Fool School

by James Comins

  The flute consumes me.

  Perille re-pares his quill, but says nothing snotty to me. He's sympathetic. I'm grateful for his sympathy. Dag isn't here.

  The girl-boy is called upon to read, and it occurs to me I've rarely heard him speak. The scroll is fitted, we are seated, and the room fills with--

  It's a she. There can be no mistake. Her voice is melodious, very pretty, and, though deep, thoroughly feminine. If she meant to pretend she was a boy, she's failed. But as she reads the Tristram, I find myself attending to the meaning of the romance, thinking of love in a way I hadn't in a long time. Malcolm is a fine reader, but somehow a girl's voice makes a love story much sharper for me. My pen is more adept today, not by much, but I scratch through the paper a little less. Practice, practice, practice.

  At the end of an uneventful class, I find myself beside the girl-boy on the stairs.

  "Excuse me, you read very well," I say. "I felt a great deal of passion in the story I hadn't noticed before."

  Sly pupils catch the corners of her eyes. "You're complimenting my reading," she says snidely, crossing her arms.

  "May I have your name?" I ask.

  "You know about me, don't you?" she hisses. I nod. "Well, I know some things about you and Malcolm."

  "You were listening at the door," I say.

  "I think that gives me a lot of power over you," she says over her small nose. "Don't you?"

  "We both have a secret," I say. "I won't tell if you won't."

  "That's not good enough. Nuncle already knows my secret, and he's the only one who can expel us. But you." She closes in on me. "He knows nothing about you. He might be shocked by some of the things I can tell him." Her legs straddle one of mine heatly; she's no shorter than I am.

  "He won't expel me," I say with some confidence. "He knows I'm good for tuition money."

  "I could humiliate you," she says. "If Dag and his twins found out, do you think they'd ever let you forget? I could make your life hell."

  "My life is hell," I say stupidly.

  Weatherford passes us, and we separate and go quiet. He gives us a look, then shakes his head and scampers down the stairs in black robes.

  "Look," I say, and the girl is once again face to face with me, "what do you want?"

  Blue eyes flick down. "For just once in my life, I'd like to have power," she says. "Control. My parents--" She scowls and looks away. "I'll make you so miserable," she tells me, catching my eye again, "unless you let me in." She touches my forehead. "In there. And let me move things around. If I want."

  "How?" I ask.

  Eyes scan every periphery, as if she were looking for how. "For now," she says, "every time you and Malcolm do that thing," and I nod quickly, "make one little scratch outside your door, on the wood. I'll find you a good sharp stone, and I want you to keep that stone in a safe place, because it's mine. You don't get to choose what to do with it, I do. Understand?"

  My lips are dry, and I say, "Okay." And I say: "What's your name?"

  "I'm called Wolfweir, here," she says. "Call me Wolf. Think of my teeth." She shows me hers, which are still good. "And don't tell your buddy about this. Or else."

  And she's gone.

  Part Three

  Malcolm's asleep, and I miss having his arms around me. I lie in bed and think. Of course she's a girl, it was obvious. She would have had the first fibers of a beard at her age, if she were a boy. And I've decided to do what she tells me, it isn't much, and it's sort of thrilling somehow. My mind drifts to the luthery, my recorder, the silver flute. I wonder how I'll get enough money to buy it. How do we earn money, if the door is always locked? Public music is not permitted on Sundays, so that's impossible. And I'm certain the fairs will not be remotely sufficient to provide us with four marks each, let alone four marks plus a pound. A pound is another mark, shilling and six by itself. So there must be something else. Perhaps I'll ask Perille, who seems to have warmed to me, though I don't know why he has.

  At breakfast, I slide over to Perille, who's sitting with Dag and Wolf--her pair of blue eyes rises to mine across their table, but I am not entranced--I say, "Perille, a question."

  Buffoonish circular lips and those disarming buck teeth shine my way.

  "Well. I was wondering when you'd come over and move up in the world. I always knew you'd try to rise, you seem the ascendant type."

  I think that was a compliment? Malcolm gives me a look across the room.

  "No, see, how do we earn our tuition?" I ask.

  Big hair bounces as Perille nods repeatedly, biting his lips. "It's like this," he says. "When Nuncle thinks we're ready, we go to the big fairs, like dis Brystow Fair, to perform? And there are barons and dukes, rich merchants, bartenders, they all want a fool. They know the way of things, they ask Ab'ly and Ab'ly sets you up to play for them for a week, or perhaps a month. Do you think you're ready?"

  "I can play two dozen songs on recorder, and recite a fourth of the Ilium story," I say uncertainly.

  "Good!" Perille exclaims. "You might have a shot."

  "Why does Ab'ly do the arranging?" I ask.

  Perille drifts into a cloud of thought, but shakes his head. "I would tink that Nuncle would make the arrangements, too, but he usually stays at the campsite."

  I try to return to Malcolm, but Perille grasps my shirt from behind and directs me to sit beside him. I look over my shoulder, feeling like I'm leaving my friends behind, then I find myself sitting next to this musk-smelling stick-insect boy. I'm thrown back to the perfume in his room, it seems a dreamlike eternity since I was jammed in there--no, I wasn't jammed in, that was my lie, I went in to spy on him. Anyway, I sit and listen to Dag telling Perille about the surgeons in Brystow, it makes me very uncomfortable, Dag is right on the other side of Perille, I was the reason he had to get sewn up, but Dag is aware of my presence and has become docile. I shield my eyes from blue-eyed Wolf across the granite slab table and imagine her snickering at me.

  As one, the table rises for acrobatics. Malcolm and Hero look despondent, so I grab Malcolm by the shoulder and bring him into the fold. I see Dag suppress a sneer. None of us speaks. Hero keeps close to Malcolm's side, and I wonder at the speed with which we have become tribes. Am I treasonous?

  We ascend the stairs, suspicious and in judgment, and I'm not certain I haven't at last driven my Malcolm away.

  Ab'ly has wrapped the rocks in leather, and as I watch Hero boil with his tiny ineffectual rage at my betrayal, I catch rocks. I've come to trust Ab'ly, and I wonder what his views of our two warring tribes would be. A series of emotionally charged glances hang in the air like Yuletide decorations, draped between the five of us--Dag has returned to his room to rest. Wolf seems to take pleasure in the discomfort, in the fact that I've been converted to her table. Hero's stone-throws to me seem tempered with betrayal, the leather orbs hurled with repressed ferocity. I will speak to him later, tell him we are always brothers, that he is still a hero in my eyes.

  Tambrel lessons are a welcome respite. It's impossible to maintain passionate emotions while tumping a tiny drum. Try it if you don't believe me. Nuncle prances at the front of the classroom like a billygoat, his curly shoes lifting off the ground, knees angular, the beat kept precise in time.

  At lines with Hamlin I am alone.

  And now I have brought my shawm up the stairs--I and Perille are the only ones with our own, and I'm cautious about keeping it in the music room, there are no locks--and I'm faced with a room in two halves, Perille and Wolfweir on one side--Dag is still in bed, Nuncle has ordered it--and Malcolm and Hero on the other.

  Cautious. Cautiously I step into the music room, and I feel the heat of expectations. From one side, blue eyes glazed with evil and power look up at me from a face I cannot believe I once mistook for a boy's. From the other are too-large brown eyes filled with newly-born contempt under a whiff of flat brown hair. Hero is Anglian, I decide, from the east half of the island, and he's really started to fill in, still very small but risin
g in strength. I want to bridge the breach here, so I choose a seat in the middle, triangulating between these four opponents, but Hero stands, picks the two reeds out of his teeth and says: "No."

  Nuncle's eyes brows, which arch anyways, I suspect he plucks them, they arch higher. Stan says, "No what?"

  "Tom," says Hero. I am a blithe kitten in a valley of dogs. "Who are you sitting with?"

  Anticipation. Wolfweir smiles with her teeth, a smile of raw contentment. This is her territory. Perille makes a variety of dour motions with his thick lips, smacking, scowling, shrugging. As a man with an entire roast chicken stuck in his teeth. Malcolm rolls his eyes, and I love him.

  I shrug and move a desk forward. Neither to my left, where Perille sits, nor to my right, where Malcolm is. I am closer to Stan. Perille lifts his oboe and aims it at Hero and tootles a pair of notes at the boy, tweetleetleetle. I fasten my reeds to their clasps and play a careful scale. Stan keeps eye contact with me. I feign innocence. I am never innocent. Many things, but not that.

  Class begins.

  Scales and simple songs.

  Class ends.

  The staircase up. A darkness I'm unfamiliar with fills the space, steps are stone the way a potter's field under the clay is stone, I am deeply aware of the great staircase-spiral I'm a part of, the twisting, as an assassin's knives, and I have a vision, I hear spectral voice my sight fills there are no angels now I am captive on the stairs and I see Father Bellows growing great spade-like claws from his forearms, a badger's claws, he's beneath the gravemound of dirt, digging not out but downwards, his snout is becoming irregular and pronounced not a wolf but a warthog yes with his teeth bursting through his nose as tusks Father Bellows doesn't mind but his spade claws dig downward in a spiral just like this staircase and in my mind I see him developing a secret room beneath his grave, in this room he can be alone with the devil that he has chosen to welcome into his soul the room is not merely a dirt hole but opens out like a private cathedral, I see it forming under him built into the hard clay I see it like a drop of wine flowering in a pail of clear water. The devil is beneath us, he is in the earth. He can flit through stone and clay the way we walk through air.

  He is under me right now.

  I press my will through the vision and there are stairs I may ascend to reach Hamlin and the strength and integrity of the thorned lanthorn. Do we not all crave light?

  After a progress of letters, the day has come to an end and a faintness takes me. Malcolm and I leave Classics together, he senses my instability, my hand is on his arm and I imagine Wolf grinning, every three seconds I seem to be thinking of her, which is probably exactly what she wants. Malcolm and I retire to our room.

  Just outside is a sharp stone with a cutting edge. A pleasurable breath catches me and I stoop and pocket the stone. Malcolm doesn't notice. I wonder how Wolf got outside to find it.

  "Ye've been far from yourself lately," Malcolm says to the darkness as the door closes behind us. We have no candle, our eyes will adjust. A green streak burns in through the glass skylight. The moon.

  "I had a vision today," I say, stretching out on the pebble bed, which has become unexpectedly welcoming. Green eyes brighten in the green light. In what words I can muster I describe what I saw. The devil's underground cathedral. Malcolm sits and stares down into my eyes, a shadow cut by green.

  "I'll tell you somewhat, you're not alone," he says, but a grand spatial sense has switched on in my mind and I believe we are indeed all alone, I have a picture of a world empty of all life, all that's left on Earth is two boys in an underground room, we will open the door to a fogplastered space where no man lives, all the doors we open will be deserted and there will be no key to the outer lock, and I conceive of spending weeks carving at the great oak around the iron hinges with Wolf's stone tooth, trying to cut our way out of the prison school, boosting each other to the arrowslit windows to see if we can squeeze out, days pass and our bodies change, devolving into subhumans, I imagine two naked boys striking the door with fists, trying to leave through the midden pipes, we are caught underground, this place is a tomb, and my mind rises toward God looking down at us, he has condemned us--no, I'm mistaken about this, he's condemned everyone but us, this prison school is the ark of Noah, like the man Edward described to me in our discourses, we two are chosen as the only worthy boys, the rest of humanity is gone, we must give birth to a new civilization, there is a way for two boys to make a child, only no one has found it yet, it's a secret of my body, there is a womb hidden in my butt. The nonsense of this overcomes my vision and I laugh out loud, helplessly, it's so funny, oh udstears it's funny, Malcolm asks what, and it takes me some time to put the words together.

  A smile, and more laughter, and we curl up together and laugh and laugh. He reclines onto my chest and I kiss him, and he kisses me back. We are friends. He's mine. I'm his. I'm frightened by everything but him.

  In the morning I rise early and make a white mark in the brown door with Wolf's tooth.

  She catches my eye at breakfast and pure pleasure expands in her smile. I don't mind. I'm protected.

  * * *

  Days pass, small notches accumulate, not every night, we aren't fiends, and next Sunday arrives.

  The silver clarion blows. Nuncle and Stan summon us for Mass, we assemble, the door is unlocked, and the dewy walk lies ahead of us. As I step out, welcomed by crisp sunlight, Wolfweir leans over to me. There is space between me and the others, so it's somewhat private.

  "More," I hear from her slim boyish mouth. "I want more."

  "Okay." I've found pride in what she's told me to do so far, I don't mind.

  "Tonight, tell Malcolm what I make you do. Tell him you're both mine. Explain my power. And leave your door unlatched."

  I look into very frightening eyes on the face of a very young boy, only it's not a boy, but I was convinced for a moment. Wolf allows herself to drift away from me towards Perille, whom she is comfortable with.

  Hero: "Why do you even talk to him?"

  Me: "I didn't. He talked to me." I enjoy keeping her boy-girl secret, it gives me confidence to have the power to expose her at my will.

  Hero: "Tell him to get lost next time."

  Me: "They were really mean to you, weren't they?"

  Hero: "Shya. I was a shitbreath cabbagehead to them. But now I've got you, right?"

  Me: "Right."

  Hero: "Hey checkitout, I've been practicing this."

  Hero gets a running start and does four cartwheels in a row, without a pause between them.

  Me: "You've got skill as an acrobat. But tumbling isn't everything--"

  Hero: "You're such a jerk to me!"

  He runs off ahead, following Stan's footsteps--oh, he's just accidentally stepped on the back of Stan's shoes. Stan slaps him, and the boy scurries away.

  Bells ring us to church, they have different bells in England than they do in France, they toll more warmly, they are truly bells of love, whereas our French bells are scolding. But conversely, Tourum is much warmer this time of year, sometimes the leaves don't yet change color, whereas here all the apple trees that line the city are a tartan of red and green. Bet Malcolm likes them. Tartans. Scottish.

  It's as we enter the church that Nuncle notices the absence of Hero. Mass has not yet begun, they're lighting censers, and Nuncle ducks back out of the narthex, then reappears, backlit in the candlelit cathedral, and he hisses, "Stan! The boy's run off again!"

  Stan rolls his eyes--he must be cursing himself for slapping Hero--and he grabs me and Perille. "You've still got all your wind and young legs, c'mon," he says, and we exit the church. "Hustle," he adds, looking over his shoulder at the cathedral as we follow Nuncle toward the fields.

  Nuncle raises a hand to his lips and begins to call out. "Boy!" he calls, as if this is all that Hero is. Not Eadmun, which I now know is his name, merely "Boy!" Loudly, over and over into the fields.

  The stalks of grasses fold and crunch, the puddles have the faintest
crust of ice above the water, I feel like I'm walking on good glass. The skies are white but clear, both of these characteristics at the same time. Autumn and winter are staring, and summer retreats. Nuncle calls out, "Boy!" and I feel the wheel of fortune turning as the seasons turn, something is coming, the harvest is laden with chaff and damselflies, the winter will be bad, the firewood will give out and we will have to gather cowchips and the dead stalks of bulb flowers to burn for warmth, pagan fingers will sprinkle blue frost over our corner of England, the Greenman with his beard of flowers waits over us, bent to be beheaded, and the white mother in turn, and from her frozen ashes next year's flowers will be born. The boy Hero will rise and become powerful, but there is a winter for him, an unfinishedness.

  "Mass is starting, Nuncle," calls Stan. The headmaster continues to call and call, but receives no reply on the downs.

  "Hero!" I call. I call again, "Hero!" but I summon only a pair of inquisitive mallards paddling past me. Stan would shoot them, I bow to them politely instead. I believe them to be barons among ducks.

  "He'll come back," says Stan, patting Nuncle's shoulder.

  Perille is taller than any of us, he's--where?--ah, he's climbed a tree and slides down to report that young Eadmun isn't visible.

  As we return into town, jogging, Stan says, "He'll come back," again. Nuncle is frenzied, an absolute fury, not exactly consumed with anger, nor despair, but frenzy. I don't understand.

  After Mass and a very brief confession--I tell the priest (I don't know his name, he's younger, with a friar's tonsure, and I don't like him) I tell him I know I made a mistake this week and I told myself I'd confess but I don't remember the mistake. He tells me to recall it when I can and tell him next Sunday. Malcolm informs me that at the beginning of Mass a service was held for the resting of Father Bellows' soul. Together we find the chapel of Mary and kneel and as I think of poor Father Bellows and that surreal, fateful meeting with the rabid clerk, I realize two things: one, Malcolm has a secret he hasn't told me, he said so way back at another chapel of Mary, the chapel in the church of St. Martin's in Cherbourg; and two, we were never registered with the Bath hundreds. After I pray for God to take Bellows out of the devil's underground cathedral--I believe my vision to have been a true one--I tell Malcolm I have several things to tell him, and together we drift to the farthest corner of the cathedral and plant ourselves on a bench and I ask what secret he'd planned to tell me back in Normandy.