Mark Lind-Hanson's Blog, page 9

Julian to the Inns of Court (Excerpt, If I Should Live So Long - 12-13)

By the time showed myself at Mary’s door in Chester, much apparently had been going on. Master Carpenter had been granted a contract (“a devil’s due” he termed it) to build casks and barrels for the Prince, Henry the younger, in advance of his father’s soon-to-be-renewed campaign against the Welsh. “They are granting me the sum of one hundred pounds in order that I provide them some hundred-and-thirty barrels- including butts, kilderkins, and firkins. I only need to build them eight butts, but then, some forty kilderkins and eighty firkins. These, they say, will be used over and over, but it is necessary to build them, as their messenger told me that the old bunch have half rotted now. At least they did not ask me to create tuns! I would have noplace to store them. All the same, it’s money due me, right? But then I must procure the wood. So I drove the best bargain I could, right through His Majesty’s treasury.”“That’s not quite so bad...”“But seeing as the profit to the brewers and the wine sellers will be much more (and we won’t, don’t you know, provide them any of the Lady’s brew!) than I should make, and when I consider the raw wood will nigh run me close to half that sum, then this is rather short on the supply line, to me, anyway. A curse on this wretch of a King! Would that there was truly an honest man on the throne, who would see to it that all craftspeople were respected. I don’t know where they get the idea that we would just as soon hand things over in the name of the honor or the glory of the King himself, seeing as that he’s such a cheap.”“But yet, even to have one hundred pounds is more than many merchants along this street might make in the course of a year...”“That is true, Julian, but then as I said- I must supply the wood, and then I must pay a tax on what I was granted out of this hundred pounds, also! Never will it do, just, never. But I told the Lady I should try at least to save some... lest we need pay more than that off to our own landlord!”“Your landlord?”“Yes! While we lease this home and we make many improvements to it, it is still a shop, and I must pay the Guildsmen their fee for licensing it, and pay little old Mister Landlord what I owe in our yearly rents, all that by the first day of July. It is never easy, never.”Mary had come down the stairs into the shop as I spoke with her father. I bowed to her, and she was happy to see I had actually made it back. “And London was?”“And London was, yes.”“Not more, not less?”“It was a disappointment. And I have to go back, as well, for they have a man there who is suing me to court!”“What of?”“What of... well, I wrote lyrics to a melody he says he owns, which I heard from another busker in the street. It is a pretty tune, and it is a good one. So I borrowed it, but lent words to it. Words that are, actually, about you, dear heart!”“You will sing me this song in the evening. Today, mother and I work on our ale. You are welcome to a cup, you know.”“It would be well met. But I need still to find my six hands! Whom should I ask? I cannot and dare not ask your father here...”Her father continued working, pounding on planks, pretending he barely heard anything, although I could see he was half-hiding the fact he had an ear cocked.“I need to visit Stephen. I need to ask him of those there on the manor who might help. I will also ask of his father. I don’t know if I can make it, but I shall try. The sooner I leave for London the sooner all this shall be over with and the more sure I will be that our nest egg is secure from more takers than I wish to allow.”“Nothing has changed my plan, we are still on to marry in August.”“Indeed we are.” And she leaned over to kiss me, despite her father’s blushing, half-hidden grin.I sat with him another hour as I drank the ale, and as Mary was gone from presence, he opened up a little to me.“Julian, you are a prospective son in law. Well it might be that you do have my daughter’s heart, and that I can see, right off. I want no better than to have her happiness, you know. But the life of a minstrel is such...”I could pretty well foresee where he wanted to take this direction in talk.“Yes, Sire Carpenter, ‘tis a rough lot, at times. But there is little she is unwilling to share, be that as it may, either the uncertainty of the sleeping chamber or the hazards of road and weather. She and I plan to combine our talents. I will write songs and perform for the people, she will create her poppets and we will make plays for people, together. This, anyway, is much our plan. If only I had not had this problem come up at court, and did not have to return to London! All we plan could go into effect this very week! But I must return. If I do not, then they will send collectors and possibly even send swordmen to track me down, and take me in my sleep. I put nothing beyond these persons that make a business out of robbing minstrels of their music!”“It does sound as though it is a matter best attended to. And of course, you will do so, before you take my daughter’s hand.”“Absolutely, Sire Carpenter! That is why I had to rush here as fast as I might. Because we do wish to get on with our new life.”“Well then, I would suggest you go with all speed to your friends at the manor. I am sure there you will find a few more to help in this situation.”That was such a good suggestion, I had not thought to think of what others there were in the manor! Stephen, most definitely, but of course, but there were those other persons who made my friendship, I could at least— I was actually beholden to ask, since there were few in the town of Chester I trusted well enough as it was.The easiest, of course, was Stephen. And along with Stephen came Richard, who saw it as a good opportunity to make sales of cloth and trade for other things. Roger, of course, would accompany them both, and Giles the Woodward.It was not hard to convince the Woodward to come along. I had had some dealings with him  in the three years I had been a familiar at the manor. When I first encountered him, I had been fishing in the stream- much as I had done the day Porcull became my friend. And he was quite suspicious, in fact, so much so that he crept up behind me unawares, and grabbed my cloak at the shoulder, and frightened me beyond words! But I remembered to pull out the seal that Richard had given me, and explained myself, and he stood back, impressed. He had then, he admitted, made a mistake, but that I was welcome to whatever I wished to take, then, as it was his duty to troll the grounds for poachers, and he had badly mistaken me as one of these. For a man like Giles, a trip to the great City of London was as much the adventure as it was for myself! But all the others had been there on numerous trips- Richard and his son, of course, Porcull in his early years, and Roger on his own. And then there was the last of the six, Garthson the Haywain. He was such a simpleton, he spent the entire trip in a stupor, hardly noticing a bit, and had to be prodded in and out of the cart. We set out in Richard’s cart with two horses drawing us. By the time we arrived at Stafford, the sun was falling low on the horizon, and the sky was pink and streaks of cloud painted a merry face on nightfall. Such a merry face! When we took to the inn there after drawing up the cart, and Richard paid for our beds for the night, there were many at their cups who wanted a song. And I did not disappoint! I was paid in food and coin- not so much as usual, but then, the merry company there were such as to not cause me any grumble. I was going to try and be as tight as I could, if I could, with my purse, since everything I might gain was to become the common fortune to Mary and myself.In the morning of our second day from Chester, Richard stopped at the Inn at Peatspit. He bought us all a fine lunch, and bought more provisions, that we need not stop again for a day or two more- but for my attempts to fish. He bought four large loaves of bread, one for each of us, and stored them in a cupboard behind the driving seat of his cart. As well in there he put two large wheels of cheese, and in the body of the cart, a nice cask of good ale, the best the keeper would part with.  Besides us all riding in the back of the cart, and he and Roger up front, he had many large bolts of cloth which were stood on end on the bottom, and lain flat over the top. These he hoped to sell at Smithfield, where they would surely be in demand, and they would, he said he hoped, pay for our trip quite in full, and leave him with some profit.On the day after the stop at Peatspit we were parked outside another town, Snakesbury, and there two small children I found at my shoes as I was not yet waking. They were tugging and pulling on them to get them free of me! They laughed and made mockery of me, and ran away when I threw a stone at them. While I managed to keep my shoes, Stephen was not quite so lucky. I went back to sleep, but I was awoken again to hear Stephen cursing. The children it seems had returned, and they had actually been able to take one of his shoes! Now he must need either go one-shod or barefoot, until such time as  Richard could get him to a cobbler. The children laughed and yelled and we could hear them as they lingered near one of the houses, and they threw stones back at us. But we were lucky- it was summer, and the roads were not muddy, and all Stephen had to suffer was a little nip in the night time. Richard did buy him a new pair of shoes at our next stop, Coleback.Stephen, myself, Porcull, and the Woodward and Haywain rode all together in the back of the cart, sitting on bolts of cloth. It was not so bad- not so bad as an empty cart would have been, when we could feel all the jolts and bumps of stones and pits in the roadway. Porcull kept us all amused by launching Springer off once in a while, and Springer would return with a fat hare, or some other type of bird, that we would roast when we camped. As I said I did try to fish in some places, but we were never quite off the road well enough that I felt assured some landsman might not catch me out, and force me into paying some type of fine. Most of the while we could live on the loaves and the cheese and the ale itself, for it was strong ale, and we measured each of us but four cups per day. By the time we reached London the cask was done, however, we were all in the jolliest spirits.When we came to Bentlea Priory, it was time for Porcull to come to grips with Vincebus. I was half expecting some horrible sort of scene, although that did not happen at all. What did happen was, within minutes of our arrival, Vincebus began a nasty running argument with Porcull that did not stop until we left for the market (and I for court) the next day.  Many of the bolts of linen that Richard had brought, Vincebus allowed him to store for a time at the Priory, so there was never much need to put a guard on the cart when we came to Smithfield. For that, just having Garthson along was a worthwhile thing.But Vincebus insisted that he must come to the Court with us.“The Songgemonger has chosen me to represent him upon your return, Sire Plectrum. Permit me to ride along with you and your company to the Court.”Richard stared at him.
“You are expecting a ride back, no doubt as well?”“Mercy, no, but perhaps...”“Let us see once the matter is attended to. You do none of us well by insisting on your presence.”“Yes, but then, Julian might never have met the Songgemonger either, had I not directed him.”“And whether that be a good or foul thing, is up to Julian to decide. It would seem this man has cost him a fair amount of trouble, no less, the trouble and time we are taking to speak up in his favor. Perhaps this was something that he had not counted upon- that Julian actually has friends.” Porcull had managed to get the last word in.Vincebus said nothing more, but when Richard took the cart and room had been made for large Vincebus to ride along in the back with us, he drove off down the Edgeware Road with most of us laughing and jesting. Even with Vincebus’s sour face and mirthlessness, we were determined to enjoy the city if we might.Many sights along the way. Of course on my trip before I had noticed much, but then again I guess I had missed just as much, my mind having been on my hunger, and the chicken leg I had brought which was my only meal (until I had come to the Lame Ox). And of the sights on the way, none was more stirring nor pathetic than the several beggars who reached arms outstretched from the roadside, asking for alms. Vincebus even turned his head aside at the countenance of some, a most un-manly act, Porcull noticed.
And so I with all the companions, I came to the court buildings, looking for Squire Dover, and having done so, reported myself to the magistrates.

“Julian Plectrum, Crofter’s son, of Cheshire. We thank you for your speedy return. We do see you have come, as we requested, sixhanded. Pray tell us the names and the duties of your six hands, and allow them to attest to your character.”The first to speak up was Stephen.“Your Honor I am Stephen Westchester, the son of my father here, Richard Westchester. We are merchants of Chester who came today to London in order we might help our friend Julian  escape the penalties, such as they might be, forced upon him by the bad circumstance he has reported to us, of the jealous man, Songgemonger, who says that Julian stole”—“Silence now! we will judge on the terms of the charge later. Attest you your knowledge of Julian, and whereof the type of sire he is.”“Julian, my dear solicitors, is a fine man- Julian actually saved my life- three summers ago! He pulled me from the river as I was drowning. He is a free man, for he left his father’s house and is now his own squire. He travels up and down from Chester to Penzance making music at taverns, and in the courts of noble gentlemen. He is talented and he is intelligent. He also helps us each year to bring the harvest in.”“Well said, lad. Next?”The Woodward Giles stepped up, and held his cap in his hands as he spoke.
“Squire Julian is a fair young man, sirs. He is honest and has been granted the goods of the manor of which I am woodward. He amuses himself by fishing and by helping his tutor here, Porcull, with harvesting the garden he keeps round his hut. He is good, and I have never known him to shoot arrows at harts or to poach the king’s game. He is my friend, and I despise the idea that he may have “stolen” some song...”Again, the Woodward too was stopped in mid sentence by the judge.Next was Roger Wirral’s turn.“I am Roger of Wirral, the attendant of Squire Richard Westchester’s business affairs. I accompany him on his travels to France, and help with the drayage of the ships he boards upon the way. I have known Julian three summers now also. He accompanied us at least once as far as Penzance, where he oft times keeps a small room in the city. he writes many songs and lays of his own, and plays quite well the lute, in a most fine and original manner, I might add. If you think that he stole”—Once again, the judge lifted his hand to cease the chatter. Now it was Porcull’s turn.“Your Honors, I am Porcull of Cheshire. I am the tutor of Julian Plectrum. To me, he comes for lessons in history, astronomy, medicine, and gardening. He has stayed with me at my cottage these past several summers. Richard here granted him the use of the lands, the stream, and of the game. Julian has been quite helpful to me in allowing me to bring in my herb crops, that I can pay Richard fair rent, and he is certainly no thief.”The judge banged the gavel. “Come now, all of you. all I need is to hear what you do and how you know him! I will deal with the charge on my own, as I have told you!” The judge reached down below the bar and poured himself a glass of brandy from a jug he kept nearby. It was obvious the judge had been busy in this manner most of the morning before we had arrived, for he smiled as he did so, and swilled down the whole cup in one swallow. With a belch he filled it again.Garthson the Haywain was next, but merely nodded when the judge asked him if he knew me. The judge could see, perhaps, that Garthson was a little thick in the brains.“I cuts down the wheat. Julian helps. He is good folk, magister.”That seemed to satisfy the judge, who again, punctuated each interrogation with a big swig of whatever sort of wondrous brandy poured from that jug he kept beneath the bar.“And you, sire? I have left you for last. Richard Westchester, is it?”“Yes.” Richard stood up straight and tall. The court clerk wrote everything down on a scroll as he delivered his own message.“Julian saved my son’s life, Your Honor. For this, I gave him my seal and the right to all passage through my lands, the right to catch any fair game he could, and to come and sup with my son and I at any time he likes. In return, he comes to us each year and helps harvest all the grain in August, the hay in June, and helps Master Porcull in July. He is a good chessman, and you would be hard pressed to take a victory on him should you be so pressed”—“Enough!” said the judge. “I HATE CHESS. I prefer bowls, myself, and boards, and checkers. Give me a game which is simple and I am well put!” He snickered, pouring himself yet another cup of brandy, and once more, tossing it all down at a dash.“SO!” he continued, when he had finished with the cup and stored it back on its shelf beneath the bar,  “This minstrel, Julian Crofter, was accused by one Julius “Songgemonger” Defult of having stolen his song, She Moved Through the Faire. We have heard his claim of not guilty, for in our first session with him, Julian did explain his belief that melodies belong to the people, not to any one person, and that melodies such as “She Moved Through the Fair”, being works of the public, should be exempt from the privileges of a certain one or two who make their money off of broadsheets- melody or words, it does not matter. We are familiar with Mr. Songgemonger. Indeed, he has won several cases at this court to date, which mainly come from his offering funds to minstrels coming here, to London, writing out their lyric or their melody, and offering them up to him for sale. He then takes these words and music and publishes them under his imprint, “Songgemonger Tunes, Limited” and sells these both himself and to his subscribers, who pay an annual fee for their delivery into their salons and inns. “And we see here as well the monk Vincebus Eruptum, his presence at Court duly noted, as he has been here once before on the behalf of the Songgemonger, and thus, I suppose, once more called to speak in his patron’s behalf. Well, lest I recall the matter in error, this is the second time that Mr. Julius Defult  has neglected to speak on his own behalf in this complaint. His absence is noted and noted with prejudice. Now, speak, Sire Monk, and make it brief and pointly.”“Your Honor, I regret that Master Julius cannot be here, but I only yesterday had occasion to find Sire Plectrum at the doors of our Priory, and allowed himself and his companions due hospitality of the evening, and they have all shared in the food of the abbots as breakfast as well.“Mr. Julius is not able to attend, being this is all such short notice, but...”
            “If you could come, “ interrupted the judge, “and he is himself, in even nearer proximity than your priory, why could he not be here now? I am extremely irritated by this.” He once again swigged off his brandy cup, and I began to feel as if things were headed my way, finally.“But Your Honor, Master Julius is a very busy man...”“As are we all. I see that as no reason to waste MY time, if a man has not the temper to bring before me his own pressing matters!” Clearly now the judge was rather angry.“But he did want me to tell the court that the use of his song...”“HIS song?”“Yes, your Honor. The song was brought to him by another minstrel, and offered freely at a price.”“It seems to me that a song so long on the tongues of the people of England cannot be the property of just one man.”“It was legally sold and so is now his property.”“But my dear monk, this song, as I recently learned, is actually older than any of us now sitting here today. It goes back a great way longer than some young singer bad on their luck recently arrived in London. It’s not even an English song at all, in its original.”Vincebus was clearly dumbstruck. The judge had actually done some reading on the case! I knew now that I was clearly the winner. And what he said next made it clear to everyone.“It is my opinion, Mr. Julian, that while you made a bad decision in attempting to take a melody already extant and fit to it your own words, that you did not, in fact, steal the song, but you had composed an original song of your own, that only fit the similar melody. Therefore, you did not steal the song. I am finding you not guilty and instead, will order a punitive fine for Mr. Songgemonger. This will be, perhaps, the last time he tries to take advantage of some green honest minstrel, ignorant in the ways of the big city and the perfidy of the old and crafty.”The judge sat back. I was floored. Actually, it took me some moments to catch my breath to think- they ruled in MY favor over the old Songgemonger! I was free to leave! No fine would I need to pay- I had carried half my fortune with me, hiding it all along, but fearing as well that I could very well need to pay great geld to the Songgemonger. I beat him!Stephen and I left, with Richard, Porcull, Roger and the Woodward, and Garthson the simpleton Haywain all, out of the Inns of Court, and back onto the street.  Vincebus hurriedly scurried off in his own direction, presumably, to take the news to Songgemonger. Immediately I took them to the Inn called the Lame Ox where I had stayed before, and Richard bought all of us large tankards of best ale. Celebrated! I took off Luisa from my back, and played the song they said I stole. I played the Lay of Arthur, the Lay of Robin Hood, and the Lay of Ulysses, to everyone’s joy, and when I was done with those, my song for Mary, and then I extemporized alone on the lute, taking all of them on a journey through my mind’s back door, into the green valleys of my muse. It was one of the best nights of my life, and the taverner- gave me not one, not two, but THREE groats for my performance.
Apparently, however, the word traveled fast. From Inns of Court to the home of old Songgemonger went Vincebus, and from Songgemonger’s Vincebus hurried his way back to the Priory, where he not only kept up his sparks with Porcull, but had me on the floor of it as well, when we made our way (finally, after many tankards) back there ourselves.“So, so, the Great Julian Plectrum of Cheshire! Has won the better over London’s finest maker and seller of songs! What will young Julian do, in order he might safely carry on his ways, back to Cheshire, perchance?”I had no idea what he meant.“You see, young Sire, the old and established are never humored to be had by insolent lads like yourself. You are but a stripling, barely green off the hills, a Cheese-eater, and wet behind the ears. Do you know what will happen to you next you travel to London?”“No.”“You will more than likely be met by some of Songgemonger’s friends. These are not fair and kind people, my lad. No. They have scoured their own penny the hard way themselves, here on the streets of London. They are well likely to have your sweet Lute all strung up and sold for pawn in an hour! Yes!”“Who laid this tale to you? What makes you think I have the slightest notion ever returning to this crazy, madhouse of a city, e’er again?”“Well you might consider it, lad, then, to keep to that plan. For London has its ways of punishing those who flaunt its custom and fashion.”At that, Vincebus went silent, at least, toward me. As Porcull was nearby, and listening to all this with a cocked ear and a curious expression, Vincebus then laid into him again.“Now! Porkle! Again, you insist that I owe you these eighty pounds over our old dart-game at Exeter.”“I do indeed, Vincebus. Taking oaths and donning the cloak does not retire one from their worldly debts, you know,.” said Porcull. His eyebrows were narrowing and his expression grew dire.“I would have your eighty pounds by the day we leave, which shall be soon, no doubt, or I shall bring the matter to the Prior himself!”“Now, now, Porkle. You know I have taken a vow of poverty. And what about forgiving our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us? It was years ago- yea, three decades ago, since you beat me on those bulls-eyes and made me squint hard lest I lose all I had wagered and all I had. In fact, it was losing your bet drove me to the cloth! Yes! Or I should have been a bankrupt.”“You are a stupid, foul oxen, Vincebus. Vincebus Eruptum agitus est. Have a little tantrum. It shall not do you a bit of good! For are not all debts meant to be settled, and sins confessed, ere you take the oath that brought you your clabbered tonsure and your pendacious rosary? I shall indeed speak to the Prior, and go right now!”And Porcull strode off. Richard, Roger, Stephen and the Woodward were all at the back of the Priory, loading the bolts of finished cloth up into the cart. Richard said we would sell them in the towns on the return, what was not sold at the market. He had earned a good price for all that he sold, and was well into his profit margin, he declared. Porcull emerged from the office of the Prior with a very red, and very angry expression on his face. Obviously he did not get his eighty pounds. “Technicalities, Vincebus, technicalities! You are a foul swine, not worth the mash they fed you this morning! If I were you, I would confess all sins to my God and pray that the lightning did not strike me blind!”“Hard words,” laughed Vincebus, "from the heretic!”“Heretic? You call me a heretic, when you fit the very bill we depreciate by your disgusting sloth and indolent disregard of a debt of honor? Me, the heretic?”“Yes, you, you simple Lollard son of a snake! Mass for the people, in English, you say!”“Might as well. What good is it to they, when they cannot understand the words you spout over them, as though you are the only ones in touch with the Lord! Would that the Lord wipe his arse with the lot the like of you, Vincebus! For I now if there indeed is a heaven, you will pay high indulgence to Peter for your turn to walk the streets of gold!”“You are a foul, fetid ingrate, Porkle. Ever since I met you, you were always the one who claimed his place was to sit by the side of the Masters, for you had read all you needed to read, you mastered the syllabus, the trivium and quadrivium, you knew the history of the kings and queens, and of the Normans and the Scots and the Welsh and the Saxon and the Dane alike. You knew them all so much better! Then why did you give up your seat at the college for a little hut in the woods, and the company of a stupid beast or two?”He had obviously listened to me with interest at our first meeting, when I had described to him the manner in which Porcull kept his house. “How I live is in every way more in harmony with the Master than is yours, where you lazy lie about the abbey with your nuns to amuse you and your sheep to satisfy you and your bowl ever full of pottage and your cheeks ever full of wine! Had I but half the debt you owe, I could finish some of the things I set out to do, yet never could, in part, because it never behooved me to take up a cross I had no real means of bearing, nor even the inclination to be true to the vows! You are a HYPOCRITE, Vincebus! A hypocrite, and a cheat, and a man who cannot be trusted! Fie!”Porcull left the room, and walked completely out of the abbey. I followed him.“Don’t mind me, Julian, I will sleep under the stars tonight, and be all the better for it. That I might share the roof of that pole cat one night longer- nay! He is fit for no less than Dunghill Dan.“We will leave tomorrow, Porcull, I promise.”“Yes, I know, and you can find me out here, out along the pathway to Watling Street. I wish to be alone, and commune with my own Lord.”I left Porcull as he asked, and returned to Squire Richard and Stephen and the others. Richard nodded. “Yes, my plan is to leave in the morning as well. We will go to Saint Albans  and then to Oxford and of course we will try to sell my goods all the way.”“I want you to be aware, Richard, there are highwaymen...”“Highwaymen?”“Yes, I met a band or two of them on my first trip here. I have been lucky not to encounter any of them yet, but it could happen on this return. Be watchful! I will help you deal with any of it, if that is the case.”While Porcull slept in the field outside the Priory, the rest of us spent the night inside the stone walls of the Priory, in much the same place as I had spent my first evenings there with the beggars and widows. Only now there were none of them, and we were all the guests they had. I walked with Vincebus into his cell and there had a short discussion about my plans, my learning from Porcull (he still called him “Porkle”) and he countered with his own judgments against “astrologers and soothsayers.”“But you yourself use the guts of birds to make judgments of future events! What makes your method any better than Porcull’s?” “Because it at least has the sanction of the church.”“Does it really? How - even Saint Augustine recanted his pagan past. You are splitting hairs and see nothing that is not what you want to see, and say nothing that is not what you think the church says.”“So. Has Master Porkle been infecting you with his heresies?”“I don’t know what you mean. He is helping me to become a man who thinks for himself, not parroting some gibberish out of a book nobody understands. Except you and yours.”This must have hurt him to the quick, for he was fast on me with a defense of all the orders of Monks, such as there are, numerous by my own count, anyway. Bitcher the parrot, hearing the word “parrot”, set himself off on a foul stream of curse words that made Vincebus blush in embarrassment. “As I told you he came to me by way of other owners.”“Ha! He seems to have a fair judgment of this place.”I looked around the little cell. It was, in fact, humble, and there were far less objects of the world than there were at Porcull’s hut, but still, I felt that much of Vincebus’ assumed poverty was a pose. Somehow, he profits just as much in all the doings of the Priory as anyone. He herds the sheep, when he wishes to. Other times he leaves it to a younger monk, to whom the dog Rambeaux has a greater affection. He partakes of the dining and all the masses, but he is also gone as often as not on missions for friends like Songgemonger, and others whom he knows inside the city.Everything about him made me feel miserable. And what I suppose he wanted most from me, but would not get, was a confession that I shared many of the heresies of Porcull, and that I ought to be punished by some penance for my impudence.I told him that my own rational mind would determine for me the validation of doctrines, not any formal policy of man or God, or Man As God, or of God on Earth as the Man the Pope.

“Aha!” he grasped on to it. “You do hold grudge against the Pope and the holy Word of God!”“If it is God’s word, truly, then it should be no problem for the common tongue to teach it,” I said, remembering one of Porcull’s most fervent arguments- that the Bible should be printed in English that normal folk can spread the Good News. “Lollardy! Lollardy pure and simple. Well, Wycliffe burned, and maybe one day you shall, too, lad. Best for you to have off to bed, I am afraid should I inspect your mind much farther, true demons there I might find. Please, be gone from my cell.”
And at that, his hospitality took leave, and I was now (as were my companions) at the mercy of the Prior. But the night passed with no further incident.You have been tuned to Grand Jatte, an independent and autonomous
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verbal rambles and reductions...

But, Julian's Troubles Have Only Just Begun (excerpt, If I Should Live So Long, 12-13)

And that was the start of my troubles, I presume. For I lodged there the best part of that week, and when I went out and about, I sang the new song, and each time I sang it, I thought more and more of Mary, and so grew more eager to return to Chester. But besides the four groats Songgemonger had given me for my Robin Hood verses, I had scraped only a number of farthing coins from the busy passerby. And busy they all seemed to be! Off in some worlds of their own.The only chances I had to gain coin were from the taverner, again, but beyond his first recognition of my  talent, he gave me none. So fair said I was most embarrassed by this, which of course, was why I were out and about busking the street.The other players I saw- for few were lent toward speaking with me- were themselves all seeming lost to their own thoughts. There were one or two who truly engaged passerby, but the effect to me of most was as beggars to the well-supplied. To me, perhaps for many of them the instrument was only a means of begging itself, for so few they were in actual skill. All one needs to properly beg then, rather than to busk, is to haul out with an instrument and pretend one has lived upon it many years. Oh, that will show them, alright! But the paucity of talents and the sheer numbers of those making a pretense of music and skill were such the contrast, I lost heart soon out.Granted my rhymes were oft better than their, and my lute playing was of itself unique. But one wonders what goes on in the mind of the passerby when but five steps down every block one is hailed after by louts and wenches bravuring theirselves behind an instrument, and demanding of them “Put the money here in the hat, sirs! Right here in the hat!” as though that were all there truly were to any of it!As I said, this was the start of my troubles. Near toward the end of my week, I set out again for the Bentlea Abbey. Vincebus took me again, and this time, I did stay for the breaking fast. He asked how things went at the Songgemonger’s and I said “well enough, but it was near but the best of all of it.”“He pays well.”“He pays but to steal, is what he does!”And while I was making my preparations somehow to return to the west came a messenger- just as I had played!- to the abbey. The messenger bore a scroll- nay, a summons! And this was in my name, Julian Plectrum of Chester, that I must appear at the Inns of Court to answer for why I had “Without license taken liberty to amend a song which is duly granted to Julius Defult, (aka “Songgemonger”) with out recompense nor accreditation.”So it were said then in the Court that the Songgemonger says I stole HIS song! Of what is this, I thought!Vincebus, who was watching when the messenger came, offered his own surprising answer.“May be it is not that you know what you have done. Have you not said to me you wrote a new song? And mayhap it be you have approprqated a melody which the Songgemonger doth truly own?”“But nobody owns melody!” I ranted. “It is free as the sky and comes to us in its fullest way of no want nor need- only like a river one might dip ones feet into, melodies are everywhere! Does Songgemonger own the call of the nightingale, or rather is his the screech of a peacock? I am not upbraided, I am incensed! Go I must and straight away there. I have to reutrn to Cheshire, and I will do so! But only once I get to the bottom of this stupid attack!”Vincebus watched me take my leave, and I did not even finish the hardy lot of porridge which had been granted in my bowl. I set out with a firm stride back toward the Temple and the Inns. I would not allow him to get away with this!I arrived at the Inns with the summons, and was directed to a chamber where sat a fat judge quite in his cups. His nose and cheeks were red with the ferment of his liver. “You are Julian of Chester?” he asked, half broken up with laughter. I suppose my dress did me no fair image to his eye, being a son of the land, and he, such a distinctive man of the laws.“Julian, it has been charged you have stolen a song from Julius Defult, who is also known as Songgemonger. He charges you with appropriating without license one of his own tunes, what goes by the name “She Moves Through The Faire”. What say you to this?“She moves through the-- what? Why that is only a melody I heard sung by a girl named Susanna, not moments after I left his house! I did not steal it from him! And I did not even steal the words! I made up my own!”“The man called Songgemonger claims that he owns all right to performing this song. He says that it was brought to him by the Susanna woman, but that he rightly bought it from her. If she yet goes about singing it, then she is to blame as well, for she relinquished all rights to it once granted to Sire Defult.”“But this is ridiculous! One man buys a song, and yet, says only he might sing it? Have you met that old buzzard? He cannot even play a lick!”“That is not ours to judge, young Julian. We in fact, are at pains to take this case at all. We might agree with you, but are charged by our office to ensure that justice be fully done. In such manner then we will release you but that you return to this court within a month’s time sixhanded before the law. Fetch you some gentlemen of your familiarity who will attest to your honesty, and we may well speed you good luck in all your endeavors.”“Sixhanded? But I barely...”I stopped. There were six honest friends, (and but yet only six!) such as I had, back at Chester. It would be my duty now to rouse them, and convince all somehow come return to London with me and help me plead before this ridiculous court and judge.I passed through Bentlea Prior again, twice on the day, this time, of course, to speak with Vincebus.“How could you send me to such a place, where such a sly dog as Songgemonger holds his lair! To think of the trouble he is putting me to! And what of inspiration? Has he no sense of it? Nay, but his inspirations are but to make trouble for troubadours on their way to London, and take the groats from out the mouth of babes! What umbrage! What scorn I must report you with to my friend Porcull, who recommended me to meet you!”“You are learning the ways of the big city, my child. If you would care to confess your sin to me now, then you might go well-blessed.”“Well-blessed? From such as you! Better I should eat and play game with the devil than to be in any means beholden to you! Fie! I am gone!”And I began wearily my journey. Of course, most of the day was already gone, but I did come halfway to Saint Albans, and slept in a field outside the village of Bunkerbuss. The nightingales sang me to sleep. When I awoke and made for the town of Saint Albans, I was cheered by the sight of a wagon full of drunken boys not much older than myself. They were shouting and howdy-dooing and waving tankards of ale. It appeared like a traveling party. When I reached an inn at Saint Albans I found several of these boys gathered at a fountain in the town square. “Minstrel, if minstrel ye be, play us a fair tune!” one taunted.“My tunes come not cheap, fair squires. I am for the tavern. There perhaps you’ll hear more of them.” For by now all I wanted was a meal and again, to sleep. I should try though to get at least an hour in of playing for the tavern patrons. And this I did, and the taverner rewarded me the bed I cherished, for no charge at all the long night through! This was a boon, and the night long, I thought upon what was the possibility that I might be able to avoid False Taffy and his mob, since their territory was coming up...When morning came I had an apple for my breakfast and quickly took to the road. There were few cartmen, and those I saw had neither the room nor the inclination to stop and ferry me along. And so it was that I managed to walk all the way from London to Oxford and no, not a sight had I of False Taffy, once I had come to Oxford. I suppose it was lucky of itself, but mayhaps he and his mob were working one of the other roads, such as the one toward York. In any event, it was indeed my luck. But I have yet more to say of the rogue later in my tale.Yet I had to keep on making my way home, and it was still a long, long way off. I passed Duarte and Oxenham and again Bilge Ferry, and walking all the way, for all the men in carts were headed toward London, and none away. When I came to Reedly Hump I had to rest, it was not possible to go on. When I ducked into the tavern there, it was also the first time I made a horoscope for a person.I had to doubt myself, of course- being new at it. But it happened that this one man in the pub was all full of himself,  having won at darts, and as he was also full of his beer, all in his cups.“Minstrel! Minstrel, what good are ye, if you will no carry a tune?”
He accosted me, as I was hoping at the time to get a full dish of sweetmeats into my gullet.“Sir, allow me to finish my meal, and I will give you of song enough.”“Give me of song enough? Why we have not heard yet one! Say, can you play that thing?”He pointed at Luisa, faithfully strapped 'cross my back.“Why of course. But I will not play the fool to your own folly. When I have eaten my  fill, and then no more! Not before, and little after!”The man stalked off, but before I had time to finish my plate of sweetmeats and mashed turnip he was back, and this time, he had two of his very large friends along. I have seen enough of these type of fellows- the boldest of them is the tiny one, and he brings on his giants in the hope you will be afeared. Well, these giants did not look half so much the wit as he, and they proved it. For the one on the left said aloud “Our sire here has won a prize, and we say his due is that you give him a song. For if you cannot give a song, then you must give up something else.” He fingered Luisa’s strings, which caused me to flinch, and back away.“You covet my instrument? Then you shall have no song at all! No! I will give you something far better.”“And what better could a minstrel give, than some borrowed tune and a cripple’s leg?” he laughed.“Taverner, fetch you your almanac for me, please!”The taverner dipped behind his bar, and drew out the large folio which was the almanac for the year.“Prithee, sir Winner At Darts, tell to me your day of birth. I shall give you your fortune, for you are so full of pride, perhaps your stars yet may give you ground of humble pie!”“My stars? Oh! The day was the Third of August. The year was 1370. My mother was a Scotswoman and my father...”I cut him off. “I need no more information than the hour you were born.”“The hour? Well, it was early morning... I should think near to sunrise...”“Enough!” With a wave of my hand I shooed them all back. I drew a pen from my pouch, a small bottle of ink, and called for a paper from the taverner, who handed me over a short sheet. Short, but enough that I could draw the celestial sphere.

“Your name squire?” I asked.“Asmodel. Asmodel Reginalson.”“Very well.” I drew out his name upon the top of the page, and marked as well the year and month and day. I drew a circle of the sphere.“Early morn- that would mean you have the Water Bearer on the horizon...”I quartered the sphere and did draw two more lines within each quarter. On his left I marked the Water Bearer’s sign ≈. “The Water Bearer is your first house. Opposite it is the sign of Leo.” I drew the symbol of the Sun in  the space opposite above his equator. ☼I looked through the almanac. Porcull had given me the dates of when the major planets would be in certain signs for the whole year, but I wanted to know the phase of the moon, which would tell me perhaps what lie in store for him, in the event that there should be some aspect occurring adverse (or not!) his natal sun. I discovered the moon was two days new, which meant that it was coming out from the Virgin into the Balance. That meant that soon his first house of Aquarius might be experiencing some fortune- had not he just won at darts? But I could not do more- I had no chart like Porcull’s to tell me the movements of the planets during the generations. So I could only sit and stare at the circle I had drawn, and hope that perhaps one day back at Porcull’s I might copy his charts and keep them for my own, that I would not be so shorthanded.At any event, I at least could tell him that there was good to come his way, and that tonight he had had but a taste of it. This pleased him, but it left his large looming friends rather unsatisfied, they had been hoping to break my hands, or rob me of my lute, or at least somehow discomfit me. In any event, Asmodel gave me no more bother, and wandered back to his corner of the pub with his paper, pleased so very easily that here was some more cotton to his existence. The poor man probably did not even possess any record of his birth at the church of his own parish, and so having some acknowledgement of his life was a little less than a miracle, to be worshiped equitably.I did, in time, take off Luisa and tune her, and gave the entire Inn a performance of my Homeric parody, and as usual, it went down like greased lightning, and was roundly applauded.I bowed, and escaped out the back door, sleeping in the large meadow off to the edge of the town.


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Troubled Songs in London Town (excerpt, If I Should Live So Long, 11-13)

On the morrow when I rose it was yet early, and the woman on the nearby cot had ceased snoring. Neither were any of the beggars yet stirring. The bells of morning Prime began pealing, however, and I could hear monks and nuns scurrying through the empty halls. I decided I should try to find Vincebus, and inform him of my plan- that I would leave and go to London with haste.I found Vincebus in a courtyard near to his cell, in a most indiscreet situation. He was holding a pigeon by its throat, and it were fair past dead. Its guts lay in a splat all about it of nearly a yard’s circle. While he yet held in his right hand the pigeon, and in his left, the knife which had killed it, he was on his knees, and taking the knife to spread the entrails of the bird about and picking through them.“Here, here, what are you up to, Monk? What is this you mess about with that bird?”“Ah, it is Master Julian of Chester. He would like to know of what I do! Out to catch me out to the abbot then, are you?”I told him I had no need to do so, but was forthwith only curious. Such a bloody mess, and why? “This is my auguring. You see I take this bird and disembowel it, and from the way in which the organs fall, I foretell many things.”“I foretell only a roast squab for someone’s delight at supper.”“Well said! Indeed! And such shall the Master Prior Abbot make of him. See here, how the liver fell in the southwest quadrant? And the heart, over here to the left? This is auspicious. It means that we are holding forth this autumn with great harvests, and great events of state!”“You know these just by the falling of the guts of a bird? Why that is soothspeak. Thought me, silly one, that Monks and Nuns and Abbots and Priors were forbidden to prophesy!”“You are really a silly ignorant bumpkin, aren’t you! Why, Saint Augustine himself told of his doing just such in his Confessio. So long as it is done as such, with none of the other monks awares, so shall I continue. For my prophecy I speak to the Prior often on Midsummer Day shall this year of course be full of good portent. It will mean high revenues to the Priory, and many many guest. Perhaps who knows, even the King?”“What thou does alone is fit for none to know, aye I shall agree at that.”“Then you will speak it not?”“Indeed. But I came to tell you other things. I am going to London- walking, and straightaway.”“You will not stay to break fast with our Brothers and Sisters?”“I’ve me a hen’s leg left in my pouch, such it will do for my repast as I go. But tell me, who is this man you say I must see, and where do I find him? And also, where do I find the Inns of Court?”“Ho ho, he fancies himself a man of the law, does he? The Inns of Court are near the center of the town. Go thou hence and you shall discover them. The man I want you so badly to see is called Songgemonger. He has his office near the Smithfield market. It is too early for Bartholomew Fair, but yet, there shall you find many such as yourself- all strugglers of talents, all poor as the day is long, suffering your art for its vanity against the teeming hordes! Go then! Tell Songgmonger Vincebus sends greetings and a blessing!”Songgemonger? What and who forthwith was this man? I would soon learn.I set me out then from the priory gates, and walked south along the Ebry Way to the London High Street, which became the Edgeware Road, and was walking the better part of all morning. It was fair an hour past noon when I arrived at the Inns of Court. There, I took about my letter, looking for Esquire Dover.And had I not had the absolute luck of running straight into the man, perhaps I should still even be seeking him! And I asked if he knew where I might find the Esquire, and he gave a little concerted look about himself either side, as if, perhaps the Esquire were hiding someplace about. Then he looks to me and asks “And who is it wishes to seek him? For he is I!”“Sire, sir, I am a minstrel in travel from the far west, from Chester. I have come to make something of the sights of the city briefly while I rest myself, and take off again for home before the change of moon. I was given a scroll to hand to you. It is from a rogue of the land named False Taffy.”And with that I handed out the scroll. “False Taffy, eh? Yes, we know him. What has he to say for himself?”And he undid the seal, and took it up and read it. He gave a most pleased, but yet curious look to me.“And how did you chance to meet this False Taffy? Did he recruit you as messenger? Did he recruit you to his business?”“As messenger, yes, but to business, no. I spent fair time with him enough to know, such is the like of man I should keep no company with.”“Well smart you are to do so! For he has a bounty ‘pon his head. Well sent, lad, though. I have enough to worry about. And False Taffy has little to complain for of my confidence in his case, for well I know it. Now, can you take a message back to him? From me?”“I suppose, though I hope not to make his acquaintance a second time.”“Very well. I shall hold you no ill should you not deliver it. It will only complicate matters should he think you are doing the work of the courts! But say this, should you find yourself so engaged- Esquire Dover knows the particulars of the case. He holds False Taffy innocent of the murder of Lew Grimspittle- the man who helped to rape his wife. Well met it is that False Taffy came out the winner in the contest, but only by a beating of a vein. For while he has that bounty upon him, the King himself would care to hear the case, and may well forbear in his favor, if he truly is unjustly put out by it all. But as for my advice to him, as well- bet to put down his thievery, it has won him no friends here in London! And he would do well to keep in hide! That’s all, m’lad.Go thee well on thy way. And I wish you good luck at your minstrelry.”And so I left the Inns of Court. My next stop then had to be Smithfield Market, and the Street of the Charter House, where I might find this Songgemonger man. Twas not a long walk, in fact, only  a quarter hour’s stroll back the way I had come, when I found the Smithfield Market. There were plenty of livestock to be seen penned and unpenned, and many men attending to them, slaughtering, and hoisting sides of the beasts to scales for weighing.That part I could do without, for I had seen enough of guts (I had thought) for the morning. The street of Charterhouse was full of many many people- wives out for market hauling great baskets of food, laundresses hauling great baskets of clothes, here and there there were players on flute, pipe, drum, and viol, and yet, none of these looked half to be the match of ones such as Ranulf and myself. For they were all ragged and thin and beggarly.Somehow one of them pointed me to a doorway where said Songgemonger resided. I knocked on the door.Presently it was answered by a crabbed old man, at least Porcull’s age, grey of hair, and fierce of eye. “Oh, it’s a minstrel, is it? Come in, then, come in. Up the stairs with you!”  He pressed me with the back of his walking stick up a tall flight of stairs, nudging me uncomfortably with it at every second step.“So. Who are ye and what is your line? Yes, I see you play the lute. I get a lot of ye. I see also you are garbed quite well. New to town, then?”“Yes.”“Wel l, it won’t take long to make a mess of ye, will it?” he laughed.I stood full and addressed him. “I am Julian Plectrum of Chester, sir. I am a man of my own and no man is the boss of me!”“Well, we’ll see about that. Are you any good?”He sat down at a stool beside a writing desk. The room we were in was both parlor and study, and it was indeed gloomy. Outdoors there was yet overcast and rain had begun to fall. What light there was seeped in through tall windows, but diffused before it reached the carpet. Which was, I noted, of some Turkish make.I took Luisa up and played. I played mostly some of the new dances, but also some older pieces. These he took rather well, but sat unmoved.“You have unusual style, lad, I will note that. You play with the plectrum and the fingers? Whatever possessed you such?”I was about to tell him, I had met a demon at the crossroad, but that was an old wive’s tale he would quickly recognize. “This just came to me. I note that few persons use a plectrum, but this one has magic, and was given me by the great Clarence of Mousehole.”At that, he harrumphed. “The Great. And that is why I have never heard of him?”“I had never heard of you, sire, until I came to seek out Abbot Vincebus.”“That old fat dog of Bentlea Prior? Ha!” he scoffed. “Yes, he always sends you little naifs my way. I humor him by seeing each and every one of you. These were all fair pieces, lad, but have you any real songs?”“Well, you asked if I was any good to play, and so, I gave you some of my favorite and finest. Of course, I know songs! I have some of my own, as well!”“Then give me ear- let me hear one.”I began my Lay of Robin Hood. I had made up several new verses while I rode with False Taffy and his Erstwhile Monks. These I laid out.“Hmm. Robin Hood, eh? That’s not so original.”“Sir each of those verses is my own. Not so original! Ha!” and now I was the one full of beans.“Young sir, do you not know? I can make you or break you in this town! Humble thyself, you churl! For I could have better things to do than sit and suffer the like of you!”I wondered just what those things could be, for he seemed to be a pretty idle old chap, and he did not look occupied with wife nor family, as well. He was probably some old scrivener, and he made his living by scraping the profits off what nitwits passed through. I could see clear through him from miles off.And indeed, as it turned out, I was right!He offered me then and there a groat- a groat! For the new verses of my Robin Hood Ballad. This he scribbled out on a piece of foolscap, from memory.“Nay, sir, a groat is what I may make with my lute, on a poor night in Chester! No, no, you must offer more. Or Robin shall not fill your plate!”“Two groats, then!”“Nay, four! And no less shall ye have him. Robin shall well have ‘scaped the forest afore he sets at the Sheriff’s tables for a measly two-groat!”“Alright, then, done!” says he, and waddled over to his desk, fetched me two more groats from a sack hid inside it, and bid me adieu. “Off, off with you!” he sped me with his walking stick, and down the stairs I went again.Now I was out on the street, and London was dark, and wet, but I had my bedroll, and Luisa, and had not lost a thing. Only several verses to a song I could easily find again. Up the market street I wandered. And then I heard a tune most kind.There was a young girl singing. She sang a song about meeting her lover at a fair.The words- felt to me just like what it was like to meet Mary! And spoke to me in my heart as to how I had met her... and “soon would be our wedding day!” Indeed! This melody inflamed me, and I stood nearby the girl and plucked at the lute until I had the chords. “Please, sing once again! I shall accompany you.”And this was the song she sang:
My young love said to me,My mother won't mindAnd my father won't slight youFor your lack of kine.And she laid her hand on meAnd this she did say:It will not be long, Love,Till our wedding day.
 As she stepped away from meAnd she moved through the fairAnd fondly I watched herMove here and move there.And then she made her way homeward,With one star awake,As the swan in the eveningMoved over the lake.
 The people all were sayingNo two e'er were wedBut one had a sorrowThat never was said.And I smiled as she passedWith her goods and her gear,And that was the lastThat I saw of my dear
 Last night she came to me,My dead love came in.So softly she cameThat her feet made no din.As she laid her hand on me,And this she did say:It will not be long, love,'Til our wedding day.      
Of course, my Mary was not dead, and I was not fooled, but yet this melody itself haunted me. I thanked the young girl who sang it, and gave her a farthing, and she bowed to me. I asked her did she know a cheap inn hereabout where I might stay the night?I was pointed down the Poultry street. “The Lame Ox on Cock’s Lane is just three blocks on. Go there, and say you played with Susanna of Derby. The taverner is a kind soul. He will listen and perhaps pay you.”“Thank you, Susanna Derby! This makes a fine end to a not-half bad eve!”I wandered in that direction, and so I did come to the Lame Ox, its sign swinging above the Cock’s Lane. The picture upon the sign was of a man beating his Ox which was bent to the knee and not rising. Inside, there were a number of patrons, none of whom looked up from their pursuits. A fine fire roared in a brick fireplace, and several tables of men nearby were playing at chess. This would be a great place to stop! But first, I wanted to make it known to the keeper that I wanted sore of a bed.I found the man behind his bar, drawing ale from a cask. This he would set out in great cups of wood and men would eagerly grab these, yell “Wassail, ho!” kiss each other on the cheek, and drink great gulps. Of course much ale was sloshed and splashed about the floors. They looked none the worse for it, as a number of dogs strolled between the table legs, lapping up what puddles there were. “Sire tavern keeper!”“Aye, that’s me. What will you have, lad?”“A pitcher of perry and a bed for the night!”“Aye, I’ve a bed, but just one left. 'Tis summer, a'comin’ in, you know, and we get the travelers here a lot”“No matter for me- I am easily pleased. And may I play for you as well? I have just come from Susanna of Derby and played with her a bit.”“Susanna? Oh, that one. Yes. Well. If you are as good as her then you will probably please this lot here. They are a fine set.”I looked about at the tavern guests. The men in their great cloaks by the fire were deep in their chess. But nearer the bar there were one or two in lively talk with pretty young women.
One of them called out to me.“Minstrel! Minstrel, I say, over here. Can you give us a song?”“And what be your preference?”“Sing us something of the country! Sing us something of love!”and because the tune of it was so close in my mind, I played the melody I had only just learned. I gave it words of my own, however, to fit my suit with Mary!O my true love you are so fair, my true love mineAnd you are so much like me, indeed, you are so kindAnd you will throw your arms about meAnd swear to allus be thereOh you know it will not be long nowUntil we haste away
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Why ObamaCare Doesn't Work

     Americans are
incorrigible and intractable. There are fewer guarantees than herding cats when
it is put in front of them: Do something because you Must, not because you
Choose to. The Individual Mandate of ObamaCare was a losing proposition from
the start, prima facie. So is ANYTHING which the Government tells you you MUST
do. Register for the draft. Pay us your withheld wages. “Serve” your country by
killing whomever the government says this year is on its “out” list. Etc. They
did not reckon on what has long been an ingrained piece of the American
Character: knowing that just because the Government says it’s good for you, doesn’t
necessarily make it so.



     If they had
wanted to create a program that people would CHOOSE, then they could have
crafted something attractive, something instinctively positive, so compelling
that people would say “Now that makes sense! It’s cheaper than what I have now, and
I can do this.” No! That is absolutely not what happened. What happened was, a
herd of party hack backslappers threw together a document none of them read in
full and passed it, over the (predictably) coarse objections of the loyal
opposition. ObanaCare became, not something of personal health care choice, but
something the Government decided needed to be rammed down everybody’s throat.
Is it really any wonder so few people
have signed up for it, after all?

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Julian Travels to London (Excerpt, If I Should Live So Long; 11-13)

Mary had then been my friend a full year, before she made clear to me she was falling in love with me. In love! The words seemed frantic and harsh. For I had yet to truly awaken inside. Yes, I had a love in my breast which I held for my Muse, and for the beauty of God and the Stars and Planets, but love for a woman? Nonetheless. She was certain she loved me. And how must I feel for her?“You are my friend. You are maybe my only friend in this entire town, and I have friends here, and far, now. You speak of love. But such it is, that I fall quite late to this myself. You shake your head, you ask me why so? When it has not been obvious to you? You are the daughter of a guildsman. I am but the younger son of a poor crofter, and all that I have is what I have garned by my own hands and talents. Such it is that I have so little I might offer you but a life by the open road! And what must your father think, me and all that I am, some nothing, a jester and minstrel, a man of such low worth compared even to his modest merchant life!”
“But Julian, Julian,” she cried, “It matters not that to me. It is you and your mind and company I crave! All these days and months I have been working here in his shop, minding the time and the hours. Surely you must have noticed how kindly he takes to you? This is because he knows I do fancy you. And if he says nothing, it is perhaps because he seeks to know the intentions of your mind. Would you be serious with me? Otherwise, he is just making politeness. It comes easy enough to him.”“And your mother? She sometimes scorns me, as though she knows my true place on earth.”“What? She only wants for my happiness, and has her own hopes that I might find some landed squire. That is why she seems to despise you. But she takes me seriously. Whenever I am to tell her “Julian wants me and we shall make it our life to be together,” she will grudgingly agree. Whatever makes you happy, daughter!”“This is no easy game, Mary. I do have a little something, but I have no land, nor even a horse to call my own! I am carried hither and yon such as my purse buys me passage. And I do have a fair dinkum of coin, but I have hidden it away, and when I make my travels, I save all that I can, and hide it as well. I am not so sure how much I DO have, though it reckons to be something far short of a thousand pounds... Smile! It is not much, but it buys me lodging when I travel, and the carriage from travelers, and my Luisa more often as not buys me my fare.”“Julian, I want to share life with you! Do you understand me? I am in love with you, even if you are yet to silly to see it.”“Mary I do not doubt this the least! But you must give me time to think these things through.”“Time enough. But mind my words- should you wait too long, Father’s patience will run out before the sands.”“Well met, dear. I shall leave for Porcull’s and I shall be back within the week. And let you know my heart. I plan to travel to London soon. It will be a hard journey, and I cannot take you, nor expose you to the dangers of the road, nor should I ever be so intemperate as suggest you take your leave of home. But I think so fondly of you.”And she gave me a kiss, not the usual one she often gave, which was a brush to the cheek, but this was full passionate on the lips, and set my head to reeling. Indeed, I would have to go think this all over. I left her to her handiwork, which was, as we were sitting together outside the shop, another puppet. And I wandered my way back to the manor, playing a fine new tune.
And I lay awake most of the night in my meager bed on Porcull’s floor, thinking about her.It was a difficult thing to think on- should I take her to wife? She, with whom I was not-just quite-yet-in-love? But there were again doubts- why not fall in love? What was it, that drew her to me if not natural affection? How rare could this be, that a woman of the town and a prenticed guilds worker might take me- me of all people- to heart and fancy and choice? the longer I thought the more kind fair things I thought of her. By the time I had finally fallen asleep, I could say I loved her. For such a fair friend comes at no given price, but that they gave themselves. In the morning, over the morning mash, Porcull advised me, such as he could.“I am hardly the one to offer you real sense on matters of the heart, Julian. I am nothing but an old scholar, aging now, and off my bloom. Were there to be a match for me, I am sure she might be some withering crone herself, and less comely to the eye than the girl you say you love. I only know the things of the scholar, little more. Had I been blessed by love at an age so young perhaps I should say there was little more important to living. Alas, I was not, and so I only hear tell of this from they who have married. Some are happy, many are not. But if you care to hazard the chance, you might come out ahead. I have full faith in you, Julian, you are a lad of resource and wise recourse. That you might NOT be the fool to rush in, I hope perhaps I have helped you but little.”“I am leaving for London soon, Porcull. I must wait on any affairs with Mary until I return. I will go to see her today and let her know my choice- for her, but not just yet. Let me see the city, and make my return. All will be well, I am sure!”Porcull gave me a short lesson in the forenoon on the stars aspects- the trines, squares, sextiles, semisextiles, oppositions and conjunctions. It was all enough to make my head swim! To remember which were fair and foul, and for which planets auspicious! But he told me I was coming along. He asked me to recite them back, and this I did fair, but I forgot about midheaven and the nodes. Oh Well. He said I would get more learned as time passed, but again, he had fair assessment of my possibility, and I was a good learner.I left the cottage full confident, and now my heart sang. Walking along on the hedge that led to the road which took me to the High Street, I chattered after the birds who called to each other from the bush. There were only a few clouds, and yet so high away they could not mean rain. Sun glittered on the leaves of each tree, each leaf new, full of its sap, calling to me “live, young man! And live well!”By the time I reached the Carpenter shop, my mind had only one thought- to sweeten the day with Mary’s kiss, and return her favor of the night before with a firm answer. Full confident I knocked on the door...It was answered by Mrs. Carpenter, her eye was assuming, and not apprehensive. “Julian, I see! Well! Sit yourself down, I shall bring you an ale. Have you been busy this morning?”“Only with some thinking. I have come to give an answer for Mary.”“I shall call her. She is upstairs sewing costumes. You wait. She’ll be down soon.”And she returned with a mug of her small ale. Such it was that it was refreshing, and coming as it did with only porridge in my gut, was fair spirit. I sipped slowly the ale, knowing Mary would only fill the mug again once she appeared.And she did! She skipped out the door and onto the porch and held me close. “Julian, you have an answer for me?”“Indeed, and I say, yes, Mary, let us be at one with the stars the trees the fish the birds the sea and the wheel of time. I shall love you, and while it lies yet small in my heart, it grows each hour. You are so fair. The song in my heart is thus”— I pulled Luisa up across my chest and set to singing.“My Mary is the fairest lass, she cares so how it goethI only have a beginner’s heart, and that is all I knowethfor she is wise in worldly craft, and in the things that showethI should be like the leaf from a tree, and blow whereof she bloweth.”
“Charming! and I do love thee, Julian. How much you shall only learn by time.”“I have one other thing to tell, though, Mary. I decided I shall leave for London in a day.I will do fine- I will take some money of my hoard, and it shall see me through the trip. There will be plenty left when I return, if I do not return with more! But it is something I need. What young man could live in England long and never want to see the capital! And I have someone to see and stay with, mayhap, some friend of Master Porcull, or so he says, an abbot. And I know I should like to go with you, only, these things are not yet meet. So I go alone.”“Indeed, Julian. There are yet passes we must cross, least of which might be being married!”Least of which. Least of which it was hardly the least matter! “For I fear high the leirwite and the bailiffs. Should word get out we are consorting, the guildsmen too will place their knock on my father and his shop. So while we wait, I shall wait for you, and we- will one day be man and wife! I know it!”Fair it may be it was her womanly intuition speaking there, but I knew this as well- I had no other fair chance at love, and if this be the biggest catch I might haul, then this would be my lot, no better. Still one could start out at a worse point, could no?And then again she embraced and kissed me so full I took care not to fall back upon the doorstop. But I matched her blow for blow, and returned it this time full. She was highly pleased.“I am finishing my poppets off with costume! I wonder how long shall you be gone, to London?”“I reckon some weeks. And I will not be back to Chester ere I return. But take this-“I handed to her as a token of faith my medallion of Saint James. This had been given to me in my youth by my mother, who had been a pilgrim to Spain. A half scallop. It hung about a leather thong attached by a small metal link. “If I should live so long, Mary, we shall marry when I return.”“Would you go with Godspeed, and god speed the day we are again united! For I love thee, Master Julian!”No one, not even Porcull, had ever called me “Master Julian” before. This of itself told me I was getting someplace in the world.I prepared for my trip, taking my usual small things along in my pouch. I would take Luisa, and Porcull as well gave me fair victuals as would see me to the next wayfare station. I would set off walking the Watling Street, through Stoke, Stafford, Oxford, and Saint Albans. I planned to make it in a fortnight, if not sooner, for I was taking a fair number of shillings to look for passage with some cartmaster, as I had become accustomed on journeys to Bristol and Penzance. There was spring in my step and all the world lay about me to conquer. For there was love blowing me at my back! With all good luck, I would do well in the big City, going less to get lost, than going to see to say I saw.
And so I began, walking southeast from the manor, to the London road. I played Luisa while I strolled. All things were possible. When I reached Stoke two days later, I  began my search for a cartman. I stayed at the inn of a Mr. Finchead, called the Rogue Boar. I was quite bored there, to be true! Because all who came to drink there were oafs and wenches. It was one of the more dismal stops along the road to London. However, there actually was a cartman. And he was headed down that way, although he would be turning off after Stafford, at least, it would be a lift to me.The cartman’s name was Guilford, Gilbert Guilford. He was employed by the bailiff of Shropshire, and heading to Stafford in order to pick up a load of wine. He bade me to play the lute while we traveled, but was not one much for talk. That was fine- so long as I could go farther, and make time, so I would be satisfied. And I slept for some while in the back of the wagon on my blankets under stars so bright they thrilled me. Thoughts of Mary always cheered, me, for I knew that I went with blessings. I even thought some of my Mother and how she might be pleased to know I had found someone to live for. These things all came and passed through my head.

Stafford came, and the cartman left me at the road near a village called Flembucket. I headed into town and to the public house. It was half in riot as I arrived! There was some type of disturbance, and I slipped in with nobody really espying me. The men were all crowded round a table, where two of them were having at each other in an arm-wrestle. “Come on, Flyswater! Don’t let Cooperman take your champion!”“Aye, Cooperman, would you look at that coward Flyshitter! He can’t handle!”“Put a brake on! Taverner, more ale!”The men were so far into the wrestling match, none of them ever noticed me. I led myself to the bar and asked the taverner for a pull of his perry. A farthing but, for the good tall cup. I sat in the corner, off by myself, assured that I was no attraction. If I were to haul out the lute, however, things would be different.But I did not want for coin, and only for the continued journey. So it was that, when the match had ended, and Cooperman had fair bested Flyswater  his two of three, and was the new town champion, the disgruntled patrons now turned their attention back to the surroundings, of which I was just another ear on the till. Yet one noticed.This was a purser known as Wigley. He had a fair group of roustabouts with him, all traveling by horse. I offered him a shilling should he be heading to Oxford. “A shilling? For a rider? Yea, we be headed to Oxford, then, matey!” It was a deal I would come to regret.For as we rambled, outside Birmingham, the gang overtook a rich lord and relieved him of all his coin and victuals. The being along for the riding could only hurt me, if the nobleman had seen my face, I might be languishing then later at gaol, or perhaps even swinging at the gallows tree. These were not the type of men you would have called friends, or even (had I had the sense to apprise them before foolishly coming along) to spend time at pub. All the same. They carted off their booty and retired to the woods to feast on his game sack, and count up each a share. I watched from the darkness near my horse. There was little on me they might avail themselves of, lest it be my own meager purse, but they showed absolutely no intention nor inclination to it. Perhaps it was Saint James protecting me after all. All I know is I did awake and the whole gang were gone! And they had taken my horse. Now I was back to square one. So I kept to the road, hoping for another cartman.But none came that day, nor the next. I was outside the town of Peatspit when finally one did. This was an oysterman- an oysterman! So far from shore, and here in the Midlands! Whatever was he doing out here, and he asked me the same.“What is a young lad not yet of majority doing out walking the roads so aloof? Why, had I a son like you, I would have him locked under key and table! To think! Get on, lad, get on. Where go you?”“To London, Squire Oysterman. “Ah! London, to see the King, I take it? Some foul branch of heaven has fallen on your lot, and you seek to make redress?”“Nay, nay. I go to see the sights. And look for a certain monk. And conquer with my lute, the ears and hearts of many.”“Well, bientot to you for that! What do I do, rolling my oyster barrels through the far country, where none might even know of such? Just as you like it, young sire. I bring oysters from the Thames to the interior, where such delights fetch fair penny. You might have the thought too, if you were a bright beam.”The manner in which he said this was meant to insult, of course. I no bright beam! and yet, free, unshackled, on my way to more adventure than this man could yet account for, apparently!
I thought him jealous, and said so.“Jealous? Of some young pup half off his cock and heading to the wicked city? For that she is, London. A fine, wicked, irredeemable city. Like Babylon she sleeps by the Thames, her ministers full of guile, her minstrels so full of bile...”“Bile?”“But yea, or do you not know? They who to London go, as you, end up often at the bottom of a dog-pile.”“Dog pile?”“But yes! Silly ass. Nobody goes to London thinking not to make a name of themselves, most especially those who reek of song. Well, the king already has a jester. I should think you would end your time but busking in the street.”“Busking the street is no bad end, for me. I could do well but to do better, but it suits me well.”“And one might so well ask Neptune to throw you a dud, too. I suppose.” He was a right obstinate character, this Oysterman. I did well just to suffer the stench of his barrels as we rolled by Bilge Ferry, Oxenham, and Duarte, on the way to Oxford. For three days I suffered this oysterman, and even caught him a few fish. So untalented for that, he seemed. He was one to scour the tides, not to bait a hook and line, I suppose. Three days it took to ride to Oxford, and I hated nearly every minute, for he never stopped his contention, he never ceased speaking ill of those back in Cheshire (“the country of the Cheese-heads” he called it) and of my own chosen path as minstrel. What I would do for better company than this!And so in Oxford when I arrived there, I quickly made haste away from whatever place he had hitched his wagon, and off on my own. To the Bear Inn, where I made new friends.
It was said to be the oldest establishment in the town. And there was a kindly taverner, one Master Pope, who saw quickly to my needs- water, a shepherd’s pie, bread, ale, and perry. I could have relaxed there and snored at the fire, but I paid him for a bed, and slept deeply. When morning broke I was off again, and this time, I would have another fright for all my troubles.
People love to make jest of the green and the unworldly. So much so that those who creep the roads in guile are always waiting for a new sucker to come along. I am afraid I was never so betrayed as I was by the next gang I traveled with- “Esquire False Taffy and his Erstwhile Monks.”The Erstwhile Monks were no monks! Not even close! They were cutpurses all, of hard mien and sour countenance, and rotten teeth, and snarling scowl. None of them had washed in several years, by the smell of them. And yet, they gave me saddle and mount, and for another shilling, promised to take me to Saint Albans, where they were to meet up with another gang of muckers-about, that of Iron Willy and his Demons Bright Shining.I have no idea how I survived all of it but for the protection of my Saints and stars and by some fortunate cause of the Lord. For no sooner had I saddled up and was riding, than they were at me to take up Luisa and sing them songs. Of course, the Lay of Robin Hood was their first choice. I managed to make it last the fair part of an hour, and added many new verses made up on the spot. These kept them well entertained and guffawing, and somehow this sense of what pleased helped me to survive the entire time. One of them fancied himself the likeness of Friar Tuck, and another that of Little John.Obviously the leader False Taffy thought himself the spitting of Robin Hood. And they laughed carousing each time singing the refrain, “To rob the rich, and feed the poor, we riding go again! Three Cheers for Lord Robin, and we his Merry Men!”But they were less likely to rob a truly rich man, many of which passed us, with train of knights and squires... most likely it were the knights and squires which drew down their pikes. For they were more likely to assault some poor wretch without wench beside, and take his full sack, for he was armed but with a dagger, or a bow, and in a fair fight quite outnumbered, for there were ten of them in all. Now when we arrived outside Blanch Hole they put it to me.“Squire minstrel Julian, we have suffered thee with your songs, and fair well they are. We have given you mount and saddle and you have seen what we do and how we live. We can not fair allow you your leave, if you ought not to take up with us, knowing what you know...”“Aye,” said the one self-styled Friar Tuck, “we’d as soon slit your throat as cut your purse, and leave you hanging for the shrikes at a yard post!”Nods, and shakings of the head, and agreed murmur from all in the band.“What then may I offer you? For I would soon as cut the throats of each and all of you should you choose to rob me of my lute, or deprive me my own purse!”“Nay, Julian, we would not do THAT. You are a brave lad to ride along with such a fierce brigade. No, Julian, we ask of you the favor. Since you ride to London, where we can none of us ever return, we ask of you this one favor.”False Taffy took me aside then and handed to me a small bill with a seal upon it.“Take you this letter to Squire Dover at Inns of Court. I am pleading for pardon from all the King’s reeves between Oxford and the city. Half the things they mean to say about me are not true! I am no murderer!”“But thou art indeed a thief!”“Hmm, could be. But none so worse than they who rode before me, took my loving wife for rape, and held me down while forcing me to see - it all! And Squire Dover is in his debts to me as well. For I fully paid him to find those men who took my lady love and this he did most untimely, such that, now there be no other witnesses, and these men who ride with me would sooner slit HIS throat than allow this breach of the justice go on fair long.”More murmurings. “If I should meet this Squire Dover, and deliver your message, then what will you do for me?”“We will grant you fair use of the roads, wither and hither you go!”This sounded better than it looked, I must admit. But the friendship of a highwayman like False Taffy was suspect on all angles. Nonetheless if it meant relieving myself of their company sooner as later, I agreed to take the letter on to London with me.False Taffy shook my hand, wished me well, and wheeled the whole group about back towards Oxford. Saint Albans was still miles off. I started on foot again, alone.It was only one more day and night before I was in Saint Alban, and the next day, outside London itself! Or at least, I finally came to Bentlea Priory, where Porcull had told me I could find Vincebus. The Priory was a shelter for Augustinians, of both genders. They kept a manor farm employing hundreds, and of these Vincebus was the sheeper. Vincebus had a collie-dog and also kept a small popinjay in his cell, which was yet small, but held everything he needed. What he did not need he did not fancy to own, either, so it was spare, and he had his Bible, his animals, his one cloak, and a writing desk there. I must say it was a shock to him, however, when I gave of who I am, and why I had come. “Porkle? Porkle is one of those... Lollygagging Lollards! He is a man unchurched and in so dire need of his soul astraightened he stinks of the sulfur of Hell itself! Yes, I know old Porkle. We taught together at Exeter College, Oxford, when we were young and stiff-necked.”“He said you owe him a debt?” I inquired, my question trailing off, for who knows where that would lead.“Hah!” he laughed. “Surely a drinking bet of thirty years on deserves to be forgot! What a sot! What an ass! Owe him a debt!” and he was then silent.I looked him over. Monk Vincebus was old, yet, round about the waist, and his tonsure was falling out in patches. His skin was leathery and tanned, but also crinkled. He worked outside all year, and when he was not at that, he was writing at his desk by candle light. He was writing a history of the Priory, he said, and he hoped to be finished sometime by the end of the year. His collie dog was friendly, and he called it Rambeaux. The popinjay was a wiseacre, and filled the little cell with foul cursing.“Silly bird! I am not his first owner- all those things he says, his owner before had taught him. He is a naughty one! Just the same. He is now in his twenties! And quite fond of me. When I get too old for caring of him, I will take him to a window and set him loose. Of course, he will probably just fly right back, so accustomed is he to his seeds and fruits.”“What do you call it?”“He is called Bitcher, because that is what he does best!” Laughing again, Vincebus set me down at the chair near his desk, and sat himself on the bed. Bitcher hopped over to his shoulder, where he sat for the rest of our talk.“Now, Squire Julian, or such is your name, you say, why are you here, truly?” There was a sense in his question that I had not been fully forthcoming, and that he was one from whom nobody could keep their confession inside.“I come to London to see the town. I am a minstrel and a fair one now. I bring my lute”— I nudged Luisa out between us— “and I sing for my supper. Or play, which I prefer, anyway. Tunes as such will you never find again, and tunes such as I have learned of others. And while I am here in London, but for a week at most, I hope, I hope to learn more songs. For I was also told by Porcull there are many singers in London!”“Indeed there are, child. There are so many singers and players here that they all compete fair weather and foul for a tiny patch of space they shall call street, and for the crumbs off the nobles, for the king already has a jester.”“Yes, yes, this is what they say. The king has a jester. But has he accomplished courtier players, those who can make their lutes ring as I can mine?”I played a few passages from the new set of dances which were flitting about in mind. He set his head on his arm while he listened.“Ties fair, sure. Maybe you will find something of what you hope for down there. I can also refer you to someone...”
But this someone, as you will learn soon, was again, not the best of persons I might have hoped to have met. I shall tell of him a bit later. Yet it was that I was to spend my first night in the Priory sleeping on a cot in the larger hall, where some other beggars and widows spent the night as well. One of them snored, but she was also not so bad to look at, so I was not irritated. When I slept, it was as if I were back in Penzance, happy to be thinking that Providence might soon reach me.

You have been tuned to Grand Jatte, an independent and autonomous
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verbal rambles and reductions...

Excerpt: "If I Should Live So Long" -- from a work in progress (11-13)

Because it seems an obvious question, I asked
it of Richard. Why do you travel so far as Penzance to journey to France, when
Liverpool lies so close to Chester? Or even from Chester, which after all, is
our home? He gave me that deep, friendly laugh, as he would ever.

“Because, Julian, I would rather sail with
friends than with strangers. My friend with the caravel is from Chester,
believe it or not. The trade in Liverpool, also, is mainly with Ireland. He can
earn more money by traveling to France and taking my goods back and forth than
either of us can trying to make money trading with the Irish.”

“That’s still not so obvious- because it is a
larger port than Penzance, and older!”

“Nonetheless. That is where Albertus has chosen
to moor his caravel. And for my purposes, I feel safer leaving with him. He
could sail to Cadiz or to Lisbon easily, and save the time!

“Not that I have much business or reason for
trade in Cadiz. But he knows the French ports, and he waits for me while I
journey inland. Where could I get that kind of loyalty from a Merseyman? No,
our friendship is now old and true by time. I hope that answered your
question?”

I replied, some, but I was still curious...
What about Calais and the Burgundians, and the Normans and Bretons? It seems
fair that an English merchant- or a Welsh one, for we of Cheshire could wobble
one way or the other- would only worry about safety, when so many dukes and
earls made war on each other for such silly reasons. Were we really a kingdom
of two lands? Or maybe more?

Richard told me that it was hardly good to
discuss these things, when things were still delicate matters with this new
king. The new king was not well liked in our shire. He had usurped the throne
of our beloved Richard II, and he had alienated all of the Shire nobles,
including the Earl, who was out to make an alliance with Henry Hotspur of Northumberland.
Hotspur would come to have a large place in my story, as would Owain Glyndwyr
Prince of Wales. But the King he was loth to tell me, would have no talk of
these things. These were matters for knights, earls, and dukes, and not
certainly not for merchants nor even minstrels. Well, that was the way he told
it to me, then.

That too was a year or more before the King
himself came to our shire and began his war on the Welsh and Hotspur and the
Scots. People rarely said it, but they did despise his presence, and the
provisioning of his troops from off our lands- lord, so many sheep and head of
cattle and hocks did they carry off! Not to mention the grain in the tills. And
I heard they would even grab young women to do their wenching, at their will, such
was the way of the King’s armies! Again, I am ahead of myself, but this I believe
was the point where I became aware that the country of Cheshire was a house
divided, and if it was not to be divided against itself, people like me needed
to have an open eye and ear.

Richard said “A country that trades with
another means two countries who are not at war” and proceeded to explain some
of the reasons wars began. I did not need the lesson of William the First, or
William the Bastard, as my father oft called him. That was a war of revenge and
claim. No Richard explained some wars got started because a Lord laid down a
tax, or a tariff, on merchants, or some intolerable tax of the villeins, and
the oppression and friction of both the merchants and the common folk led to
arguments at the noble level. Every war had also to have the blessing of the
clergy, as well. And a clergy that could bless war, Richard said, was not worth
a snot.

Those were strong words, and at that, he let me
to sit and think, and we had more of a merry night than I can now remember. But
I bade my time.

After Christmastide, Ranulf and I having made
fair work together parted again, and he left Penzance again for Brittany. I was
to see him again the following year. For the time being then, as it was winter,
mainly I would stay up in the little room I had rented, reading, practicing my
lute, and learning it better. The rain out of doors was cold, but the hall
where my room was had a large common place, which usually had a fire. I made
friends, so far as I might, with the keeper, my landlord, who stoked the fire
and fed me bread and warmed wine, so each night, I would play the lute, and
conjure, if I could, those far away places of which it spoke to me in my mind.
Sailing on those fair waters, into harbors, up rivers, mounting into low
foothills full of wild oregano and basil scents, oaks and myrtles and aspens,
of ships and carts most full high with barrels of goods, and bolts of cloth
rare as silk... all these images of my mind made the fuel, and Luisa brought
out their melody, like starfire each note rang, and was pleasing to my
landlord, and his guests.

And I remained another two months in Penzance.
Such it was that I had a fair pile of groats saved in the little chest beside
my bedstead. There was enough to make time in my return to Chester- such it was
I was always able to spend on some faster means than foot.

When I had had my fill of Penzance I decided I
might return to Cheshire, if only to hide myself in work at Richard’s manor.
The trip back north this time took me less than getting there, because I
happened to find another merchant who allowed me passage at least to Bristol,
and that I gained by helping him to manage his oxen. Oxen being rather big and
stupid beasts they were not so much trouble as they sound. All they need is
water and hay and they are happy to be left where you drop the yoke. But
Bristol had other excitements for me. I managed to make friends with several
tavern owners. This, I discovered, was a wise strategy no matter where I went,
for then I might have a plate, and drink, and even pay to line my pockets, so
many nights as I might stand the rowdies and the flounces and their constant
requests for tunes I never knew, much less, had ever heard of! But the more
they requested them and the more I asked “well how does that one go?” the more
often I was also able to fake my way through some, some, even making up my own
words.

The owner of the Lumpy Biscuit was one of these
fellows. He ended up by paying me 2 groats per night, which he said was fair
generous, and indeed it was, since most other keepers would begrudge but one.
He also has a generous stock of good perry, which I commend highly to anyone
making their way to Bristol! And just as in Penzance, being a port, there were
many jolly seamen about who were full of piss and vinegar, spoiling for a
fight, or else, calmed by charms of music to soften the ardor of their breasts.
Everything went well there, and when I left Bristol I knew I should be coming
back.

Having made my way again north and to Richard’s
manor, Stephen put me to work straightaway with the hay crew. It was important,
he said, to have a large stock of it set in before full summer, because when
the sheep were ready to move pasture, the fields needed to be clean. Everything
again went so well, we finished our work on the several dozens of acres of hay
before a fortnight was done. All the while, Richard and Stephen invited me to
sit above the salt with them and allowed me full discourse, unlike the rest of
the haymen. Their meals were good and filling, and often Richard would pour me
some fine French wine, of which would loose my tongue, and Stephen and I would
fall together in merry song.

Now it comes time for me to tell of how I met
my dear true love, and whom is the cause of what they all might say is the
reason I am called “a fool in love.” Granted that yet I may not be a fool AT
love, but she is fine, fair, and she came to me in the next year’s Carnival.

Twas on Shrove Tuesday when all the town of
Chester were out and frolicking in costume. Lent would be beginning the
following day, so people wanted to get their last chance at sinning done I
suppose. I had spent the day playing songs in the shadow of the tall houses on High
Street. I saw her first, I think- she walked with a grace much like a doe at
race among the woods— surefooted, slender, and lithe. She wore a long blue gown
and a hood about her shoulders, which was let down, and flowing down her chest
on either side were long, curling golden locks. There was a glint of mischief
to her, for she wore a masquerade, and carried alongside her a bucket full of
ale. This she ladled out to those who offered her ha'pennies, and every so
often she would go in and out of a house there on the street to refill her
bucket. She had several men who were constantly returning- but these she
refused when it was obvious they had been enough soused. When she saw me, she
looked and turned away— there was a knowledge in her eyes, I could read it!

This was that she knew she was meant for me. So
she now tells me anyway, but it was not as if I had things easy to get to know
her so well. That was last year. It took all through this year, actually, to
learn her name and her ways! But we had laid eyes to each other, and that was
really all that was needed.

When I saw her again it was at the May Day
Fair. Now she was not in masquerade, but wore the laurels and the bows of the
May Queen. Again, it had taken me a year, but I had not forgotten her. This
time, however, I was able to get her name, and learn more of her. I am sure she
only thought of me as a juggler on the run, but that was last year. Now, there
was more sureness to her as she strode up to me herself and put it to me.

Who was I? Where was I from? Why was I in
Chester? Was I any good? (at my lute.) How did I reckon my fortunes? What were
my plans? So many questions! But I could tell that Mary, the Carpenter’s
daughter, had an interest in me which I had never known for a female ere then.
The proper thing to do was to win introduction to her mother and father, and
this I did eventually manage, though it took the better part of another week!
Her father’s shop was there on High Street, where I had first espied her. He
was not a house carpenter, yet, he worked well the woods and built barrels, casks,
chests, and cabinets there. She had learned much from watching and speaking
with him, about working with wood as well. Her mother had taught her sewing and
spinning and how to make clothing, but from her father she learned the art of
making poppets, and how to make the poppets move with the aid of strings, in a
most lively and cheering fashion. These she dressed in small garments they wore
just as we real folk do. And she made me laugh telling me of all the times she
had been asked by the Guild of Carpenters to make plays for their Christmas
feasting with these poppets. “I like the story of the Holy Family and their
Flight to Egypt. My Mary and Joseph poppets are now getting old though, and I
need to often replace their strings, but they are by far most popular.”

Her mother, she said, had taught her how to
make ale, and there were many days when I came by their shop just to get a bowl
of it, for it was good to add to my meager fare. Richard was a generous squire,
to be sure, but I guess things always have been catch as catch can for me, and
I am not one to turn down a fair and free gift of food nor drink, unless I have
exceeded the appetites!

Her porter ale was best, I thought. I do not
like the stout. It is too bitter, but the porter makes a fine meal as well as
gives one a strong head. I would be back to visit the Carpenters eventually at
table, but that first month of door-sits was enough. It was enough just being
in her radiant presence!

I had the leave to come and go and yet was
still unable to sit at table with them or to enter the upstairs. But inside
Sire Carpenter’s shop was for the nonce enough. He created barrels, casks and
chests, for he was an excellent joiner. Someday I said, I should like to have
one of his fine chests, for he built them with several levels and in some even includes
secret compartments built one inside another- that opened only with a key. Such
would completely confound any highwayman who had not also secured the key  along in his plunder. But for now there were
still so few things I owned. There was one whole wall inside which was nothing
but sectioned off into different sizes of barrel staves and planks and board
for the chests, and also the metal bands of brass or tin which held barrels
together. He had a work bench and alongside it were several works in progress.
His tools hung on hooks on another wall- hammers, saws, planes, and files, and
there was always a pot of hot glue in one corner, available when he wanted.

Behind the shop was the kitchen, and often I
could find Dame Carpenter at her brewing. She sometime would have me run back
to the manor of Stephen with a groat to buy extra grain off Stephen, once she
learned of my special friendship. With the grain she would  make her 
ales. And when she had made them, oft she would put out the broomstick
to signal there was ale to be had, and rounders would come from places about
the town, fill their bellies, and wander off in jollity.

I engaged Sire Carpenter at chess once or
twice, but after I won both matches he begged me off.

“I am not the greatest at strategy” he
complained, “and as yet I have never beaten anyone at this- not even once.”

“Do you know the rules well enough?”

“Eh, perhaps, perhaps not. But even should I
know the rules, I have not guile to best one as skilled as you. You seem fair
matched against anyone.”

I did not speak of the man in Bristol whom had
beaten me each of four matches, but of that, I shall later tell.

Enough it was to enjoy being around Mary, who
worked alongside her father at times holding the hoops and staves as he put in
nails to fasten. She also helped to carve the little decorations which
sometimes the patrons had asked for, into the sides and fronts of the chests. Mary’s
kind demeanor and her pale green eyes lit fires inside me. I would fain to
speak to her of this growing love, but at this point, we were but friends. It
would take some time before the opportunity might arise that I should stick my
boldness to the limit and declare of her my intentions. Just the same. Winning
the trust of her parents almost came before, for if they trusted me, then all
might be well with her in all wise.




I had near completed my year of freedom and not
been caught out. It was my luck to have Stephen’s barn to return to at end of
each foray to town. Father’s house was on the north side of the town, in Upton,
but I knew that there I had more chance of getting caught out, just by being
around old Dad. My brother Simon took care of the plowing and the flock of
sheep, and much of the town’s wool, in any event always ended up with Squire
Richard, who would take it to Penzance for fulling, if he had not already
undertaken it with those nearby. The fulled wool, of course, was the barter
which he could make with the French and the Flemish he could meet at Amiens or
in Bruges. By now, Stephen and he might have made their pass at Amiens and
headed to Bruges, and from there back to Le Havre. I thought I could expect to
see them by end of June. In any case once summer came I might need to work for
them. In autumn for certain. So when I went into Chester I played about the
street with Luisa.

I could earn fair penny, sometimes even a
groat, if a rich man or lady were generous and pleased by my choice of tune.
The times were such that few minded my presence, and luckily the bailiffs were
always out after some business on the roads. The people of Chester, some of
whom I had known from my years at School, were not disposed to putting me at
odds with the law, even though I was not just yet free and clear from it. But
soon I would be. And in that, my having a safe place to sleep at Stephen’s was
prime.

Squire Richard’s manor was such that he
employed some thirty persons out of the surrounding lands. Only the miller and
his woodward were free yeomen, but all they who were in his servitude had
generous allotments to plow and make gardens. There was a dovecote, from which
Stephen had brought the squabs we had dined on the night that I met him, and
apiaries, with bees who were docile and easily controlled with the smoke of a
torch, that it might be more safe to steal out their honeycombs, and there was
the mill of course, which brought Richard extra income, for it was the best
mill on the south side of Chester, and made a fine flour. The barn itself held
Richard’s sheep, and he had a man who was his shepherd who had a dog which
helped him to gather them up in the morn and eve. A few head of cattle as well
although they were such less likely to end up at table than they were to
provide the milk butter and cheese with which Squire Stephen had also feasted
me. It was a bountiful farm to be sure.

Off by the mill was a small copse of wood, and
there it was that Porcull lived. Porcull, I should tell you, you will meet in
my tale soon, but this is only to explain the lay of the land. The stream
running past the mill ran to the Dee, of course, but as it did it grew willows,
and ruches, and held a great many game birds such as geese, herons, egrets,
ducks, and in the forest even there were owls. Although I would never eat an
owl, the owls helped keep vermin off the grain meadows, which were ample, and
surrounded the manor on three sides. The huts of the landsmen were generally
settled at the borders round about the fief. As such Porcull’s little hut was
secluded and isolated, in a good spot to guarantee he would see few, and few
would come to see him. I suppose that in the great scheme of it all that would
be for the best.




And now, I shall tell you of how I came to meet
Master Porcull, and how I came to have a new champion for my humble estate.

It was an early summer day. On the bank of the
little stream that flowed past the millrace at Richard’s manor, where a nice
shady spot I took beneath a rowan tree and set my hook, was the moment I met
him.

Or, at first, rather, I met Springer, his goshawk.
I had been fishing at a dip in the bank and a pool within the stream where also
an egret had been dipping. Now and then he would catch something, gobble it
down, and go back to seeking. By its attention then, I knew I had picked a good
spot.

So I was watching the egret in this wise when
quite suddenly from a short fair distance came flying out a hunting goshawk,
which had at the egret in a swift motion, all feathers to the wind it flapped
its wings in vain as the goshawk gripped most sure and quick its neck, then it
at once fell limp. The bird carried off the larger egret, and then set itself
upon the wrist of an old gentleman, dressed in a brown cloak with a
wide-brimmed hat, who took the bird and fettered it, and sunk a cowl about its
head, and dropped the egret into a basket he had brought along.

Our eyes met then.

“Who… are you?” he asked me.

“I am Julian, Julian Plectrum! I am a free man
and nobody is the boss of me!”

He shook his head and laughed.
           “Well then, sir, I see I have disturbed you at your most patient then, have I?”

I put aside the fishing pole. I had caught but
one, and that was fair small. I placed it in my pouch and walked over to where
he stood, Luisa at my back, again now.

“What are you doing, taking the fish from
Squire Richard’s millstream?”

“Hah! I have his foreknowledge and complicity,
as my due he has granted me. I tell you, no one is the boss of me!”

“Yes, yes, so you say. But, Mr. Plectrum, where
are you from, where do you reside?”

“I have fair use of the barn, and of all
Richard’s lands! His son Stephen is my friend!”

“Ah… you are friend to the younger Squire
Westchester. I see. And, I suppose, you live in the barn, too, with the mice
and the coneys?”

“It’s fair enough. When I so choose I take my
blanket and sleep beneath the stars. Such it is my way, for no one…”

He interrupted.

“I know, no one is the boss of you. OK. Well,
Mr. Julian Plectrum, how stand you then for a noble meal? Or has your catch
today gone so well as you’d have no other need of sustenance? Care you not to
come and share of this fine bird my falcon Springer has delivered unto us?
Roast, with spices, he shall make fine repast!”

“I suppose I could use a place to catch this
fish…” I tried. He had me, of course, for the fish itself

Would be but the appetizer course. His egret
was fat, and old, the size of a fine goose. Two could eat well of it and yet
have room for another to share in, besides.

“I see. Old sir, what is your name? And how do
you come to take the birds of Squire Richard’s millrace?” I put it to him as
haughty and he had done me.

Again, he laughed.

“My name is Porcull. Spelled any way,  yet it means the same. I young sir, was
formerly master Stephen’s tutor. Of several things. My cottage is not far from
here. Shall we go then, together, and have a fine meal? For I am as well a free
tenant of Master Richard’s. I pay a small rent for my cottage, and he keeps me
in gratitude of my service to Stephen. It was I who gave him his accounting
skills.”

Porcull walked then besides me. He asked me if
I had been playing the lute long and how it had some to me, and I told him of
how I had met Stephen, and of Luisa’s provenance.

“since, I have been to Penzance and back,
twice! And will go many more times ere my hair turns grey as yours,” I bragged.

“Penzance? But, my, my. Have you ever been to
London?”

He had me there, I guess. No, I had not, and
made up my mind then and there that sooner than later, to London I would go.

“London is a pretty place and fine and fair
city. All the lads are strong and brave and all the maids are pretty…” he
half-sung.

“If or when you do go, my young lad, you must
seek out the monastery of Bentlea, where lives a certain monk named Vincebus. I
do have some grievance with him, as he does me. It would, at least, be a favor
to me if you would.”

I kept silent, as we walked, and just as he
said, in due time, we came to his little cottage. I suppose that it was rather
more to be called a “hut”, since it was smaller than my father’s house, and was
only one small room, ranged about with shelves, a hearth at one corner, and in
another were a table and a strange array of glass shapes. On a desk were a
large sheaf of papers, and geometer’s instruments. On one wall was a chart of
numbers- these, he said were a table of phases of the planets. The class
shapes, he told me, were called alembics, retorts, and flasks.

“I’m making a most excellent spirit, presently.
I’m sorry I’ve none to offer you at the nonce, but it is still distilling. You
can, however, have some of this most excellent wine, and we shall cook this
heron and sip ere we sup.”

I looked around me, and everywhere were shelves
crammed full with books. Some bound, many, not. A chest held his clothing and
on this he sat while dressing the bird over the counter board which served as
his kitchen. When he had gutted the bird, he tossed those out onto the walkway
outside. A scuttling noise and soft chirruping came forth, and soon, an otter-
an otter! Came into the cottage and jumped up upon his lap..

“No, Peddles, we’ll not be sharing more yet
with you. Haven’t you had enough, yet?”

“You speak to that otter as if he is your pet!
How amazing!”

“Well, Julian, that he is. Peddles has lived
here ever since I made friends with him.”

“How?” My question was a challenge as much as
it was my curiosity.

“Why, I fed him fish! But he likes bird guts
far too much to refuse them.”

“That’s masterful. Porcull… are you a wizard?”

“What? Wizard? Why, no. But I am a student of all things. I may not be
wise, but I’m always learning! One can never cease to, should one hop to have
long life.”

“But…”

“But what, lad?”

“But this all looks like wizardry! What they
call alchemy! I know…”

“What do you know?” now he was back in command.
What did I know?

“Are you a witch?”

“Oh, heavens, no. Not even a warlock. But I’m
sure Vincebus of London thinks of me so.”

“Are you a druid?”

“Heavens, no, again, druids died out hundreds
of years ago.”

“Do you conjure demons?”

“What? Oh, heavens no! Such as that being high
impossible anyway, in all the lore I have garnered. I am a student of the earth
and all upon it, and the celestial spheres. No more nor less. Would that I had
students, but, Stephen has gone on into manhood, and hath not the sense of
which I speak. He would need fain he become wise and learned himself. And what
of you, lad. Are you a magician?”

“Me?” I was stupefied. This wise old man asks me what magic I know!

“Surely you are aware of the magic, of the
power, you wield in the music of your… lute?”

He had me again. I had barely considered it!

“Yes, my friend. Magic in music. Do you know of
Pythagoras, and of the octave?”

“I know what an octave is… a note on the scale,
that is seven notes above the same note, taken as root…”

“No, no, friend, More than that! A plucked
string, divided in half, presents itself as that note, one octave higher above
the open string. Just as you said. But the string divided also into smaller
portions, gives the third, the fourth, and the fifth. Surely you know of
these?”





While I did and had  heard of this, back when learning the Organum
from Master Rolf at the Cheshire school, what I had really learned of music
came through my own invention and experiment, due both in part to the learning
I had off Master Rolf and Clarence of Mousehole, most recently. And the
Brittany songs which I had learnt from Ranulf.

“But see, you are learning, with each step of
the way, are you not? And do you know of the Mystic Chord, that connects each
man to his star? You know of the destiny of the stars?”

“You mean, the horoscope?” He nodded.

I shrugged, shaking my head.

“No,” I admitted.

“If you should allow me, I would give you leave
to sleep here, out of the draft and cold of the manor barn, stay here, study
and learn from me. For some like myself it is not well meet to go to our fate
without telling all which we know to somebody.
That the mystic brotherhood of learning- this esoteric knowledge- might
continue!”

He set to the spit where the bird had been
cooking and collecting its juice in a tin tray beneath it. He took it from the
spit when it had fair cooked- another half hour or so- and set  it in the pan with its juices.

He took jars of spices down from a shelf along
with a bottle of verjus, ad this he gave me to add sour to my meal. We ate from
pottery plates he brought forth from a cupboard ‘neath his counter-table, and
it was good. Peddles the Otter shifted from time to time as it sat on his legs.
The hawk, Springer, was perched on a t-shaped branch and unhooded, and watched
as we ate, with most patient eyes.

When he had finished, he poured us both a cup
of wine, while I pondered long on his request. Eventually, the otter crawled
into a small box, with a blanket, and lay himself to sleep. It was much
strange.

What had I to lose, I gained comfort from the
weather, and he was a most friendly and interesting man. It was the beginning
then of a lifelong friendship.

I slept that night on the floor of his cottage,
while he bid me bring back my blanket the next time I came. In the morning, I
had a look about the cottage. It too was by a side of the millrace stream, yet
concealed between both willow trees and oaks. He grew a garden all around each
cottage wall- on three sides where it got good sun, he grew vegetables and
spices. Actually he had a fair number of plants he called cubeb, which are the
source of pepper, and with sacks of these, he paid his fair rent to Squire
Richard. He also had several very odd vegetables, of which I had never seen.
All in all he grew enough vegetables, and roots, that he always had enough for
his supply, and he did fare quite well in the winter, when with the Christmas
feasts, he said he also took sup with Squire Richard. Why I had not remembered
him or having seen him at any of the feasts, I did not know, but yet, he said
he partook, at times, of these, and of the manor life.

The time would come that I would help with his
garden, and weed the onions, garlic and leeks, the lettuce and spinach, the
escarole and endives, and make cure every week his herbs were watered. He also
had some pleasant grapes that curled up a side of his house which was
trellised- but he said these were only for the table, and made a bitter wine.
There was also a tall pear tree and a plum tree which he said he had planted as
long back as Stephen’s birth. These gave us ample fruit in the spring and
summer, which were gathered in bushels, and cut and dried in the sun, and
stored in large crocks among his shelves. It was always a pleasure to dip one’s
hands in when you needed something to nibble!

All around Richard’s estate were many farm
fixtures- there was a dovecote by the barn, and another off near the border of
the fields. As I mentioned, he had several apiaries, and these were close to
places there the bees might find food for their honey, in an orchard of apples
and almonds. The fields around were sown with oats, rye, wheat and clover, and
that made a fine food for the bees as well. The bees were docile and gentle for
the most part- Richard paid a man from the tenants to smoke them out for the
honey gathering each season. Richard’s honey was fair and he let the man keep a
large share which he might sell at the market and the fairs. All in all Richard
had near to thirty tenants, besides Porcull and the Miller. I would meet a fair
number of these when it came time to work the haywains.

So now I was nearing the time I would have won
my freedom. I was quite proud of this, and did my part, as well, to stay out of
trouble. Often I might spend evenings inside the manor, and play chess with
Stephen or his father. Richard was a lot better at chess than Master Carpenter,
and he even showed me one or two moves that could be guaranteed to force the
opponent into hard straits after just these openings. I would do well to
remember these when I next came back to Bristol, for I knew that Holdwater of
Bristol would be eager to undo me again. It was possible he had known these and
that they were a reason why he’d done me so badly, even! But things would be
different, next time we met, I swore it.

And I developed a fair routine. I would spend
my time between Porcull’s, the manor, the Carpenter’s, and playing Luisa on the
High Street. I developed a small group of people who would be known to pass me
a penny (when I was truly lucky, a groat or two, or half groat! But then, only
from the prosperous.) The time at Porcull’s actually was just as good, if not
better, than time with Master Rolf.

For Porcull was indeed learned. In my first
month there, he had shown me the stars, and their aspects. I learned I was born
under the sign of the Crab, at the cusp of the Lion. This made me a fair child,
prone to indulging myself with sweets (which was true) but also unambiguous. It
explained to me why I enjoy so much having songs to sing and being the focus of
person’s attention- and he said there were other aspects in my chart, as he
called it, which gave me talents and the gift of making tunes. This was my
Mercury-Venus aspect, which were conjunct in the sign of the Twins. All in all
he said I was due my good fortune, but like all who are not born to the manor,
I must go about earning it wisely. I should adopt the image as a fair courtier,
and deal sensibly with noble men, lest they take me (and treat me) for a fool.

It was easy enough to contrast what he wanted
me to be with that which I already knew I did not desire to become. Like the
droll and gross John of Exeter, again- while I knew and recognized that many
who gather in the pubs care only for the bawdy and raucous, I preferred to be
able to perform fantasias based upon my ideas of the world, those which I knew,
and those which I hoped to know, in traveling. And so it was that I found a lot
of time spent at Richard’s (when not eating or at chess) spent making music for
his entertainment. Always I took care only to take from Porcull what was
offered, for Richard and Stephen would feed me well enough. But I learned how
to draw up a horoscope that first spring. It was something I could add to my
list of talents, for eventually when I made my travels south, I would be called
on to advise one or another as to his stars. But I would rather have had a hand
at chess, and be at the lute. It takes having many large books to discover just
where a man’s stars lie, and how the new stars of the time reflect upon them.
Not to be discouraged, however- for in the places I was called upon to do this,
usually there was kept some almanac, which allowed me at the least to compare
his sun with the current planets! This would have been more a boon when they
might tell me their natal hour- for that would also describe how I lay out
their houses.

I, again, am getting far, far ahead of myself.
To recap- in the first spring back in Chester I met Porcull, and in the second,
I met Mary. Sometimes it is difficult in separating them, for in the two years
since meeting Mary, I have been back and forth from Chester to Porcull’s and
the Manor so often, and to Penzance and Bristol, that memories are all jumbled
as to a season. It is like that, but it has been four years in all since leaving
Father’s. And this is the year then I must regard and tell you of my travel to
London. For that I did, and it was in the Spring of the year.





You have been tuned to Grand Jatte, an independent and autonomous
syndication of Lucid Dream Music. Stay tuned for more exciting
verbal rambles and reductions...

It’s Always Something

"All Presidents must go to a diamond hell"- Allen Ginsberg


     Hardly
a week nor a day goes by anymore   without
new “astonishing” revelations of outright brigandry undertaken by the U.S.
Government on behalf and in the name of its citizenry.Today, it’s the CIA using
doctors in direct deviation from their Hippocratic oaths as agents of torture
and interrogation of terror suspects. Since when were Gestapo tactics welcome to
the White House? Well, say many (an I am among them) the paper trail leads back
to legal advisor to John Ashcroft, John Yoo, who drew up a legal brief during
the regime of G.W. Bush. Approval of these tactics against “rendered suspects”
would under normal circumstances earn such criminals an outright dismissal of
any charges, due to government misconduct.

     “But these are different times,”
apologists would like us to understand. These are indeed. When the USA can
forego its once believable moral authority as champion of human rights and
dignity in order to become as low as the terrorist they seek to destroy, now
they’ve sunk to a grossly debased acceptance of the worst and most evil maxim
of Macchiavelli’s: that the ends justify the means.

     “It was necessary to kill the patient,”
(Ms. Liberty) “in order to save her,” one can well imagine Barack Obama telling
us all at one of his courtly, staged “press rehearsals.”

     The current administration has done
nothing less than to continue the war crimes of the former one. The man we
elected in the name of peace murders and lies and acts as if there’s nobody
else in the entire country who might pose any challenge to his intellectual and
political conceits. He’s wrong.

     Of course, he could always just send his Seal Team Death Squad into Russia, to “get”
Mr. Snowden just as he did Osama bin Laden. After all, what are sovereign
borders and target locations deep inside a nation’s heartland to them? If Mathias Rust could do it, so
could they! Although one imagines the new Russian government might have somewhat
altered their aerial security technology and capacity  by this time. (Or, if the President of the
United States is so good at killing people as he says, why doesn’t he just go
over there and do it himself?)

     But Ed Snowden just happened to be in the
right place at the right time and with the right approach to authority.
Authority must ALWAYS be questioned, because Authority is ALWAYS seeking no less
than the continuance of its power, and absolute totalitarian power is no less
than tyranny- in their case now, a tyranny that they would hope would enshroud
and enshadow the entire world.

     I did not elect Barack Obama to brag about
his murders. I elected him to bring culpable authority into account for their
crimes against national and international law and recognized values of human
rights. And to bring figures such as Osama bin Laden to a justice worthy of the
word, not lynch mob law. He’s been a total failure at such on every
level in these regards. Nor did I elect him to be the Democratic Party’s version of the man he
replaced, or the ringleader of the most notorious secret police spy ring in
history.

     No, I elected him to be
something which he never was, and never can be- a humane, just, fair, honest man
devoted to upholding the nation’s Constitution and by so doing, keeping the
esteem and good reputation of the USA in the eyes of the world community..



 http://news.yahoo.com/new-book--obama-told-aides-that-drones-make-him--really-good-at-killing-people--144734667.html

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/11/03/207332/newspaper-snowden-documents-reveal.html

http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2013/11/05/the-main-danger-to-peace-and-liberty/


Being President of the United States of America means never having to say you're sorry:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/18/opinion/the-drone-that-killed-my-grandson.html?_r=0


You have been tuned to Grand Jatte, an independent and autonomous
syndication of Lucid Dream Music. Stay tuned for more exciting
verbal rambles and reductions...

SUPPORT PILOT LICENSES FOR WITCHES!

    On the day
after their most solemn and festive occasion, it needs to be addressed- it’s a
national problem! Each year on Halloween thousands of witches nationwide lose
their lives due to intoxicated flying. The photos above only illustrate a small
percentage of the problem.  Everywhere,
witches drink their potions and fly, and this is the result!

     That’s why Congress and the States must
create a new law and programs designed to discourage witches from flying while
drunk. Griselda, Endorra, and Baba Yaga might prefer a nip of the old henbane
or nightshade, but, all too often, a night of wicked joy turns out to be a pyre
of ash- especially for those who navigate into high-voltage wires!

     As an
unrepentant civil libertarian, I fully endorse the idea that witches should be
free to practice their personal religion. And in most cases I feel additional
regulatory legislation makes social issues like drug abuse worse, not improving
them. But this has gone on for too long and for too far!  Think of the children!


     If driver
licenses can be issued to “non-documented” aliens, then why not pilot’s licenses
for witches? Even domestic drones are now under the purview of the FAA!



     If you agree
that these irresponsible, “wise” old crones need regulation and oversight lest
they continue year in and year out to pose a threat to public safety, and
heedlessly expose themselves to danger, please, write to your Congressional
Representatives and State Legislators! Please Fly Safely!

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What, You Say, Is Treason?

United
States Constitution, Article III, Section 3:




     Treason against the United States
shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their
Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No person shall be convicted of treason
unless on the testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on
Confession in open Court.

     The Congress shall have Power to declare
the Punishment of Treason, but no Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of
Blood, or Forfeiture except during the Life of the Person attainted.




     The word treason
has been bandied about lately quite a great bit, and not least by the once
known as “tolerant” “liberal” class of American politics. As defined above,
treason consists only of taking up Arms in War against the United States
or manifestly helping those with whom it is at war.

     The word "traitors" has thus recently been thrown at Edward Snowden, as well as the
Congress of the United States itself, in its failure to pass a meaningful and
legally binding budget. As though a general disagreement in the policy of the US was ever
enough of itself to make one a traitor!

     That the
sobriquet was foisted upon Mr. Snowden after plainly embarrassing the US
government in the unconstitutional act of spying against innocent citizens,
with neither substance nor charge, reeks of the type of sanctimonious
partisanship germane to BOTH major US political parties at this stage of the
game. Mr Snowden has sought only to make the public aware of its government
actions- he has not traded information with foreign powers (the precise
definition of espionage, with which he has been charged in absentia) only with the free press (such that still is) and has gained no personal favor or
reward by his having been accepted for political asylum in a nation once long
feared as the US’s largest military threat.
A nation which has, by the way, become itself a free and democratic nation.

     But Mr. Snowden
is getting his due, for nearly double as many Americans see him as a patriot
than call him “traitor.” Those who claim he IS traitor perhaps bask in their
own love of authoritarianism- or in an all-enveloping, cradle-to-grave government as comforter.

     Yet, the founders
of this nation knew so much better than to trust
government. They set up a Constitution for a State which by its very nature was delimited in the powers
it might claim over any individual.

     And why should
the entire Congress be called traitor, other than that just one Congress ago,
they approved the indefinite detention of US Citizens, and a president who
claimed he was opposed to just such a policy signed it into law? Are Americans
so afraid of living without their government that they absolutely could not do
to live without it for one or two weeks? Perhaps the latest government shutdown
proves that.

     Maybe Americans
have become complacent and willing to grant their government new
unconstitutional powers over them, preferring Security to their God-granted Liberty. Perhaps they would prefer a society where government
can inflict a mandatory program- (any mandatory programs at all!) over taking
care of themselves- to actually living freeing the state of Liberty which was, again, Creator-granted!

     I am absolutely
and resolutely opposed to this government making anything mandatory absolutely at all.
That goes for everything from mandatory military service, to mandatory civil
service, from medical care, to income tax. I owe this government absolutely
nothing BUT my income tax. If only that by this income they have stolen from me
before I even handle the proffertory note of a paycheck, they are able to
guarantee to me the rights granted by the Constitution. But! The government did
not give to me my life. They did not
give me my liberty, nor my conception of happiness. These
came from the Creator and exist within me as an individual prior to ANY claim
of a State upon them. Compulsion under this Constitution is antithetical to its
purposes, from the start. If there is not freedom NOT to participate then there is not freedom of choice, the very hallmark of freedom.

     Love of any
country cannot be in any way qualitatively equated with love of its government.
This is the problem facing our society today- which government’s propaganda
would choose to confine the rational thought of the individual to consider
otherwise. It’s said, “we only have our freedom because thousands died in
battle for it.” Bullshit! As the Declaration of Independence states quite
plainly, Liberty
is a self-evident and inherent right of the living, as life is, granted
self-evidently, by our Creator. (However or whatever you might conceive this to
be, be you Deist or Atheist.) And loss of liberty can only be justified under our constitution as taken- under the due
process of law.

     It really appears
that for the past seventy years or so, Americans have been fighting, not for their country, but for their government. It even appears now, that,
what they are fighting for isn’t the freedom Americans long knew (and took for
granted) but a freedom subject to the whims of what the government- or at the
least, the Executive Branch- says it is. This present president apparently only
studied the Constitution in order to learn what he ought to most effectively destroy of it- Amendments I, IV, and V
are particularly endangered under his acts and his policies, and defiance of
his programs is perhaps the only rational resistance one can offer. Certainly
the power to impeach him still resides within the Congress.

     But for all who
care to take offs with one party or the other in Congress, they would do well
to realize this Congress was elected, just as was this President. Adolf Hitler
was freely elected as well, and his laws approved, legally, by a duly elected
government. But just as Adolf Hitler’s laws led inexorably toward the loss of
freedom for the individual in his society and eventually transgressed the moral
imperatives of the international community, so this president’s national
security apparatus has come to abrogate the standards of the international
community- as well as his country’s own Constitution- in its overweening
surveillance of foreign leaders, its executions sans due process of innocent
civilians- both American and otherwise- its determination to overwhelm all
resistance to the creation of a worldwide surveillance sate- under the ultimate
accountability of No One- in the name of some Pax Americana. “American
exceptionalism” indeed appears to be a “figa
tu!” at every other nation on the face of this earth. And must have rights
to accuse it, as I see fit, to dissent from its departures from justice and
international law, and insist on accountability of its leaders to its people. If I must love my country, then I must also despise the actions and policy of my
government.

     The notion,
propounded in the John Kennedy inaugural address, “ask not what your country
can do for you, but what you can bla bla bla bla bla…” is nothing more nor less
than bruiting a prescription for servitude and sheepledom. Since that speech
Americans have been lulled into believing that fighting in the armed forces
means fighting for their country. Its meant as an invitation to the young to
join in as willing cannon fodder, for the middle aged to act as slaves to a
govern god, and the elderly to give their last breaths in defense of a fortress
built of cannonballs. High time it is for Americans to demand of their government to restore the “inalienable rights”
which were enshrined in the first ten Amendments of the Constitution. If that
is too much to ask of this government then it, in and of itself, deserves to fall, of its own inability
to guarantee the survival of those rights once so cherished, now so ripely
despoiled.

     Now if that’s all
treason, then hang me, but I have now got plenty of company, and you have not
got the room in your jails to hold us all.


http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/2013/10/25/the-banal-justification-for-directing-the-us-surveillance-state-at-world-leaders/

http://www.alternet.org/world/scahill-will-global-war-terror-ever-end?paging=off&current_page=1#bookmark

http://antiwar.com/blog/2013/10/29/one-area-the-nsa-and-i-can-agree-obama-is-a-cowardly-if-shrewd-politician/


Being President of the United States means never having to say you're sorry:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/18/opinion/the-drone-that-killed-my-grandson.html?_r=0



You have been tuned to Grand Jatte, an independent and autonomous
syndication of Lucid Dream Music. Stay tuned for more exciting
verbal rambles and reductions...

If I Should Live So Long -- Excerpt from a Work In Progress (10/13)

    My name
is Julian Plectrum and I am but a fool in love, they tell me. I guess I should
begin by telling you about myself, but I am not that interesting, really. I
would prefer to tell you about my prized possession, Luisa, my lute, and how I
got her, for starters. Because I would not be who I am today, had I not had the
good fortune to have her placed in my hands, by a noble benefactor. And so I
shall tell you of how that happened, and what I have done with her. Luisa goes
wither I gambol, and all of my minstrelsy would be paltry, had I not her
advantage.

I was ten and four years of age, when it
happened. I had been spending a day swimming in the Dee. There was a group of
older lads up the stream a way, who were also swimming. It was a hot day in
July and there were many bluejays in the air as well as many blackbirds on the
banks. I floated in the river upon my back.

I heard a shout, a yell, what sounded most like
a cry of distress. As I looked toward the group of older boys,  I noticed one of them had gone under the
water, or was struggling with something in the water, and was not able to keep
his head up above it. He was crying for help, but his companions were doing
nothing but laughing, and his head would keep disappearing. It was as if he
were being held back by something deep in the water.

Since his friends were not helping, I came to
his aid.

As I reached him, he noted to me that he was
caught- his cloak, in which he swam, had been snagged by some sort of
tree-stump, and it was not possible for him to unravel the kink or to find the
spot on the cloak which was fast held. It was the manner in which he had been
swimming, and the direction, as well as the speed of the current, but he was
fighting to keep his nose out of water.

I told him to be quiet, since an open mouth
invites only more water inside, and he was silent.

I struggled with the cloak. The snag had
actually wrapped the cloak in such a way that a knot in his belt was the source
of his distress. This was, actually, easily remedied. But he was overjoyed when
I helped drag him from the water.

“I cannot really swim,” he told me.

“Why then do you seek refreshment in the
water?”

His companions had fallen silent at the
riverbank.

“Because- I must keep up- with them.”

He nodded in the direction of his companions,
who, falling back, now began to grab their other garments from the bank and
began to scatter, back in the direction of Chester, our large town and the fief
of the great Earl. Chester was where I was born, and have sometimes lived.
Nowadays I live in the forest, though, and go where I will. As I hoisted him
out and he flopped onto the bank, he thanked me, and told me his name (Stephen)
and said that he was the son of a traveling merchant, who was now gone on
another journey over to France. He wanted to thank me, somehow, in such a way
that would express much gratitude for saving his life. So he asked me to go
with him to the manor of his father.

This was a large home located still yet outside
the city, on many acres of pasture, with great expanse of wheat and rye and
oats, as well as many stock of sheep and also much fowl. There were also
apiaries and pens for bees and for geese, and there were many servants at the
manor. I wanted to wait outside at the door, but he bid me enter, so I
followed.

Inside the great home was like few places I
have seen. It was not like my father’s home, as that was but a two-room cottage
covered with a ceiling of straw, but that it had oaken beams for its roof,
great gables that extended all the way down so far as I could see, and many
hallways, and even more upper floors than one.

As I hesitated out at the door, he indicated
that I should follow, and told me that as his father was well away there was no
need my worrying over that I might be welcome there.

“I want to thank you so much for saving my
life,” Stephen told me again. “I can think of only one way to repay you, which
is to give you something of such value to me that it would never be thought nor
said that I do not regard you most fondly.”

At that point, I was flabbergasted, as he
placed in my hands Luisa.

“This is an instrument which my father  gave to me after his last visit to the Amiens
Fair. It comes from a land far south of the Spanish- indeed, they call it a
Moorish oud. In France it is called “l’oud” and so here, we call it the lute.
Do you know music?”

I told him, yes, indeed, I did know music, I
had studied music and the great works of Homer and the Lay of Arthur and Merlin
and that his gift would be most fondly appreciated. How much more, I could not
then say, but then, Luisa has now become my best friend of all, and as I said,
goeth with me everywhere.

“The trip he went on, he brought this back for
me, and he gave it to me as a trifle, perhaps. I can play it only some. It has strings
of gut in eight courses, as you see, but to get new ones you must go to Chester
and see Earnest on the street of Blodwyn and pay to have more. But they cost not more
than a ha’penny. These are all good as new, for I hardly play it.”

I told him much in the way of my thanks.

He bid me to stay for the meal of the evening.
The servants would wait on him, and myself as his guest, and I could eat my
fill of his father’s goose and the many fruits which would be brought to table.
This we did, and he told me more of his father’s line of trade.

 Like me,
he had lost his mother in the Plague- but mine was killed earlier, when I was
but four. His mother just died three years ago, when the Plague last came to
Cheshire but spared both my own father and myself. I saw many people laid
waste, and everone wondered just what anyone may had done to deserve this. It
was even said many great noblemen and their ladies had died. Somehow for my
father and myself that Pale Horseman passed us by. I still shudder to think of
the things we saw, and the carts piled full of the dead.

But anyway, Stephen told me of his father’s
work. He traveled across the Channel to Calais, to Belgium, to Amiens, and
Provence, gathering various bolts of fine cloth, which he sold to nobles and
rich persons both in Chester, and on his way to and fro. He often left on his
trips from the South country, travelling overland until coming to Penzance,
where he had friends who owned caravels, and which holds he would fill high
with these rolls of cloth, gathered from his travels in France and Belgium. He
would rent a cart to convey them back from Chester. Often he rode with a guard
he would hire, a man named Roger of Wirral, who lived in Chester, and would
sometime accompany him the entire journey. Stephen told me that he hoped to go
on his father’s journey next year. But he was expected back by mid spring, and
by then, the older man might have decided to remain in Chester. So it was
expected.

I thought of these places he described, in France
and Belgium. While they seemed far away, in many ways we lived under the same
economy. I do not like to spend a lot of time thinking about economy- I would
rather study the world of nature and the creatures and the plants which grow
about us. But for Stephen business and economy was his prime thought.

While Stephen had lost his mother recently, my
own mother was but a far memory. In fact for most of my life all I have known
for a family was my father. My father is just a crofter, and makes his money
selling the wool of our sheep, and working for the Earl sometimes in the
fields. In fact Stephen tells me that perhaps my father’s wool sometimes goes
with his own father down to the coast and to Europe! This was news to me, and
set us another reason for becoming friends.

I played a game of chess with him after we had
supped, and had our dessert of stewed cherries and pears. a servant brought us
wine, which was very pleasant, and I had a pair of henaps of that. But still, I
beat him at the chess game! For that, he was very gracious, and said, he would
work to learn the game better, and do me better next time for it.

Then he gave me another surprise- he said that
in the event of my having saved him from the river, he would grant me a boon in
the absence of his father- that so long as I lived, I would be able to journey
at my leisure on his father’s lands, which one day would become his. That I
would be welcome to enjoy the fish of the streams and the coneys I caught- and
take the firewood I wished form his forest- provided that I show a special seal
to the woodward. I was still only 14 and still bound like my father and older
brother to the fief of the Earl, but I had a great plan- I was going to leave
Cheshire and head to another city. Maybe to London, but now that he had mentioned
it, Penzance! If I might stay uncaught for a full year, I might return as a
freeman to Cheshire. If I could win money somehow (and the lute beside me might
well be my ticket!) I could purchase lands of my own- perhaps, right beside my
father’s! And that would do me better than my brother..

My brother, Thomas, was born three years afore
me. He actually was very lucky, our mother had borne twins, but neither lived,
three years before Thomas. So we were long hoped for. Only I am the
disappointing one. I showed my father I was bright, and full of talents, but he
only wanted me to work the crofts and the fields, lend the sheep a shearing,
and my heart has never been in that. My learning of Homer and of Aurthur and
Merlin, and of late, the recently buried great Bard Chaucer, has encouraged me
to think on new things, and of the Muses. Now it came to my hands, this wonderful
machine! I swore to Stephen that I would do him right by his gift, and learn
and master it, and that in a year I would return to Chester.

Stephen was disappointed, and told me, one of
the catches to his boon was that, I must return to help with the yearly
harvest, and so, my journey to Penzance must of needs end before that year.
However he promised he would help to keep me from the learning of the shire
Reeve in that event, and keep me hidden, and I would be at liberty on his
lands, in any case! I wondered how his father would feel about all that, but,
for the nonce, I had my work cut out for me. If I could travel south to
Penzance and thence return in time for the harvest, then indeed, I could
fulfill all my obligations.

And that was three years ago. I will tell more
of that journey, and of others, quite soon.

Before I left his manor that night, to sleep on
my own out under the open sky, he gave me the seal that was to be my signature
of liberty walking his lands, and also a cord, with which I might sling Luisa
over my shoulders as I traveled. I thanked him most graciously for all his
kindnesses, and felt I had done so little to deserve all this great new good,
but he demurred, and told me that his friendship and gifts were sincere, and
that I should never doubt of our friendship. On those things I pondered as I
headed for sleep, and when I woke in the morning with the birds a'singing by me,
I filled my heart and mind with new ideas.

When I took Luisa home to my father’s cottage,
he was well disturbed to find her sitting in my seat at his table. “How did
such a thing come into your hands?” he asked. He seemed incredulous that such
could befall me, but I told him. I suppose it was then a mistake I also
mentioned Stephen’s boon to him, for then he only thought of what I might to do
for his increase by it, and not my own. “And you shall be able to catch game
and to fish and to bring home firewood? This is much to praise!”

But then I found myself to argue with him, as
my older brother Simon had already the favor of my gaining father’s
inheritance, and I was to go into the world with nothing. I spoke sharply to
him, in such a fashion as that I meant for him to understand I was going to be
my own man, and sooner than later, that I would leave his lands and go to a
faraway city, to make my own life, but that I should return for each harvest,
for Stephen had my word of that.

“So you see, Father, that this new boon is for
me a means to my freedom and wellbeing! And I shall take leave of you, and this
house on the morrow and you and Simon will be all so much the better for the
loss of me!” Surely I spoke with anger and sharp tongue and at the time no regret,
for I knew that his not favoring me over Simon otherwise could mean I should
end up a conscript in the army of the Earl. And the Earl was at odds with the
new King Henry, and had been for some time, and it would surely be death to
join an army, for I have no patience for that type of toil, nor the stomach for
mayhem. Simon himself would be lucky that he would not end in the Earl’s army
either, if he were not careful, and not set out himself to learn a trade. Peace
would not be long in our lands because of the quarrel between the Earl, his
alliance with the Welsh, and with Percy of Northumberland, who marched to the
aid of Owain Glyndwr, who still rode roughshod and free in the marches, calling on
those who would to join him for a fight for free Wales.

All of that, added up in my decision, of
course, to leave for the south, and to go from Father’s house, that I need be
no longer a burden on he or Simon. And filling my pack with a number of
victuals off the pantry shelf, I set forth that very next day, walking the high
street south, south towards Penzance.




When I left Father’s cottage, I took a few
things along with me. Surely I looked quite burdened, but these were what they
were: the lute, of course, on its cord over my back. I even found that I could
play whilst I walked along, which made for more pleasure in my going. A
blanket, which I also wore rolled over my shoulder and within, one change of
clothing. A wineskin, over my other shoulder, in which I kept either water or
wine, or whatever I should come across for drink. In my pouch on my belt I kept
a few things: A knife, and a whetstone, a flint stone and magnifying lens, that
I should have fire in light or darkness, a folding spoon, a handful of extra
lute strings Stephen gave me as well, a comb, and two smaller bags: one for my
chess pieces and the other for my coins. I took all I had in that way, [some 16
shillings worth, all I had saved in my life up to that time, just less than one
mark.]

In this fashion I found by walking I might cover
one, to two leagues per day, keeping to the roads, and if I were lucky perhaps
before I had left Cheshire I should have avoided being caught by the reeve or
his men. That is, of course, how it happened, and I kept on my path, for
a week or two, until I came to Penzance. Before I reached Penzance though, I had
had many adventures and met many people. Some of them were good, and kind, and
invited me into their lodgings, where I found succor and a place to lie me
down. When I could not, I ate from fruit trees, and slept out in the
fields.  I would pay if I must for food,
when I hit a town, or for drink, but often as not if I came upon a tavern I
would be welcome, for where there are taverns there are carousings, and where
there is merriment or carousing, there must be music.

It was in this fashion I learned to master
Luisa: I knew my chords and I knew my notes, my breves and quavers. What I knew
not was how to slip my fingers round her neck most graciously and
expeditiously. This however, I forced myself to learn as I walked. The more I
played, the better I became. I also tuned her to a tone which I kept in my own
head, this would not be the intonation of the expert, I learned later, but just
an instinct I had. Nonetheless, it helped me to learn the frets and to work my
fingers well upon it.

The carousing that took place the night I
reached the tavern at Wroxeter was perhaps the worst of it. Without meaning to,
I nearly found myself robbed, by men who thought me miserable and oafish.

That however does not describe me or my mind.
These men thought to deceive me at my game of chess, for I set out the pieces
in the tavern on a board which was a tabletop. There is really no way one might
escheat at chess, save that, one might fain to move a piece while his opponent does
not look. But it is a bad chessman who does not know wither he left a piece.
One cannot then cheat at chess as one might at cards or dice, since there is
little honor and little to gain by such.

And I found them out, and they were ready to
strike me, but the taverner came to the table, and ousted them by the scruff of
their collar, and bid me to play on the lute, and I sang them the story of Robin
Hood and Friar Tuck, which earned me a trencher of stew and another tankard of
ale. This was most agreeable, and the taverner bid me to stay for several more
days, and at the end of that time I was weary to move on, and so I did.

Outside of Wroxeter I met a man traveling who
would tell me he was escaped of late from the dungeons at ­­Stafford Castle where
he had been shackled, for speaking against King Henry. He was to have been
pilloried, but somehow had managed to break his shackles (“These men of Staffordshire
do not know how to work iron so well. There was a flaw in the seam of one of
the links. I fairly broke it quite easily”) but to travel with him was
disagreeable, and I made some excuse, and went on alone.

It was after a month’s travel I made it to Penzance.
Being a port, it was full of sailors, and wherever sailors be, there are
carousings and merriment, and of course, there be music as well.

I made my way to the shop of a maker of
instruments where I might find more catgut strings. This man became a great
friend in my year in Penzance. His name was Clarence and his shop was located
in a most out of the way area, the southern harbor of Mousehole. He took me
aside and showed me the proper tuning for my lute, and gave me lessons of songs
and melodies. I soon developed my own presentation of these. Some have said I
am a great improviser, but I only am because I had to learn so much of what I
do on my own. While there are minstrels like John the Jester of Exeter, of whom
I have heard much talk, who are boring and uncouth, and farters, there are also
those like me who value cleanliness and honesty and virtue. This I represent as
my gift of music, that I keep this vision of Luisa and my muse on its true and
proper course beneath the Lord’s stars- I have no use for the scatological and
crude.

Yet I was forced in Penzance to earn my keep by
writing at least one bawd. This was my original adaptation of the tale of
Oddysseus and Penelope. Homer tells of her as the faithful beseiged woman who
fight off the temptation of conducting herself unseemly with any suitors, who
have made claim upon her as Oddysseus has been gone so many years, such as to
be dead. But this,she saith, was not so. 
In my version, however, she behaves much more like a common woman, and
welcomes in each suitor in his turn, and has her way with each. As such
Odysseus returns, to find himself a cuckold, and kills the suitors, one by one.
“What would you have expected me to do?” she asks at the end. This caused much
mirth and jollity with my hearers in the taverns, and soon I was being sought
after by more than one taverner, and paid a penny, even more, for a night of
song. In such a way I gathered much to my purse, and soon had many shillings to
speak of. Each night I slept with my head on the coin sack, with Luisa beside
me, her cord slung round me. In such a way 
I hoped to cheat the spirit of ill-fortune, and did so, week by week,
month by month. When autumn had come, I began to make my way in return to
Cheshire and the lands of Stephen’s father, that I would fulfill my pledge to
him and help in the harvest. The road back took less time, in fact, it seemed I
traveled at a much quicker pace than I had before, even with my purse so full.
Mayhaps it was the colder air that put a push in my step, but the further north
I came the colder it grew, and my blanket was loth to warm me in the fields.
Often now I awoke encrusted with dew, and only the honor of my oblige to
Stephen was cause for my travel.

Stephen welcomed me, and bid me out among the
others working in the wheat. He gave me leave to work with the gleaners and
winnowers- this was quite welcome, and honestly I was able to do him justice,
filling more than two bushels a day, and he paid me my eight-penny in wages just as he
would the others. I buried my purse in a spot secret and known but to myself,
deep in a wooded copse, beneath a tree with a squirrel hole. While some might
have just placed their sack in the hole itself, I had presence of mind to dig a
burrow of my own beneath the stump to secure it. When I returned on my next
journey back from Penzance I would yet find it there.

But this is to move ahead quickly too. The
quandary was how to keep myself from discovery by the reeve as the harvest
continued. Stephen had set me in a part of their manor barn apart from the
horses and sheep, where I could hide during hours not in the fields. He brought
me good foods from the manor and oft sat with me and shared good talk. He
wanted to know more of the carousing sailors of Penzance- he had been there,
but only on his journey with his father. In fact it was in such a manner of
being social that his father came upon us one of those nights, and demanded to
know who I was, and why food had gone missing from pantry and table, and why I
was hiding out, there in the barn.

“Father,” he said, “this is Julian, the son of Davis
the Crofter in Upton. He had saved my life from drowning last year. I told him in
favor of that I would grant him free leave on our lands in perpetua, and did
give him that fine lute, which I cannot play upon in any way. For such it was,
my other firends had fain to laugh at my distress, but Julian, a stranger, came
forth and freed me from a wood in the water, and kept me from being drownt.”

“But that is outrageous, that he should take of
our table and fields, yet! The son of a crofter?

Well I know Davis of Upton and his other son,
Simon, who works hard to bring the woolsacks for his father. Of this son I
never heard.”

I spoke up.

“Sir, my father is not so proud of me as he is
my brother Simon, who though he be more dutiful, it yet less clever than I.”

“And Julian is not taking from your table,
Father, he is helping with the harvest, and has pledged to do so en perpetua,
that our boon to him be fairly compensated.”





At hearing that, his father then smiled on me,
and leaned over to me, and said “I will help keep you safe, then. Such shame as
might come from my helping you will fall upon me as it may. For you have saved
Stephen’s life, and that to me is no small matter. Feel free to do as you
choose when on our lands... I feel this to be a good and fair reward. That the
reeve should not learn of you we must make our concern, but rest assured then
Julian Crofter, we are in your favor and debt.”

I said to him I am no longer called Julian
Crofter, but Julian Plectrum, for this was the name I had chosen, and now what
the men of Penzance called me, and he laughed.

“Then so be it. Penzance, eh? You have been
there and back?”

I said that I had, and that I planned to return
after the harvest.

“Then you shall come with us. We will leave
after harvest too, for I have more sacks to trade for bolts in France, and Stephen
will be coming along with me this time. You will ride with us. So be at ease.”

The next two weeks were very happy ones, and
all I did was take a care not to let many of the others working the wheat to
know my name or face. I made me a pole with which I might fish, using one of my
spare lute strings for a line, and a hook from the kitchen which Stephen gave
me. The stream that bordered their manor land was full of perch and trout,
which were good to eat, and these I cooked out in the barn where the
wheat-workers did not see. So long as I kept the fire safe and free from the
stock feed, Stephen’s father paid no mind. And the days flew past! So quickly
that, before I knew, the harvest had been all in and the wagons set with goods,
and we were traveling on our way back south, to the sea.




We rode in the back of the large cart as
Stephen’s father drove, two horses he did have which both were tall and
handsome and strong. Roger of Wirral made a stern companion and was not so much
friendly, but Stephen and I arranged the sacks of wool that we could each sit
upon one with room for our legs outstretched upon another if we chose, and we
rode in the center of the cart, such that none might see us from the road,
unless they should stand in the saddle to peer over its edge. And Roger of
Wirral could not make bother with us, so far back we were from the lead. I made
up many new songs of my own on this trip, mostly they were but melodies, but
they were all fine, and I strove to put within them all the gladness of my
heart at the sights passing around me- what birds, what trees, what wind, what
clouds! For the storms were now coming, and in just a month or two would be
Christmastide.

This time my journey took much less time, but a
fortnight, for it was aided by the strong horses. We passed three leagues and a
half each day, and never were we burdened by accosters. In the city of Wroxeter
where I had stayed before, we took abed at that same tavern, after I had played
some of these new songs, and both Stephen’s father and the taverner were quite
pleased, for I lent to each of them word of their fame and their honesty in
coin.

His father’s name was Richard, Richard of Westchester,
and he had been a freeman all his days himself. The lands he owned had been
passed down by his own father, and the villeins who worked them, such as I met
on the harvest-wain, were in thrall to the Earl more than to he. But each year
all took part in the haying and wheating, and he paid them all fair, and was
not quite like the Earl, in that the Earl took their work as his due, but he
paid a wage. He also gave them generous of food and drink, and on the feast of
Mary the Magdalene (which was my birthday) promised me the next year he would
feast me alone, myself. Lest I grow too proud of my associations with Richard
and Stephen, and took too much pride in their bounty, I resolved that I would
keep these things between us, and never speak of them, and return each year,
once I was free, for the birthday feast and the harvest and that I would labor
for them honestly. For many there are who pray feel that minstrels know not any
honest toil, such that their wealth grows but from their wits, not their hands.

On our trip Richard continued his most generous
ways with me, faring me well with bread, and with stew, and also tankard of my
favorite drink, which is perry. Along the way at times when weather was fair he
would halt the horses and wagon, and leave Stephen and I to fish, where we
might. These we would share with him and our manner of travel was leisurely but
measured. We came to Penzance on the 18th of October. I remember because it was
the Feast of Saint Luke. I have always liked the Gospel of Luke most and there is not an association in my mind with the
other apostles, who seem reluctant to be of forgiveness as they are sure of
their place by the Lord’s side.

    I
took Stephen with me to meet with Clarence of Mousehole. He was charmed by the
older youth with his fine speech and manner. Stephen garnered amongst all the
instruments hanging in the shop, looking for one which he might easily choose
to play upon. He bought him a small flute, of the type that blow straight
through the tube, and when he had it, we both went out on the streets ourselves
to make songs. We collected a number of ha’pennies and farthings, and this we
took to Richard, who pronounced us fine clever lads. I told Richard that I
would take me a room for lent someplace nearby, such that I could leave my
pouch and my lute and be of more assistance, as Stephen was called on, to move
the great number of woolsacks from the cart onto the drayage dock at the ship
they would be taking across to France. It took us the better part of a day to
move them all, but at say’s end, Richard again treated us to perry, ale, and
cider. But the combination of all three gave me a bellyache, and my head was
sore in the morning. When the ship sailed, the next day, and Stephen and
Richard were departing, I stood at the dock and waved farewell. It would be
another quarter year before I would see either again, and during that time, I
had to make do how I might with the winter of Mousehole and Penzance.




My little room was above a street full of
shops. There were always men coming and going with market carts, there was
always a stray cat in need of milk, there was always a cry in the street of the
mussel woman and the fishmonger. Here, life was not expensive to live, but one
must be careful. When I went out to the street to busk, I needed to watch my
cap, for there were rogues who would fain to rob me of my earnings when my back
might be turned. They often sat by the side as I played, offering their weak
comments on my playing. Sometimes I would get tired of them, and brush them
aside, calling them drunkards and layabouts, for that they were. I had to be
careful however- sometimes they would follow me to a tavern, thinking to steal
my lute, or to talk me into standing a round of ale on their behalf, but I said
I only would drink with friends, and they were as strange to me as none by
Adam.

At the end of the first winter week I made a
new friend, Ranulf, who was a piper. He played a bagpipe made of cloth and
skin, with several pipes and a chanter, and he played in what he called the
Breton style, of the northern French coast. There were many songs which he
taught to me, the melodies, at least, for he could not sing while he blew the
pipes, but he knew many. These if I could recall so many I turned into my
plainsong, without a lyric, and performed in the taverns when they were open to
me. Some nights I would be sent early on my way, being so young, but then there
were also taverners who enjoyed my playing so much that they would set me at a
high table with a good meal, and all the perry or ale I might regard for
myself, if I would but play all night for the publicans. Sometimes they would
offer in a penny as well, and again, the more pennies I earned, the more I
saved them, until the pouch in my little room where I kept my sleep was fat
with silver.

Ranulf came from France, and as such, spoke
both his tongue and mine. Where we could communicate best was on our
instruments, where speech was not needed. I would accompany him, or he I, and
in so doing, we reckoned ourselves to be more profitable by two than we were
each by one. The best night of all came when we had been heard by a local noble
Sir Anselm at the Bracken Eel, a dank tavern of the Penzance dock;  and he took us aside that we should spent the
Christmastide at his manor, which was at the far north end of Penzance, and
entertain all the fine knights and ladies who would make their way to his table
fair.  These knights were all loyal to King
Henry of Bolingbroke, and I made it a secret that my own loyalty would be to
the Earl of Chester, as I also wanted no one to know I was keeping my way
alone, that the Shire Reeve of Chester should not come to know my leaving
Cheshire. Were I to be found out I might be dragged back in chains and irons,
and forced into vassalage. So therefore I was no longer Julian Crofter of
Chestershire but Julian Plectrum, of the country of Bristol,  my name I took from the bright, flat
greenstone which Clarence of Mousehole gave me for my plucking the strings of
Luisa. Green is my lucky color, and happy were the days and nights we spent at
the hall of Sir Anselm.


















You have been tuned to Grand Jatte, an independent and autonomous
syndication of Lucid Dream Music. Stay tuned for more exciting
verbal rambles and reductions...