Excerpt: Fellow Traveler

He smiled and beckoned to her and she hastened over, wiping her wet hands upon her damp apron, nodding at him with favor in her brown eyes, a little black curl escaping from her cap to dance against her ear.
"I need to fix this object up so that His Lordship is pleased," Giotto said, and saw exactly the reaction he had hoped for in her round face as she pursed pink lips.
"The poor mite," she said, touching the round little head with her finger. "My man will have the hide off me, but come my lord," she said, glancing up in time to find him peering happily down the front of her blouse. She blushed, but she didn't bother to tug the cloth up over her pleasant attributes. "We can take him out back… where nobody will mind."
A good hour later Giotto brought the puppy up to the indicated room and found Montesor already in a wooden tub of steaming scented water.
"I want a bath brought up," Giotto stopped the last manservant on his way out the door with his empty bucket. Giotto scratched as he tucked the somnolent doglet into his sleeve. The skin now stretched taut over a furry belly filled with warm milk and meat scraps. "And your best soaps and a soft brush for my back."
"You could always share," Montresor said, smirking.
"I'd rather have my own. It's the fleas from the goddamned dog. I had to hold him while the stable man dressed the stump," Giotto scowled. The puppy was very warm against his wrist, clean and still a little damp. He carried it over to the fireplace and shook it out from his sleeve into the chair.
"No, I was thinking of the crabs you picked up from the maid at the inn," Montresor leered at him. "You sure? I could give you a lesson in how to acquire crabs." "No, and no, and no thank you," Giotto's temper snapped a few strands but the big man laughed at him.
"I've said before, unwilling isn't my taste," he said, "but you miss out on good fun and cheat yourself for a scruple. Do you really think to lose your soul by sodomy? All the priests do it."
"Not all," Giotto fired further.
"So it's…?"
"A matter of good taste," said Giotto taking the high ground. He made a face. "The idea is unpleasant. Men sweat and grunt and fart and smell like pigs. There's nothing appealing to me."
The lazy man lost his look of indolence and laughed as if he'd not heard anything so funny in an ape's age.
"Women bleed and bitch and weep and stink with perfumes while scratching the lice under their wigs," he countered. "Giotto you live on dreams!"
"I shall have a clean wife when I am free to take one," Giotto gritted. Defiantly he threw off his hat and shucked his doublet.
If this great oaf made any attempt on his virtue he'd skewer him with a dagger and damn the consequences. At that moment his friendship oath seemed a small light thing. As the door opened and the menservants rolled in a second tub, he backed off to let them set it down.
"I shall want my clothes picked over, and brushed and cleaned of all vermin, " he told them.
Only after he eased himself into the stinging heat of the scented water did he begin to smile a little at the burn of his own brain. Quarrelling over impossibilities as if there were even a ghost of temptation in them. No worry. He felt supremely satisfyingly sane again. Felicio returned to humming like a great drone bee. Giotto shook his head. He hadn't thought Montresor would have noted his extra half-hour absence.
"I hate itching and I think you'd do well to follow my advice, young lad," Montresor slid deeper into the water. "A fortune only goes so far to cover a stinking skin and your next cuddle won't thank you for the lice."
He dunked himself under the water and bubbled there for several moments before erupting upwards once more. Giotto savored the steaming water, dreaming back over the time he had spent in the shed, cleaning up the puppy.