by James Comins
Thanking him, I take the pottage to the stairs and begin to eat. The oats do seem richer, actually, thicker and gamy. While I imagine I hear the sound of a spine snapping, I'm grateful to Stan for having it sent up--
Wait. I definitely did hear a sound like a spine snapping. I listen, but there is nothing. I eat, and there it is again. Is Maliface standing down the stairs with a pair of bones, scraping them--
Augh, it's coming through the spoon. The sound is coming through the spoon. What's happening? What is that awful sound--?
I dig down to the bottom of my pottage. Did they put some kind of noisemaker in my pottage? This is the trouble with pissing off the cooks, I decide. There's--
There's a skull and spinal column in my pottage. There's ears. Long bunny ears.
The arrow slits are too high up to hurl through, and the bathroom is--
My lunch. Back up into the pottage bowl. My body convulses. Hideous.
So much for sustenance. I return to Hamlin, leaving the puke-filled skull dish on the lower landing.
From below, sniggering.
* * *
Words, words, words. I can spot them now, sound out some of them. Oddly, it's French that gives me the most trouble. I had no idea that my tongue could pronounce these bizarre curlicues of letter clusters. Why should Saxon English be pronounced as it's written and High French fill endless pages with false letters?
Actually, now that I've posed the question to myself, the answer is obvious. French pride. We are too prideful to allow simplicity or sense to impede our flowery written language. I conceive of a dozen men with gilded quills, reclining in indecent chaises, discussing over blancmange and Bordeaux how to add new and fanciful letters to the ends of already-finished words. I see in my mind the outrage over the way Veliquessen has become ligatured to Vexin, and the conspiracies to turn it back. Conspiracies and conspirators. There must be a pair of keys, brass; a love interest, perhaps the widow of a young knight, carrying letters of the alphabet between her bosoms; there must be a bird--no, not a bird, I decide, a cat--Stan says one can train anything, if one is patient--with a collar with a hidden compartment, and poison, yes, there must be a poisoning--
"TOM!" Crack. "Drat it, this is what I get for allowing a lunch break, is it? Very well, no more lunch breaks."
My knuckle swells, and I return to my lines.
As I depart the library, deciding whether to kick the dish of bunny skull and vomit down the stairs, I nearly stumble into Nuncle, who has faded into shadow just outside the music room.
"Here, Tom." I adhere to him, and we sit on the steps. "You caused no problems today, and left Dag alone. Thank you."
"You're welcome, sir," I say.
"Dag's in bed, and will be for probably two weeks," says Nuncle.
"Yessir."
"See that he remains alive, would you?"
"Yessir."
"Also. The harvest fair is a month away. Your friend Malcolm is clearly not ready to put on a show, but you . . . Do you have any japes or routines that you know well by heart?"
I consider this. As far as music is concerned, I can play a steady tune well enough, especially if it's simple, and I know several of Papa's favorite humorous monologues, and, well, I've been onstage nearly every day of my life. I decide to say these things to Nuncle.
"Onstage every day of your life, then? That's an advantage. Tom, I want to hear you perform. Fetch your good recorder."
I am a strike of lightning, thundering down the stairs.
Nuncle and the whole class (less Dag) wait for me in the music room. "Class, today Thomas is going to be showing off his accumulated skills," Nuncle begins.
Perille laughs with a wide-open mouth. I think I hate him. The girl-boy looks disgusted, she shies away and turns sideways. I don't understand her. Or him? I didn't expect Nuncle to have me perform in front of everyone. The air is heightened now, and I feel a cloud holding my feet up, instead of the stone floor. I cannot screw it up. There is no failure waiting for me, I let myself know this. There is the awe of every student waiting for me right around the corner. What piece to perform--?
My mind blanks.
I remember nothing. I'm akin to the wolf-clerk's blank slate. All my practiced pieces, all the notes and fingerings a white powder smudge on a sleeve. I know nothing. I'm beside a desk at the front corner of the music room, and I say: "Ha, Nuncle, very funny. Hand me a tambrel and I'll show you all the skills I've accumulated in my three days."
Nobody laughs. Nuncle doesn't laugh. Nuncle slams a hand on the desk, which makes a loud sound, and I drop the recorder.
We all see it drop. Nuncle reacts and does a forward roll, but he's far away, and one roll doesn't bring him close enough to catch it. I fumble, trying to arrange my body parts in a useful way, and I get a foot under the falling instrument, and I catch the instrument by the bell and fling it with my curly toe.
Oh dear father in heaven don't let it catch a desk or a wall--
With a twist of his curly snake arms, Perille lets my recorder land safely in his big palm. My recorder is safe. It's safe. It hasn't broken. Breath escapes me for a second; I wheeze. Nuncle glares as he rises. Perille puts the recorder to his lips and plays exceptionally well. If I weren't French, I'd give him the recorder as a gift, he plays it much better than I ever will. Laughing with the scruff of a child's moustache that he has, he stands and lays the recorder in its case, sticking out the side. He points to me and says, "Good instrument."
I am mortified. I run out the doorway and down the stairs and here is a great oak door, locked, I fling myself at it and a Tom-shaped hole breaks through and I run out across the field and past the hooded figure standing over Father Bellows' grave and the hood turns and I catch a glimpse of slavering foamy lips and the hooded figure drops to the ground and lithe haunches and black fur leap through the hood and the wolf chases me and I run away and onto cobbles and slip into the steamy anteroom of the bathhouse blocked by the trident tapestry but the wolf can smell me and I open the door to the deep baths where his nose will be full of steam but a steam pipe is malfunctioning and I'm sucked down the drain and
"Play, Tom," says Nuncle.
I match my thumb to the base of the recorder, lift the intact instrument to my lips, both hands very firm grip here I go--
Papa received requests for "Riding by Rybbesdale" at least once a week. There's always one very dense man in any audience who feels a profound longing to participate in the proceedings but is too great a coward to learn an instrument himself, so he will inevitably shout out one of maybe three universal jesting songs, "Rybbesdale" or "Bird on a Bough" or "Women," and think himself quite a dapper fellow for suggesting it. Papa hated "Rybbesdale" with a fiery passion, but there was coin in it, too, so Papa prepared a very different version, with trill notes and syncopation and several passages where he would invent a thousand notes to play in a flurry. If he wasn't too sotted when he got the request, it was really a sight to see. And he taught me it.
"Rybbesdale" is a love song. I'll tell you the lyrics, but you have to understand that everybody in the room knows the lyrics, and everyone in a good bar expects you to play or sing all the way up to the dirty parts, take a deep breath, and then all the dirty old men sing the dirty bit all together. On a good night, the whole bar will get going.
The lyrics are these:
"When I ride through the roads of Rybbesdale
Any woman in the world I dream I might wed
But there's one lady I'd call the fairest
Who ever was built of bone and blood
Her hair is the color of sunbeams, it seems
Her forehead a half of the moon,
Her eyebrows arch upward, woven of feather
Her eyes outshine the sun at noon
Her nose the right size and right shape
Her lips are red, made for romance
Her teeth are ivory, she still has them all
A swan's neck, the whitest in all of France
Her
arms are made for embracing,
Hands white as lilies for mine to entwine
(Here's the first part where all the men like to join in)
Breasts like two apples of Paradise
Supple and soft, ample and fine
A slim waist is bound by an emerald belt
With rubies glowing like wine,
The buckle is carven from ivory,
With amethysts all in a line
(It's good to draw this part out, maybe even say a second verse about the belt)
(Here's everyone's favorite verse)
But the best of the best, the part I dream of,
Her sheath's like an orchid in bloom
Pretty and pink, soft as a glove,
Come in boys, there's plenty of room!
Christ made her perfect, from bottom to top,
Come in boys, there's plenty of room!
You can see why drunken losers like it so much.
Anyway, I play it pretty fair, and I see Perille sort of going tumpty-ta tumpty-ta, saying the lyrics to himself, and Nuncle is nodding, suitably impressed, and the girl-boy's kind of scowling. Malcolm doesn't know the song, but seems pleased with me, and the song ends and I very carefully lay down my recorder, and Nuncle says, "Yes, that'll do, Tom. Be ready with that next month."
And now it's shawm lessons and I stupidly run back downstairs to get my shawm--
Dag has woken.
Sitting in the open hall with his back to the shut door of his room, Dag sips cold broth, wincing with each sip. I try to mosey past him to my room, but I hear: "Barliwine." My heart fails and I turn to the sallow yellow eyes.
"Yeah?" I say, pretending I sound tough.
"My men won't really break you in half," he wheezes, "like they said. I told 'em not to."
I give him half-a-dozen nods.
"Could you steady me to the johns?" he asks. Despite a big urge to leave him there to crawl, which I tell myself is an ignoble thought and a sin and I'll confess it--to, um, whoever replaces Father Bellows--I cross the hall and give Dag my arm and expect some treachery, a blade to the back or perhaps a needle coated with poison, but instead I have an unsteady yellow fool on my arm and we brace our way into the bathrooms, and I set Dag on the guardrobe and turn to leave, but he says, "Wait," and I wait as he forces some apparently painful urine out and pulls his breeches up and he's weak and his hand slips and he drops backward into the hole of the guardrobe and pulls it back, luckily the regular flushing means the pot isn't appalling, but it's sticky with yellow, and I reluctantly brace him over to the bath while he cleans his hands.
As I lead him back to his seat by the broth, I hear: "Thanks, Tom Barliwine."
I have nothing to say to that, so I hand him his broth and get my shawm and run upstairs.
Stan gives me a cursory look. "Took you awhile," he says.
"I was helping a friend," I say, and I give Nuncle a faux wink, he seems to get it, and I add to Stan, "Oh, and thanks for the rabbit," and he gives me an expression I don't recognize and I suck on reeds.
Oboe lessons go apace--I don't know how to narrate a lugubrious hour of going up and down scales, listening to Malcolm squeak and curse--and when we're done, Nuncle nods me upstairs and I put my shawm and recorder just outside the library entryway and Hamlin greets me, and I write familiar words with unfamiliar letters, and the evening begins to the distant tune of Nuncle's recorder.
As the bells of Bath once again thrum Vespers, I rise to leave, but Hamlin stops me.
"I have spoken to Weatherford," he says dryly, "and I have spoken of your very commendable progress--"
"Thank you, sir--"
"Don't interrupt."
I've learned to indulge Hamlin in his game of pretending he's a cold and terrible form.
"Weatherford has decided to permit you to return to studies. He expects you to do your best to write the words that are spoken. He understands you will spell unevenly. He will not ask you to read. Is this acceptable?"
"Yessir. Thank you, sir."
"Gratitude noted. If you would slide up to one of the desks, then? Perhaps one in the back."
Hamlin's stubby fingers roll up my parchment of words and he fades into the furniture. Strange how some people have that skill. Stan can make himself vanish like that, too. I wonder if perhaps Hamlin was once a fool.
Other students file in, and at last here is Weatherford, his face catlike--or no, not a housecat. Perhaps his face is that of a pine marten. Yes, I feel certain that's it. His pine marten eyes take in the sight of me, flicker, a shadow of a nod, perhaps merely to himself.
A flare of sleeves and the two books lay themselves out on the desk. A pile of quills, pared with his knife. Ink mixed, and the black-robed form becomes very still once again. I try to make myself vanish. I don't know whether it works.
"I will speak about the importance of the Greek stories to our learning. What is it about Ilium that so fascinates? Is it the heights of passion that men felt for the lovely Helen? Is it the concept of an unkillable warrior who fights for justice, in the figure of Achilles? Is it the stolid familiarity of trusted Hector? The fabled ruse of the wooden horse, a gift to the gods in which treachery is concealed? Is it the constance of Penelope, the persistence of Odysseus? Or is it," he continues, "is it the very language in which the words are written? Let us examine a passage and we will consider the elements of rhetoric which the Greeks have bestowed upon us."
Weatherford begins to write in his books.
"At the beginning of the Ilium saga, a priest's daughter has been captured by Agamemnon, who has invaded. The priest wants his daughter back, and offers Agamemnon money for her return. The priest declares, 'May the gods permit you to capture the city of Priam, but release my daughter from her capture and accept her ransom, in reverence of the gods.' The first half of the declaration begins with gods and ends in capture; the second half begins with release from capture and ends in gods. This structure is called a crossing, which in the Greek is termed chiasmus, while the repeating of the word 'gods' exactly is termed anadiplosis."
The professor turns the page.
"Now Agamemnon doesn't want to give up the girl. She's pretty. So he retorts, 'Sceptre and wreath won't protect you from me.' These are of course the tools of priesthood. Representing a priest this way is metonymy, the tool standing for the position. Today we might say of a modern priest, 'Your black robe won't protect you from me.' The priest runs to the shore and calls on the god Apollo to avenge his kidnapped daughter. 'Hear me, O god of the silver bow,' the priest cries, directing his voice toward another character while facing us, a figure called apostrophe. 'If I have ever served you well, if I have ever burnt the fat of animals for you,' he says, asking a rhetorical question that has a known answer, a figure called anacoenosis, 'then avenge my tears upon those who have taken my daughter!' Avenge my tears, rather than avenge me--metonymy again.
"As the god Apollo begins to destroy the army of Agamemnon, Ag's man Achilles declares that since 'we are being cut down by war and plague together,' yoking two elements, a figure the Greeks term zeugma, 'then let us ask a priest or a preacher, a prophet of dreams, to tell us the root of the trouble.' Priest, preacher, prophet. Every word of the same letter. This is a figure which you'll be using often. Termed alliteration, it's a most important tool for a poet. Always add alliteration. Permit me to interrupt my discussion of Greek figures to present a little something I've been working on."
Weatherford clears his throat.
"The Arthur allegory, arranged in alpha-beta order. Arthur's allies averred an adventure, augmenting his aspirations with ardent arms and altruistic alms. Arthur's aim was academic: to affirm the auspices that were administered at the altar by alb-adorned abbots, to achieve absolution in an age when axiom and allegory alone were antagonistic, and, as all are aware, to acquire the ancient artifact alleged to have accumulated the anointment from the aches of the author of the angelic host.
"But before the brave brothers of Britain b
etook the brash beck of battle beneath their blazing banner, before the brandished blades of barbarians were to be broken and the braying beasts banished, built was a bastion of benevolence and bright beauty, bought with bullion and beset with bunting. This blossom-bedizened base was to whither the blessed basin of blood would be borne: the Castle of Camelodenum."
Weatherford coughs, blinks and looks up at our reasonably attentive faces. "That's as far as I've got. You have the idea, I'm sure."
"And now, Malcolm, you did a very fine job reading the Tristram yesterday, would you continue?" Malcolm signals affirmative and moves to the front. I feel pride in him, vicariously, and shame. "And Tom." I hear a slight hesitation. "Are you willing to try to copy down the words?" I yessir, and the girl-boy distributes paper and quills and pours red ink from a decanter into a dish for me. I thank her very quietly.
Malcolm's spoken French is perfect, but my spelling of the French is far from it; I've found that the O sound, like bo, is written beau, and can manage this. Other words and phrases, like qu'est ce c'est, I cannot manage, it comes out quescer çay, which is visibly wrong, I am French and cannot spell my language and I cross it out in frustration, but Malcolm's good French moves on to other words, and even as he speaks slowly, I cannot help but skip over words and spell in bursts of nonsense. Frustration builds, and I would cry out, but for Weatherford's posterior nethers.
I've got drips of red all over my paper as I dip my nib again and again. My quill just can't keep up. If each word were spelled aloud, then maybe, but forming whole words so quickly is insanity. Rumpled, scratched rips form in my parchment, and I have to work tirelessly to suppress my violence toward this diabolic feather and the wisp-thin surface I write on. If God and Satan have conspired to invent a hell for me, it will be writing words quickly in a room full of hare skulls scraping against clay bowls. That is my hell.