Out of nowhere, as though God had heard his thoughts and wanted to punish him, a pebble hit Marek on the shoulder. He scrambled up from the ground and pinned himself against the tree and looked around, squinting into the sun. A laugh came. It was Jacob, Villiam’s son. He carried a bow and arrow on his back.
‘Hi, boy,’ Jacob said.
‘I didn’t hear you,’ Marek said.
‘That’s because I’ve got on new shoes. They’re for hunting. They quiet my step.’ Jacob approached Marek, who still clung to the tree. ‘Do you want to try them on?’
Jacob was a year older than Marek, tall and strong. He was dressed in fine spring silk and linen. His boots were red leather tied with cerulean blue satin laces. His hair was thick and black, and his skin was pure ivory. He had not one freckle, while Marek was spattered with brown splotches all over. The two had known each other for many years, since Jacob had grown old enough to leave the manor and since Marek had grown old enough to leave Jude’s purview of the lambs. They had a friendship, one of taunt and abuse, and one in which Marek could act somehow other than the subservient object of Jude’s indignation, but subservient still, as was his true nature.
Jacob was incapable of indignation. He understood that about himself, and that it was a privilege of his wealth and breeding. His father, Villiam, was the same way. Never in Jacob’s fourteen years had he seen the lord so much as clear his throat in anger. Even at his most impulsive and cruel, his father spoke with humor, as though it were all a game. When news reached Villiam that a bandit had been captured and put in the pillory, he simply laughed and told the guards to have good fun at the hanging. ‘It isn’t every day that we get to play keepers of the peace.’ And he wanted to hear all the details: How big was the crowd, were people crying, did they throw any food of value? Did they go back to work right away? ‘Tell the villagers that God wants them to redouble their faith now, and that this spring harvest will be a testament to their goodness in the face of villainy. And let the bandit hang for a day. Good if some birds come and peck at him or something. That will make people feel that justice has been paid.’
The only true pain familiar to Villiam and, by extension, his son was the complaint of boredom, but it was never without certainty that the boredom would soon be quelled. The young man always emanated a jocular wit, as if to tempt the fates of humor toward him. Villiam emanated something of more insidious intensity, which was like absurdity and irreverence. His judgments and ideas veered toward immorality, delivered through the personage of a calm, well-oiled, funny mask. Jacob thought often of the difference between him and his father. Why was his father’s persona so creepy, like a serpent disguised as a man? Villiam liked grotesque topics of conversation, nasty comedy always conveyed as colloquially as a passing fancy. He liked games and tricks. Even during meetings with his accountant and advisers, he demanded songs and dances. He liked to be entertained. He was dogged in his pursuit of diversion and demanded it of those around him. Jacob had different interests. He was an explorer, a hunter. He had already amassed a number of mounted animal heads and was teaching himself taxidermy. He had stuffed creatures in his room at the manor. Sometimes he wore a necklace of rabbits’ feet around his neck.
Like Marek, Jacob had not inherited any physical attributes from his so-called father. Villiam was not handsome, had a long, crooked nose and cheeks that were pitted with scars from a rash that still often broke out across his face. Jacob had no intimate knowledge of his father’s body, but he could imagine it: he was bony and sickly, his skin wet with sweat that stank of vinegar and scented oils, his buttocks grossly loose, and his penis a small white bone that gleamed like an ornament of alabaster handled too much. Better to leave Villiam’s private habits in private, Jacob thought. He often wondered why his mother, Dibra, had married Villiam in the first place. She had come from a distinguished family in Kaprov, the northernmost fiefdom. Her brother, Ivan, was ambitious, and he had a strong army, she said. All Villiam had were his bandits. ‘My brother could come slay Villiam anytime he wants,’ she had said.
‘Why would Ivan want to kill him?’ Jacob had asked.
‘Lapvona dirt is good dirt,’ Dibra had replied.
‘Is that why you married my father?’
‘For the dirt, yes, my love,’ Dibra had said unjokingly.
Jacob didn’t know that Marek’s father was his father’s cousin. The two boys couldn’t have been more different. Pressed to find a similarity between them, one could say they did share a desire to know the land. Jacob wanted to leave Lapvona one day, not to be a lord elsewhere but to be an explorer. Marek’s sense of his own future was as stunted as the growth of his body. He still looked like an eight-year-old, and his delight in the trees and flowers and rocks was sincere. He couldn’t imagine maturing into a man. Maybe, Marek thought, he could skip manhood and go straight to being a wrinkled elder like Ina. But for now he was trapped in his childhood. Jacob liked that about him. It made Marek easy to manipulate.