Fool School (31 page)

Next he makes new stacks of twelve, there are two,
and sweeps them into the latchbox. 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!"

I expect the Jew to order us out of his shop, to
speak harshly, as a Frenchman would. But he doesn't. He prefers to
bandy slimy words with us, arguing and arguing, I see he will argue
with us all night if we let him, so I decide to end it.

"Finish the job we paid you for, or give us our pence
back," I say. Sweat from the ale has nearly frozen on my skin from
the draft from the door, the Jew cannot even manage to keep a warm
shop. He's like a reptile, a snake.

The Jew shrugs, selects a pile of choice
quartered-farthings of ours and selects another shilling.

But as he has left the pound chest open, I reach in
and take a pound. The woman with the swords stirs and holds them
out in my path and swings, but I flatten myself, I duck beneath the
tent wall and pull up the canvas and run. In my hands are two
pounds and two shillings. Malcolm is close to my heels, and I'm
terrified of the swordwoman, who emerges through the tentflaps and
sees that we are gone.

After a few minutes of running, we spot the flagpole
on its triangular tower and make for it.

Everyone but Nuncle is asleep beneath it. He's quite
a pack of smiles despite the late hour, and when I produce two
pounds--I've sequestered the two shillings in my shoe, this is a
considerable amount of money--Nuncle positively glows.

"Oh, yes," he says, leaning over my ear, "I've heard
quite the myths and legends of you two. 'Fools of the Common,'
they're calling you. 'The Peoples' Fools.' 'The Ones Who Brought a
Blackfriar to Mary's Tears.' "

I receive a big wink.

"You did good," he says, taking the pounds and giving
me a knowing look and a second wink. "Sleep now, Fools of the
Common. Tomorrow do more."

Nuncle kisses the top of my head, through the hood,
which feels unaccustomed, somehow. Then he adds: "Where's your
recorder?"

A deja vu rises up in my throat. I see the
wharfmaster behind me, the Church of St. Martin's ahead,
frustration in my breast, and I spin, my trunks left behind on the
dock. And all the catastrophe afterward, my suit losing its royal
purple and embroidery, and getting nothing back in return.

My recorder is in the House of the Jew.

It is.

I will claim that he stole it. Nobody will doubt me.
And in this way, I'll get my recorder back without having to look
him in his beady eye and apologize for the pound coin. A Jew is too
slimy to apologize to.

I skin out of my devil's motley, being careful not to
reveal the sequestered shillings--I feel Nuncle would permit me to
keep them, but you never know--and I realize that without my
recorder I'll be unable to do much fooling tomorrow. It'll either
be all insults (which will be intensely stressful, it makes me
crazy to insult great men), or I'll need to buy a tuppence
recorder, which will be humiliating, I can't have that. Or I'll
need to accuse the Jew first thing in the morning.

The turf is dusty, it feels nearly slippery below me,
and I still have the wool bag, and Wolfweir is awake, looking at
us, and I whisper to her that it worked, the rings, and she gives
us a devious grin and returns to sleep, curling up strangely, like
an otter.

Malcolm is shaking, and I take him in my arms and he
tells me he fears the Jew and his swordwoman-slave. I tell him my
plan to recover my recorder, and he tells me it'll help to calm his
nerves if we do it first thing tomorrow.

Sleep, a hard ground sort of sleep, and no
dreams.

In the foggy ugly morning we two trot away from
Nuncle's campsite and begin looking for a bailiff or magistrate. We
find ourselves recognized, attracting attention from the occasional
fairgoer expecting insults, but we're both preoccupied, we leave
lots of people disappointed.

There's an actual courthouse in the dense center of
the fair--a little wood-frame village is built here, it stands
empty for three hundred sixty-two days a year. Up a wooden step
smelling strongly of timber and pitch, the wood quite unfinished,
actually very pleasant in its way, we find several lawmen speaking
to a small assortment of bewronged. We wait in line.

After a time, the woman ahead of us has described
some thief, and they write it up dutifully and give her a date to
present her case at the Brystow Fair Court, and we step forward and
a clerk and bailiff give us their complete attention.

"The Jew in the, um, one of the tents, he stole my
good recorder," I mumble. I have trouble with eye contact, but then
I am merely a cherubic boy--I'm dressed in my tunic and hose now,
my horned devil costume is in the wool bag. I figured dressing as a
devil would be contraindicated in court.

"Which tent?" asks the clerk, scribbling.

I have no idea where it is or even if I could find it
again. I was very drunk.

"He had a lady with him, bearing crossed clays for
protection," says Malcolm.

"Crossed--? Oh, Rabin," says the bailiff. "Really? He
took your recorder?"

The bailiff is very mild, a big man wearing a studded
hauberk crossed with a sash with the shield of Brystow sewn on it.
He reminds me of Stan. Perhaps all lawmen are alike. Perhaps there
is only one lawman, the Universal Bailiff, and all others are
merely reflections.

I look at my shoes and nod. I am a coward, but the
Brystow bailiff will believe me eventually, because this Rabin is a
Jew, and everybody hates those.

The bailiff makes a face and shrugs. "All right,
let's go talk to him."

Mortification. I will need to look the Jew in the eye
and accuse him wrongly. A gold pound-
libra
coin sits in
Nuncle's pouch. Can I do this?

I couldn't do it to a Christian, I feel certain of
that. I'm not a monster, I don't lie without reason. Not where
Godfearers are concerned.

The bailiff comes around the side of the desk and
Malcolm and I follow him out of the courthouse, saying nothing and
making no eye contact.

The sun is blinding, it makes sweat stand out from my
flanks. I'm glad I'm not fooling right now. The way is long, and we
have to follow many ditchways and traverse around many corners. The
Brystow bailiff likes to cut through people's workplaces; I step
over so many piles of work stuff, through so many backsides of
booths, past men counting coins, women sewing. I realize I've set
something awful in motion now, I want to tell this stupid bailiff
that I'm lying, but I think maybe the Jew will just hand over my
recorder and say nothing of the pound coin in Nuncle's pocket and
that'll be the end of it. So many tentpoles to trip over.

There is the object of my abhorrence, the Jew's tent.
Shivers touch me involuntarily, and I see Malcolm's loathing too. I
know all his moods and he's bathing in fear right now. I wince as
the bailiff throws back the tentflap and shouts, "Ho there,
Rabin!"

"Ho, Barns!" That reedy, distasteful voice. They know
each other. "What's the--oh, those two." He's spotted us. I want to
curl up and die like a maggot on a dry riverbank.

"Is there a recorder in here?" the Brystow bailiff
Barns asks.

"Recorder?" says the Jew. "No, I haven't seen one.
But here's the pennies they left behind from last night. I'll trade
them for the pound coin they took. I've never approved of children
drinking to drunkenness, it's bad parenting."

"Oh, were they drunk?" says Barns. "Pound coin?"

"He stole my recorder and he's already sold it!" I
say.

"You didn't bring an instrument case in with you,"
this Rabin says, "except for that little bag you've got."

"He's committing acts of
usury
!" Malcolm
exclaims.

Barns rolls his eyes. "That's his
job
," he
says. Then: "Listen, you two, if Rabin says you didn't bring your
toys in with you, I believe him, okay? And now what's this about a
pound coin?"

"But he's a
Jew
," I moan.

Why isn't this convincing anybody?

"I know well that en your England under your
Hardknot, usury's a crime, et es," says Malcolm.

Barns goes very cold. "Rabin's a trustworthy member
of our town," he says. "You're not. Apparently, since you say
nothing to the contrary, I believe you two to be drunken thieves.
But you could bring a great deal of harm to him with talk like
that. Brystow needs men like him. So don't you two start any
trouble in here."

"He stole my recorder and a whole bunch of pennies
and I need my recorder back and he's a usurer!" I shout as loud as
I can.

The swordwoman--who's standing in the exact same
position as she was last night, I wonder if she sleeps there,
standing up--gives the Jew a look. He shakes his head.

I imagine the appearance of a passing nobleman, he is
this tall, a good chin, wearing not purple but fine blue cloth, he
pushes the tentflap open and comes in, introduces himself, he hates
Jews too, he declares that he heard my declaration and he hates
usury and he demands the bailiff hang the Jew for his crime, and
the bailiff resists, but the nobleman threatens to bring the whole
courthouse to London and attest to the king, and so Barns complies
and takes the Jew to the gallows, I see the Jew hanging by a noose,
and this frustratingly stubborn Brystow bailiff sits crying beneath
the dead body, he cries and cries for his friend, and I heave a
deep breath and I'm crying too, I realize with a pimple-burst of
disgust that I want to kill the Jew even though
I'm
the one
who stole from
him
, I'm un-Christian, I must find a priest
and confess, I hate my cowardice, and once again my imagination
bursts and I run out of the tent into the sunlight and my breath is
hardly filling my lungs, I want to crush my head beneath a
blacksmith's hammer, and I run and trip and fall and find myself
flying headlong into a mudpit where a potter has been kilning, but
the potter is elsewhere, I'm covered with mud and the nearest men
call out: "John! John Shaftes! It's your butt-slapper, covered with
mud!"

I'm lucky the mud covers my face, I have no doubt
that my face is bright red. I must perform for this wodewose man
again in a moment, this fact penetrates my addled, hating,
un-Christian mind, I'm going to have to pretend to be a happy
fool--no, I can't, my self-loathing is too strong, I'll have to
play off of my despair--

For a brief moment I imagine I could raise a mob, say
things that would convince these people to kill the Jew for me. I
almost--

My mind fixates on it. All I have to do is say the
Jew stole the shilling John of Shaftesbury gave me, they'd believe
me--

Aarrgh, I'm such a coward--

To keep away from this lush new sin, I fill my mind
with the last time I struggled so. Liza. I remember my original sin
of omission, when I didn't mention that the guilty priest was
following us. I can repress my cowardice if I dwell on her
moonfaced innocence, my guilt. I caused her to be put in the pit,
where no woman or man belongs. I condemned her. I dwell on it, that
girl, that girl, my sin, I will not cause the innocent Jew to lose
his life as Liza did, I will overcome my sinful hatred. Love for
every man, is what Malcolm said, I will dwell on this--

"Well, my young tormentor, seems times have changed,"
John of Shaftesbury says, pulling me to my feet. "Whither were you
running, O muddy fool?"

"A girl!" I exclaim before I have constructed my
thoughts or my story. I leap into the air, then put my fists on my
hips. "I was rejected by the love of my life! I was so in love with
her that I gave my recorder away to buy her a ring, but like a
cruel trollop she has rejected me and in my anger I threw the ring
away and now I have no recorder and no recorder and nothing in the
world but love! Poor, forlorn and unreciprocated love! I am like
Christ." I throw myself to my knees and pretend to rend my
garments.