Fool School (10 page)

I say I don't know.

"This is what I believe," says Malcolm, and he says
this:

"Tom, we are, each one of us, a light in the
darkness. We're a lighthouse, a bastion, and the Lord relies on
each of us to shine where there es no light. I believe that each of
us es capable of lighting the way for every other. I believe
there's an absolute love, Tom, and I believe we're all reaching for
it, good and bad. And ef one of us hasn't come so close yet, it's
not for want of good, but for weakness. We're so weak, Tom, like
babs in cradles, but we're reaching. Can you feel it?"

I begin to say something discouraging, and think
better of it. I say: "Reaching." That sounds okay.

"Aye. Reaching for heaven, Tom. Who isn't?"

"The guilty priest isn't," I say.

"Guilty priest," he repeats. "Don't you hear et? Et's
his guilt that brought the devil inside hem. He's weak, Tom, weaker
than you or I. That's where the devil enters our hearts. That's how
the priest messed his footing and taken his joy in wrongdoing.
That's why Christ es there for us, Tom. To close the breach."

I think about this. It's a compelling metaphor, the
hole in your heart that the devil crawls through. I say: "If we
were strong enough, we wouldn't need Christ." After I say it, I
decide it was a bad thing to say.

Malcolm looks at me through a plume of smoke and
sparks. I believe that he's decided I've lost my faith once and for
all, that I've given myself to pagan gods or something, that I'm no
longer a disciple of the good church, and I imagine him standing
and walking away through the darkness and I rise and run after him
but no matter how fast I run mighty Malcolm is faster and I chase
through leaf-moon darkness through the cutting bracken for burnt
hours and now I've lost my way and the rustle of Malcolm's body
through heath dies away and I'm lost in the darkness on a rise in
the land and I overlook the empty lands of England, forgotten by
God, and--but--Malcolm is speaking:

"You're right, Tom," and I pull myself back to real
life. "Yes, ef we were strong enough to resist, we'd have no need
of Hem." Malcolm nods as he speaks. "But we're not that, don't you
see? Ef we were strong enough, et'd be paradise here. Esn't that
so? Christ's here for the weak, and that's all of us."

I enjoy arguing, so I say: "And the Saracens? Who's
here for them?"

"Damn the blasted Saracens. Ef they haven't the wit
to rise toward God, then I haven't a minute to dwell on them.
Here's a drachm." He takes the waterskin and drains two broad
mouthfuls.

"Do you think that priest will come to God?" I
ask.

Malcolm swallows his ale and points a finger at me.
"Ef he wants God, God's ready for hem," he says, and I'm not sure
that's an answer.

It's late, and I lie down beside the fire, and
Malcolm climbs over me and presses close behind me, his chin on my
shoulder, and I feel his breath and the smell of the ale, and I
don't seem to mind it, and his arm wraps my chest, and we are
together.

Thick morning rises. A good waking at last. At last,
I have slept well, I feel wonderful, I feel life returned to my
soul. Malcolm smiles at me and we shake the fire out and I take
first shift as the horse. This time, the not-talking is joyful,
companionable, we strive leg-longly through hip-deep heather and I
imagine we've worked out all the horrors of the past week. Have we?
It feels that way. I don't hate myself for Liza, although gusts of
guilt rise up now and then in my belly and I feel bad. But it was
meant to happen, and I take comfort in that.

Nothing much happens the next several days, so I
won't speak of them. Each night Malcolm and I find ourselves
entwined, and each morning there is goodness in the air.

Treeburgh's a proper buyer's town. It's stone from
rooftop to gutter to the good square-cobbled streets, there's a
market not unlike my Papa's Tourum and Angers markets, dense
three-tiered stacks of clotheslines, herded animals, an abbey, the
whole experience. I am proud of Treeburgh. It makes me think better
of England, and I consider that England isn't merely a place of
peasantry, it's just got more room between the cities. I imagine
what Bath will be like, and perhaps if Bath is bad, I'll be allowed
to travel to Treeburgh once a fortnight for a night of japes.

Here is hot seafish, burnt orange in flax oil. A net
full of gooseberries, fresh from . . . somewhere. A manor garden, I
imagine, although at least in Somerset the English seem to have
invented a new style of garden where they don't put any effort into
it, and it grows unattractively. They seem proud of their
irregularity here.

The road rises away from Treeburgh. I wish I had
money, wish I had kept Papa's cut coppers, so I could have bought
at the market--even in their unkempt backwaters, the English have
created good leather and fresh spices and jams--but I am too proud
to ask Malcolm for gifts other than food. I love him, but I am
French, and throughout France, pride is stronger than love, always.
I look back at Treeburgh and tell myself I will return.

Both Malcolm and I can feel it. It's coming. The Fool
School and its promise of the beginning of a life, an education, a
profession. We're not to be boys forever. Men, and fools besides.
The proud head of manhood rears, and we approach together. We will
learn.

The road leads on.

Part Two

There is nothing in France like Bath. Not anywhere,
nowhere, it's quite unique. It smolders with unFrenchness. First
thing you notice is how Roman it is--those bold stone forms of
recommissioned Italianate row houses clustered together like white
cauliflower warts built up on each other. If I didn't recognize the
smell of heather and goldenrod that constitutes wild England by
now, if my eyes were everything, I'd say Bath was in Italy, which I
have never seen, but I visualize it looking just like this: White
walls, everything in stone, but much older and grander than the
long row of alleys that is Treeburgh. Bath goes a distance in every
direction, and you can walk--with or without a clunking cart--for
more than a mile in each direction without seeing the last of
it.

It'll take me some time to make Bath mine, I decide.
That's how it is with a new city, either you make it yours, conquer
it, or it becomes an old prison that you can't escape from. A city
you've conquered will always yield to your will. That's the best
part of living somewhere new, is breaking a place open and drinking
the hidden recessed juices. A city is a pomegranate.

Where is the Fool School? we ask, and men direct us
to the oldest part of the Roman city.

We have walked the way. From a distance, the sound of
tambrels.

Home.

There's a certain feeling, a breath of warm fresh
earth and cold wind that floods you when you begin a new
experience. Walk with me and I'll tell you all about this one.

First, see where the brick city cobbles end and then
there is dirt. Ahead is a considerable rectangular building as big
as the Parthenon. I've never seen so grand a building in my life,
and I've spent nights in castles. The building is four stories,
colonnaded, and emanates the smell of water. Around it is a ring of
older square cobbles; Malcolm guides the cart, which has nearly
cracked in two by now, onto the cobbles and we circumnavigate the
temple of water, looking around for people to tell us where to
go.

The far end; a door is hidden behind a very odd
exterior tapestry, a thoroughly faded picture of a trident, and I
try not to glare at it, because it's going to remind me of my
little Neptune affair every time I see it. The cloth moves aside at
our hand and thick steam escapes; water's gathered on both sides of
the doors, which are made from extremely cheap wood. The wood is
warped and soaked. I open it and water pours onto me like
sweat.

Bath.

Inside are curving corridors slick with water. We've
left the cart inside the entrance, hoping that the general lack of
people in the Roman temple will prevent our stuff from getting
thieved. We go the whole way around--it's not as big a building as
I make it sound, although it's not small--and there's nobody.

Where had the tambrels come from?

Bursting outside, we leave the fetid damp behind and
try to dry ourselves off. The day is summer-warm, and the sun dries
us.

A man. What a man. His nose is augmented by what I
sincerely hope is a false balloon-nose, he beckons us, and his
shoes--ah! To see this again!--are a rosy red and curly in the toe,
looping like long fingernails.

I hold up my pathetic orange ones with my feet and
bounce my toe-curl at him. He beckons.

"My dear young pimpernels, hello! You may address me
as Nuncle, for that is how I'm addressed. You're enrolling?"

"We are, et that," says Malcolm.

I add a yessir helpfully.

"A Scotsman," exclaims Nuncle with a smile at
Malcolm. "I've never taught a Scot. This
will
be an
adventure. Wooja tellus wharr yer from, miladdie?" he asks in an
exaggeration of . . . well, it's not exactly like Malcolm's accent,
but it rings of his accent.

"Atholl," says Malcolm, and I wonder that it never
occurred to me to ask where he was from. Whereas Nuncle found out
right away. By asking. Huh.

I ask: "Is that a false nose?" the same way.

Nuncle's expression darkens and he pats the bulbous
protrusion. It is not a false nose, I learn. Nuncle is dying of
facial cancer. Perhaps asking is not always best. Nevertheless I
feel the odd thrill of meeting someone I will be getting to know
better. Nuncle teaches the tambrel--a small drum--and the recorder,
we learn. I tell him mine is made of African acacia, and he laughs
at me and asks whether that's what they told me when I bought it. I
don't yet mention that my father and ancestors were once
kingsfools.

The bathing coliseum, I learn, is part of the Fool
School only insofar as nobody else in the Christian city goes near
it. We're led a distance from the temple, following cheerful Nuncle
and his drum.

Here, then, is the Fool School proper. It's a sight
I'd never have thought to imagine, but it's deceptive. At a rocky
prominence not too far from the bathing building, a tiny castle has
been built in the old Roman style, a single circular stone keep on
top of the crag. By itself, it wouldn't be much. Only, as you enter
the stark doors, as I and Malcolm and Nuncle and the finally-split
cart are doing now, you find a stairwell going down, and it hits
you right away: the prominence is hollow, a hollow mountain, and we
descend into it, leaving the cart up top for now, and Nuncle speaks
about the building.

"Now, what you see around you is what's left of the
old Bath prison system."

"Prison?" exclaims Malcolm.

"Good," says Nuncle, "that's the correct response.
Here, sit on the step and I'll tell you."

Uncertainly I sit on the angled stone of the spiral
staircase, with Malcolm beside me. Nuncle climbs to a step above
us, and we turn and look over our shoulders at him. His fists meet
his hips, a conqueror.

"And now? You are both bastards," Nuncle says in an
exaggerated voice, and kicks us with his squishy plush toes.

Malcolm rises, anger cresting inside him, I can tell.
His hand flies to the handle of his good knife, but my hand
encloses his and he leaves his knife sheathed.

Nuncle laughs and claps and pirouettes and shuffles
his feet. "I am higher than you," he exclaims, "and I have insulted
you. What will you do now? I am your looorrrd and master. I am
above you in rank! I am above you in power! I am above you on the
stairs of life! And I have insulted you."

Malcolm is wary, a threatened fox.

"What do you feel, sirrah?" Nuncle says, leaning in,
lording over us, crowing.

"I want to drive a dagger through your chest,"
Malcolm says, seething. He seems to have taken it quite personally,
I'm surprised.

"And now," says Nuncle, and in a feat of acrobatics
he does a quick cartwheel down the stairs to arrive a few steps
below us, he screws up his face, which is lined with age with
flat-looking blue eyes and a burst of graying brown hair under his
red liripipe hat, screws it up to look like he's cringing and
weeping at our feet, a whipped hound.

"And now," he says, sniveling, "you are both
bastards
." He makes a big show of weeping, and gives our
shoes--my orange curly one and Malcolm's hard brown one--a quick
kiss, one two three four. Malcolm recoils at the foul display, and
frankly I don't blame him. Nuncle is pathetic and vile now, and I
think we both want to kick him down the stairs.

"Messires," the tambrel teacher whimpers, "what do
you feel?"

His perfect mouth slightly agape, Malcolm stares down
at the man. "I feel nothing like I did," he says. "Et's a different
feeling. I felt compassion, like I'd done something evil to you,
but you were aye revolting, too."

I nod helpfully. I enjoy letting Malcolm talk for me.
I like his voice, his accent.

Nuncle rises and transforms into an equal, shrugging
his head in a circle around his shoulders, becoming easy and
relatable with nothing more than a change of face and posture. He
sits between us on our step, his elbows on his knees and his chin
balanced on a cherubic dais of fingers. "What do you think a king
is?" he asks, humming through his cancerous nose as he speaks.

"A king's a great man," Malcolm says.

"How does a great man feel if you talk down to him
like he were naught but a child?" Nuncle asks.

"He'd knife you," says Malcolm.

"And the same words from below, cringing like a dog?"
Nuncle says.

"Less so," I say.

"You'd nae be stabbed, at least," Malcolm adds. "But
he'd despise you."