Fool School (13 page)

"Brownboy," and Ab'ly has an accent I can't place. I
look up and he's looking down at me. "You report to acrobat room
each day each morning. Pink," and now he looks at Malcolm, "I give
one week to heal your wounds, and then acrobat training begins.
Legs." He stares down at Hero. "You go with Brown today. Show him
the way up the stairs." He smiles with thin lips, as if he's made a
joke. "Ten minutes. Be late and I make you both look like him." He
gestures to Malcolm. "Nuncle and Sparky will expect Pink at Prime
bell in sounds room. Don't be late for them, eidder."

Gone.

My education has begun.

* * *

"New boy. Brownhair. First lesson in acrobatics.
Catch."

A stone the size of my two fists together hurtles
through the air and knocks me in the shoulder.

"Not good enough."

I've just stepped through the doorway from the spiral
stairs. The last thing I expected was a new injury. Clearly the
pillows on the floor are not going to protect me from this foreign
madman.

"Throw back and try again."

Perille and what I would swear is a girl but who is
dressed in men's hose and long tunic and short hair sit side by
side on mats inside. Hero ducks in under my arm and sits on the
opposite side of the room. Reluctantly, still out of breath from
the fight, I pick up the rock and throw it back to Ab'ly.

"Wrongo!" he exclaims, lets the rock do some flips
from hand to hand, spinning it around nimbly through the air like a
bucket on a string, and sends it back to me at high speed. I put my
hands out in front of it, and it strikes my sore palm with great
force.

"Now throw at Legs," Ab'ly tells me.

Lightly, underhand, for fear of killing the little
thing, I toss the rock to Hero. He catches easily, with a nest of
hands.

"See how he does it? Now to Demi."

Hero throws remarkably hard at the girl who's dressed
as a boy. I wonder what her real name is. She catches the same way
and the stone does acrobatics as she redirects its path upwards,
letting it land on an outstretched palm.

"Now back to Brown."

Again I defend myself from a hurled rock. My hand has
a network of almost bloody cracks from the strikes, and hurts
pretty bad. I wonder how Malcolm is doing. He's in bed.

"Pick up and throw at Hairstyle."

I presume he means Perille, who has quite elegant
long frizzy hair in a circle around his head. I chuck the rock.
Perille catches it badly and fumbles it. A cane appears in Ab'ly's
hand and reaches the distance between the teacher and the student
and slaps Perille's shoulder. I see fury rise, and wonder whether
Perille will react, but instead the boy picks up the stone and
throws it back to me, not hard, and this time I catch it easily,
with both hands, like Hero did. Ab'ly nods to me, and the cane has
vanished. I imagine it's up his baggy sleeves. I imagine Perille
will pound me later.

Ab'ly's hand moves back and front, like a snake, and
a second rock identical to the first appears from the aether and
flies at me. I try to scoop it out of the air, bobble the first
rock, jam my finger and drop both.

"Up!"

I pick them up.

"To Hairstyle!"

I throw one, but Ab'ly adds, "Both!" and I throw the
other. Perille catches them.

"Legs!"

The stones fly.

"Demi! Hairstyle! Brown!" The two stones impact us
like stones and go skipping between our sore hands like stones.

A third appears.

Thus our morning.

After acrobatics, I find it easy to know where to go;
it's the floor above, and we all travel together. My estimation of
Perille has decreased. He's not as slick or as terrifying when he's
in the presence of authority, and I have trouble imagining the king
or duke who would be delighted by his service. This is a better
feeling than abject terror, I think, this feeling of superiority. I
like to feel superior. I am superior to Dag anyways, and so is
Malcolm, but I will have to develop strategies to conquer Perille.
I must understand him. Maybe among his belongings is a secret that
will allow me to crack the code. I feel like a crook, thinking this
way. This is how thieves think. Ah, my train of thought has led me
to a strategy . . .

I am downstairs now, and everyone is upstairs.

The bathroom, I have told them.

Here is a door, none too sturdy. I have devious
thoughts. Do Perille and Dag share a room, I wonder? I pull the
door open. No, this room is partly unoccupied. There are chests not
entirely unlike my own. It isn't Dag's room, I saw him enter his
own room earlier. I remember now. There are two pebble beds, but
only one has blankets on it. Six students and probably no more than
eight grown-ups in a prison built for fifty or more. I realize I
won't have time to pee after this, and they won't let me go twice
before luncheon, so I'll need to hold it.

I open Perille's chest. What can I steal or destroy?
I will conquer this Perille. Quills and ink, some parchment,
clothes, several semi-cured pelts of wild animals that I feel
certain he caught himself, a bag of coins with some evil-looking
mechanism of springs at the top, a small rectangle guarding the
opening, I don't know the secret to getting at the coins, and I
value my fingers, so I leave it right alone--

A potion bottle, perfume inside, smelling strongly of
musk and ambergris. Perille must be rich. There are several
polished rods of different sizes, I don't know what they do . . .
there are images of nude women drawn on parchment, I think Perille
did them himself . . . A cameo sketch of a man and woman's face,
probably Perille's parents . . .

The door bangs shut.

I have been in a fugue state, not fully aware that I
was here, placing myself in danger impulsively, and now I've been
caught. I am in Perille's room. Why? I want to know who he is, so I
can survive him. Can I explain this to Nuncle? And who is outside
the door? Will I be able to outsmart them?

A squeak. Not a mouse, though. I push on the door,
turn the handle, but the door is shut and locked somehow. I push,
and the door bows around its lock and hinges. I hear Dag outside
the door, chuckling stupidly.

I am dead. I am dead flesh. Perille will carve my
skin off, another pelt for his collection. Nuncle won't stop
him.

I will miss class. This is undoubtedly worse.

Why am I in Perille's room? I just ducked in because
. . .

I'm not as strategic as I believe.

"Malcolm!" I hiss. There's no reply.

"Malcolm!" again.

Every five seconds for the next hour, I say Malcolm's
name, louder and louder. Twenty minutes in I begin slapping the
door, then banging it. I find if I slap both hands in a certain
rhythm it resonates sonorously, I decide this is most likely to
attract help, but it doesn't do anything. Nobody comes. I'm in this
strange room with the smell of flowery Provençal perfume and body
odor and the wood of the door and the sound of my drumming
constant, and I imagine that Perille has been sent to check on me
and naturally he notices drumming from the inside of his own room
and he unsticks the door, probably Dag has put a wood shiv into the
jamb, and Perille is holding a long knife between three fingers
like he's about to dip into a fingerbowl at dinner, he tells me to
kneel and he makes a quick cut across my forehead, I feel the blade
scraping the bone under my foreheadskin, he cuts over my ears like
a barber trimming a man's hair, then around the back of my head, my
hands are in my lap so he doesn't go for my neck, I feel a curly
red shoe braced on my shoulder and with a terrific tug my skullcap
separates from my skull, and Perille, wearing his insane smiling
face, all krrrrazy, he begins curing my pelt in a bowl full of
cow's urine--and--and--

A second drumming. I stop at once. It's coming from
across the hall, I decide. Malcolm's room. Dag has trapped him,
too. Now I know how to survive this.

Some ten minutes after I know Malcolm is also
trapped, I am banging on the door when I hear, "That'll do," and a
squeak and the door pops open explosively, shuddering. A man I
don't know, a rather squat, unimpressive man with a sheriff's black
wheel of beard stands there.

"Dag stuffed me in here," I say immediately, having
practiced my alibi for some time. "I was on the way to the bathroom
when he grabbed me and put me in here to frame me to look like I
was snooping in Perille's room, then he made it so I couldn't open
the door!"

The man flicks a wooden shiv (exactly like the one I
imagined) away with a finger and thumb.

"Yeah, plausible," this new figure says in the voice
of a regular man, a man without much juice or human honeysuckle or
religion, just a guy, the kind of guy who can probably be found in
his garden trying out new rabbit traps on a Wednesday, probably
owns a dog
and
a cat, probably repairs good stone walls just
as a hobby. "Look, who are you?" he asks. He legitimately doesn't
know. How pleasant; he wasn't expecting me, I'm not in so much
trouble.

"I'm Tom Motley," I say, and he nods and repeats my
name, and I think it's nice, maybe he doesn't make up insulting
nicknames for his students. I see that Malcolm's door is open, and
I peek in and Malcolm isn't there, and the man says, "C'mon, you're
late for class already," and I follow him up the stairs, and ask
him his name, and he's Stan. Of course he is. He is utterly a
Stan.

Nuncle is leading a practice of drums, the sort of
tabor you hold in one hand and beat with a mallet in the other, a
single-headed drum, and he is so consumed by the joy of drumming
and hearing his students drum that he doesn't notice me or Stan,
his face is a mask of pleasure, he hears every drumbeat without
commenting, the sound is an approaching army, tum tum ta-tum tum,
tum tum ta-tum, and I pull a chair a sit down but Stan taps me on
the shoulder and hands me a tabor and mallet, and hesitantly I join
in, and of course I've screwed it up, I have no rhythm, and Nuncle
has become aware of the little drummer boy who couldn't drum, I
have exploded his perfect rhythm, and I see Malcolm is here,
although Dag is not, Malcolm looks awful, his face is draped by a
wet towel, with one swollen eye peeking out.

Here's angry Nuncle.

"The hell were you?" he asks.

"Didn't Malcolm say?" I say quietly.

"Malcolm was in his sickbed," Nuncle snaps. "What's
your excuse?"

"Dag stuffed me into Perille's room and jammed the
door shut," I say quickly.

"Dag," Nuncle snarls, "is in Brystow, getting sewn
up. I hardly see how he 'jammed the door shut' on you. I expected
better of you. Begin again and follow the beat this time."

Apparently there are no punishments at the Fool
School save embarrassment. Well, that and Ab'ly's cane. I bang the
drum. Over time I find the tempo and overcome my lack of rhythm.
It's a Navarran quality, rhythm, not a French one. It's two hours
of the same beat, non-stop, and I secretly wonder what the point of
it all is.

The drumming ceases. Nuncle ushers Stan to the front
of the room. He clears his throat.

"So I understand we have two new students. I'll say
my usual."

Nuncle nods at him.

"Keep with it," says Stan in his flat voice, through
his stormcloud of beard. "It's worth it, it really is. It's a great
education. Don't give up."

Stan is not an inspiring speaker, but I suppose it
was well-meant.

"For those of you who are on your first day, we'll
meet back here for the oboe and recorder after an hour and a half
for lunch, and after that you'll go upstairs and--have you met
Weatherford, Tom?"

"Is that Hamlin's name?"

Nuncle shakes his head.

"Oh, you'll like him," Stan says.

Nuncle stifles a smile. I find myself afraid
again.

The group files down the stairs. Nuncle stops me by
the ear and gestures Malcolm to head downstairs.

"Listen to me, boy," the headmaster hisses once the
other students are gone, shaking his infected nose redly at me.
"The surgeons of Brystow have a record of a lad coming in with a
deathly wound, do you hear me? It's written down in ledgers, boy,
you understand? All it takes--" He snaps his fingers. "Is for me to
bring you before the hundredscourt and tell them what I and
Abramopouli witnessed. That's it." He draws an imaginary dagger and
stabs himself in the side of the neck, the universal gesture for
dead. "Gone. Do you take my meaning?"

I feel the body heat of Stan at my other side, and my
eyes rise to meet his. I find myself surprised he hasn't gone to
luncheon already. It seems like his sort of thing. He looks down at
me with unlit coals for eyes.

"We'd hate to lose you," he says. "Shame to have you
hung for acts of wounding."

These are not priests. I don't have to do anything
they say. But it might be a good idea. The rows of music stands
press in on me and the smell of Perille's faint cologne
lingers.

"I pledge not to start fights," I say, hoping I'm
audible.

"Better concern yourself with how your fights end,"
Nuncle hisses. "Dag's worth another eight gold marks to us,
Tomworth, and that's a great many sins pardoned at the traveling
fair,
you understand, boy?
See that Dag pays his next two
years' shinies to us, oh wouldn't you?"

It had not occured to me that we'd need to pay the
gold every year. It took Papa a decade to save up four marks. How
will I get the money for more school? Another thing to worry about.
But--

They're threatening me. Perhaps I can threaten them,
too.

"Where's the change for Malcolm's mancuses?" I ask. I
see Nuncle silently cursing himself that I was awake and
remembered, that I hadn't convinced myself I had dreamt it. I
always know a dream from reality. In the real world there's always
pain in my body, and there is no God in dreams.