Fool School Page 26

  I'm in a hallway. Men come through wearing off-white robes, snowflake-men. A hand lands on my shoulder and I'm led to a cafeteria, where I'm given porridge. An acolyte winks at me and hands me a good half-moon-shaped piece of chicken. I thank him and eat it heartily. I hope to be out of here before he gets any ideas. I know these priests.

  I ask after Malcolm, and they tell me he's in confession, for real this time. I wander into the aisle of the church and visit a cell with a priest.

  The priest sits down across from me. He begins by bringing his eye close to mine, checking me out.

  "Why are you dressed like the devil?" he asks. He's very young for a priest, no more than nineteen. I'm not in the mood for a conversation.

  "It's just my costume," I sigh. "May I confess quickly? I'd like to get back to the fair."

  "I'd rather be at the fair myself," he says. "Are you a fool?"

  "I'm not in a mood for fair conversation," I sigh. "Just take my confession, please."

  "You know, it's really not such a good idea to reject friendship the way you just did," the young priest sniffs.

  "I didn't--look, I'm in a rush," I say. "I stole from a Jew, all right? And I, what do you call it, bore false witness against him. I lied to a bailiff. I did a bunch of stuff. Just give me my punishment, please."

  "Uh-uh-uh," he says in a fluty voice.

  I groan and press my head back against the wall. He's going to talk to me, isn't he?

  "Before we get to that," the young priest says, "I need to know a little of your history. Are these sins out of character for you? Are you normally a better young man that this? These are things I need to know."

  The coins of fairgoers are slipping away.

  "I don't care," I say.

  "Mm-hm, well I do care. These things are important, if you want to become holy. And you do, don't you?"

  I rub my face with all of my hands, mmpph.

  "I want to feel . . . I don't know. Just come on, would you? Tell me what to do. Assign me my--"

  "Uh, uh, uh," he repeats.

  I push the door of the cell open and promise myself I will confess on the road to Jork.

  "Stop right there," I hear in the same fluty voice.

  I know better than to disobey a priest. God, this is irritating. I look up to the vaulted ceiling and realize God has chosen this horrible priest to be my confessor as a punishment. I am being punished right now, for bothering the Jew. God isn't close to done with me yet. My sins are too deep.

  "You come back in here and confess your sins," he says, and I turn to grapple my horns with his.

  I am sitting in the booth. My head is clunking against the chair back. I'm listening to the young priest.

  "Your first sin," he's saying, "is in not obeying me when I instructed you to tell me a little of your history."

  "If you're going to make me sit and talk to me," I say, realizing I'm digging myself a deeper hole and not caring, "why don't you tell me all about your history, so I know I'm not talking to a sinful priest?" Malcolm's fooling style has rubbed off.

  "I am the priest here. You're the sinner."

  "Fine. What do you want to know? I'm from Anjou-Touraine, I'm from a long line of fools, I dislike people, I dislike arrogant, bossy priests . . ."

  A small sneering silence. "Maybe you deserve your sins," I hear.

  "Is there someone else I could confess to?" I say.

  "I think you're going to sit there until you show respect," I hear, and the young priest leaves.

  I'm sure of it now. God has given me this priest to punish me for my hatred of the Jew. I must atone by suffering this arrogant young priest.

  Hatred like steam boils up off of me as I sit in the confessional. I pray for some interruption, that some important person--or better, an important pair of people --come to confess on this Saturday morning, displacing me and Malcolm so we may leave together, but nobody comes. I've been ordered to sit--how did he put it? Do I dare to misinterpret his words and say something like, "Well, you thought I was going to sit , but I wasn't . . ." No, I'm not inclined to toy with him. He's probably sitting just outside, being sniffy, waiting for me to disobey . . .

  God I hate this. I'm just sitting when there's a whole world of excitement--I have things I've got to do--it's dark in here, strangely quiet--I drum against the seat, developing a pointed hatred of Brystow and its people--what sort of town would keep a priest this bad?--Poole, I suppose--how unpleasant, to do what you're told--I'm not of the tithing of Brystow, I'm registered at Bath, I don't have to do what he says--I hear Malcolm outside--my hands are cold, that always happens when I'm angry--I better not miss my meeting with Robert in Pucklechurch--I conceive of a rescue party, they're going to steal me away from here, I imagine a giant mechanism to lift the church from off of the booth, it's very much like the crane that lowered the longboat into the water from the Immaculate, only much larger, it rips the entire church off of its foundations, I see Stan waving his hat from the mechanism's seat as the cell folds apart and I'm catapulted into the air by an underground catapult . . .

  "Are you ready to behave yourself?" the young priest says to me, slipping into the other side of the booth.

  "Yessir."

  "Now. Tell me what I want you to say."

  I close my eyes and take a crying breath. "I--what exactly do you want me to say?!?" I exclaim.

  "Well, if you're going to take that tone with me, you're going to sit there a lot longer."

  "No! Father, I just, I don't--" but he is gone.

  He's gone again. That was my chance. That was my one chance.

  It's forty-five minutes of agony before I hear Malcolm whispering outside the door.

  "They've told me I'm not to speak to you," he hisses, "but I'm not so blind of a pious man as ye. What's the priest keeping you here for?"

  "My tone," I say.

  "Then change it, ye great head-of-bricks," he says.

  "I tried--"

  "They're coming!"

  Malcolm rushes away.

  Another hour goes by, I feel every second of it, and finally I start to need to pee, but there's no way for that to happen.

  "This time," and the young priest is extremely rude as he sits, "you're going to get it right."

  "Yessir."

  "Well? Go ahead," he says.

  "Normally I'm a very good boy and never commit such sins," I say in a penitent voice.

  "Well!"

  He is shocked at my impudence. I put my face into my hands, because I have told the truth and he doesn't believe me.

  "With that sort of cheek, I'm going to have to take much more serious measures," he says.

  "I was telling the truth--" I murmur.

  "I know misbehavior when I see it!" he exclaims.

  I stand in the booth. I am not tall. "No you don't," I say in an above-average tone. "I haven't done anything wrong, I came in to confess and you never let me. I'm not the one who's been misbehaving--"

  "Why, you little shit," he says, and comes around the side of the confessional, but I'm ready, I ball my fist and sock him in the ear, I was aiming at his eye but my arm didn't work properly, and he swears and I push past him with my recorder in my hand and I call for Malcolm and he sprints down the hallway and sees what I have done and together we get to running.

  By the time we exit, there are four men after us. The young priest isn't one of them, he's sent his acolytes after us like a coward, and we're flat-out sprinting into the streets. I've got my recorder, Malcolm's got the bag, and we quickly outpace the priest's men and head back to the fair for our last day before our journey to Northumbria.

  The fair is an alive, heaving thing. On this, our last day, I begin to take in much more of it, the rich colors of the tents, the Brystow Wait traversing with their music, the sheer number of tanners, of cordwains, there are fifty choices of seller for each buyer of goods. Farmyard animals are shunted into basket-cages and lifted by burly children shuffling after their mothers. The soilman trails after the a
nimal-keepers, picking up the droppings for use as fertilizer or coal. The smell of roasted meat fills the space. Games are set up for children, there, and beside it, games for men, games of strength and agility, a balance beam for mallet-fights between contestors, archery, a lumbering competition, the winner receives a fine sheep. Down the way is the hiring fair, a line of sturdy boys and nimble girls up for hire, and

  Owwww

  Wolfweir twists my ear, I'm bent backwards trying to straighten myself out, now I'm looking up into the darkness of a very sinister smile, it's upside-down over a pair of pale blue eyes and flattened breasts, her face is in shadow because she's bending over me.

  "Do you have your tithe for me?" she whispers, girl-like, into my ear. Malcolm produces a shilling and a penny, but she's got bigger plans. "Kneel," she whispers into my ear, and I'm all twisted around, and she's still got my ear between two sharply-pared fingernails. In her trap of fingers are a shilling and one from the Jew, the coins sliding over each other like lovers.

  "You two," she says, standing over us. "Who are you?"

  A thrill rushes up my shoulders. "I'm your slave," I mumble.

  "Your vassal," Malcolm says.

  "I hear you got hired," she says, and we nod. "So you're going to be gone for awhile," she says with female knives in her breath. We nod. "I made you something," she says, and both of us are suddenly nervous, as flattering as it is that she thinks of us, her handcrafted things are always threats.

  Yes, here is a threat.

  There are two. It's a little woven cage made of switches, and I see that it's meant to fit onto the switch circles. Um, over us.

  "Are--are they--?" Malcolm stutters.

  "No more going up and down," she tells us. "Saints don't get to grow in their breeches. Saints need to bow their heads, don't they?"

  We're both staring at the round wicker cages, shaped like a small aubergine.

  "Do we have to wear them the whole time?" I ask.

  "Mm." Her smile came to us from hell. I can tell.

  "Can we--" and she leads us away toward a secluded spot and we unfasten the discreet two-layer flap for using the midden and reveal ourselves to her. I feel swollen by the everpresent switch circle, as if my man were full of pee leaking into the skin.

  The wicker cage slips over me and I feel crushed, squashed, there's an oily feeling, and suddenly I'm crammed into the cage and Wolf has secured it with a spiral binding. She has jute twine and ties it in place. Now I won't be able to show off for the girls.

  "Will we--do you mean we should wear thes day to night?" Malcolm whispers as she fastens him shut, too.

  "Mhmm." She lets a finger touch our caged men. "This is an ancient gypsy practice. They call it the Lace of Flowers." From a fold of her baggy sleeve she withdraws some red and blue thread and a thorn needle and threads a pattern around my man and eggs. I can feel her touch very, very clearly. It's making me a little crazy. Actually I feel myself going crazy because I'm worried that the four acolytes will find me and she won't let me run from them. "It keeps men chaste when the women travel away from the caravan." Her nimble fingers tie a knot. "You can pee all you want, but I'll know if you cut or untie this thread. So don't."

  As she lifts my breeches back up over the swallow's nest of wicker and thread that conceals my trapped man, I feel I have no idea whether I'll be able to pee standing like a normal man without getting piss everywhere. It's sure to spray.

  And it's pinching! I adjust with my fingertips, but she's giving me a bad look, and I'm scared of moving it around too much. My legs do an involuntary jig and it feels . . . outlandish. As if I had a heavy lump of clay hanging between my legs.

  Wolfweir touches my chin and takes my hand and then quickly gives me a big hug, pressing up all the way against me without self-consciousness. I stare at her as if she were touched with madness, but she smiles at me, not at all in a cruel way, and hugs me again.

  Malcolm is scowling at her. She gives him no more than a tepid wave. I am Wolfweir's favorite. That's something I have, for now.

  "You two need to start fooling," she tells us, and pats my shoulder. I reluctantly take out my recorder and hand Malcolm the drum. We lean together, dazed, even though we received a good night's sleep, and Wolf doesn't stay around, she sends us on our way. A mellow tune, children's songs, both of us too self-conscious to behave more foolishly than this. Today there are no dense, impenetrable gatherings with coins flowing like metal rivers. Instead we drift from place to place, noodling on the same simple themes, impressing no one, and no one is wealthy today. Malcolm stays close to me, he finds himself touching my arm, my shoulder, and he shakes, jolts himself back to reality. His mouth is perpetually open, he has no jests or insults, he is otherwise occupied, occupied with the gypsy cage, the Lace of Flowers.

  People notice us, we're famous, we're legends in our own time, and I nudge Malcolm and tell him he should insult someone. Instead he acts like he's got water in his ear, shaking his head, practically vibrating.

  "We'll not be much use to Robert of, of Jork, if we're, if we're thus," he murmurs.

  "I don't think she'll let us take them off," I say. "After all, she spent all that time making them."

  "I'll go to jelly, Tom, et takes all I have to stand on my own feet."

  "Let's take our mind off. I think we can find a cheap chicken leg up ahead."

  "Aye." Food takes his mind off. He always burns through it so fast and desires more. Me, I find the sensation of a packed belly to be distracting. Life is so full, who has time to eat?

  Ah, the vendors have set up a longtable on the tall grass. A simply mammoth number of boisterous men have come to get sweet oatcakes and morning pottage and biscuits and berries and beer. The noise is big, wide, a Carthage sound, a barbarian sound. "Rybbesdale," I hiss to Malcolm, and he shakes his head.

  "I need food, Tom. Et's--"

  "They'll be gone," I say. Diners rarely stay.

  He punches my shoulder and begins tumping the drum. I see the weariness in him, the gypsy cage is doing something big to him, giving him feelings.

  This is my masterpiece, I think to myself. I have this piece practiced so bad, it's all carved into my mind, I know every note, I'm ready for this, and the audience is exactly right. And I think: everything will go wrong, something terrible will go wrong, I can just tell, I'll break my recorder, I'll go clumsy and drop it, I'll forget the song, the audience will hate it, the wife of some ealdorman or other will dislike my song and have me hanged, perhaps King Hardknot has come up and he'll find the words too bawdy, or perhaps--yes--he's Danish, he'll find the words not bawdy enough, he'll have his retainers bend their spears to my throat and demand I invent dirtier words to amuse His Highness, in my mind I try to find rhymes for "sheath," perhaps a "wreath" of curly hair, ha, and Malcolm taps on my temple with his little mallet, and I remember I'll not be singing any words at all, and I lift the recorder to my mouth, I remember one of my Papa's lessons, "always take a second before blowing the first note to pull yourself together," and I do, I look through the haze at the several expectant faces turned to us, nobody we know, and I see big men with mountainous beards, beards like upturned forests, round scabby noses like shingle-covered wells, the odd scar, old men with valleys in their faces, and all of them wanting women.

  I play.

  Bouncing into the first notes, feeling Malcolm awaken, feeling his drum become a steady, firm beat below me, I play Papa's good version of "Riding By Rybbesdale." Faces light up, the landscape of the table is welcoming. I keep feeling this funny feeling that something is going impossibly wrong, and yet I permit myself to become lost in the music; before the second verse they are singing it with me, everyone here knows the words, the joy is unanimous, what will go wrong here?--nothing's diminishing the music, the voices bark, celebrate, they are filthy, happy men, and I am leading them, and Malcolm is leading me. We are the young kings of the table. Before I even realize it, the song is over, all the dirty parts are sung, and the table erupts in
cheerful laughter. Ha'pennies are produced and the men ask for another.

  "Bird on a Bough!" someone calls out.

  Sigh. My Papa hates that song. I see no reason to differ from him. I don't really want to play "Bird on a Bough," it's so pedestrian, it's a song of drunken oafs--

  "Bird on a Bough!"

  Well--

  Humoring these perhaps pre-drunken morning men, I feel I can manage to overcome my father's feelings on the matter. After all, who is my drunk of a father to criticize drunken men? Perhaps I need not agree with all my father's views. Let my father believe himself to be a kingsfool, too high of a fellow to play low songs for the likes of these; I will be the Fool of the Masses, celebrating the oaf, the striver, the farmer Piers and his plough. Yes, I choose to like these men. A friend of Piers, that's me.

  Malcolm is really struggling as we get through a less-well-rehearsed version of "Bird on a Bough." I can see him failing. As the merry song closes, I shout: "Who will offer up a good meal and a pair of mugs of second small to some famine-hungry fools?" My Malcolm gives me a grateful look and men slide down split-log benches, making room for us, and a pair of chicken drumsticks and bowls of harvest stew with beans and parsnips are handed down, followed by drinks. "To our hosts! May your health always match your generosity!" I exclaim, one of Papa's lines, he'd use it in response to both kindness and parsimoniousness.

  A big beard faces us and the man behind it says, "Did I ever tell you of the time I saw the White Stag?"

  Me and Malcolm look at each other. We've never met this man before. Malcolm is leaning into my shoulder in unmanaged affection, the gypsy cage is turning him into a "J't'aime" drunk, that's what my Papa calls it. Why do I dwell on his words just now? So I can overcome them, triumph over them, invent my own in their place. I must eject my Papa from my mind, I am not his just now, I'm an inventor of new words.