These are funeral biscuits, dipped in wine, sin taken into the body, dense and dark. Lodged there in the stomach, passed through the blood, colouring the urine but never quite pissed away.
Sins are his best and dearest food, and he lives by promising salvation to others, as priests do. But he lives in the ragged fields; his breath rattles through his withered chest, his fingernails bleed frequently, and his eyes are yellow as a cat’s and shine in the dark. Children cower before him, but he blesses them all the same, his fingers fluttering over their shaking pallid heads, their hair dry as straw.
He speaks Latin and a garble of nothing, he speaks the chicken bones and dirty rags the villagers throw out at the edges of town. When he dies, they will strip his flesh carefully with their little knives and they will burn his body and throw the ashes into the river that flows away from the town, and they will do this in agreement with each other so his body, buried, will not nourish any part of their crop, in case a morsel of his eaten sins were to pass their pale sanctified lips and so into their hearts. They are a fearful people, living as they do between the river and the wood, and who can blame them if they are cautious with their food.