I'm No Bard

This week's story for you dear reader is one that sort of wound its way through mind and fingers to keyboard and here. It's about what might happen if you were to wake up and find yourself having to start life over from, almost, scratch.

With just a hint or two of the past to deal with, first. This week's story is one I call...

I'm No Bard by M. K. Dreysen

I wake in a cell with a face and a body too young and skinny to be mine. I contemplate both of these things for some few hours, until guards appear to drag me into the light.

And a royal presence. "Do you remember our faces?" the woman asks.

"I've never met either of you," I answer, truthfully.

The younger of the two, a prince I guess, laughs. "So it worked, then?"

The older nods, but only after gazing into my eyes for long thoughtful minutes. "Yes. Surprisingly enough, yes."

They leave, full of thought and conspiracy. The royals exit the room by a back door; the guards, summoned from somewhere they wouldn't have been able to eavesdrop from, arrive not long after.

Certainly not more than an hour. They take me to the gate and turn me loose. "Now what?" I address myself.

I remember myself, older than this face, a belly to go along with the kids and the wife and the countdown to retirement and the brass watch of my 401K.

This world, the prisoner who it seems wore my self same face, how we got to where we were and the royal mother and son who managed to switch us? I know nothing of it but the cell and the room and now a road leading from a castle gate.

At least I have clothing, smelly and dirty as it is. I'm covered well enough that coming to the second worst tavern in the castle town to beg them to let me try a few stories, a few songs beaten out to the rhythm of my hands on a tabletop, works.

Enough so that my pennies pay for a bath and a bed and dinner. I drum out what I remember of Highway 61 Revisited and Tennessee Whiskey and half a dozen others. When my hands grow sore, I tell them my condensed version of Salem's Lot.

When they ask me of these places, these stories, I tell them I had them from my grandfather. If I told you where Salem's Lot lay, or which country Highway 61 ran through, I'd be lying, you see.

A few nights of that and I've pennies enough for a little old traveling guitar, clean new boots to go with a change of clothes and a warm, water shedding cloak of wool. I'll need these and the extra strings because I'm not hanging around this town.

People ask me if I'm a bard. I tell them I'm a musician, a storyteller, but I'm not a bard. I play before the common folk, not the king.

The new king. Apparently, the old king lost his marbles a day or so after I took my first bath of freedom. He's safe in the castle, but the queen summoned the court sometime while I was busy slowly re-learning three chords and the truth.

She put her son in charge about the time I added All Along The Watchtower and A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall to my repertoire. That's when I bought the cloak and plenty of extra strings.

I save Redemption Song for when I'm no longer bound by royal walls; I recast Caesar and Macbeth and Hamlet from the voices in my head. There are taverns enough, traveler's places and half a dozen other, smaller free towns within the royal reach.

Places where merchants and pilgrims appreciate a sly tale without running to the local duke as soon as the beer's run dry.

Just about the time my tour has reached the last free town, and I'm considering my options, I meet up with a troop. Actors and jugglers and musicians.

The Lost Abbot's Mummers, they call themselves. They're in need of a storyteller and a guitarist. "Wouldn't you prefer a lute? Isn't that what bards are..."

"Too many strings, and I'm no bard."

I save the tale of the Bishop and the Actress for when the children are in bed. Now that I spend my days telling tales and singing songs, my voice is roughly good enough to not scare the straights, and my memory's worked it's way up to just less than poor. I string Poe and Twain and Dickens along, come back tomorrow night for part three, folks!

We are six weeks and six towns away, and safety allows me to mourn now my kids and my wife and the world that I came from. I wonder, as the wine runs out that night, whether they've a father who's wondering where the hell this belly came from, and how to count and dispense prescriptions for twelve hours a day, four days a week.

I try and talk the Mummers out of the invitation from the king. "We don't need the money."

"A royal performance means we will continue to not need the money for years further, sir Bard."

"I'm not..."

"You will be by the time this gig is done."

And so I am. I look at my face in the mirror.

I am clean, well trimmed, well fed. Dressed in wool and leather and linens finely made. I am not the confused mess the royal pair had known they didn't even need to force to bow.

I still don't remember anything of the young man they'd cursed. Small blessing.

I sing of Changes and Sympathy for the Devil; I tell the court of Romeo and Juliet and Twelfth Night, and I'm proud enough now of my storytelling memory to lie and tell myself that I got most of both into my stories.

When the meal begins, I find myself sitting next to an old man, ignored and left in the corner.

Forgotten. As he appears to have forgotten when he sat where his son, clearly echoed in his countenance, now sits. I play for the lost king, here in the quiet corner between bites and sips and the performances of my now by royals appointed comrades.

He enjoys most of all a quiet, oh so quiet, version of Weary Hangs the Head. "You know, don't you?"

I share a look, of memories of a world gone. "Do you remember any of who he was, whose face you wear?"

The old man smiles, a sly curl of his lips concealed behind a chicken leg. "It would take a strong neck indeed to allow words like those to pass the throat within it. Look around and tell me how this court has changed, since the person whose face you now wear learned of what loose tongues can lead you to."

It's my turn to smile, and even laugh. There may be no memories to go along with the old man's story, but something still thrills within me at his words. I ponder them. As I lead him back to his bed.

As I wander the darkened halls.

We the Mummers have been called to play for a full meeting of the royal court. Dukes and barons roam these halls this night.

And the new young king nor his mother have produced an heir of the body in the months between. Not even a bastard to be recognized. Such a shame then, really, when both fall sick that night.

All weep when the queen and the new king pass some few nights later, within hours of each other. The old king, tested by his former barons and dukes for hours to verify his sanity, asks me to sing at their mutual funeral.

I ask him if he has any requests. He winks at me, and says wing it.

I don't do it; I play Bach at the funeral, and wait 'til the old man and I are alone to play him Dire Straits and Pink Floyd. We drink 'til we're maudlin and my fingers finally give out.

And this time, when I've put the king to bed and wander the darkened halls, I can return to my mourning assured that at least I've taken at least some small measure of justice for what was done to us.