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Stories from the Verse
A Dozen Verses
Chapter 114: Cooper 110
Table of Contents
Previous chapter: Kondor 293
The man led Barrelmaster into a small office with twelve small stools along the walls. He opened a cabinet on the wall high above the stools, and pulled out plates, a cheese drum, dried apples, a loaf of bread, butter, and a broad-bladed one edged chopping blade. Putting the blade to work with quick strikes he hacked off three pieces of bread, three slices of cheese, minced some apples on a plate, and took off a healthy chunk of butter which he smeared on each bread slice. Cleaning the blade with a dry towel, he put the remaining food back up, along with the chopper.
The buttered bread got minced apples shoved into it, and a layer of cheese atop each open-faced sandwich. Cooper got two and the man one, each on his own plate. The man also poured out a warm tea from a clear jar from another cabinet into two metal cups. With gestures, he showed Cooper to drag up a stool, and he did so himself.
Before eating, he raised his right hand skyward, and spoke.
“Grant us blessing, One True to your devoted followers.” Cooper followed, because he could pray this as well, and the man nodded with approval before slurping up some tea. No words were exchanged as the two munched. Cooper quickly discerned that one was supposed to noisily slurp the tea, which went against much of his training, but he had lived in the Orient so he was familiar with this practice.
The meal was tasty, with no hint of modern preservatives, just pure natural wonder in each bite. They finished, and the man swept the crumbs off, opened a small window, and lay the crumbs on the window sill. Within a minute Cooper was delighted to see three small birds hopping about on the sill, eating the bread crumbs. This finished, the man shut the window.
He turned back to Cooper and spoke.
“You said your name was Brian Barrelmaster, and you had been lost, and were without food. I am Saul Wheatson, third son of Fortitude Wheatson, and verger for this church. You are in Middle Valley, so you now are not lost. You’ve joined me for my mid-morning snack, so you’re not hungry or thirsty.”
He stared.
“You cannot be too far lost as you are a Browning like me and the rest of the village. The Slants live off to the coast, and far to the North live the Pale barbarians in their mountain fastnesses. Nor are you a Purple, who are the closest non-Browning. Yet, clearly, your clothing is distinct.” He waved his hand at his dark blue tabard with a yellow fringe, and loose pants and sash of slightly better quality than the farm workers had had. “No Slant or Purple that I have seen dresses as you do, and neither do any of the villages or towns of the Brownings, and I have been to nearly ten of them. Some of your clothing is of a material I cannot identify with certainty. Cotton maybe? Quite expensive that, and your stitching is so regular and fine. Nor do you have the dust of many days travel on you or your clothing.”
The verger’s bright eyes scanned Cooper.
“I am, I think, meant to believe you are a trader gone for a long time to a very far country, and now come back home, possibly with gold, silver and spices. I do not see evil or malice in your face, which could mean you are just a good liar, but I choose to think that perhaps you are a spy from the Slants.”
Barrelmaster sighed. His clothes really did stand out. Industrialized clothing in a pre-industrial setting was going to be hard to swallow, what with plastic buttons in his flannel shirt, and denim pants, especially if the intended target was an unusually perspicacious church official. He wondered what verger meant, but guessing that now was not the time to indulge his curiosity, he lifted his head back up.
“Let me tell you a story, which will at first seem unbelievable, but I have proofs of it.” This felt like relief to him. Even as close to lying as he had come, and he had not strayed over, made him uncomfortable. He sketched out some of his story. He was a man who had traveled from world to world, trying to help, fighting criminals in one, and being a sailor in another, and having been used of God to perform some miracles, and he had just arrived in this world the other day. After about ten minutes of story, questions and responses, he pulled out his laptop to show the man a passage from the Bible. The lit up screen looked odd in the natural light from the window, and the startled verger gasped as he saw the arrow moving on the screen.
He tried to stab it with a finger, and then pick it up with two fingers before demanding Brian give him the arrow. Brian scratched his own short hair, wondering just how you explained to a bright but pre-electricity, pre-television, pre-computer man that the arrow was a figment of light. Oddly, that phrase settled the man.
“Brian, I will be back. I must speak to some of the leading men of the village.”
“I could go with you,” Brian offered.
“Uh, no, no, just stay here all right? It will be simpler if I go talk to them.” The verger’s voice was quiet, and gentle and a bit energetic at the same time. Curious, Brian looked over at him, and then his stomach rumbled.
“Do you mind if while I wait, I have some more food and tea?”
“Yes, yes, of course. There’s meat, too.” With that, the man hustled out. Brian made himself another two open-faced sandwiches. One he made had a kind of pork salami slices all over it from an unrefrigerated meat curl. The dense, salty meat tasted very good with the leathery dried apple bits and the soft cheese. That done, he decided that this was as good a time as any to study the Bible, and so he opened his laptop back up and began reading. After a bit, he remembered the birds, as he had gotten to the point where Elijah was being fed by ravens. Clearing up the crumbs, he went to the window and opened it, and put the crumbs on the sill.
The birds swooped down again, but then held off as they apparently did not recognize him. He whistled back in their own songs, and soon one and then four others arrived to peck at the crumbs on the sill. As they did, he looked down the dusty street. A couple young men were running as if alarmed. Around the fourth house down came a crowd of about ten men and two women, and they marched as if in great determination.
This did not look good, Brian decided. Making sure the crumbs were out of the way, and the birds as well, he slid the window shut. Turning back, he shut his laptop quickly, and stowed it before grabbing his other gear.
There is a behind-the-writings look at the thoughts, influences, and ideas of this chapter, along with eleven other sequential chapters of this novel, in mark Joseph "young" web log entry #533: Characters Traveling. Given a moment, this link should take you directly to the section relevant to this chapter. It may contain spoilers of upcoming chapters.
As to the old stories that have long been here:
