KNIGHT PRISONER by Mark J. Mitchell In 1470, in the great City of London, the great French poet, François Villon, was in trouble. He had a talent for it. Carted off to Newgate prison, he is thrown into the company of that master of English crime and prose, Sir Thomas Malory. Knight Prisoner is told by Fremin—Villon’s put-upon secretary who has never had an adventure of his own—he tells the story of the meeting of these two masters of writing and crime, while looking back at their early criminal adventures. Both men’s lives curiously echo their literary work. It also becomes the story of Fremin himself, as he grows from being the servant of two great men, into his own manhood. The legal and romantic situations go from bad to worse until there is only one man they can turn to, the old Knight in the prison.
PROLOGUE Late in the year, when evening comes early and the road winds behind me marred only by my shadow, he comes back to me. Then his memory wearies me and weighs me down like some household god out of Virgil, and I recall how sick of him I was at the last. Oh, I was sick of that man with all his sickness. He wasn’t just a thief, a cutpurse, a picklock, a sneak, and a whoremonger. No, he was also a hypochondriac, imagining illnesses everywhere. His cough was real enough, it kept me up nights, that much I’ll grant you, but the rest— well, for all he said he was dying, he was never dying. Death brushed him most closely while he was waiting for pardons, and even that touch was light. If the damned Archbishop couldn’t kill him then nothing could. He was always looking death in the eye, but it seemed he couldn’t die. He still lives somewhere, for all I know. I know I should have left him. I should have called it quits when he got thrown out of Paris, the only city I had ever known or wanted to know. But I waited like a lapdog outside the Châtelet while he waited for one last pardon, sick with dread that he might be hanged. I panted for more of his poems to copy. More of those endless, convoluted, worddrunk, rhyming wills in verse, studded with ballades and rondeaux like jewels. I wanted to write them down. I needed to. As if he was doing me a favor. As if he paid me. Still, I stuck by his side and followed him north to this cold and barbarous country. I packed his few possessions during that quick grace period he so wittily requested; I pawned my pens for what little cash they would bring and copied a flurry of letters so we would have passage money when we reached Calais. And never a grunt of gratitude from that one. Then for seven years there was London. Even there, it was me keeping a roof over our heads and the scrawny chickens in our cracked pot, copying for lawyers, clerks, and merchants. London, with its awful fogs, wet winters; with its fish stink and smoke reek; with its constant chorus of goddamns in the streets and offal in the gutters. Oh, how I
loved London. It was there we had that last adventure that almost cost both our lives and put me back into life. Yes, late in the year, like this, when the sun hangs like a white wafer, and my shadow is weak, I feel him beside me like Christ on the road to Emmaus, and I know that he’s a sinner, and I’m a sinner. As I round the curve in the road and see the small house that I call Hope and see Margot standing in the doorway, or in the kitchen garden, my heart lightens, and I know that God will forgive us all one of these days. I walk glad into the warm embrace of my wife, letting sorrow go. So, now I plan to take this winter chance, in the winter of my life, to stay up late into the long nights and scribble out our last story. I will reach back to the London of my memory and imagination to relate the adventures of the scholar, and of that Knight Prisoner whose romances both clutter and haunt my little house here at Newbold Revel. I will tell it, night by night, in the English tongue, robbing my sick master of his one gift, language. Stealing something from him at last, leaving him bereft even of that horrid slang of the Coquillards he deployed so obscenely. Maybe this way, even as God forgives, I may wash some of our sins away.
ONE It befell on a Saint Stephen’s night in the year of our Lord 1470, in the City of London, that my master, the great François Villon, got himself into trouble again. He had a talent for that. We had a room over a paper maker in Cheapside that stank from the process, but everything stinks in London, so we hardly noticed. I earned our bread as a copyist, as I had been Villon’s copyist. How I longed to copy his words again, but he hoarded them, composing in his own hand, never letting me see, never letting me near his poems. He saved them to get weak girls to lie down with him and weaker men to buy him wine. There was unrest in the country in those days, so we heard. Who was king? Who was not king? We never knew and rarely cared, except as grist for talk in the wine shops. Kings did not touch our lives much, though we would soon learn more of them. The armies fought most of their battles elsewhere and only celebrated victories in London, taking the throne and tossing coins about. That much we liked. No, the great ones didn’t bother us, and we didn’t bother about them. The sheriffs, though, and the guards, now they were a concern. Villon didn’t work at any craft, that would be beneath him, but he did steal. Nothing great or daring, a purse here and there, and only by speed and stealth. He wasn’t a brave man, my master, not at all. I would chide him, but he would laugh and say, “It’s just to keep my hand in, old Fremin. Talent needs practice, you know. Just ask the girls. Oh, I forgot, you have no talents. And no girls.” I’d laugh my forgiveness and drink the terrible wine his thefts brought in. He had his talents, surely. But it was Saint Stephen’s night I was telling: It was a miserable winter, damp with sleet and dirty snow that didn’t really stick, so much as clutter the streets, impede traffic, and chill our ill-shod feet. Christmas was past us, with its pageants, Masses, and incense. The Thames was running slow, and the odor wasn’t bad. I was trying to sleep in our little bed, pulling what thin blankets we had over my ears. Villon was
scratching and scribbling by the window, trying to steal light from the street. It was quiet outside, except for the scrape of a boot or the drag of a night soil cart. Good citizens were safe indoors by their fires. Thieves like Villon were waiting for the Watch to get lazy, and, perhaps, thinking it was too cold to steal anyway. I heard him trying out rhymes, muttering to himself. I heard his pen scrape on the used paper I pilfered for him. I heard him cursing. But I didn’t hear him throw the inkpot at me. “Fremin! It’s frozen!” he shouted. I just rubbed my head and pulled the blanket tighter around me. I was not going to get up and get him ink. Not after curfew. Not if he wouldn’t deign to dictate his precious poems to me. They were precious to me, at least, no matter how little he valued them. Besides, where would I find ink at that hour? Where would he? He walked out the door, and I was grateful as I heard him clomp down the stairs. The fire was banked. I got up and pushed the bed closer, then rolled myself back in my blanket, and fell, warm and toasty for a change, asleep. Morning came, and I didn’t miss him. He was useless in the mornings and not much good at midday, for that matter. I thought nothing of his absence. I didn’t even look at the papers he left behind. If he wouldn’t share his gift with me, well, I was too proud to peek. Anyway, he would leave for days at a time. Sometimes it was a generous girl, or sometimes he was just lying low, avoiding his usual haunts. Other times, a stranger might stand him drinks for days and nights on end, and I would only see him when the money ran out and he was truly sick from what passes for wine in this country. I gathered my pens and knives and made my way to Cheap Street, where I kept my copying stall, hoping someone might need a document before the first of the year, and I could earn a few honest groats. I hadn’t been there long when Anselm, the dour little cleric who used the stall next to mine, arrived. I didn’t like the man and tended to ignore him. He stopped short at his stall, squinting, then kicked the door, which swung open with a cold creak. He looked at me as a broken lock fell to the
paving stones. He didn’t much like foreigners, and he had more than an inkling about Villon’s tendencies. He muttered a goddamn or two, propped his door closed, and hurried away up Cheap Street. There was no reason for him to linger. A pale sun threw some light but no warmth through the river fog. No one was out. The water in the fountains ran slowly, almost frozen. Women had drawn the morning ewers and wouldn’t be back for more until evening. The markets were downstream. There was no reason for anyone to come anywhere near my stall, and no one did that cold and lonely Saint John’s Day. I blew on my ink-blackened fingertips and sharpened my nibs, then decided to close the stall and see if there was any legal work at Saint Paul’s. Between the courts and the Inns of Court, the cathedral was a regular meeting place for legal folks, lawyers, and their clients. At the very least, they could mutter a prayer for a weak case. I would sometimes be able to take a deposition or write a will, or forge one, if need be. I was only slightly more honest than my master, for even scriveners need to eat. If nothing else, I would be out of the weather in the vestibule of the cathedral. As I was climbing the steps, someone called my name, and I turned to face a law clerk I knew as Martin. “Fremin, looking for an advocate?” he said without even a good morning. “No, looking for documents. Work, you know.” “I thought you’d be at Newgate.” “I don’t like prisons, Martin. I can’t see why I’d be there. Most of those in jail belong there, and they rarely have copying that needs doing.” “But your friend is there. That poet. Dark little fellow you room with.” “Villon? In Newgate? What’s he done, do you know?” “No. He was arrested last night, that’s all I heard. Breaking the peace or some such, no doubt.” “He was out after curfew. Oh merciful Christ. Will they let me see him, do you think? I don’t know about English prisons.”
“For half a shilling or so. That’s the usual fee.” I didn’t know what to do as I took my leave of him, heading for the city walls and Newgate Prison. Villon was in trouble and would need my help. Frenchmen were not popular in the best of times in England, and certainly no felonious Frenchman could expect mercy. Still, half a shilling was a small fortune. I do want to keep this story in good order, but my brain is not as orderly as it should be. I was educated in Paris, you know, and I am thinking in my second language with a mind ruined by third-rate philosophy. Still, it seems now I should write of what I only learned later. When Villon left our room the night before, he headed towards Cheap Street, to the row of copying stalls. He was going to get ink from my store. In the dark, of course, he broke into Anselm’s stall, just as the Night Watch turned onto Cheapside. I don’t suppose it would have mattered if he had broken into mine; it was the breaking that was the crime, but I might have been able to plead for him. Villon, sensibly, ran from the Watch, towards the wall, but the big men of the Watch soon trapped him in one of the many alleys that branch off there and dragged him, protesting loudly, to Newgate Prison. Usually, these none too bright watchmen would have hauled him off to Sherriff’s of London, a more common jail for the more common prisoner. Newgate was for hard cases and for political prisoners. But, they dragged him to Newgate that Saint Stephen’s night. It was probably just the usual official laziness; still it was a happy fault. “A thief for you,” they told the warder, who just opened he door and kicked Villon through into the common room. Here, women and men, London’s least lights, mingled. Some slept. Some gathered around a fire, drinking sour wine and bitter ale. There was some, well, sexual activity of a commercial nature, taking place in one corner, accompanied by the low mutterings of negotiations.
Villon had come flying through the door and fell on the filthy stone floor, measuring his length. He was no stranger to prisons, that one, and he knew he had to make an impression right away or he might not survive the night. He gathered his wits and righted himself, standing as stiffly as only a Frenchman on his dignity can. He brushed the collar of his dusty gray coat, and strode, boldly and stiffly, towards the fire. A small silence fell on the drinkers as Villon rubbed his hands together and extended them towards the flames. The other prisoners made a wall, blocking his way to the warmth. “Excuse me, I’m sure.” His accent was enough. A buzz exploded through the room. “A toadeating Frenchman!” was probably the most polite remark, and one large man reached for Villon’s neck. François Villon can’t be held. It’s as simple as that. Not for long, not by any one man. There were six of the Watch, and it took three to get him to prison. This human horse didn’t stand a chance. Villon dropped to the floor, rolled between his attacker’s legs, and reached for the knife he always carried in his shoe. He came up behind the Englishman, quickly and neatly hamstringing him. There was a sudden stillness in the jail and a palpable threat of mob justice in the air. Villon stood with his back to the fire, knife in his hand. I have always wondered what he would have done had things followed their natural course. Instead, from the back of the room came the measured sound of good boots on hard stone. A tall man emerged from the corridor at the back of the common room. He carried authority as a natural right, his back straight as a lance, his gray hair neatly trimmed, his clothes clean. He was utterly different from anyone in that room. “Who’s this? What’s he done? Speak up. Has he killed anyone?” “No, your worship,” said a thin slip of a girl from a dark corner, “he was defending himself. He’s a Frenchman.” “French,” said the tall man, towering over Villon. “Can you read? Don’t lie, now.”
“Sir,” answered Villon, “I was educated at the Sorbonne.” “That doesn’t answer my question, sir,” he said rather acidly. “Yes, I can read. French, Latin, and even what you call English.” “Good. I have some books I’d like you to look at. I’ve been reducing them from French to English. Are you willing?” Well, Villon knew a savior when he saw one. “I am at your service, sir,” he replied quickly. “And who, precisely, is at my service?” “François Villon, poet and scholar.” “And I am Sir Thomas Malory. Knight and prisoner. Come along.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mark J. Mitchell was born in Chicago and grew up Catholic in southern California. He studied writing and Medieval Literature at UC Santa Cruz under Raymond Carver, George Hitchcock, Barbara Hull and Robert M. Durling. His poems have appeared in several hundred periodicals over the last thirty five years, as well as the anthologies Good Poems, American Places, Hunger Enough, and Line Drives. His poetry chapbook, Three Visitors won The Negative Capability Press International Chapbook Competition. He lives in San Francisco with his wife, the film maker and documentarian, Joan Juster.
DOWNLOAD A FREE SCIENCE FICTION EBOOK
http://StrangeFictionsZine.com/get-a-free-ebookwhen-you-subscribe/