Fool School Read online

  Nuncle touches the cloth.

  "Who are you?" he asks suddenly, his blue eyes reflecting green light and candlelight. His eyes are very wet, like puddles.

  "My grandfather was a kingsfool," I said. "Not a big one, but he tumbled for--"

  "His name," Nuncle says, intent.

  "Philip de la Motley," I say.

  "Second fool at the court of Duncan of Strathclyde, 1024-1034," the headmaster says automatically. "Yes, I know the name. I know of your family, Tom, they are well-thought-of." He pauses. "I know your father, Jean."

  "He tends to pronounce it John, in the English style," I say automatically. Then: "You know Papa?"

  "Yes," says Nuncle. "Look. Lend me these patches, Tom, and I will have them mended. In the meantime, I will lend you a suit in return. Don't tell any other students where it came from. I prefer to keep my affairs private."

  "Yessir. Thank you, sir."

  A look passes between us, and I feel, for a moment, a feeling of estimation grow in my belly. The headmaster is lending me his suit. I have his trust. I don't know why. Nuncle knows my family. We're well-thought-of.

  Nuncle leaves, and I am crouched over my trunk, feeling too much.

  The suit he gives me is a little baggy--I'm slight, I feel threatened by my daily pottages--and Nuncle walks around me in the deserted music room, thrusting curved pins into the red fabric. It's a devil outfit, bright red, with real spiral ram's horns stuck to the hat. I feel devilish wearing it. There's no masque, but the apple-red cloth, clinging to my body, is turning me into a provocateur. I dislike displaying my nethers, but it's part of being a fool, at least a low fool. The fool is a sexual creature, always.

  Nuncle pulls the fabric taut, here, there. I undress, and Nuncle takes the cloth to hem. I pull on hose and a tunic. Nuncle is indifferent to the human body, he has other preoccupations.

  When next I am summoned to wear the suit, it's a day before our trip to the fair. This time, the motley is tailored, it's perfect, it fits snugly in every corner. Satisfied, Nuncle leaves it with me and instructs me not to sully it before the fair--we will wear hose and tunic as far as the outskirts of Bath, and then change into motley for a grand entrance, a Parade of Fools.

  Malcolm has a very inadequate suit, it's just a particolor tunic with legs sewn to it. Nuncle's taken it in, but it still looks just a poorly made tunic, rather than motley. I can detect the disappointment in Malcolm; he's built for finery, and this is very cheap. The neck is broad--you step into it from the top, and these cheap fabrics have no give--so his freckles down his shoulders glare like pink stars in the night sky. In the privacy of the room, we stand together and I rest a hand on his freckles. I find them becoming.

  The door opens and Wolfweir comes in with her hands behind her.

  "I learned this trick from Perille," she tells us. "In a crowd of women, the fool with the firmest manhood makes the most money."

  In each of her hands she holds a small braided circle of birch switches. "I made these for you and you will wear them. Don't argue. The sooner you make four marks, the more you'll have left over for the tax I will levy on you." She presents us with the circles. "The tax for a slave is five pence," she says. "And the tax for a vassal is eight pence. Put them on."

  "On where?" I say, looking at the hard, inflexible circle in my hand.

  Wolfweir points at my crotch.

  Very, very gently I pull my hose down and tug it on.

  Yes, right away I wake up and stand.

  It feels quite . . . unsettling.

  "I don't know if I can play music and wear it at the same time," I say, feeling heightened. "It's . . . distracting."

  "Practice," says Wolf, smiling and shrugging. She struts away.

  Part Four

  The walk to the fair begins on Monday. We've all confessed and have clear consciences. The swamp of outer Bath gives way to heath and fields. There are no castles here, no great sights, only morning sky and the sound of Perille's shawm, he's chosen to entertain us as we go. While I might be preoccupied with my own worries, the noise is a welcome filling-of-the-head. Sometimes life is best when you can drown out the sound of your own mind. I feel like much of human nature springs from a desire to stop being human for a moment or two. We desire to be raw low animals, or bright glowing angels, but nothing in-between. What bliss to be mindless, choiceless. No wonder we give ourselves kings.

  We're all here. I'm surprised Hero has been brought; his music isn't at a strong level yet, and I wonder what he'll perform. Flips? How much money does a fool make from acrobatics, anyways? It seems more like seasoning than a meal.

  In my hand is my recorder in the repaired case. A bag of cheap colorless wool is slung over my shoulder. In it, the red devil suit's horns dig into my shoulder, and Malcolm's tunic-suit is folded beside a tambrel. Malcolm is beside me. Wolf walks ahead, looking much more devilish and much more alive than I will in Nuncle's suit.

  The road trends up, and at a dusty crest I see Brystow. It wasn't so far of a walk, I realize. Morning to late afternoon from the edge of Bath, no more.

  Brystow is not a city, it's a kingdom. Stone towers and row houses. The city proper is empty, everyone's at the fair. The cobbles are well-made, there's hardly space between the stones, it's polished smooth. I am much smaller in Brystow than I am in Bath, I'm shrunken beneath the great cathedral, under the laundry, below roofs that are not yet dripping from snow. Winter is next door, the monks of the cathedral have already taken out their thick woolen albs to wear and they rub their hands together, blow on them, press their hoods over their ears.

  Nuncle leads us to a low overlook where the road touches the crust of the bay. At a gathering of shrub trees, we stop to change. As I untie my hose bracers and pull off my itchy tunic, I catch a glimpse of Wolfweir's bound bosoms, my mouth goes dry and I feel funny. They are threatening, the bosoms. They confront me. I avoid them. I become a ram's-horn devil. The fresh stitches in the fabric are scratchy, Nuncle didn't bother to use fine thread, but at least it fits.

  Oh! I never discoursed on how I fixed my shoes. I didn't. I found a very poor spare pair of jester's curly red shoes in my second trunk. I'm wearing this spare pair now. I'll buy some plain leather here, if I have spare money after Nuncle and the evil lady-wolf have bled me, and build new shoes altogether.

  A mile beyond Brystow the stream of humanity thickens. Cartwheels turn, animals lift their tails on the road, people with coin purses walk--actually it's mostly carts, if you look back down the road. Carts loaded with processed foods and bales for winter oxen. Women have bucket-yokes full of autumn fruit, there are barrows full of wax-sealed clay jars, probably honey and boiled berry preserves. I laugh at a man who's got a spinning-wheel of honey taffy, he's dyed it bright purple with grape juice, his hand-cart reads ROYAL TAFFIES, he turns the wheel and laughs in reply as we pass.

  The density increases until we reach a funnelling-point. There's an earl's bailiff checking the guilds and charters of each comer. It takes awhile to get through, if you're not the sneaking type. We stand in the billowing dust and shiver.

  Wolfweir says: "Put it on" in my ear and in Malcolm's. Awkwardly we shuffle away from the crowd. There's a boulder lodged in the ground, we hide behind it and put the wooden circles around ourselves and find ourselves quite overcome. A visible shape arises in our motley, anybody could recognize it.

  "Here's a theng I know," Malcolm hisses, pulling his hands out of his neckline-jesting-tunic thing. "Ef you look embarrassed, everyone'll be embarrassed. Ef you're proud, they'll be proud, too. Ef you're amused at et, they'll be. That's what they say."

  "Who says that?" I ask.

  "Dunno. Jost people."

  We return to the line. Ab'ly and Nuncle are here. As the earl's bailiff speaks to Ab'ly, I notice Nuncle ducking away, sorting through his bag, keeping his back to the bailiff--

  Didn't I have some business with the earl of Wiltshire? Ah, it was Perille, who had offered to get my suit repaired. Well, now it's Nuncle m
anaging it. I don't mind. I trust him.

  The earl's bailiff checks us off the list.

  We're in.

  And suddenly, in my heightened state, with a ring of twigs down my trousers, I'm expected to begin entertaining people. After our initial waltzing entry, Nuncle tells us to meet at sundown by the flag of England--there's a triangular flagstaff in the center, with the red and white cross of England flapping in the chilly breeze--and we're to invent things to say, and songs, and the people will watch us and take joy from us, somehow.

  We separate.

  Malcolm follows me, and my heart begins pounding, I hardly know what to do.

  "Where do we go? To the center, where there's stalls and people buying, or should we go where they're traversing?" I ask Malcolm, remembering Perille's admonitions. My heart's in my throat, and I feel my body losing itself again. The fear is a pit and I am in it.

  "Here," he says, and faces turn to us as I dig out my recorder case and the tambrel and mallet.

  There's no music to hear in the fair right now. It's evening before the first day, and people are still setting up, constructing booths and pouring produce and crafts onto countertops and into baskets. Where we are, there's a ditch along one side, there's a curved path lined with stalls and not too many people, it's the outer edge of things. For our first performance I feel like we could be terrible here and few people will hear us. This appeals to me.

  "Now?" says Malcolm uncertainly.

  "Not 'Rybbesdale,' " I say. "The time is wrong. It won't be appreciated."

  "That's all we've practiced," he shoots back.

  "Just play."

  I begin "Bird on a Bough," I play the plain notes without embellishment, but all I can think about is how ridiculous my body looks with my--

  Shopkeepers immediately perk up, even though Malcolm hasn't caught onto the beat properly. Smiles meet me, crusty men's smiles, big tubby bellyfat smiles, mustached smiles, women sitting on barrels sewing in time to the music.

  "Et's working," mutters Malcolm.

  "Just keep going," I reply.

  The stress of not running away, of having to stay in front of these people I don't know and play notes on my recorder, of listening to Malcolm doing his imperfect best, drives me out of my mind. I'm drowning. The only thing keeping me alive is the familiar notes of "Bird on a Bough."

  I try to add a trill, but I miss, and lose the beat. I lose it completely. And I stop playing.

  A big woman lifts her face to me and witnesses my embarrassment. She rises from her barrel and comes around the side of her booth.

  "This is your first year at the Fool School," she says in a burly sort of voice.

  "Yes, Ma'am, God keep you," I say politely.

  "First month, actsh'ly," throws in Malcolm, who seems no less intensitied than I am.

  "It's a joy to have music while I'm at it," she tells us, waving some sort of sewing stick at us. "My Ethman would sing as he worked, Lord rest his soul." She swings the sewing stick twice, I fancy she's remembering him. She chooses not to notice the bulges in our hose. "So don't fret, my two," she adds. "Just play. And I'll have thruppence for you at the end of the day."

  Thruppence is quite a lot of money for a poor seamstress to donate to our music. Malcolm and I share a look. There are probably riper patches of land we might have claimed, but I believe no one would appreciate our presence uncritically like this Ethman's-wife will.

  I play. Malcolm follows.

  I choose not to break out anything precious or bawdy like "Rybbesdale." Instead I stick with music that toes the line between children's rhymes and the music of the Gospel. I find my knowledge of simple songs is quite extensive, and I spend time running back and forth over familiar four-note songs, developing them until I can add pretty notes the way Papa does. I see the seamstress nodding to herself, working to the time of the music. She is nearly moved to dance, but she has work to do.

  A lucky thing happens.

  The dirt ditch behind us, which we both perceived to be an insurmountable obstacle, opens up as a main thoroughfare to a whole new section of booths that's turned up below. And a flow of people begins alongside us. I hesitate to leave behind the seamstress, a woman who has been exceptionally good at making us feel needed. Instead I confer with Malcolm between songs, and we skitter about ten feet down, so that we're within the flow of traffic. I feel sentimental about the seamstress, and I choose to let her hear our music.

  As we reach our new, slightly shrubbier location--everything green is quickly crushed by feet--the coins begin. Tiny silver coins, enough to have bought my passage across the English Channel, begin tumbling at our feet. Quickly Malcolm slings open his bag and scoops the coins in. By noon there are perhaps twelve pence, not all of them in whole coins, mostly a sharp pile of quartered-farthings, cut pie-slice coins. Malcolm props the bag open on the ground beside us, and we play our plain children's songs.

  But a funny thing happens.

  As soon as the bag is placed on the ground, the coins stop, nearly at once, even though the flow of people is increasing.

  "Why--" I began quietly.

  "Stingy," he whispers in my ear. "Misers all. Et was the early morning 'ers who had coin to spare--these have spent all theirs, and are clutching--"

  A big man in a green woodsman's tunic and filthy boots turns to us.

  "Did you just call me a miser?" the big man asks. "Is that what I heard?"

  I can't tell if he's truly angry or--

  --before I can even think of what to say--

  Malcolm shouts: "And what ef we ded, ye great backwoods teeth-grinding pillock?"

  "What did you--" the green man says.

  Malcolm: "Oh, you heard me, ye towering sheep-nibbler. Go keck some more shit with your great shit-kecking boots, ye shit-kecker!"

  A dozen passers-by freeze to see what the big man will do. This the French and Saxons have in common: we'll stop work to witness anything extraordinary, especially a fight.

  For a long moment, during which my hands grip my recorder like I'm throttling a wild animal, the man stands there. We're all speechless.

  My hands raise my recorder defensively. I need to remind this man that we're nothing but humble fools, merely musicians, it's our job to--

  My recorder is at my lips when I realize my job is not merely to make music, but to make the audience laugh. I'm not attending a music school only. There must be laughter for there to be foolery.

  So, directing my recorder bell straight at the big man, I bend at the waist and go tweetleetleetleetle, the way Perille did, the way I did against Wensley. I wiggle my butt. On an impulse, the sort that is probably not accompanied by the voices of angels, I slap my own butt.

  I kick some pretend dung. In a feat of serendipity, my spare curly red shoe unrolls and nearly pokes the man up his nose. And then, leaning on my French pride to bolster my acting, I pretend to be disinterested. I go back to playing pleasant children's tunes.

  The man explodes in laughter. A grand cheer from the assembled gawkers.

  Coins. A hail of pence.

  "Ahh," says the big man, "that was a one I'll take with me for a month of months. Here's to two brave fools."

  And he hands us a shilling, scrapes his boots clean, giving us a big smile, and drifts into the crowd.

  A shilling is a huge, heavy coin, and a great deal of money to give away. The green woodsman must be quite a successful man.

  After we collect the coins, I look through the bag. There are a great many pence coins now--four shillings at least in small silver coins, farthings and the old copper coins--and it's too many for the wool bag, which tears easily. I'm concerned about having it tear and having all the coins tumble out and a wild crowd stealing all our coins.

  "How sturdy d'ye reckon those horns are?" Malcolm asks as we discuss coin storage.

  I put a hand to them. They hang just forward of my ears, so the wearer can hear.

  "There's an iron band between them. No, two. I think it'll hold som
e weight."

  Malcolm takes a minute to feed coins in past my ear. A few cold discs slip into the suit and drop along my body and into my curly red shoe.

  "Put a shilling into your toe," I whisper. "I need new leather to fix my shoe."

  "Aye." Malcolm has red shoes that aren't curly. I'll give him these spare shoes when I've repaired my good ones. His are red cloth, and the toes are a bit extended. They can just pass for fool shoes. He slips a big tarnished silver coin into them, steps on it, gets himself comfortable.

  "Music or insults, d'you thenk?" he asks me as the crowd passes around us.

  "I can't handle too much worry," I say, truthfully, so we begin playing music.

  A strange thing happens. The empty bag quickly fills up with tiny coins, and then the coins stop.

  "They think we're already rich," I say. "That's why we're not getting any more."

  "I'll keep putting them up," he whispers back, taking a handful of coins.

  Every hour or so, Malcolm can restrain himself no longer and chooses a likely victim. A merchant, say, walking slow, in no great hurry. First, a "Hey you! Where d'ye thenk you're off to?" Next, a "Ohhh, I know your kind, ye probably come up from Devon and thenk yourself quite a fellow down there!"

  Malcolm has an unerring sense of where people come from, he never misses by more than a county one direction or another.

  "Are ye too busy to wipe your mouth off after ye shovel dung with your teeth?" he bellows at one.

  "Ded you buy that manky tunic off a leper?" he asks another. There isn't anybody in the world who's clean enough to escape his prissy wrath.

  The best of the day is a blackfriar--I don't know if you know this, but the blackfriars are supremely vicious and cruel men, they simply don't stand for joy or good humor anywhere.

  So when he passes, I imagine Malcolm will shy from haranguing him.

  Mais non.

  "Ooo, a pious man walks among us!" he crows right away, so loudly that the blackfriar trips over his cassock and manages to fling himself off his feet, flopping forward like a trout on a bank. "Och, look, he's startled to thenk there's a pious man in his midst! Never seen one in the walls of the abbey, I'd say!"