Of immortality, or more precisely, of immortal works.

Figma bowed to Lady Ouiser with a splendid flourish of her wide-brimmed hat, adorned with flowers, feathers and parti-colored¹ ribbons.

‘My lovely Lady Ouiser! My assembled friends and confidantes! I wish to pose you a question. What written epic among you do you all consider the best?’

And everyone, looking to one another, shrugged and murmured to themselves.

Xerox then said: ‘Doubtless the works of Homer, for he is the greatest poet of them all! And after him, the Seven Sage Poets, and all their progeny. And with them, the whole of the Latin poets, Virgil, Prudentius and Catullus².’

Lord Swiffer said: ‘In my lands, the works of Chaucer are enjoyed. And also there are these things called broadsides³, and people of all kinds love to hear and better yet, hear their verses sung.’

Fr Bunion then said: ‘There is nothing more lovely than the Bible, for it tells you things which are true and good. And unlike some folks here, I think the Bible ought to be read as freely as one wishes.’

‘What is your intended point, my dear Figma?’ Ouiser said.

‘I contend, my dear lady Ouiser, that despite the works that we all agree are good and beautiful, the ones that are not good and not beautiful deserve equal remembrance, if only for the hours of entertainment one may have at ridiculing them.’

Looks of puzzlement were seen on everyone’s face, but Figma went on.

‘We shepherds read, too, don’t you know! Sometimes we’ll put up our feet up by the campfire, fluff a sheep, and tell stories like we’re doing right now. But the stories we tell are just as old and as well known as those of Homer, despite never being written down. It is unlikely they ever will.’

Xerox then said, ‘My dear girl, even the scholia⁴ left by students in the olden times were enough to be added into the ancient Greek myths to distinguish and elaborate the tales told there.’

‘A lively and most effectual answer, my Lord Xerox, for that is what precisely happened in a little town not too far from here.’

Figma then sat by the little fountain and told her tale.

Have any of you ever heard a story that you loved so much that you wished you could continue it with your own characters, setting and plot? An English lady, Joanna of Keats and Rowlering, took it up on herself to write a courtly romance⁵ concerning a school of some renown, in the time of King Henry IV⁶. While it brought her fame and renown, she squandered it in rashly prosecuting Lollards⁷ who donned certain kinds of breeches, and was for a time the most annoying woman in all England.

Everyone then looked to Lord Swiffer.

‘You don’t see me complaining—and the stories are regrettably true,’ he said.

‘What did the stories deal with, dearest Figma?’ then asked Jardiance.

There were four tomes in all, all dealing with a school founded by some Benedictines⁸ in the time before the Angles and Saxons routed the pagans of England, I’m told. The school was a monastic one, but then it was reformed by some saints from Cluny, and opened to the general public.

The school was no regular school, and its students no regular schoolchildren. Nor its schoolmasters just learned men with the license to strike children.

Friends, this was a magical school for magical children. Its lowly protagonist—Henry of Pottering, a chorister in the Cathedral of Lincoln was selected by an owl to attend it, this being the wisest of all animals⁹. And being spirited away on a yardstick his poor cloth-maker parents used to dispense worsteds¹⁰ sold by the Jews, he found fame, wealth and much mischief while also fighting against the unnameable demons summoned against him.

Lord Swiffer then said: ‘My dear child, I believe you’ve confused several tales at once. For even Chaucer mentions one boy in Lincoln¹¹, and there are a number of others in various parts of Christendom with fantastical stories attending them.’

Figma smiled and went on.

Many people were enchanted with the tales of the school and of its fantastical places and beings: a great serpent from India, a prison said to be the very one Prester John¹² escaped from, and a hospital founded by St Kentigern¹³ himself, which tended to persons touched with magical maladies.

I have only heard the stories in a secondhand way, mostly through naughty puppet shows. Sometimes the details accord with what is agreed upon, sometimes not. It takes a person of discriminating taste to divine what truths have come down to us, and which are but the inventions of a lesser folly.

But rather than speak of the little that I know, let me tell you what happened to this girl, who I’ll call Rose.

This Rose was but a poor girl in the backlands. Her parents were pig farmers of a wretched sort, and had nary the sanction of the Church to bless their blasted home. The father worked for a cruel-hearted lord and the mother was from another place of similar origins. When Rose was born, her father cursed her for not being a boy, and left her to die at a Tree of the Good Fairies¹⁴. Some people said the fairies saved her, and she told the tale to anyone stupid enough to believe her.

She had a younger brother who was similarly savaged, despite being the thing the father wanted. The mother was too timid to do anything, much less the lord of the place, who was only content to live off the labor of the whole family. The children did not go to catechism¹⁵ and were expected to live much as their porcine wards were.

One Carnival¹⁶, Rose went down and saw a puppet play about Henry of Pottering and the Lapis Philosophorum¹⁷.

‘Wait a second, Figma. Are you really going to sit there and tell us that a group of itinerant puppeteers gave a presentation on alchemy to a group of illiterate peasants?’ asked Abraham of Babka.

‘Peasants seldom forget lessons worth teaching,’ Dr Scholl replied.

‘I’ll say,’ Xerox replied. ‘I’d like to know what this Englishwoman was thinking having a cloth apprentice study the Goetic arts¹⁸.’

‘I know! I mean, you’d think his master would want him to learn something like designing a suit jacket with a good silhouette,’ replied Abraham of Babka.

‘I will say for my own part that during the last plague, Mrs Xerox and I once devised an entire continuation of the Acts of St Paul and St Thecla¹⁹, wherein St Paul goes to Salzburg to hunt down Pontius Pilate, St Thecla bargains for marriage with him, before it all ends with a bang in Rome. St Paul has a fistfight with St Peter, and St Thecla has several hair-raising scenes with all-female inmates of a Mamertine-like²⁰ prison.’

Persiflage then inclined forward: ‘Does St Thecla get naked?’ he asked.

Lady Ouiser then said: ‘I believe that Figma must continue the tale.’

And so Figma, graciously bowing, continued onward.

Rose, finding this telling of Henry of Pottering far too difficult to understand, wandered off into the Carnival. It mattered not if she got lost: her father and mother were passed out, having failed at a drinking contest with some other country people. Going down the alley of this nameless town, she was called to by an old crone, who with a long finger said—

And Oura then said: ‘Figma, that’s not how it happened.’

‘But this is my tale, Oura, and I must continue it as it was told to me. When you learn to read and write then I suppose you can tell it your way.’

Anyway, this old woman beckons to Rose and says to her: ‘Hey, little girl. Wanna see the puppet show my son runs? It’s good, the characters are fun and you’ll like it.’

Rose replied, ‘But I’ve already been told I’ve got to marry Ezio, in spite of the fact that he doesn’t wash and eats his boogers.’

The crone then said: ‘Are you lost, little girl, or are you lost?’

Of course, it doesn’t matter what happened next, because the way I heard this Rose goes in, finds some sort of magic puppet show or toy shop or enchanted closet, and discovers a tome, written on golden plates²¹, in perfectly beautiful, somehow legible letters. I will say here that fairies, if you point out which mushrooms they like, will teach you to read without you having to give up your newborn baby for it first²².

‘What was the name of this book?’ Dr Scholl then asked.

‘I don’t know and it doesn’t matter,’ Figma replied. ‘Now can I please continue with this story? If we all keep interrupting one another we’ll never get to dinner on time, and I know some of you men seem to live as if your next meal will be your last one.’

Anyway, the book—which I have no idea why she didn’t sell, since it was made of gold—was supposedly another testament of Henry of Pottering, containing incidents more or less congruent to the overall story. Once again, I don’t know the whole story myself, since I can’t read or write. But I have seen enough Henry of Pottering puppet shows to know that Henry generally enjoyed his time in school, when he wasn’t being bullied by fourth and fifth form boys for Latin declensions²³.

Ah yes! I remember the title now. Immortalis mea²⁴.

We might as well be here until Judgment Day were I to relate what this tome relates. What you should know is that Henry of Pottering is affianced²⁵ to a character of such baffling moroseness, such foolish self-absorption, and such awful fashion sense it’s a wonder Henry, as magical as he is, wouldn’t just conjure her to Spain, where at least such moroseness is looked upon well by the Church.

Its main character is a woman calling herself Ébène of the Darkened Wood. Who should have such a strange name? By the token of her surname, does she own this wood? And if the wood is neither the King’s nor the Church’s, is it attached to her through a benefice or a demesne²⁶? And if she is of this darkened wood, which one should it be? Is there a road leading to this wood? Is she somehow a companion of Dante²⁷?

The crone gave Rose this whole-ass book apparently made of gold. Which makes no sense either: what happened to this lady’s son and his puppet show? Did she take—God forbid—the puppet show’s working script? Was it indeed another testament of Henry of Pottering?

And perhaps the most burning question of all, which everyone’s debated ever since this thing happened: why were Ébène and Draco of Bad Faith fucking one another in a forest? Which forest? Not hers, I should hope? The Forest of Arden²⁸, perhaps? And why did their gigantic, hirsute²⁹ Cornish schoolmaster see fit to call them both motherfuckers?

The entire company stopped smiling. Abraham of Babka, who had been sipping on some wine, spit it out in a fine mist.

Figma went on unabated:

Within days of this supposed discovery, Rose began making the very grand claim that she had written this utterly dreadful relation. Those that read came away from it regarding it as a work of the age or one of the Devil. Still others questioned precisely why the entire first chapter was dedicated to Ébène’s wardrobe, as crass and tasteless as it was.

Why is she wearing hose³⁰? Whose army is she going to lead, huh?

Why should a girl of England necessitate skirts so short that her ankles are seen? Why is her seamstress embroidering execrations³¹ into the velvet of her gowns?

And let us not speak of poor Henry! For this Ébène herself declares he loves her alone. Henry never needed a second love interest—his intended one and only was the lowly sister of his carder³² friends. And this is to say nothing of the feelings Henry has for the Norfolk girl whose saucy replies make you imagine all sorts of things.

You’re all looking at me like I’m crazy! I’m not the one reading stories about queens being torn apart by horses³³ or men losing their eyes after sleeping with their Mom³⁴.

At first everyone believed her. And why shouldn’t they? She was a bright-eyed, beautiful girl with a strong conviction. Some of you girls will agree with me that alone can get you anywhere, as it did with our Swabian friend of Lady Ouiser’s telling³⁵. Rose had at least her good looks to go to bat for her. What she didn’t have was that golden book. Now, now, I know some of you are looking at me funnily. But honest to God, she swore she had it one day, and the next day—the most crucial day, the one wherein she met the rich and wealthy Lord of Costco—she’d claimed the book was gone.

But that meant little, you see. The story alone was more riveting. Everyone of Lord Costco’s friends heard little variations of the same story: sometimes the crone was tall, sometimes short, sometimes she was an old lady, or sometimes a less old lady. To these she told the stories of how the Good Fairies saved her and left her clothing and food.

Pretty soon, she was getting fitted for dresses, and one day, she showed up here in a green one, just like Anne of Swabia did. But i’ll bet my last silver florin³⁶ that Anna of Swabia wasn’t as fat as Rose.

‘I refuse to believe that a fat girl in a green dress can be bad to look at,’ Persiflage said.

‘Well now—aren’t we just airing out all our dirty laundry today?’ Figma said.

Lord Costco was the one responsible for getting her fat—that’s not rumor, that’s fact, and I know because my boss sold two of our sheep specifically so Rose could eat them. Unlike Anne of Swabia, Rose was actually nice to folks who fed and clothed her. Lord Costco asked her time and again if she needed help finding the little gold book, because he wished to print the thing in the capital and turn a tidy profit for it. Everyone loves a printed book, you know, if you can afford one. And why not the most hotly coveted book of them all?

‘Lord Costco was printing a dictionary?’ Xerox asked.

Figma closed her eyes and sighed.

The story gets weirder because Rose was also telling people that Immortalis mea, had been penned by her to escape her parents. Now, I’m not saying that her parents were entirely good: parents rarely are. But she kept on returning to the fact that the book, as it was inscribed, was meant to procure the liberty of not only herself, but also of her brother. Her brother, as I’ve said, was indeed wanted, as most sons are, but he was sickly. That, as some of you know, can’t possibly be good for anyone in agriculture, least of all a pig farmer. And Rose herself hadn’t seen her parents or the brother since she claimed to wander away during that one Carnival.

Which does indeed beg the question: where in the hell were they?

For this, Lord Costco sent out two hired men to find the family and especially the brother. They were where they had always had been: the mother nursing a black eye in the kitchen and the father jerking off on a cot in the bedroom. The brother was drinking bone soup from the Franciscans³⁷, one of the worst meals a poor person can get. When the father wasn’t trying to jerk off in peace or beat his wife he was usually out picking large and potentially dangerous mushrooms in the foothills. Sometimes he didn’t come home for days—also difficult to believe as the mushrooms we’ve all had make you just a little disoriented, but not like, crazy crazy.

Anyway Lord Costco’s men eventually found the brother. But guess what? When they asked him if Rose had ever written Immortalis mea to escape his miserable parents, the boy said—and this I know because it was later told in court:

‘I’ve never seen Rosie do anything like that. We’ve never been taught to read or write. Sometimes Daddy drinks too much and says hurtful things, and Mommy intervenes. But Daddy always apologizes to me, and tells Mommy he’s sorry for hurting her. We’ve not seen Rose in many days, and are worried for her, but I wouldn’t blame her if she left. Daddy never seemed to like her very much, anyway.’

Then Lord Costco’s men spoke to the father—he had thankfully washed his hands—and the Mother, who said that it’d be better if Rose was married off to some fine man who could nurse her curiosity, because they had tried and found it impossible to keep her on the farm. You think you know a guy.

It was all downhill from there. I mean, Lord Costco’s men literally had to go downhill and everything. Rose and Lord Costco had a heart-to-heart, and she said that the golden book had most likely been lost in the hullabaloo. Some gold foil was later found in Rose’s old room, but it was later found to be sulphur³⁸. Which, again, makes no sense to me, either. How do you not know the difference between gold and sulphur? I suppose I understand why that Englishwoman decided to write of alchemy way back when.

Some folks around here say that golden book fell from Heaven and that when it served its purpose, it returned there. Do you think God keeps a library? If so, does he keep dirty books there? And if they’re dirty books, are there any with naked guys in it? A girl gets curious from time to time.

At this, Figma bowed, and sat, and everyone was quiet for a long time, partly out of astonishment, and partly out of admiration.

Then Madonna Aquafina rose, and with much reserve said:

‘I shall tell the last tale of the day, and it is one that will be the capstone of this impressive first day of tales. Our dear friend Figma has given us a stupendous example of what happens when a soul, desperate for a better life, reaches for immortality as a means of rescue. Now I shall tell of what desperate souls will do for the mere taste thereof.’