An Antic Disposition Read Free Page A

irresponsible Fyns, melancholy Jutes. Theophilos, you were from there originally. Wouldn’t you agree?”
    “I don’t know,” I said. “Some of my best friends were Jutes.”
    “The problem with Denmark,” he continued, “is that unlike other countries, they had no law of primogeniture, which is what, Thomas?”
    “Um, right of the firstborn to succeed to the throne,” rattled off the boy.
    “Very good, Thomas,” said Father Gerald. “Or, for the common folk, to inherit. Now, that is not necessarily a bad thing. There’s no guarantee that the firstborn will be a capable leader, or even old enough to be an adequate monarch. The Danes would select from the available candidates the man most suited for the position. However, there was not always strict agreement as to who this should be. Frequently, several contenders would arise, each backed by powerful factions and armies of mercenaries. During the early part of the last century, five different brothers from the same family ended up being king for a short while.
    “So, it will not surprise you to know that the Guild was actively involved in trying to keep the country from falling into civil war. It will also not surprise you to know that, as in many things, we were only intermittently successful.
    “But this is by way of background, a setting for my story. It is a long one to tell, and I am too old to sing it, so bear with me. I shall tell it from the vantage point of God in His Heaven looking down, yet without the benefit of His omniscience. Like the country itself, the story is pieced together from many fragments told by many different people. As their final repository, it falls to me to assemble them into a coherent shape. It is a motley story, as a result.
    “It begins with two fools meeting at a crossroads.”

Two
    Fardel, n. I. A bundle, a little pack; a parcel.
    2. fig. A collection, “lot,” parcel (of immaterial things) esp. A burden or load of sin, sorrow, etc.
    — The Oxford English Dictionary
South Jutland, 1157 A.D.
    T wo roads crossed on a slight rise from the surrounding heath. Although neither road was straight, each following the path of least resistance through the gently irregular landscape, the ancient builders had made some effort to make the crossroads a perfect perpendicular, perhaps to lend exactitude to the traveler searching for his way. At the center of the intersection, one could line up the four directions just as precisely as the ancients had with their stone circles marking the equinoxes and solstices.
    A crossroads, properly constructed, reminds you that you are making a choice.
    A huge standing stone, wrested from a granite boulder, stood by the crossroads, its face carved with runes. To the south, the road vanished into a forest of oak, the outer trees taking the brunt of the constant wind, bending slightly to the east. To the west, the heath descended into bog, only the road staying high enough to provide dry footing. To the east, a tiny but elaborately constructed stone bridge arched grandly over a brook that was all of four feet in breadth. The road followed the brook into the distance. Near the horizon, they met up with a small river running east, and the fickle road abandoned the weaker body of water in favor of the stronger, hugging the north bank.
    To the north, the road snaked between regularly shaped mounds of turf, grouped in pairs or sets of seven, rising twenty feet or so into the air, culminating in flattened circles at their peaks. It was from this direction that a man could be seen, appearing around the edge of the farthest mound, following the windings of the road.
    He was tall and lanky, a shabby gray cloak wrapped ineffectually around his body to ward off the ever-present wind. On his back were a bewildering variety of misshapen bundles, bound with string, twine, scraps of leather and cloth, holding them both to each other and to their bearer. They rose and fell with every step, some of them clanking as