BREAD CLUTCHED IN MY TREM-bling hand, I crept into a corner of the broken church as far from the monstrous man as I could go. Though I swallowed the bread he’d given me, I knew I’d sworn a sacred oath to which I was forever bound. Far better, I thought, to have died on the road.
Hearing him move about, I stole an anxious glance in his direction. He had sat down again, but in such a place so as to prevent me from bolting. What’s more, he was staring at me with his moist, sly eyes. I dared to look back with the greatest loathing I had ever felt.
“Ah, boy, what does it matter?” he said, speaking in a far softer voice than before. “You didn’t truly expect to live without a master, did you?
I made no reply.
“Or do you believe that some day none of us will have masters?”
Unable to find words for my misery, I remained mute.
“Answer me!” he cried, making me jump. “Do you believe that someday none of us will have masters, or not?”
I shook my head.
“Why not?”
“God …” I said, gulping down my misery, “has willed it otherwise.”
“And yet,” he said, leaning toward me and leering, “when Adam plowed the earth and Eve spun, who then was the gentleman?”
His question was so unusual, I did not, could not, respond.
“You don’t like my sense of humor,” he said. “You think it treasonous”
I wanted to say yes, but was too afraid.
“You needn’t be so resentful,” he said. “When you’ve lived as much as I, you’ll learn to neither trust nor love any mortal. Then, the only one who can betray you is yourself.”
I didn’t know what to say.
“Do you ever smile, boy?” he demanded. “If you can’t laugh and smile, life is worthless. Do you hear me?” he yelled. “It’s nothing!”
I winced.
Then, smiling, he cocked his head to one side, and ruffled up his beard. With a sweep of his hand, he snatched off his hat, revealing a bald pate. “By the love of Saint Arnulf the King,” he said, “you could do much worse than being bound to me.”
That stated, he seemed to pull back within himself and give way to private thoughts.
Fearing what sudden thing he might do next, I watched him warily. But after a while he said only, “Do you wish to ask me anything? Who I am? My name? What I’m doing here?”
“It doesn’t… matter,” I stammered.
“Why?” he said.
“Because you’re already my master forever.”
“So be it,” he said, acting as if I had offended him.
For a while he toyed with his hat, not to any purpose that I could see, but as if lost in thought.
At length, however, he reached over and took up his sack and rummaged through it. From it he took out three balls, each made of stitched leather.
To my surprise he tossed the balls into the air. Instead of falling to the ground, they stayed in the air and rotated at his will, with only the smallest touch and encouragement of his fingers.
I looked on, astonished.
“What think you of that?” he said, laughing.
“Are they … enchanted, sir?” I whispered.
“Hardly,” he said as he continued to keep the balls in the air, sometimes higher, sometimes lower, until, as abruptly as he’d begun, he gathered them in, and they rested upon his great slablike hands.
“I’m a juggler,” he said. When I made no response he said, “Don’t you know the word?”
I shook my head.
“A French word. It means I balance things, or toss balls, boxes, knives—anything I choose—through the air and catch them up again. And what do I do with my skills? I wander from town to town through the kingdom. Not as a beggar, mind you, but as a man of skills. Skills, boy, which enable me to gather enough farthings and pennies to live and keep this belly full.” He patted himself on his large stomach.
“Believe me,” he said, “there’s no place in the kingdom I’ve not been. Gascony, Brittany, and Scotland too, for that matter. What think you of that?”
He rushed at me with so many new and strange ideas I could not grasp them all. So all I said was, “I don’t know, sir.”
He cocked his head to one side. “Do you have any thoughts about anything!”
I hung my head to avoid his eyes.
He sighed. “What’s your name?”
I hesitated, not wanting him to call me what I had always been called—Asta’s son. But I was not comfortable with my newly discovered name either.
He leaned toward me, glaring. “Boy,” he said, “as I am your master let me offer you advice: I’m a simple man. I go by simple means. You’ll do as you’re told or suffer the consequences. Now, answer me or, as there is a loving God in Heaven, I’ll thrash you. What is your name?”
“I’m called … Asta’s son.”
“Asta’s son. That’s not a name. It’s a description. Were you never,” he said, “christened with a name of your own?”
“I was … told it was … Crispin.”
“Crispin. That’s too fine and noble a name for such rubbish as you. Have you a surname?”
“I … don’t know.”
“God’s blood. You might as well have been a dog,” he said.
It was all I could do to suppress screams of rage.
“Very well, Crispin—for henceforward that’s what I shall call you—I too am bound for towns and cities. But I wend my way to such places—not as a runaway peasant beggar like you—but earning my bread with tossing things into the air the way I showed you. People in towns pay fair coins to see my revels in squares, in merchant houses, and inns, as well as guildhalls. Do you know how to make music?”
“Music?”
“By the Devil’s own spit,” he said. “Have you lived your life under a rock? Were you born of sheep? Do you know nothing of drums, horns, and pipes? Do you even sing?”
“No, sir.”
“God’s holy wounds,” he said. “Music is the tongue of souls. Is there anything you can do?”
“I can follow an ox. Sow seed. Weed. Gather crops. Thresh wheat and barley.”
“Merciful Heaven,” he said. “And in this town or city you intended to go, were you going to plow the streets there?”
Unable to withhold myself I cried out, “I don’t know what I was going to do. I wanted to gain my liberty. And with God’s help I would have, if not for you.”
His eyes opened wide. Then he tilted back his head and roared with laughter as if I had told the rarest jest of all. “Liberty” he said. “And with God’s help too, I’ll wager. It’s a marvel you don’t seek out the blessed Saint Crispin himself to come to your aid. No wonder you want to die. The only difference between a dead fool and a live one is the dead one has a deeper grave.”
It was as if all the scorn and insults I had ever endured were pouring forth from him. If there had been an open hole in the earth I would have crawled into it willingly.
“Ah, noble Crispin,” he went on, “Our Blessed Lord, in His wisdom, must have sent you to me for instruction.
“I shall begin by teaching you something. Mark me well: with all the armies of the kingdom at your side you could not gain your liberty on your own. A boy? Alone in a city? A wolf’s head? Why, any city you entered would swallow you like the whale took Jonah. And not to spit you out, either, but only to belch up your empty soul.” That said, he erupted with another great laugh. “Now, go to. Let’s see if you’re capable of asking me a question.”
Struggling to find something, I said, “What … what is your name, sir?”
“Orson Hrothgar,” he said. “But people call me ‘Bear.’ Because of my size. And strength. Pay heed, young Saint Crispin,” he added, glaring at me with eyes that seemed to glint, “a bear has two natures. Sweet and gentle. If he becomes irritated, he turns into a vicious brute. So I beg you to consider the two sides of my nature. Next question.”
“Where are you going?” I said.
“To my death,” he said, “as must all men.”
“And … before that?” I ventured.
His eyes seemed to laugh. “Ah, you do have some wit. God’s truth, before I reach my end, there’s work to be done. Big work. The work of ages.”
“What… is it?”
He cocked his head and laughed. “On the Feast of Saint John the Baptist I must meet a man in Great Wexly. Large things are brewing, young Crispin,” he said grandly, “and I intend to play my part. Let it be as it may be. But, time for that to come. Until then you and I shall wander. Our task is to stay alive and measure this great kingdom with our feet, our eyes, our ears.”
With that, he tossed his sack to me. His meaning was perfectly clear. Huge as he was, I was to carry his belongings.
Inwardly lamenting my fate, I lifted the sack and began my life as servant to the Bear. I began to wonder if he was mad.