Another twofer.....

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Another episode of the Adventures of the Baron de Montlaur….
Today we find him still incarcerated in Sommieres but the mind has powers of escape even if the body does not…..

June 25, 1622

It was past noon. All the prisoners in the congested dungeon had come to know the stillness in the air that signified the heat of the day. It was a particularly fetid smell, some part decay, some part filth, and some part the unmistakable odor of human misery.

The Baron shifted his weight, favoring the old wound over the new. The new was just a scratch after all while the old had pierced him entire through the thigh. But that was many years ago and while still painful, particularly in these conditions, it was the new “scratch” that worried him. It had been inflicted as they repulsed the first wave of attackers, just after the enemy’s cannons had opened the first breach in the wall. Now it was red and puffy, hot to the touch.

The Protestants had stormed forward like an angry nest of bees converging on the newly opened, arms length wide crack that had appeared in the wall. His men, patience sorely tested by the long bombardment, had been eager to the fight but the close quarters had turned the skirmish into a series of one-man contests. They could not afford to let the enemy in, nor did they have the wherewithal to push them too far out for fear of being overwhelmed. It was an untenable defensive situation and the Baron knew it, despite the relative experience and zeal his soldiers were bringing to the fight.

He had followed the cry that arose when the wall had cracked, as had the others. Sword in hand he had run to see one of his men bloodied and motionless on the ground, probably from the concussive blast that had torn open the stone. Several others had already reached the breach well before the Protestants had managed to and were taking up a defensive position. He looked at the sky, the late afternoon sun slanted down on them casting shadows.

“Good, it will be in their eyes when they come through.” He thought to himself. But that had not slowed them. They came screaming, the words of Martin Luther on their tongues, the blood lust of hate in their eyes. He had taken the first with a simple thrust and let the man’s momentum carry him up the blade. The second was more cautious, feinting left before attacking right. Years of experience on the training field, and in battle, in campaign after campaign, had tuned his muscles and nerves to the nuances of single combat. An honorable fight, fought fairly between two equals. But this was no fair fight and these were not his equals. He parried the attack and sunk his main gauche, the short left-handed sword he preferred to never be without, into the man’s gullet.

It was then, while disengaging, that one of the attackers had swung a rusty old weapon at him. His arm, caught by the weight of the dying man, could not parry the blow and it fell on his armored leg, scraped noisily along the protective metal before it bit slightly into the flesh above his knee. Not a bad wound as wounds go, and shortly the perpetrator had paid a full measure for it. But it was enough for the Baron to reassess the situation. Calling forward his old Master-at-arms to fight in jis stead he had retreated through the breach.

He had signaled for the few archers he had to post themselves on the wall above the breach while he directed three other soldiers to bring up one of the wagons, filled with pitch covered hay. On a prearranged signal the archers rose above the parapet and fired a volley at the front line of the enemy below. In the momentary confusion of this latest turn of events the defenders fell back through the breach. Another volley from the archers stayed the attackers for the few seconds it took for the advance guard to fall back through the narrow opening and to drive the wagon into the breach. The attackers howled their derision and clambered forward, pawing for a hold on the blockage. The first of them had just mounted the wagon and had just enough time to realize the predicament he was in before the whoosh of flame became a roaring wall of fire. What defenders were not caught in the flames fled before the intense heat, the archers taking liberties with their retreating backs.

The Baron touched his wounded knee. At time his fingers had come away sticky and red. Now he could simply feel the tenderness and heat of inflammation. He never felt the pain of these things until long past the actual fight but he had known this would take some tending. His wife had tended the wound but they had been overrun before it had healed properly. This dank and festering dungeon was not the ideal place for a clean knitting of the wound. With some sense of bitter irony he cursed the faculty of Medicine, founded by his ancestors, and now in the hands and under the influence of these headstrong Protestant zealots.


June 25th, 2009

Still I have not yet seen a drop of rain on this trip and mostly cloudless skies. Temperatures continue to be in the high seventies and eighties but the lack of humidity keeps it reasonably comfortable. Certainly the conditions have contributed to my cold clearing up. Although remnants still hang about in the morning it seems I am otherwise normal.

Today I simply must do the tiling and yet I found several excuses to put it off. There were beds to put together, plants to water, dishes and laundry to do. Not a lot, but enough to delay the inevitable for a few more hours. And then of course there was lunch to be prepared and a pleasant glass of white wine to be had. But then it was inevitable. The old floor, broken and pitted with wear, called out to me. “Fix me, make me new again. I want to live for another 500 hundred years.” Damned floor, it got to me.

So it begins. I started at two pm and it was after midnight that I cleaned up the tools and sat down for a rest. It was hard and grueling work but the result looked spectacular. Still the harder part, the grouting remained in front of me. With grouting, once you begin you pretty much have to stay at it. There is not much time for rest and you’re basically on your hands and knees for the duration. It’s like washing floors but the full length, DVD addition, complete with grunts, groan, sweat and cursing.


The new bedroom tile floor "ungrouted"....

But that will be tomorrow. For today I am done, tired to the bone and ready for bed.

June 26th, 2009

Well I can’t rightly start the grouting until at least 24 hours after the tiling, right? I have time for a few things yet. Let’s see…I’m out of dish soap. I must go to the store then. If I go to the store then I need to get some more pillows, a few throws, some spider repellant, some ant control product, some rose powder. And I might as well get the oil and antifreeze for the car….and some tie downs.

I recognize the pattern…this is the “way of grouting” or rather the “way of avoidance of grouting”. It is a whole philosophy unto itself. I’m sure there are tons of lost and ancient Greek, Roman, and Chinese texts that would expound on the various virtues and vicissitudes of grouting, its resemblance to penitence, its supplication of the will and the ego. Can one find happiness through grouting? Certainly, if one ascribes to the theory that hitting oneself in the head with a hammer is wonderful because it feels so good when you stop (it doesn’t actually, the pain intensifies for about 20 minutes depending on how many hits, how hard and how big the hammer was – don’t ask me how I know!)


The master bedroom steps repaired...(ungrouted"...

I happily do everything I can possibly do with few minor exceptions before I am confronted with the reality that I must do the grouting. With a resignation that weighs heavily in my heart I prepare the grout. It’s already 5 pm. This is going to be another late night. I have hope that a new tool, like an icing dispenser for cakes will make the work easier this time. With that in mind I make the grout thin enough to squeeze out of the funnel that I brought over from America (a land of very good grouting products). I filled up the funnel and proceeded. It worked fine until some small it of cake grout blocked the opening. Then I would squeeze hard and it would either come squirting out en masse or be so difficult that smashing it with a hammer prove my only way forward. And this technique required a different stance. Both arms were busy with the funnel so all of my weight was on my knees and legs. I found I could not sustain it for too long.

Defeated but still in servitude to the grout I reverted to my old method, cursing the tiles and the grooves and the grout roundly in turn. Getting it in was only a third of the battle. Washing it up took the other third. Round about 10:00 with about one third of the floor done I had to give up. Something tells me I’m getting older. When I was a young man I could grout all night with a case of 24 beers at hand. Now I’m done at 10 pm and only a half-bottle of wine the worse for the wear. The good news is that I can take a nice, long, hot shower outside by candlelight. The bad news is that the grouting will still be there tomorrow.