Fool School (35 page)

"Christ," says Malcolm.

"And Christ is . . .?" asks Rabin.

"The Son?" I say.

"Jews pray to God the Father," says Rabin.
"Christians pray to God the Son. Same God."

The same God?

"D'ye thenk," Malcolm muses, squeezing his fingers
with the other hand, "the Saracens--do they worship God in the Holy
Spirit?"

Rabin shrugs uncomfortably. "I wouldn't know," he
says.

"Ef--" Malcolm begins, "ef you worship the same Laird
as us, why--why should we differ so?"

Rabin sips his wine. "I really don't think we differ
so much at all. Do we differ more than the French from the Scots
differ? More than the Welsh from the Danes? Are we not all
neighbors?"

"I'm sorry I took the coin from you," I manage.

"And I for my poor speech," says Malcolm.

Rabin thinks, searches his boxes and produces seven
shillings ten and ha'.

"I'm not going to accept Richard's money," says
Rabin. "I appreciate your apologies, and since I am made whole,
this money is yours. Shall we leave as friends?"

We both take a breath, a deeper breath, and I feel
shame-tears breaking through.

"Aye," whimpers Malcolm, and produces a hand, which
Rabin shakes. I shake too, although I am crying.

A shadow crosses me, and the swordwoman kisses the
top of my head.

And we are gone from there.

We find a dark secluded spot and just recover. Breath
comes haltingly, and I'm still crying, but we now have room to
confront our sins.

"Wouldye confess with me?" asks Malcolm. I nod. With
our bag and my recorder, we walk in the torchlight toward the city
of Brystow, past the guild checkpoint, to the dark road. In our
way, we don't speak, we allow the cold air to chill us, we press
together as we walk, we feel the road through our shoes, we live, a
pair of lifes walking.

"Will we go t' the Goodbarry alehouse eke?" Malcolm
asks.

"Do you know where it is?" I ask.

"Not a blessed idea, but I'd say a spread pair of
legs is waiting for us there. Remember what Perille said of the
fair? Women love the fools, he said."

"Do you--do you want to--?" I ask.

"It's sleep I'm wanting," says Malcolm. "And
Wolfweir's blessing." I nod. It makes one angry, having to hold
everything in, but it's what is meant for us.

Brystow Cathedral. In a late haze we stumble through
the doors and across the floor and between wooden pillars and we
call out and there is no light but firelight and my back and legs
feel hollow and we wake a pair of acolytes and they mumble
obscenities and rise to take our confession.

The familiarity of being alone in a box. I speak
about the Jew, not even keeping track of my words, they pour forth
and the priest's boy listens and Malcolm is not beside me, they've
taken him to a second room, and I mouth words but now the acolyte
is peeking in through the cell door and has lifted me by my
underarms and guides me to a trestle bed, and the last thing I
remember is the comfort of straw and a frame of dark wood and a bat
flitting against the ceiling.

Day. My ram's horns have scraped my ear as I slept,
and my ear is bleeding. Crusts of brown and red-black blood turn to
powder as I rub my head. I push myself risen, pull myself over the
edge of this coffin-shaped bed. I feel a dead man. I feel my ghost
has left me. As I sit with my butt bisected by the thin frame of
the bed, I think, do each of us have a ghost that accompanies our
soul? Perhaps that's what turns bad when we lose control. Not a
goblin but a ghost, a perky cloud scuttling through our arms and
legs, and when we die, we give up the ghost. Perhaps it's the Holy
Spirit, infesting us all. Perhaps I'm crazy.

I'm in a hallway. Men come through wearing off-white
robes, snowflake-men. A hand lands on my shoulder and I'm led to a
cafeteria, where I'm given porridge. An acolyte winks at me and
hands me a good half-moon-shaped piece of chicken. I thank him and
eat it heartily. I hope to be out of here before he gets any ideas.
I know these priests.

I ask after Malcolm, and they tell me he's in
confession, for real this time. I wander into the aisle of the
church and visit a cell with a priest.

The priest sits down across from me. He begins by
bringing his eye close to mine, checking me out.

"Why are you dressed like the devil?" he asks. He's
very young for a priest, no more than nineteen. I'm not in the mood
for a conversation.

"It's just my costume," I sigh. "May I confess
quickly? I'd like to get back to the fair."

"I'd rather be at the fair myself," he says. "Are you
a fool?"

"I'm not in a mood for fair conversation," I sigh.
"Just take my confession, please."

"You know, it's really not
such
a good idea to
reject friendship the way you just did," the young priest
sniffs.

"I didn't--look, I'm in a rush," I say. "I stole from
a Jew, all right? And I, what do you call it, bore false witness
against him. I lied to a bailiff. I did a bunch of stuff. Just give
me my punishment, please."

"Uh-uh-uh," he says in a fluty voice.

I groan and press my head back against the wall. He's
going to talk to me, isn't he?

"Before we get to that," the young priest says, "I
need to know a little of your history. Are these sins out of
character for you? Are you normally a better young man that this?
These are things I need to know."

The coins of fairgoers are slipping away.

"I don't care," I say.

"Mm-hm, well I
do
care. These things are
important, if you want to become holy. And you do, don't you?"

I rub my face with all of my hands, mmpph.

"I want to feel . . . I don't know. Just come on,
would you? Tell me what to do. Assign me my--"

"Uh, uh, uh," he repeats.

I push the door of the cell open and promise myself I
will confess on the road to Jork.

"Stop right there," I hear in the same fluty
voice.

I know better than to disobey a priest. God, this is
irritating. I look up to the vaulted ceiling and realize God has
chosen this horrible priest to be my confessor as a punishment. I
am being punished right now, for bothering the Jew. God isn't close
to done with me yet. My sins are too deep.

"You come back in here and confess your sins," he
says, and I turn to grapple my horns with his.

I am sitting in the booth. My head is clunking
against the chair back. I'm listening to the young priest.

"Your first sin," he's saying, "is in not obeying me
when I instructed you to tell me a little of your history."

"If you're going to make me sit and talk to me," I
say, realizing I'm digging myself a deeper hole and not caring,
"why don't you tell me all about
your
history, so I know I'm
not talking to a sinful priest?" Malcolm's fooling style has rubbed
off.

"
I
am the priest here.
You're
the
sinner."

"Fine. What do you want to know? I'm from
Anjou-Touraine, I'm from a long line of fools, I dislike people, I
dislike arrogant, bossy priests . . ."

A small sneering silence. "Maybe you deserve your
sins," I hear.

"Is there someone else I could confess to?" I
say.

"I think you're going to sit there until you show
respect," I hear, and the young priest leaves.

I'm sure of it now. God has given me this priest to
punish me for my hatred of the Jew. I must atone by suffering this
arrogant young priest.

Hatred like steam boils up off of me as I sit in the
confessional. I pray for some interruption, that some important
person--or better, an important pair of people --come to confess on
this Saturday morning, displacing me and Malcolm so we may leave
together, but nobody comes. I've been ordered to sit--how did he
put it? Do I dare to misinterpret his words and say something like,
"Well, you
thought
I was going to sit , but I wasn't . . ."
No, I'm not inclined to toy with him. He's probably sitting just
outside, being sniffy, waiting for me to disobey . . .

God I hate this. I'm just sitting when there's a
whole world of excitement--I have things I've got to do--it's dark
in here, strangely quiet--I drum against the seat, developing a
pointed hatred of Brystow and its people--what sort of town would
keep a priest this bad?--Poole, I suppose--how unpleasant, to do
what you're told--I'm not of the tithing of Brystow, I'm registered
at Bath, I don't have to do what he says--I hear Malcolm
outside--my hands are cold, that always happens when I'm angry--I
better not miss my meeting with Robert in Pucklechurch--I conceive
of a rescue party, they're going to steal me away from here, I
imagine a giant mechanism to lift the church from off of the booth,
it's very much like the crane that lowered the longboat into the
water from the
Immaculate
, only much larger, it rips the
entire church off of its foundations, I see Stan waving his hat
from the mechanism's seat as the cell folds apart and I'm
catapulted into the air by an underground catapult . . .

"Are you ready to behave yourself?" the young priest
says to me, slipping into the other side of the booth.

"Yessir."

"Now. Tell me what I want you to say."

I close my eyes and take a crying breath. "I--what
exactly do you
want
me to say?!?" I exclaim.

"Well, if you're going to take
that
tone with
me, you're going to sit there a
lot
longer."

"No! Father, I just, I don't--" but he is gone.

He's gone again. That was my chance. That was my one
chance.

It's forty-five minutes of agony before I hear
Malcolm whispering outside the door.

"They've told me I'm not to speak to you," he hisses,
"but I'm not so blind of a pious man as ye. What's the priest
keeping you here for?"

"My
tone
," I say.

"Then change it, ye great head-of-bricks," he
says.

"I tried--"

"They're coming!"

Malcolm rushes away.

Another hour goes by, I feel every second of it, and
finally I start to need to pee, but there's no way for that to
happen.

"This time," and the young priest is
extremely
rude as he sits, "you're going to get it right."

"Yessir."

"Well? Go ahead," he says.

"Normally I'm a very good boy and never commit such
sins," I say in a penitent voice.

"Well!"

He is shocked at my impudence. I put my face into my
hands, because I have told the truth and he doesn't believe me.

"With that sort of cheek, I'm going to have to take
much
more serious measures," he says.

"I was telling the truth--" I murmur.

"I know misbehavior when I see it!" he exclaims.

I stand in the booth. I am not tall. "No you don't,"
I say in an above-average tone. "I haven't done anything wrong, I
came in to confess and you never let me. I'm not the one who's been
misbehaving--"

"Why, you little
shit
," he says, and comes
around the side of the confessional, but I'm ready, I ball my fist
and sock him in the ear, I was aiming at his eye but my arm didn't
work properly, and he swears and I push past him with my recorder
in my hand and I call for Malcolm and he sprints down the hallway
and sees what I have done and together we get to running.

By the time we exit, there are four men after us. The
young priest isn't one of them, he's sent his acolytes after us
like a coward, and we're flat-out sprinting into the streets. I've
got my recorder, Malcolm's got the bag, and we quickly outpace the
priest's men and head back to the fair for our last day before our
journey to Northumbria.

The fair is an alive, heaving thing. On this, our
last day, I begin to take in much more of it, the rich colors of
the tents, the Brystow Wait traversing with their music, the sheer
number of tanners, of cordwains, there are fifty choices of seller
for each buyer of goods. Farmyard animals are shunted into
basket-cages and lifted by burly children shuffling after their
mothers. The soilman trails after the animal-keepers, picking up
the droppings for use as fertilizer or coal. The smell of roasted
meat fills the space. Games are set up for children, there, and
beside it, games for men, games of strength and agility, a balance
beam for mallet-fights between contestors, archery, a lumbering
competition, the winner receives a fine sheep. Down the way is the
hiring fair, a line of sturdy boys and nimble girls up for hire,
and

Owwww

Wolfweir twists my ear, I'm bent backwards trying to
straighten myself out, now I'm looking up into the darkness of a
very sinister smile, it's upside-down over a pair of pale blue eyes
and flattened breasts, her face is in shadow because she's bending
over me.

"Do you have your tithe for me?" she whispers,
girl-like, into my ear. Malcolm produces a shilling and a penny,
but she's got bigger plans. "Kneel," she whispers into my ear, and
I'm all twisted around, and she's still got my ear between two
sharply-pared fingernails. In her trap of fingers are a shilling
and one from the Jew, the coins sliding over each other like
lovers.

"You two," she says, standing over us. "Who are
you?"

A thrill rushes up my shoulders. "I'm your slave," I
mumble.

"Your vassal," Malcolm says.

"I hear you got hired," she says, and we nod. "So
you're going to be gone for awhile," she says with female knives in
her breath. We nod. "I made you something," she says, and both of
us are suddenly nervous, as flattering as it is that she thinks of
us, her handcrafted things are always threats.

Yes, here is a threat.

There are two. It's a little woven cage made of
switches, and I see that it's meant to fit onto the switch circles.
Um, over us.