An Antic Disposition

I
n memory of Susan Snyder
,Professor of English Literature, Swarthmore College, in whose living room I spent many happy hours discussing Shakespeare, and who also loved Gaudy Night.Well, God give them wisdom that have it, and those that are fools, let them use their talents.”—Twelfth Night,
Act
I,
Scene
VThis fool humbly thanks you for sharing your wisdom.

T
he Black Forest
, despite its foreboding name, is a pleasant enough place to spend one’s summer. There are roads that penetrate it sufficiently to allow passage to the occasional pilgrim or peddler, and paths branching off from these roads for the braver hunters seeking the more elusive and dangerous prey. If you truly know what you are looking for, you might come across a stand of brush that is actually movable, if you took the time and trouble to move it. But there being no point to moving a stand of brush in the middle of a forest, you would go your own way, hoping to find shelter before sundown.

If you had taken the time and trouble to move it, and I recommend having at least one other person helping in this endeavor unless you enjoy being scratched or having branches whip back into your face, which at least has the benefit of amusing your companions who stood and watched you rather than helping, no doubt expecting that very result, then you would find, to your surprise, a path wide enough to accommodate a wagon drawn by a pair of horses. You might even find evidence that several such wagons had traveled this path fairly recently, although we usually are quite careful about erasing our tracks for a good distance after replacing the concealing greenery. If you then follow the path, and are not taken by our sentries, who are very well hidden, by the way, so that even I have trouble spotting them, you will emerge upon a small valley deep within the forest, unknown even to those who think they know these woods well. There is a stream, and a farm with several fields of crops as well as pastures for sheep and cattle. The very ordinariness of the scene is jarring set as it is in the middle of nowhere.

Yet, on closer inspection, the activity you would see on this farm is far from ordinary. An unusually large number of children would be running about doing the chores. Some of them will be herding the cattle while walking on stilts; some will be juggling the scythes used for harvesting, or standing with ease on the backs of trotting horses. You will hear songs from every corner, in every language, and you will think that you have stumbled upon some magical fairyland.

Unless you are a fool, in which case you have come to the right place. For this is the new location of the Fools’ Guild.

We had to pack up and run from the old Guildhall, our
crazy
tumble of stones and beams in the Dolomites. Pope Innocent III had decided that enough was enough. Our usefulness to the Church was outweighed by our subversion of its hypocrisy. Rome saw our mockery as a greater threat to its power than any Saracen army lurking on its borders, and sent papal troops to put an end to our mischief.

But we saw it coming long before they did, and the troops arrived to find an empty hall and a village ignorant of our whereabouts, while we toiled on our new haven to provide enough shelter for the Guildmasters, the novitiates, and any visiting fools and troubadours staying through the winter.

We felt safe from the locals here. Swabia has an old habit of respecting fools. The historians of the Guild have often speculated that we originated in Swabia, where the
Narrenzunjt
tradition predates Christianity. Even now, amidst all the saints’ days, the villagers don masks and costumes in February and have a fools’ festival to drive away the winter. And the winter always goes away.

There is a competing theory that we were derived from the old Dionysian festivals. My personal opinion is that we came from everywhere, and at some point the Guild just sprang into being centuries ago. It’s difficult to know for sure when all you have are stories passed down from generation to generation. But those are one of our specialties, so they are as reliable as anything written down. I think writing is overrated as a means of preserving the past. Why should it be considered any more authoritative, just because some opinionated person with a little schooling had access to quill, ink, and paper?

The farm had only been partly prepared for our arrival. It had served as an asylum for old or incapacitated fools without any other means of survival, and the family running it did not have enough provisions stored to take care of the sudden onslaught of children. So, we jugglers, tumblers, tale-tellers, and musicians were pressed into strange and unfamiliar physical labors. Those proficient with bow and arrow, such as my wife and fellow jester, Claudia, turned huntsmen, bringing back deer that were roasted in pit fires for the evening meals. Able-bodied men such as myself were handed axes much larger than the ones we used for juggling and sent to make war against the surrounding trees. A new Guildhall was constructed next to the barn, with space enough for four different classes to be held simultaneously as a new generation learned the foolish arts.

In the afternoons, after the children returned from the fields and the adults from the forests, when everyone was spent, the real training began. Languages, music, dancing, repertoire, disguises, juggling, tumbling, fighting, passwords, and poisoning. The arts needed to entertain, the skills needed to accomplish our hidden goals, the wits needed to survive.

Every other day I taught tumbling and pratfalls in the barn, using the bales of hay as both seating and padding. On Saturdays I taught knives, both for throwing and fighting. Today, however, I was between classes, and back to hewing innocent trees, my tunic off and the leggings of my motley drenched in sweat. I was in the middle of chopping a newly fallen spruce into firewood when I looked up to see my wife watching me, idly tossing and catching three balls with one hand, her bow in the other.

“You’re getting too muscular for your motley,” she observed. “We have to be careful that you don’t lose your flexibility. You’re supposed to be a jester, not a strong man.”

“You could always put me at the base of the pyramid for acrobatics,” I said, twirling the ax over my head.

She looked at it with interest.

“I wonder if there are any tricks we could do with an ax that big,” she said. “It’s too large to juggle. Have you tried anything with it?”

“Just this,” I said, and I spun and flung it with a two-handed grip. It turned end over end in the air and split a sapling about twenty feet away.

“Not bad,” she said. “That should get us the price of a drink in most taverns, as long as we don’t have to pay for the damage.”

She fetched it and hefted it experimentally.

“Too big for me,” she pronounced.

“It’s a prop,” I said. “Play it for laughs.”

She plunged it into the fallen spruce, spat into each hand, grabbed the handle, and lifted. It didn’t budge. She grimaced, spat twice into each hand, and heaved with all her might. The blade came up abruptly over her head, flying end over end and embedding itself in a tree trunk behind her as she fell onto her rump.

“Very nice,” I said, helping her back to her feet.

She glanced behind her at the ax, its handle still quivering.

“That wasn’t the tree I was aiming for,” she said. “I had better practice before we try it on a live audience. We want them to leave as a live audience.”

“We’ll have plenty of time to practice,” I said. “Father Gerald doesn’t want to send any of us out until next spring when the fury has abated a little.”

“Next spring!” she said in dismay. “We are going to be cooped up on this farm until then?”

“I’m afraid so,” I said. “But we won’t be cooped up, exactly. There are woods to explore, and songs to learn, and stories from all over Europe to hear. It’s a rare opportunity, in a way.”

I loaded the cut wood onto a sledge and pulled the harness over my shoulders.

“I just worry that we could be trapped here,” she said.

“No one can find us,” I assured her. “And it will give Portia a little more time to grow before we have to travel with her again. This is as safe a place for a baby as any.”

“Speaking of which, where is she?” asked my wife.

“She’s with Brother Dennis,” I said.

“She’s with Brother Dennis,” she repeated, “You left her with an ostler who cares more about horses than about people. You left her in the stables with a blacksmith’s fire and several large and irritable animals for her to play with. Where in your feeble mind did you come up with the notion that this constituted safety?”

“Dennis is very good with children,” I said. “It’s the adults he has trouble with. And Zeus will keep the other horses away from her. He adores Portia, maybe the only human he’s ever taken to. Besides, she’s in her cradle and can’t crawl yet, so …”

There was a sudden commotion from the direction of the stables— a man shouting from inside and other fools dashing to help. Claudia gave me a look that said, “I told you so,” another that said, “And I’ll tell you again and even more later,” and sprinted toward the barn. It took me a few seconds to untangle myself from the harness and follow her.

The cradle was empty, and fools were ransacking the piled hay, searching for our daughter.

“I swear, I just took my eye off her for a moment,” protested Brother Dennis as Claudia grimly went from stall to stall. “I thought she didn’t know how to crawl yet. She’s only seven months old.”

“They say that at seven months I was already telling the servants what I wanted,” said Claudia. “The women in my family run to the precocious. Ah, there you are, my little scamp.”

Portia had found Zeus’s stall and had crawled under the gate to see her friend. She had both arms wrapped around his right foreleg, and the terror of the equine kingdom was nuzzling her gently.

“He’s your horse,” said Claudia, “’fou do the honors.”

“Toss me a carrot, Dennis,” I asked. I caught the vegetable and carefully entered the stall. “What say, old friend? Shall I trade you a snack for my daughter?”

Zeus looked up from Portia at the proffered bribe, then back at the baby. An instant later, the carrot was but a sticky stump. I reached down to pry Portia’s arms away. She started sobbing, reaching for Zeus’s muzzle as I lifted her up.

“Give her here,” commanded my wife, and she took our daughter and started nursing her. She looked at the stable entrance, where several of the younger novitiates were watching with interest.

“I don’t have enough for the rest of you,” barked my wife, and they scattered, giggling. She grabbed one girl by the scruff of her blouse and hauled her back. She was about ten, with a plump face and hair that might have been blond if washed.

“What’s your name?” asked Claudia.

“Helga,” said the girl.

“I have a proposition for you, Helga,” said Claudia. “Be Portia’s nanny while I’m hunting, and I’ll teach you how to use a bow properly.” Helga looked up at her, considering.

“Will you teach me a language, too?” she asked.

Claudia grinned. “Which one?” she asked.

“They say you speak the Arab tongue like a native,” said the girl. “I would dearly love to know it.”

“Done,” said Claudia. “But be careful what you bargain for. If you learn enough Arabic, the Guild may send you to Beyond-the-Sea for your mission, and that’s dangerous territory.”

“I’m not afraid,” Helga declared, and she held her arms out for the baby to prove it. Portia, having nursed and burped, nestled into the new nanny complacently.

“I like her,” said Claudia as I retrieved my sledge and hauled the firewood into the Guildhall. “Maybe we should keep her.”

“She’s learning to become a jester, not a nanny,” I said. “You’ll be lucky if Father Gerald lets her do this much.”

“Forgive me, Father,” she muttered. “A question, husband.”

“Yes?”

“With so much raillery against the Church, why does the Guild rely upon so many religious to run everything? Father Gerald, Brother Dennis, Brother Timothy, Sister Agatha …”

“They’re a special order,” I said. “They don’t upset us.”

“Are they fools who took vows, or religious who became fools?”

“Some of each, over the years,” I said. “Sometimes a fool wearies of jesting, and seeks a simpler existence within the Guild. Sometimes we hear of a young monk or novice who cannot take ecclesiastical authority seriously, and we recruit them. Carefully.”

“But don’t they submit to Rome?”

“Rome thinks so,” I said. “But this order was founded by a fool, they say, and instructs its members to ignore Rome when they feel it has lost its way.”

“Has the Guild ever been banned before?”

“Oh, yes,” I said. “There’s an old burial yard around here somewhere from the last time the Guild fled the mountains. Sometime in the ninth century, they say, but that’s before my time. Father Gerald might remember it.”

“Oh, I might, might I?” came the irritable Irish rasp of our leader behind us.

“Why, Father Gerald,” I exclaimed. “I had no idea that you were in earshot.”

“Save it for the paying customers, Theophilos,” said Father Gerald. “I know you too well.”

He was an ancient man, with a face as cracked as a cobbled street after an earthquake. He had gone blind three years back, and relied on a simple oaken staff that became an extension of his body. And his will— he was known to dodder about, tapping the staff’s end uncertainly, then suddenly whip around, pointing it unerringly at whoever it was who gave him cause for ire. Having seen him in my youth wield that same staff to more deadly effect, I kept my eyes on it whenever it was anywhere near me.

“I understand, Theo, that your daughter nearly escaped today,” said Father Gerald.

“Yes, but…” I stopped. The staff’s end was suddenly an inch from my nose.

“But nothing,” he said. “’Vbu knew better than to leave her with Brother Dennis. The man’s too distractible to be a nanny.”