He kept remembering a specific day, the one day she turned to leave him and looked back, not wanting to. And that last time he saw her, her clinging to him like that. On that day, the day he kept remembering, he told Ajda, "You know, I have all of these things. I have money and I eat well every night. I have power. I am in want of nothing, except, perhaps, a better way with words. And yet when I look at you, I am so small, and I have nothing. What I do have, I would give up, if such an exchange were possible. And so I would have less than nothing. I don't think I've actually loved anything. I've been playing pretend like a little boy, unprepared for what it would be like. And now that it's here, it's this total emptiness, this pursuit of emptiness. It's destroyed me. Whatever I give is nothing, whatever I want to give is inexhaustable. I don't know what to do. Why is it like this?" He was crying when he said these things. When he said things like that, it was usually because he wanted something from her, that he wanted her to feel guilty, or to need him. But he had no other aims that day. The words merely came to him and perhaps that's why he was crying. Two lone tears running down his cheeks.
He didn't want to be on that filthy storeroom floor with her anymore, hiding from the world. He wanted to be in his bed, wanted to walk outside with her in his arms. He wanted to go riding with her, wanted to look at the wind passing over the wheat from the tower, wanted to sit next to her at dinner, and dance with her after. He could give her no dignity without losing some himself, and he would never be willing to lose that which came to him at the great expense of his forefathers. The exchange he spoke of was impossible - even if he gave her what he wanted, no one else would accept it, and neither would she. They were stuck in this sad place, this hopeless situation, with him still so full of vain hope. And so he sat beside her, dabbing two tears away with his wrists. And she looked at him intently. She brushed his hair away from his face with a certain curiosity, like that of a child, peering into his eyes. Then she kissed him softly, sweetly. She wrapped her arms around him, nestled her face in his shoulder. "Oh, Sigismund," she murmured, in a mothering way. It was the only time she ever said his name. And he heard that murmur over and over, felt that same soft kiss. Looked into her eyes, eyes that would never again see life in them. For a long time, he wept.
Years had passed since he saw her with any regularity, and yet this black grief, heavy as an anvil. When the lord was alive, there wasn’t so much to do, wasn’t so much for which he was responsible. Weren’t so many eyes on him. Nobody knew about the boy, but now he would have to tell his betters. And his wife. And now he would have to reveal himself to the boy, who probably is none the wiser. Don’t I owe Ajda that? After all I took from her? Took from her? His stomach churned. What language. All this crying, and why? Is it not now over? Are you not free? Now that she’s gone, you can put yourself back together, stand a little taller. No, he thought, in contradiction to himself. How can you believe such things? As though she were nothing. But wasn’t she? To everyone else?
And the boy, his boy…Hilda was thirty-five now and in the throes of a woman’s great burning up, sweating her way through all the linen in the world, the possibility of her having a child of her own, over. After all the things Sigismund had done to Ajda, things which he could bury within himself when she was still alive because there existed still more time, more time in which she could come to love him and all would be forgiven…no, he owed her this. It would be a black mark on his honor if he didn’t take the boy in. This was the only way he could be, or rather feel, forgiven, the only way he could forgive himself.
And so, upon his return, Sigismund asked permission of his lady to make his son’s existence known and to have him trained in weapons and courtliness, permission which was granted. The news that Sigismund had borne a son, if only a bastard, delighted Benedicta – who herself was no stranger to witnessing other men’s petty dalliances -- as the steward had been so helpful to her in widowhood. Besides, a bastard was very useful in its own right. Not only could a bastard serve a high (and dangerous) position, one didn’t have to marry him off and, if he died, he was only a bastard.
Sigismund’s conversation with his wife proved less successful. No amount of sweet words and displays of contrition appeased her. The boy was forbidden from living with them, and Hilda told him she was content to never lay eyes on him. He can walk here from the hovel he came from, she said. Let him cross that distance every day, let all the other children, the men and their women, see exactly where that child comes from and where he belongs. Let him get his little training, if he even can, savage as he is, and then while the other boys go home to their houses in town, he will walk back out into the fields where he will eat pottage and sleep on the ground and shit in a hole, which is all he knows and all he should ever know. His world and ours will see him for what he is, which is a bastard. Beseech me this, Sigismund, she screamed through tears. Beseech me this. He hated that word, beseech. He beseeched her.
The next day, Sigismund had Siegfried brought up to the courtyard. A man on a horse arrived at Bodin's house first thing in the morning. A succinct knock. Without dismounting, the man said, "I'm here for the boy."
Heavy-hearted, Bodin called for his nephew, who had buried himself under the blankets, just like on that day when his mother was called up from the castle. He pretended to be dead. And for a moment all was quiet. Then, two hands on his back, the blankets being torn off, hands in his hair. Not his uncle's hands. The man's hands. Siegfried screamed. He thrashed and writhed and kicked. Tried to bite but the man was wearing a gambeson. The man had no patience. He slammed the boy into the wall, which shook with the force of the blow. Blood trickled down Siegfried's nose, and, dizzy, he stopped resisting, began to cry to his uncle for help. But his uncle looked on, pain in his eyes, powerless. The man pulled Siegfried with him into the saddle, and laughed.
"A glance at you, and I thought, no, no way is this Sigismund's son. But now?"
"Where are you taking me?" The boy demanded, through his tears.
"To see your father," said the man, spurring his horse. "You'll go back after. But you will be walking, sorry to say. Try to remember where you're going."
In the castle courtyard, for the first time, father and son acknowledged, in truth, one another. Scoundrel, thought Siegfried, but he knew better than to say it. The steward. Siegfried searched his face looking for his own features, but mostly he wanted to cry. He wanted his mother. This first test of his bravery and it was already febrile. If the steward could do such things to his mother, a woman, what would he do to him? But the sight of Siegfried struck Sigismund. The boy looked so much like his mother. Those same, bright eyes. An identical defiance. He didn't know what to say. He reached out to touch the boy, but he flinched, a look of hatred on his face, and Sigismund stopped. It hurt him, that look. As though it came from Ajda.
"Do you know German?" he asked.
"Only a little," said Siegfried. "You know, Steward's German."
Sigismund bristled. "Well, you will learn quickly, you are still very young. At any rate, I am here to tell you that, in the morning, you will come up to the courtyard and will receive training. You are a little old; the other boys have a year on you, but I can see that you are strong from work and tall for your age."
"And what if I don't want to train?" Siegfried protested. "What if I like my life as it is?" He would rather God strike him down than thank this man.
Sigismund frowned. "You are still my son, whether you like it or not. You will come tomorrow or someone will bring you. Do not disappoint me."
Siegfried tilted his head and stared at him, pretending not to understand.
Every young boy dreams of adventure and triumph, the world won by a sword. Siegfried, in his necessary and defensive loyalty towards his way of life, liked to imagine himself different. It was easier not to acknowledge the possibility of being the one on the horse until, one day, the other boys no longer wanted to play with sticks and crowns made of flowers and everyone accepted their fate in the same way Siegfried, precocious as he was, accepted his. And yet, when he used to tie sheaves of wheat at the end of the harvest, his uncle always berated him for being distracted when a band of armed men passed by. Glittering under the sun, flags billowing in the wind. The sight brought a mixture of fear and envy. Siegfried’s lot had always been on the receiving end of the sword. Never the ones to cut down the enemy, but the ones the enemy torched in retribution. Producers, collateral.Pettau, despite its rurality, received plenty of people and things, for the old Roman road from Hungary to Cilli all the way to Aquileia, passed through, as did the road from Graz to Angram, and with it merchants, soldiers, dignitaries; all the traffic of far-flung empire. The constant skirmishes at the border had interrupted trade from the East, but owing to the uneasy truce upon the lord’s death, more exotic finery began to make its way through. Cavalcades of cloth peddlers, spice merchants, men returning from the Holy Land, musicians who had already visited the courts of the Hungarians… In passing, the boy saw these things. Hoofbeats on stone-paved roads, the jangling of armor. Ministerial coats of arms. The Pettau escutcheon, spiky and full of holes.
There were so many types of people he’d already discovered in the first few days of being allowed to cross the Roman bridge. It was a long, grueling walk. He began at dawn, sometimes even before the rooster crowed. That first day, the journey was made harder because of the fear in his heart, the apprehension, the constant looking backwards. A boy walking alone amidst the grasses, wheat-stalk in his mouth just to keep it tame. The castle far away, getting closer and closer, gradually, at the cost of his feet, his tattered shoes. By the time he reached the hill, his shirt was soaked. But once he got there, once he crossed the bridge made out of that same pale, sand-colored stone as the castle, the town always rejuvenated him. He almost resented the wonder it aroused in him. In the town alone existed things Siegfried had only heard about in passing: stone houses and stonemasons, a towering, scaffolded, unfinished church, smithies, barber-surgeons, tailors and dressmakers, bakers, an apothecary, all wrapped around the shallow base of the castle hill, uncoiling along the Drava river. Sure, in the village nearest him there was a small chapel, a blacksmith and a farrier, but every man was expected to know how to sharpen a knife, cut open a pig, bake his own bread, shoe his own horse.
And now, here the boy stood, after making his way up gnarled, knobby cobblestones, in the courtyard of the castle. From the interior colonnades, guards and castle people, rich people – who knew what they did or who they were – loitered about and watched the training. Servants passed in and out of the doors to the great hall and the kitchen, disappeared into a dark coil of stairs. Men chatted, polished their swords. The town itself felt exotic to Siegfried, but the castle? A whole other world in frisson with his own. So close, yet profoundly inaccessible. When he asked his uncle once, what such a world could be like, his uncle glowered at him. You are lucky God favors those who reap wheat far more than those who make war.
In those days, the marshal of Pettau was Ermenrich, who around that time would’ve been thirty or so, though his hair had grayed early and his wiry beard gave him a rather leonine appearance. As an instructor, he was firm and intolerant of laziness; concise and not forthcoming with praise, even for his own son Walther, who was Siegfried’s age. The other boys, sons of the guards and garrison men, all arrived together in one tight-knit unit, having known one another since birth. The introduction of Siegfried to such a group was not taken well. Sigismund's son, who they had somehow never seen before, though they knew and feared Sigismund. On the very first day, they taunted him, spoke virulently behind his back, and held nothing back in terms of vitriol. Little did they know that their taunts of bastard, bastard, were nothing new to him just because they were shouted in a different language. He held these children in less regard than the peasant sons who spit on him. So much for the alleged good bearing of their fathers. To be insulted by them came, in part, as a compliment. And, they were weaker. They feared their fathers too much. Names? Thought Siegfried. If you knew about the pig's blood...
On the first day and all the days after, Ermenrich gave the boys each a wooden sword. To Siegfried, he gave a quilted gambeson and told him to put it on. All the other boys already had one. It was stiff and hot in the summer weather, but Siegfried knew better than to complain. When the marshal spoke, everyone obeyed him instantly, whether out of fear or respect, Siegfried couldn’t tell. A sword, even a wooden one, made the boy shudder. It was one thing to play with sticks in the grass, another to hold a proxy for a weapon. The people in the village weren't allowed to have anything of the sort, not in the house. To the other boys, the swords were tools of play. They’d been around swords all their lives, as had their fathers. But for the first time, Siegfried had been given an instrument of power, and even in his childhood, he understood this. He looked at it. The "blade" was chipped.
Siegfried’s stolnikova nemščina was of little use to him here. Helpless, he listened to words he didn’t understand. For a long time, he watched as the marshal shouted out a word, and in response to that word, the boys assumed certain positions. Sword at rest. Sprightly, leg extended, sword in line. Sword brought up to ear height. Two hands. Always two hands. Step, parry. Step. Over and over. Repetition made learning easier. A few paces away from the others, he imitated. Ermenrich often walked over to Siegfried, adjusted his form. Moved his hands on the hilt, adjusted his hips to better center him, made him step again and again, which brought pink shame to the boy’s face. Was it really so hard to step? Other boys began practicing their moves, combining them, and then trying them against one another, but Ermenrich stayed with Siegfried. The marshal offered him no reassurance. When satisfied, he merely made Siegfried practice something else. The whole thing felt humiliating. All these little tricks. Did men not naturally come by the sword? Didn’t they throw their whole weight into it hoping that God would sort it out?
Months passed like this. The grueling pre-dawn walk to and from the fields after which he was already exhausted, the derision of his peers, the countless drills, the terrible language that, in his desperation, he’d tried to pick up further by helping a German neighbor’s daughters carry water from the creek, which only exhausted him further, the seeping coldness of his family at dinnertime, waking up sore from sleeping on rushes to do it all again. And that was before the harvest. The walk, the early afternoon of training, the return, then the fields, the same fields as always. Two lives in one. He begged, often, to be spared from something, anything. He tried to tell Ermenrich about the harvest, that he had to work. But Ermenrich merely said, "After I am done here, what do you think I do? Lay about?" He tried to appeal to his uncle, who said, meaner than he'd ever been, "What, is your mother's son too good for fieldwork?" The only blessing was, once the other children in the village found out that Siegfried was going to the castle to learn how to fight, they began to fear him. The worst they could do was snipe from afar, "Traitor, traitor, bastard, traitor." There was no winning anywhere. That same sense of not-right-ness. But this time, instead of crying to his mother, pursuing her love, Siegfried became withdrawn. There was no mother, there was no love, there were only days, long, continuing, accumulative.
The only blessing was that the slowness of the training helped Siegfried learn German. Ermenrich spoke slowly, deliberately to him, expressionlessly. Sometimes Siegfried became so frustrated he fought back tears. It upset him that the marshal thought he was stupid. The marshal, even in his coldness, was someone whose approval he wanted. Siegfried understood that his aunt and uncle's love for him had dwindled and was perhaps unrecoverable, and this caused him profound grief, grief he didn't believe in. He insisted on being the same towards them, as though holding up a mirror in which they would finally see the error of their ways. When they didn't he blamed himself - the same, familiar pattern, but less and less so. He worked. Everything would only ever take more work. But Ermenrich, who valued skill, could be won over, and perhaps if he tried hard enough, kindness would follow, desperately wanted kindness. When, owing to his youth, one day he had a breakthrough with German, it came to Siegfried as an act of God. After hearing it for so long, the language, by some mechanism, began to make sense. It would take longer for him to find equivalents for Slavic words, but attaching words to meanings, along with imitation, got him further than anyone expected. By the year’s end, he found himself having decent conversations, could finally join with the other boys and no longer received special instruction. Unfortunately, paradoxically, this only made them hate Siegfried more.
The boys were a nameless mass to him, a mob. Only Walther had a name, and Walther stayed close to his father, choosing not to get involved because he was wise. Ermenrich didn't tolerate when the boys wasted their energy beating on each other, which enforced a specific type of peace. Training was strict and required honor. Honor, an abstract concept that was flexible outside of training. But if anyone caught Siegfried alone, it almost certainly entailed him being hit or spat on. And when the boys were all together, no one talked to Siegfried. They pretended he wasn’t there, which, in its own way, was a blessing. Siegfried found it curious. Boys of his own status hated him because despite being born better, he insisted on behaving as though he was the same as them, and the boys of higher status hated him because he was born lower and insisted on behaving as a child of his status ought to. When you are half one thing and half another, you are, figured Siegfried, so often nothing at all. You walked a boundary other people had to obey.
No matter what the other boys did, Siegfried remained patient. Still besotted by grief, every day he asked himself: what would my mother say? What would my mother think? What would she do? You have gifts, Siegfried. Our reward will come in the Kingdom of Heaven. Bastard or not, he thought, I have honor, and in terms of honor, I am above these people who cling to their birthnames like trees in a storm. I will not, ever, show them weakness. And he did not. Ermenrich, who possessed a keen eye for disposition, noticed such resolve and began to watch the boy closely. Sigismund's son wasn’t immediately talented, no. In fact the marshal wondered whether he was dumb as a donkey. He owed this favor to Sigismund after all their years in combat together. Sigismund, who was like an older brother to him in his own training. At first, working with Siegfried really did feel like an obligation. A chore. It slowed down the training of others. But once the boy began to grasp the language, he improved rapidly. Soon, it was as though he woke up one day a different child. His father’s son.
We’ve really turned out differently, you and I, Sigismund, thought Ermenrich, when the two practiced their own sparring on a Thursday afternoon. When we were small, you were always so impatient. Greedy, even. You couldn’t stand the mildest impediment. And you knew exactly how much the whole world was worth and how much of it you were owed. You’re still like that. If you weren’t so clever, someone would’ve killed you by now. You knew it yourself. You always laughed at it, the way you were. Nothing could contain you or placate you. But now you are getting older. You’re slower. Me too, but less.
"You’re dragging your sword, Sigismund," shouted the marshal.
The two stopped. Sigismund took off his left gauntlet and shook out his arm. He wiped the coif of mail from his forehead to give his head some air.
"It’s this same goddamn elbow. Rings like a bell every time I get a parry in."
"Soak it in hot water. I know you hate it when I give you advice."
"Yes, well."
The two men bowed and sheathed their swords.
"How is my son?" Asked Sigismund, trying and failing to be nonchalant.
"I was wondering when you would ask."
"And?"
"He was abysmally slow at first. And you doomed him to a life where other boys feel empowered to torture him. He holds his own, you know. He has dignity. From whence, I don’t know." They laughed. "Oh, perhaps I do. But it’s arrogance on you, Sigismund, and dignity on him because he was born with less."
"And now?"
"Now that he speaks enough German, he holds his own and is very perceptive. I can feel him thinking. You know, some boys see the training sets as hopelessly disjointed parts and take years to assemble them into coherent movement. But the boy already sees things as they relate to another. He would benefit from watching grown men and older boys fight. And he’s always exhausted from his trips to and from the fields."
"My hands are bound, Ermenrich, on that count."
"I understand, my friend," said Ermenrich, "but mine aren’t."
