erebus

The bedlam of the street gave me peace. I could not hold onto the voice for the crash of voices scurrying around me. Cascade of color a running tide ushered between market stalls as the breaking rocks. I let the current draw me, releasing my will to the throng. 

After losing myself in the running stream of countless turns and eddies, I found the river drawn to a pool in an open court. The public space collected its particles of people around a stage that lifted a stone above the ground. The gravity was a pantomime of two boys with the down of manhood. They cantered and tumbled to music I could not find. I cast about to hear the timbrel but even the din of mob was stilled save for a voice. 

As I began to listen, I found the troupe performed to the faceless words. This was their music and rhythm. The unseen speaker spoke as a gentle bird, in transcending simplicity. How his story could reach my ears seemed a miracle of wind, but bodiless it entranced us each. A love was proffered, in veil and faith. Words upon words, bricks upon mortar. 

The disembodied voice told of court and castle, and hunt with danger. Familiar and common, I fought the fog of my malaise to understand the street's tale. The nameless knight of the stage began to coalesce as his misfortune mounted. Soon fear came to unbalance my confusion as the hapless hero sustained more descript wrongs. And before the narrator unveiled the knights colors, before the knight's actor impressed his wound, I knew the man.

"The Sanguine Knight." My heart clutched at the secret pronounced. The speaker continued to wend a mindless path through the mass while stacking the tragedies upon the hurts. An actor died in the arms of the red chevalier. Betrayal and flight, saw a leap from the stage. Hurried chase circled the audience, enclosing them in the intrigue. 

My body felt the press of human water as they tightened around the story. A little boy clutched at me thinking me his father. In horror I trembled for fear of the child and broke from him. I fought the waves but they were an enraptured wall. 

The tale never faltered. Soon the chivalry of our knight was questioned. His faith might be hollow. Perhaps his curse merited. His near drowning met with some exultant cheers. His madness leaving the believers doubting. 

I surrendered my retreat. The tragic saga had me bound. Instead the whirl of the crowd began to pull. I clutched the pommel, hiding my sin. And my feet again took me in currents not my own. 

As the story reached the forest keep, our Sanguine Knight, bereft of his name, crawled to the dais. And I nearly fell into the open. The moving hole of the narrator had found me. 

"And sylvan king laughed a laugh

While rest upon his hippograff"

I fell upon my side in duress. The blade clattered upon the stone. 

" 'Urchin, villein, and dastard son

You step upon feyéd doom' "

The speaker, with his ageless eyes, never broke his telling. But he stooped to offer aid.

" 'With naught but dirt to crown you

The final question, is she true?' "

Troilus and Criseyde Frontispiece