Lapvona(19)

*

Villiam was asleep in his four-post bed. He dreamt that the bed was made of human flesh, a living thing of fat and soft baby skin. He was under the covers, caressing his fine silk sheets. He had never known injury or hunger, yet he was rawboned and his body often hurt from its own frailty against the cushioned chair or the fine velvet settle. Bed was the only softness that gave his body peace. He was a glutton, ate for an entire family, stuffed himself at every meal and in between. But he was never full and had barely an inch of flesh on his bones. He didn’t take walks or do much but sit and be entertained by whoever was at his service on a given day.

He had spent the night before eating and drinking in his room with his accountant, Erno, and his head guardsman, Klarek. They were supposed to discuss the reallocation of funds for new tariffs paid to Kaprov. Ivan, Villiam’s brother-in-law, had raised duties and now Villiam had to pay more for his guards to pass through his fiefdom on the way to the sea to sell Lapvona’s crops and livestock. There wasn’t enough money in the coffers to make up the difference; the lord had spent too much that winter on furs and wine.

‘Next month, tell the villagers that the spring harvest was intercepted by bandits and take all the money from the sales at the port,’ he said. ‘Use what you must to pay off Ivan, and bring the rest back to me.’ Erno nodded and left. Erno and Klarek, like all the northerners, complied with Villiam’s requests without reserve. There was something in their temperament that made them especially well suited to amoral servitude. Villiam never tried to hide his cruelty or silliness around them. This was what saved him from fear of God’s judgment. His life was plain for all to see, though not all did see it. No villager was allowed past the drawbridge at the manor. Most had never even seen Villiam. The guards carried out any punitive action the lord directed if a family had failed to pay its taxes or had voiced some grievance to the collector or priest. Oftentimes punishment consisted of a little poison in the family’s well, just enough to make the wife and children sick for a week. The priest would say that God punished those who didn’t uphold their responsibilities as citizens. This was the way Villiam governed. Surreptitiously.

Villiam had spent the rest of the evening asking Klarek over and over to do the comic trick of crossing his eyes and sticking out his tongue. Each time, Villiam laughed so hard that the wine spurted from his nose, and he’d need a long moment to recover before he’d ask Klarek to do it again. They stayed up until dawn just horsing around. The night had been no different from most nights. He never spent time horsing around with his wife. He despised Dibra, in fact. She was a bore and a nuisance. Marrying her, his parents had said, would be good for business. Of course, like so many other things, they had been sorely mistaken. ‘Her brother, Ivan, is trying to ruin my life,’ he told Klarek. Klarek understood this and pretended to pity him. ‘You poor man,’ he’d say every time the wine spurted out of Villiam’s nose. Servants came in now and then to tend the fire—it was cold in the stone manor even in the spring—and to mop up whatever Villiam had spilt and refill his cup and bring a new plate of food. Villiam’s tongue was wide and thin, more like a bit of cloth than a muscle. When he chewed, the taste of food struck him powerfully and immediately and then disappeared. Sometimes food got stuck in his throat and he’d choke and cough, ringing his bell for a servant to come in and slap him on his back. More than once, someone had to reach into his throat to pull out a chicken bone or a peach pit. The man had no sense about what to swallow.

Villiam believed that his appetite was nothing but a physical symptom of his greatness. He needed more because he required more, because he deserved more, because he was more. Food was not the only thing that he could not get enough of. He needed company at every moment of the day. His team of servants was trained to be placid and witty. Villiam was not the kind of lord to care much about female beauty. The servant girls all cut their blond hair short and wore caps. No, Villiam wanted to be entertained, cajoled, mystified. He often had visitors to the manor, people from as far as Iskria and Torqix, who did magic tricks like pulling quail out of jewelry boxes or smoking intoxicating herbs and exhaling apparitions, or so they said. Villiam’s favorite daily activity was to watch people do impressions of him. This was a requirement of the servants, to fill any moment of idleness, and so they practiced as they cooked and cleaned, working continuously to come up with language and gestures, the best new joke about Villiam’s character and physical countenance. It was not that Villiam enjoyed humiliation, but that he enjoyed the humiliation of others. Father Barnabas supported him unquestioningly, did impressions, sang songs, told stories, anything to make Villiam laugh or cry. And Villiam did cry. He was not a stony lord. He was sensitive, so much so that a sad tale could throw the whole estate under the shadow of Villiam’s sorrow. Everyone would work tirelessly to cheer him up. When Villiam suffered from fear or insecurity, the priest summoned nuns from the convent at the top of the hill to demonstrate miracles.

Villiam’s days had a casual discipline to them. He woke in time for lunch—a feast—then played games all afternoon, barely disturbed by an occasional meeting with Erno or Klarek. In the evenings, he was bathed and dressed for dinner. He liked to look good. Yesterday he had taken a tour of the grounds by carriage. Father Barnabas came along so they could have a private chat about the state of the village. Villiam was fond of the priest. Father Barnabas had a room at the manor and stayed there most nights. The two men often gossiped about what the priest had heard in his Saturday confessional. Yesterday, on the carriage excursion, Father Barnabas had said that the families of those slain by the Easter bandits were refusing to work in the fields until the next Sabbath. Luka, the horseman, could hear them over the clomp of the hooves.