Fool School (30 page)

My sympathy is stirred.

"Why do you weep?" I ask without mockery.

Fury and tears mingle. The blackfriar seems unable to
depart and unable to speak. The crowd is transfixed, and nobody
moves. They've found something outlandish to ogle: that rarest of
all God's creatures, a weeping blackfriar.

Through gritted teeth, the man forces three words
out: "I demand respect!"

"Earn our respect," I say, "by refuting our words
through fair discourse."

Malcolm gives me a cursory glance--he prefers his
cutting remarks to fair discourse, I think--then says: "Have ye nae
sinned, Papa
Frére
? Nae broken the vows you wear over your
saggy man's bosoms?"

Tears of unusual intensity. "I have not come to
Brystow to be cut down with the devil's words!"

"You don't deny our accusations?" I say. I'm not
crowing, not playing the recorder. I rest the bell on my toes. The
crowd is rapt.

"My sins are not under discussion!"

"Ah, but I thenk they are, et that," says Malcolm.
"I'll trade all of this--" and he grabs his ring-awakened
manhood--"and eke one of these--" he points just lower--"to hear ye
say truthfully that you're nae father to a single brat in fair
England or France."

The blackfriar screws up his face in frustration.

"On the other hand," I say, and I hear an angel
singing, "I'll give you a shilling if you admit you've fathered a
child."

Malcolm gives me a glance. That's a lot of money,
money we need, but I feel certain about this. He slips his hand
down his sleeve into his suit, reaches down and pulls up the green
woodsman's large shilling coin from the feet of his costume.
Flicked, the coin lands in my quick hand. It's quite a large coin,
but thin, with the face of the old Danish King Knot.

A roar from the maybe fifty, maybe seventy-five
people watching.

"Ef you can look us in the eye and say ye've nae
children, that ye've kept all your vows, I'll cut myself off and
ye'll walk home with a candied fool's wilkin," Malcolm says. "And
ef you can squeeze the honest truth out of your clenched-butt lips,
this bright shiny and round shelling es yours to carry around with
ye for the day."

Shutting his eyes, squeezing his arms tight around
his body, as if it were cold under his thick woollen cassock, the
blackfriar silently snatches the coin from me and pushes his way
through the crowd.

Uproar and delight.

"Lucky us we guessed aright," Malcolm whispers as I
begin playing "Rybbesdale" as loudly as I can.

At the end of the shower of coins, at the other side
of the song and a second shower, we've counted two new shilling
coins and a million pence and tuppence and farthings.

As evening thickens and clay oil lanthorns are
hoisted onto poles, we discover to our considerable astonishment
that we haven't eaten at all today, that we have more pennies than
the horns will hold, and that the widow seamstress is standing over
the overhang of the ditch.

"God keep you, Ma'am," I say, and try to lift my
horns. They jingle, and a few pennies drip away. I gather them.

"Do you know what you've done, you two?" she asks,
not too loudly.

Our eyes traverse up the embankment to where she
stands. I have no idea what she means to say.

"You've taken my mind off my life for a full day,"
she says, standing quite still. Her legs are built for stomping
grapes, and her dress is undyed. She wears no wimple, merely a
linen towel wrapped around her hair; several folds of white cloth
drape down carelessly. Sweat stands out on her hard face.

"Yes'm," I say, grabbing my forelock in the English
style. Coins shower from me, and she bursts with an unaccustomed
smile.

"You probably don't know," she says, her hands
hanging down her sides, "but they're all talking about you
two."

"Are they?" says Malcolm, looking at me.

"Yes, that's right," she says, and she lets herself
down to sit on the overhang of the ditch. She's still maybe six
feet above us. "It was John of Shaftesbury who began speaking of
you two, he did. I heard him round the aletent, was recounting the
whole story. Mentioned a great deal of butt-slapping, said you
managed to attend his bogeys with the tip of your toe. He was quite
taken, let me say."

Malcolm and I share a look.

"A lot of the fellers weren't coming 'round this
square of the fair for to purchase goods, I'll have you know. They
were here for you."

I find myself quite pleased. Malcolm is blushing
through freckles.

"I've never been half so happy to have the Fool
School in our stretch, I'll tell you." She scratches her thigh
through her dun dress. "Made me feel a girl again, and it's been
quite a time since I felt that way." She sneezes. "That man Ethman,
he'd have loved to hear your jestin', yes Lord he would of."

I feel a voice in my ear. I am led to say what I say,
and, in the ways of angels, it wound up making a great deal of
difference in the way things have gone for me.

Guided, I say: "Would you speak of your Ethman?"

"Ah, but I have no heart for jestin' of him--"

"No Ma'am," I say, "we may be jesters, but it's the
nature of the fool to tear down the proud and speak well of the
humble, for that's as Christ would want, I trow."

The seamstress looks away, toward where the sun has
gone down. It's quite dark now, even with the oil lanthorn lighting
the ditchway.

"He was--" She stops and curses herself. I feel that
there is goodness in having her speak. Neither of us interrupt her;
we merely wait.

"He was no more than a tanner's boy till he was quite
an old man," she says, not loud enough to be heard past our ears.
"His master was a poor tanner, and a fiend for drink, and proud,
and took out his own failings on my man. Each night I'd undress my
husband to find a--a fallow field of bruises across his back and
chest. I'd always say he needed to leave his master, I did, but my
husband was not an abandoner."

I hear the woman's deep breath.

"He stayed. He'd produce tanned leather in the style
of his master, and it wasn't good quality, because his master had
no idea how to tan. Not a master of the trade he wasn't. There are
some men who have no talent at any job, but insist on employing
themselves, and teach themselves a trade, but go the wrong way
'round. My husband's master took him on as someone to blame for the
bad leather.

"It was four years ago. In the spring," she says. "A
shipment of Gascony rawhides of the finest quality came. The ship's
man was doing business in England, and knew nothing of leather, and
thought to have the leather improved before he sold it. As I said,
he knew not a blessed thing about leather, and spoke little Saxon
or Brython, and blundered his way to my husband's master.

"Fourteen pounds he offered," she says quietly, and
both us boys gasp. A king doesn't have fourteen pounds on his
person in jewels day to day. That's a coronation crown and enough
wine to fill every fountain in France.

"Of course he took the commission. Of course he did.
And of course he mixed his curing lot wrong, and tried to do them
all at once, in a big bog ditch, and turned the hides to shrivelled
shit."

She sighs and apologizes for her indelicate speech.
"And the fool ship's man--no offense, my two fools--" We grin
appreciatively. "The ship's man demands the cost of the Gascony
hides. Eighteen pounds he demands. My husband's master had two
pounds four saved from a lifetime of work, and I had one pound two
myself, saved from my Ethman's pay. The ship's man took them both
to court, and with his foreign tongue he demanded the difference
from the hundreds. My Ethman's master was sentenced to a decade in
debtor's, but before they took him, he went and beat my husband
until his insides burst."

She is not crying. We have scrambled up the short
slope now and sit beside her. She stares ahead very hard, as if she
doesn't understand.

"He died in my arms," she says very deliberately. Her
eyes turn to me. "I spend every Sunday asking the--well, that's not
true," she says. More quietly: "I spend every day asking the Lord
why he brought my husband upon the earth. What was his life spent
for? What did he learn from this life?"

"Perhaps it wasn't him that God meant to teach," I
say softly.

She is very quick, she understands me immediately:
"Then what am I to learn?"

"Ef you let the world brutalize ye," Malcolm says,
"perhaps you're naught but a whipping boy, and not a man."

"He was weak, yes," she says. "But a love of a man,
my man was."

"Did you learn about love from him?" I ask.

For a moment she thinks, and then she says:
"Yes."

"Then his life was spent well," I say, and we have
made her cry, tears of release. Malcolm looks past her to me. I
place a hand cautiously on her shoulder and she allows me to
embrace her.

Carefully, chastely, I kiss her forehead, and she
wipes her tears, but there are more, a river of salt.

"I said I'd have a quarter-shilling for you," she
says, but Malcolm stops her.

"Nae," he whispers. "For you we gave a day of
distraction, and for us ye've geven a story of truth, and I believe
those to be twain in price, thenk-ye-not, Tom?"

"If you'd like to do us more service, share a bowl of
good stew with us," I say. "We haven't eaten."

So it is we secure our coins, she her sewing, and
traverse to a tent where a cauldron of lamb stew simmers. Here. At
the table in the aletent. See our sore feet, our muscles all
aching, and our red shoes in a pile beneath the off-centered table
clunking back and forth as we set down drinks. I untie my costume's
booties, and a bit of smell emerges from them, and the barwoman
scolds me good-naturedly, and the seamstress laughs loud at this,
she's getting quite drunk. We lift mug after mug together with her.
And it feels good it should be so. It's been a day's work
today.

Her name is Hilda, and she has a farm between Brystow
and Bath.

As we depart at the end of the night, she tells us we
are welcome at her humble house anytime.

* * *

"You know what we need?" I say as we head to the
flagpole. "We need a Jew to change our coins, so we have enough
room for tomorrow's."

We ask around, and stumble to a tent with a yellow
star sewn to the front.

A sleepy-looking man with a big beard of white and
black and a small yellow hat welcomes us.

"Come in, come in, couldn't it have been earlier?" he
mumbles, smacking his lips. I find myself disgusted by him at once.
Everyone knows Jews bathe so often because they're naturally
dirty.

"Ef et had been earlier, we'd nae have all our
coins," snaps Malcolm, who sometimes gets testy after his ale.

"So it would, so it would. Have you come for a
loan?"

There are a number of small boxes like jewelry boxes
scattered around the tent, and I see to my surprise a huge woman
with two bare swords standing in the shadows, as motionless as a
statue. "Ah, don't mind her, she's quite under my command," he
says, and I feel strange shades of Wolfweir in his meaning, it
makes it feel like I'm looking into a mirror at my own pledge to do
as Wolf tells me, I suddenly turn away and reach into my hose and
cause the circle of birch switches to pop off from where it clasps
me. I tuck it into the wool bag.

"We need our coins changed to the highest change," I
say.

"Certainly, certainly. That will be five pence," he
says.

"You expect us to donate our coins to ye for naught
but shufflin' them around?" Malcolm says, exploding.

The Jew levels his beady eyes at Malcolm. "If you
don't like my price, then don't use my service," he says,
shrugging.

"That's not fair," I say, coming to Malcolm's
defense. "We expect to leave here with the same amount of money we
came in with--"

"Then do so," says the Jew, shrugging.

"Only in different coins!" I shout.

"My time is not free," says the Jew. "Pay for my
services, or don't."

Malcolm and I look at each other. Everyone has heard
of the Mammon-worship of the Jews, but this is
obscenity
.
Five pence is nearly as much as my father offered the harborman for
actual hard work, for arranging for a man to physically row me
across the ocean!

I take a deep breath, and feel spew and bile rising
up. It tastes of carrot and strong ale. I choke it back down.

"We'll pay," I say, swallowing, "but we won't like
it."

The Jew gives me a look, shrugs and tells me to
unload my coins. "If you're sure," he adds.

Malcolm helps me shake out the coins from my
horn--I'd take it off, but the horns are sewn into the hood, and
the hood to the motley.

In no time at all--seriously, no time--the Jew has
arranged the coins into stacks of twelve, collecting twenty such
stacks, and asking us to count them.

"You want us to count them? To do your work for you
for?" I ask.

"Is this a pound?" he asks in his reedy voice.

"
Do you want us to count them for you?
" I
repeat. I steady myself on his table. My mouth fills with stew and
ale again, and I swallow reluctantly.

"Is twelve pence a shilling?" the Jew asks. I roll my
eyes. "And twenty shillings a pound?" he goes on. I want to kill
him for his dirty-sounding voice. "Then this is a pound, yes?"

"It es," says Malcolm, with violence in his tone.

The Jew takes a wooden latchbox and sweeps all our
hard-earned coins into it. They mix with other silver pence and are
lost to us forever. I didn't think to keep out our first coin for
luck, or perhaps our first shilling. The Jew has stolen our coins
and given us a Roman gold pound coin in return. I feel like sitting
down, but realize I'm already sitting.