"Yet so much is my poverty of spirit,
So mighty and so many my defects,
That I would rather hide me…"
--Richard III; III.vii

"Right. Um." Alan of Pirate's Swoop cleared his throat. "Well. Start with the basic strike and block pattern. In pairs. The way you've been doing it. I'll … I'll walk around and, um, correct --" No! That was the wrong word. "And help you with your stances and holds." He was sweating. 'Be careful what you wish for,' every fable said. If only he had thought to approach Sir Gareth, or Sir Myles, and ask for duties. Yesterday afternoon, when the training master's assistants had been with him, it hadn't seemed this difficult. But now, there was no one to back him up. The pages were staring at him, not making any motion towards following his instructions. Of course, they had no reason to listen to his direction. Yesterday, the others had mainly given instructions, as Alan watched. "Come on," he said. "Form pairs." They slowly shuffled around. They were short, these ten and eleven year-olds. He hadn't been so short at that age, surely.

"We aren't enough," one of them said, after what seemed like and age of slow movement. "I don't have a partner."

"I'll partner you," Alan said, more confidently than he felt. With his luck, he would have completely forgotten all of his staff-work.

"Then you won't be able to check our positions," another of them pointed out. He and his friends -- Alan assumed that they were his friends -- snickered.

"That's right --" He waited for the boy to supply name.

"Alberic of Groten." Little Alberic managed to sound both sullen and sneering at the same time.

"So you'll have to be perfect, Alberic of Groten." He had an idea that he ought to call the boy to task, ought to make an example of him for his disrespect, but that thought terrified him. He was only a squire, albeit an overaged one; he didn't really have any authority in this sphere except that which he was given temporarily by the training master.

The boy laughed, tossing his head and mimicking Alan's words to his friends. They lazily began to hit and block in a far corner of the training yard, pointedly turned away from Alan.

Alan shrugged. "Well," he said to the boy without a partner, "I'll block you, to start. No, not like that." The boy was holding his staff all wrong. When Alan made to fix his hold, he slid his hands easily into the correct position, a resigned and world-weary look on his face. "Look," Alan said, "there's a very good reason for holding it that way." The boy rolled his eyes, but began the drill of high strike then low.

As he easily and mindlessly fell into the pattern of strikes and blocks, he imagined a confrontation with the really obnoxious page -- with Alberic. Groten would start it, of course, perhaps by saying something about Mother, or by flatly refusing to follow Alan's instructions. Then he would knock him down, humiliate him. 'If you can't keep your tongue civil, Groten,' he would say, 'I advise you at the very least to keep it close.' Caught up in his fantasy, he lost the drill and struck back at his partner, who gave a shout and dropped his staff, jolting Alan out of his daydream.

"You hit me!" He accused.

"Sorry." That was another mistake, he supposed, as soon as he had said it. By now, the boy should be able to counter an unexpected hit. When he had been a page, the instructors had purposely done such things to ready his reflexes and keep him paying attention. "Here. You work in threes with them, now," he said, pointing to the nearest pair. He had better watch some of the others, try to make sure that at least they didn't get worse under his watch. Most of them had completely stopped the drill, and were simply whacking at each other with abandon.

"No, no," he said what seemed like a thousand times. "Look at yourself. Your stance is terrible. That's why you have to master the drill, first." Grumbling and muttering, they gradually obeyed, returning to halfhearted strike and block patterns, at least for as long as he was watching. Alan was bewildered: didn't they care at all that there was a proper way of doing things? They hadn't been this lazy yesterday while under the assistants' eyes.

The group in the far corner was huddled around something. A bird, probably, or a squirrel, Alan thought. He wouldn't put it past Alberic of Groten. Not at all. Probably, he thought suddenly, it was another boy. He tried to remember how many there had been to begin with…

"Hey," he called as he approached. "You've got work to do. If you keep up like this, I'll keep you after." It was an empty threat, of course.

Evidently, however, they weren't so sure. With painful and insolent slowness, Groten and his three friends formed two pairs. Groten turned his back deliberately towards Alan. They had, Alan realized, when came near, been digging a hole in the corner of the training yard with the butts of their staffs.

"Can't we stop this stupid drill, already?" Groten whined. "Sir Padraig never makes us go this long without varying it."

"You haven't spent any time drilling!" His frustration seethed, but knew he sounded like an indignant child, not a twenty-one year old man. He hadn't felt this ineffectual and feeble since, well, since he was a page, really. "There is no purpose," he continued, carefully controlling his tone, "in moving to a more complex pattern when you run roughshod over the simpler, and learn nothing from it."

Groten looked a little chastened, but not much. "How do you know? I mean, really, how do you know? You aren't the training master."

That shocked him. "Are you that insubordinate?" He asked slowly, astonished. "Does it pain you so to acknowledge any authority? 'Best reign who first well hath obeyed' (1). You will never pass through the Chamber if you do not learn to submit."

"But how do we know that we ought to submit to you? I wouldn't, for example, "submit" to a peasant. I mean, I wouldn't do it without good reason to."

"You haven't been through the Ordeal either," another boy said. "You don't know what it's like."

The page was right, Alan realized as the virtuous indignation faded a little in his mind. It was several months yet until his Ordeal. And here he was, unable to oversee -- not even unable to teach, but unable to oversee -- a group of children. Not even minding what everyone said: that the Chamber took a dim view of traitors and their kin. He had seen Lerant of Eldorne, bitter to be only in the King's Own, and not to hold the honorable title of knight. And many whispered that it was only for fear of the Ordeal that he had not tried for his shield…

"And you won't pass, neither," said one of Groten's friends in a loud voice. Cadwal, Alan thought he remembered his name as being. Cadwal of…the fief escaped him momentarily. "Traitors and criminals die in the Chamber of the Ordeal." Cadwal's eyes were wide at the realization that he was staring at a dead man walking, as it were. There were murmurs and whispers throughout the circle of boys that had abandoned all pretense of work to crowd around them. At last, someone brave enough to voice what they had all been thinking!

"I am not a traitor." Damn it all! Why was his voice shaking? He wasn't a traitor! He hadn't had anything to do with it! He had been the king's squire, by all the gods. How dare they impugn his loyalty to the Crown! And even Thom was not a traitor, per se. Even Thom hadn't meant what he had done. Thom. Older brother. For whom he hadn't given a thought all day. Guilty, yes, but not criminal. Thom. Or perhaps not even Thom. Yesterday he had been permitted to see him, bound up in his magical cage, twisted, foaming at the mouth, eyes rolling, face contorted and coarsened with unnatural features. He had peered through the foggy barrier in horror and pity and revulsion. Thom, who had known so much, whose intelligence and knowledge he had always held in awe. It was so much easier to forget about his brother's involvement, to fall into the almost automatic assumption that he was still rapt in his studies at the University. Poor Thom. What had been thinking to do when he -- … when he…

"Not a traitor," he repeated. But as he opened his mouth to say more, the hour rang. The "lesson," such as it had been, was over. After piling their staves neatly and quickly under the overhanging stable roof, the boys ran out.

Alan closed his eyes. There was a horrible ache behind them. 'I would be well within my rights, Cadwal of Runnerspring,' he imagined himself as having said. (Runnerspring: that was it -- funny how these things came to you when it was too late. Or perhaps it wasn't Runnerspring, but that name was simply the first that came to mind.) 'I would be well within my rights to challenge you for that slander. However, as the pitiful quality of the staff work you showed today demonstrates, you are so woefully inadequate in the combat arts that no purpose could possibly be served by my meeting you on an honorable field.' But, of course, he hadn't said it. Hadn't thought of it at the right time. He was the one who was woefully inadequate.

Lord Raoul had been right not to waste his time training him. Because, however reasonable his briefly-knightmaster's explanation had been, it couldn't have been the truth. Mother spoke of Lord Raoul and those who had been his squires often enough. He took those fit to command and taught them not only to be the best in the fighting arts, but all his tricks and knowledge of strategy, of leading men, of tactics. And he would have realized soon enough that he had made a mistake in taking Alan. He had given him a good chance, had honestly tried to teach him; he just hadn't been good enough.

Not that Sir Geoffrey hadn't been good to him, or that he wasn't a skilled knight. Kind, noble, one of the best with the sword (excepting Mother, of course). Bent over in the snow in a northern forest, his pale, gentle features barely showing the mortal pain of a belly-wound. Blood freezing as it ran out through his fingers and through Alan's. Dying. And he helpless beside his lord. Beside the king. If only Lord Raoul had let him stay, had spared him from this, and from Sir Geoffrey. Terrible, what a terrible person he was, to wish that. Not only incompetent and useless, but mean-spirited and selfish as well. Weak. Unable to face adversity. He wanted to go back to his room and cry.

No. No, he couldn't do that. He couldn't let himself go again. He had to control it. It was just that it was beginning to get dark, anyway. Things always seemed worse come nightfall. Tonight, he forced himself to think with a cleared mind. Tonight he was serving at table: although the king was dead, -- no, don't think about that, don't relive it -- his squire had some duties still to the entire royal family, and serving at meals was one. The familiar (though fairly recent) memory of the Gallan ambassador flew into his mind -- No. No. No. No. No. Don't remember that. Don't think about the king. -- So he had to get back to his room to clean up and change. Perhaps he would stop in the chapel to pray for a few moments. For the King. For Sir Geoffrey. Ask Mithros for strength for himself. Yes, he should do that.

But first, he had to make his report to Sir Padraig. Had to tell him about his massive failure today. Had to apologize. "Their combat training must not lie fallow," the knight had said. And he had as good as let it be overrun with weeds. Slowly, Alan dragged himself across the courtyard, away from the slowly-setting sun.


(1) John Milton: Paradise Regained, Book 3, 195-196. (It seems that Alan, too, may be following in his namesake's footsteps!)
(The above, rather condescendingly punctuated aside refers, of course, to Lord Alan of Trebond, who seems to have been noted as a pedant.)
6--6-05: Fixed several typos.