The Fool (Bailey)/Chapter 13

KNEW thee that thou art an hard man,'" said the fool to the King, "'reaping where thou hast not sown and gathering where thou hast not strawed.'" Whereat the King's Chancellor looked down his impressive nose, but the King laughed easily.

"I seek only justice, Father Bran."

"Then take care lest you find it, my son. Na, na, who will ask justice o' Judgment Day?"

The matter was this. King Henry had taken to wife the Duchess of Aquitaine, and though he held her in prison since nowhere else was he sure of her, he was still married to her lands and rights. Among her rights was some suzerainty over the Count of Toulouse which God forbid that any man should now explain. But to enforce it, to make himself master of the county of Toulouse, the King of England marched with his barons and a great host. For Thomas Becket the Chancellor had devised him taxes on yeoman and town, on church and on Jew, for the hiring of spears, and Thomas himself brought 700 knights of his own and 1,200 whom he rented and sergeants 4,000. A Chancellor of pride.

Yet the very first town that they met called a halt to King and Chancellor and all their panoply. The town of Cahors on its limestone cliff in the loop of the grey river stood across their path impregnable and from its walls the minstrel of its lord Bertrand mocked at them. Terrible as an army with banners they made parade and menace and gave challenge, and sat down to listen to those jeering songs, to watch the sunlight on the twin cupolas of the cathedral and starve out the Seigneur Bertrand. And the while the strength of France gathered to Toulouse.

Among the walnut trees by the river the King had his pavilion, and as the nightfall darkened that lucent southern sky he would talk with his Chancellor of all that he was doing and had in mind to do, strange talk, petty and grand in the same moment, so that Bran said to him: "Peace be with you, Henry my brother. A just man are you. But I knew a taverner in England that swore the miller gave him short measure of malt by a groat's worth and he would have him in the reeve's court for it. And thereafter sell all that he had to buy him a horse and mail and ride with the King's spears and win knighthood and lands by doughty deeds. Only he spent life and substance a-seeking his peck of malt. Peace be on his soul. A just man was he."

And the King pulled his ears and laughed, but Thomas Becket said, "Who stands not for his own right, he will not stand for God's right," and went on to plan a great campaign in France.

Much of France indeed lay already in the King of England's hand. Normandy was his and Brittany and the broad lands of Aquitaine. Toulouse and more he was to win by arms and make one great realm from the Mediterranean to the Scottish hills. Then join hands with the Holy Roman Empire. Then lead all the strength of Europe upon Asia in a great Crusade. Behold Henry of Anjou the champion of Christendom, the deliverer of the Holy Sepulchre, God's viceroy of the world. So betwixt King and Chancellor the scheme grew.

The while Bran at the supper-table was building him a tower. On a pasty it was founded and on the pasty he piled a beef ham and on the ham chickens and on the chickens a swan and on the swan silver cups. And then the tower fell down. "Alack my pasty," Bran mourned. "A fair land was she. Now her poor vitals gush forth."

"What have you done, you wastrel?" said the King.

"Na, na, Bran is no wastrel. 'Tis brother Henry put on his land a load she would not bear and laid her waste. See your England, my King," and he thrust the squashed pasty under Henry's nose. "You load her with all Christendom and heathenry and glory and it crushes her life blood out."

"Hear the words of the preacher, Bran the fool," said Becket angrily,

"Once there was a wise man and a wise man was he," Bran made owl's eyes, "farther he saw than any man could see, but when he went a-walking he walked into a tree."

They were then disturbed. "My lord," said Sir Hugh of Assynton, "my lord, there has come a herald out of the town and this only he says that he has no word but from his lord Bertrand this to Henry Plantagenet: "and there was laid on the table a bough of broom with its flowers dead and shrivelled.

"Foul insolence!" Becket started up, for the broom was his King's crest. "Hold me that knave herald. His sides shall bleed for it."

But the King laughed. "Peace, Thomas, peace. Give the herald meat and drink, man, and bid him say that broom flowers all the year."

"My lord," Sir Hugh bowed. "Here too is a clerk come with letters from England, but the poor priest hath ridden till he can neither stand nor sit, yet must he give them into your own hand."

"I will seek them, my lord," Becket went out and after a while came back hot. "The knave is ass and mule. He will not hear me nor heed me."

"By my faith, a brave man, Thomas," the King chuckled. "I would not dare so, not I."

"The rascal whines he is sworn to give his budget to none but you. God's death, what ails the Archbishop he chooses such a fool for his errands?"

The King went out laughing.

"Give a priest orders and he lets his brain go sleep. They are all so," Becket grumbled.

"Quoth Thomas the deacon," Bran murmured, and Becket glared at him. "Thomas, were you born of woman?"

"Do you think me no man, fool?"

"God he knows, Thomas. But Bran he doubts. For mortal man is sometimes wrong, but Thomas the deacon is only strong."

"Be it so," quoth Becket.

Then the King came rolling in. "Heart of God, here is matter, Thomas. The Archbishop is dead, rest his soul."

Becket crossed himself. "He was a good man but old."

"And here he writes with his dying hand. The good Theobald! He prays me choose the best man I have to come after him. Aye, aye, a wise man and true. The best man I have?" he looked sharply at Becket. "Who is it but you, Thomas?" he smiled.

"Who I, my lord? Now God forbid," Becket was vehement.

"Why should He, man?"

"I am not fit. No, my lord, not I. And there is work enough to hand and better work for me."

"Well, we will think more of it. Archbishop Thomas! By the mass, it has an honest ring."

"Do not mock me, my lord." And so they left it. For it was the King's way to ponder his policies long and secretly but to be sudden in act.

In the morning Bran went out beyond the camp. Often the need came upon him to be alone under the sky, and then he would talk long to dumb things, bird and beast and flower. Beyond the camp a quiet country smiled, for King Henry made war not on the land but its lord alone and the people stayed by their fields. It was early summer and great flocks of the black sheep of Languedoc were on their way from the plains to the upland pastures in the mountains of Lorèze and Margaride, far off and blue in the glittering southern air. So he lay in his red and green motley in the shade of a bank of wild roses and talked with the grasshoppers and he was aware of a child. She sat alone in the tall clover, through the murmur of the bees working in its fragrance she too was talking, talking to the sheep driven on the green road away beyond the corn, telling them stories, promising them good days, bidding them bring their lambs safe home again. And Bran fell silent and listened and the grasshoppers played on his body. She was little and frail. She wore nothing but a short tunic of leather. The black hair that curled about her neck shone in the sunlight. The small brown arms made strange graceful rhythms in the air as she talked, there was rhythm in her words and her voice was clear and sweet.

"What fairy are you?" Bran said.

She started up like a fawn and was a score yards off before she stopped. Bran lay still and held out open hands. She came closer, little brown legs swift. He saw her eyes like violets in a dim light or black water in sunshine. Her face too was frail but finely wrought and of a dark warmth of colour. She peered at him, shy and afraid. He had thrust back the cock's comb of his hood and his big shaven head was revealed. She considered him gravely, from big head to big feet. The little mouth laughed.

"Who are you, seigneur dwarf?" she said.

"Bran is my name, and a man am I, and what is more a fool."

"How are you more than a man?"

"I weep when I laugh and laugh when I weep. I see what is not. What I know that I do not believe."

"Are you a witch?" The child was very grave. "They say I am a witch."

"Nenny, nenny. I have been here and I have been there and never a witch was anywhere. It is a kind earth and has no magic save in men's fear."

"They say I have the evil eye," said the child solemnly. Bran put out his hand and drew her down beside him. "Your eyes are like flowers, little one." And to himself he said: "God send they do not die as soon." And he caressed her. "There is a place in my heart for you. Na, na, but believe no evil they say of you. You are God's child."

"They say it hurts them when I look at them, and brings a murrain on their cows and their sheep. But I do not believe it. When the boys are not there the lambs love to come to me and the little calves. And they like the stories I tell them and they play with me. And the birds will come into my hands. So I know I am not evil."

"Yea, yea. That is sure," Bran said. "Who is your father, little maid?"

"I have not a father. I never had, they say. I have no mother. She died in bearing me. Like the black calf's mother. But they said it was my grandmother looked on her that she died. For she is a great witch."

"God have mercy, God have mercy," Bran said. "There is none but the grandam for you, little maid?"

"But grandmother is my own grandmother," said the child proudly. "And she is very great. None dares come to our cave. And all run from her. She knows all things and she is sister of the King of the Dead. Some day he will send for her and she will be a Queen."

"Sister of the King of the Dead?" Bran said after her. "God save all poor souls. And what is your grandam's name, little maid?"

"Why, she is my grandmother. And they call her the witch. Sometimes they call her the Wisdom and the Old One."

"So, so. Then what is your name?"

"I do not know. I have so many. The boys call me too witch. Sometimes my grandmother calls me Ion. It means violet, she told me, and also it means one who is going, always going. Sometimes she calls me her flower." "And you love her, this grandam? And she is good to you?"

"But yes, yes. She is my own one. She is dear and kind. Only—only she—sometimes it is strange. Oh! How do you make me talk? I talk everything to you. And look, look, she is there." The child started up.

Bran held her gently. Across the clover he saw a woman. Old she might be, but she walked easily, unbent. She was short and sturdily made. She wore a tunic that reached only to the knee and her legs and her arms were bare. "Bran is safe to trust," he said. "How do you live, little one?"

"Why, we live in our cave. I told you. I told you everything. Please, Bran, let me go. My grandmother is hunting. I do not like to be with her when she is hunting."

But the woman had seen them and she cried out: "Wait, you," and came to them in long strides and stood before them.

"Good cheer, good woman," Bran said. She was old, indeed. The hair beneath her flat leather cap was white. Her face was wrinkled everywhere like a walnut and darker than a walnut and her eyes sunken deep.

"What man are you?" she said.

"I am the King's fool."

"And I am the Wisdom of Cahors."

"Can I serve you, good mother, you or the child?"

She clutched at the child. "What have you that I would have?" she said fiercely. "Keep your own. I keep mine," and she dragged the child away and over her shoulder jeered at him: "Fool, poor fool."