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Shaddai: a novel for Advent
Jan. 9, 2009
Day 13
A small boy, a servant to His Majesty Wenceslas the Second, walked down the corridor, shivering in his tights. He ran a small hand over the bright tapestries and wished suddenly that he could somehow be transported to one beautiful weaving especially; it was of a green hill spattered with sunshine and strewn with delicate pink and purple flowers. Four figures were riding on great muscly steeds over the hills in the big tapestry. Two of them were women, their mantles trailing long and soft looking in the implication of a steady breeze, and their long dresses rippling like real silk in the midst of the woven tendrils of threads. The other two figures were men; tall, broad-shouldered, and noble-browed, bearing armor and thick wooden lances pointed nonchalantly at the sky. The boy, a young page with thick brown hair that fell into his eyes and a rich red doublet, ran his hand over the men’s surcoats, embroidered with green and frosty white. It was a timid child who gazed upon the great tapestry hanging on his master’s stone wall, but it was a wild lad who wished suddenly he could wear such clothes and go riding with ladies whose lips were red as those in the women in the weaving had.
“Perhaps some day you will,” the boy said to himself. “For the time you have been given now, make the most of it.”
A shout aroused him from his reverie and one of the snappish maids came running up to cuff the little boy on his ear. “Where have you been?” she asked breathlessly. “The King is ready for his dinner, and all you can do is stand staring up at a tapestry on the wall!” The girl grabbed the boy’s collar and drug him down the hall.
“D-do you think I could ever ride a horse like that, or where a great rich abundance of clothing like the people in the weaving?” the boy said as he stumbled along beside the maid. The girl laughed vapidly and gave a jerk to his ear.
“You should get you head out of the clouds, Timothy!” she snarled. “You are a page, and a page can never hope the gain he same wealth as a vassal.”
“The men in the tapestry were not vassals,” Timothy chided, tearing away from the maid’s grasp and rubbing his ear thoughtfully. “They…they were knights or something. We do not even have vassals in Crescent!”
The maid harrumphed. “Well then, perhaps we had them a long time ago. Come along, hurry up! The King awaits your service to him at his dinner.” Timothy sighed and ran down the twisting hallways himself, waving to his friends as he passed. Unlike the other little boys who served as pages in the King’s house, whether to help pay off a family debt, to undergo punishment for a wrongdoing or to keep out of mischief, Timothy did not consider it any great honor to wait upon the King. While the other boys snickered over the grand ladies and their ridiculous costumes, Timothy used the time spent standing in one corner waiting for a summons to gaze about at the people’s faces and to try and guess what kind of soul hid behind it. Indeed, Timothy had often been called odd by his fellow man, but he did not care. He had been a page to King Wenceslas long enough to know some of the things that truly happened behind the great pomposity and the sparkling show of candles, the wistful rose arbors and even those rich, wonderful tapestries. Wenceslas was not the kind of king people thought him to be, but to speak against him was death so Timothy kept his thoughts mostly to himself. There had been several times, yes, where his temper had flared and he had uttered an angry cross word against an act of the King. Yet every single time he had been soundly switched and sent off to bed without his supper.
It was not that Timothy the page hated his master; it would be more along the lines of truth to say that he felt sorry for the King. Wenceslas was a troubled soul; Timothy could sense it. Deep down in his childish heart, the young page wished to do something for the king to make him realize his errors and attempt to change. Goodness was nestled within every man, yet sometimes it was so deeply obscured that it took more than the man himself to find it once more.
It was all very new and strange to Timothy but he felt that, in time perhaps, his growing mind could wrap itself around these new and debatably blasphemous ideas. He must not say a single solitary word about it, for he might be put on probation from his ramblings in the local fields for several months…if not killed.
Timothy liked to be by himself. He often took long walks in the rustling autumn grass or climbed a low-swung tree growing upon a sandbank to jump off into the cold clear stream with a scream of laughter. He enjoyed the other pages’ company, but if he were to choose a constant companion, he could not. None of the boys really understood the way he thought and reasoned, nor did they care. They went about life as if it were a game to be played, a dish to be washed and dried and put away, or a stuffed animal to fondle until the velvet trim was rubbed off and the button nose gone. Timothy believed life was too short and too sweet to waste it, and so he lived his life to the fullest capacity he could despite the severe limitations of the castle and surrounding lands. He grew used to the teasing of the other little boys, the rough crude bullying of the squires, the frosty aloof looks of the knights and the snobbish powdery looks of the grand ladies invited in to dine with the King. He was able to look beyond all that and find a higher joy that allowed him to feed on it until he felt invincible.
Timothy straightened before the small cedar wood door that led out into the banqueting hall. He smoothed his dark red doublet and threw his shoulders back. Several other maids and pages stood waiting at the door for the nightly feast to begin. One of the older boys, not far from being made a squire for a tall, thin and sickly knight, reached over and shoved Timothy in the shoulder, just for spite. Timothy ignored him and smiled right across the boy’s face at a giggling maidservant. The boy, whom Timothy finally recognized as a rude lad named Malkmus, lost his smirk and grabbed Timothy about the shoulders.
“Do not smile at her,” he spat in his face. Timothy looked up into the piggish eyes. “Why ever not?” he asked. Malkmus’s face quivered with rage as he growled, “It is not your place to show affection to a maid. You are too young and she is too stupid for it to be let go as a trifling thing; young flighty things like you must learn to keep emotions to yourselves!”
“I was not showing affection, friend,” said Timothy, putting emphasis upon the word friend. “I was attempting kindness and you spoiled it!” Again he smiled at the maid, who was growing pale, and Malkmus slapped him across the mouth.
“Impudent child!” he cried out. Several heads turned in amongst the grown-up servants and several hushings were heard. The crude fat boy ignored them and snarled at Timothy. “You have no right to speak to me that way. I am your better! Now, say you did not mean a cross thing by it and we shall forget this little incident ever occurred.” Timothy cocked his head in confusion and wondered what foul trick was bubbling in Malkmus’s head.
“I did nothing wrong!” Timothy protested. Malkmus grabbed his shoulders and pushed him against the wall with a grunt of anger. His eyes smoldered and Timothy began to feel afraid. Yet he had merely smiled at the maid, trying to show kindness to her, where lay the wrong in that? The bully was being unfair and Timothy refused to do himself an injustice. He peered right back at the boy called Malkmus and set his chin. “Please, let me go. It is almost time to serve the King, please let me go so that I may do my duty to him.” Malkmus laughed. The other boys in his group of friends laughed and the little maidservant wept into her apron. Timothy wished the girl could learn how to be helpful instead of standing there sobbing and crying out for Malkmus to stop being imperial. Yet her pleas probably would not have done any good against the older boy’s malicious behavior.
Malkmus got up into his face and sneered. “I said, BOY, apologize for smiling at the girl and angering me!” Timothy laughed, nearly choking on his nervousness. “I was only trying to show her some sunshine in this, our bleak heath winter. I was doing no wrong. But you, Malkmus, you are doing wrong by-”
The bully crashed Timothy against the wall and got up into his face. “I do no wrong by punishing you for being impudent!” he shouted. His breath smelled like rotting vegetables and Timothy wondered what would happen if he gagged. Yes, that was it, gag and cough uproariously in the bully’s face. That would show him.
No, no, no…that would be revenge and revenge was one thing Timothy did not seek upon his neighbor. He tries to remove Malkmus’s fat meaty hands, but the boy shook him until his brain rattled.
“Here now, youngsters,” said the royal taster for the King, “do not be so hard upon the page…”
“He is getting what he deserves!” Malkmus screamed, and shook Timothy until every tooth in his head felt jarred loose and his arms where Malkmus gripped them felt numb.
“P-p-p-please!” Timothy stuttered. Malkmus slowed hopefully. “Will you renounce the wrongdoings of your heart that trespassed against mine this day?” he said, in words stolen from a neighboring parish pastor. Timothy nearly laughed out loud. “What makes you so sure, Malkmus, that it is wrong to smile at the maid and show her that the day can be bright, even without the sun to shine upon our heaths? Tell me that!” Timothy’s eyes flashed and he stuck his chin out. Malkmus gave a gasping cry of rage and repressed emotion and threw Timothy to the ground. Before anyone could stop the fat page, he began kicking Timothy in the ribs again, and again, and again, muttering Fairy curses of wrath. The maid tried to stop him, wrapping her arms around his bulging waist, but Malkmus just laughed maliciously and threw her to one side. She fells into the arms of a kindly nurse as a guard standing to one side and enjoying himself reluctantly stepped between Timothy’s body and Malkmus’s furiously kicking legs. He was whapped in the shin and gave an angry cry before knocking Malkmus on the side of his head with a sharp reprimand.
“What do you think you are doing, boy?” the guard demanded. “You will hurt the boy! He did nothing wrong. Take this one away, Guy,” the guard shoved Malkmus towards the other guard on duty outside the banqueting hall. Malkmus kicked and yelled, pleading his case with flairs and exaggerated details, as he was dragged down the hall to his room.
“Are you hurt, kid?” asked the guard, bending down and helping Timothy to his feet. Timothy winced at the ache in his side as he straightened, but he forced a smile and stubbornly directed it to the little maid, who was drying her eyes.
“I will be fine,” he answered. The maid smiled back, shyly, and mouthed “You are so brave!”
“Then come, it is time for you to serve the King.” |
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