Fool School (32 page)

"Where is this girl?" John of Shaftesbury remarks.
"Perhaps a word from Ole John will reverse your fortunes."

And now I know what I will do, it will indeed reverse
my fortunes, I'm sure of it.

"Ah, thank you, friend John!" I exclaim. "Follow
me!"

John seems to attract new friends wherever he goes,
because a parade springs up behind him as he trots after me. The
Jew's tent is not far, but we have at least twenty followers when
we arrive, maybe more, all jogging in through the tent flap.

Malcolm and the bailiff are shoved aside as the
parade crams in.

I shout, "Here!"

Before I have a chance to kneel before the eerie
swordwoman, the Jew dives to the dirt, pulls up the back of the
tent and flees.

If the bailiff were not here, if the swordwoman did
not immediately move to prevent the mob from following the Jew, I
believe there would be general looting of the Jew's latchboxes.
Instead I plunge to my muddy knees (Malcolm holds the bag with our
things) and plead for the swordwoman's hand in marriage.

John comes forward and, doubled over laughing, he
says, "Oh, go on and marry him, I can vouch for his manhood!" and
the crowd bubbles with merriment.

"Svedskjælð gutrsdottír jarlsfjord," she says, or
something like it.

"Has she not the fairest voice you've ever heard?" I
say. In a stage whisper I add: "I fancy foreign accents."

"Fnordsgardr," she says, and the crowd erupts.

I say: "I think she understands me not." Then I mouth
some exemplary kissy-faces at her and John laughs, and the people
laugh with him, he's that sort of man.

I look up at the woman. A leather jerkin covers a
quality mail hauberk; beneath that a double layer of tunics. Her
hair is brown, worn in a single long ponytail in the Danish style.
Her face is broad, eyes set farther apart than Saxon eyes, nose
blunt. In reality I find her too foreign, although I believe any
Norseman would declare her beautiful. Everyone in England hates the
Danes, so I must take care not to inflame the mob unless I want her
dead, or possibly them. I find there to be much responsibility in
having the power of a fool. I wonder idly how many people I could
kill if I were murderous and calculating.

"She rejects me, see-you-not?" I say, turning from
her in
faux
despair. "Say to her that I love her, would you,
John?"

John looks behind him at the crowd, notices the
bailiff, faces the woman.

"This young man." He points to me. "Has
fallen
--" he plunges to one knee--"in
love--"
he
clutches his heart--"with you." He points to her.

It seems to reach her that neither I nor the crowd
are here to kill her or the Jew or to steal his coins. I think she
doesn't understand why I brought these people here, but that's
understandable, since I have no idea why I did it either.

She points at me and shakes her head. I manage a
pretty decent backward roll of despair, landing under the Jew's
desk. But the swordwoman then points to John and does a big
yes-mama nod. The crowd laughs and cheers. I leap to my feet--a
flip Ab'ly demonstrated once but has not yet had us practice--and
I, proud with my hands on my hips, demand "A kiss! A kiss from my
scorned love!"

The swordwoman crosses her arms and turns away from
me primly. She sweeps her hands down her jerkin, and she's right,
I'm covered with mud, I've left a smooch on the ground. Then she
faces the audience, points to John, and then to me, making a
kissyface.

"Aye, she's right, you did scorn my love once!" John
of Shaftesbury declares, and lifts me into the air with both hands
and kisses me full on the lips with a full beard. He bobbles me
like a child. "No reason for a shit-kicker like me not to get a
little muddy, whey-hey!"

I'm set down, feeling queasy, and yet feeling like
things may yet pan out in my direction, and John gives the
swordwoman his arm. Smiling in a terrifying way, she takes it.

"What of your wife?" someone from the crowd
roars.

"On your honor, nobody tell her!" John declares, and
gives me a slap on the shoulder. "Couldn't grant you the love of
your life, lad, but you've granted me another grand time, so here's
eke a shilling for your role as matchmaker!"

A shilling leaps to me, followed by a hail of happy
pence and quartered farthings, and the crowd departs, led by John
and the swordwoman.

Now Barns, Malcolm and I are alone in the Jew's
tent.

"What the bloody eyes of God was that about?"
exclaims Barns. "Why--what--just . . . what?"

"I did really lose my recorder," I say. "I don't know
where it is. I thought I had left it here, but he--Rabin--didn't
seem to have it really. I'm sorry I believed him to be a thief, I
imagine it was stolen elsewhere, maybe at the aletent, I don't
know."

"And so you summoned up a mob from thin
air--seriously, how--you were gone for naught but a minute, and you
rush in with a thousand men and women, and, and children . . ." He
scratches his head. "Where did they come from?"

"Ah, fools are given a magic whistle that summons
mistmen," I invent. "I only wish I'd gotten a kiss from her. Well,
thank you for coming with us to see if the--if Rabin had my
recorder. We'll look elsewhere. If someone brings in a fine
acaciawood recorder in a brassclad box, will you have it sent to
the Fool School?"

Barns is quite speechless, and sends us away after
overseeing us gathering the hail of pence to pay back the Jew for
the pound we stole. There are four shillings here, and he demands
we give him the three we have ourselves, and he says he will send
for the other thirteen at the Fool School if we don't raise it by
the end of the fair. We're now penniless and in debt, although
Nuncle is quite rich from my shiftlessness. This is the price of my
hatred.

Malcolm and I are traveling back over our drunken
footsteps. We discuss.

Malcolm: "Ded your opinion of the Jew change so fast,
that you spoke highly of him by the end?"

Me: "Here's, um, my mind on the matter. So Barns is a
normal dumb bailiff, and he says the Jew's a part of the community.
Why would he speak so if the Jew were not an exemplary man? Why
allow the Jew to live in England if he weren't more of a man than
any Christian? Whereas I--"

Malcolm: "Perhaps Barns just likes . . . loans."
Soppily dissatisfying to both of us.

Me: "You spoke of love for every man--"

Malcolm: "Every man accepting of Christ, that es. Not
. . . not every--"

Me: "Why not every man? Why an exception? Would
Christ have love for the Jew?"

Malcolm goes very still, stops walking. We've not yet
found the aletent, we're merely walking.

Malcolm: "Know ye not?"

Me: "What?"

Malcolm: "Christ was a Jew himself. Aye he'd have
love for the Jew, he was of kin with him."

And this gives us much to think about.

Me: "And you spoke well of King David of the Jews
once. Why speak so him and feel so poorly about this Rabin?"

Malcolm: "Et's one matter to hear a story read, but
another to confront its subject."

Me: "I don't believe you."

"There you two are! I'd hoped to see you again."

Ahead is the open side of the aletent, and the
barmaid whose voice it was. Scurrying behind the bar, she produces
my recorder and returns it to me. I am whole again.

I tell her I will soon find thruppence for her
kindness when I have such money, which is three days' pay for a
barmaid, and manage a muddy wink. Everyone is satisfied. I wonder
whether Rabin's come back to his tent yet. I hope I don't see him
again.

I suggest we bathe in the saltwater of the bay,
cleanse ourselves of mud and whatever else is dirtying us. As we
march together to the sea we find what seems a laundry parade. The
line of washer-women washing directly in the bay is something
incredible to the eye, it's all bonnets and white flags of sheets
and raw, bare arms churning against tin washboards--or, for the
poorer women, pairs of rough rocks. Surprisingly, aside from
seagulls, the sound I hear from many is weeping. Not the romantic
weeping of maids in love, nor the heavy bawling of mourning, but a
strange intermittent gasp.

"Pray thee, mum," says Malcolm to one as we pass,
"why do you weep?"

"Ach, don't worry your sweet head of it, my one, it's
the soap does it," she answers, and this is satisfactory. I know
nothing of lye, only that it burns the knuckles through after too
much washing. These are the poorest women in Brystow or they
wouldn't be washing, and their work is apparently a true pain to
them.

We skirt the range of beach where the lye has seeped
thoroughly into the sea and find a flat rock that leads into the
algae and kelp of Brystow Bay. From here the upper reach of England
becomes Brython Wales, and there is no clear line by land, only one
side of the bay and the other.

Stripping, we wade in. There's no ice yet, but good
blood of Christ it's cold. I am cursing and blaspheming in my own
mind. I will need to confess, this isn't my way.

The nearest washer-women offer to wash my muddy
clothes, but I have no money. I say so.

We wade in, dressed. Crusted mud dissolves in the
waters of the bay. I feel cleansed. The water causes my body to
shake and shiver, and this seems to loosen my hatred. I want
Malcolm to feel the same way.

"Have no hatred for any man," I say to him, he's
letting himself descend thigh-deep into the kelp below the stones,
we're some yards from shore. "Only love." I come up beside him and
wrap my arms around him, he closes his eyes and takes a deep
breath, hiccoughing once in the freezing October water. His body is
very hot.

"You know what I've been thenking of?" he asks. I
shake my head. "I like the way that ring of birches feels girting
hem. D'you thenk, if we've found the bob and a penny to pay her,
she'll give us leave to attend to 'em?"

It's very strange, but I have completely forgotten my
body in my stress and insanity. It's been so far from my mind, even
when I've worn the switch circle. But my Malcolm hasn't forgotten,
he's too pure in his fire to relinquish any part of his life, he's
a column of conflagration, he keeps spreading from tree to tree in
the dark forest, blazing alight. I brace a hand around him and
amuse him somewhat, but even though Wolfweir wouldn't know, I don't
take him all the way.

Back on shore, we dry ourselves with handfuls of
autumn leaves and dress for the day. It's noon and we've missed
half a day of jesting, so we quick-march back into the fair,
playing tunes, wearing the switch circles. We begin searching for
an opportune spot, eventually lighting far inland, near a fine
foods emporium that'll cook manor-house fish and very decent game
for you. They're under a silk tent hemmed like a rich man's pillow,
they have a tank with live perch, it's actually charming me, this
emporium. It's the earl's cook, I think.

Most of the people buying fish and game are traveling
with their wives, so "Rybbesdale" is off. Too dirty. I whisper to
Malcolm that I desire to recite, these nobles of the regime will
appreciate fine stories better than bawdy songs. He tells me to go
ahead and try. I stand in the middle and take several deep breaths,
men and women in finery pass, and I'm afraid I'll be reciting to an
empty crowd.

I begin.

"There was, in the time of Arthur of Camelodenum, a
declaration," I say.

People do notice me, they slow in case I should say
something interesting.

"It was so declared that all noble and graceful men
should come to Camelodenum and declare themselves knights of the
Round Table, to be sent on mighty quests undertaken for the glory
of England."

My voice sounds accented to me, I'm very French, I
can hardly understand myself. My voice is nasal and whiny, and I'm
very concerned.

"This declaration was spread to all corners of the
isles, and eke to Normandy and Brittany and Burgundy," I continue.
"And from all corners knights came. Norman knights, Welsh knights,
Angles and Umbrians and many Saxons and Jutes and Bretons. The
declaration reached Scotland, the highlands and the lowlands, to
Caithness and to the Shetlands, but from Scotland not a single
knight came."

Malcolm glances at me. I'm constructing the story
from memory, and much of it is new to both of us.

"But in the mountains of the highlands, there was a
boy who had dreams. He strode through his parents' house filled
with visions, and could be brought to do no work. From hiring fair
to hiring fair he went, his head in the clouds, and at each he'd be
hired for a day's work only to lean on fences, dreaming of far-off
places."

We've attracted a crowd now, a wealthy crowd, and I
push on aggressively.

"The boy--"

"His name was Duncan Donalvane," throws in Malcolm,
and I run with it.

"Duncan went with a girl, the most beautiful in all
of Scotland, and everybody declared she could do better than a
halfwit lad with no eye for honest work," I say.

"But aye she was thoroughly in love weth hem, crown
to sole, head to heel, and not for a king's jewel box would she nae
do ennatheng he'd ask," Malcolm adds. I shudder at the jewel box.
Too much like a Jew's latchbox.

"So when Duncan came to her one day and asked her to
sew him a flag of Scotland, she bought red cloth and yellow cloth
and set to work at her sewing without question, out of love," I
say. "And produced a great flag of Scotland. And when he asked her
to buy him a horse, she bought the horse--"

"And dinna once ask why he should need it,
out-of-work as he was," says Malcolm.

I realize that we haven't mentioned something. "What
she didn't know was that the declaration of Arthur had reached his
ears--"

Malcolm nudges me and hisses, "Dinna give it away,"
but I've already done so.