by James Comins
Reluctantly I blare my recorder at him. I don't like disrespecting authority figures, but in a way it is my job.
The blackfriar rises to his feet.
"I tripped," he says snippily, "because I was shouted at."
"I was nae shouting at you, I was shouting at these good men of Brystow. For who among us can say we've met a pious man? Not I, not to this very minute, quod I."
"Where I come from," the blackfriar says coldly, "we'd stone fools like you."
"And where I come from," Malcolm replies, "we'd run your underpants up a flagpole for trying to pass among us as a monk. Look at ye. I'll bet there's not a nun in twenty miles of your Exeter abbey hasn't got a fat belly off of ye, ye philanderin' guilt-wracked hobbler. And your body, hark at that gut, would you folks? Must have quite a flock to fill your tub of a belly so. Do you fatten up your parisioners with wine and wafers afore you feast on them? Fisher of men indeed, ye bloated cannibal ye!"
There is a crowd now, and everyone is stifling their grins for fear of excommunication.
"I can have you sent to Rome for sin," the blackfriar hisses.
Instantly--and this is a trick I invent wholly on my own--I play a burst of notes that sound just like some old Roman Legion march, dun dun da dooo, dun dun da deeee. It works--everyone has ancestral memories of the hated Italians, and it only takes a couple of notes to stir nationalist fervor. Even we French remember when the Galls resisted the Romans and tried to push them back out of Toulouse.
And now the crowd is squarely ours, and the blackfriar finds his fear. But he is too proud to back down, so instead he modulates his papal furor.
"I sentence thee to four full rosaries each," the blackfriar snaps.
"Et's a punishment in St. Dominic's circles to worship Holy Mother Mary, es et? I thenk it esn't! For penance I sentence thee to six backflips and a recitation of the siege of Troy!" calls out Malcolm. The crowd applauds approval.
"I will not be spoken to as a common man!" blusters the blackfriar.
"Oh, you're a common enough sinner," I throw in.
"So if you're common, you must be nae man, so we'll speak to ye as a bab in't cradle!" Malcolm says.
From my recorder bell I begin "From the Nightingale's Lips," a baby's nursery rhyme.
"Oh wee-welly-whillikins, hark at the sweetcakes, dursten't thou, oh my precious ward," croons Malcolm, clasping his hands to his cheek.
The crowd laughs, and we get our first truly unexpected reaction--tears. The blackfriar, a grown man in black monk's robes, a huge wooden cross and beads dangling around his neck, cracks, and weeps uncontrollably.
My sympathy is stirred.
"Why do you weep?" I ask without mockery.
Fury and tears mingle. The blackfriar seems unable to depart and unable to speak. The crowd is transfixed, and nobody moves. They've found something outlandish to ogle: that rarest of all God's creatures, a weeping blackfriar.
Through gritted teeth, the man forces three words out: "I demand respect!"
"Earn our respect," I say, "by refuting our words through fair discourse."
Malcolm gives me a cursory glance--he prefers his cutting remarks to fair discourse, I think--then says: "Have ye nae sinned, Papa Frére? Nae broken the vows you wear over your saggy man's bosoms?"
Tears of unusual intensity. "I have not come to Brystow to be cut down with the devil's words!"
"You don't deny our accusations?" I say. I'm not crowing, not playing the recorder. I rest the bell on my toes. The crowd is rapt.
"My sins are not under discussion!"
"Ah, but I thenk they are, et that," says Malcolm. "I'll trade all of this--" and he grabs his ring-awakened manhood--"and eke one of these--" he points just lower--"to hear ye say truthfully that you're nae father to a single brat in fair England or France."
The blackfriar screws up his face in frustration.
"On the other hand," I say, and I hear an angel singing, "I'll give you a shilling if you admit you've fathered a child."
Malcolm gives me a glance. That's a lot of money, money we need, but I feel certain about this. He slips his hand down his sleeve into his suit, reaches down and pulls up the green woodsman's large shilling coin from the feet of his costume. Flicked, the coin lands in my quick hand. It's quite a large coin, but thin, with the face of the old Danish King Knot.
A roar from the maybe fifty, maybe seventy-five people watching.
"Ef you can look us in the eye and say ye've nae children, that ye've kept all your vows, I'll cut myself off and ye'll walk home with a candied fool's wilkin," Malcolm says. "And ef you can squeeze the honest truth out of your clenched-butt lips, this bright shiny and round shelling es yours to carry around with ye for the day."
Shutting his eyes, squeezing his arms tight around his body, as if it were cold under his thick woollen cassock, the blackfriar silently snatches the coin from me and pushes his way through the crowd.
Uproar and delight.
"Lucky us we guessed aright," Malcolm whispers as I begin playing "Rybbesdale" as loudly as I can.
At the end of the shower of coins, at the other side of the song and a second shower, we've counted two new shilling coins and a million pence and tuppence and farthings.
As evening thickens and clay oil lanthorns are hoisted onto poles, we discover to our considerable astonishment that we haven't eaten at all today, that we have more pennies than the horns will hold, and that the widow seamstress is standing over the overhang of the ditch.
"God keep you, Ma'am," I say, and try to lift my horns. They jingle, and a few pennies drip away. I gather them.
"Do you know what you've done, you two?" she asks, not too loudly.
Our eyes traverse up the embankment to where she stands. I have no idea what she means to say.
"You've taken my mind off my life for a full day," she says, standing quite still. Her legs are built for stomping grapes, and her dress is undyed. She wears no wimple, merely a linen towel wrapped around her hair; several folds of white cloth drape down carelessly. Sweat stands out on her hard face.
"Yes'm," I say, grabbing my forelock in the English style. Coins shower from me, and she bursts with an unaccustomed smile.
"You probably don't know," she says, her hands hanging down her sides, "but they're all talking about you two."
"Are they?" says Malcolm, looking at me.
"Yes, that's right," she says, and she lets herself down to sit on the overhang of the ditch. She's still maybe six feet above us. "It was John of Shaftesbury who began speaking of you two, he did. I heard him round the aletent, was recounting the whole story. Mentioned a great deal of butt-slapping, said you managed to attend his bogeys with the tip of your toe. He was quite taken, let me say."
Malcolm and I share a look.
"A lot of the fellers weren't coming 'round this square of the fair for to purchase goods, I'll have you know. They were here for you."
I find myself quite pleased. Malcolm is blushing through freckles.
"I've never been half so happy to have the Fool School in our stretch, I'll tell you." She scratches her thigh through her dun dress. "Made me feel a girl again, and it's been quite a time since I felt that way." She sneezes. "That man Ethman, he'd have loved to hear your jestin', yes Lord he would of."
I feel a voice in my ear. I am led to say what I say, and, in the ways of angels, it wound up making a great deal of difference in the way things have gone for me.
Guided, I say: "Would you speak of your Ethman?"
"Ah, but I have no heart for jestin' of him--"
"No Ma'am," I say, "we may be jesters, but it's the nature of the fool to tear down the proud and speak well of the humble, for that's as Christ would want, I trow."
The seamstress looks away, toward where the sun has gone down. It's quite dark now, even with the oil lanthorn lighting the ditchway.
"He was--" She stops and curses herself. I feel that there is goodness in having her speak. Neither of us interrupt her; we mer
ely wait.
"He was no more than a tanner's boy till he was quite an old man," she says, not loud enough to be heard past our ears. "His master was a poor tanner, and a fiend for drink, and proud, and took out his own failings on my man. Each night I'd undress my husband to find a--a fallow field of bruises across his back and chest. I'd always say he needed to leave his master, I did, but my husband was not an abandoner."
I hear the woman's deep breath.
"He stayed. He'd produce tanned leather in the style of his master, and it wasn't good quality, because his master had no idea how to tan. Not a master of the trade he wasn't. There are some men who have no talent at any job, but insist on employing themselves, and teach themselves a trade, but go the wrong way 'round. My husband's master took him on as someone to blame for the bad leather.
"It was four years ago. In the spring," she says. "A shipment of Gascony rawhides of the finest quality came. The ship's man was doing business in England, and knew nothing of leather, and thought to have the leather improved before he sold it. As I said, he knew not a blessed thing about leather, and spoke little Saxon or Brython, and blundered his way to my husband's master.
"Fourteen pounds he offered," she says quietly, and both us boys gasp. A king doesn't have fourteen pounds on his person in jewels day to day. That's a coronation crown and enough wine to fill every fountain in France.
"Of course he took the commission. Of course he did. And of course he mixed his curing lot wrong, and tried to do them all at once, in a big bog ditch, and turned the hides to shrivelled shit."
She sighs and apologizes for her indelicate speech. "And the fool ship's man--no offense, my two fools--" We grin appreciatively. "The ship's man demands the cost of the Gascony hides. Eighteen pounds he demands. My husband's master had two pounds four saved from a lifetime of work, and I had one pound two myself, saved from my Ethman's pay. The ship's man took them both to court, and with his foreign tongue he demanded the difference from the hundreds. My Ethman's master was sentenced to a decade in debtor's, but before they took him, he went and beat my husband until his insides burst."
She is not crying. We have scrambled up the short slope now and sit beside her. She stares ahead very hard, as if she doesn't understand.
"He died in my arms," she says very deliberately. Her eyes turn to me. "I spend every Sunday asking the--well, that's not true," she says. More quietly: "I spend every day asking the Lord why he brought my husband upon the earth. What was his life spent for? What did he learn from this life?"
"Perhaps it wasn't him that God meant to teach," I say softly.
She is very quick, she understands me immediately: "Then what am I to learn?"
"Ef you let the world brutalize ye," Malcolm says, "perhaps you're naught but a whipping boy, and not a man."
"He was weak, yes," she says. "But a love of a man, my man was."
"Did you learn about love from him?" I ask.
For a moment she thinks, and then she says: "Yes."
"Then his life was spent well," I say, and we have made her cry, tears of release. Malcolm looks past her to me. I place a hand cautiously on her shoulder and she allows me to embrace her.
Carefully, chastely, I kiss her forehead, and she wipes her tears, but there are more, a river of salt.
"I said I'd have a quarter-shilling for you," she says, but Malcolm stops her.
"Nae," he whispers. "For you we gave a day of distraction, and for us ye've geven a story of truth, and I believe those to be twain in price, thenk-ye-not, Tom?"
"If you'd like to do us more service, share a bowl of good stew with us," I say. "We haven't eaten."
So it is we secure our coins, she her sewing, and traverse to a tent where a cauldron of lamb stew simmers. Here. At the table in the aletent. See our sore feet, our muscles all aching, and our red shoes in a pile beneath the off-centered table clunking back and forth as we set down drinks. I untie my costume's booties, and a bit of smell emerges from them, and the barwoman scolds me good-naturedly, and the seamstress laughs loud at this, she's getting quite drunk. We lift mug after mug together with her. And it feels good it should be so. It's been a day's work today.
Her name is Hilda, and she has a farm between Brystow and Bath.
As we depart at the end of the night, she tells us we are welcome at her humble house anytime.
* * *
"You know what we need?" I say as we head to the flagpole. "We need a Jew to change our coins, so we have enough room for tomorrow's."
We ask around, and stumble to a tent with a yellow star sewn to the front.
A sleepy-looking man with a big beard of white and black and a small yellow hat welcomes us.
"Come in, come in, couldn't it have been earlier?" he mumbles, smacking his lips. I find myself disgusted by him at once. Everyone knows Jews bathe so often because they're naturally dirty.
"Ef et had been earlier, we'd nae have all our coins," snaps Malcolm, who sometimes gets testy after his ale.
"So it would, so it would. Have you come for a loan?"
There are a number of small boxes like jewelry boxes scattered around the tent, and I see to my surprise a huge woman with two bare swords standing in the shadows, as motionless as a statue. "Ah, don't mind her, she's quite under my command," he says, and I feel strange shades of Wolfweir in his meaning, it makes it feel like I'm looking into a mirror at my own pledge to do as Wolf tells me, I suddenly turn away and reach into my hose and cause the circle of birch switches to pop off from where it clasps me. I tuck it into the wool bag.
"We need our coins changed to the highest change," I say.
"Certainly, certainly. That will be five pence," he says.
"You expect us to donate our coins to ye for naught but shufflin' them around?" Malcolm says, exploding.
The Jew levels his beady eyes at Malcolm. "If you don't like my price, then don't use my service," he says, shrugging.
"That's not fair," I say, coming to Malcolm's defense. "We expect to leave here with the same amount of money we came in with--"
"Then do so," says the Jew, shrugging.
"Only in different coins!" I shout.
"My time is not free," says the Jew. "Pay for my services, or don't."
Malcolm and I look at each other. Everyone has heard of the Mammon-worship of the Jews, but this is obscenity. Five pence is nearly as much as my father offered the harborman for actual hard work, for arranging for a man to physically row me across the ocean!
I take a deep breath, and feel spew and bile rising up. It tastes of carrot and strong ale. I choke it back down.
"We'll pay," I say, swallowing, "but we won't like it."
The Jew gives me a look, shrugs and tells me to unload my coins. "If you're sure," he adds.
Malcolm helps me shake out the coins from my horn--I'd take it off, but the horns are sewn into the hood, and the hood to the motley.
In no time at all--seriously, no time--the Jew has arranged the coins into stacks of twelve, collecting twenty such stacks, and asking us to count them.
"You want us to count them? To do your work for you for?" I ask.
"Is this a pound?" he asks in his reedy voice.
"Do you want us to count them for you?" I repeat. I steady myself on his table. My mouth fills with stew and ale again, and I swallow reluctantly.
"Is twelve pence a shilling?" the Jew asks. I roll my eyes. "And twenty shillings a pound?" he goes on. I want to kill him for his dirty-sounding voice. "Then this is a pound, yes?"
"It es," says Malcolm, with violence in his tone.
The Jew takes a wooden latchbox and sweeps all our hard-earned coins into it. They mix with other silver pence and are lost to us forever. I didn't think to keep out our first coin for luck, or perhaps our first shilling. The Jew has stolen our coins and given us a Roman gold pound coin in return. I feel like sitting down, but realize I'm already sitting.
Next he makes new stacks of twelve, there are two, and sweeps them into the latch
box. He produces two large shillings from another box and lays them on the table. Candles in good glass sconces gutter--he's so rich, he can afford clear glass for no more purpose than a tent at a fair. What if it should break? He could reach into these boxes and purchase another. He could have one commissioned. All by thieving from us poor folk. The Jew is a magpie, I feel, and I hate him so much.
When he selects five particularly shiny pence of ours to keep, Malcolm speaks up.
"How do we know ye dedn't take a few extra in those piles you were making?" he says dangerously. "You've fingers nigh slippery enough to steal one pence for every two you swapped away."
The Jew rolls his eyes, as if he were dismissing the accusations. "We counted each stack together," he says. "Remember?"
I take the pound coin and the two shillings and produce more pence from my hose and I say: "Finish changing our money."
"Nope," says the Jew. "I have one simple rule: whenever someone accuses me of stealing, the transaction ends there. No refunds."
He sits back in his German chair and crosses his arms.
"You didn't even finish the job we paid you for!" I explode.
His beady eyes level with me. "Why accuse me of stealing?" he says. "I didn't. I take offense that you'd call me a thief."
"How'd you get so many coins ef you didn't pick them from pockets?" Malcolm yells.
"I loaned out what I had, in exchange for payment," says the Jew. "Anyone who doesn't want a loan on the terms I offer is welcome not to accept them, just as you were."
"That's filthy usury, that is!" Malcolm exclaims. "A loan's naught but charity, and what sort of thief charges for charity?"
"I don't make loans out of charity," the Jew sniffs. "I make loans for businessman, and only at their own request. Look at it this way: say you wanted to start a business, but couldn't afford the tools. You come to me, get a loan, and buy the tools. Then you make some money and pay me back, plus my payment for the use of my money."
"And what do ye do when they earn jos' enough to get victual on the table for their family?" says Malcolm. It's getting very dark now. "You steal from the mouths of a man's children, that's 'ut!"