Fool School (24 page)

Perille decides to advise us about the fair.

"An English fair, this is very little like our French
fairs," he tells me. "The dancing is wild, they simply go crazy.
Even the nobles dance," and he's right, this is quite news.
"English girls, well, they'll take you to the barn merely for being
French, they're keen on the Continent, they see us as suave." Both
of us saints squirm. "Don't look to buy too much, the sweets don't
last and the durable goods don't last either, the English don't
make them well. And they'll try and cheat you."

"I don't have money," I say.

"Then this is for you," he says, directing a finger
at Malcolm. "You look like the buying type. Buy honey taffy if you
want something sweet, it'll keep if you don't finish it. Avoid
decking yourself out in some lordly get-up, it isn't seemly,
sometimes Nuncle confiscates tings if he thinks you've been
spending your tuition on baubles, he hates dat. Bring whatever
instrument will impress people. Malcolm, you're not sharp on the
oboe, I'm sorry, but it's true. Bring a drum instead, and stand
behind me or Tom, it'll make it livelier, you can always keep a
beat. You'll make a shilling an hour if you've caught a good crowd
at the right time. Watch the flow of the people, enough people in
one place and you get a river, dere are regular eddies. Play where
they stand and shop and rest, not in between, it takes a particular
attitude to coax coins where people are passing, it's more like
poetry than prose, you must play like Nuncle, creating emotional
figures dat people don't expect, no one will stay and listen but
they'll give you a coin for the feeling. But for regular money,
stand across from popular stalls, play reliable music, give dem
something to hear while they shop. You make less from each person,
but there will be many more silver quartered-farthings, these
really add up. You can take them to a Jew if you want to trade for
larger coins, Nuncle prefers it. Oh, and if you want pocket
change," Perille has leaned in over the table, his body is a snake,
"
hide a half-dozen pennies in your breeches, but make sure when
Nuncle takes your money, he gets enough to tink he's got all of
it
." Big wink.

"He takes our money, does he?" says Malcolm
quietly.

"Every year, he makes sure he's got an advance on da
next. Once he's counted up four marks, he'll let you keep de
rest."

"What if we don't collect four marks every year?" I
ask.

Perille laughs with his gapped teeth stuck out, his
hair is combed into two half-domes. "We're the Fool School, there
isn't another, north of Venetia. Everyone is pleased to see you,
you'll see what I mean. The girls are especially pleased, wear
tight motley. Have you got a formal motley, Tom?"

"It'd be the clothing in your trunk with the diamonds
on," adds Dag, chortling, and I'm not sure if this is his little
insult, or he's merely trying to be humorous and failing.

I briefly explain about the wharfmaster and the hated
knife.

"You said nothing about it," says Malcolm,
considering me.

"It was all a flurry, and far too embarrassing. After
all, what could be done?" I say.

Malcolm has no reply.

"Show me," says Perille. "I've never seen true
purple, you must have had quite a
pépère
."

Before Ab'ly's class begins, I and Perille run to my
room and I lift the lid of my trunk and show him the despairing
bundle of cloth diamonds. He withdraws the legs, which are intact,
and lays a finger on the frayed threads.

"The Bath tailor can't do it. She hasn't got the
thread, nor the hand. There's a man in Brystow who can do it, but
you'll need an invitation to de Earl of Wiltshire's estate. I'll
see if I can find him for you, he's not too bad of a man."

I size up Perille, who seems to have changed
considerably from our first meeting at the stairs. He is no longer
a threat. I feel kinship with this extraordinary-looking boy with
the sackful of hair.

"Thank you, Perille," I say, and he smacks my
shoulder in friendship and we leave for acrobatics.

"Flexibility very important," says Ab'ly as we enter.
"Move in all directions. Not just four directions!
Six
directions. Very big deal, jumping and squatting. Half of life
should be jump, squat, jump, squat. Now. Jump!"

At his command we leap into the air. His long,
maybe-Greek fingers tell us to keep jumping. I'm not a terrific
jumper, although my Papa was world class, so I know it's possible
for me to become one. The skinny usually have an advantage, which
is why you so rarely get a big meal in the fooling profession. Food
is looked down on. Hamlin looms in my mind as the consequence of
too much meat. I have no gut, far from it, but my legs are short,
too. Tall Perille has an advantage, and I see Hero is quite capable
at jumping.

"Landing, also very important. Weakest place in your
body? Ankles! If you have big jumps ahead of you, use a trick."
Ab'ly opens a trunk and withdraws a series of long strips of
leather with a clever interior weave. He unwinds his odd Saracen
toe-wraps and scootches his baggy trouser legs up to his knees,
wraps his ankles like butterfly wings, locking the leather in place
with a tied piece of string. "Now, less chance of popped-out
ankles. Observe."

The lanky professor arranges his red-brown beard,
sends us to the side of the room, steps back, swinging long arms,
inhales, and runs straight at the wall. When his feet hit the wall
he takes four steps up it and flips. His feet walk on air as he
lands.

"Now you."

We are given a pair of leather weave strips each,
"plenty plenty," and we wrap up our ankles. Of all the tasks I
might imagine a kingsfool performing, I can hardly conceive of a
less suitable one than a casual wall-flip, but then, I am not much
for the tumbling part of tumbling. I'm not sure what I am much
for.

"Shoes off. Legs first!"

Barefoot Hero stands, backs up, runs, hits the wall
feet-first and bounces back. He looks immediately sore.

"Hairstyle!" Perille is shaking his head and staring
at the stone wall as if willing it away. His strides are loping,
lanky, and he doesn't get enough of a start to run up the wall, the
blankets slide and he's a frog, forward-leaping, his legs trying to
retract, his arms useless, he catches himself on the wall and
pushes himself back.

"Brown!" I'm dissatisfied with my nickname, it isn't
funny enough. I avoid the theatrics and just run, my foot gets high
enough that I catch the wall with the feet of my hose, it slips
immediately and I land heavily on my back.

"Hose off! Breeches only. Don't be shy."

Wolfweir is nothing but smiles, she stares right at
me, she waggles a bare foot at me, waving hello with her toes, and
I can't help it, it's mortifying, I clench my legs, but it doesn't
help, I'm growing in my breeches, I just can't believe this is
happening, my breeches are sticking out and I slick the green and
blue hose off my feet as quickly as I can and run straight at the
wall so nobody can spot what's happening to me. I get a foot up and
with bare feet I can feel the stone, I push off and bounce straight
back to my feet.

"Good!" exclaims Ab'ly. "Yes. See the difference?
Your feet are very smart, but hose is stupid. Now you understand
why I reveal my feet. Very alluring? Very smart! Now Demi."

For the first time, the class is endless. Gut-busting
smacks resound as we hit the floor, over and over. Nobody, not
once, completes a backflip. Malcolm of course merely watches, Ab'ly
won't let him participate, although I think he's probably healed.
Perille repeatedly touches the ceiling with his toes, I think he's
made a promise to himself always to kick the ceiling. I've chosen
not to resent him for being a show-off. It's just his way, that's
pretty clear.

By tambrel lessons I'm sore all over my body. The
pain is not immense, but it sticks to the body like berry jam,
there are daubs of pain in each direction, a bruise on every body
part. I am an orrery of bruises.

It is now that I discover that my embarrassment has
subsided. In fact, as I pull on my hose at the end of class, I
realize that the pressure in my breeches vanished almost
immediately as I started my motion toward the wall. That's when I
realize: I'm not without control over my body and its humiliations.
I need not fear the Wolf.

With this new realization of power I can dedicate
myself to drumming--but as we enter with our shawms for next
lessons and pick up the school's tambrels, Nuncle sees our
exhaustion, he sniffs and crosses his legs standing, the cancer
drooping like the wattle of a great bird, and tells us he'll
perform for us first, and we'll have tambrel and shawm after
lunch.

Nuncle withdraws a flute, four feet long, made from a
single unknotted branch. I imagine a man must have spent two weeks
circling the interior with a long knife, I see the carver seated on
a stump, or perhaps a carpenter's workbench, his legs spread, a
cloth braced under his underarm to prevent sweat from damaging the
wood, his hair is long, shaggy, sodden, but very beautiful, it is
clean straw hair, it hangs to his shoulders, his hat is not unlike
Hamlin's, a black Italian-style beret with several corners, perhaps
five. His shoes are of quality and dyed black, this is a maker of
fine flutes; his workshop is perhaps in a half-room open on several
sides to the elements but raised on a platform, he watches the rain
as he works, his wrist turns the branch, perhaps there are several
discarded, or no, he is experienced, talented in his precision, he
does not make mistakes, I erase the discarded branches--

Nuncle blows the first note, and I am transported to
a different fantasy.

It is a sound of seas. It is a sound of forests
alight with seed and leaf. It is a sound throaty, of men's breath,
of love and hate and despair. It is, above all else, a sound I want
to create. I'm inspired.

My eyes shut and immediately a vision arises. My
mind's eye opens up a place of light above my head and I witness a
story. I didn't know the story before I saw it. The story is
this:

There is a knight of Camelodenum, he has ridden
across Britain and its fields, past the Wall to Scotland, he's come
to see true mountains for the first time, he has an entourage of
three men who hide under cloaks, I don't know if they're monks or
not. They travel further and further north, and the further they
travel, the more mountains there are, I don't even think that's
true. But the mountains grow, and the knight traverses them, hooded
men beside him. Until, at the top of Scotland, at the last mountain
before the sea, there's an uncharted castle, it isn't a regular
castle, it's on an island floating a hundred ells above the
water.

Through fog the knight rides, and a stair of cloud
emerges below his feet. The clouds are raining, but water rises
from the ocean and the clouds re-form. The knight rides up to the
castle, the drawbridge lowers and a deep voice welcomes the knight.
The voice says he's found the castle where the Key to Heaven is
stored, and if the knight proves his worth in battle, the Key will
be awarded to him. Naturally the knight accepts, and he's readied
for battle by the monks. A knight dressed in blue mail meets him,
the horse is clad in blue too. They tilt, a dueling joust, and just
when they are to collide, the blue knight fades from sight, he's
made of mist. Still the knight pursues him, but neither is
unhorsed. The blue knight reappears and repeats his challenge, and
the knight tilts, but he is again passing through mist.

I don't know how the vision ends.

What I hear now is the approach of the music. It's
quite close, and I find that my eyes are shut tight, and also
there's a crick in my back and my hands are pressed together
haphazardly and I release all of these things quite at once, I
burst open. The wooden flute is above me, and Nuncle releases the
final note and lets it rest over his shoulder like a farmer with
his hoe. The flute, I mean, not the final note.

"You were elsewhere, Tom," he says, sinister,
probing.

"The music," I say. "There's pictures in it."

Nuncle rolls his eyes and spins himself around
dramatically. "Everywhere I go, there are children seeing visions."
He glares at me, though I prefer to imagine he's humoring me. Hero
tries to shrink into his chair, I've made him uncomfortable. "Well,
go on," says Nuncle. "Entertain us with your sibyllism."

I say the story just as I told it above.

"No no no," Nuncle says when I've finished, "you
can't just leave it there. How does it end? That's the beginning
and a bit of a middle, but you must have a revelation in an Arthur
story, a revelation of God. That's quite mandatory."

"I--I don't know. It was very clear when I saw it,
but it drifted away, there was no conclusion."

"Make one up," suggests Stan from where he's faded
into the stonework.

My mind races, there is little to deduce from what I
saw. "He--" but there's nothing.

"Let's open it up to the class," says Stan. "Any
ideas?"

"I like what he has so far," begins Perille. "Dere's
an Arturian romance in dere." He can't pronounce "Arthur," I guess.
"But why was he on his quest? Just to see mountains? He needs more
motivation."

"Well, that's obvious," chimes Malcolm. "He had a
vesion. Just as you ded. A vesion of the Key of Heaven. Et was on
the tallest mountain en Durness, I'd say."

"Who are the monks?" asks Hero.

"Good question," says Stan. "Thoughts?"

"They were squires--" I say.

"Squires don't dress as monks, they dress as squires.
Who were they? Blackfriars?" says Nuncle, leaning against the wall,
an angle among straight lines.

"They've come to take the Key back to Camelodenum," I
say.

"That's war, et es," says Malcolm. "Ef the Key to
Heaven were held in Scotland, et must stay there."