Free Fool School by James Comins Page A

I--
    Dawn on the Bourne. Malcolm stirs, as he has all
night--I've been watching him, it's better than my sick sleep--and
I taste best oatcakes and they're okay, a little dry perhaps,
luckily there's no mustard, which may or may not be made from mouse
turds--and Malcolm seems to decide against sleep and both of our
eyes have blue spotty bags under them, and Malcolm grabs me and
spins me around and I don't know what's going on, but he leans
against my back and I lean against his back and he takes my hand
and that's better.
    I spend the day cleaning my curly red shoes in the
River Bourne, darning them with thick needles and thread, wishing I
had some way to dye them--after so much trouble and travail,
they're pale orange now. I consider trying to reconstruct the
remains of my great-grandfather's lovely suit, but I'm frightened
of losing cloth diamonds in the water and being unable to find
reams of the same fabric again. It's a very old style. I wonder if
kings would think it out of date, if there are fresher jester's
suits. I wonder what the Fool School will be like.
    Here is a ford. Gravel's been piled up in a
deliberate way, from one bank to the other, evenly, so horses don't
stumble, and logs have been propped underwater, preventing the
gravel from drifting. It also prevents our barge from
advancing.
    "Heaviest things off," the bargeman says, and sleepy
Malcolm and I haul barrels for a little less than an hour, pinching
our fingers repeatedly on the bowed slats of the barrels as we lift
them off the deck and hand them up to the bargeman, who takes them
with two hands. I'm amazed at his strength, and I can't stop
staring at his pendulous belly.
    "Now lift, lads," and we roll up our breeches and
take our shoes off--I feel naked, and I don't even have my proper
shirt, I'm wearing a spare tunic--and grapple with the barge and
try not to ruin the bottom of it on the logs. With a terrible hiss,
it slides away over the ford and we re-pile the barrels and
continue.
    There is a tight bend in the river. We push.
    "Lads, here's where the Bourne meets the Dorset
Afon," and I am thinking about other things, but yes, slightly
larger river. Onward.
    But I think about this broad river, much more like
our French rivers than the noodly narrow Bourne. This, I decide,
this junction of rivers, this is the last point at which I can turn
back. From here we hit Sarsbury Plain, a hundred miles of treeless
heath, I can see it over the ridge, and when we begin this crossing
through Sarum we won't be able to go back. Liza is back there.
She's waiting for me. She trusted me. I'm all she has. No one else
will come for her. This is my responsibility, to return to her and
set her free and maybe I'm supposed to marry her, I'm not sure. Now
is the time to speak to the bargeman and tell him I'm going to take
the barge back to Poole because I have an important thing that I've
forgotten to do. I wait for myself to say this out loud. Any second
now I'll pipe up and tell him that there's something I need to do.
I can be a hero to Liza.
    Any second.
    But maybe taking her out of the pit would kill her,
the same way it killed her mother. Maybe she really did have the
devil in her. Maybe--
    Any second now I'll tell the bargeman. There's plenty
of time. There's--
    I realize the bargeman won't turn the barge around,
even if I tell him. He's got deliveries to make.
    Maybe I can tell him to take me back after we get to
Sarum.
    Maybe I have until then to dwell on it.
    The barge rolls on down the Afon. I roll with it.
    Every five seconds I tell myself this is the second
I'm saying I'm going to go back. No, the next five seconds. My
seconds spin, one over the other, like a line of tumbling
jesters.
    I am juggling with her life.
    Here is Sarum, a fine-looking town, and I have gone
mad, as the English insist on saying. Malcolm doesn't speak, but I
do, only not out loud. I gibber into my own mind about Liza. I
wonder if this is how love feels. If I'm in love with Liza, then