Fool School (12 page)

Malcolm: "Listen! Listen!"

Dag makes a stupidface and looks around at Perille
uncertainly. He pushes Malcolm's face into the wall once more and
steps back, still a tor casting a shadow across Malcolm, and folds
his arms. "Listen to what?" he asks.

Malcolm is not held back by pain. I've seen it
before. He says: "It's the woman who kills."

Dag: "What? What woman?"

Malcolm: "The man John Barleycorn turned to his wife.
'I've a thirst in my belly,' quod he. She brought him clean water
in the bowl of her hat, but he spilled it out passionately. 'I've a
thirst for summat stronger,' quod he. She went to the swamp and
brought him thick stillwater, awash with flies and frogs, and he
took a sip thirstily." Perille stifles a giggle. "Yet he threw it
away, too. 'I've a thirst for summat stronger still,' quod he. She
took a bowl to the privy and pissed in it and brought it to he."
Maliface's eyes sparkle unpleasantly. "He took a big swig, but
spilled it across the floor. 'Still not strong enough,' quod he.
She pricked her thumb until she wept, and let her husband lick her
tears, one, two, three. 'Not strong enough yet,' quod he. So at
last she fell to rage and woad, threw her husband to the floor,
knocked his head off with a scythe, lay his head by the door and
struck him and struck him with a flail, took those pieces that were
left to the miller. The miller took her coin and ground
Barleycorn's bone to dust. She filled barrels with his blood and
bone, left them for a year, only just, and brought the miller home
to lay in bed and drink the drink she had brewed. And the drink was
strong, and the drink was thick, and the drink was all they needed.
And in the candlelight, on her old bed together, she and the miller
rose a toast: ' 'Tis strong enough at last. And here's to you, John
Barleycorn.' "

Nuncle, who to my discomfort has been standing not
too far from any of us as the fight went on--why he didn't
intervene I don't know--has admiration plastered across his face,
and claps, slowly, filling the void where we are all
speechless.

Dag punches Malcolm remarkably hard, and Malcolm's
head hits the stone with a wet sound and he goes down, his shoes
sliding out ahead of him. Dag goes to his room, which is across the
hall from ours, and shuts the door.

Nuncle says, "That's enough socializing today, Tom.
Take Malcolm to his room."

And I do.

* * *

It is well past nightfall, and I wait the hazy wait
as sleep descends but before consciousness is gone, there are
bulging faces in my closed eyes, a swimmy brown-red field like
diseased . . . something . . . and I am shaken awake by Nuncle,
whose face is black in the lightlessness, only a flame of cancerous
nose and half an eyebrow.

"I've forgotten something," he says, and I am an
icicle. "Admission to the Fool School is far from free, boyos. Four
marks from each, or get out."

I am lucky that Papa prepared me for this. He spoke
of the fools' famous greed, of the costs, and he set aside the rare
gold mark for me whenever he found one, and created a place to hide
it. I have no doubt that the money is still there. I open my case
and peel back the vellum paper that lines it. A metal frame looks
to the casual thief like any case's brass frame, but to one who
knows, there is a double catch that one opens by squeezing here and
here, Papa showed me--

Four pieces of gold fall from the opened compartment.
My heart stops and I let myself breathe again. I take the coins and
give them to Nuncle, and I wake Malcolm and he reaches into his
pouch and produces a pair of gold mancuses, a simply enormous piece
of money, I have no idea who Malcolm is to own two mancuses to his
name, that's nearly a hundred shillings, that would buy a dozen
jester's uniforms made all of purple cloth and sewn of gold thread.
And Malcolm sleepily asks for change.

"I'll bring change in the morning," says Nuncle, and
he is gone.

* * *

I fall, rolling onto the floor, and there is green
light everywhere and I blink, astonished that so much light could
fill the underground room in the middle of the night, I imagine a
goblin has clapped its hands and poured green energy from its
mouth, but it's morning. The light comes from a skylight of glass,
set at a strange angle in the prison cell's ceiling. The green
glass is lit by the sun, filling us with sickly light that's
already fading as the sun moves on, and I think: prison. They meant
to wake the prisoners early each morning.

My back is as sore as it's ever been in my life, and
I believe I'll learn to hate this pebble bed. It's unwholesome.
Malcolm's face is swelling, I see--we've elected to share a room, I
don't know if I explained that before--and he looks in considerable
pain. So I go to him, I'll be his nurse, but no, he gestures for me
to come near, he wraps himself around me, he looks in unusual pain,
he says it hurts him and he wants to die, he whispers in my ear,
he's crying and I don't know why and he says he feels that nothing
will go right again, and he says he's been putting something off
but he doesn't know if I know about it, and I ask what.

"God gave us each a way to feel joy in times of
pain," he says, and I don't know what he means.

Malcolm unties his breeches. There is a moment
rushing toward me, something like noise and fury, and my red-haired
master holds my hand and pulls me down and I wonder if the devil's
in him a second time, I just don't know, and I do something I've
never done before, Malcolm guides me, and I can't tell you what it
is, it can't be watched, maybe I'll talk about it later. I feel
like it's best for me to keep Malcolm's privacy. I'm his. We smile
at each other and Malcolm grimaces as his smile moves his swelling
face in a way he can't manage. I hold him around the waist and he
lies back to rest and I'm afraid of letting him get up to go to
classes, which I imagine will start right away.

Eventually we dress and move out the door. I insist
on keeping Malcolm close to me as we traverse the long wide cold
hall to the bathrooms. The guardrobe is a series of stone circles
with lead piping beneath, it looks cold, and there're a pair of
levers that pour hot or cold water into a bath basin, which drains
out right away. The water seems to be good for washing, drinking,
and bathing. I feel reassured by this room. It's a place where
relaxation is allowed. Later I may take a hot bath, since such a
thing is possible. In the meanwhile, I wash Malcolm's arms and
legs, touch his face with a towel--there are towels in here,
clean--and try to sop up the swelling with a patch of cold water on
the towel, making Malcolm wince. I wonder if he hates this place
already. I don't ask.

The door to the bathroom opens. I brace for combat. A
boy smaller than I am enters and pulls his pants down and uses the
guardrobe. The boy is a fawn, his legs so thin I can see bones
trying to burst through the skin. His cheeks have green-yellow
bruises on the edges, beside the ears. Someone has been boxing
them. His eyes are too big for him, they're liable to fall out of
his head, and he doesn't raise them to us, nor his head above
shoulder-height. His head hangs like he's lost a parent. Malcolm
looks up at the boy and rises. He sits on the adjacent guardrobe
without pulling his hose down, I hope it was clean, and he
says:

"Have you been here lang, Skinny Malenk?"

"Don't call me that," the boy mutters.

"Aye," says Malcolm softly, nodding. "Aye."

There is no further conversation forthcoming from the
little boy.

"What do they call ye here?" Malcolm says, very
quietly.

"Shitbreath."

"That's nae what we'll call you," Malcolm says, and
raises his red eyebrows to me. I nod. "If ye could have any moniker
the world'd allow," he says, "what'd et be?"

"Hero," says the boy, and I am touched, I desire
bravery for this boy, I desire to see him slay a dragon. He will
not, I know, but I desire it.

"Then that's what your name is with us," I say.

The boy takes a wiping-cloth and takes care of
himself, pulls his pants up and waddles over to us on duck legs.
"You have to get me some breakfast," he says.

Malcolm and I look at each other. "A bit strident,
that," Malcolm says. "Why can't you get it yourself?"

Hero says, "They won't let me have any."

He's so skinny. I wonder if they'll let him die. I
wonder if all the others here have died of starvation, and that's
why there're so few students.

Malcolm and I will protect this boy. That's what
we'll do. We three travel through the bathroom doors toward the
opposite end of the hall, where the cafeteria is, but Dag is
waiting in his open doorway for us.

"Shitbreath's got hisself a mummy and daddy," he
says.

Malcolm tenses at the sound of Dag's voice. "I'll be
your daddy, too, before long, Dag," he says, "and give you the
whipping you deserve."

Dag's coming. His fists are stones, his face is fury,
and he gets three fingers on Malcolm's swollen face and twists.
Malcolm crumples. I try not to imagine his pain. I decide I need to
defend Malcolm, so I work on Dag's hair, wrenching it and getting
his neck around, trying to bend him backwards where he can't see
what he's doing. Hero--I'm trying not to call him Shitbreath, even
though I admit it's a catchier name--Hero bites Dag's fingers,
bravely I feel, trying to keep him from giving Malcolm any scars or
any more pain.

Dag spins fast and I'm left with his hair in my hand,
it's torn out, but now he's facing me and snarling and I jab his
puff of straight brown hair back at him, because I'm hopeless, and
he socks me really, really hard in the bone under my chest, and
what's strange is that it doesn't actually hurt, I feel no real
pain, but I suddenly feel as though my skeleton inside my body is
dancing on the fingertip of Death, that my heart might stop, that
my body is failing and fragile and a glass filigree balanced on its
tip, wobbling, and my fingertips go to my neck, where the beating
of your heart may be felt, and I feel a mess of slippery hair
there, because my hand still holds the lock I tore out, and I toss
it away and press to locate my heartbeat and there it is, it's just
fine, but I feel maybe I should be lying down anyways, maybe yes,
that's the right choice, my breath feels sullied and bony, I know
that doesn't make sense, but I flap my hands behind me and let
myself recline and Dag goes back to pounding on Malcolm, who is
essentially helpless, I see Malcolm dead in my mind's eyes and I
work on rising to help, but my whole being is in need of respite, I
fear for myself, but I fear for Malcolm more, so I stand, shaky,
and in my frightened vision there is Nuncle and a professor I don't
know, they stand a few lengths away with their arms folded and
observe, and they will not intervene, they are testing our mettle,
maybe, or else they enjoy watching teenage cruelty, I don't know,
and unsteadily I tip toward where Dag is hitting Malcolm and it
seems like he's only managed a few hits, so I launch myself, a
human arrow, and I take a goodly patch of Dag's flank and I do what
he did to Malcolm, I hold the soft skin through the shirt and I
twist and twist and I wonder whether I'll detach a patch of skin
from him like harvesting mushrooms, Dag goes limp and he's unhappy
and Hero is scampering back and forth a few feet away, leaping from
foot to foot like a hobgoblin, celebrating each blow against Dag,
and now it seems my flank-twisting has turned the tables and Dag
seems to want to stop the fight now, but I won't let him, I unscrew
his skin as hard as I can and Malcolm rises and throws a big punch
at Dag's jaw and that'll be a sturdy bruise, didn't break the bone
I think, and I hear Dag's voice begging me to release his flesh,
and I twist, and I twist, until I can feel a sudden burst of
wounding and I feel disgusted at the sensation and let go and run
across the hall to a wall and press myself against it.

Dag lifts his shirt.

There is a line where the twisted flesh tore. It's
black beneath the skin, and blood starts pouring out of the wound,
opaque brown dripping out.

Dag drops to the ground and pulls himself toward the
bath. Nuncle and the other professor move to stop him. They pick
him up and take the him up the staircase. I touch the bone under my
chest and I think I haven't been injured in a way that will kill
me.

Here is breakfast. Long low tables of stone, benches
of stone lying on the floor, shrieking if you try to move them. I
hold a coldwater towel to Malcolm's face. Hero eats not one but two
whole pottages, all by himself. I wonder who the fourth student
here is. I find breath wheezing through my body between mouthfuls
of oats and cabbage. I don't know whether it's from exertion or
injury.

A shadow cast over us. Nuncle holds in his hands a
bowl of small wild strawberries. He places it on the table between
we three. I wonder whether he picked them for us himself. I desire
to ask him for the change for Malcolm's mancus coins, but I don't.
It would be churlish just now. Nuncle departs.

The other professor takes his place. I look up at the
man and he's dressed outlandishly, like a Saracen, in a flowing
white blouse, green scarves, weird baggy trousers, no hose or
breeches, his sleeves and trousers secured to his wrists and ankles
by webs of strands woven around his fingers and bare toes. He
doesn't wear shoes.

"Proff Ab'ly," whispers Hero, taking a strawberry. I
don't know what tone of voice he's using, afraid or in awe or just
quiet.

Ab'ly--Aberly? I wonder--slaps Malcolm very hard on
the back, not a pat of approval but a strike of harsh Levantine
discipline. Malcolm doubles over and curls himself up like an
injured spider.

Before I know what's happening, I am struck in the
back, between the shoulder blades, and I freeze, clenching my eyes
shut, expecting my brittle bones to shatter. I hear: "Ouch!" in
Hero's voice soon after.