Free The Cross of Lead by Avi Page A

Surely God Himself put us all in our places: Lords to rule and fight. Clergy to pray. All the rest—like me—were on earth to labor, to serve our masters and our God.
    Otherwise, it was as much to say stars could go their own way instead of being fixed to turn around our world.
    Bear had to be wrong. Yet I found myself thinking it was not so bad to have fallen in with him. To be sure, he was a rough-and-ready man. The things he said confused me. Even his calling me by the name Crispin was unsettling.
    Still, if Bear fed me and protected me, I might, at least, survive awhile. In any case I had little choice. God had willed it.
    And yet—thinking on what he said—I asked myself if I were to live by questions, what questions would they be? About my father? And those things Father Quinel had said about my mother—if they be true or not. And maybe—I allowed—I’d ask what was to be my fate.

 
    25
    W HEN I WOKE IN THE MORNING, I had spent so much time with Bear’s strange ideas I was in a cross mood, not wishing to deal with him. Nonetheless, he informed me that it was time to begin teaching me some skills.
    He explained how upon entering a town he played and danced, heading straight for the village church. “There I pray, hopefully at a Mass.”
    I said, “I thought you didn’t believe in such things.”
    “What I think, Crispin, stays in my head. What I do is there for all the world to see. I must show reverence.”
    “I don’t understand you.'” I burst out, surprising even myself. “You tell me I don’t need a church. Then you talk like a priest. What are you?
    “A man. Nothing more or less. And you?”
    “Nothing.”
    “Why do you insist on that?”
    “Because I have no name,” I said, my rage bursting forth. “No home, no kin, no place in this world. I’m a wolf’s head. Any and all may kill me when they choose. Even you. You say you want me to do things. Think things. But when I won’t be able to, you’ll shun or betray me like the rest.”
    I had never said so many words in one breath in all my life. When I’d done I turned away, alarmed that I had spoken to my master in such a fashion.
    “Crispin, in the name of all the blessed saints, have you ever desired to be anything different from what you are?”
    “We must be content to be as God made us,” I said.
    “What if God wishes you to better yourself?”
    “Then He will do so.”
    “Crispin,” he said, grabbing me by the neck and hauling me along. “Come with me.”
    He dragged me to a little stream where we had fetched our water. “Have you ever seen what you look like?” he said.
    “A little, by our river. But I don’t like to.”
    “Gaze upon yourself,” he said.
    Puzzled, I did as he bid, staring at my image in the flowing water: my long hair, my dirty, bruised, and tear-streaked face, my red-rimmed eyes.
    “Now, then,” he commanded, “wash your face, using sand to scrub it. Go on. Or by God, I’ll do it for you.”
    After I did as he told me, he picked up his dagger.
    “What are you going to do?” I cried.
    “Cut your hair.”
    “Now look at yourself again,” he said when he was done. “What do you see now?”
    I considered my reflection anew.
    “Are you different?” he said.
    “A little,” I said.
    “And that was only water and a blade. Think what you might become if you were cleansed of thirteen years of dirt, neglect, and servitude.”
    I turned back to my image and gazed. It was different. For a moment I allowed myself to wonder what it would be like to alter the rest of myself as well.
    “As I was trying to tell you,” Bear said, interrupting my thoughts, “when I reach a village, I apply to the priest, to the local lord, or bailiff. The reeve if necessary. Anyone in authority from whom I can get permission to perform.”
    “And … you wish me to go with you?” I asked.
    “Of course.”
    “But, Bear,” I said, “what if I’m recognized?”
    “Crispin, you are altered. Who would recognize you