Fool School (27 page)

Today Stan's decided that instead of a free period of
us listening to him playing the shawm, that today we will play a
round. As I'm sure you know, the tune of a round is simplistic, but
you must remember your part and drown out, inside your own mind,
the notes of others. It requires a challenging single-mindedness
that's actually well-suited to the slick sodden period in the late
afternoon when all the food has gone to your head. Or perhaps I
feel this way because Hamlin has permitted me both luncheon for the
first time since the rabbit skull, as well as a return to the
second woodwind class. I've got all my letters right, and it feels
the same way that getting all my Ave Marias right feels. The first
round we learn is called "Rose and Thorn." It's more of a
children's rhyme and only uses four notes.

Malcolm's been struggling with the shawm. He hasn't
picked up the lip tricks that permit good sounds, and there's
really no teaching it, it's a knack, just like whistling. He's very
intent, but sometimes it's letting go of intensity which leads to
revelation.

Today he gets the first note to sound successfully.
For some reason his first note reminds me of Christmas with my
mother, we'd always go to see her and she'd have a tin toy for me,
painted, perhaps a bird, say a peacock with iridescent plumage that
really shines in sunlight, or a miniature wagon painted the blue of
the French flag, with wheels that worked. Over the years Papa would
need to pawn them to pay for rent and drink. By last Christmas I
got to keep Mama's toy for only seven or maybe eight weeks before
it was gone. I have none of them left. I'm woolgathering.

I play my four notes and Stan comes to stand beside
Malcolm, he can't get the last three notes right, his crest is
fallen, he despairs of ever mastering the oboe, only it's been no
more than a fortnight since we arrived, although it feels five
times as long. He doesn't realize it took me three times as long to
get as good as he is already.

"Your lips are too closed, open up a space inside
your mouth. Take a look at my mouth," Stan tells him. Only, just
like whistling, this never works, there's no way to teach it. An
urge rises up in me to tell Stan this, only I don't.

Malcolm struggles, producing a buffoonery of toots
and honks. But he isn't laughing. Fire rises through his
frustration. I'm afriad he'll break the shawm, which would be a
shame. But I have no especial wisdom to impart to calm him down or
help him learn shawm. His anger and frustration fills the room, you
can almost smell it. After one particularly noisy failure, he
knocks the music stand over with a punch and then kicks it,
scratching the stone floor, sending the iron thing six feet on its
caltrap-legs.

Nuncle remarks: "Malcolm!"

"Et's not wairth et!" he replies. Rising, he storms
out.

"Tom, would you retrieve him?" Nuncle asks.

I slip out through the doorway and immediately there
is Weatherford, his eyes are bright, he is a white face.

Malcolm surely went downstairs. I try to slip past
Weatherford, but he grips my arm.

"Laugh at me, will you?" he hisses.

My head starts shaking no, all by itself, I'm not
involved. "Pr-professor," I manage, but my words give out.

"Show your arms."

I tug my sleeves up--not the snotty ones, I've soaked
that tunic in the bath--and reveal the series of crisp-looking
short pink lines, all parallel.

An animal snarl crosses Weatherford's face. Somewhere
between a smile of satisfaction and the guilty priest's expression
of delight in cruelty. Recoiling, I stutter than Nuncle has
directed me downstairs. The Classics professor doesn't let go.
Weatherford's breath comes heavy as his face lowers; he looks at me
through thin dark eyebrows, it's like staring down a maddened boar.
I conceive of tusks curling up through his lips, I'm reminded of
Bellows and the devil.

I hear: "Tom? Have you--"

Stan appears in the doorway, then retreats. My arm is
captive in Weatherford's paw.

Nuncle.

"All is equalized," murmurs Nuncle, he's leaning
against the doorway now.

The Classics professor gives my outer arm a slap, I
have the presence of mind to feign pain, this seems to mollify
him.

"Shake," says Nuncle firmly.

Still breathing like a stuck boar, Weatherford lets
his hand detach, lets it hover in the air, cupped downward as if
still slapping, and then turns it to shake, a figure of perfect
reconciliation. I know Nuncle's will, so I quickly shake hands. We
have formed a pact of truce.

"Now. Fetch the Scot."

We split, as two opposing lodestones.

Malcolm's at the very bottom of the steps.

His hand is down the front of his trousers.

I sit beside him.

"I can feel et," he moans, his hand in motion. "All
the anger'll get out when I get to the far side of et. Ef the devil
girl'd let us, jost the once--"

"We'll ask her," I say. "We'll explain. But not now,
hold it in until after Classics, then we'll confront her."

"I mean not to be a saint," he says. "Never to be
one," and there is conviction in his tone.

We ascend, and he muscles through the shawm lesson. I
tell him to focus on the fingering. He agrees and concentrates on
his hands, letting breath foul him. It ends, and now it's
Classics.

Weatherford is already laid out, writing furiously,
when we enter. There is none of the usual equanimity, and he says,
"There will be no lesson today," hardly looking at us, for once his
eyes are down, following his dual sets of words, and I notice that
today he's not writing the same thing in each book, he's writing
two different books at the same time. He's never done that before,
not ever.

"No, instead, Perille, go ahead and finish off the
Tristram. If you reach the end before the end of class, begin the
Romance of the Rose
."

And thus was Classics today.

Malcolm corners Wolfweir on the stairs. I join them.
Perille gives us a last look, but he looks a dead man, he goes to
supper. Dag hasn't yet returned to classes. Hero tries to buzz
around the three of us on the stairs, but Malcolm catches the boy
by the shoulder and directs him to the cafeteria. "We'll be doon
alang and alang," he says. I can see him resist his fiery anger,
and I see Hero's eyes go wide, he's detected the undercurrents and
manages to detach himself from his own chumminess and give us
space. I think he's scared of Malcolm now. Perhaps that will be
useful.

Weatherford departs. A waft of emotion trails him
like dust behind a cart.

We're alone, us three.

Wolfweir, sensing our solitude, breaks into smug
evil. Her hand touches the red circles flaming up on Malcolm's
cheeks. "I did this to you," she says with vital certainty. "I made
you feel this way." Her tongue perambulates the inside of her
mouth. "I've got you. You're my possession. Say you're my two
slaves and I'll give you permission to break your vows, just this
once." Cherub's dimples appear. I find myself attracted, I enjoy
it.

"Just say it," I say.

Wolf turns to me, says, "You first, Tom."

"Tom, ef you name yourself a theng, you become the
theng," says Malcolm solemnly. "We all may decide our status in
life, et's our birthright to place ourselves in Man's world."

"You're not going to learn the oboe when you're so
frustrated," I say. "It requires a, a letting-go."

"Et's a damn sight of a bigger theng to name yourself
chattel than et es to learn the bleeding oboe," says Malcolm.

"Wolfweir, I'm your slave," I say. I say it almost
casually, I find it easy to say, I have no grand pride regarding
status, only pride in my Frenchness. Fools should never be ashamed
to place themselves on the bottom rung of the ladder, as Nuncle put
it. Somehow I don't mind saying that I belong to a Saxon girl, it
feels subversive.

"I'll not say et," says Malcolm, and her cruel smile
turns on him. The smile is about the most awful thing I've ever
seen, and yet it fills me with contentment. Perhaps there's
something wrong with me.

"Then no relief," Wolf says. "None. My slave Tom will
tell me if you try to cheat me. And I'd know, anyway."

She pushes past, but Malcolm grabs her arm. She spins
with a look of fury and slips her fingernails up Malcolm's sleeve,
digging into his skin. "Let. Go," she says.

"Give me release, and I'll release you," he says.

Claws slowly drag down his arm. He endures the pain
and holds fast to her.

"There's naught you can do to make me let go, lessen
you give me leave to release," he says.

"Say you're my servant," she hisses. "I'll settle for
a servant. I don't need two slaves. One will do." She makes eye
contact with me, and I feel shame for having given in so
easily.

"A vassal," says Malcolm, bargaining. A vassal has
far more dignity than a servant, who is hapless.

"Fine." Wolfweir sounds like a flirt when she says
this. She's playing with us. "Say it, and I'll give you
permission."

Malcolm's eyes look away as he pledges himself to
Wolfweir's service.

"Good boy," she says. "I think you're the gem in my
collection." She pulls him forward with her claws up his sleeve and
gives my Malcolm a kiss.

Back in our room, it takes us no time to lock the
door and undress. Malcolm throws himself onto me, moaning about
"what have I done?" and I tell him he need not take a girl so
seriously, it's a game, and he speaks about honor and remaining
faithful to one's word, and I hold his neck and we press together,
it feels like we both have fever, our breath is steam and my hand
wraps his shoulder and Malcolm says, "kess me where she did. Erase
et, I won't have her kess on my body."

I do, of course I do, I erase all trace of the girl,
she is gone from us and couldn't come back, we are locked inside a
cell, I have Malcolm's pink body and freckled shoulders to myself.
I sit crosslegged and provide him with attention, I tell him I'm
ashamed for being weak, for declaring myself hers, I am not hers, I
am yours, I say between kisses. And through heavy breaths, he
reminds me I declared myself his, once, and he lets the devil rise
up and grips the bit of skin between my nostrils, he directs my
face as he desires, I let myself be directed, I follow his pinched
fingernails. We contemplate our feudal relations, the three of us,
I have been placed on the bottom rung, I am the fool, Malcolm is a
reeve, perhaps, a bailiff in the Kingdom of the Girl. And Wolfweir,
a boy without bits, is our king.

Malcolm has relief. The mess remains. He drops to his
pebble bed, pulls me on top of him, and I feel his body under mine
as he attends me with a calloused hand. I feel his sweat, his
chilly patches, I feel the bones of his shoulder against the bones
of my back. Skin, great slick expanses, provides a softness. I let
my head rest on his, our hair together, and when the rise of that
inexorable god-devil force begins and I again attempt escape, his
strong arm takes my hands and I am bound, my breath is uneven and I
climb a tower in a thunderstorm, I am battered by the winds of the
gale, I mount the roof of the tallest tower and lightning strikes
and I am alight.

In my ear, I hear: "Lick et up," and I say something
like "yes, liege," and there is dust and white pee on my tongue.
Suddenly, as the god-devil force drains away, it all seems tawdry,
ridiculous, I'm nobody's slave, nobody's my liege, what on earth
was I just doing? Why did I say all those ridiculous things? Was I
really lying on top of a naked boy? I'm on my hands and knees, my
throat is gunked up, what's going on? I visualize the whole earth,
I see the totality of it, the thousands of ant-like people crawling
on its face, and just under the surface is a converted Roman prison
dug into the rock, and there's a perfectly absurd boy doing
something disgusting on the orders of just another human being, we
are all no more than four-limbed pink creatures wearing shaggy hair
drooping out of our scalps, what is happening?

"And make another of those marks on the door," says
Malcolm. Dazed, I crawl to the door, the sharp rock is here, I
unlatch and lean out and I find Wolfweir just outside. She peers
over her shoulder at my naked body, quite interested, and whispers,
"you had to lick up your own mess." She stands and saunters back to
her room. I quickly scratch the door and pull it closed again.

Now that I have finally told too much, I will speak
of practicing "Rybbesdale."

During fair season, our daily rhythm changes, it
turns out. The period after first woodwinds becomes a time for
practice, if we have something to practice and nothing better to
do. Now that we have begun aiming our arrows at the Brystow Fair,
so to speak, we have no more than half an hour for luncheon.
Nuncle's moved it all forward so that we have two hours of practice
each day. Given that "Rybbesdale" is only perhaps fifteen minutes
long if you really push it, and much shorter when you're nervous,
this means playing it over and over many times in a row, something
that would be much more tedious if I weren't so desirous of
perfection. I can play it with some assurance, but perfection?
Perfection feels like a hazy light in the middle distance.

I am far from perfect, but with each repetition the
notes fall more tautly into place. Papa spoke of the ability to
invent notes in between the notes of the song, he often described a
way of playing what you feel, to drop emotions in between, but my
fingers are simply not quick enough to play more than what I was
taught.

Let me say also that without an audience, everything
changes. It's not the other way around. Don't say that
adding
the audience changes the performance. The audience is
always part of the performance, always. It's the silence, the
taking-away of the audience, that disrupts. Malcolm's been given a
tambrel and is told to accompany me, but this is disaster, because
he was my audience, and now he's no more than a heavy cross across
my back, weighing me and my perfection down. I love Malcolm, but
his rhythm isn't good at all.