by James Comins
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.
Having seniority, Perille has claimed the cafeteria, which resonates pleasantly, and Stan is amusing himself in the music room by teaching Hero the shawm one on one. Dag is still in his room, recuperating, and Ab'ly has permitted Wolfweir the acrobatics room, where, before the door closes, I see that she's planning to play the recorder while turning cartwheels. The music isn't good, but it's remarkable to watch anyways.
Malcolm and I have no great place to practice. A pair of chairs would be pleasant, but there aren't any chairs anywhere. On a whim, I begin opening dormitory doors one by one, up one side, down the other, my assembled recorder swinging not quite casually from a free hand. I skip the rooms I know are occupied. Beside me is my saint, my reeve. A cyclone of Perille's shawm notes comes from the cafeteria; this is how you know you're practicing in the wrong place, when you can hear someone else clearly. Pity the cafeteria has no door.
As we come to the door nearest the staircase, Wensley emerges from the kitchen and leans against a wall. Instinctually I defend myself with my recorder. Not by swinging it--by lifting it to my lips and playing it, pretending that I am where I'm meant to be, ignoring him.
"Aye there, Gally and Pict." Wensley desires a fistfight, but we saints are sick of fighting. One of these days we'll lose a fight, even two-to-one, and then it'll be us with yellow skin and blue lips.
I play "Rybbesdale" on my recorder, shyly. Watching Wensley coldly, Malcolm taps an ineffectual beat.
"You think you have it settled," the cook hisses, "but I'll have the last, just wait."
"We'll take you and your brother and the whole muckle school on, afore I'll cede the last to ye," Malcolm says over his tumping.
"Oh, aye, aye," moans Wensley, mocking Malcolm's accent, grabbing his hair into pigtails. "You'll do ennatheng to preserve the honor of your little French gairlfriend here."
Malcolm's mallet presses against my chest, as if I were likely to try to surge forward and start a fight. I'm not. But I am thinking of what Wensley's plans may be, and they worry me.
"Permit me to clarify something," I say, taking the recorder from my lips. "If you sabotage any of my belongings, I'll take a knife to you where you sleep."
"If that's the only threat you have to offer me, I think I'll sleep soundly," says Wensley, and slinks away.
If my acacia recorder becomes damaged by an act of Wensley or Maliface, I will kill them both. I tell no one that I've decided this. I'll buy a knife at the fair. I've overcome my fear of them--
No, I've made quite a different choice. I think of Wolf's sharp stone. I will make a knife.
After Wensley's gone, I spin to the nearest door, open it, I must hide for a moment so I don't create a violent madness in myself, and--
This door, it looks like just another of the plain cell doors, it's the one at the end--but it opens not to a cell but to a stairway down.
Footsteps above.
Malcolm pushes me in and the door shuts behind us.
For several moments we wait for the footsteps to retreat, and once they do, we are in a faint green-skylight-lit darkness, our feet braced on different steps.
"Es et a secret passage?" Malcolm says.
I nod, and descend the hidden stairway.
The light gives out at the first landing. There is a second landing before the bottom.
As our eyes adjust, we find out what's hiding at the bottom of the steps.
"Et must have been for the wairst of the prisoners," says Malcolm.
Cages of thick lead bars seem to call out for wolves or bears. Inside one is a colossal chest of quality wood. "Full of coins, I bet," I say, pointing. It's mostly
glints and shadows down here, although I detect no filth or spider hives, my nose is that good. This place has been kept clean.
"D'ye ken, I think thes es Nuncle's room, where he sleeps," Malcolm says, pointing to a cot along one wall. Chains droop down from the ceiling in several places. I brush them aside. What sort of man sleeps in a torture chamber?
"We shouldn't be here," I say, and a panic takes us at the same time and we gallop back up the stairs. I press my recorder to my belly so it doesn't get scratched. I'll wipe some resin over it anyway, so I can have peace of mind.
Carefully we ease the door open. The hall is deserted, but I feel like someone's watching me. A sudden rush of terror; if Wolfweir finds out we know where Nuncle's secret room is, she'll have much more power, real power over us. Nuncle would kill us if she told him we knew where his hiding place is. I imagine it must usually be kept locked, and is open in error. But as we shut the door and return to our room, we both breathe easier. We have a new secret, and nobody can destroy us.
In our own room together we play "Rybbesdale" freely, majestically, as though there could be nothing that ever goes wrong again. We tell no one about Nuncle's secret room.
And I'll say right here, nothing gives a fool more power than secrets. It's the depths of the human soul that we jest about, and the deeper the soul, the deeper the jest. If I were to speak my mind truthfully, I would say that the Devil is the greatest fool of all. He is, in some ways, the patron saint of fools. For without the temptation of sin, there would be no need of us.
* * *
Two weeks before the fair, Nuncle comes to us and asks what we have to wear. Malcolm has nothing, and Ab'ly is sent for and takes him to Brystow to buy a jester's suit. "The boy is growing," Ab'ly remarks as they leave, and Nuncle gives him a scowl and tells him to buy only something cheap, because he'll need to buy another in a year or two. I ask why Stan doesn't accompany him, the way he accompanied me to the cobbler's, but Nuncle doesn't answer. I detect a mystery.
Here we are, the headmaster and I in my room, squatting beside my trunks. I lift the lid and reveal the morose bundle of diamonds.