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1620 had been an absolute joke of a year.
But that was okay. Robin loved to play his part as jester.
First there was the threat of war, knocking on their doors, soldiers with no name and barely faces insisting that every able-bodied man in town come with them. The Red-Eyed Village War, they called it, and Robin could only stare as his struggling father was dragged away, having to be pulled apart from his son by force of three men. Robin didn't mind the quiet of the house, didn't mind it when it was just him and his toys, little shoddy figures carved from wood and formed from clay by his dad's shaky but loving hand when his mother had died so many years ago before she had a chance to craft him something better. Robin didn’t mind dark nights under scratchy wool blankets because he could think up stories and jokes to tell the air. He’d always wanted to be a jester.
The mayor, in the end, was the one to take care of him when nobody else volunteered. Jack had the farm to take care of, and Bob had construction work to complete, always another house, another meeting place, another jail cell to build, and Miles was sent off to fight in the war as well, leaving a too-full cattle farm behind, so it was Mayor Jim and Helga who got saddled with the orphan when the chips were down. And they were nice enough. At least the mayor never beat him, only his wife. She fought back, acted out, stayed the night with anyone who asked. Robin learned every naughty word he knew from Helga - she was a strange one like that. And she liked his jokes. Helga was the first audience to ever appreciate Robin’s jokes, applauding his melodrama and lauding his puns, promising he could make the king laugh if he were before him.
And then his father came home, wounded, sent to recover and then back to the fight. Robin wasn’t scared when he saw his father limping, the way his toes curled when something banged shut in the fields or the way his eyes blew wide open at night even as he slept through fitful nightmares that sometimes left him screaming. He wasn’t scared because Robin had learned to be a doctor, learned to bandage little wounds and scrapes, learned to apply the right herbs to kill infections, learned the right foods to feed for balanced humours, although it was a dying theory, anything he could to keep his dad alive and laughing. Robin helped his dad as best he could for those nights when all hope seemed lost, and then he was better, and for a few glorious days they played together, and his dad even listened to his jokes, politely agreeing with his talent as all fathers would their sons’ passions.
And then the soldiers came again, and this time his dad went quietly, and he never came back.
The others in the town, the grown-ups, would come to Mayor Jimmy when they thought Robin couldn’t hear, or couldn’t understand, even if he was nine already and knew perfectly well what they were talking about. Nobody needs orphans. They just use up our resources. We’d be better off without him taking up space in this town. They were mad, he decided, crying into scratchy wool blankets, or maybe they were joking. Nobody would kill a child.
Second there was the threat of plague, a miasma sweeping the country, messenger boys bearing scrolls from royal sources that told the town to isolate, to keep themselves locked down, no visiting other towns and no socialising beyond the necessary. But Robin had just turned ten, they told him, and a boy needs company in formative years like these. So they tended, more days than not, Mayor Jimmy busy with formalities and protecting his townsfolk, to leave him with the veteran whose name nobody knew, the corpse.
He’d come home with the half-dead soldiers at the end of the war already rotting, one eye gone and the other fast on its way out, blind and missing fingers and toes and teeth. The rest of the town gave him no mind, because he was one of those hybrid creatures that you knew existed but rarely met, the only one Robin had ever known. His tail still waved when he was excited and Robin liked to tease it on his happier days with the Corpse, the days he could still pretend to be an innocent child. The man spoke gravelly and low, soothed Robin with bedtime stories, encouraged him to follow his dreams, because a year like this with war and plague could only lead to better years to come, and when he grew up Robin could live out those years in the way the Corpse never could, only a soldier, hated by his ranks, half-dead and rotting, incomplete. Robin’s jokes made his days brighter, he said.
Third there was the threat of famine - blight, snatching the potato plants in the middle of the night and swapping them for dead roots and black potatoes by morning. The mayor, even busier, caught up by the need to find food in a year of war and plague and famine, instructed everybody to keep their diets low. The Corpse gave Robin most of his meals - he was a growing boy. Miles and his cattle made some necessary culls to the herd in order to keep everyone from starving. The steak connoisseur could get by on thinner cuts for a while if it meant the town stayed alive.
Whispers in the night. Some might turn to cannibalism. Not believed. You’d have to be mad or joking.
Until Robin woke up one morning, alone under scratchy wool blankets, and made his way to the well in the middle of town to find out that wise old Cornelius was dead.
Surely not, was his first thought. They’re joking. All a joke. It must be. Cornelius? The weird man who dressed all in green and spoke as if he knew of lives beyond this one, of dreams beyond their comprehension? The silly old man who used to yell that the end times were before them and all they could do was wait for death?
The strange thing, though, was that they’d found his head alone. The rest of his body was somewhere unknown. He’d been put to death with an axe, and the body had been used for…
Robin didn’t want to think about it. So he’d be the jester tonight. He always had been, and who better than a grieving town to bear witness to some comedy? He didn’t quite understand the gravity of it all, he knew. Death was beyond children.
Nobody laughed at his comments round the fire, so he stayed quiet. He watched as everybody argued and bickered and fought and blamed. Miles, it must have been, driven mad by the strain, and he’d always harboured a strange hatred for the old man. Or the Mayor, stretched too thin, desperate to cull the population like he’d ordered Miles to cull the herd, desperate to keep his townsfolk alive by killing the oldest and least useful of them. Or the Corpse - Cornelius lived with him in the makeshift hospice, seeing as he’d finally lost the use of that second eye. They made an invalid life together on the edge of their little cul-de-sac. Well, now, he supposed, they didn’t, because Cornelius was dead, and the Corpse was… accused? It was ridiculous. They called his blindness an act. They jeered, burning their hands on the fire to prove their innocence, laughing at the half-dead, rotten man who couldn’t even see where to hold his. They suggested he be put to death for a crime he hadn’t even seen take place.
Helga kept her eyes on Robin as the shouts of able men raged around them. The Mayor declared a state of emergency - everyone was to sleep alone in their houses tonight, and in the morning they’d decide if the Corpse would face punishment.
(A voice, high and purple and inescapable, whispered into the minds of men that 60% of the watching eyes blamed Robin.)
The next day was cold. Robin felt a little bit out of his body walking to the well to fetch the day’s water for him and his blind Corpse friend, his friend who was half dead and rotting and now on death row for a crime he hadn’t even seen take place, it was an absolute joke. Everyone was there again. Muttering accusations under their breath, inventing elaborate deductions as to why it might be Miles or Jimmy or maybe even Helga, the last suspect for her frailty but still a possibility. Everybody knew about the axe that hung on the wall of the mayor’s house. It could have been used and cleaned and replaced in the night.
What a joke. A man’s head had been taken off and all they could think about was blame. They needed to band together, needed lightness in this time of war and plague and famine.
In the end, the votes of the townsfolk called for the Corpse’s death. They’d all wanted him gone anyway, Robin knew - a disabled veteran, half dead and rotting, was no use to the town and in this time of war and plague and famine he became only a hindrance. He accepted his fate with grace, guided into the cell by a stoic Miles and a disbelieving Robin, still a little sure that it had to be a joke, it must be, you’d have to be mad or joking to have a man killed for a crime he hadn’t even seen take place. He watched, morbidly fascinated, as the Corpse choked on poison, hands and insides burning, and slowly turned to ash on the floor of the jail cell. Burnt for a crime he hadn’t even seen take place. It was a joke.
It was hard to believe, in the days that followed, that his friend was gone. Robin kept his head low and his voice quiet, barely even speaking, because he’d gotten so used to using his voice to guide his old blind friend and now he’d never have the need again. Helga and the Mayor offered to take him back, clearly distressed at the sight of the grieving child, but he refused. He watched the sun cross the sky in silence, sitting on the step of the well, and didn’t say a word. He slept on the stone cold floor of a jail cell that was still covered in ash. He didn’t make a joke, because how could he? What was left to make him happy?
Around him, war and plague and famine drove the village mad. He heard strange moans, noises from all manner of men’s houses. One day Helga was coughing and the next day Miles and Bob were both complaining of the plague. Mayor Jimmy, fraught, insisted for the third time that everybody keep to their own houses. He acquiesced that Robin could sleep in the cell if he wanted, and he did.
On the third night, they went to bed a town split apart, a town half mad and rotting.
In the morning, it was declared, they needed to have another execution.
He let the able men shepherd him to the fire. It was quickly dying in a sudden onset of rain - they huddled under the sparse cover of spruce trees, stripped by strong winds in the days before, and fought over blame. Helga, again, was questioned - she swore up and down that her only crime was adultery, spurred on by the beatings and maltreatment from her husband, who sat in quiet authority and said nothing in defense of his cheating wife. Bob and Miles side-eyed her, and moved on. Jack levelled the accusation at -
No.
Surely not.
He must be mad or joking.
Because Robin, he was saying, maybe it was the orphan.
And the worst part was that nobody shut him down.
It’s just as well, Bob was saying, all he does is suck up resources. He’s useless.
He still didn’t speak. Days of closing off his throat with tears had left him voiceless, weak, an insomniac on the stone cold floor of a jail cell that might soon be covered with his ash. He was left undefended by the whole town.
Mayor Jimmy wouldn’t let him die. Surely.
Maybe you’re right, said Mayor Jimmy, and he almost cried.
But no! He couldn’t cry! He had to be strong, for his dad, for the Corpse, even for old Cornelius who’d had his head chopped off for nothing but blame and fighting and anger in a town gone mad from war and plague and famine. He had to be the jester. He had to keep his heart and spirits high, even as they hit him back into a stone cold wall covered in ash and thrust a glowing orange bottle in his direction. Liquid fire. Lava. Almost instant death.
He was ten, he thought bitterly. He could barely even lift an axe. He was just a jester.
Come on, the able men insisted, drink up, orphan. Say goodbye.
But there was nothing to say goodbye to any more, so he said nothing.
Fourth, inevitably, after war and plague and famine, there was always going to be the threat of death.
Robin raised a glass to thoughts of another life where he’d been a doctor and he’d saved the Corpse from rotting and, when it came down to the vote, he’d freed the town from going mad.
But that world was there and this world was here and now and ash coated his clothes and he couldn’t escape the fourth horseman, always looming over his life, ten pitiful years ending far too soon to mourn it well.
He drank and died a jester.
(A voice, high and purple and inescapable, congratulated him for a life well lived, a part well played, and he smiled.)