THE FOOL
CHAPTER I
PLAYING KNUCKLE-BONES
THERE were dead in the courtyard and a noise. Across the morning twilight men shouted from tower to tower and blade clashed on mail where the last of the garrison sold blood for blood, and from the bowels of the castle came already the yells and crash of plundering. And the bells of the Abbey beyond the wall were ringing to matins.
Only one man was alive among the dead in the courtyard, and he sat on his heels in a corner and played knuckle-bones. He flared in the greyness, one lean thigh scarlet and one grass-green, his doublet a patchwork in all colours, about his neck and his big head a hood like a monk's cowl, but yellow, and the crest of it was red and fashioned as a cock's comb, and out of the sides came the grey rough ears of an ass. While his big hands tossed and snatched the bones he was singing a Latin hymn. From the battlements a man was thrown and fell beside him and lay with blood oozing through the rings of the hauberk. But he did not move or look; he tossed the bones still and still sang.
The storming party mustered again, a sturdy, swaggering company, begrimed and with many a gap hewn in their mail coats. For their armour was rings or little scraps of steel, like a fish's scales sewn upon cloth—that a man could wear steel plates no man had yet found out. It was the year of the Lord 1140. You remember that Stephen was fighting to be King of England then, and his cousin, Matilda, who had been an Empress in Germany when she was a child, fought to be Queen, and all the country was ravaged by their wars and the barons who throve upon their wars. From sea to sea in England there was no law: what a man could not hide the sword took from him; what could be hidden torture dragged from him; and over many a shire there was no meat nor milk nor corn for common folk, and they lived in holes upon acorns and beech-mast like swine, more wretched than the first men who crawled upon our world. For they had known a better life.
Odo le Veneur was made to prosper in such a time. You see him, a hulking big-bodied man in bright mail, the long nose-piece of his helmet shadowing all his face but the fat jowl. He came down to the courtyard and roared at his men: "Splendour of God!" (He gave out that he was a base-born son of the Red King, he liked to swear the Conqueror's oath.) "You grow slow, dogs!" He strode past looking them over and laughed. "The boars have gored you. Go to, do your will," and they scattered to plunder. Odo took off his helmet and showed a bloated red face and lank black hair and shouted for wine. The man in the corner still played knuckle-bones.
Odo put out a foot to kick him over, but the man fell on his hands and threw a somersault. "Why, cousin Odo," says he with a wide grin, "Cousin Odo, we have stormed Heaven this morning and I bring you the keys of the gate," and he held out his knuckle-bones.
"Bones, fool?"
"Why yes, cousin, man's bones, woman's bones. Nought else will open Heaven to any man."
"Out on you, do you play with man's bones?"
"Even as you, cousin. What else are they good for in this world?" He threw a somersault backwards and sat down on his heels and went on playing.
Hours after he was there still, when from the h;ill Odo shouted: "Bran! Bran!" He picked himself up, he picked up a shapeless thing beside him which, being blown out, revealed itself as a small bagpipe and playing upon it a jerky tune he danced into the hall, an odd sight, for his fool's habit clothed a frame very lean and very short yet with broad shoulders, a huge head, big hands and big feet, and he showed them off in a jig. This vastly amused Odo and his men, who stopped their eating and bade him do it again and again, till he fell upon hands and knees and ran about like a dog, and like a dog whined for food and scraped at Odo's knees, and, putting his head on one side, looked up at him plaintively and licked his chops and dribbled and made more queer dog's noises.
Then Odo, swearing that he was the king of fools, flung him a bone, and he ran after it and growled and thereafter picked himself up and sat down by the little table on Odo's left-hand. He cut himself a trencher of bread like the rest, and snatched slices of meat which another had cut, and began to eat, using all his fingers. Then, "Welcome to our castle of Malmesbury, cousin Odo," he said, and giggled. "Welcome to my shell, quoth the oyster, as I ate him. But he had no wits, the fool. How does your entertainment like you, cousin?"
"It likes me well enough, fool."
"Pledge me in a cup of wine, cousin. What, knaves, wine for my lord!" And when the steward came with a pitcher he snatched it. "The cup for the lord, but the jug for the fool," he cried, and drank. Odo cuffed at him and he fell over and waggled his great feet in the air. Then he sat down and ate again, and after a while, humming a glee, began to make his bread-platter into little dolls.
"What are you at, fool?" says Odo after a while.
"Why, cousin, I am like the good God. I make men and women for man to eat." He swept up the dolls and gulped them all down. "God rest their souls, quoth the fool."
Then they made him dance again and juggle with knives till at last he seemed to stab himself and fell backwards out of the door and made the death rattle and was gone.
Out of the castle and down the hill he went. The fool was fool enough to like to be alone. See him, if you please, throwing back his hood and dipping his shaven head in the river; see him wandering in the green desert of the country-side, laughing to himself, preaching to the willow herb and the ragged robin and barking like a fox till a fox answered him and he found a litter of cubs at play. But the next thing that matters is that scrambling down a hill he came upon a cave in the oolite and a boy looking out of it, a sturdy bold boy, young in his teens, who laid hold of him and said, "Whose man are you, fellow?"
He giggled. "Bran does not know that. Bran is a poor fool. But we are all God's people, lord."
A girl came up behind the boy, little his elder by the look of her body, but with a wiser sterner face. "He lies, Jocelin. All fools lie."
"Na, na, na," said Bran. "None but fools tell truth. None but fools keep troth. An alms for the fool, great lady," and he fell on his knees and put out his hands.
She dashed them aside. "Rogue, you are some rich lord's man. See his silver chain, Jocelin."
"Chains are chains. God save all. Pity the poor fool. Sir Odo le Veneur is my lord, lady."
"Jocelin!" she plucked out the knife from her girdle. The boy held her hand. "He will tell of us. He must not go back."
"It were shame to kill a fool," the boy said.
The fool laughed. "Mercy was ever a man," said he, "and wisdom is a woman. Strike, and I give you my blessing." He flung back his head and opened his arms—then sprang up. "No! God forgive me, who tempted a child." And he crossed himself and muttered a prayer. "Do I believe that? Why, care killed the cat." And he laughed so queerly that the girl shrank away and made the sign against the evil eye. "Na, na, never fear, Bran is not a wicked one. The more fool Bran."
"Swear that you will not tell on us," says the boy, catching his wrist.
"By oak and ash and thorn I swear, yea, and by the blood on the Holy Crown."
"That is a great oath."
"A great and terrible oath, lord. And thereafter a man must eat and be strong again." Into the cave he came, past the bewildered boy, and squatted down and took from his scrip a gammon of bacon and bread and cut. "Bran's pouch never goes empty till Bran's paunch is back by the larder. Eat, lady."
"I am not hungry, fool."
His long finger shot out. "Swear it! Na, na. Bran knows when a body is hungry. Bran has seen."
Eat they did then, and eating loosed tongues. They wanted to know if the Castle of Malmesbury was taken; what had befallen the garrison. "It is well with them. They are dead," said Bran, and saw the children look at each other with fierce eyes. "Whose kin are ye?" And they told him. They were the children of Sir Jocelin Longuemain who had held the castle for the Bishop of Salisbury, but he died in his bed in the spring. When Odo summoned the castle at nightfall, their father's steward had thrust them out by the postern and bade them take sanctuary in the Abbey. But the Abbey would not open to their knocking, and they ran away to hide. "The drowsy knave monks," said Bran; "eh, eh, cousin Odo will wake them. Not a saint sleeps sound with Odo to neighbour. Patience, patience, my lord and my lady, the monkery will pay." So they asked him what his lord Odo was like. "Saw ye ever a pig loose in a garth? What does he do? He eats the herbs, yea, and what he does not eat that he roots up and defiles. Even such is my cousin Odo."
"And you serve such a one!" says the girl.
"Pity the poor fool, Lady Judith," Bran whined.
"A man may be a fool yet have a man's spirit," and she rated him fiercely for serving a robber lord, a knight unknightly, a hunter of the weak, a foreigner—till the fool broke out in that queer laugh of his.
"Foreign? Nenny, nenny, foreign are you all. The Saxon was before the Norman, and the Briton was before the Saxon, and before the Briton was my folk, yea, before Sir Brut the Trojan came. For we are the living earth, the clay and the chalk, and the old, old stone, and it was a Saxon churl slew my mother with his spear in the thicket above Monken Risborough, and I only am left that I know. Bran the fool. Only the land, the old land and I." He thrust at them with his big feet and laughed again. "Away, new folk!"
The children drew together: "You—that knife is iron?" the boy said.
"Aha! Yea, lord, iron; and, yea, there is salt in the meat. Both the salt and the iron are my friends. No goblin I am, no fairy man. Born of woman I was and body of man I am. Naught but a fool, lord."
Perhaps they did not thoroughly believe him; they became curious about him yet with a certain reverence, and talk came fast. They asked him a thousand things and his advice. Odo was King Stephen's man, but it was no order of Stephen's to seize on Malmesbury. That was lord Odo's private venture. He was sent forth to watch the roads for the Empress. What should they do, the children? Lie close, close. The castle was a bishop's castle, and no arm so long as the arm of Holy Church. Wait awhile. And while they talked and the light waned came from the valley the call of a woman, a long, despairing cry. The boy started up and ran out. "Oh, the mass! Lie close, say I, and off goes he. Who hath trouble enough ever goes to seek it."
"It was a woman," said Judith.
"What is the worth of a woman when men are born to be killed?"
Up the steep in the twilight came Jocelin, tottering, panting, so heavily the woman leaned upon him, and as they drew near the cave she swayed and stumbled and fell upon her face and lay still. The fool rolled her over and the children stood aghast. "She had ridden her horse to death," Jocelin gasped. "She asked food for the love of God."
"Now God have mercy," the fool muttered, peering at her.
"Why, is she dead?" Judith cried.
"Nenny, nenny," says he, and tweaked the woman's nose and laughed wildly and tweaked it again and fell to beating her hands. She sneezed, she grasped at the air and sat up, and he slipped his knee behind her.
"Wine, a cup of wine," she said faintly.
"Water is our wine, goody," he laughed.
"Who speaks?"
"A poor fool, goody."
"I am well served," she said. She was tall and largely made. Years and passion or care had furrowed her brow. Her cloak was deep in dust, but of rich blue cloth with broideries, and in it the gleam of a golden chain.
The boy brought her water in his cap and she made a wry face and drank, and they fed her on bread and bacon, and though she looked at it queerly she said grace for it.
"As dark as it is, a fool can tell you have an eye, goody," Bran said.
She was pleased and laughed. "Whose folk are ye?"
"Na, na, goody. You are upside down."
"How, fool?"
"Thus, by mine honour: 'tis the guest gives a name not the host."
"Here is deep policy! Why then, sirrah, men call me Grandam Mold, and I am a landless woman this day."
Bran lay back against the rock and looked at the children and laid his finger on his lip. Then, making a chant of it, he droned out, "And well met then, and very well met, are Grandam Mold and we, for these be orphans and outcast and I am a fool, you see."
"Aye, now am I come to my kingdom," she said. "You are right to be merry, fool."
"Why yea, goody, even as thorns do right to crackle in the fire. What now? What now?" There were horsemen riding in the valley and not keeping the track, but ranging wide and calling to each other. "Keep close now, you, or you are sped."
"Close, quotha? I could not move a yard to shun the fiend," the woman said, but Bran was gone.
It was not yet quite dark and a full moon rising red above the hills. So in the valley all things looked vague and treacherous, and the horsemen came on slowly, beating hither and thither. Then rose a long-drawn howl, a howl as of a creature in pain, yet with some wicked mirth in it, and it echoed from hill to hill, and while still the echoes rang came another that seemed to answer it and another.
The shouts of the horsemen were hushed, and they drew together and halted, and through the stillness came the murmur of an anxious parley. Then keeping close they pushed on. Again the howling echoed, there was cawing and screaming and a rustle of wings as a pair of ravens, roused from their nest, hurtled through the air in angry fear. If they were ravens and not more evil things, for there on the lump of rock above the river was some creature neither human nor beast, a strange, shapeless sight, grey as the twilight, grey-white all over, without head, without tail, now dancing on all fours, now on its hind legs, now on its fore legs, and either way waving great hoofs in the air. Whence came the howling that mocked and gibbered no man could tell, whether from the dancing beast, whether from the hills.
The horsemen saw fiends on earth and air, and turned and fled the haunted valley.
When he heard the panic, Bran scrambled down from his rock and brushed the dust out of his face and his clothes. "It is a good Bran," he said, and for his own satisfaction performed another little dance. "A good Bran, yea. The trick was featly done. But oh, my wits, my wits, what a poor soul hath a man! As often as I play me that trick, under the roof, under the sky, never it fails me. Conjure up a fiend for them, and their souls cower and their joints are loosened. Yet what fiend could be more a fiend than man? I will believe in Mahound, ere I believe that any world hath worse than this. But Bran is a fool."
So he went lustily for the castle, and making a straight line passed those anxious horsemen, who kept to the track, and coming into the huddled little town of Malmesbury he hit upon some of Odo's men who had been drinking there, and mingling with them he entered the castle by the postern. Then he sought the hall and curled himself up on the rushes among the dogs and slept careless as they, yet like them not without dreams that made him start and moan.