Fool(22)

 

“Aye, mum. Thalia.”

 

“And you may tell me of your past, good Pocket. Tell me of your life.”

 

“But, Dog Snogging is all I know—all I have ever known.”

 

I could hear her laughing in the dark. “Then, tell me a story from your lessons, Pocket.”

 

So I told the anchoress of the stoning of St. Stephen, of the persecution of St. Sebastian, and the beheading of St. Valentine, and she, in turn, told me stories of the saints I had never heard of in catechism.

 

“And so,” said Thalia, “that is the story of how St. Rufus of Pipe-wrench was licked to death by marmots.”

 

“That sounds a most horrible martyring,” said I.

 

“Aye,” said the anchoress, “for marmot spit is the most noxious of all substances, and that is why St. Rufus is the patron of saliva and halitosis unto this day. Enough martyring, tell me of some miracles.”

 

And so I did. I told of the magic, self-filling milk pail of St. Bridgid of Kildare, of how St. Fillan, after his ox was killed by a wolf, was able to compel the same wolf to pull a cart full of materials for building a church, and how St. Patrick drove the snakes out of Ireland.

 

“Aye,” said Thalia, “and snakes have been grateful ever since. But let me apprise you of the most wondrous miracle of how St. Cinnamon drove the Mazdas out of Swinden.”

 

“I’ve never heard of St. Cinnamon,” said I.

 

“Well, that is because these nuns at Dog Snogging are base and not worthy to know such things, and why you must never share what you learn here with them lest they become overwhelmed and succumb to an ague.”

 

“An ague of over-piety?”

 

“Aye, lad, and you will be the one to have killed them.”

 

“Oh, I would never want to do that.”

 

“Of course you wouldn’t. Did you know, in Portugal they canonize a saint by actually shooting him out of a cannon?”

 

And so it went, day in, day out, week in, week out, trading secrets and lies with Thalia. You might think that it was cruel of her to spend her only time in contact with the outside world telling lies to a little boy, but then, the first story that Mother Basil had told me was about a talking snake who gave tainted fruit to naked people, and the bishop had made her an abbess. All along what Thalia was teaching me was how to entertain her. How to share a moment in story and laughter—how you could become close to someone, even when separated from them by a stone wall.

 

Once a month for the first two years the bishop came from York to check on the anchoress, and she would seem to lose her spirit for a day, as if he were skimming it off and taking it away, but soon she would recover and our routine of chat and laughter would go on. After a few years the bishop stopped coming, and I was afraid to ask Mother Basil why, lest it be a reminder and the dour prelate resume his spirit-sucking sojourns.

 

The longer the anchoress was in her chamber, the more she delighted in my conveying the most mundane details from the outside.

 

“Tell me of the weather today, Pocket. Tell me of the sky, and don’t skip a single cloud.”

 

“Well, the sky looked like someone was catapulting giant sheep into the frosty eye of God.”

 

“Fucking winter. Crows against the sky?”

 

“Aye, Thalia, like a vandal with quill and ink set loose to randomly punctuate the very dome of day.”

 

“Ah, well spoken, love, completely incoherent imagery.”

 

“Thank you, mistress.”

 

While about my chores and studies I tried to take note of every detail and construct metaphors in my head so I might paint word pictures for my anchoress, who depended on me to be her light and color.

 

My days seemed to begin at four when I came to Thalia’s chamber, and end at five, when the bell rang for vespers. Everything before was in preparation for that hour, and everything after, until sleep, was in sweet remembrance.

 

The anchoress taught me how to sing—not just the hymns and chants I had been singing from the time I was little, but the romantic songs of the troubadours. With simple, patient instruction, she taught me how to dance, juggle, and perform acrobatics, and all by verbal description—not once in those years had I laid eyes on the anchoress, or seen more than her partial profile at the arrow loop.

 

I grew older and fuzz sprouted on my cheek—my voice broke, making me sound as if a small goose was trapped in my gullet, honking for her supper. The nuns at Dog Snogging started to take notice of me as something other than their pet, for many were sent to the abbey when they were no older than I. They would flirt and ask me for a song, a poem, a story, the more bawdy the better, and the anchoress had taught me many of those. Where she had learned them, she would never say.