The Spruiker
Lords and Ladies, before we begin, may I humbly beg your indulgence to refresh your memory of the
first morality tale, of the matches rustling in ragged coat pockets, of the fires and rising waters, of the tree monks and the paper castle.
Done? Excellent! Now we may proceed.
Lords and Ladies, since last I regaled you with tales of Tiny-er-er O’penmouth’s jesterly activities, he has been created a new man. Gone is the ‘er, er’ to be replaced by ‘pause, pause’, in his sentences and his thinking. Gone is the jester flapping inanely from great hall to field and forge. Now is come Tiny Napoleon O’penmouth, standing astride the history of kingdoms, soon to be master of all he surveys — even beyond what he can survey.
The Lords and Ladies of his kingdom succumbed to (or perhaps simply gave up on) his jests and gave him charge of their knights and yeomen: at least it saved them that irksome task — no longer checking that each breast plate was cleaned and shined or making peasants clear the roads of the droppings of the knights’ horses — and relieved them of the boredom of his jests. This new power has enthralled him, wrapped itself coquettishly in his mind, and he believes he is Napoleon — although, as Napoleon has not yet been born, perhaps he is the exemplar for the future. Now he thinks that distant Lords and Ladies should heed his every magnificent, even insignificant, word (even if it still takes him some time to get the word out), and should bow to his commands: although, like you, my Lords and Ladies, most continue to think of him as merely a court jester and not a good one at that. But beware!
The tale of Tiny Napoleon O’penmouth
When the Lords and Ladies of his kingdom granted Tiny Napoleon O’penmouth his newfound power, he immediately called out the knights and yeomen in defence of the borders of the kingdom. The Lords and Ladies looked on with benign amusement. There was no threat, they knew, but if it kept the jester amused and away from their own courts it achieved their intent and what harm could there be.
The knights and yeomen ringed the kingdom standing beside the orange boats — those which Tiny Napoleon O’penmouth had managed to retain, and he had also had the wheelwrights attach wheels to some of them. But who was he defending this kingdom from? No one was sure. But Tiny Napoleon O’penmouth decided that the borders must be protected from anyone trying to cross. ‘I’m not shutting the borders (pause) closing the borders’, he said, ‘just not (pause, pause) letting anyone in.’ Purely for the jest, he occasionally ordered the guards to allow some people to cross, then to round them up, pack them in the orange boats and push them back again or set them into the sea. He was having so much fun, he hoped the Lords and Ladies were taking notice of this splendid, ingenious jest.
They were and they didn’t like it. Tiny Napoleon O’penmouth was also stopping serfs whom the Lords and Ladies wanted to work in their castles and in their fields. Quite abashed he was summoned to the castle gates and four leviathan guards carried him, very un-genteelly, to the castle’s great hall where sat the Lords of the kingdom. (He had thought of arriving in one of his new orange boats with wheels but, luckily for him, they were all in use ferrying serfs and their families back across the border).
‘We need more serfs in our fields and at the forges, not fewer,’ the Lords told him.
Silence. And an open mouth. Tiny Napoleon O’penmouth could not think of a word to say, only numbers.
‘457’ he blurted.
The Lords silently glared at him.
‘400, 500, 700,’ Tiny Napoleon O’penmouth added into that silence.
All eyes were fixed on him and he could feel the chill of the dank castle dungeons creeping over him or perhaps the real hand of a guard grasping his shoulder in joyful anticipation of dragging another poor soul into the darkness below. ‘I can let in 700 (pause) or more. Or less,’ he added sensing no reaction. ‘We can call them (pause, pause) 457s.’ At least, he thought, that made sense of the numbers.
‘Call them what you will. Just let them in.’ The Lords’ final command.
Tiny Napoleon O’penmouth was dismissed. He had escaped the dungeons and felt well pleased with himself. Numbers had worked out fine instead of words. He would let some in — and send some back if the mood took him. After all, he now had that power. Power was a grand feeling, better even than being a jester. He could come to like this. The chagrin he felt, however, at the Lords’ final command prompted a vague impression that something was missing but in the pause between his thoughts he also missed the connection.
Not long afterwards, as fate would have it, a wagon load of serfs overturned in a distant kingdom — it was ten days ride away. Tiny Napoleon O’penmouth called the knights together.
‘I need you to ride to that far kingdom and bring the wagon home.’
‘Is it our wagon?” a knight dared question.
Tiny Napoleon O’penmouth hesitated. ‘It (pause, pause) it had our 457s in it’ Tiny told him. The knight gazed quizzically— what was a 457? — but asked nothing more. ‘And you’d better (pause) better bring the 457s here as well — at least, any who are (pause) still fit to work.’ The knights rode off not at all sure what they were meant to do but as valiant knights they did as they were bid.
A short time later, news came that the peasants in that distant kingdom were revolting. Tiny thought there was a joke about that but couldn’t quite bring it to mind.
Then, in a stroke of genius (at least Tiny Napoleon O’penmouth thought it was a stroke of genius), he decided that the wagon must have been overturned by the revolting peasants. (What was that joke?)
In his green great hall, with his jesters, clowns and goblins behind him and with a few summoned peasants in front, Tiny Napoleon O’penmouth unleashed page one of his exalted vision:
‘Those serfs in that far kingdom have forgotten their place. They think they can sup at the same table as the Lords and Ladies. They think they need no longer work for the Lords and Ladies. They are making the kingdom unsafe for the Lords and Ladies. They are interfering in other kingdoms and stirring serfs there to think as they do. They deserve the condemnation of all kingdoms. They deserve the condemnation of all other serfs for threatening your way of life.’
That wasn’t what the peasants thought at all. How could they work when fires ravaged the landscape, when waters rose and no longer receded? When the land turned to mud, they could barely grow enough food and the Lords and Ladies demanded what little there was. And in that kingdom, the peasants had finally taken the matches from their pockets and lighted the fire of revolution.
The knights returned from that far kingdom empty-handed: no wagon and no fit serfs to work for the Lords and Ladies but that no longer concerned Tiny Napoleon O’penmouth. He had discovered the rapture of his power, able to send the knights off to wherever he chose and, to his astonishment, many of the serfs even cheered them as they rode out and when they rode in again. This was all starting to add up in Tiny Napoleon O’penmouth’s mind, even if the additions were interrupted by pauses. He couldn’t quite see it yet but the numbers were fatefully drawing together. Perhaps it required just a shorter pause between his thoughts.
The peasants’ revolt spread. New kingdoms were being infected by it as the waters continued to rise, as the fires continued to burn. Tiny Napoleon O’penmouth sent twelve knights and their retinue to join knights from other kingdoms: the Lords and Ladies of many kingdoms were by then becoming alarmed and sending their own knights to quell those rebellions before more castles burned, before more fields were left untended, before revolt spread to their own kingdoms. ‘You are defending our own kingdom,’ Tiny told the knights before they rode off. ‘No we’re not,’ someone shouted from the attendant crowd, but Tiny didn’t see who and ignored it for then, although noting it for the future: he could not have people doubting his splendiferous schemes or there would indeed be local rebellion.
Matching a shorter pause in his thoughts, the numbers came together in a second wave of genius and Tiny Napoleon O’penmouth had his epiphany. Now he understood how he could control the serfs and peasants of his own kingdom, how to quiet the dissenting voices. The Lords and Ladies would be grateful beyond measure: but did that matter now? They had not given him control over the peasants but he knew then how he would have it.
He returned to his great hall and, with the jesters, clowns and goblins again gathered behind him and a select few peasants in front (again), announced his next transcendent vision.
‘The peasants are revolting. (He wished he could remember that joke.) You might think it is only in the far kingdoms (pause) where I have sent our knights. But they threaten us. They threaten you. They are not content (pause, pause) attacking only the Lords and Ladies. They will kill any peasant (pause) who does not agree with them and kill them most horribly. They wish to create (pause, pause) a world (pause) a world where they are in control and you will still be serfs (pause, pause) but serfs not as well cared for as the Lords and Ladies tend you.’
Despite a lone cry of ‘crap’, the majority was listening then. They were mostly attentive and motionless awaiting Tiny Napoleon O’penmouth’s next word. No laughter, no raucous bellowing back at him. They know I am no longer only a lowly jester, he thought. They are afraid and that is good. He continued (after a pause, of course):
‘Already there are those among us who support those revolting peasants. Those who will seek to kill you and burn your fields (pause).’
‘The fields are already burning’, a peasant called across the hall, but only the same single soul who had earlier yelled ‘crap’. Tiny felt confident, however, that now such voices would disappear beneath the maelstrom of fear he was fashioning, so he ploughed on, digging more deeply the furrows of foreboding.
‘They threaten your way of life. You will have to flee for your lives unless you allow the knights and yeomen to patrol within our own kingdom, to go into houses and drag out those who would harm you, to follow them to their secret meeting places, to watch their every movement — where they go, whom they visit.’
He grew assured that now the Lords and Ladies would let him close the borders. But that question, ‘did it matter?’, re-echoed in his thoughts.
Previously, as no more than a common jester, he had thought that sometimes ‘shit happens’ but then he confidently understood he could make it happen. Even if not a single peasant in his kingdom (it wasn’t actually ‘his’ — yet!) was threatening revolt, it was a mendacious and all-powerful justification to round up those terrible tree monks (or those who looked like tree monks) who insisted that something substantial was amiss when the rising waters did not recede, when the fires kept returning. Yes, he could well do without them making the peasants restless and giving them something else to fear.
Tiny Napoleon O’penmouth continued to disregard those rising waters and recurring fires. The knights and yeomen could not stop them, so what was the point of concerning himself.
Yes, now he had the plan. Eventually even the Lords and Ladies would not be immune. The knights and yeoman would enter the castle on pretext of searching out revolting peasants who had found their way in as blacksmiths, cordwainers, coopers and fletchers, and find the Lords and Ladies who protected them or who heeded the preaching of the tree monks (whether they did or not would no longer be of consequence). He could be rid of them too. He would no longer need his paper castle. He would have the real castle!
‘Soon I will be Emperor’, he dared tell himself. ‘No more Lords and Ladies — just me. My power is majestic and makes me a glorious and illustrious personage, worthier, nobler yet, than the Lords and Ladies. I will be Emperor!’
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