Fool School (6 page)

Here is the ealdorman of Poole. Look at his red round
face. A face like a fat glass pitcher full of wine. He looks
jollier than my father, wiser than the Martinite friar, and I don't
find him to be a vile drunk at all, though he is drunk. His accent
is different, and I imagine him to be Welsh. Yes, he says, he's
from Swansea. A Brython. A Celt.

Here's his wife. Her outfit is no different from her
husband's. Somehow, nobody finds this funny except me. Both their
sleeves are long, dangling off their wrists, their tunics are
nicely tailored, particolored red and yellow, with embroidered
collars, and somehow in these colors they seem Navarran somehow,
Spanish, Moorish even. Their Welsh hair is very dark, not black,
and their eyebrows are thick and solemn. But the ealdorman's manner
is boyish, and his wife is dramatic, and I find myself at home in
their hall, forgetting about the goat woman and the priest,
listening to Edward speak.

This is what Edward says:

"He's an exceptional lad." Malcolm he means, not me.
"France was good for him. It's well to broaden your tongue." He
gives the two of us a look. "We have high hopes for him now that he
has a direction. It wasn't the one I'd expected, but he seems keen
on it. He's so small a lad. Needs a burst of growth."

Malcolm shifts uncomfortably, dips his fingers in the
water bowl, takes a pair of pork ribs.

"Not a fighter," Edward continues, shaking his head,
and takes the water bowl in turn. "Not yet. I know his father
wanted a sloan for a son, but a poet he's got instead. Trust in the
Lord's judgment, I say, and he'll turn out all right in the
end."

"And the other boy?" asks the ealdorman.

My muddy thicket-swamp hands fill the water bowl with
disease-ridden brown. I feel sick all of a sudden, but I can mask
my discomfort in the presence of the good ealdorman. That's an
important thing for a fool to practice. If you can't hide your
pain, you'll upset your host, and you won't be able to fake pain
properly when the time is right.

Edward's hand rests on my shoulder. "We don't know
much about him, really. Enigmatic, I'd say. I think he means well
enough."

"Don't we all," says the ealdorman, and Edward
smiles.

"An education will be good for the two of them," says
Edward. "Above and beyond books and tongues. Have you read, Tom?"
he asks me.

"Not really, sir," I reply. "Not enough." Or at all.
I'm illiterate, except for music. I don't say that.

"Not enough," Edward mutters. "Never enough."

The ealdorman's wife begins to sup, so we all eat.
I've never thought of myself as enigmatic. I don't like the idea. A
fool should be simple, bold, plain. A fool is a man of the laity, a
bumpkin, a yeoman in the court of the king. A fool shouldn't be a
mystery.

"Could we have a song?" the ealdorman asks me
tentatively. This shouldn't be a surprise, I decide, but at the
same time I'm unprepared. I've never been a natural musician, even
though Papa taught me the recorder and the pandora lyre and other
things, as well as singing. I fear embarrassment. But songs are
expected of fools; in poorer courts, the fool is all the
entertainment: orchestra, comedian, wizard, dancer and grand
vizier. I run to dig my recorder out of my cases, which have been
brought to the ealdorman's house. Part of me imagines that the
devil harbormaster of Cherbourg has stolen my recorder, too, which
is more than a hundred years old, made in Italy, of African acacia
wood, clasped in finely-wrought iron bands. I may be the son of a
drunk, but my Papa had the wit not to pawn our finest. A drunk
fool, but not a fool. You understand.

I race back to the ealdorman with the black hasped
box that holds my recorder. I tell him I've only received the most
basic musical training, and he waves me on. A cheery song, I think,
one of Papa's drinking songs. "Long the Yard," I decide, hoping the
ealdorman and his wife don't know the bawdy lyrics. It's a
rollicking wine song and uses only the basic scale, and I play it
just fine--it's not tricky or impressive--and the ealdorman clearly
has found himself enjoying it.

It's a very rare and special thing, let me tell you
about it, when you perform in front of a crowd, even a small crowd,
and find someone who takes special joy in your performance. Too
often you'll watch an inadequate performer, maybe a traveling
morality show, create a crowd only to see the people slough away
like dead skin from the back of the theaterground, those few who
stayed forcing themselves to put up with a bad show out of
politeness, or out of a lack of entertainment in their lives, or
God forbid out of a sense of pity for these sad men who have
devoted their lives to entertainment and have failed at that
task.

I don't want that to happen to me. I don't want to
turn into the St. Martin's friar, escaping from the world of
jesting to the priesthood as a failure and a cad.

So it's strangely gratifying when one of your
audience finds joy, actual joy, in the music you make. Reassuring.
The ealdorman conducts with his fat fingers, a genuine stupid smile
on his lips.

There's danger, too, in overplaying to the one man in
the audience who's happy with your performance. I overplay to this
man.

"Enough," sighs the ealdorman's wife before long, and
my tune dies away. I feel a pit of danger inside my chest. A
warning. I see that the ealdorman himself is not the most powerful
person in the room.

"But--eh--darling," he murmurs, "don't you
think--couldn't we--he's but a boy--"

"Enough," she repeats.

"Madame," I find myself saying, "how may I entertain
you?"

The room fills with a terrifying void, borne from her
cold Welsh blood. A mist of icicles forms over the longtable draped
by the red tablecloth, and people find their hands halfway to their
mouths, food raised, uneaten. I fear for my life. I will be hanged
now, taken to a gallowbraid and thrown off the side of the platform
by this darkeyed woman and her timid, complying husband. I will be
kept in the wine cellar till dawn, swatting drunken mice, and in
that moist-eyed fresh breath of day I will see the whole of
creation pass before me as I take fugue steps up from the damp to
the sunlight and the dew of summer's toil, my feet drawn by the
woman's harsh words toward a fate of breathless--and--but here the
ealdorman's wife is speaking to me.

"Play a love song," she whispers, and this is somehow
worse than being executed on the gallows.

I don't understand love. I say so. She dismisses
it.

"Madame," I repeat, "I'll play for you, but I know
nothing of love."

"Yes," her lips say, "that's what I want to hear
again."

I'm frightened of her passion.

There is an old song, some say it comes from Master
Boethius himself, that speaks of the devotion that the constant
Penelope felt toward her husband, the warrior errant, Odysseus. It
speaks of long years alone, sequestered in a house, surrounded by
enemy lovers like flies buzzing, they're trying to convince her
that her husband is not coming back, that she is alone, but she is
strong, a fire buffeted by the wind, and she maintains, year after
solitary year, tending her flame.

I cannot sing it--there's a thousand thousand verses,
well, not really, maybe five, but they're long--but the melody is
familiar, I can play it on the recorder.

There is a very different world inside your head--and
in the shape of your mouth--playing a love song than a bawdy
drinking number.

It begins in the first note.

It begins with breath. This is what Papa taught me. I
imagine myself six years old again, sitting on a hard stool on a
stage in one of Papa's bars in the
châteauneuf
of Tourum,
smelling the thick odor of woodsmoke and aged brandy and leather, a
field of old men before us, old men yearning for escape, for
renewal, and Papa speaks:

"Your first note must be the breath before the kiss,
Thomas. It's a breath of knowledge, knowledge and desire, the
desire to touch a woman's soul, to grasp it, to entwine yourself in
it. See yourself sitting across from the most beautiful woman your
mind can create, the unobtainable woman, the perfect woman. See
yourself gathering all the flecks of bravery you have, preparing
yourself to speak. This is what you do before you play the note.
You gather your courage, Thomas, and--"

A single, tentative note of longing, sustained,
breathy, exploring.

"Next, now that you've broken through the silence,"
Papa is telling me, telling the audience too, "you must boast. You
must share with the woman the idea that you're a great man. She
doesn't believe you, of course--she's not an imbecile--" Papa
winks--"but she will feel hurt if you don't work to impress her."
Men in the front row laugh at Papa, feeling the wisdom in his
words. Papa plays a trill of notes, boastful, arrogant, a strange
departure from that first note.

"And now," he says, "if you are very lucky, you may
speak to her. Through your words, you build love." He demonstrates,
beautifully. "And then, at the very last, you find the very
first."

I don't know what that means.

"It helps," Papa says, "to have a woman to look at
when you play. Here--" and he selects a man's wife from the
audience, asks permission from the husband, brings the wife
onstage, sits her in his lap. The audience roars, and the husband
looks drunkenly amused, tolerant. And Papa plays on the
recorder.

In the great hall, I look at the ealdorman's wife,
with her Spanish eyes, dark hair, glowering eyebrows, and for all
that I know for sure she's a passionate woman, I don't find love
there. I feel fear of being hung for insolence. My neck itches.

I close my eyes and play the first note, but my
thumb, anxious to scratch at the noose around my neck, slips, and I
squeak.

Papa taught me: always pretend you meant to do it.
That's very important.

So I wave the recorder around a little, laugh in the
Gallic fake style, and say loudly: "Inexperience!" Because that's
what Papa would say.

The ealdorman erupts, his red face wheezing with joy.
Edward smiles. I may have fooled him. My neck is burning.

I look at the ealdorman's wife, and she's not
laughing. I clam up and try again.

Who am I to look at while I play?

There are no other women in the hall, at least none
eating here. Further afield are scullery maids. I don't love them.
I can hardly see them. I look at the ealdorman's wife, and I can
feel myself wilting. I will be hung for insulting her unless I
begin to play right now, right away, I must start, I--

I will be hung. My body vibrating, my throat closed,
my neck partially snapped, the world spinning on a rope, the voices
of children younger than me jeering below, the brisk cold morning
wind chilling my chafing neck as I turn, my body shutting down as
my breath ends--

"Tom?" says Malcolm quietly.

My body shakes--I may have been sleeping--how
long?--seconds--everyone is now looking at me--play it off, like
you meant to do it--I am consumed by Malcolm's ice-green eyes--the
first note--I play--

Malcolm, ice and fire--

I play, the notes sounding heavily, like tears. The
room fades and here is my recorder, alive in every way, bringing
light to darkness. Bringing love.

"Yes," breathes the ealdorman's wife, her hand
running up her opposite arm, feeling love, making love. "Yes,
that's it."

I will not be hung.

* * *

Dinner is over. We have washed our hands again,
blessedly. The feeling of juice from roasted meat against your skin
is the worst. I air out my recorder and examine the cork, which has
not been replaced in a decade. When I have a patron, I will ask for
new cork, which, at least in the vinelands of France, is not cheap.
Half a mark at least, which is a good month's pay. I set the
recorder to dry--you'd be astonished how spit wears away wood--and
it's evening, but not midnight.

In the firelight, I sit beside Edward; there's the
sleepy nodding red lump of the ealdorman's face, fingers clasped
like a palmer praying, a jovial smile, a salmon-colored chair. In
another chair, a dark woman, contented for the nonce, although as
with any ill-tempered wind, that could change. The ealdorman's
reeve has joined us in talk for the evening. Where is Malcolm? Is
that him in the shadows, burning too brightly for the fire to
contend with? How will he and I and the girl Liza get to the
meeting place? It isn't yet midnight.

Edward is speaking. He says that the Viking king of
England, Hardknot, is a villain, accursed, a Godblighted Viking
invader. At least that's the way it sounds. He doesn't use those
exact words--that would be treason, which no man will commit--but
instead he speaks of the king in glowering tones that hint at his
true meaning. It's easy to tell what people are really saying, if
you listen hard enough.

"Ironside was the last true king this country had,"
Edward mutters. "If I could turn back the clock . . . and my father
spoke highly of the Martyr--" He means St. Edward the Martyr, who
was king briefly in my grandfather's time--"but since the coming of
the Danes--"

"Now, now," the ealdorman says mildly, "I have no
strong love of politics. Let's speak of something pleasanter. Let's
speak of women--"

"No," his wife utters. "I want to hear his mind."

"Hm? Well, er, as you say, dear, only Edward, do take
care, there are some--" and he looks nervously at his reeve, who I
see has gone rigid of late, I hadn't noticed. "Some Danes in the
area." Yes, the reeve is blonde, I see, and vigorously built.

"Danes in Poole," hisses Edward, I've not seen this
breed of anger from him before, but it's falling out of him now.
"Danes in London. Invaders from the North. Had--had Æthelred the
support of his own barons, there'd be no Danes south of
Mercia--"