by Noah Gordon
He knew what happened to a boy who failed and was sent away. Most met with disaster: the lucky ones became sexual playthings or slaves, the unfortunate starved to death or were killed. It bothered him more than he cared to admit, but he couldn’t afford to keep an unlikely boy; he himself was a survivor, able to harden his heart when it came to his own welfare.
The latest, the boy he had found in London, seemed eager to please but Barber knew that appearances could mislead where apprentices were concerned. It was of no value to worry the issue like a dog with a bone. Only time would tell, and he would learn soon enough whether young Cole was fit to survive.
5
THE BEAST IN CHELMSFORD
Rob woke with the first milky light to find his new master already about, and impatient. He saw at once that Barber didn’t begin the day in high spirits, and it was in this sober morning mood that the man took the lance from the wagon and showed him how it should be used. “It’s not too heavy for you if you use both hands. It doesn’t require skill. Thrust as hard as you are able. If you aim for the middle of an attacker’s body you’re liable to stick him someplace. If you slow him with a wound, chances are good that I can kill him. Do you comprehend?”
He nodded, awkward with a stranger.
“Well, chappy, we must be vigilant and keep weapons at hand, for that is how we stay alive. These Roman roads remain the best in England, but they aren’t maintained. It is the Crown’s responsibility to keep them open on both sides to make it hard for highwaymen to ambush travelers, but on most of our routes the brush is never cut back.”
He demonstrated how to hitch the horse. When they resumed traveling, Rob sat next to him on the driver’s seat in the hot sun, still plagued by all manner of fears. Soon Barber directed Incitatus off the Roman road, turning onto a barely usable track through the deep shadow of virgin forest. Hanging from a sinew around his shoulders was the brown Saxon horn that once had graced a great ox. He placed it to his mouth and pushed from it a loud, mellow noise, half blast, half moan. “It signals everyone within hearing that we aren’t creeping up to cut throats and steal. In some remote places, to meet a stranger is to try to kill him. The horn says we are worthy and confident, able to protect outselves.”
At Barber’s suggestion Rob tried to take a turn at signaling, but though he puffed his cheeks and blew mightily, no sound emerged.
“It needs older wind and a knack. You’ll learn it, never fear. And more difficult things than blowing a horn.”
The track was muddy. Brush had been laid over the worst places but it demanded tricky driving. At a turn in the road they went directly into a slick and the wagon’s wheels sank to the hubs. Barber sighed.
They got out and took a spade to the mud in front of the wheels and then collected fallen branches in the woods. Barber carefully placed pieces of wood in front of each wheel and climbed back up to take the reins.
“You must shove brush under the wheels as they start to move,” he said, and Rob J. nodded.
“Hi-TATUS!” Barber urged. Shafts and leather creaked. “Now!” he shouted.
Rob deftly placed the branches, darting from wheel to wheel as the horse strained steadily. The wheels hesitated. There was slippage, but they found purchase. The wagon lurched forward. When it was on dry road Barber hauled back on the reins and waited for Rob to catch up and climb onto the seat.
They were spattered with mud, and Barber stopped Tatus at a brook. “Let us catch some breakfast,” he said as they washed the dirt from their faces and hands. He cut two willow poles and got hooks and line from the wagon. From the shaded place behind the seat he pulled out a box. “This is our grasshopper box,” he said. “It is one of your duties to keep it filled.” He lifted the lid only far enough to allow Rob to stick his hand inside.
Living things rustled away from Rob’s fingers, frantic and spiky, and he pulled one gently into his palm. When he withdrew his hand, keeping the wings folded between his thumb and forefinger, the insect’s legs scrabbled frantically. The four front legs were thin as hairs and the hind two were powerful and large-thighed, enabling it to be a hopper.
Barber showed him how to slip the point of the hook just beneath the short section of tough, ridged shell behind the head. “Not too deep or he’ll bleed molasses and die. Where have you fished?”
“The Thames.” He prided himself on his ability as a fisher, for he and his father often had dangled worms in the broad river, depending on the fish to help feed the family during the unemployment.
Barber grunted. “This is a different kind of fishing,” he said. “Leave the poles for a moment and get on your hands and knees.”
They crawled cautiously to a place overlooking the nearest pool and lay on their bellies. Rob thought the fat man daft.
Four fish hung suspended in glass.
“Small,” Rob whispered.
“Best eating, that size,” Barber said as they crept away from the bank. “Your big river trouts are tough and oily. Did you note how these drifted near the head of the pool? They feed facing upstream, waiting for a juicy meal to fall in and come floating down. They’re wild and wary. If you stand next to the stream, they see you. If you tread strongly on the bank, they feel your step and they scatter. That’s why you use the long pole. Stand well back and lightly drop the hopper just above the pool, letting the flow carry it to the fish.”
He watched critically as Rob swung the grasshopper where he had directed.
With a shock that traveled along the pole and sent excitement up into Rob’s arms, the unseen fish struck like a dragon. After that it was like fishing in the Thames. He waited patiently, giving the trout time to doom itself, and then raised the tip of the pole and set the hook as his father had taught him. When he pulled in the first flopping prize they admired its bloom, the gleaming background like oiled walnut wood, the sleek sides splattered with rainbowy reds, the black fins marked with warm orange.
“Get five more,” Barber said, and disappeared into the woods.
Rob caught two and then lost another and cautiously moved to a different pool. The trouts hungered after grasshoppers. He was cleaning the last of the half dozen when Barber came back with a capful of morels and wild onions.
“We eat twice a day,” Barber said, “mid-morning and early evening, same as all civilized folk.
To rise at six, dine at ten,
Sup at five, to bed at ten,
Makes man live ten times ten.”
He had bacon, and cut it thick. When the meat was done in the blackened pan he dredged the trouts in flour and did them crisp and brown in the fat, adding the onions and mushrooms at the last.
The spines of the trouts lifted cleanly from the steaming flesh, freeing most of the bones. While they enjoyed the fish and the meat, Barber fried barley bread in the flavored fat that remained, covering the toast with husky slices of cheese he allowed to melt bubbly in the pan. To finish, they drank the cold sweet water of the brook that had given them the fish.
Barber was in better cheer. A fat man had to be fed to be at his best, Rob perceived. He also realized that Barber was a rare cook, and he found himself looking toward each meal as an event of the day. He sighed, knowing he wouldn’t have been fed like this in the mines. And the work, he told himself contentedly, wasn’t at all beyond him, for he was perfectly able to keep the grasshopper box filled and catch trouts and place brush beneath the wheels whenever the wagon became stuck in the mud.
The village was Farnham. There were farms; a small, shabby inn; a public house that emitted a faint smell of spilled ale as they passed; a smithy with long wood piles near the forge; a tanner’s that exuded a stink; a sawyer’s yard with cut lumber; and a reeve’s hall facing a square that wasn’t really a square so much as a widening in the midsection of the street, like a snake that had swallowed an egg.
Barber stopped at the outskirts. From the wagon he took a small drum and a stick and handed them to Rob. “Bang it.”
Incitatus knew what they were
about; he lifted his head and neighed, raising his hooves as he pranced. Rob pounded the drum proudly, infected by the excitement they were causing on both sides of the street.
“Entertainment this afternoon,” Barber called. “Followed by treatment of human ills and medical problems, great or small!”
The blacksmith, his knotted muscles outlined by grime, stared after them and stopped pulling his bellows rope. Two boys in the sawyer’s yard left the lumber they had been stacking and came running toward the sound of the drum. One of them turned and hurried away. “Where are you bound, Giles?” the other shouted.
“Home to fetch Stephen and the others.”
“Stop and tell my brother’s lot!”
Barber nodded in approval. “Spread the word,” he called.
Women emerged from the houses and called to one another as their children merged in the street, jabbering and joining the barking dogs that followed after the red wagon.
Barber drove slowly down the street from one end to the other and then turned around and came back.
An old man who sat in the sun near the inn opened his eyes and smiled toothlessly at the commotion. Some of the drinkers came out of the public house, carrying their glasses and followed by the barmaid wiping wet hands on her apron, her eyes shining.
Barber stopped in the little square. From the wagon he took four folding benches and set them up joined together. “This is called the bank,” he said to Rob of the small stage thus formed. “You’ll erect it at once whenever we come to a new place.”
On the bank they placed two baskets full of little stoppered flasks that Barber said contained medicine. Then he disappeared into the wagon and pulled the curtain.
* * *
Rob sat on the bank and watched people hasten into the main street. The miller came, his clothing white with flour, and Rob could tell two carpenters by the familiar wood dust and chips on their tunics and hair. Families settled to the ground, willing to wait in order to obtain a place close to the bank. Women worked at tatting and knitting while they tarried, and children chattered and squabbled. A group of village boys stared at Rob. Aware of the awe and envy in their eyes, he struck poses and swaggered. But in a little while all such foolishness was driven from his head, because like them he had become part of the audience. Barber ran onto the bank with a flourish.
“Good day and good morrow,” he said. “I’m comforted to be in Farnham.” And he began to juggle.
He juggled a red ball and a yellow ball. His hands seemed scarcely to move. It was the prettiest thing to see!
His fat fingers sent the balls flying in a continual circle, at first slowly and then with blurring speed. When he was applauded, he reached into his tunic and added a green ball. And then a blue. And, oh—a brown!
How wonderful, Rob thought, to be able to do that.
He held his breath, waiting for Barber to drop a ball, but he controlled all five easily, talking all the while. He made people laugh. He told stories, sang little songs.
Next, he juggled rope rings and wooden plates and after the juggling performed feats of magic. He caused an egg to disappear, found a coin in a child’s hair, made a handkerchief change color.
“Would you be beguiled to see me cause a mug of ale to vanish?”
There was general applause. The barmaid hurried inside the public house and appeared with a foaming mug. Placing it to his lips, Barber downed its contents in a single long swallow. He bowed to good-natured laughter and applause, and then asked the women in the audience if anyone desired a ribbon.
“Oh, indeed!” exclaimed the barmaid. She was young and full-bodied, and her response, so spontaneous and artless, drew a titter from the crowd.
Barber’s eyes met the girl’s and he smiled. “What is your name?”
“Oh, sir. It is Amelia Simpson.”
“Mistress Simpson?”
“I am unmarried.”
Barber closed his eyes. “A waste,” he said gallantly. “What color ribbon would you like, Miss Amelia?”
“Red.”
“And the length?”
“Two yards should do me perfectly.”
“One would hope so,” he murmured, raising his eyebrows.
There was ribald laughter, but he appeared to forget her. He cut a piece of rope into four parts and then caused it to be rejoined and whole, using only gestures. He placed a kerchief over a ring and changed it into a walnut. And then, almost in surprise, he brought his fingers to his mouth and pulled something from between his lips, pausing to show the audience that it was the end of a red ribbon.
As they watched he pulled it out of his mouth, bit by bit, his body drooping and his eyes crossing as it continued to emerge. Finally, holding the end taut, he reached down for his dagger, placed the blade close to his lips, and cut the ribbon free. He handed it to the barmaid with a bow.
Next to her was the village sawyer, who stretched the ribbon on his measuring stick. “Two yards, exact!” he pronounced, and there was great applause.
Barber waited for the noise to die and then held up a flask of his bottled medicinal. “Masters, mistresses, and maidens!
“Only my Universal Specific Physick …
“Lengthens your allotted span, regenerates the worn-out tissues of the body. Makes stiff joints supple and limp joints stiff. Restores a roguish sparkle to jaded eyes. Transmutes illness to health, stops hair from falling and resprouts shiny pates. Clarifies dimmed vision and sharpens dulled intellects.
“A most excellent cordial more stimulating than the finest tonic, a purgative gentler than a cream clyster. The Universal Specific fights bloating and the bloody flux, eases the rigors of the childbed and the agony of the female curse, and eradicates the scorbutic disorders brought back to shore by seafaring folk. It is good for brute or human, a bane to deafness, sore eyes, coughs, consumptions, stomach pains, jaundice, fever, and agues. Cures any illness! Banishes care!”
Barber sold a good deal of it from the bank. Then he and Rob set up a screen, behind which the barber-surgeon examined patients. The ill and the afflicted waited in a long line to pay a penny or two for his treatment.
That night they ate roast goose at the public house, the only time Rob had ever eaten a purchased meal. He thought it especially fine, though Barber pronounced the meat overdone and grumbled at lumps in the mashed turnip. Afterward Barber brought onto the table a chart of the British island. It was the first map Rob had seen and he watched in fascination as Barber’s finger traced a squiggly line, the route they would follow over the coming months.
Eventually, eyes closing, he stumbled sleepily back to their campsite through bright moonlight and made his bed. But so much had happened in the past few days that his dazzled mind fought sleep.
He was half awake and star-searching when Barber returned, and somebody was with him.
“Pretty Amelia,” Barber said. “Pretty dolly. A single look at that wanting mouth, I knew I would die for you.”
“Mind the roots or you’ll fall,” she said.
Rob lay and listened to the wet sounds of kissing, the rasp of clothing being removed, laughter and gasping. Then the slithering of the furs being spread.
“I had best go under, because of my stomach,” he heard Barber say.
“A most prodigious stomach,” the girl said in a low, wicked voice. “It will be like bouncing on a great comforter.”
“Nay, maid, here is my great comforter.”
Rob wanted to see her naked, but by the time he dared to move his head the tiny bit necessary, she was no longer standing, and all he could see was the pale glimmer of buttocks.
His breathing was loud but he could have shouted for all they cared. Soon he watched Barber’s large plump hands reach around to clutch the rotating white orbs.
“Ah, Dolly!”
The girl groaned.
They slept before he did. Rob fell asleep finally and dreamed of Barber, still juggling.
The woman was gone when he was awakened in the chill
dawning. They broke camp and rode from Farnham while most of its people were still in bed.
Shortly after sunrise they passed a blackberry bramble and stopped to fill a basket. At the next farm Barber took on provender. When they camped for breakfast, while Rob made the fire and cooked the bacon and cheese toast, Barber broke nine eggs into a bowl and added a generous amount of clotted cream, beating it to a froth and then cooking without stirring until it set into a soft cake, which he covered with dead-ripe blackberries. He appeared pleased at the eagerness with which Rob downed his share.
That afternoon they passed a great keep surrounded by farms. Rob could see people on the grounds and earthen battlements. Barber urged the horse into a trot, seeking to pass it quickly.
But three riders came after them from the place and shouted them to a stop.
Stern and fearsome armed men, they examined the decorated wagon curiously. “What is your trade?” asked one who wore the light mail of a person of rank.
“Barber-surgeon, lord,” Barber said.
The man nodded in satisfaction and wheeled his horse. “Follow.”
Surrounded by their guard, they clattered through a heavy gate set into the earthworks, through a second gate in a palisade of sharpened logs, then across a drawbridge above a moat. Rob had never been so close to a stately fastness. The enormous keep house had a foundation and half-wall of stone, with timbered upper stories, intricate carvings on porch and gables, and a gilded rooftree that blazed in the sun.
“Leave your wagon in the courtyard. Bring your surgeon’s tools.”
“What is the problem, lord?”
“Bitch hurt her hand.”
Laden with instruments and flasks of medicinal, they followed him into the cavernous hall. The floor was flagged with stone and spread with rushes that needed changing. The furniture seemed ample for small giants. Three walls were arrayed with swords, shields, and lances, while the north wall was hung with tapestries of rich but faded color, against which stood a throne of carved dark wood.