An Antic Disposition

by Alan Gordon

  When I stumbled out later, Amleth was sitting in his little fort, whittling a stake. He beckoned me over to him, his face solemn.

  “You may have noticed that Gorm does not possess a sense of humor,” he said.

  “So what?” I said, wiping my nose on my sleeve, sitting painfully by him.

  “Yorick once told me that people without humor are the mortal enemies of people with it,” he said. “That’s why Gorm beats you.”

  “I don’t understand why that’s so,” I said.

  “Neither do I,” he said. “But I have seen it, so it must be true.”

  “How did I get a sense of humor if he has none?” I asked.

  “From your mother,” he said, smiling. “She had the most marvelous laugh, Yorick and I loved to hear it.”

  “Was she funny?”

  “Oh, yes. I remember a time..he began, and was off into a new reminiscence about her, one that made me laugh and tolerate the welts on my back a little better.

  It never occurred to me that Amleth’s behavior was anything unusual, but then he was behaving like that ever since I knew him, and my knowledge of how normal children played in the town was limited, thanks to my restrictive father. Amleth was my playmate, teacher, inspiration, and idol. He was my brother, and he was going to marry my sister when she was old enough and adopt me and take us all to a better place.

  That was my plan.

  When I turned eight, I was given more freedom, and began to explore the town, sometimes with Amleth, sometimes on my own. Whenever I returned, my father would sit down with me and ask me in great detail about who I saw and what they did or said. I was so happy that he took an interest in anything I was doing that I would rattle on, occasionally inventing incidents to make up for a slow day. The inventions, when discovered, would bring on more chastisement, and I learned to confine my observations to the real.

  He demanded more and more as these conversations continued, wanting specifics on certain people that he found of interest. I gradually realized that he was training me to become a spy. I remember thinking, oh, well, most boys follow in their father’s footsteps, and I tried to become better at it. I learned how to hide using any cover available, and how to climb buildings and eavesdrop without actually dropping from the eaves.

  When I told Amleth about this new occupation of mine, he became concerned.

  “It’s not the spying, mind you,” he said as we juggled near the ruins of the Viking tower. “It’s who you’re doing it for, and why. I know that he’s your father, but…”

  He stopped.

  “But what?” I asked.

  “You won’t like what I am going to say,” he said.

  “Say it anyway,” I said.

  “He is not a good man,” he said.

  “I know,” I said. “But he is my father, and I have no other choice.”

  “You will,” he said. “I will make sure of it. Will you promise me something?”

  “Yes.”

  “Never tell him anything that could end up hurting anyone.”

  “But if he catches me, I will be the one who gets hurt.”

  He squatted in front of me and put his hands on my shoulders.

  “Then don’t let him catch you,” he whispered.

  I still remember our last day together before he left for Paris, both for how forlorn I felt and because we juggled nine clubs together for the first time. I took his request to amuse my sister seriously, and since my father forbade her the world, I devoted myself to bringing the world to her. Strange, looking back, but I essentially did for her what I had done for my father: I sat and described in great detail everyone and everything I saw, and she would practically inhale the words from my mouth, so starved was she for anything that wasn’t a stockade wall.

  She would devise games in which I would follow a person of her choosing for a week, giving her a slice of an individual life over time rather than the confusing profusion of many lives swimming by a moment. I would shadow that person for as long as I could stay unobserved, which was a great amusement to me. At night, when I would finish my daily account as we lay in bed, clinging to each other, she would sigh at the simple pleasures of living in the world, then kiss my cheek.

  At some point, she crossed over into womanhood, and it was then that my father shut her in the upper room by herself at night while he and I slept downstairs. Needless to say, I did not consider this a fair trade.

  When Amleth came back from Paris to visit the first time, I could tell that something had changed in him. He was to the rest of Slesvig still a brooder with a tinge of madness, but when I finally got him alone, he seemed both more guarded and more purposeful than I had known him to be.

  “Do you like the cathedral school?” I asked as we walked to our old juggling spot.

  “More or less,” he said. “I like the city itself very much.”

  “Do you think I will manage well enough there?” I asked as we began our warm-ups and stretches.

  “I am sure you will do fine,” he said. “When do you think Gorm will allow you to go?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “He’s disappointed that his old school has declined so much. He went to Ste. Genevieve, and thought the cathedral students were licentious drunkards.”

  “He was right, for the most part,” laughed Amleth. “I now room with two of them. Of course, Rolf and Gudmund were like that in Slesvig, too.”

  He had six clubs going effortlessly over his head, his hands a blur.

  “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say that you’ve been studying juggling with someone,” I said. “You never did six that well here.”

  He looked at me in surprise, then grinned.

  “Don’t tell anyone,” he said. “I have found a juggling master who gives lessons. It is my version of vice.”

  “Fine, so long as you teach me what you’ve learned,” I said.

  “All right, try doing this,” he said, and the lesson began.

  When we had finished, he looked at me for a moment.

  “How are you with a sword?” he asked.

  “My father has taught me how to use one,” I replied. “And I practice with the guards some of the time.”

  “Not good enough,” he said, pulling a pair of wooden practice swords from his bag. “It’s about time you learned how to fight properly.”

  And every day he would teach me what his father had taught him. Of course, he had begun at an earlier age, and with daily instruction from the source, but he passed on all that he could when he was home, and I added swordplay to my routines when I would sneak out to practice.

  When he returned to Paris, my sister, who had brightened considerably for the course of his visit, became more and more moody, despite my best efforts to cheer her up. I begged my father to be gentler with his methods, but that only produced the opposite effect. Oh, and I earned another beating for my pains.

  I tried to dissuade Alfhild from entering the convent that last year, but she had convinced herself of Amleth’s betrayal. It was wholly out of character with the Amleth I knew. I suspected that it had something to do with his juggling lessons, but he had sworn me to secrecy about them, and to my everlasting regret, I honored that oath rather than tell my sister. When father drove off with her inside a closed carriage, I felt that the last vestige of my childhood was gone. I had turned thirteen two days before she left. She was the only one who remembered my birthday, and gave me an embroidered kerchief.

  That last summer Amleth came back with his friend Horace, who lightened the mood at the evening table and flirted shamelessly with Gerutha. I was old enough to notice how starved she was for this kind of attention. Fengi was so busy with his plans that he barely noticed her, and despite her grand airs, she was so familiar to the stockade guards that her parading by no longer merited a glance, even with my sister no longer there to distract them.

  Amleth on his arrival heard of Alfhild’s predicament, and dashed off. Upon his return, he retreated to his stockade and
would speak only to Horace. He would let me sit with him, but I could never get more than the occasional monosyllable out of him. I had placed so much hope in his return that this quite devastated me.

  One morning I dragged myself out of bed and walked down to the promontory to do my daily exercises. To my surprise, I found Horace there, sitting on a rock, watching the fishing boats in the distance.

  “Good morning, young warrior,” he said. “I hope that I am not disturbing you.”

  “I was going to…” I began, then stopped, suddenly shy.

  “Going to juggle,” he said. “I know. Amleth has told me about you for years. He says you are a better juggler than he was at your age, which would be astonishing if true.”

  “Did he really say that?” I said, pleased beyond all imagining.

  “I always speak the truth,” he said with a solemn expression that made me laugh for some reason. “Show me what you can do.”

  I started with the basics, then added a fourth club, then a fifth. Then Horace reached into a bag and pulled out some clubs of his own.

  “You juggle?” I exclaimed.

  “I dabble,” he said, immediately giving that statement the lie with his obvious skill. “Amleth says the two of you could get up to nine clubs passing between you. Let’s see.”

  We practiced together for a while, and he nodded, satisfied.

  “Very impressive,” said Horace. “I am told, Lother, that you will be joining us in Paris this term.”

  “Yes, sir,” I replied. “I was hoping to live with Amleth there.”

  “You speak langue d’oi’l well enough?” he asked.

  “Fluently,” I said. “Plus Latin, Greek, Tuscan, German, Slavic—“

  “And what will you do with your education when you are done?” he interrupted me. “Be a spy for Gorm? A soldier in Fengi’s revolt?”

  “His what?” I exclaimed.

  “Didn’t you know?” he asked. “Fengi and Gorm have raised an army to seize the crown of Denmark. I would have thought an observant lad like yourself would have known about that by now.”

  “What army?” I said. “There are guards at the earthenworks and here, but they aren’t enough for an army.”

  “Stow your gear and come with me,” he said.

  We walked south, a direction I rarely traveled, preferring the busier human entertainment in the town. Horace was no longer the convivial dilettante of the dinner table, but an alert prowler on the hunt, his hand never straying far from his sword hilt. When we reached a stand of trees near a road I had never been down, he turned to me.

  “From now on, not a sound,” he whispered. “Not a gasp, not a cough, not a broken twig nor a rustling of leaves. If you see me stop, you stop. If you see me drop, you drop. And if you see me run, then you better damn well keep up with me if you want to live to see the sun set tonight.”

  We crept through the woods for another mile until they began to thin. Horace suddenly hit the ground, and I immediately dropped beside him. A second later a patrol passed by the edge of the tree line, speaking Slavic. When they had passed out of sight, Horace tapped me on the shoulder and pointed to an oak that overlooked the area in front of us. Without a word, I climbed it just as I had climbed so many rooftops at the behest of my father. I soon was forty feet up, looking through a space in the leaves.

  There was an army there, drilling in the field before me. Beyond them was an encampment, with emblems from different lands. There were hundreds of soldiers there, and I had never seen any of them before.

  I climbed down, and nodded to Horace. Then the two of us made our way back to the road.

  “I hereby proclaim that the ban on noise is lifted,” said Horace, back in his jovial persona. “You did well back there. What do you make of it?”

  “It looks like treason on a grand scale,” I said. “And Fengi is behind it.”

  “So, what do you intend to do?” he asked.

  “Me?” I said. “What can I do?”

  “What would you be willing to do?” he asked.

  “Who are you?” I asked.

  “The best question yet,” he said. “But answer mine first. What wouldyou be willing to do to stop a war? Would you risk your life?”

  “Yes,” I said without hesitation.

  “Would you kill someone?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “Good,” he said. “If you had answered in the affirmative right away, you would have failed the test. No one should take killing lightly.”

  “How many tests have there been this morning?” I asked.

  “Many, and you have passed all of them,” he said. “Would you be willing to give up the life that you lead if it meant saving others?”

  “This life?” I said. “There is nothing for me here except for my sister.”

  “What if we could get her to safety?”

  “Who is ‘we’?” I asked. “You still haven’t told me who you are.”

  “Ym might call me a recruiter,” he said. “An advance scout seeking a very peculiar combination of talents.”

  “A spy,” I said.

  “Sometimes,” he said.

  “A killer?”

  “When necessary.”

  “For which king? Or do you work for the Church?”

  “No king, and Heaven forbid,” he said, crossing himself impishly. “Then for whom?”

  He shook his head.

  “Yxi haven’t passed that test yet,” he said.

  “What must I do?” I asked.

  “Betray your lord,” he said. “And your father.”

  We walked on for a while in silence while I considered everything that I had seen and heard that day.

  “My father is a traitor to Denmark,” I said.

  “Traitor is a strong word,” he said. “He supports a rival claimant to the throne. If that makes him a traitor, then Valdemar was a traitor before him.”

  “If Fengi succeeds, then many will die,” I said.

  “Yes, both in the heat of battle and the cold darkness of dungeons,” he said. “And if Fengi fails, Valdemar will descend upon Slesvig and lay waste to this treacherous countryside. The best solution is to stop him before he makes the attempt.”

  “And I can stop him?”

  “^tou can try. Along with the rest of us.”

  “And then we get my sister out.”

  He smiled. “That is part of the plan.”

  * * *

  I did not learn the details of whatever plan he and Amleth had concocted. It didn’t matter, as things changed when Fengi and my father used Alfhild as bait for their trap. It was Horace who informed me of what had happened when he returned, and a cold rage possessed me and sent me charging at my father before anyone could stop me.

  It was then that I realized that I could beat him. I was finally big enough to take him on. I was tall, even at thirteen, and my frame was beginning to fill out. The daily regimen that Amleth had imparted to me, which was a fool’s routine unbeknownst to me, had given me a strength and speed that I had finally mastered.

  And so I was sent to Paris, fuming all the way there. Fortunately, my journey was with Horace, who was riding Amleth’s old horse. He spent the entire time chattering to distract me. I gradually realized that every one of his stories contained a subtle lesson, one that I was eager to learn. He also taught me a number of bawdy drinking songs, which would endear him to any thirteen year old.

  I also noticed that every large town that we passed through had a jester in it, and every one of them seemed to know Horace. He had a long, whispered conversation with one in Bremen whose expression became serious underneath his whiteface.

  When we came to the outskirts of Paris, we paused to look at the city.

  “That’s the biggest place yet,” I said excitedly. “I cannot wait until…” Then I stopped. “I’m not going to the cathedral school.”

  He looked at me, expressionless.

  “And I?”

  He shrugged and we rode on.


  “There’s something I want you to do, now,” he said as we came to his quarters.

  “What?”

  “This is a personal favor,” he said. “Since you are a stranger here, I propose using you for a little scheme of my own.”

  “What kind of a scheme?” I asked.

  “Well, this will seem petty,” he said, laughing ruefully. “There is a poor excuse for a fool who juggles in the market at les Halles. He is a miserable juggler, and when I took the time and trouble to point that out to him, he became quite rude.”

  “Imagine that,” I said.

  “I thought it would be amusing if he were to be humiliated a little more,” continued Horace. “I want you to go heckle him for me.”

  “But I have no quarrel with this stranger.”

  “Whose side are you on?” he asked indignantly. “Here I am, prepared to risk life and limb to save your sister, and you won’t do me this little favor?”

  “All right, I surrender,” I said hastily. “One question.”

  “Yes?”

  “Where is les Halles?”

  When I got there, the market was bustling. I think there were more people in it on that morning than in all of Slesvig. I wandered around, keeping an eye out for pickpockets. Then I saw Horace’s target.

  He was clearly drunk, even though it was only midmorning, and he lurched about, bellowing some old song while heaving three clubs into the air in an ungainly manner. He watched each one with trepidation as it spun over him, and snatched it almost desperately from the air. The sparse audience watching him was more interested in when he was going to miss one, and when he finally did, there were cheers. He gave an ironic bow, and went to pick it up. I took a deep breath.

  “What’s wrong, old man?” I called. “Are they too heavy for you?”

  There were raucous laughs from some young clerks standing nearby, and the fool turned toward me with an appraising air.

  “Well, my fine young cock,” he said. “I suppose you think this is easy.”

  “I do, as it happens,” I replied.

  “As it happens,” he echoed me, looking up at the heavens in supplication. “Here I am, eking out my meager living by bringing a moment of joy to these good, hardworking people, and I am harassed by a pipsqueak who thinks he knows something about juggling. Well, young cock, let’s see how you do with those two scrawny wings of yours.”