Interlude.

“Hayfoot! Strawfoot!” the brother cried. “And are you a fool, too?” he asked, his voice like thunder, deep and rumbling.

Just last night the lightning cracked upon us, the booming steps of the storm like a giant’s pace. “Gad, but it’s loud,” and me at the edge of the bed, ready to run for a mother's shelter. “Is it war?” I might have shouted. “Abed with thee, child” the prefect told me. “It’s just a storm, is it not? And you shoutin’ war. What overcomes you so? Hush. It’s abed, to be sure.”

To be sure, Brother, a fool I am. And, Brother, fool enough to know, I’m not made for marching, though I might grow in fondness for murder. I sent to him as much, but he could not read me. He just heard my wheezing and was disgusted. And me, I heard his complaints, his blasted tooth aching so and they’d tear it out. They will, God help me, he thought. Like something for shoein’ a horse, the clamp they wave about. God. And the crunch of it. That’s the worse. Poor lamentable me, I ache so. Worse than a kick to me sack. But what good is me stand anyway?

“Left and right, you whelp! Do you not know them by now?”

“Brother, if you would just ask? I know the Latin, too.”

“Vile cur, I say. Dogs have no Latin, I won’t hear it!”

“Pater.” Rian said, and he took the priest’s hand. “I heard you were poorly. Well ... I thought of you, and it was clear.”

The priest didn’t stir, but his breathing was easy. Rian felt the fever leave.

“I was out grubbin’ for asparagus.” And he thought, What might be its truename?

“Oh, stand to, you sorry pup. Left, right and bother. You’ll never march. Your head’s too big for it. You’re heart’s too big for it, too. So who will you fool next? Go back to your books and your candle wax.

“Brother, I’ll try harder...”

“Laddie, don’t go bother a brother,” the man told him. “Bugger a brother,” he muttered. “Oh, the whole lot of you." He cast eyes eyes over us. "I’d best go shovel coal.”

And the winter came hard. I remember the troughs gone froze over and the cows’ staring. Like licking for salt with less chance. Chaney-eyed, the beasts, the breath of them a vapor. Was it their prayers, like the incense we burned on the Lord’s day, our plea for the Christ, the Son of God? When would he come ... and would we know him? Pater asked just so, “Will you know him?” and the lot of us shook our heads. Would it be poetry he spoke? Like the psalms? Or will he just speak with his sword and have at us sinners?

We’d know then.