The Impresario (part twenty)

The Impresario

Part Twenty

The hour demands chicanery

But Pierre’s mood weighs low his spirit

He perches on an oaken chest

Fine-carved in fingered leaves, knobbed round

With acorns…an uncomfortable seat

In a house of placid comforts

Too excellent withal for a humble man to contemplate

With ease, this room, but if his station

Cannot merit such, the dwelling is yet Gaspard’s.

Boniface, standing at the fire, grasping an iron heated by his stirring

Turns and speaks the thought Pierre had read.

“I ought this moment strike you dead. It would give me pleasure.”

“It would. But pains to your master. And as I can no longer

call you Sir, but varlet merely, it must also be…”

He had anticipated this, untroubled ducks the swing.

“…that while you may be much to him, you are

nothing to me.”

“Swine!” Boniface seizes him by the collar.

“I loved the man I served,” Pierre chokes out.

“And then I grew to hate him.” His enemy stops twisting, utters

A phrase beginning with the letter F.

“And why so? I will let you tell me one more lie.”

“A woman,” Pierre says.

He has been holding court, the wax-man

The aubergiste wrings hands, for this strange guest

Is never to be budged, it seems…and where

Are those coins he’d promised?

Hid, his host must think, within some fold of loathsome flesh.

That has been the wax-man’s sport with him

The villain roars a greeting, seeing three come nigh

One breaks and throws fond arms around his neck

The Impresario

Part Twenty-One

(2017, Stephanie Foster)