Fool School (29 page)

"Here's a theng I know," Malcolm hisses, pulling his
hands out of his neckline-jesting-tunic thing. "Ef you look
embarrassed, everyone'll be embarrassed. Ef you're proud, they'll
be proud, too. Ef you're amused at et, they'll be. That's what they
say."

"Who says that?" I ask.

"Dunno. Jost people."

We return to the line. Ab'ly and Nuncle are here. As
the earl's bailiff speaks to Ab'ly, I notice Nuncle ducking away,
sorting through his bag, keeping his back to the bailiff--

Didn't I have some business with the earl of
Wiltshire? Ah, it was Perille, who had offered to get my suit
repaired. Well, now it's Nuncle managing it. I don't mind. I trust
him.

The earl's bailiff checks us off the list.

We're in.

And suddenly, in my heightened state, with a ring of
twigs down my trousers, I'm expected to begin entertaining people.
After our initial waltzing entry, Nuncle tells us to meet at
sundown by the flag of England--there's a triangular flagstaff in
the center, with the red and white cross of England flapping in the
chilly breeze--and we're to invent things to say, and songs, and
the people will watch us and take joy from us, somehow.

We separate.

Malcolm follows me, and my heart begins pounding, I
hardly know what to do.

"Where do we go? To the center, where there's stalls
and people buying, or should we go where they're traversing?" I ask
Malcolm, remembering Perille's admonitions. My heart's in my
throat, and I feel my body losing itself again. The fear is a pit
and I am in it.

"Here," he says, and faces turn to us as I dig out my
recorder case and the tambrel and mallet.

There's no music to hear in the fair right now. It's
evening before the first day, and people are still setting up,
constructing booths and pouring produce and crafts onto countertops
and into baskets. Where we are, there's a ditch along one side,
there's a curved path lined with stalls and not too many people,
it's the outer edge of things. For our first performance I feel
like we could be terrible here and few people will hear us. This
appeals to me.

"Now?" says Malcolm uncertainly.

"Not 'Rybbesdale,' " I say. "The time is wrong. It
won't be appreciated."

"That's all we've practiced," he shoots back.

"Just play."

I begin "Bird on a Bough," I play the plain notes
without embellishment, but all I can think about is how ridiculous
my body looks with my--

Shopkeepers immediately perk up, even though Malcolm
hasn't caught onto the beat properly. Smiles meet me, crusty men's
smiles, big tubby bellyfat smiles, mustached smiles, women sitting
on barrels sewing in time to the music.

"Et's working," mutters Malcolm.

"Just keep going," I reply.

The stress of not running away, of having to stay in
front of these people I don't know and play notes on my recorder,
of listening to Malcolm doing his imperfect best, drives me out of
my mind. I'm drowning. The only thing keeping me alive is the
familiar notes of "Bird on a Bough."

I try to add a trill, but I miss, and lose the beat.
I lose it completely. And I stop playing.

A big woman lifts her face to me and witnesses my
embarrassment. She rises from her barrel and comes around the side
of her booth.

"This is your first year at the Fool School," she
says in a burly sort of voice.

"Yes, Ma'am, God keep you," I say politely.

"First month, actsh'ly," throws in Malcolm, who seems
no less intensitied than I am.

"It's a joy to have music while I'm at it," she tells
us, waving some sort of sewing stick at us. "My Ethman would sing
as he worked, Lord rest his soul." She swings the sewing stick
twice, I fancy she's remembering him. She chooses not to notice the
bulges in our hose. "So don't fret, my two," she adds. "Just play.
And I'll have thruppence for you at the end of the day."

Thruppence is quite a lot of money for a poor
seamstress to donate to our music. Malcolm and I share a look.
There are probably riper patches of land we might have claimed, but
I believe no one would appreciate our presence uncritically like
this Ethman's-wife will.

I play. Malcolm follows.

I choose not to break out anything precious or bawdy
like "Rybbesdale." Instead I stick with music that toes the line
between children's rhymes and the music of the Gospel. I find my
knowledge of simple songs is quite extensive, and I spend time
running back and forth over familiar four-note songs, developing
them until I can add pretty notes the way Papa does. I see the
seamstress nodding to herself, working to the time of the music.
She is nearly moved to dance, but she has work to do.

A lucky thing happens.

The dirt ditch behind us, which we both perceived to
be an insurmountable obstacle, opens up as a main thoroughfare to a
whole new section of booths that's turned up below. And a flow of
people begins alongside us. I hesitate to leave behind the
seamstress, a woman who has been exceptionally good at making us
feel needed. Instead I confer with Malcolm between songs, and we
skitter about ten feet down, so that we're within the flow of
traffic. I feel sentimental about the seamstress, and I choose to
let her hear our music.

As we reach our new, slightly shrubbier
location--everything green is quickly crushed by feet--the coins
begin. Tiny silver coins, enough to have bought my passage across
the English Channel, begin tumbling at our feet. Quickly Malcolm
slings open his bag and scoops the coins in. By noon there are
perhaps twelve pence, not all of them in whole coins, mostly a
sharp pile of quartered-farthings, cut pie-slice coins. Malcolm
props the bag open on the ground beside us, and we play our plain
children's songs.

But a funny thing happens.

As soon as the bag is placed on the ground, the coins
stop, nearly at once, even though the flow of people is
increasing.

"Why--" I began quietly.

"Stingy," he whispers in my ear. "Misers all. Et was
the early morning 'ers who had coin to spare--these have spent all
theirs, and are clutching--"

A big man in a green woodsman's tunic and filthy
boots turns to us.

"Did you just call me a
miser
?" the big man
asks. "Is that what I heard?"

I can't tell if he's truly angry or--

--before I can even think of what to say--

Malcolm shouts: "And what ef we ded, ye great
backwoods teeth-grinding pillock?"

"What did you--" the green man says.

Malcolm: "Oh, you heard me, ye towering
sheep-nibbler. Go keck some more shit with your great shit-kecking
boots, ye shit-kecker!"

A dozen passers-by freeze to see what the big man
will do. This the French and Saxons have in common: we'll stop work
to witness anything extraordinary, especially a fight.

For a long moment, during which my hands grip my
recorder like I'm throttling a wild animal, the man stands there.
We're all speechless.

My hands raise my recorder defensively. I need to
remind this man that we're nothing but humble fools, merely
musicians, it's our job to--

My recorder is at my lips when I realize my job is
not merely to make music, but to make the audience laugh. I'm not
attending a music school only. There must be laughter for there to
be foolery.

So, directing my recorder bell straight at the big
man, I bend at the waist and go
tweetleetleetleetle
, the way
Perille did, the way I did against Wensley. I wiggle my butt. On an
impulse, the sort that is probably not accompanied by the voices of
angels, I slap my own butt.

I kick some pretend dung. In a feat of serendipity,
my spare curly red shoe unrolls and nearly pokes the man up his
nose. And then, leaning on my French pride to bolster my acting, I
pretend to be disinterested. I go back to playing pleasant
children's tunes.

The man explodes in laughter. A grand cheer from the
assembled gawkers.

Coins. A hail of pence.

"Ahh," says the big man, "that was a one I'll take
with me for a month of months. Here's to two brave fools."

And he hands us a shilling, scrapes his boots clean,
giving us a big smile, and drifts into the crowd.

A shilling is a huge, heavy coin, and a great deal of
money to give away. The green woodsman must be quite a successful
man.

After we collect the coins, I look through the bag.
There are a great many pence coins now--four shillings at least in
small silver coins, farthings and the old copper coins--and it's
too many for the wool bag, which tears easily. I'm concerned about
having it tear and having all the coins tumble out and a wild crowd
stealing all our coins.

"How sturdy d'ye reckon those horns are?" Malcolm
asks as we discuss coin storage.

I put a hand to them. They hang just forward of my
ears, so the wearer can hear.

"There's an iron band between them. No, two. I think
it'll hold some weight."

Malcolm takes a minute to feed coins in past my ear.
A few cold discs slip into the suit and drop along my body and into
my curly red shoe.

"Put a shilling into your toe," I whisper. "I need
new leather to fix my shoe."

"Aye." Malcolm has red shoes that aren't curly. I'll
give him these spare shoes when I've repaired my good ones. His are
red cloth, and the toes are a bit extended. They can just pass for
fool shoes. He slips a big tarnished silver coin into them, steps
on it, gets himself comfortable.

"Music or insults, d'you thenk?" he asks me as the
crowd passes around us.

"I can't handle too much worry," I say, truthfully,
so we begin playing music.

A strange thing happens. The empty bag quickly fills
up with tiny coins, and then the coins stop.

"They think we're already rich," I say. "That's why
we're not getting any more."

"I'll keep putting them up," he whispers back, taking
a handful of coins.

Every hour or so, Malcolm can restrain himself no
longer and chooses a likely victim. A merchant, say, walking slow,
in no great hurry. First, a "Hey you! Where d'ye thenk you're off
to?" Next, a "Ohhh, I know your kind, ye probably come up from
Devon and thenk yourself quite a fellow down there!"

Malcolm has an unerring sense of where people come
from, he never misses by more than a county one direction or
another.

"Are ye too busy to wipe your mouth off after ye
shovel dung with your teeth?" he bellows at one.

"Ded you buy that manky tunic off a leper?" he asks
another. There isn't anybody in the world who's clean enough to
escape his prissy wrath.

The best of the day is a blackfriar--I don't know if
you know this, but the blackfriars are supremely vicious and cruel
men, they simply don't stand for joy or good humor anywhere.

So when he passes, I imagine Malcolm will shy from
haranguing him.

Mais non.

"Ooo, a pious man walks among us!" he crows right
away, so loudly that the blackfriar trips over his cassock and
manages to fling himself off his feet, flopping forward like a
trout on a bank. "Och, look, he's startled to thenk there's a pious
man in his midst! Never seen one in the walls of the abbey, I'd
say!"

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.