Druid Bleu

A Druid bore-cart sped past, a monk dressed in a surplice and leather toe-sandals pulling hard on the reins, the horses snorting and faying, and toppled over the friar’s oxcart, sending wheels of ripe cheese into the air. The Druids produced a low-grade Quebecois Bleu Bénédictin that smelt like boiled rags. They lived in a stone creamery on the other side of the mountain and spoke a Gaelic dialect that was consonant and guttural. The head Druid, a monk by the name of Smith, oversaw the cheese production, making sure it had that overripe necrotic saltiness to it. There was talk among the cheese-makers that the Druids used bone-clips and ferret’s nails, and some oily substance that resembled oil of castor. The friar’s turned their noses up at the Druids, finding they’re alchemy highly suspect; and besides, they’re bicycles were rusty, the tires threadbare and worn through to the rims.

The man in the hat wore a hat with a feathered hatband that he twisted at the front to form a bow and tassel. He’d seen the Druids do the same thing, but with a four-cornered fools hat, flat on top with a cameo broach on the front that looked like a hen’s foot bent into a Papal thumb. He’s seen this once before in a movie where a monk bent over a dying man, his four-cornered hat tipping sideways and falling onto the dead man’s chest, the crowd of onlookers wailing, one obese woman with a furriers hat, brown sable with silk underpinning, weeping uncontrollable, her face flush and roiled with tears. That same day the shamble leg man had espied a friar-cook on a bicycle, his hat bluffing and whipping behind him like a kite tail. There seemed to be a society of capped men, some in Papal hats, miters and berets, others in fedoras and rattan boaters with numbered cards and feathers. The Druids and friars stuck out, as they’re hats were of poor quality, made from coarse burlap and cheap felt, and seldom fit properly, cinching the sides of they’re heads; among the Druids blood boils were a common compliant, unassailable itching and dandruff were common afflictions among the friars and monks, hearing loss and eczema common to both.