Cicatrix
Part I: The Stranger, the Village, and the Wench
It has been raining for three days and nights, and now it is turning into sleet. A dark figure hurries through the forlorn village, clutching the hood of his tattered cloak. The village sits in a remote and forbidding mountain pass that is perpetually lost in the clouds and frequently lashed by storms. This is fine with him. Such is the bargain he has made. He pauses momentarily to regard the dripping body of a heretic dangling in the gloomy courtyard, then hurries through the downpour. “The world is a cruel place,” he thinks.
He opens the door to the dimly lit tavern and slips inside, avoiding the faces that quickly turn toward him and just as quickly turn away.
He despises the tavern. But tonight it is a necessity. He must warm up for the difficult scramble back to his hut. He would not even have come to the village but he burnt his last candle two nights ago.
He sits in a dark corner of the tavern. He pulls back his hood, revealing matted, disheveled hair and a dirty bandage over his left eye. A woman walks over to him, a woman with fox-red hair and animal hips. “Hello, again,” she says. “Bitter outside. What can I bring you?”
He grunts.
“You cannot speak?” she says.
He glares at her with his one good eye. “I will speak when I have something to say.” He gestures for her to leave.
She stands there, hands on hips. “What is your name?”
He tosses a small copper coin on the table. “If you must, bring me ale. And then begone!”
She picks up the coin and sashays away.
He wipes his nose with his ragged sleeve, watching her swishing skirt. “Women are nothing but trouble,” he mumbles to himself.
Yes. He has seen her. She sits with men and laughs and drinks with them. It only takes one eye to see trouble.
She returns and plops down a mug of ale without even glancing at him. She struts off.
He sips the ale slowly. He must not get tipsy. The path to his hut is narrow, steep, and treacherous in the dark. Especially on a night like this.
= = =
The red-haired woman sits down at a table with several men.
A large man with curly blond hair and a broad smile spreads his arms wide. “Rachel, my dear,” he says, “you lose.” The others laugh.
Rachel tosses the copper coin to the big man. “Tonight I lose,” she says, “but know it in your Teutonic heart, mister woodchopper, that I will win.”
“Rachel, my love, you will get nothing but cold rain in your face. A truly unbearable fate for a jewel such as yourself!”
Everyone laughs heartily — the potter, the weaver, the cobbler, and even Rachel.
= = =
Unnoticed, the one-eyed man disappears into the night.
He picks his way along the dark cliffside, leaving behind the faint glow of the village. The clouds are blowing off and a full moon is rising over the crags. Along the edge of the chasm, broken beds of rock jut up like tombstones draped in shrouds of glistening ice.
* * *
As Rachel is clearing the tables, two men slink into the tavern and sit near the door. She has not seen them before. One is a tall, baby-faced youth missing his two front teeth. The other is shorter, stocky, and with a scraggly beard. Rachel walks over and asks them if they want food. The youth grabs her by the arm. “We’re looking for a man,” he says.
Rachel jerks her arm away. “Because women bore you?”
“Never mind why we seek him! Have any strangers come here?”
“Strangers? Like yourself?”
The short man with the scraggly beard raises his hand to silence the youth. He looks at Rachel and in a slow, unhurried voice he says, “You know. Strangers…”
“Well, I see two seated at this table.”
“No. Other than us. Strangers?” He holds out a coin.
“Only one?” she says.
“One stranger?”
“No,” she laughs. “Only one coin?”
The man produces another coin.
She takes the coins and drops them into a small pouch that she tucks into her bosom. “I don’t know his name. He rarely speaks.”
“What does he look like?”
“Well,” she hesitates. “If you ask me, he could profit from a good meal. He never eats a crumb.”
The toothless youth strikes his fist on the table. “The one we seek is an epicure!”
The bearded man motions for his companion to be quiet. He turns to Rachel. “Does this man have money?”
“He lives in rags!” declares Rachel. She is being deceitful. She herself has wondered where ‘mister one-eye’ gets coins.
“You say that he lives in rags?”
“Yes! And he has only one eye.”
“One eye?”
“One eye.”
The men confer — “Gaunt? Rags? A pauper? One eye? This cannot be him.”
They turn back to Rachel. “No other strangers?”
He is the only one since last spring.”
“No others?”
“Other than pilgrims, no one comes here. People leave here. Now if you are looking for a woman, let me know.” She turns, shows them her ass, and walks away.
“Damnation!” says the short man. “As the days pass I feel the bounty slipping away.”
The toothless boy pounds his fist on the table. “Damnation,” he says.
* * *
The one-eyed man’s stone hovel is perched precariously on the edge of a bleak cliff. He pulls away the pile of brush that serves as a primitive door, and crawls inside. He revives the embers in the fire pit with a handful of dry pine needles, then adds some sticks and branches.
“Tomorrow I must gather wood,” he says.
As the fire begins to flicker, he sits on his crude bed and opens the bundle that he brought back from the village. He takes out a candle and he smiles. He lights it from the fire.
Then he turns to a large wooden chest, which along with his bed and the fire pit occupy most of his cramped quarters. The firelight enhances the eerie figures carved across the panels of the chest. He opens the lid.
Inside is a bronze coffer, intricately inlaid with jewels, lying amidst a trove of codex book manuscripts. He sets the coffer aside and picks out a manuscript from the chest. He settles back on his bed. The text, in Latin, begins, “In anno domini CCCXI...” He reads: “In the year of our Lord three hundred and eleven, Helen, Mother of Constantine the Great, who rules all of the world and has no equal, undertook a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, to Jerusalem, for the purpose of unearthing the True Cross. This was done at considerable personal expense...”
He sighs. “Blah, blah, blah…”
He lays back on his bed. He looks up at the sagging roof. “Tomorrow,” he says.
He sits up again and searches through the chest. He selects a text of the writings of Marcus Terentius Varro. “Ahah!” he exclaims. “A man of natural science!”
He reads aloud: “Of rabbits and hares, there are three kinds. One is our Italian species, with short forelegs and long hind legs, the upper part of the body dark, the belly white and ears long. The second species is born in Gaul near the Alps, and differs in that it is entirely white. These are often brought to Rome. The third species, also called the cony, is native to Spain, with short legs. You should have all three species in your leporario.”
He stifles a yawn.
“Wealthy citizens of Rome keep leporarios with stone floors that prevent the rabbits from breeding underground and thus they can easily obtain the delicacies, the laurices, and dine on the newly born.”
His eyelids begin to droop.
“The Christians have adopted this practice. They do not consider the laurices to be meat, and thus are suitable for their Season of Lent and other periods of fasting. The same can be said of beavers, which are regarded as fish.”
A roof pole cracks and a several chunks of sodden thatch drop onto his bed.
“Tomorrow!” he shouts. He sets down the text, blows out the candle, and pulls the ragged blanket over his face while muttering, “I will go back to the village. Purchase cordage. And fix this mess. Damnation!”
* * *
​
​
​
(Go to Part II: The Monastery, the Pilgrims, and the Sheriff)