methos’s neck and leaned forward and kissed his lips, warm and wet.
And would have slipped away, but Methos’s arms came around and pulled him
tight. And held him, warm and wet and close, Darius leaning his weight into
his chest and thighs, leaning his head into his shoulder, leaning into him.
Methos held him, between water and soft air.
“Alive,” said Methos, finally. He slid his knuckles up Darius’s spine.
“Weaker, but no less herself. She said to tell you that.”
“Comfort from Marette,” said Darius.
Methos chuckled. “She knows children.”
Comfort from Marette, afflicted; from Methos, pagan naked. God of fire, air,
water, and earth. On a tomorrow, later or soon, Marette would be gone and he
would be left, living, with only her memory.
Darius sniffed, and smelled the running stream, night willow, and flesh. He
pressed his lips to Methos’s shoulder. He murmured in the mongrel tongue:
“My love is green, green and wet. My love is sage and thyme. My love is
parsley, basil sweet, and wanton, dripping cress.”
Methos bit his ear.
++FIN++
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