by Robin Hobb
As the Council’s opening day drew closer and nobles both new and old flocked to Old Thares, their political differences came to the fore in the press and on our campus. The friction between old and new nobles’ sons that had died down stirred again in small, unpleasant ways. There were several thistly decisions facing the Council of Lords at this gathering. I refused to bother my head with them, and only by a forced osmosis of overheard discussions did I know that one had to with how the king would raise funds for his road building and his forts in the far east. I was also vaguely aware that there was a large disagreement about some sort of tax revenue which the old nobles said traditionally belonged to them, a percentage of which was now being claimed by the King. Although politics were not discussed in most of our classes, there were plenty of hallway debates and some of them became heated. The sons of the old nobles seemed to consider such issue as personal affronts, and said such things as, “The king will beggar our families building his road to nowhere!” or “He will use his pet battle lords to vote in a law allowing him to siphon our income away.” None of us liked to hear our fathers referred to as ‘pets’ and so the discord was awakened between us again. It grew as the end of the week approached, for many of the cadets eagerly anticipated their first night away from the dormitory since we had arrived. The fortunate ones would be allowed to leave the campus on Fiveday afternoon and could be away with their families until Sevday evening.
The coming break was on everyone’s mind as we queued up for midday meal that Threeday. The mess had always been ‘first come, first serve’ in the sense that as each patrol arrived, it was allowed to join the line for entry. As we had to enter in an orderly and quiet manner, it could sometimes entail what seemed a substantial wait to hungry young men. Worst were the days when chill rain fell on us as we waited. A cadet could not even hunch his shoulders, but must stand with correct posture. That day, a chill wind was blowing and the sleet that pelted us was trying to turn into wet snow. Thus we were not pleased when Corporal Dent abruptly ordered us to move aside of the main line to allow another patrol to precede us. Disgruntled as we were, we still had the sense to keep quiet, except for Gord. “Sir, why do they have priority over us?” he asked almost plaintively from the ranks.
Corporal Dent rounded on him. “I’m a corporal. By now, you should have learned that you do not call me ‘sir’. You do not, in fact, call me anything when you are in ranks. Speak when spoken to, Cadet.”
For a moment, we were properly cowed. My ears were starting to burn with the cold, but I told myself I could endure it. But when another patrol likewise passed us to join the queue, Rory muttered, “So, we’re supposed to starve in silence? And not even ask why?”
Dent rounded on him. “I don’t believe this! Two demerits for each of you for talking in ranks. And if I must explain it, I will. Those men are second-years from Chesterton House.”
“So? That makes them hungrier than us?” Rory demanded. Rory was always antagonized by punishment rather than cowed. He’d keep it up now until he had an answer that satisfied him, even if it meant a dozen demerits for him to march off. I shook my head to myself, hoping I would not have to share the punishment he earned. A mistake.
“Two more demerits for you, and one for Burvelle for supporting your insubordination! Did any of you read your booklets ‘An Introduction to the Houses of King’s Cavalla Academy’?”
No one answered. He hadn’t expected an answer. “Of course you didn’t! I shouldn’t even have bothered to ask if you had. I’m quickly learning that you’ve done the least you could to prepare yourselves for the year. Well, let me enlighten you. Chesterton House is reserved for the sons of the oldest and most revered of cavalla nobility. They are descended from the circle of knights who were the first lords under King Corag. The nobles were the original founders of the Council of Lords. Learn this now and it will save you a lot of social disasters later. The cadets of that house expect and deserve your special respect. You can either give it to them, or they will demand it of you.”
I could feel both confusion and simmering anger from the cadets to either side of me. Not for the first time, I wondered why there was not a house solely devoted to our kind. New nobles first-years were housed on the upper floor of Carneston House or in the frigid attic floor of Skeltzin Hall. Second-and third-year new nobles’ sons were housed well away from us in River House, a converted warehouse that was a joke among the cadets. I had heard it was run down past the point of discomfort and verging on dangerous, but had accepted that without pausing to think much about it. Chesterton House, by contrast, was a fine new building, plumbed for water closets and heated with coal stoves. Surely the third-years of the new nobility deserved such lodgings as much as any other. Lowly first-years that we were, we were always being either taunted or tempted by the freedom and better lodgings that awaited us in our graduation year. Slowly it was dawning on me that such comforts were never meant for the sons of new nobility. What I had been accepting as the lowly status endured by any first-year cadets went deeper. I could expect it to last through all my time at the Academy. I suddenly felt queasy as I saw all the lines that had been invisibly drawn to divide us into different levels of privilege. Why had not the Academy given us officers from our own stratum if there was such a difference amongst the level of nobility? And if this was how they segregated us in the Academy, what did it foretell for when we were issued our graduation assignments?
As I pondered all this, Dent held us there, letting yet another patrol go ahead of us, mostly to engrave on us his authority over us. We held our tongues and he finally allowed us to join the queue.
After we were seated and served we were allowed conversation at our table. Casual conversation, beyond polite requests to pass food, was a new privilege for us. Corporal Dent, who was still required to share our table and supervise us, obviously did not enjoy it, and was inclined to stifle our talk at every opportunity. Of late, we had been united in refusing to be daunted by him. I was too hungry and cold that day to think about further defying Dent. I was grateful to wrap both my hands around a mug of hot coffee and hold them there to thaw.
Gord was the one who foolishly brought up the sore topic as he passed the bread to Spink. “I thought all cadets entered the Academy on an equal footing, with equal opportunity to advance.”
He did not address his words to any individual, but Dent seized the comment like a bulldog latching onto a shaken rag. He gave a martyred sigh. “I was warned that I’d find you an ignorant lot, but I thought surely a simple process of logic would have shown you that, just as your fathers are lesser nobles, their gentility only conferred on them by a writ, so are you at the bottom rung of the aristocracy of command and least likely to rise to power. True, if you manage to complete your three years here, you will begin your military careers as lieutenants, but there is no guarantee you will ever rise beyond that rank, nor even that you will retain it. I don’t have to mince words with the likes of you. Many here at the Academy feel that your presence among us is awkward. But for your fathers’ battlefield elevations, you’d be enlisting as common foot soldiers. Don’t tell me that you are not aware of that! We will tolerate you at our king’s whim, but do not expect us to lower our standards of academics or manners to accommodate you.”
Corporal Dent was quite out of breath by the time he finished this diatribe. I think only then did he realize that, ravenous as we were, we were all sitting still and silent. Gord’s face was scarlet.
Rory’s hands were clenched into fists at the edge of the table. Spink’s shoulders were tight as steel. Trist managed to speak first, all his elegance and usual laconic style erased from his voice. He looked around our table, meeting the eyes of as many of his fellows as he could and thus making it clear he spoke to us rather than replying to Dent. At first, he seemed to be genteelly changing the topic of conversation. “The son of a soldier son is a soldier before he is a son.” He took a sip of coffee and then added, “The second son of a noble is also a sol
dier son. But perhaps, such soldier sons are nobles before they are soldiers. So I have heard it said. Perhaps that is the good god’s way of balancing the advantages a man is born with. To some are given the ability to remember always that their fathers are nobles, while others are soldiers to the marrow. For myself, I’d rather be the son of a soldier first, and the son of a noble second. As for those who are nobles first? Well, I’ve also heard it said that many of them die in battle before they learn they have to fight first as a soldier and primp like an aristocrat afterwards.”
There was nothing humorous about his words; I had heard them before, from my own father, and judged them wisdom, not wit. Yet every one of us laughed and Rory was so carried away as to bang his spoon on the table edge in rough applause. All laughed, that is, save Dent. The corporal’s face first went white then scarlet. “Soldiers!” he hissed at us. “That was all you were ever born to be, every one of you. Soldiers.”
“And what’s wrong with being a soldier?” Rory demanded bellicosely.
Before Dent could reply, Gord softened the discussion. “The scriptures teach us that the same is true of you, Corporal Dent,” Gord observed mildly. “Are not you a second son, and destined to serve as a soldier? The Writ says to us also, ‘Let every man take satisfaction in the place the good god has given him, doing that duty well and with contentment’.” Either the man had excellent control of his features or Gord sincerely meant his words.
The colour rushed up to Corporal Dent’s face again. “You, a soldier!” Scorn filled his voice. “I know the truth about you, Gord, at least. You were born a third son, and meant to be a priest. Look at you! Who could imagine you were ever born to soldier? Fat as a pig, and more fit to be preaching than brandishing a sabre in battle! No wonder you argue by quoting holy Writ at me! It was what you were meant to know, not fighting!”
Gord gaped at him, his wide cheeks hanging flaccid for an instant, his round eyes opened wide. Dent’s words were deep insult, not just to Gord but also to his family. If the allegation were true, it would be shocking.
Gord knew it. He knew his status amongst us hung by a thread. He looked, not at Dent, but around the table at the rest of us. “It isn’t true!” he said hotly. “It’s a cruel thing even to speak of it to me. I was born a twin, and due to my mother’s size, both priest and doctor attended our birth. The doctor cut my mother’s belly to lift us from the womb. He took out my brother first, but he was blue and lifeless and small. I was hearty and strong, and the priest pronounced that by my size and heartiness, I was clearly the elder of the babes my mother bore that day. I am a second son, a soldier son. My poor little brother who died before he drew breath should have been the priest for our family. Both my father and my mother wonder daily why the good god did not bless them with a priest son, but they accepted his will. As do I. I bowed my head to the good god’s yoke and came here to serve him as I am fated to do. And I shall!”
He spoke with vehemence, and for the first time, I wondered if, free to choose his own road, Gord would have chosen differently. Certainly his ungainly body did not look as if the good god had meant him to be a soldier. Could the priest who had attended him after his birth have been mistaken about the relative ages of the twins? I had seen enough of stock to know that when sheep dropped twins it was not always the largest that came first. I do not think I was the only one who suddenly harboured a tiny doubt of Gord’s fitness to be my fellow.
Gord knew it. He offered what further proof he had. “My family does not circumvent the laws of the good god. I have a younger brother. My father has not named him as priest son to replace my twin who died. No, Garin will be our family artist. Much as my father would love to have a priest son, the good god did not bless our family with one, and my father has never ignored the will of the good god.”
The silence that followed his words betrayed that some of us still wondered, and Corporal Dent grinned, rejoicing evilly in the suspicions he had sown. If he had stopped there, I think he would have retained a great deal of power over us, but he pushed it one step further. “Five demerits more for every man at this table for your earlier mockery of me. Subordinates should never laugh at the man who commands them.”
Some of us would now be marching off demerits until sundown, and we knew it. Inwardly, I snarled at the little popinjay, but I kept my eyes down and my tongue still. Across from me, Kort picked up his fork and began eating. A wise move. If we had not finished by the time the order came to clear off all tables, we would simply go hungry. Gradually, the rest of us took up our utensils and began to eat. My hunger, so pressing just a few minutes ago, seemed to have fled. I ate because I knew logically that it was a good idea, not from any eagerness. Dent looked around at all of us and probably decided that we were well cowed. He had just taken up a spoon full of soup when Spink shocked me by speaking.
“Corporal Dent, I do not recall that any of us here mocked you. We enjoyed a remark that Cadet Trist made, but surely you do not think you were the butt of any joke amongst us?” Spink’s face was solemn and without guile as he asked his question. His earnestness caught Corporal Dent off-guard. He stared at Spink, and I could almost see him searching his memory to find the insult that he had claimed to himself.
“You laughed,” he said at last. “And that offended me. That is sufficient.”
A strange thing happened then. Spink and Trist exchanged a look. I almost pitied Corporal Dent at that moment, for I suddenly knew that, all unknowing, he had forged a brief alliance between the two rivals. Trist spoke, his sincerity almost as convincing as Spink’s had been. “Your pardon, Corporal Dent. From now on, I am sure we will all endeavour to save our laughter for when you are not present.” He looked round at all of us as we spoke, and we all managed to nod gravely and with great apparent sincerity. It was as if a chain of resolve suddenly linked us. No matter how we might clash elsewhere, from now on we would be united against Dent. He rewarded our deception of him by nodding solemnly and saying, “Even as it should be, cadets,” completely unaware that we had now secured his permission to mock him behind his back.
That thought gave me comfort that evening as our entire patrol marched off our demerits together. It even somewhat sustained me during the next day of classes. All of us had been too weary to do more than a cursory job on our assignments, and we were soundly berated by our instructors and given an extra heavy load of study work as punishment. The egalitarian injustice that we laboured under seemed to unite us as we stood straight despite Corporal Dent’s efforts to grind us down.
Yet it did not extend as widely as I’d hoped. United against Dent we might be, but Spink and Trist still chafed one another. They seldom challenged each other directly for our loyalty; the division was now most plain in how they treated Gord.
Gord continued to tutor Spink in his maths, and gained for his efforts a solid friend. Spink’s scores were not astounding, but his marks were solid and passing. We all knew that without Gord’s help, Spink would have been on probation if not expelled from the Academy. Gord was generous with the time he gave Spink, and most of us admired him for it. But after Dent’s accusation about Gord’s birth, Trist began to needle Gord in sly ways. He began to refer to Gord’s drilling of Spink on his basic maths facts as his ‘catechism lesson’. Occasionally, he would refer to Gord as ‘our good bessom’, a term usually reserved for a priest who instructs acolytes. The nickname spread throughout our patrol. I think that Spink and I were the only ones who never jestingly called him ‘Bessom Gord’. On the surface, it was just a play on Gord’s role in drilling Spink on repetitive facts, but the undercurrent was that perhaps, just perhaps, Gord had been intended for the priesthood rather than the military. Every time someone called him Bessom Gord, I felt a small prick of doubt about him. I am sure Gord felt the jab of the possible insult more keenly.
Gord was stoic about it, as he was about almost all the teasing he endured. Stoic as a priest, I one day found myself thinking, and then tried to stifle the thought. He had a
n almost inhuman capacity to tolerate mockery. I think that even Trist regretted his cruelty the next day when he unthinkingly asked ‘Bessom Gord’ to pass the bread at table, for Corporal Dent immediately seized on the name, and used it at every opportunity. It spread like wildfire from the corporal throughout the second-year cadets who would call mockingly for Bessom Gord to come and bless them as we were marching past them on our way to classes. When that happened, it felt as if the mockery fell on all of us, and I could almost feel the ill will building toward Gord. It was hard not to resent him for the mockery that included us.
However stoically Gord might endure his torment, Spink betrayed his anger at every taunt. Usually it was subtle, a scowl or a tightening of his shoulders or fists. When it happened within our own chambers, he would sometimes speak out angrily, bidding the teaser to shut his mouth. A number of times, he and Trist almost came to blows. Slowly it became obvious to me that when Trist needled Gord, Spink was the actual target. When I spoke to Spink about it, he admitted he was aware of that, but could not control his reaction. If Trist had attacked him directly, I think Spink might have been a better master of himself. Somehow, he had become Gord’s protector, and every time he failed in that role, it ate at him. I feared that if it ever led to blows, one of us would be expelled from the Academy.
