The Children of the Dark Age by Ágnes Bacsálmási

Author:Ágnes Bacsálmási [Bacsálmási, Ágnes]
Language: eng
Format: epub

Sebastian and Chiara

It happened more than a year ago, when the monks noticed an interesting newcomer from the window of the monastery. He was jumping between the bushes, from one to the other, completely naked. When he knocked on the monastery door, he tried to cover what he could with a leafy tree branch. At night, frostbitten from the cold, gritting his teeth, he recounted the evil robbery he had fallen victim to.

“I have to go to Siena immediately! I'm meeting my bride this morning,” Sebastian said, distraught.

The monks wrapped a blanket around Sebastian and looked at him weirdly, for in such an attire, not even the poorest beggar would have gone courting.

“My fashionable, expensive clothes have been stolen by the robbers, and I can't stand naked like this in front of my bride," he said as the monks nodded understandingly, one of them bringing a grey frock.

“We only have one dress, the one we're wearing. But here’s a Franciscan dress that had been left here. We don’t wear it because we are Dominican.

Sebastian pulled on the rough linen cloth full of holes, and he looked as if he had been fished out of somewhere.

"We don't have sandals," another monk said regretfully.

Sebastian was late, so he quickly tied the dress with a rope around his waist and ran to Siena. There, in the street of the goldsmiths, where Chiara lived, he knocked on the gates of the wonderful house while the servants growled angrily at him.

“You’re knocking for food in vain, we're only donating to the hospital. Go there, you will get bread there.”

"I'm Sebastian, the son of the Florentine goldsmith. I came to see Chiara.”

The servant stuck his head farther out the window because he couldn't believe his eyes.

"What, you’re Sebastian? Well, then I am the Pope of Rome,” he said with a laugh and rushed to another servant to call the lord of the house immediately.

That morning, everyone had waiting for Sebastian, the young, rich man who became Chiara’s betrothed after the two families had agreed to it. They imagined him in a lot of ways, mostly as a haughty young man, arrogant, parading in fashionable fabrics, similar to most young Florentines.

"I came to see Chiara," Sebastian said confidently as he entered the palace.

Chiara's parents inspected him in shock, and he knelt down politely in front of them in his torn rags. His expression was especially peaceful and respectful. The last to enter the long salon was Chiara, and when she saw the young man, her breath stopped for a second.

"Francesco..." she said in a whisper.

The grey, ragged frock clung to Sebastian's dirty body in the summer heat, his feet turning black and wounded from the dust and stones of the road, blood dripping from the wounds in some places. However, his beggar-like appearance and pious demeanor captivated the saintly girl. She was attracted to the boy kneeling in torn rags in front of her who was none other than the portrait of St. Francis.

He was exactly the humble and pious young man Chiara had always dreamed of.

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