Happy Holidays, ImprobableDreams900!
Jan. 2nd, 2020 06:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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go_exchangeTitle:Natural Histories
Recipient: ImprobableDreams900
Rating: PG
Notes: Thank you for a wonderful prompt! I should note I did some due diligence researching, so my biographical information came from to The Life of Bernard Palissy, of Saintes by Henry Morley. Unfortunately, despite my efforts, I was never able to find the name of Palissy’s wife!
Summary: When Monsieur Bernard Palissy called for him, Aziraphale hadn’t modeled since Leo, the dear, had sent him that rather desperate note after a summer ague had felled half the most nubile boys in Florence.
Aziraphale hadn’t modeled since Leo, the dear, had sent him that rather desperate note after a summer ague had felled half the most nubile boys in Florence [1], but he was “absolutely tickled, Bernard, to be asked, really, it’s an honor to sit for any fine artist, but for one doing such innovative expressions with, er, wet paste––“
“Euh, Monsieur le pasteur,” said Bernard, who was, though undoubtedly a great artist who would be remembered unto the end of all days, unfortunately and unavoidably French. He gently pried Aziraphale’s fingers from his bedoubleted shoulder [2]. “Come into the workshop, would you?”
Aziraphale followed obediently, only to see Bernard’s wife throw them a poisonous look over her shoulder, perhaps because Aziraphale was after all a handsome enough if not conventionally dashing man following her husband into his private apartments, or then again perhaps because Aziraphale was a known art-lover and her husband had infamously bankrupted the family through sixteen years’ worth of failed efforts to crack the secret of Chinese porcelain. “How do you do, Madame Palissy,” he tried, bowing a little from the shoulder as Bernard rushed him through the house.
“Oh, please, kiss my derrière,” Madame Palissy muttered in what may or may not have ben Aziraphale’s general direction.
Well! If she’d say that to someone she thought was a man of the cloth––! And to think Aziraphale had counted her something like a friend while he was stationed in this backwater, and in fact had nearly sent Bernard an anonymous note with a formula he’d picked up in Bianjing a few hundred years ago! This kind of entitlement was exactly why Upstairs had recently changed their policy on shortcuts [3].
“I thought he was dead, you see,” Bernard was mumbling into one hand as he opened the doors to his studio. “I had a vision in a dream last year: a serving dish––scenes from Genesis, with Satan in the form of a great serpent.”
“Yes, what a carefree dinner party that would lead to, I’m sure.”
“I carried him all the way in here without so much as a twitch, but as soon as I brought over the tools to cast his body, he knocked them out of my hands!”
“—Oh, I do see,” Aziraphale sighed: Crowley was sprawled in a huge, glorious, and obviously self-satisfied scaly sprawl across one of the work tables.
“Actually, Monsieur Fell,” Bernard continued, face blanching, “I could have sworn he started hissing your name!”
Aziraphale could feel his mouth start to pucker into a sour moue and tried to control himself––when in Rome, of course; but in Xaintes? It wasn’t that Aziraphale particularly disliked the French. In the current political clime [4], he just couldn’t abide being mistaken for one. “Is that so,” he managed.
“At first I thought I’d just fallen and hit my head, but then he did it again in front of my wife––well, honestly, Monsieur Fell, when everything fell the antimony fell into the pearlash and I suddenly began to understand how a new formula could come together.”
“Did you.”
“I took it as a sign from God,” Bernard said, his eyes misting. “It’s going to work this time, it really is.”
“And your wife?” Aziraphale couldn’t help but ask.
“She’s not as convinced of his heavenly origin,” Bernard admitted, which at least explained Madame Palissy’s sudden disdain.
Really, this was typical of Crowley––whose company Aziraphale was only minorly ashamed to admit he enjoyed. Crowley had a way of squeezing into Aziraphale’s business and mucking things up, usually while he lounged about as languid as insouciance itself, grinning at Aziraphale over the tops of those sod-awful little spectacles he’d started wearing once humans had taught him about grinding glass. “We’ll see about that,” Aziraphale promised, and stepped around the upended tools.
“Ssssssssssssssssssssssss,” said Crowley [5], still belly-up and starting to wriggle.
“This is unbelievably undignified, you know, my dear.”
Bernard, who was crawling about on the floor and picking up the mysterious instruments of his trade, shook his head in disbelief. “Snakes understand English?”
Figuring that a little bit of extra ethnocentrism could be forgiven if it saved Bernard’s soul from Crowley’s sinuous wiles in the long run, Aziraphale tried, “Well, are not the English snakes?”
Bernard let out a frankly embarrassing honk of a laugh that turned into a yelp when Aziraphale lunged and caught Crowley with both hands, lifting him in one swift yank.
“Now, now, nothing to be afraid of, my dear boy,” said Aziraphale, as Crowley turned suddenly biddable in Aziraphale’s hands and hissed a coy farewell to Bernard.
“Be careful, Monsieur le pasteur,” Bernard said, starting once again to set the workshop to rights. “Who knows what devil may walk in him.”
“I know,” said Aziraphale, looking disapprovingly down his nose at Crowley’s snaky smile. “Until I see you again, Bernard. Good luck with the, er, paste, and all that.” [6]
“Why don’t you just let the door hit you on the way out, you conniving, areligious, artistic––” Madame Palissy muttered under her breath as Aziraphale headed out the house’s grand front door, unaccompanied by so much as a servant. It wasn’t that Aziraphale went in for servants, or anything; being a servant himself––though of course Aziraphale wasn’t a bit reluctant to serve the Almighty Good for ever and ever Amen et cetera––he was rather looking forward to humans abolishing the institution. But one couldn’t deny the decorum was wanting.
Crowley at least waited until they passed a convenient tree to grow his usual legs and cocked eyebrows and shoes, or at least presumably they were shoes. “Hallo, angel, fancy seeing you around these parts.”
“I thought you’d said you’d given up on art after all that dreadful nonsense with the Inquisition,” Azirphale said, peering suspiciously at him.
“Well, it was a trying time.”
“Ha! You’re sentimental, is what you are. You like Bernard.”
“I take offense to that,” Crowley said, looking a great deal happier than the last time Aziraphale had seen him––when both of their hands had been drenched in blood.
“You do! You wanted him to succeed.”
“I don’t like anybody,” Crowley insisted, slinging an arm around Aziraphale’s neck. “I’m a demon. It’s in the job description.”
Behind them, through the grand front door, around the workshop, deep within the house, Bernard took his wife by the shoulders and kissed her in celebration.
“You know there’s no way that man is possibly a good Christian,” she sighed, patting him on the cheek.
“Oh, I’ve seen him eat an entire wheel of brie in one sitting––he can’t be anything but a Catholic at heart,” Bernard agreed, spinning her around. “But, darling, what matter is the brie as long as it’s eaten off a plate fine enough for an angel himself!” [7]
—
[1] The other half had, of course, already stirred enough of da Vinci’s paint pots to know they preferred their paint-sticks remain dry. Aziraphale, for his own part, didn’t mind grinding an egg white now and again.
[2] Frenchly.
[3] There was of course still a loophole in the fine print for any shortcuts that, in hindsight, could be argued convincingly to be miracles, but by the end of the decade-long Human Resources training Aziraphale had privately decided to wash his hands of the whole affair––well, a little flaming sword now and again notwithstanding.
[4] Which was to say, ever since Cain had single-stonedly invented politics.
[5] “Hello, angel,” in Snake. Or, possibly, “Look, Ma, no hands.” The two phrases sound remarkably similar.
[6] The pearlash and the antimony––along with saltwort, iron, tin, and a dash of lead monoxide, among other mysterious and poisonous powders––did, in fact, eventually turn into a kind of rustic ceramic that, upon rediscovery in the 19th century, made no fewer than four art historians sitting in a basement of the British Museum cry real tears for the first time since they’d left their mothers to attend Eton, Eton, Harrow, and Eton.
[7] If Bernard ever made such a dish, the Messrs. Etons and Harrow were unable to find it––there were serpents aplenty, but no representatives of ultimate evil, which was just as well, since the Messrs. would have found that sort of thing very embarrassing.
Unbeknownst to the Messrs. or their descendants, inside a locked cabinet tucked in the kitchen of a stupidly posh flat in Mayfair sat a precious wheel of very, very, very aged brie. Underneath it, a ceramic angel (perhaps slightly more cherubic in model than he would have preferred) wrestled a snake. If the cheese could think, it might have wondered what they were both smiling about––but seeing it was a cheese, it could not. Like most of the things on Heaven And/Or Hell’s Green Earth, it simply waited for what was to come. And then: whatever happened after that.
(no subject)
Date: 2020-01-03 02:00 am (UTC)I'd been hoping someone would pick this prompt, and then you did so much more research than I even expected! Finding and reading a book published in 1852—now that's my kind of research! <3 <3
For instance, "infamously bankrupted the family through sixteen years’ worth of failed efforts to crack the secret of Chinese porcelain" << Now that's some solid research right there! And I can trust that it's true because it's very specific, and also because I know how much all the Europeans were trying to do just this! Ah, the history of porcelain. :D
Also, as someone who has been obliged to read PAGES and PAGES about the various compounds combined to make medieval metals, I appreciated the lengthy list of ingredients to make the Europeans' knock-off china. :D
And I must admit, I'd been picturing the plot being Aziraphale saving Crowley /from/ Bernard, so it was a bit of twist to see it the other way round ("saving Bernard’s soul from Crowley’s sinuous wiles")! He's just looking for an excuse for Aziraphale to come collect him. XD
There were so many great little turns of phrase, too:
"decade-long Human Resources training" << (oh god that's so long but it tracks because HR training sessions are always Like That)
"Which was to say, ever since Cain had single-stonedly invented politics." << (single-STONEDLY because he did it with a STONE hahaha)
“Look, Ma, no hands.” << (LOL but then a second lol because bicycles and cars haven't been invented yet XD )
“Well, are not the English snakes?” << (and also everything about how much Aziraphale dislikes the French lol)
"though of course Aziraphale wasn’t a bit reluctant to serve the Almighty Good for ever and ever Amen et cetera" << (VERY in-character for Aziraphale, I must say, the way this line is just sort of shoved in there amongst the larger thought that Aziraphale actually cares about. It's him sort of thinking it on auto-pilot)
'“I don’t like anybody,” Crowley insisted, slinging an arm around Aziraphale’s neck' << (ALSO very in-character for Crowley, how he says the thing he has to say because he's a demon while simultaneously telling Aziraphale the exact opposite through his actions!)
'it might have wondered what they were both smiling about––but seeing it was a cheese, it could not.' << (I lol'ed, and also it reminded me a bit of Douglas Adams)
everything about Messrs. Eton, Eton, Harrow, and Eton :D
Thank you again!!
(no subject)
Date: 2020-01-07 01:49 am (UTC)-A secret!
(no subject)
Date: 2020-01-03 11:57 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2020-01-07 01:50 am (UTC)-A secret!