Martin wanted to sing, to cleave the glorious morning with brazen melismas, to spin down the street with his knee-length sleeves slapping so many cliffside calendula that petals would whirl around him juicy with sunlight and leave a golden trail of his passage, from the Castle to Frankopan Square. And he pined to charge the hen yards of dirt-brown pilgrims smashing Sunday fast outside the inns. But he didn’t. As he emerged from beneath the surly gatehouse in the plumage of a castle guest, finery dangerously above his station, he knew he was already attracting too much attention. He wanted everyone to see him as a smiling young Apollo accustomed to his rewards, but the unruly radiance from his face lacked the calm, noble dignity that would have confirmed good fortune as his right.

Happy he was, accustomed he was not. Beyond the clifftop town fleecy clouds drifted inland over dappled green and silver mountains, hardened and began to turn, a vision of Fortune’s Wheel exactly as it glowed in the window of the great Cathedral in Kaptol. On one side a bound man rose headfirst up into Heaven and on the other, still headfirst, he plunged into Hell. In the final month of his teens Martin’s wheel had come full circle, lifting him at last from terrible times and wretched despair.

The pilgrims stared and muttered, bobbed their modest scarves and sweat-stained leather hats. Some men even dared to tilt their mugs as if pointing and launch a ripple of laughter across the tables. Martin knew they were jealous. Who wouldn’t be? He was tall, fair, soft-haired and slim. A feathery beard floated across his upper lip and along his jaw like straw-colored smoke. His long strong legs rippled in spotless stockings, one red, one white, and his peacock blue tunic, slit up the sides and actually made for a shorter man, revealed flashes of manhood in the scandalous style of wealthy Venetian rakes. He owned no jewelry, and the small dagger in his belt was common enough, but his pointed red Cordova shoes and oversized blue velvet hat that flopped behind his head all the way down to his shoulders were those of a man the Prince of Krk might have invited to his home and addressed by name. No one outside Rijeka, on the river far below, would guess his clothes were second-hand.

And he had Piero to thank for everything. Piero the handsome, Piero the artist, Piero the hedonist, Piero the dark Genoese lover. Piero who, thirsting for every vintage, had discovered Martin serenading the patrons at Dva Lava (if Venice had its lion, then the Croatian port of Rijeka, squirming with Venice’s boot on its neck, would have “Two Lions”!). Piero who wouldn’t take no for an answer.

Piero had insisted the terrified Martin sing at Prince Nikola’s farewell banquet, offering to play himself so that the entertainment rose to the occasion. Despite the August heat, they had rehearsed all the following afternoon gazing ever deeper into each other’s eyes as only musicians can without arousing suspicion. Plucking his elaborately carved mandora (which, coincidentally, his father had brought back from Genoa) while Piero bowed his oversized round-bottomed rebec, Martin’s rich countertenor soared over a deeper harmony resonating between them, secret and exotic – the musical tones of lilies, incense and manly sweat.

His audition had been a triumph, launching a purse of gold florins over the pounding of fists on the tables and directly at Piero’s head. Piero caught it and bowed to Prince Nikola without missing a note. Though old for the honor, Martin would study under the itinerant troubadour’s dark and worldly gaze. His Lordship had even granted Master and Apprentice leave to stay in Trsat Castle while he and his entourage escaped to the island of Krk and the healing breeze from the Adriatic.

For three days and nights, eager for everything the music master wanted to teach him, Martin hadn’t left the neat villa-sized fortress. Not that he was ignorant or naïve. Whisked off to Kaptol as a lucky boy to sing and study music at the Cathedral, he soon learned what Canon Ambrogius expected in return. And after his father and brother were lost at sea, sinking the family fortune and standing along with their cargo and themselves, fifteen-year-old Martin returned to Rijeka to support his mother and sisters any way he could. He quickly developed a trade more lucrative than providing the patrons of Dva Lava with music and song. He knew how to read men’s eyes, especially sly, hungry merchants and rough, thirsty sailors, and how to gauge what they would pay for more personal entertainment. As he and his reputation grew, performances downstairs at the inn kept his swelling source of income upstairs in the private rooms a secret.

But this was different…

A Prince can afford torches as well as candles and lanterns, so the farewell feast roared past midnight. The road down from Trsat to Rijeka would hardly have taken Martin more than an hour, but leaving the castle unescorted on such a festive night could attract robbers. Casually, through a toothy drunken smile, Piero offered to share a bed with his new protégé.

Dark, damp and sour with urine, the small stone box cradled two other men already asleep in another bed and a servant wrapped in his cloak on the floor. Regardless, Piero removed his stockings, placed them on a chair and hid them with his tunic, goading his new apprentice to do the same. For the first time in months true desire rose like a wave of heat from the soles of Martin’s feet to his scalp. He climbed into bed in only his long linen shirt, trembling in fear of what his new Master could demand despite the three other men in the room. What went on down in the harbor stayed with those who lived by the ships, but sins witnessed in the castle could reward anyone who reported them to an enemy or the Church. And it was always safer to flout the law in the company of others doing the same.

Martin rolled over on his back directly onto Piero’s thick waiting palm. He bit his lower lip as his Master’s fingers explored the small of his back, the curve of his ass and then slid over his smooth burning skin to grip his thigh like a talon. Unable to stifle a gasp, Martin was grateful the darkness hid his eagerness which had begun to move under the thin summer blanket. Piero chuckled quietly, gave Martin’s leg one last, cruel squeeze and then turned away discreetly. The bearded Italian’s deep snore haunted Martin for almost an hour before he could fall asleep.

Next morning, Prince Nikola said goodbye to his guests who galloped away noisily with their snapping banners and armored escorts. He, his family and their retinue were in turn cheered on their way by Piero, Martin and nearly two dozen servants, craftsmen and caretakers who were to remain managing Gradina (the family’s name for the castle at the end of the village of Trsat) and its dependant workshops and farms.

In between final toasts with still more wine, Piero had snagged the Prince’s permission to stay in the finest guestroom on the outer wall, the top floor of a square corner tower, gorge on the right, cliff in front, the figurehead on the spur where Trsatica had been fortified by the ancient Romans. The windows were exceptionally large since no arrows could reach them and, overlooking the end of the Gulf of Kvarner, pulled sun and breeze across the room as if it were open to the sky.

“Do you like it?” Piero asked, as he shut the door behind them.

“It’s not as splendid as the Curia in Kaptol,” Martin teased, “but far more inviting…And the view…”

“…The view from here could inspire the Muses,” Piero smiled, far from any window.

“Yes, Master,” Martin smiled back, “I agree.”

They spent their days and nights alone, careful to practice music slightly longer than expected by the staff and rumple the servant’s bed each morning. Piero wanted to teach Martin ‘The Châtelaine de Coucy’, which had so many verses the student swore he would need months of private instruction to memorize it.

The oppressive August heat excused near nudity in the Master’s aerie, which saved them from wasting time during their breaks. But on the second afternoon the tower grew so hot they chased each other around the courtyard with precious buckets of water from the cistern, laughing and wrestling like overgrown boys. The servants exchanged knowing glances. That night, their fever grew so intense they couldn’t sleep. So much sweat poured off them that they were slippery in each other’s arms and cooled down only when they sat exhausted, wet and naked in an open window.

“This is what Fortune was meant to give us,” Martin sighed, gazing out on the harbor, over the black Istrian hills on the far side and up into the stars.

“Fortune has made this moment possible,” his teacher agreed, “but we have made it the best we could. Just remember, no gardener can make every bud bloom.”

“But success blesses him who tries?” his pupil smiled.

And now, strutting down Trsat’s main street with the inns on his left and Rijeka harbor below the cliff on his right, Martin felt the fever returning. Granted, he was overdressed in his borrowed clothes and enormous hat, but his life had changed, and he wanted everyone to know. He was apprenticed to a Master troubadour currently under the patronage of the Frankopan Prince of Krk, he had two gold florins to bring home to his mother and sisters, and… and… A chill rushed through his body as if he had just walked through a ghost. And... he was in love.

Martin stumbled in the burning sunlight, in the middle of the street, in front of tables full of pilgrims. What he saw had to be a vision. It couldn’t be real. In front of him Piero smiled, completely naked, walking backward as he had walked to the bed that first afternoon. Piero who was not only shockingly handsome but a dark fantasy of what Martin dreamed he himself would someday become. Black hair and tight-cropped beard glistening with sweat, bushy brows shading deep brown eyes, Piero, tall as Martin but stockier and as thickly muscled as a knight. Piero with the forest of shiny black curls from the notch at the base of his neck to his absurdly long toes.

Screams of laughter slapped Martin’s face. Piero shimmered and shattered into a cloud of flies. The pilgrims squealed like a pack of choirboys and pointed to the hem of Martin’s tunic, the source of the bulge unmistakable.

Martin’s mouth dropped open, and his fair skin blushed almost as deeply red as his left stocking. He snatched off his floppy hat, stuffed it into his belt and draped it over the offending root swelling past the skirt of his tunic. The pilgrims howled even louder. Martin raised his impressive lightly cleft chin and marched down the street towards the square chased, not by a swirl of golden petals bursting with light, but by sharp barnyard barking in Croatian, Italian and several other languages he only recognized.

Frankopan Square, treeless and bound by pale orange buildings, was a scorched desert compared to the road along the cliff. Adding to Martin’s discomfort, several days of too much wine had stained his breath and soured his perspiration. His lips and tongue were raw and swollen from being scrubbed by the dense black hair on Piero’s body and the wiry beard surrounding his deep wet mouth. A ladle of rancid rainwater did no more to slake Martin’s thirst than a cup of olive oil, and the heat pressed down on him like a giant’s palm.

A bell called him by name. The Franciscan church had been consecrated the year of Martin’s birth to honor Pope Urban’s gift to Trsat, a miraculous icon of the Blessed Mother painted from life by St. Luke himself. Since then, through every season, hordes of pilgrims blessed the town with money spent on food, lodging and commemorative trinkets. Year after year, as he had grown taller Martin watched the church bloom in magnificence till its walls were covered in rainbow-hued frescoes. On the icon itself oversized gold crowns now floated over the Madonna and Her Child, sparkling with jewels above a choir of flickering tapers.

It was Sunday after all, and he had not gone to Mass, so Martin slipped into the brown tide of humanity that was flowing across the square and up the three wide stone steps into the cool shade beyond the tall open doors. Here and there craftsmen, proudly flaunting the bold colors of their guilds, broke the monotony like roosters in a muddy farmyard. But it was Martin’s gaudy party clothes that distracted the faithful.

Suddenly he stopped. There was a darkness in their eyes he recognized. It wasn’t anger, certainly not hate or disgust. It wasn’t envy either, but the more he looked around trying to understand, a painted statue in a dirty flood, the more looks he got.

Again and again in every direction he saw the same pair of eyes. Even on men’s faces they were a woman’s eyes, almond shaped and ringed with black, left eyebrow slightly raised in… surprise?… challenge?… daring him to… what? The sweat under his arms slid down his ribs and his lips smoldered with thirst. Desperate to get out of the sun, he looked up and petitioned the church itself.

And there were those same eyes, huge and floating above the crowd, the dark exotic eyes of the icon. Martin had always thought it strange that they looked not at Her Son with a mother’s love but at the viewer, as if saying, “This is He. Now that you know, what are you going to do?” And they were confronting Martin, neither in judgment nor condemnation, but daring him to answer the question.

Martin gasped. He snatched the hat from his belt, wiped the sweat off his face and stuffed the smooth velvet into his mouth, biting it as hard as he could. It was a mouthful of the wool on Piero’s chest. And the eyes, with that same look of comprehension and concern his own mother gave him when he came home with too much money, burned his face worse than the rays of the sun. He had to get out of there. He needed answers, not questions. He needed someone to speak to, someone who would understand. But Piero had left for Dubrovnik and wouldn’t return for at least a week.

And then he knew. He didn’t know if he would get his answers, but he knew whom he could ask. He would ask St. Sebastian.

The steep, winding road down from Trsat was almost abandoned. Stinging sun on the day of rest discouraged travel, and Rijeka had so many churches that residents only climbed to honor the icon of Our Lady on feast days special to Her. Waves of heat rippling across the deep blue Gulf of Kvarner crashed into Martin with such solid force he had to fight his way downhill and struggle to breathe. When he finally reached the bridge over the Rjecina, he ran down the stone steps to cool his face with brackish water bullied in from the harbor by the tide. But the stench of salty sewage and rotting fish made him instantly sick, and he was thirstier, hotter and worse than before. Fortunately a thuggish young soldier at the city gate, with whom he had spent a particularly violent night, leered at him and ignored his new clothes. The Sumptuary Laws would have been ample grounds to arrest him for dressing above his class, and a stranger might have mistaken him for a madman who had stolen them.

Martin was grateful the century-old Church of St. Sebastian nestled timidly in a quiet, sloping side-street. He was spared the embarrassment of crossing the market in borrowed raiment stained with large patches of sweat. Built to thank the saint for ending a plague brought by sailors, the modest chapel had been alternately mobbed and avoided as waves of the Black Death came and went just before Martin was born. In these happier times the church was again happily forgotten, dark and serene after a single poorly attended Mass.

Elaborate strap hinges bolted across the weathered door with huge pointed spikes squealed and groaned, thwarting Martin’s desire for anonymity. Certain the saint would forgive him, he lurched across the vestibule, plunged his burning face into a holy water font in the wall and drank it dry. He wiped his face with his hat, straightened his clothes and humbly stepped through the wide carved archway as respectfully as urgency would allow. He genuflected, crossed himself and mumbled gratitude for the coolness of the simple rib-vaulted cave. But before he even stood up again he was unnerved. Newer buildings encroaching on all sides blocked light from entering all but the most blood-red upper windows, and only a few weak lamps fought the gloom. A lonely island of squat stuttering votive candles seemed to float just inside the carved altar rail to the right of a low bronze gate. Above them, glowing as if from his own shimmering aura, the saint himself looked up to heaven for release from his agony.

Martin and St. Sebastian were not alone. A tent of black cloth capped with dense black lace, near the front on the left, surely covered a widow praying for the soul of someone she loved. Out of respect, Martin made his way along the right-hand wall rather than down the aisle. He quickly regretted his courtesy.

As his eyes adjusted to the gloom, diffuse and shifting light animated a long single fresco that ran beneath the windows. For the entire length of the church a litany of horrors tumbled and throbbed, so cruel, so painful that the sweat on Martin’s skin turned to well water, and he shivered as chills raced up and down his body with the speed of winter wind. Here, the eternal torments of the damned were portrayed in terms familiar to victims of the plague, as if earthly suffering was a mere warning of what sinners could expect if they died unshriven. Naked men and women were boiled together in huge cauldrons, burned at the stake or roasted on spits by grinning devils with pitchforks and spears. Wolves drank from weeping purple sores and giant horned toads hung from women’s breasts. Mythical beasts with rows of enormous teeth tore bodies apart with their claws and devoured the pieces. And in the center the Deaf Adder glared at Martin. Olive green with red rheumy eyes and larger than any other creature, one ear pressed against the earth and the other stopped up by his tail, the long-necked dragon defiantly “closed his ears to the words of life”.

Martin knew that along the other wall streams of penitent Flagellants, naked backs streaked with their own blood, converged on the Gates of Paradise directly opposite the Deaf Adder. Welcomed by saints, they donned the gleaming robes of the blessed and processed in joy to the right side of the Judgment Seat in the half dome high above the altar. Frantic and terrified, Martin lurched to the altar rail and dropped to his knees before the statue of St. Sebastian.

Martin’s lips trembled with all the words he ached to blurt out, but he did not know where to begin. Slowly, as slowly as his inflamed lips had explored the body of his lover, his gaze kissed the statue, a masterpiece so natural worshipers were convinced it regularly shifted position and sighed during the Consecration. Seven real arrows pierced the naked limbs and torso through glistening gashes that bled every winter on the saint’s feast day even when holy water froze in the church. But despite his wounds and the cruel way his arms were wrenched behind him around a thick and brutish stake, Sebastian’s heavenward gaze was so serene that those who came to him were freed from pain and lifted up into his bliss.

From the realistic pale feet so amazingly like his own, up the long hairless legs, over the contracted ribs, up the straining neck to the full parted mouth, Martin felt the saint’s flesh somehow across the pool of flames, recognized its youthful warmth and resilience in a way he could not explain. But Sebastian’s deep blue eyes were fixed on heaven as if the roof of the church didn’t exist. Martin knew he would have to speak.

“Holy Sebastian,” he croaked. What little spit he had in his mouth felt like glue. Behind him to his left the widow coughed, reminding him he wasn’t alone. He lowered his voice to a respectful whisper, crossed himself since he had forgotten to do so and began again.

“Dear Sebastian,” he sighed, “it’s me. Martin.” He looked up to the soft blue eyes still fixed on another world. “I know you can hear me. I… I can feel you listening. You always listen when I come to you as if we grew up together as friends.”

Suddenly he felt the saint’s presence so intensely he had to bow his head in respect and rest his burning forehead against his folded hands. The trembling flames transported him to a mountainside he loved high above Trsat, free from the darkness and weight of the church, up into a sunset where he and Sebastian lay in the grass sharing secrets they could tell no one else.

“I… I…” but Martin couldn’t bring himself to say what he knew he meant. He had to preamble, cushion the obvious with logic and explanations as if arguing in a court of law.

“That first time with Canon Ambrogius,” he explained, “I had no choice. He would have sent me home. You understood. You had your Romans. And then…” Martin paused for a moment as happier memories pushed away the pain and humiliation. “… the older boys.” He smiled self-consciously, but he reined in his recollections as inappropriate in the presence of a saint. “We took care of each other. We were family. You were in the army, as young as I was in Kaptol. I know you never blamed me for that.”

Martin began to perspire intensely. The fever was returning, and his clothes felt damp and heavy. He frowned as he recalled the long, worst years of his recent life.

“And when I had to come back, when I came home and there was no home anymore...” He stared angrily at the flickering candles. “...all of us in that stinking room. My poor mother. My sisters crying. No food. Not even bread.”

Martin raised his strong notched chin but, as a supplicant, kept his eyes respectfully on a savage gash in Sebastian’s thigh and the bronze arrowhead almost buried in the pale tender flesh. “I saved us. I put food on the table. It was my responsibility… a home, clothes, wood to keep us from freezing. I did what I had to do.” His tired eyelids drooped, and through his golden lashes the flames melted into a nimbus around Sebastian’s legs.

“And if there were times…” he sighed. He recalled several sailors, young and even fatherly, and a certain merchant’s sad beautiful son who had lost a leg in battle. “If there were nights when we made each other happy…” He inhaled deeply, and the smell of beeswax and wood scented with a memory of incense lifted him out of the real world onto a less painful plane. “You always understood. I know you did. Happiness is so precious, so special and rare…”

Martin began to cry. He knew he had to say the words. He couldn’t dodge the truth any longer. “I love him,” he blurted out. “What am I going to do, Sebastian? I love him!”

A sharp breath from behind him. The widow had heard, and a rustling of her clothes was probably from her crossing herself in shock, but Martin couldn’t stop the flow of words. The fever was consuming him like a fire while sweat dripped through his thick blond brows, stinging his eyes and pouring down his body as if he had been doused with a bucket of hot salt water.

“Please, Sebastian. Tell me what to do,” he begged aloud. A surge of consternation rushed through his body. “It’s not fair,” he declared, his voice metallic as if he had just unsheathed a sword to defend himself. “What have I done that’s so wrong? I love someone. Isn’t that what God wants?”

Anger overcame Martin’s respect for Sebastian’s holiness, and he boldly raised his eyes to the statue’s serene averted face. “Answer me, Sebastian,” he demanded. “Tell me what to do.”

Martin’s voice echoed around the stone church and faded into silence. He paused for a moment listening for a reply, and then he gasped. “No! Oh, NO!” Above and directly behind Sebastian’s head, as if miraculously illuminated just for the moment, God on his Judgment Seat loomed forward from over the altar, hard and fierce in a fan of fiery rays.

“It’s not fair,” Martin growled, terrified into petulance. “Is that it? Is that all you have to say?” Frustrated, he wanted to shake Sebastian, physically grab him and demand a better answer. His gaze clutched the thin white shoulders as if the strength of his thoughts could accomplish what his hands could not reach. But something was very wrong. Martin frowned, and then he saw it. From under the wrenched-back arm nearest him, a thick trickle of black sweat was slowly crawling down Sebastian’s ribs.

A savage sting suddenly tore into Martin’s left shoulder from underneath as if a red-hot spear had been thrust into his armpit. He groaned and fell against the altar rail, overcome by the sheer cruelty of the pain. He fumbled desperately with his belt and tore it from his waist. As the buckle bounced off the marble step simultaneously with the clattering of his dagger he thrust his right hand up under his tunic. Before he even pulled it out and examined it in the vibrating candlelight, he knew it was covered with blood.

“Oh my God,” he whispered turning his hand in the light.

He heard the arrows. They whistled through the air and slammed into Sebastian’s young flesh with nauseating thumps. And each arrowhead pierced Martin’s own skin, muscle, anchored into his own bones with such screaming fire he was struck dumb. He jerked left and right, back and forth with each impact, seven times, clinging to the alter rail, fighting for air. Glowing brighter and brighter above him, Sebastian was bleeding from his seven wounds.

Delirious with pain, Martin ripped open his precious tunic, shredded his soaked linen shirt and threw them behind him. There were the wounds. Exactly where they were on the statue, open gashes on Martin’s chest and arms wept thick, black-red blood. In his groin, inky stains were spreading into his red and white stockings. And the statue was bleeding with him. Behind him a low woman’s voice was franticly chanting a prayer in Latin, over and over, and the rustling of her clothes became constant as a wind.

“Sebastian!” Martin shrieked. “Oh, God! Sebastian, save me!” Tears streamed down Martin’s burning face. With a burst of furious strength, he pulled himself up. Stripped to the waist, he shouted at the statue, his long arms reaching over the flames hoping to clutch the saint by the legs. “Sebastian, don’t let me die in my sin!”

To his horror, Martin felt himself going deaf and blind at the same time. He thought he was fainting, but something else was happening. The rushing air was suddenly silent, thick with lilies and roses. Sebastian’s head glowed brighter and brighter with the purest, whitest light, blotting out the Judgment Seat, dissolving the altar and the entire church into a glowing cloud surrounding the two men. Martin felt his hands floating up, up to Sebastian as the pain melted away, and a young man’s voice huge as the sky and yet tender and close as a lover whispered his name.

“Martin,” it said, gentle and tender as the deepest kiss. It came from the statue and from everywhere at the same time. “You come to me because you trust God. That is all the proof of your innocence He needs. You have no sin.”

Very slowly Sebastian turned his head, his soft blond hair blowing behind him not from any wind but from the light itself. His kind blue eyes looked deep into Martin’s all the way to his soul.

“Don’t you see?” Sebastian smiled. “God is love.”

Martin saw only Sebastian’s face as he collapsed.

The widow screamed as the young man fell onto the white marble step below the altar rail. Then she bit her hand as a pool of blood spread out from under his golden hair.

“Father! Father!” she shouted again and again, pounding her fists against the pew, not daring to approach any closer.

An old priest in noisy sandals burst from the Sacristy door and shuffled quickly toward her.

“What is it, my child?” he asked, wringing his bony hands. But the old woman could only point with a shaking finger at the half-naked youth lying by the altar rail, a glistening pool of blood spreading rapidly out from under his head, dripping off the step and onto the gray stone floor.

“Dear God,” the priest gasped, rooted to the spot. Too afraid to approach the boy he blessed him with the sign of the cross. The widow crossed herself at the same time.

His eyes fixed to the terrible sight, the priest spoke gently and consolingly to the widow.

“Let us thank the Lord for his kindness to this poor lad. He has spared him terrible suffering.”

The widow nodded. She understood only too well. And so did the old priest. The young man’s naked skin was covered with the weeping black sores of the plague.

THE END

Author’s Note: 

For clarity’s sake, I have used spellings (Nikola, Sebastian, Venice, etc.) that would be recognizable to those reading this story in English and the modern name Rijeka for the Croatian port that, in the 14^th century, would have been called Reka sv. Vida (St. Vito on the Rjecina [River]). All other place names (Trsat, Krk, etc.) are accurate to the time of this story and continue unchanged today. Kaptol and Gradec, its neighbor and often violent rival, were not united into the modern city of Zagreb until 1850. They have retained their separate identities and are now collectively referred to as the Upper Town. However, the current Cathedral of the Assumption in Kaptol, begun after the earthquake of 1880, preserves only a few elements of the previous Cathedrals on that site. The icon of Our Lady of Trsat, bestowed by Pope Urban V in 1367, is still revered at the Franciscan church on Frankopan Square, but the building was remodeled during the Renaissance, as was the Church of St. Sebastian in Rijeka (orig. 1291).