It was the day of the Feast of St. Claude, a saint long considered to be the last word on all things related to love in some circles. That the average person took this holiday in a fornicatory mood in no way diminished its deep importance and greater message: that love was something you did, and not merely a feeling, biological impulse or verbal expression.
Of course, St. Claude himself did not extend the “doing” to acts of lusty coupling. But he was dead, and probably better off unaware of the heights of enthusiasm to which people took his original ideas.
Most of the monks liked to throw a big meal and invite folks from regions far and wide to gorge themselves on roasted suckling pig and great loaves of bread fattened with cheese made from the milk of certain unidentified creatures that left everyone guessing at the taste and texture.
So when Sebastian should have been cooking and helping, or loading up the wagon with those who could not walk or see and bringing them to the feast, he was instead on a distant hill with a young woman (who herself should have been with her family and townsfolk at the great meal).
“You look so pretty to me,” he said. He reached out his hand and laid it on her breast. He could feel her heart beating, speeding up even. He watched her mouth open, and her warm breath floating out into the chill air.
“Do I?” she asked. “Even now?”
“Even now,” he said, and at the moment of these words, her heart was so close to joy that her affliction began to fade.
