by James Comins
"Landing, also very important. Weakest place in your body? Ankles! If you have big jumps ahead of you, use a trick." Ab'ly opens a trunk and withdraws a series of long strips of leather with a clever interior weave. He unwinds his odd Saracen toe-wraps and scootches his baggy trouser legs up to his knees, wraps his ankles like butterfly wings, locking the leather in place with a tied piece of string. "Now, less chance of popped-out ankles. Observe."
The lanky professor arranges his red-brown beard, sends us to the side of the room, steps back, swinging long arms, inhales, and runs straight at the wall. When his feet hit the wall he takes four steps up it and flips. His feet walk on air as he lands.
"Now you."
We are given a pair of leather weave strips each, "plenty plenty," and we wrap up our ankles. Of all the tasks I might imagine a kingsfool performing, I can hardly conceive of a less suitable one than a casual wall-flip, but then, I am not much for the tumbling part of tumbling. I'm not sure what I am much for.
"Shoes off. Legs first!"
Barefoot Hero stands, backs up, runs, hits the wall feet-first and bounces back. He looks immediately sore.
"Hairstyle!" Perille is shaking his head and staring at the stone wall as if willing it away. His strides are loping, lanky, and he doesn't get enough of a start to run up the wall, the blankets slide and he's a frog, forward-leaping, his legs trying to retract, his arms useless, he catches himself on the wall and pushes himself back.
"Brown!" I'm dissatisfied with my nickname, it isn't funny enough. I avoid the theatrics and just run, my foot gets high enough that I catch the wall with the feet of my hose, it slips immediately and I land heavily on my back.
"Hose off! Breeches only. Don't be shy."
Wolfweir is nothing but smiles, she stares right at me, she waggles a bare foot at me, waving hello with her toes, and I can't help it, it's mortifying, I clench my legs, but it doesn't help, I'm growing in my breeches, I just can't believe this is happening, my breeches are sticking out and I slick the green and blue hose off my feet as quickly as I can and run straight at the wall so nobody can spot what's happening to me. I get a foot up and with bare feet I can feel the stone, I push off and bounce straight back to my feet.
"Good!" exclaims Ab'ly. "Yes. See the difference? Your feet are very smart, but hose is stupid. Now you understand why I reveal my feet. Very alluring? Very smart! Now Demi."
For the first time, the class is endless. Gut-busting smacks resound as we hit the floor, over and over. Nobody, not once, completes a backflip. Malcolm of course merely watches, Ab'ly won't let him participate, although I think he's probably healed. Perille repeatedly touches the ceiling with his toes, I think he's made a promise to himself always to kick the ceiling. I've chosen not to resent him for being a show-off. It's just his way, that's pretty clear.
By tambrel lessons I'm sore all over my body. The pain is not immense, but it sticks to the body like berry jam, there are daubs of pain in each direction, a bruise on every body part. I am an orrery of bruises.
It is now that I discover that my embarrassment has subsided. In fact, as I pull on my hose at the end of class, I realize that the pressure in my breeches vanished almost immediately as I started my motion toward the wall. That's when I realize: I'm not without control over my body and its humiliations. I need not fear the Wolf.
With this new realization of power I can dedicate myself to drumming--but as we enter with our shawms for next lessons and pick up the school's tambrels, Nuncle sees our exhaustion, he sniffs and crosses his legs standing, the cancer drooping like the wattle of a great bird, and tells us he'll perform for us first, and we'll have tambrel and shawm after lunch.
Nuncle withdraws a flute, four feet long, made from a single unknotted branch. I imagine a man must have spent two weeks circling the interior with a long knife, I see the carver seated on a stump, or perhaps a carpenter's workbench, his legs spread, a cloth braced under his underarm to prevent sweat from damaging the wood, his hair is long, shaggy, sodden, but very beautiful, it is clean straw hair, it hangs to his shoulders, his hat is not unlike Hamlin's, a black Italian-style beret with several corners, perhaps five. His shoes are of quality and dyed black, this is a maker of fine flutes; his workshop is perhaps in a half-room open on several sides to the elements but raised on a platform, he watches the rain as he works, his wrist turns the branch, perhaps there are several discarded, or no, he is experienced, talented in his precision, he does not make mistakes, I erase the discarded branches--
Nuncle blows the first note, and I am transported to a different fantasy.
It is a sound of seas. It is a sound of forests alight with seed and leaf. It is a sound throaty, of men's breath, of love and hate and despair. It is, above all else, a sound I want to create. I'm inspired.
My eyes shut and immediately a vision arises. My mind's eye opens up a place of light above my head and I witness a story. I didn't know the story before I saw it. The story is this:
There is a knight of Camelodenum, he has ridden across Britain and its fields, past the Wall to Scotland, he's come to see true mountains for the first time, he has an entourage of three men who hide under cloaks, I don't know if they're monks or not. They travel further and further north, and the further they travel, the more mountains there are, I don't even think that's true. But the mountains grow, and the knight traverses them, hooded men beside him. Until, at the top of Scotland, at the last mountain before the sea, there's an uncharted castle, it isn't a regular castle, it's on an island floating a hundred ells above the water.
Through fog the knight rides, and a stair of cloud emerges below his feet. The clouds are raining, but water rises from the ocean and the clouds re-form. The knight rides up to the castle, the drawbridge lowers and a deep voice welcomes the knight. The voice says he's found the castle where the Key to Heaven is stored, and if the knight proves his worth in battle, the Key will be awarded to him. Naturally the knight accepts, and he's readied for battle by the monks. A knight dressed in blue mail meets him, the horse is clad in blue too. They tilt, a dueling joust, and just when they are to collide, the blue knight fades from sight, he's made of mist. Still the knight pursues him, but neither is unhorsed. The blue knight reappears and repeats his challenge, and the knight tilts, but he is again passing through mist.
I don't know how the vision ends.
What I hear now is the approach of the music. It's quite close, and I find that my eyes are shut tight, and also there's a crick in my back and my hands are pressed together haphazardly and I release all of these things quite at once, I burst open. The wooden flute is above me, and Nuncle releases the final note and lets it rest over his shoulder like a farmer with his hoe. The flute, I mean, not the final note.
"You were elsewhere, Tom," he says, sinister, probing.
"The music," I say. "There's pictures in it."
Nuncle rolls his eyes and spins himself around dramatically. "Everywhere I go, there are children seeing visions." He glares at me, though I prefer to imagine he's humoring me. Hero tries to shrink into his chair, I've made him uncomfortable. "Well, go on," says Nuncle. "Entertain us with your sibyllism."
I say the story just as I told it above.
"No no no," Nuncle says when I've finished, "you can't just leave it there. How does it end? That's the beginning and a bit of a middle, but you must have a revelation in an Arthur story, a revelation of God. That's quite mandatory."
"I--I don't know. It was very clear when I saw it, but it drifted away, there was no conclusion."
"Make one up," suggests Stan from where he's faded into the stonework.
My mind races, there is little to deduce from what I saw. "He--" but there's nothing.
"Let's open it up to the class," says Stan. "Any ideas?"
"I like what he has so far," begins Perille. "Dere's an Arturian romance in dere." He can't pronounce "Arthur," I guess. "But why was he on his quest? Just to see mountains? He needs more motivation."
"Well,
that's obvious," chimes Malcolm. "He had a vesion. Just as you ded. A vesion of the Key of Heaven. Et was on the tallest mountain en Durness, I'd say."
"Who are the monks?" asks Hero.
"Good question," says Stan. "Thoughts?"
"They were squires--" I say.
"Squires don't dress as monks, they dress as squires. Who were they? Blackfriars?" says Nuncle, leaning against the wall, an angle among straight lines.
"They've come to take the Key back to Camelodenum," I say.
"That's war, et es," says Malcolm. "Ef the Key to Heaven were held in Scotland, et must stay there."
"Not if it were given freely," I say. "A gift from God's house in Scotland--"
"Is this a story about Scotland or a story about Arthur?" asks Stan.
"Both," I say.
"Et could be a--what's the word, not a reunion, nor a reparation, ach, I've forgotten et," says Malcolm.
"How about a repatriation?" says Nuncle quietly.
"You mean the knight's returning home? He's the one Pict in the Round Table?" I ask.
Nuncle faces Malcolm and allows a small smile. "For any audience with a Pict in it, it would be quite popular. Don't you think, Maelcolum?"
My Malcolm blinks and then nods. "Aye. But there wasn't a Scot at the Round Table, was there, then?"
Nuncle steeples his fingers, leaning against the wall. "No story is a true story," he murmurs in his undertones, a tone where he has something wily he means to say. "Thus, every story can be a true story, if you allow your audience to believe in it."
"So here's kind of what I've got," says Stan, and he closes his eyes and taps a hand against the air as he speaks. "There's a boy from Scotland. He comes down to join King Arthur at the Round Table. He has a vision of the Key to Heaven, at the highest peak of--what was it called? Durness?"
"Aye," says Malcolm.
"Yeah. So he takes a trio of warring Blackfriars and rides up to Scotland--"
"Past the Wall," adds Hero.
"Yeah, past the Wall to Durness. And there's the castle on a floating island, and the rain stairs--"
"Make them legendary," adds Nuncle. "The Raining Stair."
"Right. And the blue knight--why is he blue? What's blue mean?"
"Rain," says Hero, who is quite immersed.
"Or egalité," says Perille. "What is this word in English? Eggmuffin? Eglentine?"
"Equality," I say.
"That's good, that is," says Malcolm. "The equality of England and Scotland. Have et be that."
Stan and Nuncle share a look. "Don't make it explicit," says Nuncle. "And don't make it political. It's enough that there should be symbolism meant, let the audience draw their deductions themselves. Each symbolism can be replaced by any other symbolism, if you allow the audience their own minds on the matter."
"So they joust, and the blue knight turns into mist. Then what?" says Stan.
"Ef--no, hear me out. I've--shut up, let me wairk this out. Ef the blue stands for equality between England and Scotland, then the joust es a war between the two--"
"But they're both Scottish," points out Hero.
"He esn't Scottish either, then," Malcolm says, "he's bearing the banner of Arthur, that's England. He's bringing the English court upstairs, so to say. Jousting under the mantle of England. And he can't defeat the Scottish knight, can't even find the bugger. The futility of war? Maybe--maybe there's a color change en the knight's livery when he realizes he'll not defeat Scotland through arms? Red and gold, as he reclaims his heritage?"
"But the disembodied voice says they have to joust if they're going to get the Key to Heaven," says Hero. "When does he get the key?"
"What's missing," says Nuncle, "is an element of the godly."
We all ponder this.
"And what about the friars?" I say. "That part didn't make sense even to me."
"Mountain," says Malcolm, flopping back in his seat in consternation. "The mountain es Scotland. The floating island--the Viking Shetlands? Es et to do with the Norsemen somehow?"
"Let's leave it for today," says Nuncle. "Think on it, and perhaps we'll advance the story tomorrow. Luncheon."
Which is letters, for me.
The intellectual distraction is wonderful, I can focus on my letters and allow the story to stew in the back depths of my mind, I've completely forgotten Wolf and her intrusive rules. Give me a good challenge any day, I won't rise to meet it, but my failure will distract me from all else.
The story is a shifting labyrinth of walls, I can feel the drift of the chess pieces, and in no time letters is over. I didn't tear through the paper once, Hamlin praises me, and it's now tambrel time, I feel over-alert from my hunger, which is starting to whistle, I've not had luncheon one day in four since I've got here, my belly cups my ribs, gurgling intermittently. I feel confident that Hamlin will declare me literate in no more than a week or two. Perhaps.
"But the blue knight--" says Hero as we return to the music room.
"No," Nuncle tells him firmly. "Now it's tambrel. No talking, only drums." Nuncle lifts a tambrel and mallet slowly to eyelevel, shakes them at Hero, as if he were a toddler, and tumps once on the drumhead. "Drum."
Bliss, actually, to retreat from my mind for another hour. I conceive a race of men who live their lives this way, they have invented drums that play when their shoulders are shook, they plough while shaking their shoulders, they reap while drumming, they eat and drink to the sound of tambrels, they walk in a distinctive way, they bounce their shoulders with each step, and as I play the tambrel beats I see these men, they have dark foreign skin, darker than Perille's, the color of wet woodpulp, they are walking in a line, their shoulders go boinggg, and I bust up laughing in the middle of class, everyone looks at me, but I will not share this vision, I've spoken out of turn too much today already, I'm humiliating myself, but it's so funny, these dancing men.
Stan insists we practice shawm, too, even though it's the long miserable sleepy part of day. This is less pleasurable, we're all worn, and it's more of a swamp of a class than a flit through clouds. When shawm class finally ends, we're all spent, but there's still Classics.
The top room. Hamlin asks why I didn't come up after music, I explain, he nods in understanding and then nods to sleep.
Weatherford. He is dramatic in his black cloak, a raven with a marten's face. I have yet to find his class tedious, but at the same time it's impossible to drift away. I almost want to ask whether we could have tambrel lessons at the end of each day, so that I'd have a vacancy in my mind when it's time to sleep. Nuncle won't change the order of classes, though. So I must try to re-light the fire in my brain long enough to listen to--
"The headmaster has requested I give a lesson on symbolism in the telling of stories. We will begin with a discourse on synecdoche--"
Light the brain-fire . . . like striking sparks onto wet woodpulp--wet woodpulp--and I drift immediately to my dancing men, I have to breathe very deeply to keep from laughing--
"Which is the practice of representing the whole via a small piece of the whole. For example, when we speak of the crown, the golden hat is not meant. 'The crown' signifies the king. Likewise, the Round Table is not merely a piece of furniture, it comprises a hundred great knights, does it not? I was told you were discussing Scotland, where the Drum is not merely a hill, but the seat of the 'lairds.' And yet it is often sufficient to speak of the Drum."
Oh God, drums, and their shoulders bouncing, tumpty, tumpty, as they eat--perhaps they all have crowns--I must stop, I'll upset Weatherford--
"This is synecdoche--"
Malcolm sneezes, and Weatherford closes his eyes, wearing the threateningly mild smile of the sincerely put out. His pens have left large pools of ink where they rest against twin pages, all the words will be blotted out. Narrow, womanly shoulders heave up and down, the professor has some sort of hiccups, he speaks and tells Malcolm through his hiccups that whenever a sneeze is coming--which, well, there's dust, it's not unheard of in a library
, but here it's expected that the spoken word "sneeze" will precede the event, but I am transfixed, his shoulders, they're bouncing, each hiccup causes his shoulders to hop, I imagine a system by which butter is churned, you attach the handles to his shoulders and then sneeze, oh God you could invent endless conveniences to attach to those hiccupping shoulders, and they don't stop, he's still hiccupping, you could attach a set of wheels to a clever pulley system and he could wheel himself around like a big boy, you could invent a self-propelling carriage, a man in front with sniffles and powdered paprika to snuff up his nose, and Weatherford on the other end, nudging a lever with his shoulders, and I imagine adding a drum, tumpty, tumpty as the auto-carriage wheels people around the town, I see the carriage riding off irrepressibly into the sunset, a pinch of spice and tumpty, tumpty, tumpty, I've ruined myself and my smile quivers and I collapse into my desk and I can't think straight enough to cover my mouth and Weatherford turns to me and I suppress my mirth as hard as I can and it doesn't work, it bursts and I laugh helplessly at his convulsing face, it all comes out of me, it's so funny, I can't repress the giggles, and it all comes out, the boundless laughter, tumpty drum shoulder boiiing scoot scoot scoot aachooo, it bursts through my face as snickering that escalates to hooting, and at last, at longest last, it all comes out of Weatherford as well. To the detriment of all.
A wet, slippery fart. It continues, it doesn't end, as ropes of shit eject from under Weatherford's black robes. An indescribable smell, not at all like regular midden-deposits, fills the library, and from behind me I heard Hamlin's cluck and "oh, Tom," he's perfectly disappointed in me.
Weatherford's face. A clenched red mask of despair. The delicate, almost elfin features curl into improbable sadness, his eyes are shut tight, his teeth are displayed and tears are held back ineffectively by dainty eyelashes. From the back of the room we hear, quite plainly, "Class dismissed. Return to your rooms with the door shut for the rest of the evening."