Free Fool School by James Comins

thing I
need doing, there is an evil priest and he must be removed and
there is a girl who is innocent, and after some cajoling the
ealdorman's wife agrees and we go to the church and she has the
priest taken to court, and she commands me to search the priest's
apartment for evidence, and there is the dried humanculus form of
the devil baby, and against my better judgment I lift it and take
it to the hundreds court and the hundredsman gathers everyone
around the devil baby and one takes out a wicked-looking knife and
cuts and the hooved legs drop away and the stitches become visible
and the hundredsman declares that the guilty priest has built the
baby out of a goat's hind legs and Goodwife So-and-So's poor child
who died of bad lights, and the hundredsman declares Liza innocent
and now they are putting the priest in the pit, and I stretch my
fingers toward God in the sky because finally, at last, I have done
right and justice is served, and the ealdorman's wife takes me to
London and has me knighted by King Hardknot.
    Withy trees stroke the chains between the mules and
the barge, mussing my hair and bothering me in a charming way. The
sun is hot on my neck, and I wrap a fey-looking yellow liripipe
around the back of my shoulders where I always get sunburn. The
bargeman walks, I guess he doesn't trust the mules to keep apace
without leadership, and I understand this. We all need leadership
when we want to do right in the world. Nobody does God's work
without a prod behind him. Nobody chooses to act on their own.
We're all lazy lumps without a king. I wonder whether even King
Hardknot would have rescued--dear God, I can't even think her name anymore--that girl--had he been in my place. I failed . .
. that girl. That girl my age. Even mighty Malcolm ran. I wonder if
I have, in my mind, destroyed the image I had of Malcolm as a--what
did I think he was? I thought he was Apollo, Adonis. He's a boy. I
wonder where he came from.
    The river is kept clear for several miles, so there's
not yet any trouble with the barge.
    "Damned hard to make a crossing on horseback, this
near the sea," says the bargeman conversationally. "They don't
allow fords this near. One's to go miles around for a clean ford."
We don't really reply.
    There aren't bridges, either, which surprises me--in
France there are always bridges. It's a point of pride. I imagine
the English don't take pride in their roads and rivers, but then I
think perhaps the rivers are the roads, and then I think
perhaps England is just poor, and in this way I can keep up a line
of internal dialogue to keep my mind away from that pit. I don't
want to think anymore. I want my mind amputated until I hear that
Liza has died and then I can forgive myself.
     
    * * *
     
    The evening fades to night. Listen to the river.
Hear, O muse, the sound of hooves on the dry roads, the sound of
Malcolm supping on best oatcakes and what passes for ale in
England. Hear the complete absence of French in the voices of
travelers, hear that gritty, guttural Germanic crap they call Saxon
English. See the foolish colors the English travelers wear. Regret,
O muse, that you have ever set foot in this terrible peasant
land.
    I sleep.
    Here is a dream. I dream. I swim, and fail, and will
drown, and without clear transitions one of my mistakes mutates
into another, as it is in dreams, and and now I break through,
starting, to the reality of the barge and I'm awake and and sweat
pours from my cheeks and and I have forgotten the dream, but I
slick sweat from my forehead and and wonder if I'm sick, but I
don't feel sick, just reeking of guilt and I realize I haven't
confessed any of my latest sins and and it's been--God, has it been
so many days since I attended mass? How long ago the church of
Cherbourg seems to me!--and and I look behind me and Liza is there,
dragged behind the barge on a chain around her neck, her face
bloated by water and brass pins. I look down and there is yet
another pin in my hand and and