Beyond Binary

by Brit Mandelo

  “Look!” Carefully, Richard brandished his blade, but low to the ground where it couldn’t hurt anything. It was not as razor-sharp as a true duelist’s would be, but it still had a point, and an edge.

  Crispin nodded, but didn’t look up. “Steady….” he said around the thread in his mouth, anchored to one finger against his hook. “Wait—“ With a needle, he teased at the feather on the hook. “There!” He held up something between an insect and a dead leaf.

  “Nice,” Richard said.

  “So. Let’s see.” Crispin gently balanced his fly on the table and looked up. “So you finally got a real one. Is it sharp?”

  “Not very. Want to practice? I’ll tip the point for you, don’t worry.”

  “Not now. I want to fish. It’s nearly dusk. The pike will be biting.”

  “I’ll let you use the real sword.” It cost Richard something, but he said it. “I’ll use the wooden one.”

  “No, I tell you! I’ve been working all day on my Speckled King. It’s now or never. I’ve got to try it!” Crispin picked up his rod, the fly on its hook reverently cupped in one palm.

  “Oh, all right. I’ll come with you, then.”

  Richard slung his heavy sword back in the makeshift hanger at his hip, and followed the lord’s son out through the courtyard and down the drive and across the fields to where the river ran sluggish, choked with weeds. The afternoon was perfectly golden. He felt that it was meant for adventure, for challenge, for chasing the sun down wherever it went—not for standing very still and waiting for something small and stupid underwater to be fooled onto the dinner table by a feather and a piece of string. Nevertheless he joined his friend on the riverbank, and watched Crispin expertly cast the line.

  It was true that the boys had already corrupted each other, in precisely the way that Crispin’s father had meant. It was, for them, just another thing to do with their bodies, like climbing or swimming or running races—and with certain similarities there, as well; they experimented with speed and distance, and competed with each other. Fishing was serious, though. Richard prepared to wait. He wondered if it would distract Crispin, or the fish, if he practiced just a little, and decided not to chance it. Crispin fussed at the pole, and cast the line again.

  Gnats hummed on the water. A dragonfly mated with another.

  “Tomorrow,” Richard began, and Crispin said, “Shh! I think I’ve got one.” He raised the tip of his rod, and his line tightened. Richard watched Crispin’s face—the fierce concentration as he pulled, released, tightened the line again, and gave a sudden jerk as his opponent lashed the surface of the water. It was a pike, a big one, with a sharp pointed snout, its jaws snapping with the hook. It struggled against the pull of the line, and Crispin struggled with it as it raised white water and then rose into the air—it looked almost as if the fish were trying to wrestle him into its own element, holding him at the end of the nearly-invisible line, coming toward him, going away, dancing on the wind. Finally it spun in, a writhing silver streak of a pike that landed on the grass beside him with a desperate thud, enormous and frantic for breath.

  “Ha!” Crispin cried, viewing his prize as it gasped out its life—and “Ha!” Richard cried, as he plunged his blade fiercely into its side, where he figured the heart should be.

  The fish lay still, then flopped once more and collapsed. Richard withdrew his blade, a little raggedly, and fish guts leaked out its silver sides.

  “Why did you do that?” Crispin said quietly.

  “It was dying anyway.”

  “You ruined it.”

  “It was a noble opponent,” Richard said grandly. “I gave it a merciful death.”

  “You don’t give a fish a merciful death.” Crispin’s voice was tight with rage. “It’s not a deer or a hound or something. It’s a fish.”

  “I know it’s a fish, so what does it matter?”

  “Look at it!” Crispin’s fists were clenched. “It looks completely stupid now.” The pike’s fierce mouth, lined with teeth, gaped haplessly, the hook still in it, the feathers of the fly like something it had caught and didn’t quite know what to do with.

  “Well I’m sorry, then,” said Richard. “But you can still eat it. It’s still good.”

  “I don’t want it!” Crispin shouted. “You’ve ruined it!”

  “Well at least get your fly back out of it. It’s a terrific fly. Really.”

  “No it’s not. It was, but you ruined it. You like to ruin everything, don’t you?”

  Oh, no, Richard thought. He knew where this was going, and that there was pretty much no stopping it. It didn’t even occur to him to walk away; that would only prolong things. He had to stay and see it out.

  “Go away,” Crispin said. “You’re not my friend.”

  “Yes I am. I was your friend this morning. I’m your friend, still, now.”

  Crispin kicked the fish. A little goo ran out its mouth. Its eyes were open. It did look pretty stupid.

  “You said you were sorry, but you didn’t really mean it.”

  “Yes I did. I am. I’m sorry I ruined your fish. It’s a great fish.”

  “Prove it, then.”

  Here it comes, thought Richard. He felt a little involuntary shiver. “How?”

  He waited. Crispin was thinking.

  The longer Crispin thought, the worse things were. It would be something awful. Would he have to eat the fish raw? He wondered if he could.

  “Give me your sword,” Crispin said.

  “No!” That was too much.

  “I’ll give it back.”

  “Swear?”

  “If you do as I say. I don’t want it,” Crispin said scornfully. “It’s just a beat up piece of junk.”

  Richard put his hand on the pommel at his hip. “Swear anyway.”

  Crispin rolled his eyes, but he swore one of their oaths: “May the Seven Gods eat my liver live if I don’t give it back to you. After you’ve apologized.”

  “All right, then.” Richard drew his blade, and held it out.

  “Not that way. You must kneel. Kneel to me, and offer it properly.”

  He knelt in front of Crispin in the grass, the sword balanced across his two hands. It was heavy this way.

  “All right,” his friend said.

  “Is this enough?”

  “For now.” Crispin was smiling the unpleasant smile that meant he’d thought of something else. Richard wondered what it was. It was worth staying to find out. His arms ached, but not unbearably.

  “Are you going to take it, Crispin, or not?”

  “Give it to me.”

  Richard held it out a little further, and Crispin grasped the hilt. The weight leaving him was like a drink of water on a hot day.

  “Now stand up.”

  He stood.

  Solemnly, Crispin leveled the sword at his chest. Richard looked down at the tip of the blade against his shirt. This was hard. It took almost everything he had to hold himself in check, not to fight back.

  Crispin nodded.

  “You have passed the first test,” Crispin intoned. He put the sword aside. Richard hoped it wouldn’t get too wet on the grass. The sun was getting lower. But it wasn’t dark yet.

  “And now, the second. Are you ready?” Richard nodded. “Take off my boot.”

  He knelt by Crispin’s leg and pulled his left boot off the way he’d seen the valet pull off Lord Trevelyan’s after the hunt. Crispin steadied himself with a hand on Richard’s shoulder, but that was all right; he had to: the whole thing wouldn’t work if Crispin fell.

  “Now my stocking.”

  Richard eased the wrinkled stocking off his foot. It smelt not disagreeably of leather, wool, and Crispin himself. “What should I do with it?”

  “Put it somewhere you can find it again. This won’t take long.”

  Crispin’s bare foot was balanced on his thigh, just above his bent knee. Crispin was like an acrobat, poised for flight. Or if there had been a tree above them, he might have b
een about to hoist his friend up into its branches for the sweetest fruit. He could see all sorts of possibilities, but Richard knew from rich experience that nothing he could imagine was remotely like what Crispin would say. And, indeed, it was not.

  “Now, put your tongue between my toes.”

  “What?”

  Crispin said nothing, did nothing. The foot was there. Crispin was there. The words had been spoken. They were never taken back.

  The foot was there. Richard bent his head to it.

  Something in his body tingled. He didn’t like it. It was just a stupid foot. It should have nothing to do with the way he was feeling.

  He tasted essence of Crispin. Crispin’s fingers were in his hair, holding tight. He moved on to the next toe. The feeling grew. He really hated it, and he really didn’t. He didn’t seem to have a choice, actually. He was feeling it whether he wanted to or not. It felt more dangerous than anything he’d ever done, and he didn’t hate that, either. He ran his tongue along another toe, and felt Crispin shudder.

  “All right,” his friend said. “That’s enough.” But Richard didn’t raise his head. “The offense— The offense is purified. The deed is pardoned.” Those were the ritual words. Richard should have stopped, but he didn’t.

  “The deed is—“

  Richard went for another toe.

  Crispin let himself fall. His bare foot caught Richard on the side of the mouth, but Richard could tell he hadn’t meant it to, and let himself fall, too. They rolled on the ground together, struggling against each other for some sort of relief in a fight they didn’t know how to win. They pressed their bodies tight against each other, reaching for each other’s skin through their clothes, and finally had the sense to tear them off and give each other the release they’d gotten in the past. It felt different this time, more frightening, more uncontrolled, more essential—and more complete, when they had both done, as though they had made an offering to the world they hadn’t meant to.

  “The offense is purified,” Richard breathed into Crispin’s ear.

  “The deed is pardoned,” Crispin whispered to the grass.

  They got up and cleaned themselves off, and put their clothing back together, and went home.

  The next day, Richard helped his mother clean the loft out. The day after that, Crispin took him riding on a real saddlehorse. They passed through a field with high hedges, but did not dismount to experiment with each other behind them. That particular experiment was over, now. They never spoke of it again.

  ∞

  The old swordsman came back at the end of summer, and spent the winter with them. He didn’t say much, and he didn’t drink much, either. He was yellowish and hollow-eyed, skin slack on his face, hands trembling when he didn’t watch them.

  Richard showed him his new sword. The old man whistled low. “That’s a real old relic, that is. A pride of ages past. Wonder where they dug that up?” He hefted it, made a few passes with surprising speed. “Wasn’t junk once. Nice balance. Length’s all wrong for you, boy—’smeant for a bigger man. Have to work extra hard now, wontcha?”

  He wasn’t fun to have around. Some days he never got out of the grubby tangle of blankets and cloaks he huddled in a little too close to the hearth and its ashes. On what must have been his good days, though, he’d heft his own blade, or the fireplace poker, whichever was nearest, and smack at Richard’s leg or his sword, if either was within reach; he’d growl something in the back of his throat, and then simply go at him as if Richard were some kind of demon he needed to vanquish. Eventually he’d calm down, and start criticizing, or explaining. That was worth the wait. But it was hard.

  “I’ve gotten bad,” Richard complained, the fifth time of being smacked along his ribs with the flat of the man’s blade. He was waking up bruised. “I’ve forgotten everything you taught me.”

  “No, you’ve not.” The old man cackled. “You’ve grown, is what it is. Arms and legs in a whole new place each morning. Trying, ennit?”

  “Very.” Richard risked a pass, and was rewarded with a touch.

  “Move the table,” Octavia said absently, standing at it exploring a bat’s insides. They had actually left it on the other side of the room some days ago, but she wasn’t paying attention.

  “Well, don’t break anything, then.” She might have meant a bowl, or her son’s arm—or probably both.

  Nothing got broken. Richard grew all that winter. He was getting hair in unaccustomed places. His voice was not reliable. It made him all the more eager to master the sword.

  “You’ll be a beauty,” the man would taunt him, trying to break his concentration while they sparred. “Good thing you know how to use this thing, because you’ll be fighting them off with it.”

  That was good. The last thing he wanted was people pestering him. This fall the goose girl had started following him around, never leaving him alone—and when he ignored her, she actually threw things at him, so he gave her a thrashing—a light one—but still, to his surprise, his mother had given him one when she heard, to see how he liked it. She said it was for his own good, but he knew that she was just good and angry. She told him he must never, ever lift his hand against a woman or a girl, not even if they were being very irritating. Not even if they struck him first. Because son, she said, soon you will be much stronger than they. You could hurt someone badly without even meaning to. So it won’t be fair. And besides, soon you’ll be in a position to, ah, to put them at risk— But we’ll talk about that next year, shall we?

  “What if her brother comes after me?” Village boys had bullied him a lot when he was small.

  She gave him the same answer now that she’d given then to such good effect: “Oh, him you can try and kill, if you can.”

  ∞

  He didn’t see much of Crispin that winter. The snows were unusually deep, and Crispin was at studies of his own. His father had sent to the city for a University man to teach Crispin mathematics and geometry and orthography and things. When he saw his friend, Crispin told Richard that this was unquestionably the worst year of his life so far. And he didn’t see why he had to learn all this stuff when he was going to have secretaries and bailiffs to do the important writing and figuring for him—which earned him a clout from his father, who explained that if he didn’t know how to do those things for himself, he’d be cheated blind and the whole estate go to wrack and ruin. And no, it wasn’t a bit like not studying the sword. Some things were indeed best left to specialists; he wasn’t expected to be able to shoe his own mare, either, was he? Next year he was to have Logic, and Rhetoric, and Dancing.

  “Stand fast,” he told Richard St Vier. “Don’t let them teach you to read, whatever they say. Next time she remembers, just tell her you’re too busy or something.”

  “I’ll tell her it’s bad for my eyesight.”

  “Whatever it takes. Trust me, it’s the beginning of the end.”

  Crispin was considering running away if things got much worse. But not to the city; that’s where all these horrors came from. Maybe he’d jump a boat upriver, if Richard would come with him.

  Richard said he’d consider it.

  And so they waited ’til spring.

  The old man was better in the spring. He sat out in the sunshine on a bench next to the rain barrel against the wall, like a pea sprout waiting to unfurl in the sun. He dueled Richard up and down the yard, to the terror of the hens, who wouldn’t lay for a week. Octavia complained about the chickens, and the old man got all huffy, and said he would go. She was sorry to hurt his feelings, but she was really just as glad to get her cottage back to herself.

  They missed him the next year, though. Octavia felt bad, especially as she was pretty sure he must be dead. He couldn’t last forever, and he hadn’t looked good, even in spring. However, Richard had uncovered the exciting news that Lord Trevelyan’s new valet from the city had studied the sword there, as well.

  Richard had given up on Crispin as a dueling partner. Crispin said he ha
d too much to study already, and when they had time to do things together, they had better be something fun. Neither of them had to say that Crispin wasn’t any kind of match for Richard any more (except in drill, which even Richard couldn’t consider fun).

  In an agony of need, Richard plotted how to approach the new valet. Should he be casual, off-hand, and only plead if he had to? Or should he abandon all pretense, and simply beg for a lesson?

  In the end, it was Lady Trevelyan who decided the matter. Crispin’s mother was back from the city, a month early because of an outbreak of fever there, and bored out of her mind. It was her idea to stage a demonstration bout at the Harvest Feast.

  By the time Octavia had heard about it, Richard had already gleefully said yes, and it was too late for her to make a fuss about any son of hers displaying himself like a mountebank for the entertainment of people who had nothing better to do than watch other people poking at each other with hypertrophied table knives. It was just as well, really; she had the awful feeling she might have ended up sounding exactly like her mother.

  Still, it would have been nice if Hester Trevelyan could have troubled herself to make a courtesy call to explain to Octavia herself that the swords would be tipped, and there would be no First Blood in this duel, the way there was in the city. A mother’s heart, after all. Or didn’t Lady Trevelyan think she had one? Octavia had Richard’s boots re-soled, and made sure he had a nice, clean shirt.

  Late on the holiday, Octavia braided her hair on top of her head, fixed it with gold pins, and put on her Festival best—not the dress she’d run away in, which had gone to useful patches long ago, but the one she’d stashed to be married in whenever she and her dashing lover got ’round to it: a glittery and flimsy contraption a decade out of date which still fit her perfectly, and made her look like a storybook queen.

  When she made her entrance on the Trevelyan grounds, everyone stared. The country folk standing behind the ribbons marking off the fight space sniggered, because they’d never seen anything like it; but Hester Trevelyan, who had worn something very similar at her own coming out ball, looked hard at Richard St Vier’s mother. Then she scanned the crowd for Crispin, and called him to her.