Chapter 32 #2
“Stay, sister, I may have need of more wine.” The druid’s hand shot to my wrist, and I looked.
I shouldn’t have looked, but I looked. Crimson irises bored into mine, pupils narrowing to pinpricks.
He took a gulp from his goblet, unblinking, staring at me over its rim.
I always imagined him an older, austere-looking man, with crooked teeth and pallid skin, not youthful and, fuck…
handsome. I cast my gaze to the table, begging whichever godsforsaken deity was listening that he had not borne witness to the confusion within them.
Druid Capriche was a long-serving druid, appointed as our enclave’s ward before I was born.
The heat from his grip tunnelled into my wrist, and my stomach turned to water, balls clenching.
Shit, shit, shit. He knew.
He knew I was no sister.
Before I could bolt, or try to knock the fucker out at least, the druids turned to the doors, another joining the fray.
A two-pointed helm inched down to where the rest of them sat, their robes longer than the others, trailing behind them like wraiths. Capriche released me, but I remained frozen, intent on the new druid just like all the rest.
Falstaff.
Veering towards the head of the table, every eye in the room tracked his thin frame as a sister pulled out a chair.
He descended upon it slowly, bracing both hands on its arms, as if his arse were bone china and would chip upon the wood.
Knobbly fingers reached for his helm, lifting it with the same rigidity in which he sat.
He placed it, like a crown, on a tasselled cushion to his left.
My hand twitched, where I longed to bring it to my mouth to temper the retch rising in my throat.
Neck like a stick, cheeks hollow, eyes sunken, he looked older than all the druids here combined.
A few thin strands of hair clung limply to his skull, but mostly he was bald as an acolyte.
No eyebrows or eyelashes, his mouth nothing but a darkened hole.
He bore the same scabbing, the same bumpy red rashes sported by Capriche and Timothee, but Falstaff…
every inch of skin was smothered in it: his ears, his nose, his neck, fuck, even his eyelids.
Under them, his eyes were so bloodshot, it was difficult to discern where his iris began, simply bleeding into one orb of red. He was more wound than man.
Gloved in silk, his hand stretched for a glass.
Slowly, chatter started to build as the druids returned to their conversations.
My heart hammered so loud, I was sure Capriche could hear it.
How many could I cut down with a piece of flint?
Two? Three? I eyed Capriche, but he ignored me entirely, his red gaze fixed upon Falstaff.
Any moment now, he’d reveal my secret.
But he didn’t; instead, he slouched back, shoulders relaxing, and offered his chalice.
“Wine, sister,” he ordered, his face angled towards Falstaff, who was fiddling with something round between his long thumbs.
I poured, slackening my face. Perhaps he had not noticed.
Was I that pretty? Like flower. A different druid seated himself next to Capriche, this one covered in spots—leoparded in crimson over his clavicle and arms. After the briefest of stares, I stepped to the side, the picture of duty, just like the others.
I examined the rest under the flap of my headdress, careful not to linger on any one of them for too long.
Some were worse than others, but each bore at least a patch of the strange red crust. A scar?
Scab? Infection? A druid with long, deep-brown hair had only a strawberry-sized lump on his forearm, while others were mapped with it in sprawling clusters, though none were consumed by it like Falstaff.
The Other only knew what hid beneath their robes.
“Speaking of eyes,” the druid next to Capriche continued, his voice nasal and pinched. I’d missed the beginning of their conversation. “Have you seen Falstaff’s new playthings? He’s been parading them around after a mead or two.”
Capiche’s mouth downturned before righting into an appeasing smile. “So I’ve heard. His tastes have grown a little…” He seemed to search for the word. “Perverse of late.”
The other barked a laugh. “If he starts carrying around a cock in his pocket, then I might deign to agree with you.” I wondered what enclave this druid belonged to.
How many penancings he’d enacted under the guise of moral protection, now sat here, chugging wine and discussing with a fellow holy servant the peculiarities of severed dicks in pockets.
“What I meant is that he’s a short-sighted old fool,” returned Capriche, chuckling as if it were a joke.
It didn’t sound like one.
Nonetheless, the druid laughed alongside him, producing a pouch from his robes and dropping it onto the table.
“On the subject of cocks,” he murmured, untying its strings.
The front was embroidered in gold lettering, a large ‘G’ stitched in cursive.
“I heard through a little-acolyte birdie that Vetrius is looking a little worse for wear.” My ears all but pricked.
From his pocket, he retrieved a small spoon, dipping it into the sagging bag before lifting it to his nose.
I angled back slightly, curious to see what substance it held, but with a sharp sniff, he’d inhaled the lot.
Wetting his finger with a lick, he scooped up whatever still clung to its surface and rubbed it over his blood-red gums. A shiver wracked him, and he closed his eyes, allowing the tremors to move through him freely.
“They say the succumbing has spread…down there.” He opened his eyes, somehow a fiercer red than before, and pointed to his crotch.
“Poor bastard. I thought him too high and mighty to take a sister to bed, but it explains why he never partakes or joins us in the Great Hall of late.”
Capriche’s face was neutrality given flesh, only the smallest flicker of something igniting his eyes. “Do you often discuss your superior’s cocks in this much detail? You should ask him to show you, Giamo. Or are you still fond of your head?”
Giamo’s eyes widened before he quickly recovered. “Capriche, my brother, you should know I’m wiser than that.” His fingers toyed with the pouch, twisting its fabric, as if he was fondling his own balls. “I only talk behind his back, lest my own be unseamed. We all know what a nasty temper he has.”
I considered the Butcher’s many penancings the less heinous of his crimes had he harmed but a single hair upon Ashara’s head.
Before Capriche’s reply, the druid ripped open the pouch again, forgoing the spoon to simply dip his finger inside. Another indulgent sniff followed by a shudder of ecstasy. There were other pouches now on the table, too—different druids all doing the same thing as Giamo.
“How much grace have you had today?” questioned Capriche over his cup, nodding at the pouch.
Grace?
Giamo wiggled his nose, avoiding his stare. “The usual.”
“You know it’s under ration.”
Giamo smiled, his teeth stark white against the red of his gums. “Have you not heard the news, brother? A fresh batch arrived this morn—victims of a blood plague three centuries past, found by the scouts… Some settlement to the west, high up in the mountains. Rejoice, for the Blood God hath replenished us!”
My mind reeled, trying to determine what in the fuckety of all fucks was he talking about. The blood plagues? The scouts?
“It’s finite, Giamo. Pace yourself. Need I remind you we still have no tree.” Capriche’s brow turned scolding.
“I have faith that His Eminence and His Holiness will provide.” Giamo’s red eyes shifted from left to right, like flames stuttering in the wind. “The acolytes whisper that they’ve located a replacement.”
Capriche stifled a choke on his wine. “Where—”
“Hear thee, my brothers!” Falstaff rose, the movement strained, his thin arms spreading wide, palms upturned.
Silence shrouded the hall, every shoulder turning towards his voice.
Something deep inside me twisted; he was nothing more than a body left too long on the pyre, flesh hardened and refusing to crease where it should.
He moved as if pain threaded every joint, each gesture slow as it was unyielding.
“I cometh here, to your nightly revels, with the most joyous of tidings.” His cheeks twitched, as if he were trying to smile. “His Eminence, under the guiding hand of our most ingenious Lord, hath found a solution to what ails you.”
The hall bristled, an excitable swell infecting the whispers of druids.
“Well, what ails most of you. As for mineself, I wear our colour proudly. A gift bestowed, a token of fortitude and might from the Blood God.”
I chewed on the conclusion that the scabbing was indeed a disease, milling it over until my jaw ached.
Falstaff curled his fingers into a fist, manoeuvring them over where his heart should have been.
“Yet I ken it beareth certain…difficulties which the rest of ye struggle to endure.” His sympathy felt mocking somehow.
As if he could not fathom why they would not want to be consumed by it, like him, a blood clot made flesh.
“The rubification, or the succumbing, as some among ye name it, may yet be undone.”
“How?” a druid yelled from the far end of the table.
“When?” another demanded, their voices clambering atop one another.
“Another gift of His divine rule.” Falstaff raised his voice to a shout, competing with the roar of questions hurtled to him by the druids. The sisters glanced at one another, flashes of panic quickly tamed into blank faces.
Falstaff waited for silence, content to let them beg. “The grey laurel,” he finally revealed.
I dropped the carafe at the same time as Capriche coughed, masking the sound as it thudded on the bear fur rug. He peered up at me, brow furrowed, eyes motioning to the fallen glass. I bent to collect it, masking my expression into that of a sister’s indifference.
“We hath discovered the most delectable secret. Her blood…it is a blessing from the Blood God, as we first suspected.”
The chatter roared alongside the ringing in my ears. Ashara’s blood? I’d learnt that lies and truths were one and the same in the templum, and it was becoming harder and harder to distinguish them both. I tried anyway, listening for any hints of deception in Falstaff’s oily voice.
“Where is she?” a voice yelled from near the hearth, this druid’s skin heavily mottled.
“Cooped within her fair cage, where none may lay hand upon her. Thou knowest how Druid Vetrius is with that which he claimeth as his own. Parry, I fancy not for long, not now that we hath discovered the truth. He must learn to share.” Falstaff’s mouth stretched as much as it could into a grimace more than a smile.
A ripple of nervous laughter.
“He is busied with the gathering and corking a supply. By the morrow, a few samples shall be prepared. His Eminence hath called for any willing to sample its fruits.”
A few jumped from their chairs to scramble around him, eagerly raising their hands.
The edges of my vision blurred, and I tunnelled in on Falstaff’s red, watery eyes. I was out of time, borrowed as it was. He’d bleed her dry.
“Is Vetrius any closer to learning the reason her blood destroyed the tree?” Giamo piped, standing so his voice carried above the din.
“I rather think he has been studying her cunt.” A snigger followed the comment, and I searched for its source, ready to add another name to the list of druids marked for death.
“Mind your vulgarity, Timothee, for it treadeth upon blasphemy.”
Timothee, I rehearsed.
“Yet thou art not false…he is somewhat taken with her.”
I gripped the neck of the carafe with as much force as I would squeeze Falstaff’s when I got the chance—tight enough to crush bone. Vetrius, Falstaff, Capriche, then Timothee. “But we all hath our vices.”
He produced a pouch from his robes, hanging limp, apparently empty, holding it up to the hall.
“Sisters, retrieve some fresh grace. My brothers and I shall make merry this eve.”