Historical Setting: 610 C.E., Vosges Mountains
Histories are told in statues and epitaphs carved in stone to be handed on from generation to generation purposed with tethering the noble-born to their ancestors. The generations are designated heirs to nobility or even royalty according to these markers. And yet, without heirs the eternal line of title is broken. In that way maintaining a lineage protects the separation of the classes that keeps us common.
But what if, simple romantic love would break the lineage and produce no heir? I see monks and nuns and ascetic desert mothers or fathers with passion for the spiritual who break the lineage with every life of them, and yet humankind continues on. After all, all the varieties of love aren’t limited to the threads that bind us to particular ancestors; and without names carved in stone each person is simply part of the whole fabric of people. We are all the poorest of us, and we are all the kings. I can say that easily as a commoner.
But for those born noble it is not a convenient thing to acknowledge. And maybe I don’t understand it at all. Maybe it takes a special self-identity when our spiritual natures all just mesh together into one big humanity, unsorted, and unmarked.
So here this ivory-fingered fellow, Gaillard, is a guest in this house where we slaughter our own chickens for food and butcher our lambs for feasting. It is our own hands that milk the goats and turn the cheese. And when we call for servants, they are us. Now our commonness requires Gaillard’s choice to either sever his obligation to his birth family, or cut his bond with Greg. We all know in our minds that mere fragments of relationships won’t survive. And a broken heart dies slowly in love’s own time.
Greg and Gaillard return from their walk together and without speaking, they prepare their horses to leave. Ana offers to send them off with a bit of food and she prepares a bird in a traveling cage so they can send us word. They choose not to take a bird or the food. They don’t tell us where they are going or what they’ve decided to do. I imagine they are going to Metz where Greg will stay alone in a castle chamber until his lover comes calling.
Now, even while the day is still fresh with morning, a bird comes from Luxeuil with a message. “Abbot taken, Papa needed.”
(Continues tomorrow)
Lazarus Ink 