It started as a talk in a tavern.
Eldmaen and Folvuf were cormorants at drink. The table creaked under the hard-hewn arms that leaned their big bodies grotesquely forward. It was a loud day. Some of the patrons there had been drinking since dawn, and violence aplenty had put a rather ugly black blotch upon the north wall where a man’s head had been smashed upon it. Beads of barley wine trickled down Eldmaen’s mutton chops and a beard that rested its end comfortably on Folvuf’s chest. A whore came to fondle their ears with her words and tongue, but they beat her off with the pitcher and sent her yelping like a hound. Quim was a fine thing, but on this day the men were much more inclined to talk.
What talking they did! It was a constant ritual between the men. Eldmaen would always start off griping about how his bitch of a woman harassed him to slop the swine, or nail a new plank to the flat ferry that he would take to go up river to sell skins. He would always assure his friend that the men there were skinning him, with their ridiculous rates of purchase. His claims of offence would often grow proportionately with the amount of barley wine he imbibed. By the end of the night, he would often smash the clay jar he drank from and declare that the entire world was looking to rob the last coin from his purse.
Folvuf was always the more level-headed of the pair. He would listen more than speak, save to make conjecture. Ever the proverbial anarchist, he would insist that the price at which the skins were sold was commensurable with the tax that the aetheling levied on goods, and insist that the very meat of the problem lay with a rigid and unyielding political ox. When he spoke on his own, he liked to tell tales about the terrible things he had seen as a courier, in and out of employ for officials and less than honourable men. It was the usual fare from that sort of lot: tales of heads in sacks, and orders of execution for entire villages. Eldmaen always knew when the other was lying, but never said so. Worse, he also knew when he spoke the truth, for a grim line would crease the elder man’s brow and his words would slur in a particular way. The more Folvuf drank, the more true stories he told.
On this day, it was much the same. They talked about similar gripes while turning to watch a woman try and scratch out the eyes of a child who’d stolen her coins. They laughed when the boy ducked under the woman’s skirts to hit her flanks, and shouted complaints when the woman’s mate kicked the teeth out of the young boy’s mouth. Eldmaen made an obscure reference about how much the same was being done to his own coins.
Yet on this day, Folvuf’s reaction was very different. Rather than cool grasps for logic, the courier slammed his jar upon the table and spouted angry words. They were so loud, so passionate, that the disputes stopped. The usual dull roar of tavern life slowly ground to a halt as the man threw himself into fiery sermon. He posed questions to the now attentive forum about why they tolerated injustices, why they let themselves be taxed, and why they accepted the living conditions, such as they were. He demanded to know what they would do about it aside from gripe like spinsters. He posed the theory that action should be taken, that their voices should be heard.
This strange, heady brew was received well by the patronage. There were muted nods at first, then murmurs of approval. Then the crowd began to participate; sparsely at first, a few brave or genuinely interesting voices entering into debate. And then, finally, the forum erupted into sound once more. Yet this was a different sound: that of dissent.
Eldmaen watched in horror and fascination as his friend single-handedly became a revolutionary. Yet he could not help but be caught into the fray. He’d heard the man tell him for as long as he could remember that these problems were directly related to the matters of state, and finally his jaded ears took in the words.
***
Eldmaen realized that he was looking at madness. Folvuf was clubbing a guardsman to death with a spade, breaking his skull and spilling brains onto the earth road. There was panic in the streets. Men fought with men and women fought with men and children fought with everyone. The farmer watched as he saw a man dancing around a bloated soldier, his fishing spear still wobbling as the gastric fluids reacted caustically with the intake of air. Serfs and ceorls were in the streets, dying and killing. What had started as a tiny tavern rabble became a full fledged riot.
The speed at which the uprising commenced was something that had to be admired. The magistrate looked out his window to see what had happened, just in time to take an oak table to the face, breaking his nose and rendering him unconscious amongst shards of broken glass. The garrison houses were emptied quickly, deployed in single ranks, but the onslaught was simply too fast. Folvuf himself broke the line. He found a horse and cart, and rode into the guardsmen. The horse balked at running into the soldier steel, but the cart had its own momentum and bones were trampled at three men died. The rabble closed in on the chance, and slaughter commenced.
Yet Eldmaen watched, as the afternoon waned towards twilight, as a man amongst the rabble picked up a pitchfork and thrust it into Folvuf’s side. Whatever unity had originated in the mob, it had long since fizzled out. Now it was just mania. The courier gasped a final plea to Eldmaen…
…who plotted to lead the mob towards the castle.
Sat May 02, 2009 1:52 pm
