Oh, My Heart: To Eat the Single Petal of the Rose. Livre vingt-neuf des Januarius MCCCLXIV
Fabian de Kerckhove | April 2025
Dear History Writers,
I am delighted to bring you a fiction extract for this week’s guest post, a piece by
who will be well-known to many subscribers. Engaging and gritty, his writing in this piece draws you into the narrative from its very first words, using a letter format to bring us into the world of his protagonist and connect us deeply with the lively events of his day.If you enjoy this piece, do let Fabian know by thanking him in the comments and sharing what you particularly enjoyed.
All the best as always,
Holly
Editor, the Society of History Writers
The Society of History Writers is an entirely free-to-read newsletter providing a platform for history writers at all stages in their career - whether complete newbie or established professional. Subscribe to avoid missing out on our diverse guest posts, and consider giving a voluntary donation to support the ongoing work of the Society.
Who is our guest writer?
‘I’ve always been a writer, worldbuilder, and wonderer. After finishing my undergraduate studies with a specialism in late medieval history, especially science, magic, and culture, I have been floundering between making my writing work for me full-time whilst building up less exciting safety nets. My Substack is the latest project to get some of my studies and worldbuilding out there, inspire others, and build up a community and following whilst I edit my fantasy and literary novels—it focuses on medieval magic and marvels.’
Oh, My Heart: To Eat the Single Petal of the Rose
Livre vingt-neuf des Januarius MCCCLXIV
Fabian de Kerckhove
Turn overleaf.
‘…No. No, no. Oh, your poor father. Well, I could honour you still and we forget this impropriety—perhaps I should—perhaps I will—but this won’t do for long. No, no,’ the old bastard said, flapping my paper around like it was some damn feather and he a popinjay, waving it like he would take off using it. ‘What happened, Eustache? What happened to you, once so hungry, so full, so full of—with curiosity, vigour?’ He wiped a greasy hand down his cheek and rolled his eyes and shook his pudgy stupid head so his chins wobbled. ‘I look at you now and I see a man starved. A man vapid and loose and lost. Oh, what would the Philosopher counsel we do with you, Eustache?’
‘Morel,’ I replied.
He pouted and frowned and rose his wormy eyebrow. ‘Stop this fallacy. Hmm? No, quiet now. A farce is what this is. And you jest so, when matters are so weighty? When, pray tell, dear boy, when did you shed reason? When did you cast behind your scientias and shun your rational soul? Is it that Machaut? You are no Machaut, child.’ A halitosis sigh. He shook his head again. ‘No, no. The law has no place for—for this!’
‘Don’t,’ I hissed through my teeth.
He lay my paper down. Burning wood ached and leered in his hearth. So entranced, I had not noticed him shuffle closer. ‘Even your garments, my boy, my dear boy.’ The timbers beneath our feet groaned. I shrugged away as his fat little finger reached up at my hat. ‘Why? Why cast our God asunder?’
‘Fuck you,’ I said, and made sure to slam the door as fiercely as I was spat out into Orléans.
Students milled and chatted and tweeted like so many songbirds, parading the gardens and road on my way to the hostel. Growling and grimacing would do me no favours with those empty, placid creatures. I gawked and I smiled and I doffed my hat in honour—just as a I simmered. They parted ways or flew off, and once surely free from sight, I let my face tighten again.
Slowly the clouds grew steely from woolly, the sky flat and pensive and purple. The mad rush in my legs had taken me to the city walls. Towers pinioned the stone to the muddy riverbank, stone hats dotting up into the dusk. Anger puffed out through my nose and I slowed my pace. My eyes trailed along the shiny Loire. There, I paused for a moment and decided to sit upon the deck’s edge. ‘Bloody child,’ I degraded myself as my legs swung over the wild rushing water. Slowly torchlight and smoky plumes stained the sky and the Loire’s surface. Something stung in my eyes but I bit my cheek gazed askance. ‘Petulant,’ I whispered, a little quieter. Something heavy thudded and chains rattled leaving me alone with the raspy wind. Fury fading, I found myself cold and in complete quiet. There were no wagons or carriages along the bridge. It struck me then I was hateful and ungrateful and at least I was not a pestilent corpse dragged downstream. At least I was not how many cousins, lost to the plague? By then thoroughly embarrassed, I rose to stand and gazed out along the bridge, to the south, into the farmland and hoped the war would not burn it again but imagined English and Angevin and Gascoigne ghosts twinkling on the hills, wreathed in golden bonfires, theirs the dreams burnt up to ash yet lifted to stars on smoky columns. I mused on the forest road north, to Paris, to Vertus. Vertus, home: I missed it, that was all.
I would write a letter—that was what I’d intended, marching back to the hostel, I think.
So I waddled along the bridge, back to the city gate: closed. I bit my cheek that little bit harder and pouted and nodded like it would conjure up some solution. ‘Right,’ I muttered, and cried out, ‘hello?’
A guard on the rampart above the barbican leaned over. I waved. He ignored me and shrugged.
‘Can you let me back in?’
‘I can,’ he replied, without leaning over. His words were almost lost on the long, chilly wind. I heard in those breezes something subtle but rich.
‘How much do you want?’
‘How rude,’ he called back, now leaning back over. ‘I can’t just let in any vagabonds.’
I presented my gown, the drooping sleeves dark in the night. ‘How much will it be?’
‘We cannot play this charade so often, boy. I expect as least as much as last time.’
‘Fine. But my purse is in my lodgings.’
He snorted. Some spittle fell past me, on the horse-shat bridge. ‘Oldest trick going!’
‘Well, if I die cold and shivering out here, that’s on your conscience.’ It was my turn to shrug. ‘Though I doubt the university or my family will be much pleased.’
‘I’ll throw you crumbs and you can drink the Loire until daybreak. This door isn’t opening, not for free.’
‘What—’ but I held my tongue and pressed my lips together in a resigned, straight line.
‘Well?’
‘Well what, you damn fool? I can’t pay you because I haven’t coin on my person.’
‘I suppose you’ll be getting chilly then, eh?’ he chuckled.
‘This is so ridiculous,’ I replied, but my words were a whisper. The gate guard stretched over, gawking at me. I shrugged, he shrugged, then kept shrugging like a weird shadow humping the air. I turned away and was left alone once more.
The solitude brought some comforts. For a moment I felt like a monk. I even ungloved one hand and let it roughen and chap. Then I glanced at my shoes and studied my stupid sleeves and frowned, slipping the glove back on. I nodded and letting myself feel hungry and cold and hating it. There was no cleansing in arbitrary pain, which I supposed was why monks were as corrupt as the next man and let themselves eat and fuck and start fires and trade out hair shirts for silk and wool. Then I pursed my lips and guessed not all monks were like that.
Some raptor soared overhead as the sun truly sank away, a spectre or angel or just something free, tracing the Loire downriver.
‘Hello?’ a new voice cracked from above the gate. I turned and gawked up. ‘You, why are you out there?’
I shrugged. ‘The guard wouldn’t let me back in.’
‘You’re a student.’
‘I’m a student.’
A silhouette shifted and the second voice vanished from presence. I waited a moment, reflecting on how I hadn’t meant to sound so dejected. Out in the distance, I was distracted by a distant bell and guessed vespers. Clinking metal and groaning wood cut the bells away and I turned to see the tiny door in the gate swing open. The second voice was a short man, and he waved me in.
‘Thank you,’ I said as I slipped past him, being sure to not let my robes rattle with what few coins I had.
Winds did not follow me inside Orléans, where I was gifted a sensory overload as the door clapped shut. Torches gave the streets their long shadows and ghostly forms and sleep-inducing light. Muttering and shuffling and market stalls tidying away, hawkers swapping places with escorts and students who were practising their illusions and conjurations on dumbfounded children and dumber rogues. I noticed a friend watching a geomancer and I stood in beside him.
‘Eustache,’ he whispered, probably smelling me.
‘Jehan.’
‘Drink?’
‘Drink and foile,’ I agreed. So we went, into town proper. Le Serf Volants was full, as was the ever-popular Quatre Fils Hemon. I groaned as we ended up thirsty and standing before l'uisserie des Balances. ‘We can’t go in there,’ I said, jerking away from a vomiting, galloping child. Someone’s donkey bleeped as a goose ran past it, followed by a pretty ginger cat, and a woman.
‘Why not?’ Jehan asked, ‘I think Ancel comes this way sometimes.’
I shrugged and frowned at the scales on the sign above the door. ‘Ancel’s a pastry.’
‘What? A pastry?
‘I don’t want to go in there. It isn’t right. I had an argument with—’
‘We know you did, Eustache.’
‘So you know why I can’t just go in there right now—’
Jehan was a bigger man than I, and stronger, and he thumped my back so hard I practically stumbled inside. My old anger bubbled back, but Jehan stepped in after me and rose an arm calling after Ancel and some others. Then came the smells—wood varnished sticky with ale, pottage and stews and, oh Christ, I didn’t think about how annoying I or anybody else was and I just slotted in beside Jehan and were poured from barrels and I felt the smoky drunkenness stir me away.
‘…you, melancholic,’ Ancel slurred at me, ‘that’s your problem, you old melancholic.’
‘You’re all bachelors in magic, now under that old tregetour wizard,’ I shot back, ‘it won’t last. Magic school. A ridiculousness. At least I will get a job as a juror or judge one day.’
‘It pays better to make pretty tarot for the ladies and poison spells for the lords, methinks.’
I drank down my jack and shuddered. ‘So we shall smokily speculate.’
‘All I know is you’ll be on side when we are tried for our magic.’
‘Only if you teach me that memory trick.’
‘God be good and all the angels, etcetera, and I will. Meanwhile, you ought focus on your Gratian. I hear you’re not doing too well.’
‘He is too busy writing poems. You do all know this?’ They all nodded; they all knew. ‘And that’s why flabby old Regnault’s in a mood: the damn fool submitted a poem instead of a gloss on the Six Tables.’ Jehan seized my shoulder and bellowed a huge, hearty laugh, ‘oh, he did, he did it, the damn poet, but the best—’
‘Hey,’ I said, my eyelids pinched and my cheeks warm and red, ‘hey, come on now—’
‘—the best ones are the—the drinking songs, the ballads of the barrel. Oh don’t be an Englishman, don’t be a sheep, look, I’ll get you a wine, a cup of beaune, if you’ll only be singing lad.’
‘They don’t sell beaune in a place like this.’
‘Shut up and sing.’
Oh, we sang, and it filled me right up. We sang and danced and when I woke up still smoky the next morning, fine vapours and boozy haze, I was in pain. You’ll remember from before that I was courting and I was to change letters with pretty Ysabelet, de Rue St-Laurent. I never made it, you see. I had no wits and no reason and no sense at all. All is stolen from me but a wobbly mind filled with fancy, for my belly has been emptied once more. So we say, to eat the single petal and lick the thorn, with blood e’er the rose grows. Maybe I should just take mother’s advice and expend my poetic energy on love. Which love, says I? Both are thorns worth eating and petals good to lick.
Anyway, that was my day. Asked for a ballad and the boy shall provide. For I did, father, but I can’t remember how it went, so I am asking for some more sols to afford rent and books, inks and paper, and so on, you see? Thank you.
Your dear son by the poesy and the nightshade—and studious in the law as well,
Eustache Deschamps.
This the letter’s end.
The Society of History Writers is an entirely free-to-read newsletter providing a platform for history writers at all stages in their career - whether complete newbie or established professional. Subscribe to avoid missing out on our diverse guest posts, and consider giving a voluntary donation to support the ongoing work of the Society.
Other fiction extracts you might enjoy…
 | A guest post by
|