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Henry hadn’t known how to read for most of his life. As a blacksmith’s son, he had learnt the trade through watching his father work throughout his life, listening to him, practicing with his hands. If there would ever come a day that Henry—well, if he ever died too, without passing on the knowledge to someone else... In any case, surely there were many accomplished blacksmiths in the land, from whom one could learn. It was, as Hans, Lord Capon, His Lordship, etc had said once, “a good trade.” There were many good blacksmiths, one might suppose. Many good tradesmen. But perhaps not quite so many scholars, and certainly not in the sort of market village where Henry had spent his life.
Henry hadn’t known how to read, and now he did. More or less. But sometimes, quite often, he’d find words that he didn’t know the meaning of them. What good was it knowing the sounds, deciphering those hidden scribblings, when you didn’t know their meaning? There were words that you wouldn’t know the meaning of. Unless you found another bit of writing that explained the other word’s meaning in more words that you could actually understand. Or you asked someone. Henry wasn’t a person without worldly experiences. He knew a bit more of the world than he used to, when he was a blacksmith’s son who never left his village, who moved slowly and clumsily, who really knew nothing. He’d moved through the world, and he was learning to read between the lines people spoke out loud. He was learning the meaning of the things that people said and did. But sometimes there were still words and ideas that he didn’t know, stories that he didn’t always understand, in the way that maybe someone a bit more scholarly would understand them.
Once, he and Hans had been sitting at an inn, up in the sleeping quarters near the fire that his lordly lordship Hans had acquired, and Henry had said, maybe just a little drunk, nursing his tankard, but happy with it, “Do you think people would still have the same thoughts and feelings if they don’t have the words for it?”
Hans looked up from his book, some tome that he’d found here or there or under the bed, and asked Henry, his voice going high and jovial, “Good Lord, Henry, is the drink making you a philosopher this evening?”
Henry shrugged his shoulder at the book, and said, “I was just thinking… maybe before, I would have looked at a book and seen nothing but a jumble of letters. Is that how the inside of an unschooled person’s head, like myself, looks like sometimes? Nothing but digging around in the dirt for radishes, all ashy from working at the forge.”
“Henry, you’re half of blue-blood, as we all know now, and even if you weren’t, you’re my squire, as it were. My man-at-arms. The fellow who has been with me through thick and thin. And you’re clever as weasel, my friend, isn’t that right? So many times, you’ve cunningly saved me from the embrace of… well, anyhow, fates that truly it were better that I had escaped from them after all…”
Henry considered those words, then the book, then Hans’s face, and then smiled lopsidedly, and pronounced, “Yes, that’s true. I’ve come up with loads of ways to get us out of sticky situations. Clever as a weasel, I like that! And handsome as one to boot.” And then downed the rest of his beer, and went to retire for the night, and didn’t look back to see if Hans was watching him, to see if the expression on his face was as tender as the words he’d said had sounded… Henry hadn’t looked at Hans square in the eye that whole evening, not for all that long. Just loose, brief glances, all shining with the light of the fire. Henry’s tongue felt loose with the alcohol, for all that he said he didn’t have the right words to fill the air with. There was a tenderness that felt fragile to hold onto, given all that he knew of Hans. Hans talked loudly and brightly. But sometimes there was a smallness to him, like a child. Especially when he talked about his preciously guarded freedom. Especially when the light had seemed to go out of his eyes when the betrothal had been made, in the shadows of that evening, with all those silly nobles and Sir Hanush had made that promise that he’d made, to sell Hans away... Henry didn’t know if he had the words for it. He wondered if any of those books that existed could contain what it was that he saw. Just that there was a light, like the embers of a fire. And then there wasn’t.
-
The night that Hans confessed to Henry, he had said that in his story about the two knights, there was something that he didn’t have the words for. And anyway, even in his “confession,” there hadn’t been much in the way of words that spoke to what Hans was thinking, in any bare-faced way. It had been story of Lancelot and Galehaut, not strictly of Hans and Henry: the two knights who went on campaign together, slept in the same tent together, even wooed court ladies together…
After the siege of Talmberg, that battle that Henry and Hans had survived together… when all was quiet again, for some time… It was just Henry and Hans together again in a village inn, waiting for Han’s uncle to summon Lord Capon for the wedding, whether it be willing or clapped in the figurative or actual irons. One might have guessed that in the lull, there would have been a constant whirlwind between the two of them. One might have imagined their sneaking around together, quietly in their rooms, or off deeper in the woods somewhere far from prying eyes, though still rather risky! And filling their appetite with each other’s kisses and touches, loving each other in that way, in a different way than they had been able to love each other before that night…
Henry supposed that he didn’t think of any of it as a Sin, although he had caught Hans once when he’d worriedly, a bit, eyed the Indulgences that one could buy from the Church to reduce the consequences of one’s Sins in Purgatory… but Henry really did not have the kind of money to throw around on Indulgences. So he didn’t think much of it. And certainly not for someone like himself who liked a roll around in the hay, as much as he did. It wasn’t a constant parade, but he wasn’t a virgin. Hans was hardly chaste himself, although Henry had wondered sometimes if Hans’s bluster around the ladies was bigger than his actual appetite…
But in spite of the picture one might have come up with, for himself and Hans, in actuality, they hadn’t touched each other since that night of “encouragement.” And when they went to the inn, Hans hadn’t immediately jumped into Henry’s willing arms. After they’d gotten settled, Hans went out for some air, for that open blue sky that he craved so much, and Henry found him sitting under the trees, looking out at the fields of summer barley on the fringes of the village.
“My Lord Capon,” Henry said, strolling closer, trying to be a bit jokey.
Hans looked up at Henry, and said with a smile, “My dear friend Henry.” But still, there was something that looked quiet and sad about him, like he’d been too lost in all his own worried thoughts, such that even jokes that day wouldn’t lift his usually buoyant spirits. It could have had nothing to with Henry. It could have been the aftermath of all that fighting, the siege, a hundred other dangers and miseries that Hans had survived as of late. But also, it could have had something to do with Henry. Or at least, perhaps there was something he could do about Hans’s current state, even if it was only for the moment.
Henry drew closer to Hans, then sat down beside him.
“Hans,” he said.
Hans hmmed a little, that sweet voice of his.
Then Henry said again, softly, “My Hans.”
Hans looked over at Henry then.
Henry reached for Han’s fingers and then intertwined them together. Hans clasped his hand back.
Henry didn’t always have the words for everything. But maybe even the few that a child could scrounge together could be enough, for just that moment.
They sat there together, watching the clouds drift across the sky.
Henry with Hans.
His Hans.