Hodge Watches the Great Siege of the Wicker Gate

Friends, I set down my hoe this morning at the word of my lord's steward, who bade me sit before the glowing tapestry and report what marvels I saw there, on account of my learning being wasted on turnips and better spent, he says, on "content." I do not know what a content is. I know what a furrow is. But a man does the work he is given, and so I sat, and I watched, and I set it all down true, as God is my witness, though I understood perhaps one part in ten.

The contest was called FIBA, which I take to be the name of some far kingdom, on account of the men wore the marks of their nations upon their chests same as knights bear arms upon a shield. Our own champions, who I am told serve the realm called United States of America — a fine broad name for a lord's demesne, and I hope his fields drain better than mine — went up against the men of Hungary, who I confess I know only as the makers of a very good paprika, of which my lord's cook once let me smell a jar and I have not been the same since.

Now here is the marvel, and I set it down exactly as I saw it, for I have not the learning to make it prettier than it was. The contest was fought not with lance nor bow nor even fist, as a proper contest ought, but with a leather globe, round as a cannon-ball but soft, which the men hurled up and up at a little hoop of wicker hung high on a post, same as my lord hangs a hoop for the falconer's glove, though why any man should want to put a ball through it I cannot fathom, unless it is some manner of tithe to whatever god lives in the rafters of that great hall. Every time the globe went through the wicker, the whole hall roared as if the siege had broken, and a great glowing tapestry — worked, I must believe, by unseen hands, for I saw no loom and no weaver — showed numbers climbing higher and higher, same as a tally-stick kept by a reeve who has drunk too much of the lord's ale and stopped counting sense. By the fighting's end the men of America had put the ball through the wicker gate so many times their tally reached one hundred and eight, which is more sheep than my whole village owns, and Hungary's tally fell short, and so — I am told, though I did not see the moment plain, for I had wandered in my telling, which I will own to shortly — America's men are to go on to what they call the semifinal, which I take to mean the lord's steward has judged them worthy of a second joust before the crowning bout. A fine showing, and no man was struck down or maimed that I could see, which by my reckoning makes it a gentler war than most I have heard sung of.

But I will confess to you, reader, and confess it plain, for a serf does not lie even when the lying would flatter him: I did not watch the wicker-gate siege so close as I ought. There was a man at the edge of the hall, in a little wheeled stall no bigger than a hen-coop, and he was crying out that he had meat-tubes, hot ones, wrapped in bread, and I tell you I have never in my life of tilling and tithing seen a man sell meat in a tube before, and I could not look away from it. Is it a sausage? Is it a sacrament? He handed them to the crowd for coin, no haggling, no barter of eggs or labor, just coin straight across, and men ate them standing, walking, even — and this I marvel at most of all — while shouting at the wicker-gate contest without once losing their place in either the eating or the shouting. My lord's own table has not such multitudes of skill. I watched that man and his tube-cart through what I am told was a whole quarter of the contest, and I do not regret it, for a serf must take his wonders where he finds them, and I have never once in my field found a tube of hot meat.

There was also a man dressed all in black and blowing upon a little bone whistle same as the reeve blows to call us in from the fields, and every time he blew it the great contest stopped entire, and the men stood about looking cross, and I understood at once that this whistle-man must be the highest lord in the hall, higher even than the players, for they obeyed him utter and complete the instant he made his sound, the way I obey when the church bell tolls compline whether I am ready for supper or no. I do not know his name nor his lineage but I should like very much to shake his hand, for any man who can silence a roaring hall with one breath of bone has a power greater than any baron I have served.

And I will tell you true, friends, there was a beast — a great painted ox, or some manner of ox, walking upright on two legs like a man cursed by a witch, and it danced along the edge of the hall the whole match through, shaking its haunches at children, and touched not one blade of grass nor tended one single thing, and yet the crowd loved it same as they loved the wicker-gate siege itself. I do not understand what labor it performs. I do not think it performs any. I think it simply dances, cursed and content, forever, and no one asks it to plow so much as an inch of field, and if that is not the strangest mercy I have seen granted to any beast in this shining age then I have not eyes in my head at all.

I set this all down honest, though I own I have given you more of the meat-tube man and the whistle-lord and the dancing cursed ox than I have given you of the siege proper, and for that I ask your pardon, but a serf reports what a serf sees, and what a serf sees is rarely what he is told to look at. The tally stood one hundred and eight against whatever Hungary's men managed, which I did not catch close enough to swear to, and America's men are to fight on toward the crowning bout, and no one bled, and the paprika men went home with their dignity if not their gate, and I call that altogether a fair and merciful war as wars go.

The light through the window of the steward's hall is going long now, and there is a hedge wants mending before dark and a plague-mark on the miller's gate I have been asked to look at, so I must away, though I know not to what field I return, only that a field awaits, as it always does.

By my troth and the mercy of the wicker gate, I remain your faithful watcher, — Hodge o' the Field