Fool School (26 page)

Me too.

I expect to be summoned to Weatherford some time
during the day, but it doesn't happen. The day is ordinary except
for my nerves. All the way up through the end of Nuncle's flute
performance--I will discourse on the Blue Knight matter shortly, be
prepared--I wait for punishment, but it doesn't come. When the time
set aside for Classics arrives at the end of music class, we all
turn to Nuncle, who peers out the window to the night, he taps his
fingers on his wrist, sniffs, and says, "Tom? Meet me in the
cafeteria. Malcolm, you understand the rules regarding sneezing
around Weatherford?" Affirmed. "The rest of you . . . Hero, will
you be comfortable outside?" Affirmed, piping. Nuncle sighs. "Run
around outside, then. Be children for the evening."

He trips to the door, and we rise and restore our
instruments to their proper place, and the outer door becomes
unlocked, and I am now to be punished.

I stand on the second floor landing. There's a force
pressing against me, a pike is pressed against my sternum, in my
mind I am told to walk into it, it's a pike made from fear. I don't
understand what's going to happen to me. The stairs make no sound
under my feet, it's five hundred years since this building was
abandoned by the Romans, but their stonework endures. I will
endure, too. I will pull the Roman stonework into my lungs and
become impenetrable. But no. I am made of vellum, and am already
torn. With an unusual whoosh I feel myself floating inside my own
body, the fear has torn my soul out, I rise, my legs don't touch
the ground, I almost lose my footing, my body is numb in the
extremities. My legs are twisting inside their sockets. I can't
feel the floor or the wall that I press up against, I'm adrift.
Speeding up, I find myself at the bottom of the stairs, which are
newly unfamiliar, it's another place I've been taken to, none of
the rooms are rooms I've ever seen before, we call this
jamais-vu
in French, I don't know what the English call
it.

The open archway to the cafeteria is made of cut
stones formed into a segment of arch, not squares but smooth all
the way round--look, they've given each of these archstones a
curved interior, somebody must have ground the stones down, I see a
Roman pressing the stone to a potter's wheel with a grindstone
attached, perhaps there are cows or oxen turning the wheel, they've
made how many stones? onetwothreefourfivesix--

"Ah. Tom."

I've lost count of the archstones. There is a lump in
my throat and I'm not certain that I haven't begun to cry.

"Tom?"

I cannot lift my eyes, they've got fishing weights
bowing them to the floor, there is heat in my face, and snot. I
wipe my nose.

"Look me in the eye."

A gout of snot forces its way out and I wipe it away.
How embarrassing; it's gone up my sleeve.

"In the eye."

I look him in the eye. I see no punishment there, no
furor.

"This is to amuse Weatherford, lad. I know his
eccentricities, I'd boil them out of him if I could. But he
completes two books a week from memory, and he'll teach you the six
big stories if you let him, which will serve you in unique stead
among the storytellers who know only two or three of them. Reveal
your bare arms."

In my violence I squash the strands of snot onto my
sleeve as I roll it, the snot will go right up to the shoulder
now.

"Arms at eye level."

A switch is revealed, and I hold both arms out as
Nuncle swats the tops, it's very painful, but hardly the breaking
of the spirit I was expecting. Once the switching stops, I turn my
arms so the bottoms are up, but Nuncle says, "Oh please," and puts
an arm on my shoulder, I find it to be fatherly, it doesn't cause
me the repulsion that my Papa's drunken bawling did. Perhaps Nuncle
feels true sympathy. Perhaps he once was switched as a young
student.

"Show that to Weatherford, it'll assuage his anger.
Show repentance. And manage yourself in his presence. I fear too
many such incidents."

The headmaster vanishes. I drift to bed.

* * *

Oh, the blue knight story. Yes, we speak of it, add
to it. Several days pass where it's mentioned and discussed for
five or ten minutes before tambrel lesson. It gets better each
time. It's a story about the abandonment of homeland, we decide. I
say it isn't a love story, although in one of her very rare moments
of speech during class, Wolfweir states that every story is a love
story, we would do well to remember that. Tristram and Isolde,
Odysseus and Penelope, Arthur and Guinevere and Launcelot. So I add
a love story:

A boy and a girl lived in Scotland. Everyone knew
they were in love, and everyone knew they'd get married before
long. Only the boy had no occupation, and this was the source of
tension in their families, for it's known that only through good
work does a Scotsman get ahead in life. The boy was a dreamer. He
had heard of a new king in the south of England, in the castle of
Camelodenum; the new king had put out the call for all good and
brave knights to come from all corners of the British Isles and
unite under the banner of England and the Round Table. The girl and
her family told the boy to apprentice as a blacksmith, or a tanner,
or a tailor, but despite being small and diffident in mien, the boy
became gradually consumed by the thought of being a knight in
Arthur's court. At the end, as the boy and girl quarrelled over
work, the boy mounted his horse, declared himself a knight, though
he had no arms or armor, and rode south to Camelodenum.

This is how we've decided the blue knight story
begins. It's familiar--any parent in the audience will have a child
who is unwilling to follow good guidance, this is universal among
those with more than one child. And there is love, which Wolfweir
says is essential to hold the attention of the women of the
audience. I still am not certain that everyone recognizes her as a
girl. She probably cuts her hair regularly, probably hides the hair
clippings in the midden, I wouldn't be surprised. She's still in
control of us, but Malcolm and I have distracted ourselves for
several days, it isn't impossible to keep the desires away. It
requires constant distraction. But this is school, we can always
develop new strategies to distract ourselves at will. For example,
I think of the silver flute.

Nuncle has not permitted me to play his flute. He's
only got the one, he says, and he's uncertain whether his mouth
might spread the cancer. I tell him a curse is not catching, it's a
matter of sin, and he tells me he's reminded of Father Bellows.
This stops my protest. I can wait for the fair and I will collect
four marks plus a pound, I will entertain and transcend, I will buy
the silver flute.

Oh! I haven't spoken of shoes, nor of my recorder.
While I'm telling my story all out of order, I might as well speak
of this. It's not, perhaps, the most exciting part, but it precedes
the story of the Brystow Fair.

It's one of the days this week--the days here are
less distinguished in my mind, as often happens when looking back
at many days that are structured alike--when Stan brings my shoes
and recorder up to the library.

"Take those filthy things out of here at once,"
sniffs Hamlin, referring to the shoes held up in Stan's mitts.
Following Stan, I withdraw to the dark corridor and pull off the
hated brown clunky shoes and gratefully pull on my red--

"They don't fit."

"Give 'em a few days," says Stan.

"Stan, I can't even pull them on, he sewed the toes
shut."

My shoes. That awful man mauled my shoes.

"Sewed the--show me."

In the shadow between the rosy haze of the landing's
sconce and the library's fireproof lanthorn, I hand Stan a shoe. He
stuffs a hand in and whistles. "Yeah, he did. Let me see if I
can--" He pulls out a knife, but I stop him. "Do you have a knife
to lend me? I'll do it."

With a half-shrug, Stan hands me his waistband-knife
and tells me to give it back to him tomorrow. "Check the recorder,
too," he says. "I'd like to get it all taken care of at once."

I shuffle down a few steps to see better--I don't
know why I don't just go down to the landing where there's
lamplight, but I don't. I set my case on my lap, and see, first
off, there are new brass corners riveted to my increasingly worn
and battered black case. They've repaired it, gratis.

I open the case.

The iron bands are a little sticky to the touch. I
don't like the feeling, but what I do like is the color. The iron
was long faded to lumpy black, but the luthers have brought out the
silvery grain using some sort of polish, I don't know what. The
bands now catch the light, and I see that the blacksmith's
striations form not the usual nebuly that Saracen blades displays,
but the spiralling lines of an expert blacksmith, the carbon kept
safe from rust by some fancy alloys and a layer of oil--there is a
glass disc tucked into the case, I open it and it's a foul-smelling
yellow sticky oil, it's to protect the metal--and here's a second
disc, two halves separate to reveal rosin to polish and protect the
wood. I run my finger over the new cork, and they've used truly
admirable cork, it's easily dense enough to be found in any bottle
or cask in King Henri's palace. My heart rushes. These people, the
luthers, they've taken a good recorder and returned something
magical.

"Is it good?" asks Stan.

"It's good," I say, and my elation is hardly undercut
by the work I will need to do to make my shoes wearable in time for
the fair.

An evening has passed. Here I am now, in the
firelight in the cafeteria, holding with reluctance a red-handled
knife. The blade is short but threatening in its sharpness. I
experience a terrible review of the Cherbourg wharfmaster's words
telling me to rend my garments, only no one is speaking, everyone's
finished with the day--Classics--oh, I will speak of the next day
of Classics next. Malcolm is elsewhere, maybe on the john. There is
only the sparking hearth, red light and the particular one-sided
warmth of a fire in a cold room, it's coming on winter.

I cannot turn the shoe inside-out, it's got the same
nasty hard shoeform that this terrible failed cobbler used to make
my shapeless clunk-shoes. I have my bare foot out, I wish they made
hose with the feet cut out, this would be easier, but I sit in
undyed gray-brown breeches with my foot up, the blood of my veins
turning red in the heat of the fire, in my eyes the red flame
becomes a tunnel and my world is a foot, a matching shoe, the curl
is not the correct red, he's got everything wrong, but I have no
dye, and this red-handled knife, I have my hand in the shoe,
measuring, I feel inside the cloth to the horrid leather form, I
have chosen to ignore the toes for now and begin by removing the
leather, I will re-shape it myself--I have measured, here's the
spot where an arch insole might be found in a better shoe, I make a
single incision into the sole, the insole's cloth tears precisely
under my careful fingers, I fold the leather--no mean task, this
leather is extremely cheap and hard as bones--I make a deep cut in
the leather of the outer part of the foot, so that only an arch is
left. I take my time and cut my new arch at an angle, bevel it, and
feather the sharp leather so it will soften with wear. I return the
cloth to its place. I will sew it later, when I'm satisfied.

With due patience I repeat this with the other shoe,
I measure and measure by feel until I'm certain they'll be
parallel, I cut and I have it almost right, easier to remove more
than to add to the leather, I tell myself. I'm the only one who can
get it right, there's probably no other cobbler in town, although
there's always a proper cordwain. Perhaps the Bath cordwain is a
better man, perhaps he could be persuaded to cobble for me. A
cordwain more easily repairs shoes than a cobbler makes one.

Now the toes. I'll need to sew them shut farther up,
so my feet don't slip into the long curly part. The cloth is good
and very soft, although to my dismay I feel a slight crustiness
that wasn't there before. He must have dyed it very poorly for the
cloth to turn crusty. It smells of carmine. I feel the thread, find
the knot; he's managed to hide it in the interior of the cloth,
where I can't get to it. I'm drawn to rage by his complex villainy.
I cut each of his toe-stitches, pull the threads away, manage to
winnow the knot through the cloth's good weave, and try on the
shoes.

My footprint-cut into the leather is immediately
comfortable. I have created a competent insole. I can feel the sole
beneath my feet; perhaps I'll buy a fur at Brystow Fair and cut
footprints and tack them onto the new sole, which is too heavy and
needs more carving, but I'm too weary for any more carving tonight.
But my foot slips into the toe of the shoe. I'll need a tricky
solution, there's no question. What was it that kept them from
slipping before? I feel that there was a cup on the inside. What
was it made of? Leather? Why did the man take out the toe of the
shoe? Malice, I decide, he's made a toeless shoe out of hatred for
mankind, he's lost his Christianity, perhaps he's godless. The
thought frightens me. I'll acquire a bit of leather and make toes
for my shoes. Perhaps I'll disassemble the clunky brown shoes, but
perhaps I should keep them, so I have a backup in case I can't
perfect these improvisational shoes that until late I'd worn,
altered regularly, since I was seven. In France, no cobbler would
produce these abominations. I must resist the urge to hate the
English, it's merely one man I hate. If I have the opportunity for
vengeance, I will leap upon it.

Thus, the shoeing.

Ah, yes, let me speak briefly of Weatherford's return
to the school, and then I will speak of practicing "Rybbesdale,"
and then I will return to what I am calling the present, which is
the fair.