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Authors: Mia Marlowe
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head. He crumpled to the flagstones. His vision tunneled, and the last coherent thought skittering through his brain was, “Thank God. Nab’s finally stopped making that infernal noise.”
Make we joy now in this fest
In quo Christus natus est.
—From “Make We Joy Now”
“I like the music. Ye can dance to it. But for the life of me, I dinna ken why we sing in a language no one but God and them who pass for educated understand.”
—An observation from Nab,
fool to the Earl of Glengarry
Chapter Six
Nab tore the loaf in two and took a bite. The barley bread was still warm, but he took no pleasure in it. Even so, he forced himself to wolf it down. He didn’t want to wake later and be tempted to wander back down into the main part of the keep in search of food. Then he stopped himself from demolishing the whole loaf in one sitting. He might be truly hungry tomorrow. He wrapped the rest of the bread in his handkerchief and set it aside. He never wanted to go back to the great hall, even though he was pretty sure his appetite would return sometime.
But then again, maybe not.
His stomach roiled uncertainly. Nab was used to being thought the fool and made the butt of countless jokes, but never before this night had he felt so helpless, so small, so . . . exposed.
He didn’t express himself well. He knew that. But what the rest of them didn’t understand was that he thought as well or better than any of them.
Just a wee bit differently.
The Earl of Glengarry ought to see it, but he never did.
Maybe out of all of them, only William could see him clearly. Maybe he knew there was something more to Nab than motley and a fool’s cap. He must since he’d entrusted him with such a precious thing as the scepter. And William had stood up to Ranulf MacNaught for him.
But William was the only one.
Nab settled on the old rug and laid down the scepter so that the silver rod rested by his thigh. The smooth metal was restful and helped quiet the fidgets inside him.
He cracked open his book. No one in the castle, not even his friend William, would believe Nab could read. He’d started by studying the Latin inscriptions carved into the walls of the chapel, and before long, he’d puzzled out the code of the written word on his own.
The priest thought he was just parroting what he’d heard instead of reading. It made Nab smile. Sometimes it was good to be underestimated. If folks expected less of him, it gave him fewer chances to fail.
Lord Glengarry had a small library in his solar. The shelf held nearly half a dozen bound volumes, an unspeakable trove of riches meant to impress visitors to the keep. Nab was sure the earl himself couldn’t read. He’d certainly never seen his master with a book in his hand unless he was showing it to someone else. Lord Glengarry wasn’t likely to miss one of them. Nab just had to be stealthy about borrowing in case the maids who dusted the books could count.
He reminded himself to feel grateful that he was able to stay at Glengarry Castle, even if he did have to play the fool. His parents had been glad to be shed of him. They had no idea what to do with the likes of him. There’d even been superstitious talk in the village about Nab being a changeling, some queer offspring from the hollow hills. Everyone in his family was relieved when Lord Glengarry took him on as his fool. Nab was slight enough of frame that manual labor would have been a hardship, and this way, at least he never knew hunger or lacked a roof over his head.
There was another good thing about living in a place like Glengarry. The keep had been added to piecemeal over the years, a new dovecote here, a barbican there. As the centuries rolled by, certain things were forgotten. Like the derelict passageway that led into the old tower room where he took sanctuary.
One particularly rainy day last January when the sky was falling like shards of grey glass, Nab had slipped away from his place by the earl’s
Make we joy now in this fest
In quo Christus natus est.
—From “Make We Joy Now”
“I like the music. Ye can dance to it. But for the life of me, I dinna ken why we sing in a language no one but God and them who pass for educated understand.”
—An observation from Nab,
fool to the Earl of Glengarry
Chapter Six
Nab tore the loaf in two and took a bite. The barley bread was still warm, but he took no pleasure in it. Even so, he forced himself to wolf it down. He didn’t want to wake later and be tempted to wander back down into the main part of the keep in search of food. Then he stopped himself from demolishing the whole loaf in one sitting. He might be truly hungry tomorrow. He wrapped the rest of the bread in his handkerchief and set it aside. He never wanted to go back to the great hall, even though he was pretty sure his appetite would return sometime.
But then again, maybe not.
His stomach roiled uncertainly. Nab was used to being thought the fool and made the butt of countless jokes, but never before this night had he felt so helpless, so small, so . . . exposed.
He didn’t express himself well. He knew that. But what the rest of them didn’t understand was that he thought as well or better than any of them.
Just a wee bit differently.
The Earl of Glengarry ought to see it, but he never did.
Maybe out of all of them, only William could see him clearly. Maybe he knew there was something more to Nab than motley and a fool’s cap. He must since he’d entrusted him with such a precious thing as the scepter. And William had stood up to Ranulf MacNaught for him.
But William was the only one.
Nab settled on the old rug and laid down the scepter so that the silver rod rested by his thigh. The smooth metal was restful and helped quiet the fidgets inside him.
He cracked open his book. No one in the castle, not even his friend William, would believe Nab could read. He’d started by studying the Latin inscriptions carved into the walls of the chapel, and before long, he’d puzzled out the code of the written word on his own.
The priest thought he was just parroting what he’d heard instead of reading. It made Nab smile. Sometimes it was good to be underestimated. If folks expected less of him, it gave him fewer chances to fail.
Lord Glengarry had a small library in his solar. The shelf held nearly half a dozen bound volumes, an unspeakable trove of riches meant to impress visitors to the keep. Nab was sure the earl himself couldn’t read. He’d certainly never seen his master with a book in his hand unless he was showing it to someone else. Lord Glengarry wasn’t likely to miss one of them. Nab just had to be stealthy about borrowing in case the maids who dusted the books could count.
He reminded himself to feel grateful that he was able to stay at Glengarry Castle, even if he did have to play the fool. His parents had been glad to be shed of him. They had no idea what to do with the likes of him. There’d even been superstitious talk in the village about Nab being a changeling, some queer offspring from the hollow hills. Everyone in his family was relieved when Lord Glengarry took him on as his fool. Nab was slight enough of frame that manual labor would have been a hardship, and this way, at least he never knew hunger or lacked a roof over his head.
There was another good thing about living in a place like Glengarry. The keep had been added to piecemeal over the years, a new dovecote here, a barbican there. As the centuries rolled by, certain things were forgotten. Like the derelict passageway that led into the old tower room where he took sanctuary.
One particularly rainy day last January when the sky was falling like shards of grey glass, Nab had slipped away from his place by the earl’s
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