Aine Noire, Oiseau Noir

(Black Groin, Black Bird)

He came around noon. I saw him coming from the merchants’ district—it was impossible not to see him. He was a giant, demonic bird (a raven perhaps) that tore out the leftovers of people: their hopes, fears, their throats that called out to God until they burned red-hot with agony.

I was lucky so far, or blessed by Christ and His saints. These are the people I knew who died so far: Thomas le boulanger and his wife (whom he beat), Frère Jehan, Frère Henri (he made us poor one summer), Daniel le meunier, Père Thibault (he always groped my crotch when I was younger), Martin le Gros (who always picked his nose), three of my cousins (two Maries and Elizabeth), my brother Guellimen (last Thursday, God rest his soul), my English tutor Edward Ashwood (who taught me the tricks dirty English whores used), and my uncle Denis (he groped my crotch too).

Other faces went away as well, like the prostitutes three streets over, many of the serfs, regular merchant folk like us, soldiers who came home from fighting the English, our faraway lord of Marseilles (I never met him; his name escapes me).

I touched a charm that hung between my breasts. A wise woman made it for me, filled it with sweet, earthy herbs, and told me to pray to Saint Sebastian. She smelled like thyme and piss, but I gave her my coins anyway, and now her charm hung from its noose like a poker on my chest. I fingered it, waiting for some miracle to take place. My face held hot—good Lord, save him!

The raven-man came into our home, Death caught in the eyeholes of his horrific mask. Why must he look so fearful? Was he trying to scare us off? Or was he intimidating the Death itself? Intimidation by impression?

I backed away as he said, “I’ve come.” Deep voice. Made the house tremble. “Where is he?”

My heart leaped to my throat—God, I don’t know where he is! Passing away I suppose, where else? He’s dying like everyone else is. Soon the dead will outnumber the living and we’ll all be in Hell like Frère Henri warned (hidden in a dying cough) before he himself died. I wondered if he was in Hell or if his Hell, the Hell of the Holy Book, was any worse than this.

“In the bedroom, sir.” I was always so polite and soft-voiced. Maybe that’s why men never worried when they stuck their dirty fingers up my cunt.

Did the Devil stick his filthy hands up virgins’ cunts too? Or was that reserved for churchmen?

“What is the deceased’s name?”

He isn’t dead yet! I wanted to rage. He isn’t dead yet—he might not die. He might not be like the others. Saint Sebastian could make a miracle. God could make a miracle.

“Audenin.”

“What is his relation to you?” His bird mask hovered over me. He was ready to pick at my bones too.

“My betrothed, sir.”

I followed his cloak (it was like the fog of a shadow if there’s such a thing) into the bedroom. My hands were trembling. My tongue curdled in my mouth. Warm, sour, dead milk.

“No—stay out.” The raven-man said. The rage in his voice seemed somehow unprovoked, but I knew I deserved it for trying to meddle in great things.

I left, my hand groping my charm. I was in the sea, lost from shipwreck to nothingness, and it was my only piece of driftwood.

The streets were very quiet. It was like no one lived here to begin with, like it was a new town under the grace of our lord Marseilles (who was stinking in the ground somewhere). There were a lot of beggars who pulled at my chemise with their grubby hands. Suddenly I was struck—I had to leave! They were grabbing for my coins. I was terrified one of their hands would crawl beneath my chemise (the snakes!) and pierce my cunt again and again and give me the Death and then everyone would know what had been up there and that I was a whore who would go to Hell, whether it was burning below or here forever.

Some drunkards pissed in the street. I moved warily, trying not to get soaked by their yellow splashes.

Normally, our city smelled a little of piss, a little of the stinking tanner’s stalls, a little of poverty and dirt. But after the Death came, a sickly cloud hung over the city. It rained the piss (piss from the drunkards, piss from the infection…) until all the buildings and livestock groaned with the smell of burning flesh and sick flesh. Everything smelled sick. I struggled to breathe something fresh. I wanted to leave.

The sky was white, but through my eyes, it looked a little yellow. Not of daffodils on a merry May day or the sunset thereafter, but the yellow of sick human skin in the pit.

Maybe the tanners could use human flesh to make leather breeches? I wondered if it would be quite as good.

Children, looter-beggars, crawled the streets. Their parents probably deserted them early, when they heard the Death was coming. Either that, or the children were orphaned when the Death took their parents. Now they banded together, kings of their countries with boundaries drawn up of beating old beggars for leftover bread and roaming crusty houses on Merchant Street.

They ran past me. They smelled. I almost…dare I say it…no! No, good Lord, no. Yet…God, Savior…they didn’t even resemble children anymore. Maggots. Nasty, stinking maggots, eating things that didn’t belong to them to survive. Clusters of squishy maggots devouring insides.

Suddenly, something smoldering hot came into my belly and it flooded my throat and forced me to bend over (like the priests made me do) and purge everything evil inside me. I vomited. It spewed all over. I began crying so that salty vomit and salty tears covered my face, embalmed my lips because I was nearly dead like the rest of Marseilles. I hugged myself, struck down on Merchants Street, scared I’d shit myself too. More purging came, wrecked my body so hard I thought I’d spew out my insides (at least the maggot children would have some feast!) until the yellow sky fell into blackness and my head exploded.

When I woke up, I was naked, shivering, a newborn who came into this ugly world of the Death. I was reborn in the worst kind of way.

My clothes were gone. My nose caught the awful stench of the room coupled with the smell of my own body. I felt sick again, yet there wasn’t anything else to purge.

Fingers groped at my thighs.

I was naked! A terror seized me. Where was I? What horrible place was this? And whose hands were creeping up my thighs? No, no, no no nonono…

They came further; there was laughing in the darkness. I tried to move away, but hands forced me down, crucifying me against the floor. Where was I? Where was God in all that? Didn’t He help folks like me?

Then I thought of Saint Sebastian, nailed by arrows. He was a martyr! A good Christian. Did God let him die for some greater purpose? So fourteen year-old girls like me could pray to him as God’s vengeance washed over France?

I started praying. I knew what was coming next—the tears were already hot down my face, rivers of fire. God God God God! Please, God! Please, God!

The men howled again (animals!) as two fingers rammed into my cunt. I tried to cry out (I was still praying and sobbing) but another put his prick in my mouth so they were contorted and cut short in a fury of thrusting. I thought of Jesus Christ, nailed to His crucifix by the Jews, but felt no empathy. How blasphemous…how un-Christian of me! But God, how could I feel empathy when all of these demons were destroying me? I wasn’t even a martyr. There was no greater meaning!

There was just darkness, just pallid hands reaching out from the Hell itself. I wailed. I thrashed. But I was nailed to the floor. One of them began thrusting into me with his prick (my virginity!) and another two (or three?) held me down as another prick choked me.

Rage. There was all rage. Like a dormant fire! Not a festering womb, secret and away, but a fire that had been ignited because it had gone too long unnoticed. All this death and sorrow, yet all I felt was this anger that burned my body. Engulfed me. Swept over my skin. Boiled my insides. My stomach turned. Another hundred thrusts from the pricks impaling both sides of my body. And, God, fingers up my arse! Sodom and Gomorrah! Hellfire! I was a big whore and now everyone would know it and (what was left) of my family would exile me in disgrace of my bad behavior because God didn’t reach down to help me! But it didn’t matter—I’d end up in Hell anyway with all the other sinners.

The raven-man in the shadows. His bird mask. His terrible yellow eyes. He was ready to pick my bones clean! Spread my flesh and devour my insides if there were any left after their pricks were done with me.

Next morrow, I woke up in the streets, wearing my dirty chemise. There was the morning bustle of merchants and carts of dead, wheeling off to be buried in mass graves on the outskirts of Marseilles. No one helped me up. I felt a little betrayed; I would have helped a little girl…but people were frightened of showing kindness, especially during The Death. I suppose I can’t blame them.

Someone gawked at me, but I kept to myself.

Audenin. He was the very best man because he gave me free kindness. I knew he had things in mind (my meager dowry, my maidenhood that was now lost to brutes), but I knew he loved me in a small way, which was good enough for me. He was a good Christian, paid his taxes, worked hard. We were to be married soon. Before The Death, my heart (and loins) was giddy with the thought. But now I was sad, because I would never feel him inside me or bear his children or carry his name or cook his food or keep his house clean. Audenin, in all likelihood, was already dead from the plague…and I was too late…

After my father (my mother died already) fled to the coast, after my brother died, Audenin was all I had. We played wife and husband in my father’s house. Too young to know what we were playing at. Just miniature adults with soft hands, bright eyes.

There was no one in the house when I came back. The raven-man fled to eat someone else’s insides. Terror gripped my heart. I felt sick again.

Audenin’s body was gone. And I was so tired, so tired. I wanted to collapse in his arms and feel him kiss my brow, brush back my hair, whisper into my ear. There’s nothing better than being held by someone you love. But he was gone. Not even a ghost of him remained. His things were gone (probably burned or stolen). There were no sheets on the pallet which could have given me a clue of how his body laid, wasting away, in his final hour. I yearned for his smell (barley and sweat), but there was nothing.

So I sat down. My body seemed no better than Audenin’s before he died. I almost wanted to die myself. It was a wonder The Death hadn’t taken me, too. (I chose wonder, not blessing this time.) There was searing pain in my cunt, my arse, my throat, all over my skin where their serpentine fingers pinched and tore me. Smiling sadly, I thought of how gentle Audenin kissed me. I even thought of my mother (another Marie) who petted my hair when I was sick.

Yet, I was alone. I was another maggot without anyone, so I would steal and fuck to get what I wanted. Living off others like maggots do. Fourteen. It wasn’t so uncommon in Marseilles.

As soon as I stood up, the rage hit me again like a wave too big to overcome. My piece of driftwood was gone and not only was the water pure nothingness, but it was a huge wave about to wash me ashore!

I mourned, I raged. Why did God take those sweetest to us? Why were folks so selfish? Why did God let things happen to His innocent? And why (the brutes!) didn’t God strike down the evil? Why did he leave fourteen year-old girls alone to suffer, without a soul in the world to help them? Was it because I was a whore who let men jam their fingers up my cunt? (I never really let them…they just did it…) Where was my hellfire?

One of the monk processions was starting outside. I could already smell it, because they distinctively smelled like incense and humping. They tried to be clean for God, but they were the dirtiest when no one was looking. They chanted something (the walls muffled their hymn) as I watched them from the pantry. I saw this short, bug-eyed one who made me kneel and accept more than a wafer one Sunday. My throat burned worse now.

I had to get away from Marseilles. I stood, surveyed the room, and decided what to bring in an outright-frenzied urge to escape. I had to! My insides already seemed to burst from my skin. I had to get away from this place, escape to somewhere better, softer, fresher. Somewhere where The Death’s hand was not already groping the city’s intestines. No black groins.

When I was undressing, to put on my other chemise (my clean one), I noticed a shadow.

I froze. Panic.

On my armpit was a black boil.

I always thought that, if I got The Death, I would go mad. Never had I truly expected to get it since I had lived an entire year without catching it, watching most of the folks I know die. But here it was, a hole in my body. It would devour me in a day’s time. The raven-man physician would be called, observe the boil, and bid a priest to say my last rights. To the grave I go! Go thee to a grave! I smiled at that, old and cynical, like I was watching from above, a raven myself.

The monks were chanting again. I decided not to call the physician or a priest. I simply laid down, where my beloved gave his final gasps, and waited for God to take me. After all, He had taken everyone else—good or bad, it didn’t matter.

And was that a giant blackbird in the shadows?