Chapter One

HE SAT ASTRIDE HIS STALLION, THE VERY ICON OF CALM, HIS ATTENDENT AT HIS SIDE.  Trumpets blared and the conversation quieted not only out of respect for his position, but what ultimately lay at stake.  He held his plumed helmet under his left arm.  The brightly colored banners flapped in the breeze, the wind stiff, coming directly toward him, brushing his full head of hair back from his face.  

The stands were full, and thousands of eyes were upon him, unblinking.

Gamon was seated upon a muscular steed, facing the most dangerous man at the competition some hundred feet away, a man who was a mystery to all in Alpurnia.  

His foe’s garments were almost fully black, accented by red. A visor covered his face. 

He was the prince; he could simply order the man to remove his helmet.  The man had retired six of the king’s best men to get here: one rested under a shade, three were being attended to by royal physics, and the remaining two lay inside, white sheets pulled over their faces.

Gamon tried to determine some clue as to his identity, but there was none there to see.   Was it the evil Fenwick?  Was it even possible?  He didn’t think so…he’d been presumed dead for years now, hadn’t he? 

If not he then who?  Some new, unknown foe?  A talented blackguard, here to make a name for himself?  His opponent’s shield was also black, bearing no crest, and it too bore no sign of its affiliation…Gamon had the crazy thought that it was a husker, dead for all these years but for walking the land day and night.  But the Man in Black was no mindless shell; there was evil in that malevolent suit.   He chuckled at the notion.

The menace surrounding his opponent might have worried most men, but Gamon wasn’t like most men…and he held the red and gold kerchief of the princess in his hand.  He looked up to see her staring at him, but his gaze made her blush, and she hid her face behind a duplicate kerchief.

Gamon raised his own linen to his mouth and kissed it, giving her a wink.  She suddenly seemed faint and fanned herself, so Gamon nodded at her and tucked the kerchief in his wrist, under his metallic glove.  With a final nod of his head in her direction he turned and once again faced his opponent.  The man in black seemed to be speaking to his valet, who shook his head until his master leaned down and said something to him that seemed to freeze him on the spot.  When he did move the squire went to the end of his master’s lance and pulled off the cover at the tip, revealing a gleaming brass point, honed and quite sharp.

 There were gasps and even some small screams around the packed stadium.  They’d come to see a competition, and it looked like they were about to see a death match.

“Sir!” his squire gasped.  “This is foul!  You must not allow this…”

“I beg to differ,” he said, his voice steady.  “It is he I will not allow to continue.” 

“I beseech you,” his valet said.  “This is evil.   You cannot mean to meet him in the field of battle…not this way.  He is cruel!”

Gamon only smiled…so he wanted a joust of war, did he?  He nodded to his valet, and flipped his hand, as if to say, “Ah! Well…” and his lance was uncapped as well. 

The packed stands went crazy…several women collapsed, and men ran to support them, knowing full well that for this minute, at least, their hearts fluttered for another.

But as for his own life Gamon wasn’t worried…his steely constitution had dealt with worse threats than this.  No, despite the danger facing him, his mind was elsewhere.   His mind had but one occupation at the time:

What was that smell?

O, Almighty!

Gamon’s eyes shot open.  He knew in an instant what his father had done...he’d been doing this almost every morning lately.

It was ghastly, so awful it almost had a taste.  And he’d just fallen asleep again after languishing in the half-slumber that was always so hard to regain, hoping for one more chance to grasp the flimsy threads of his dream and pull it back over like the spare burlap under which he slept.  And it had been splendid…

But this…oh, this.

Gamon Minor scrambled out of his straw bed, scarcely remembering to grab his leggings before he descended the tall, rickety ladder into the main room of his family’s ramshackle cottage home.  Even holding his breath was detestable, as the act forced him to take a deep lungful of putrid air. 

But, as doing so would prevent any future breaths, he regrettably inhaled.  Deeply.  As he intended to take no more, he held this breath, slipped into his leggings and slid down the shaky pine post with half-foot crosspieces nailed every foot or so that served as his ladder down to the dirty straw floor.  Just as he was about to hop into his thin leather boots he turned and saw his father, disheveled and unkempt.  The man scratched his armpit, looked at his son and pretended raising a glass.  His pinky finger was out.

Gamon nodded, his lips tight, and his father held his gaze for a moment, looking expectant.

“’Morning!“ he said in a cheery voice that mocked the upper crust—which for them was pretty much everybody else.   “Pleasant weather we’re having, ‘tisn’t it?”  His face was an attempt to look elegant, but its least effective effort was in hiding the smile.

“Mmph,” Gamon forced out, waving his hand as he passed by.  He could hear the laughter as he pushed aside the door and stepped outside.  He pushed the door closed behind him, as much to keep the smell inside as the sound.

This, from a man who struck fear in the hearts of his fellows?  He could name two dozen strong men who could tip an anvil yet were intimidated by a single malicious look from his father—this very man, who spent more mornings than not breaking wind just to wake his son.   You never know, Gamon thought: maybe they’d be even more frightened of him if they smelled what he regularly treated his son to.

And so here Gamon was, out by the privy to get a fresh breath.  Ridiculous.  He shook his head and poked his head inside the cottage.  He believed the air was passable, but he felt it suspicious that his mother was nowhere to be seen.

“Aw, come on in, ya dandy pants!” his father said.  “It’s sweet as silk in here!”

Sweet as silk?  Gamon thought, once again wondering if his father meant to mix his sayings up that way.  He stepped inside slowly…it was hardly a bed of roses, but it was better.  

“Over here, boy.  We have work to do before emergence.”  

Gamon gurgled, nodding.  Chewy, their goat, came by her name honestly, and they would probably have found ample reason to make her into a meal and some gloves or shoes, especially with winter coming on, but she provided good milk, and milk meant butter and cheese.  It was her one saving grace in his father’s eye.

Getting it done now, and before emergence—dawn—meant there was something going on.  His father typically let everything go until the final minute.

             “Where’s mother?” he asked.

His father gave a small snort.  “Over at Maggie’s.  Something about tomorrow’s visit from the porter.”  He held his hand out.  “Hammer.”

While Gamon looked around the straw floor in an attempt to find the tool, his father continued airing his views.

“You know how she is,” his father said. “Whatever Abingdon wants, he gets.  He’s coming over here tomorrow morning…sometime before midding.”

Gamon noted the time with great disappointment; the bell of midding placed him out in the fields and it meant he would not be able to see the good porter—who was not only their local clergyman, but a good man to talk to, to listen to, and simply to be around. Abingdon ran the temple with a gentle hand, favoring intelligence and discussion over blind allegiance, as their creed dictated.  It was one of the only rigorous rules of their faith, and Gamon enjoyed spending time with the porter whenever he could.   Compared to that new man Clarinbeau, he was a blessing.

“How long will Porter Abingdon stay, Papa?”

“Long enough for him to say what he needs to,” his father said, “and short enough for you to miss ‘im.  Where’s the hammer?”

“I’m looking.”

“How about over here?” he asked, indicating the area behind him.  Gamon got up off his knees and stood, then walked over to the spot his father indicated.   There were no tools there at all, and though he bent down and looked closer he still could find nothing. It surprised him, until he heard that his father had trapped him, again.

“Appear to‘ve ripped me breeches!” Papa said, his shoulders bouncing as he chortled at his son’s predicament.

“Agh!”   Gamon cried, jumping to his feet, hopping on his toes until he saw his way out by tumbling over the corner of the goat cage, then running for the door.  “Get the hammer yourself!”  He pushed open the door and exited, but not before he heard his father’s shout follow after him, cheerily:

“Then don’t forget the bucket, boy!”

Now, outside, he exhaled and breathed in and out, regaining his composure.  This morning was a ruin.  He wished he could start over, to reoccupy the dream he’d had this morning.   But of course he was to his great misfortune stuck with the world before him and there was little to see but a grey mist, gloomy and moist. 

He looked down upon the ground, littered everywhere with chicken feathers courtesy of the Ryders next door.  Then he jumped—he thought he’d seen a fire ant creeping across the floor.  But he’d been mistaken…it had only been a beetle crawling toward their home across a remnant of a shattered egg shell.  One of his feet dragged what looked like a remnant of chick’s bedraggled feather behind him as he made his way to their door.  He raised his foot to step on it, then put his foot back down.  He sighed.   We all have our lives to live, he thought--an echo of the Circadian faith he revered.

He looked to his right toward the small privy his father had tacked together years ago.  His shoulders drooped.  He hated the smell of the privy, but he had learned by now there was little he could do about a chore except get it over with. He inhaled deeply and walked to the clapboard structure, reached down, and pulled up on a horizontal slat allowing him access to a putrid wooden bucket, which he carefully pulled out with both hands, lest it spill.  Once it was out he made sure to leave the slat against the door so that others might see not to use the privy until he was back.    He lifted the pail, making sure to point his eyes elsewhere, and began walking.    

Like everything else around the farm the bucket was in ill repair, and he picked it up cautiously and carried it by his side, trying his best to extend and elevate his right arm to carry it as far from his body as he could.    He’d been hoping perhaps if he did this every morning he might develop his chest and shoulders—he was pretty scrawny for even a ten-year old, and he continually wished he might look more muscular like so many of the other boys in Bailey’s Wicket.

He stopped briefly so he could switch arms.  He was nearly in the field now, though it was an observation made more from reason than from sight.  There was little he could see: the fog slid drearily across the fields until it melded with the mirthless gray sky, blanketing all.  But he knew he was heading toward Donny’s Brook, which flowed here after branching off from its more mercurial sister, the Calico River, more than two miles upriver.  Gamon had always thought it interesting that the Calico, a strong but mostly calm river, turned violent the moment it separated from Donny’s Brook.  He knew it was due to its narrowing at the mill, but he preferred to think it had gotten mad when it realized its sister had gone missing. 

Regardless, the brook flowed just beyond a haggard grove of trees maybe not quite a quarter acre in size, full of vine-covered trees, evergreens, scrub and small boulders across the pasture from his house.  There wasn’t much growth here even in the s ummer, and he’d heard his father and others talk of clearing it, but they knew it would mean a great deal of work; even if they cleared it the ground was riddled with roots and rocks, and it would take a prodigious amount of effort to make it farmable.   It was fine with Gamon, for inside it lay a hiding place of which he alone knew. 

As he crossed the syke—the ridge of uncultivated grass separating the fields—he felt his mind idling in the still air of the early morning, and doing so he allowed himself to encounter the familiar depression that always  came around this time of year.  The fields—still wet from yesterday’s rain—lay cleared of their crops, only occasionally broken by residual clumps of ungathered bales and loose stalks here and there that left the land looking disordered and barren.  The summer crops were in, the winter crops were not yet sown, and there was just…something…about the freshly harvested field that always disheartened him. 

It had been like this every second moon of fall he could remember—every one of his approximately ten years, that is.  Even though the summer growing season had reached its natural end and the cycle was continuing as it should, the empty field smacked of loneliness and ruination—as if the land were used and now discarded.   He knew it was otherwise, but he couldn't shake the feeling.  Some of the fields, true, would be re-sown for winter crops: beans, garlic, cabbage, peas, leeks…. But still, winter was different, and it seemed to bring a heart-sucking dreariness with it.

He knew of no others who seemed to feel this way: the Circadian religion emphasized the cycle of life, and the transitions were honored within their faith.   The people within the village of Bailey’s Wicket were no different than those throughout Alpurnia: life meant change, and change was life.  The concept of transmutation was central to their spiritual existence; from the moments they could understand these concepts children were witnesses to the sacred stages of metamorphosis: embryo, larva, pupa, adult...embryo, larva, pupa, adult...embryo, larva, pupa, adult...

He understood.   He just didn’t always like it.

Once at the grove he had only to walk a path that skirted it a few dozen yards to reach the stream.   He set the bucket down, resting his arms.   Even at this early hour of the morning he could see he was not the only one who had dumped one.  Pursing his lips, he reached to lift the pail but stopped to admire a loud procession of ducks as they waddled along the far side.  There were four of them, and he respectfully let them pass and gather a little distance before he dumped the contents of the bucket into the current, rinsed it, and headed back.

He swiveled his neck back and forth, trying to work out the kinks within it from last night’s sleep.   Up in the loft, over the fire, he was finding himself to be a bit more cramped lately, and wondered whether or not he was growing, finally.  He’d always been undersized among his peers, and while he was tired of the kidding the community gave him, it was the good-intentioned comments that hurt most: people who goaded him to eat his food so he’ll grow, or the parents who made an exception for him and beckoned their resentful children, saying, “Aw, do it for him, son.  He’s too small to do it himself.”   

Past the grove now, he headed back toward his cottage, alongside a dozen others that were built near the river.   The mist made their homes difficult to see, and it made him feel he was on a journey—a trek, or a quest, like a knight might take.  Did knights really fight dragons? he wondered.  He’d heard the men of his village tell tales of dragons when they gathered at night at the Moontime Revelations…and if the men told them, didn’t they have to be real?   The king had really battled the Evil Fenwick, hadn’t he?  He knew the stories: how Fenwick had learned magic as a young man, how he’d been discovered by King Alford, who stood by the magician’s side for years until Fenwick’s lust for power had gotten the better of him and made him turn toward sorcery and Vengweaving, eventually betraying his old mentor.   Those tales were real, so couldn’t the dragon be, too? 

He was constantly reminded he was getting too old to play at such games with his friends anymore, but it was a fantasy he found difficult to dismiss.  Even his companions derided him, telling him to grow up.  It was getting so that he could only imagine such things when he lay in his loft, at night.  He knew well enough it was only the stuff of dreams, but to live like that, to sit astride a stout stallion and head to war to fight for the praefect to whom he owed allegiance, the pretty maid waiting behind…well, it might be child’s play, but when he saw his father’s worn back, his mother’s lined face, he could see the cost of giving those dreams up for good. 

As he stepped closer to home the mist dissipated bit by bit and their cottages slowly became visible again.  And so, unfortunately, did his little reverie: the light exposed their little homes as hovels, and not at all the stuff of anyone’s fantasy. 

The roofs stood out more than the walls supporting them, the thatch looking particularly unattractive in the vapor…but beneath their mossy, dark straw the walls of the cottages were hard to see, with only about four to five feet of them exposed beneath the roofs.  The windows were narrow and tall, and no care was taken for decoration.  The wattle-and-daub walls were really panels composed of a lattice of wood strips woven between timbers that framed the house, and then a mixture of clay, earth, crushed stone and other materials was applied over the lattice to form a hard plaster, and then whitewashed.   Not spectacular, and certainly no castle, by any means.

Was it just the gloomy morning, he wondered as he returned to his home to put the pail in its place.   This wasn’t like him…he was usually happy and upbeat.  What was it that lay upon his heart?

Perhaps it wasn't anything more than the time of year, he reflected…he hated the end-of-the-year harvest chores, and today was no exception: this whole week had been flailing cornstalks.      The community worked together whenever they could, and all of the corn—or maize, as it was more properly called—had been culled together as a communal crop.  It was necessary, he knew: the seed would be saved for next year's crop, and the husks would be used as fertilizer, silage, and fuel.   Food, seed, fuel, fertilizer… embryo, larva, pupa, adult...the cycles of life

His father had lectured him more times than he could count about the hard life and responsibilities he would inherit someday here on the quintract of fifteen acres granted them by the right and proper Archpraefect Bailey—back when Bailey had been a fit, younger man.   His father’s friends got to grouse and complain, so why couldn’t he?  Who liked blisters and stooped backs?

For all their bluster, croppers knew there was little use in protesting: like the others, Gamon’s family, the Minors, were granted land of their own to work as long as they provided some of their services to the archpraefect who owned the manor and its lands.   

For Gamon’s part, today he would be working at one of the many tasks he hated: flailing the corn. It was the Sabbath, but several of the young workers had not made their quota: three seven year olds, and he.  Despite the positive spin his mother had attempted putting on it, he considered it categorically humiliating. 

His father told him to consider how embarrassing it was for him…that his own son could not work with boys his own age.  It’s not always about you, his father had said.

The tool he would have to use today was actually two rods held together by a joint, and the end he didn't hold, called the swingle, was short and heavy and swinging it over and over was awkward and unnatural to him. His arms and shoulders ached from it, and by the end of the day his still soft hands became a bloody abomination. 

To make it worse, Gamon had been born one finger short of a set on his right hand—his middle finger was tiny and never formed correctly—and it made a lot of farm work very difficult.   But he hated to draw attention to his deformity…being different in a medieval community was never something you wanted to stress.  So he always went in, and he always hurt his palms, and bled, and he always felt like a failure. 

Given the dark skies he prayed for enough rain that he might avoid the inevitable humiliation.  In his experience such prayers seldom worked, so he had to assume O meant it to be a practice for greater problems down the road.   He could only wonder what greater mortifications lay ahead. 

When he traveled in sight of the privy he saw the slat had been knocked to the side and now lay upon the dirt.  He clearly remembered putting it in front of…

Bloody Nihil! he swore to himself…it was his father.  He took a step toward the privy and the smell hit him like a rock in the gut.

His father stuck his face out of the door to the house and smiled.   “Sorry!  Bad lot, that.  Couldn’t wait…you took too long.  When you’re done, I need you inside.  Be quick about it.”

Gamon’s looked up to the murky sky and his shoulders slumped.  If there wee any hope I it he would leave this O-forsaken place and head for the capital city…THERE would be a place he could prosper, he thought.   Not this bloody pit...cleaning up after his piggish father.

When he was done he re-placed the pail under the privy seat, and took the slat from the ground and slid it into its position on the side of the little structure.  He slid his hands along the grass out front to clean them…it was the best he could do.

There had to be something better.

He thought the familiar thought: of traveling between towns like Wilmer Straud, the village’s courier, a life on the road, living freely, beholden to no praefect, answering to no man…

But Wilmer had been injured moons ago, hadn’t he?  Those terrifying highwaymen again…they’d come out of nowhere and beaten him into unconsciousness, taking his cart and leaving him in the road.   It had taken him a little over a moon to get better.   And had been other stories, too, other couriers or tradesmen who had been badly injured on the road every now and then.

Well, he’d be more careful, Gamon thought.  Perhaps, too, he could learn to swordfight, and then he would fear no man.  It was possible…he’d had a lot of fun playing at it with friends, and maybe someone would come along and notice him.  Stories were always full of moments like this.   The thought cheered him, and made him feel there was some kind of hope for a better life. 

And Gamon was getting near the age to begin an echoship; maybe he could get Porter Abingdon to put in a good word, and Gamon could eventually take over as Wilmer began to tire.  

He re-entered their cottage…as usual, it was chockablock with clutter, housing the three of them and Chewy in a single room that bore the marks of kitchen, living quarters, bedrooms and barn.  The floors were packed dirt covered by straw everywhere but the circle of stones that served as a fireplace near the center of the room.  There was little of the wall that could be seen, so covered it was by hanging coats and blankets and cups, or shelves holding plates, utensils, candles and food.  Spread at uneven intervals around the room at the junction of floor and wall were boxes, sacks and larger tools such as a shovel and rake.

  There were several window slits as well, and they were little more than that: about six to eight inches wide by two feet tall, they let in light but would soon be shuttered tight against the murderous, damp winter.

A small table sat to the left of the door with a bench on one side and two stools on the other, and on the right side of the residence was another bench with stacks of clothes upon it and under it.  Near the bench to the far side wall was his parents’ bed, as yet not rolled up and out of the way.  Above the pen was a small cubby for the placement of food, sacks of grain, and other bulk items.    

But the room itself held little interest to Gamon: he was much more concerned with the man bent to his task at the corner of the goat pen.  It only took a quick look for the boy to gain an immediate appreciation for what he had to do.   He had been studying his father’s moods for the greater part of a decade, and he assessed the man and straight away knew how to behave.  This was no idle speculation; getting this wrong could affect the whole day for him and his mother, and there was often a good chance it might affect others outside the house as well.

All because his father Nigel, who could in his better moments tell a story and make it breathe, who was a wizard on stilts at their temple fair, who could cheat so well at cards he might never be caught except for the joy he gleaned from revealing to those he’d cheated just how he’d done it—was the same man who could be so Draconian and menacing there was no fellow in Bailey’s Wicket would stand against him. 

This morning he was once again repairing a small plank of the nanny’s pen, a task he plainly felt he had done enough already.  There was little Chewy did not find to her gastronomical delight, and Gamon’s father had warned the family he was nearing his breaking point with her.   He dropped his small bag of tools and a scrap of board by Chewy’s stall.   The goat was treading on thin ice: while she provided milk and questionable companionship, she did not supply so much of either that there weren’t some more gloves, satchels and boots the Minors could make of her if she didn’t mend her traitorous ways.

To make this very point his father knelt in front of the goat and slipped off his right boot, then leaned over toward his son and wiggled a finger through a small hole in the sole, tilting his head toward Chewy.  When his mother turned around from the cook pot she scolded his father to Gamon’s delight, but by now the message was clear, and Chewy returned to the small pile of barley and hay in front of her and did her best to feign repentance.

Still smiling at his father’s unusual early morning humor, Gamon inched toward his father as he bent to his task.   Ignoring his mother’s precautious eye, he sat down near his father and nodded to him.   Gamon said nothing; he’d had enough experience to know asking questions was unwise.

With a sideward glance at his new audience, Nigel nudged his canvas bag toward him.   “Find me my hammer and five or six nails,” he said.

Gamon bent to his task eagerly and pulled out the hammer at once, but after a full search he could only find three nails.  He looked up at his father apologetically.

“Look harder.”

Gamon redoubled his efforts but finally shrugged.  Exasperated, his father rolled his eyes and pulled the bag from his son.  He looked for a moment, then began hunting avidly, his eyebrows furrowed.  In another moment he tossed the bag back to his son.

“What the hell happened to them?” he said, staring at their thatched ceiling at first, then at his wife. 

“I haven’t the faintest idea,” she said, unceremoniously dumping the turnips she’d just chopped into the pot.

His father harrumphed and then, after no one responded, harrumphed again.

“Do you want me to ask Jacob for some?” his mother asked, referring to their neighbor.   “We could send Gamon.”

His father shook his head.  “Nah.  I don’t want to owe that man a gree.”

“Well, what of Sam?” she said, thinking of their other neighbor, Samuel Fuller.

His father sighed.  Gamon knew immediately what it was: his father did not want to ask a favor of anyone.  He saw it as being in need, and a weakness.

“I’ll get it done with these.  I don’t need anybody else.”

He said it with the finality of an edict, and he bent to the task at hand: the lowest horizontal rail of Chewy’s two-rail fencing, but Gamon could see there was little hope for it…the goat had eaten down the wood in the middle into the shape of, well, a smile, thought Gamon.  With some care he took out the board and laid it upon the floor.  It looked ruined, but he knew his father, and throwing it away was not an option.    His father bent down to measure the board, but not his oaths, which rolled off his tongue under his breath in an unending series that only paused when he drew breaths. 

Gamon paused, letting the curses run their course.

“What are you going to do, Papa?” he soon asked his father.

“You mean besides kill the little bas..?”

“Please! You wouldn’t…really!”

His father stared at Chewy, then slowly toward his son’s anguished face.  “No, no…” he said eventually. “But that damn goat’s on shaky ground.  I have to repair this with three nails.  I don’t know where the rest went.  Someone’s not telling me something…”

“Oh, I’m sure it was us,” his mother said.  “I can’t tell you how many times I take your nails out and sew with them.   And I catch Gamon dueling with them all the time.”

Gamon tried very hard to stifle any laughter.   His father would not take kindly about being ganged up on.   But he acted as if he appreciated the joke just the same.

“All right, all right…” his father said.  “Ha ha.”  He indicated the nails.  “Pick those up and hand them to me when I ask for them.”

Gamon did as he was told while his father fitted another small board over the chewed portion.  He noticed the new board was a little bit bigger on each side than the portion Chewy had destroyed.

“All right, the first one.”

Gamon handed it to him, and he had hammered it only three times when it bent severely.  His father cursed, and then tried to bend it back, at first with his hands and then with his hammer.  He tried to hit the nail in such a way as to bend the shaft back, but he just succeeded in making it bend once again below the original site.  This time his cursing was more livid than his previous attempt, and the boy and his mother remained silent, waiting.

After his tirade, Nigel sighed deeply and tugged at the nail, trying to pull the nail out.  He tapped at its sides with the hammer, tried to pull it out again, then tapped at it from several sides again, pulled at it, tapped, pulled, tapped, pulled…. And when finally the nail came out he tossed it to his son, signaled for another, and Gamon gave the second of three nails to him.

Gamon knew he would be all right as long as he sank both of these nails.  It wouldn’t be like new, but the board would hold.  He watched as his father took the nail and set it in the hole started by the other nail, and he tapped the nail in place, then rested the hammer upon the nail, brought it up and struck the nail dead on, driving it home.   A small contented smile crept onto his lips and he turned the board over and intentionally bent over the nail with a couple of taps, sinking the end of the nail in the wood.  This side was now done.

Turning the board back to the original side—the side with the new bracing board on top—his father now signaled for the other nail and Gamon handed it over.  He set it upon the un-nailed side of the board and gently tapped it to the point of it standing fully upright, and he removed his fingers and set the hammer on the nail once again.  Gamon glanced over at his mother and saw that she was watching, too, though she gave the appearance of chopping more turnips to go into the pot.

Gamon turned back to watch his father raise the hammer and he struck the nail once, then again, and again, and the nail was in.   Gamon found himself smiling, and he looked at his father who was smiling, too.  Only a little of the nail stuck out, and with one more hit it was in, and done.

His father grinned, turned the board over, hit the end of the nail to bend it over, and was done.   He smiled, rose to his feet, lifted the board, and heard a telltale crack.  It sounded almost as if someone had cracked several knuckles all at once.  His father turned the rail over and there it was: the brace was cracked from the left side through the nail to the right side.  

Before Gamon could offer, “Maybe…” his father had tested the brace with his fingers and the bottom half broke off.   “Son of a turd!” his father shouted, so suddenly that Gamon’s mother shouted, too: she had cut her finger with a knife. 

“Ow!” his mother cried.

It was all his father needed for a full-on binge of cursing.

“By the hairs on my ass!” he cried.   “You pig-headed pismire!   I will halve you and quarter you and break you into eighths and….”

When he saw his father grab the rail and splinter it on the floor, Gamon ducked for the door and headed out behind the cottage facing the woods, where the ailing archpraefect Bailey let them look for wood.   The sun had come up, and as he entered the arching boughs of the trees he found solace…it was as if nothing could hurt him here.  He couldn’t hear his parents anymore; that is, he couldn’t hear what they were actually saying…just that his father was carrying most of the discussion.

Gamon walked some 15 feet within the woods; the ground had been picked clean of all branches and there was a pleasing clarity about the place, unlike the dark storm of his father’s temper.   He could be such a good man; but he frightened his son…Gamon felt real danger blistering off of him, like the sizzle of fatty meat on a skillet. 

What made a man burst apart like that?  What passion must lay underneath the skin at all times that made it so readily triggered?   His transformations were so sudden and complete that it was like there were two distinct persons within him, one Gamon loved and one that Gamon feared.   He’d escaped cleanly this time, but there were times he didn’t, especially when he’d done something himself to trigger it.  There were several times he’d been struck by him, either casually or maliciously, and a few of those times he was terrified, hit over and over until either his mother stepped in or his father tired.

Gamon loved his father, and he came to believe if he studied him, if he could figure out when those moods were on hand, he might be able to head them off.   Or at least, like today, to get away in time.

When things quieted he waited several minutes and moved up toward the window.   He knew he was going to be ushered off to work soon, and wanted to grab a carrot to take out to the field with him.   He peered in the the back of his house, from under the cubby, and looked twice for his father until he saw him: sitting on one of the stools, Gamon’s mother on his lap.

Gamon stepped back, shaking his head.  For as long as he lived, he would never understand his parents.

              a b

At least the day had brightened a bit; the mist had lifted, and though the sky was still a little cloudy there were hints of blue sky overhead.   Finding one of the sticks his mother dropped on her way in to the fire, Gamon reached into his tunic behind his belt, traced his hand along to the little pocket his mother had sewn for him, and pulled out a knife his father made for him a year ago.  It was a clever design: he’d taken a blade and, using a nail he’d twisted into an S shape, had fit the knife into a slotted piece of wood, allowing the knife to be folded shut or open.  Gamon had never seen anything like it, and always kept it with him. 

He reached up to the top of his head to pick at another particularly itchy spot on his scalp, hoping he did not have another louse up there.  His mother had worked like the chud on him a couple of moons ago, pulling off nit after nit because he had cried every time his father threatened to cut his hair off.  She’d worked upon him all evening by the light of candles, pulling out each and every louse from his head.

He hoped with every fiber of his being they were not back.

He tossed the carcass of whatever it was onto the fire.  He took the knife and carved a little tip on the stick he had picked up.  Satisfied that his alteration had created quite a fine sword, really, he thrust and parried outside their small hut, quite vividly envisioning himself to be a noble knight keeping enemies of the kingdom at bay.

Immersed in his fantasies, he did not know that his parents stood together in front of the narrow slit that was their front window and watched their boy stabbing the morning air with a stick.

“Dumb fool’s making a fool of himself,” his father said.  “And us.”

“Now, Nigel!” Anna said.  “The boy’s allowed to have dreams.”

“Of all people, Anna,” he answered, shaking his head. “I would not have expected to have this argument with you.”

Anna was silent for a moment, then turned from her vegetables to look at her husband.   She turned from the window and went back to her vegetables.  

“You know it’s normal.  That’s all.  It’s sweet to see, actually,” she said, then went silent for a moment, thinking.  “Sometimes he seems to carry the weight of the world…”

“What’s he think he’s gonna be?” Nigel said, cutting in, waving his hand.  “A bloody knight?  He’s a cropper, a plowman.  He’s tied to the land like he had a foot nailed to it.   Now and forever.   He can dance all day with a cudder on his head and he’s never gonna be nothing but a plowman.”

He made for the door.  “I need to make him understand…”

Anna brought her knife down hard on the end of a carrot, beheading it.  “You’ll do nothing of the kind!” she said, stopping her husband cold.   “He’s a normal boy, with a normal dream, is all,” she said.  “He’ll have his fun and that’s that.”

Nigel stood still and looked at the door, then his wife.  Though he stood a head taller and his muscles knotted his back and arms as he clenched his fists, he stood still.

He looked again out the window and was silent for a moment while his wife resumed chopping.   He bit his lower lip, watching, then glanced over in Anna’s direction.  “He’s all parry and no thrust,” he muttered.   “If he’s to fight, he ought to do it right.”

“Well?” Anna said, smiling.

Nigel sidled to the door.   “I’m just saying, is all…” and he went back to the goat’s pen.

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