The Crowning at the Southern Manor

I was sent south, as is my charge, to watch the great contest and set down what I saw, though I own before God and this parchment that I understood perhaps one thread in ten of it, and that thread frayed besides.

It was called, by them that stood nearest the rail, an inauguration, which I take to be a southern word for a crowning, and by my troth it had all the trappings of one. There was a great stone hall, and a crowd such as I have never seen even at the Michaelmas fair, packed shoulder to shoulder and roaring fit to wake the dead, and up on a high scaffold stood the man himself, one Daniel Florez De la Espriella, who I am told is now made president of the whole of Colombia, which must be a demesne of tremendous size, for the cheering alone could have flattened a barley field.

They swore him in proper, hand upon a book, the way a reeve is sworn before the lord at Michaelmas, and I confess my heart near stopped at the solemnity of it, for I have seen men hanged with less ceremony. A fellow in fine robes — the priest of the place, though he wore no cassock I recognized, only a sash the color of a ripe plum — stood over him and spoke words I could not catch, and the crowd went silent as a church at the Elevation, and then all at once loosed such a bellow of joy that I dropped my stylus in the dirt. I take this to have been the moment of the crowning proper, the match itself, as it were, decided in that single silent breath and the roar that followed, though I never once saw a ball, a bat, nor any beast set loose to run a course, so I cannot rightly say by what rules the thing was judged, only that De la Espriella came off the victor, and no man in that hall seemed to dispute it.

There was, I must record, a wondrous cart. It stood at the edge of the great square where the common folk were let to watch, and a woman worked it alone, turning some manner of meat on a spit no bigger than a ploughshare, and the smoke of it rolled out over the whole crowd so that half the realm, I daresay, watched their new lord crowned through a haze of good honest cookery. I stood by that cart the better part of an hour, for it was the only thing in the whole proceeding I understood plainly, and I will say this for the southern folk: whatever their contests, they know how to see a man fed while he watches. I did not catch the meat's name. I did not need to. I have not eaten so well at a crowning in all my days, plague years included.

Now to the heart of the matter, for even a serf must render account of the wager, and the wager here was a grave one. When De la Espriella took up his place — and I use the word "took up his place" as I would of a champion stepping to the mark, for that is exactly the manner of it — he made a vow before the whole assembly, and it was no small vow. He swore to drive off the armed bands that trouble that country, the outlaws and the free companies that plague the roads and the fields the way wolves plague ours in a hard winter, and he swore it plain, with no hedging, the way a lord swears at his hall-moot that the reeve will see the hedgerows cleared of thieves before Lammas. This I set down exactly as I saw and heard it, for it is the one true thing in the whole strange day, and a serf does not embroider the true things. There are bands of armed men loose in that country yet, and this new-crowned lord has sworn, in the hearing of God and the whole shouting multitude, to put them down. That is no jest to make light of, and I make none.

What I cannot rightly account for is the rest of the spectacle that surrounded this vow, for it seemed to me they mean to fight this war not with pike and levy but with speaking, which strikes me as a very great gamble indeed. There was talk, much talk, from other men who came up onto the scaffold after him — I took these for his seconds, the way a champion at a tourney is flanked by his squires — and one spoke of rebuilding the whole nation, remaking it entire, the way a lord might vow after a bad harvest to dig new ditches and reroof every cottage on the manor. This I set down too, though I do not know how a man remakes a country the way he remakes a roof, and no one there troubled to explain it to me, being all too busy roaring.

There was, above the scaffold, a great glowing tapestry — taller than any church wall I have ever stood beneath — upon which the man's own face was shown twenty times its true size, moving and speaking as though it were alive, and I will confess this frightened me considerably more than the crowd did. I take it for a scrying-glass of some southern conjurer, thrown up so that even the folk at the very back of the square might see their lord's face plain, and if that is sorcery then it is sorcery put to honest use, for I never once saw it turn against him, only magnify him, which is more than I can say for the one scrying-glass I ever saw at a fair, which showed a man three heads and a tail and cost me a farthing I did not have to spare.

The anthem, when it came, I took at first for a psalm, for the whole multitude rose as one and sang it with their hands upon their breasts, very grave, very fine, and I confess I mouthed along though I knew not a word of it, for a man does not stand mute when his neighbors are at their devotions, whatever tongue they pray in.

I did not see the contest's rules writ anywhere, nor its full course run, nor any rival champion brought forward to be beaten, only the one man crowned and the one vow sworn and the whole hall given over to noise and smoke and that glorious cart. But I set down what I saw, as I am bound to, and what I saw was a nation's lord made new before a roaring multitude, sworn on his honor to clear the wolves from the demesne, while a woman sold meat from a little wheeled stall and did better trade than any of them.

The light is going here and the field will not tend itself, and I am called back to work that has waited on me the whole while I stood gawking at scrying-glasses and southern crownings. God keep the new lord honest in his vow, and God keep that cart-woman in business, for she alone I understood entire.

— Hodge o' the Field, who saw it, and marveled, and has turnips yet to see to before dark