Fool School Read online

  FOOL SCHOOL

  by James Comins

  Published on Smashwords

  Copyright 2014 James Comins

  Cover image by gnuckx. Licensed under GNU Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic.

  Thank you for downloading this eBook. This book is the sole property of the author. It may be excerpted or reproduced for non-commercial purposes. Your support and respect for the property of this author is appreciated.

  This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons living or dead, places, events or locales is purely coincidental.

  Table of Contents

  One, Part One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven, Part Two

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen, Part Three

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One, Part Four

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Acknowlogies and Apoledgements

  Questions for Reading Groups

  Part One

  This is me. Tom Barliwine de Motley. I'm not so tall, a plain boy, brown hair that goes in spirals and a mind that goes the same way. I wear green and honey-gold, the cloth too long and patched too often, hose and a long baggy tunic sewn in diamonds, and on my feet are curly red shoes. Curly red shoes are how you tell fools from other professions. No one else wears them. They're meant to look like a man's sword, it's part of the job to be rude. I know all about rudeness. Devil tongues and pits of hell.

  It's the year of our Lord 1040. Henri is king in France, the Vikings own Britain, and I'm leaving my life forever for a foreign education.

  My destination is Bath, England, where for more than four hundred years all jongleurs north of Venice have been educated. Papa went there thirty years ago, pépère seventy, and grandpépère more than a century ago. Now it's my turn.

  I'm traveling with Papa. Come with me.

  Grapes ripen on grids of staked vines, stems curling and berries fat. The ocean glisters on my left, and the horse has taken to sneezing every third trot as it makes its way up the coast toward Normandy. My papa slugs out of a wineskin, his face reddening like a sunburn under his large hat. I sit behind him, clutching his belt, less than thrilled to be on horseback. Large animals always seem ready to bite me. The horse sneezes again, and the minature cart with my cases on it hiccups into the air and lands.

  Here, beyond the pear trees, is Cherbourg. We've come to the end of France. Through coastal warmth we reach the bustling pier overlooking the English Channel. Seagulls tumble above me in the early evening, just before sundown, calling for crumbs. Down my crooked French nose I watch as Papa unloads my two cases from the cart. They contain thousands of silver deniers' worth of costumes and musical instruments and such. They belonged to my grandpépère, who was a kingsfool, the highest appointment of all jesters. Papa is not a kingsfool. He says he got thrown out of Paris for remarking on the king's mistress, but old King Philip is a saint now and can't have had a mistress, or they wouldn't have let him be one. Papa lies.

  Norman water washes beneath the dock. Silver whitecaps burst between the ferry's low sides and the dock's posts. The water is the blue of my mother's courtesan eyes.

  On the pier beside me my father sways, arguing loudly with the wharfmaster. Pointing a round ruddy nose into the air, Papa bellows demands for cheaper passage and flashes fistfuls of old copper coins. Copper's been worthless for almost a hundred years now, and papa's are almost all cut to pieces for the metal. The wharfmaster repeats a demand for real silver, and Papa snorts. Unsteadily he balances a talonsharp piece of copper coin on the end of his thumb, flicks it and strikes the wharfmaster on the chin. Papa laughs like a seal on a rock. My Papa.

  The wharfmaster gives me a cold look and grasps my cheeks between two sudden fingers.

  "Tell your father," he hisses, "that you'll get no passage on my ferry this evening. I've no place on my boat for a drunkard's son."

  And my Papa throws up his lunch onto the pier in a tidy wine-purple pile, hurls two fistfuls of cut copper coins at me in an orange blizzard and storms off unsteadily.

  Keeping my eyes up, watching the wharfmaster, I stoop and pick up the few pieslice quart-deniers that haven't slipped through the pier's gaps, sweeping them out of the vomit and into a stack, wincing as more and more drop into the water.

  "Monsieur, my father is a good man, but he--"

  As the cold eyes of the wharfmaster meet mine, I stop speaking. I won't pretend I'm not afraid. The big man draws a finger across his jawline where Papa's coin struck him and a tiny line of red comes away.

  "A scar," the man says, showing me. "I'll have a sad bit of a scar from that. What have I done to earn myself a scar today, would you say, boy?"

  "Nothing, sir."

  "A scar for my wasted time. Get gone."

  I stand, dumbstruck. My life is unravelling. Everything is nothing now. Papa's given up, the Fool School waits across the English Channel, and I have no silver for passage. There'll be no school without a ferry ride.

  Look out over the sea toward the purple horizon with me. That's where my life should be headed, and I can't get there. Papa's already made himself scarce, fading into the doorway of some bar. The quayside at Cherbourg is warm. Small unusual plants like palmer's fronds grow wild.

  I look down at the brown quartered discs in my hand, trying to burn them with my eyes. I hate them so much and I hate Papa and I want nothing of him or his poverty in my life. Overcome, I take a salty breath and throw the coins away, throw them outward from me with both hands, watch them skip across the water like stones. They catch the light as they spin beneath the surface, then disappear, swallowed.

  The wharfmaster's eyes follow the old cut coins for a moment. I feel my cheeks flush hot red, feel pride rise up rudely behind my eyes. Then I turn and run.

  In my secret mind I hope the wharfmaster will run after me, call out, pick me up and say he forgives me my father's drunken sins and that he'll take me across to England as an act of Christian charity and maybe he'll even say that I remind him of a son of his, one who died as a boy or who left to travel abroad in search of hope and never returned, maybe he'll tell me that it was all a mixup and Jean Motley isn't my honest father but stole me from my cradle at birth, and the wharfmaster will embrace me and tell me to call him Papa now, and he'll teach me the sailor's and ferryman's trades and I'll grow old working the ferry--after a few years sailing the coasts of hot jungle lands abroad, of course, every boy must do that--and--but--but the wharfmaster is speaking with other men now and has forgotten me.

  I walk the lane, along rolling stacked-stone walls, keeping to the center cobbles between the cartruts, smelling the filth of the human city. The odor is cut by cut flowers in sheaves projecting from the brownbrick buildings. I wonder whether a handful of silver coins, exact change, will change the harborman's mind, perhaps I could steal the money, but I'm not optimistic. On the other hand, maybe the little cut on his chin will heal proper in a day or two, and I could pay him a full sou and he'll take me and my trunks--

  Oh, no. How could I? I turn around on my cloth heel and run back to the docks at full speed, certain they've been stolen. I always do this. Life's important things spin away from me while I dwell on the impossible. I fly down the winding track streets, kicking up dust, falling more than running, I trip and rise and run again.

  The wharfmaster has my trunks open. With a cobbled leather toe he pokes through my belongings, appraising them with his eyes. I imagine
a merchant's Moorish al-gebra scrolling through his mind. Coldly he becomes aware of my presence and shuts the case with his foot, then changes his mind and opens it again.

  "Fine cloth," he says, pointing to my great-grandfather's tumbler's clothes from the duke's court at Lyons. The motley is brocaded with real gold wire and trimmed in royal purple.

  If you don't know, there are no more than ten or twenty rolls of royal purple in the world at a time. In the world. They're made from seashells that can only be harvested along the coast of North Afrique and Andalus. The color never fades, it only grows brighter with time. Only men in the court of a king may wear royal purple, but my great-grandfather had permission.

  "It belonged to my--"

  "Take it out and hold it up to the light for me," the harborman says.

  I lift my grandpépère Jacob Motley's uniform from its place folded in the trunk and watch it unfold, blazing in a dozen bright colors against the early sunset. Cloth diamonds in red and gold, blazing purple trim, thick fine embroidery. Ocean water slops up--it's high tide--and I hold it higher, above the froth.

  The man lays a hand on the cloth. He pulls out a small knife and I almost die, I believe he's going to cut up the golden cloth, but he turns the blade around and presses the pommel into my hand.

  He wants me to cut up the golden cloth instead.

  "Take all the stitches out," he tells me.

  "Sir, this was made for my--"

  "I'll be taking the cloth for your passage. I'll not be needing it as one garment."

  I take the knife and sit.

  Beautiful cloth, beautiful suit. It's princely, and it almost fits. None of us are tall in my family, and Papa always said that I'd grow into Jacob's suit and stay Jacob's size, and when I was a kingsfool I'd wear it and outshine the king himself.

  I begin shredding stitches, plucking them out like goosefeathers and throwing the short threads onto the planks beside me. I tuck the scraps away from the reach of the wind. Can you believe this is my life? A wiser man would have sold the suit whole to a haberdasher for a thousand silver sous and returned to the ferryman with two or three of them and called himself rich.

  I'm not a wise man. I'm an idiot boy. I'm the son of a jester who got himself thrown out of Paris for mocking King Philip for calling himself a saint while he was taking mistresses. I live in oxcarts and penny-a-barrel-bars. Here I am, shredding my clothes for a mule of a man. See me. Watch me picking at a duke's tailor's masterpiece.

  And it's over. All are swatches and a pile of high-end thread. I've destroyed Jacob Motley's suit.

  The wharfmaster takes the ball of cloth, removes a dozen purple scraps that had lately ringed the collar and hem, removes a few brocaded cloth-of-gold strips, and throws the rest back to me.

  "We leave at dawn, Monsieur Buffoon. Remove your trunks from my sight."

  I drag my remaining belongings away from this man.

  The town is a scattering of churches. They grow like untended wheat from Cherbourg's back. My destination is the church of St. Martin, where I know I'll be permitted a piece of floor and some straw to lie down on. Trying to keep my trunks from dragging through ruts full of ordure is hopeless, so I choose a few strategic crossings of the open sewers and once again make my way up the streets.

  As I walk, something happens. I can feel the angels hovering over me, guiding me, their toes dancing on my forehead, glorious. It was my mother who taught me the ways of angels. If you listen to their voices, you can feel your heart touched by the Lord, she told me. And when that happens, you cannot be led astray. My mother is a visionary when she's not at her job. I'm going to miss her when I'm away in England.

  I walk. The cases scrape. Steeples are men standing on the roofs of churches, reaching. You can tell the type of church by the steeple. Above all else, gianting over the town, is the cathedral of St. Stephen. Not a place for a free nap. That's a place for the wealthy to fill baskets with large coins and make themselves known. I am not wealthy, and therefore I go to a humbler house to pray and sleep.

  You can always tell the Martinite friars because they have a lower steeple. It's their way. Humility. The Dominicans, on the other hand, always aim to have the largest, larger even than St. Stephen's steeple, as if they're men competing for the Virgin Mary's affections.

  Here's the door to the church. Look up at it with me, I don't like being alone. They paint it white, for purity, but in the way of things it's mostly brown now. Someone should clean it.

  Inside, though, it's very clean indeed. It feels like there's evaporated water on all the walls. The nave of the church is small, but the rectory and the friars' cells are expansive, filling space in every direction. Halls and walls, white and clean.

  I hear hushed voices, the kind with something important to say. My trunks scrape over the floor, leaving narrow trails of crap. The hushed voices stop, and a friar comes out of a cell.

  "God go with you, brother," I say politely.

  "May the pope's blessings sit on your shoulders, little Monsieur," he says to me, pinching my cheek. I hate being patronized, but if you can play the poor pathetic cherub boy, some men of faith will be kinder to you.

  "Frére friar, may I sleep here?" I ask.

  "Oui, yes, yes indeed," the friar says, touching my cheek again. I bat my eyelashes and smile. There is sometimes a price to free food and lodging. I will pay it tonight. I'm the son of a courtesan, after all.

  Out from the friar's room comes a boy in a nightshirt. I catch his eye, and he doesn't smile. His face is bold, unexpected. Viking heritage, I think, with hair like dried blood and a man's big head: long-necked, with a high forehead, even though he's my age.

  The friar twists and grabs the boy by his face and pushes him heavily back into the room. "You cannot be seen," he hisses.

  I'm confused. Why can't the boy be seen? It can't be the friar's shame, I think; the friar is clearly shameless about his boys. I peek around the doorframe, and the boy peeks back at me from behind a thatch roof of red hair.

  "What's your name?" I ask the boy, but the friar hits me and I become silent.

  "You are forbidden from speaking," the friar tells me, and I obey. That's what you do when a man of God commands you.

  "Now. You will follow me, say evensong, take your rest under God, and depart. You may not speak of what you've seen. Is that clear to you?"

  I open my mouth, then close it quickly and nod.

  The friar leads me away to an empty monk's cell with a chamber pot and a bowl of not-quite-clear water. A crucifix hangs on the wall. There's no bed and no straw. There's nothing else.

  I undress, wash, wait for the friar to come to me, but he doesn't. I hear the hushed voices resume their muttering. I want to listen. Instead I dig a nightshirt out of the cases and go to evening services.

  The worst part of Mass is the incense, hearing the censer chain clinking, thin stalks puffing thick Ceylon scents into your face as you worship. Couldn't they use something else for smells, citrons or flowers or something else that doesn't burn your eyes? You can't concentrate on the Lord when your eyes are itchy. I can't, anyways.

  Furthermore, I wish I spoke Latin so I'd know the words of the priests. Instead I hear a low litany of plainsong, like the sound of a baby babbling, ba bo bee bo baa, and in the high stone room, I feel lifted, lifted by the scruff of the neck by the Holy Spirit. I feel purified.

  I am walking back after two hours of services. My belly is sunken and my ribs create a small tent inside my tunic. I'm a child. I feel childhood on my shoulders, but no naïvete.

  The friar is sitting on the floor of the cell he gave me. His tonsure has speckled shoots like spring flowers. Wordlessly I sit on his lap and he rests a florid hand on my thigh and kisses my face and he's dead-drunk and I smell boiled wine on his breath and he begins talking to me.

  "Ah, the soul of innocence," he murmurs. "Red shoes . . . You know, I remember my days as an actor, my son. I wore shoes not so different from these. Spreading morality through s
tory to those who strive. It was brutal work--the holes in your soles, the peeling sunburns, the broken cartwheels, the rotten fruit, the sewing of the outfits--"

  I flinch involuntarily, remembering the wharfmaster's knife. The priest doesn't notice.

  "But for all that we might have intended to spread the Gospel, it was a Luciferean job, acting."

  He reaches down and pulls off one of my red curly shoes and rubs my feet. I try to relax, but I don't like anything touching my feet.

  "You know, Christ washed feet," he says, and dips fat fingers into the water bowl. "To be of service," he moans to himself, pinching my toes, hurting me. "Yes, tumbling, telling the Gospels," he repeats. "Our company chief, Lord Caligula Petrovka Kingarthur Antiochus de Paree--his mother called him Jean Bureau of course--he'd whore his two wives out to the crew for half a month's pay at a go. Everyone was broke all the time!"

  The friar laughs, and doesn't notice my second big flinch. My mother is a courtesan.

  "Ah, but I saw in myself a higher calling," he says, rubbing my leg, smacking his lips sleepily. "A life . . . without sin." And at last he passes out drunk, clunk.

  I extricate myself from the monk and consider taking my things to another cell, but this friar would clearly birth a world of rage if he woke up in my cell and found I'd gone to another. It would be an indignity. These shameless friars get possessive of their boys. His snoring will keep me awake, though, so I stand and tiptoe to the Chapel of St. Mary in the corner of the church and kneel to say my prayers while the monk works the worst of the snore boogers out of his nose.

  A slim shadow grows monstrous in the candlelight, appearing along the wall across Mary's face, swaying as the bloodhaired boy kneels beside me.

  "It's Malcolm," he says in French.

  I don't speak, because the friar has forbidden me to.

  He looks down at my shoes. I've put both back on. I've still got my pride. "You're a fool," he says.

  I nod.