THE QUIET LORD by J.T.A. Reddy

God was a smith that could make flecks of grey appear at dawn. When the flecks reached the ground, they grew into beasts of steel and jagged towers of leaves; Bendys watched them through two eyes, counting colours, waiting for a perfect chance to blink. A crow tapped on the window, said hello, gathered air under its wings, and Bendys followed it through the lonely meadow in the courtyard of the Manor and her pregnant forests, bursting with life and darkness. It must have landed somewhere between the stream and the market, near the Marbleway, that carried lemons and salt and, in the case of an extravagant evening with the Lady Maria, wine, lemons and salt. 

Sometimes he would see them to the kitchens, each hand a propitious delicacy, and Smyle diced the rest of the chicken legs and mutton and threw the grease and debris back into his hat with homely squelch. He could catch words between deep, mouthy breaths - what did Charlotte want again? - Bendys pointed. Anne enjoyed dinner last night? - He nodded. And all the while, his hat, which he only wore when the Stags came home with game after a long hunt, like he didn’t know it was ever missing, had the little stains and ribbons of old hearty broth; it’s Bendys’ job to wash iit, he would say, and he would smile. Names got carried around easily in the Lord’s Manor.

He had never touched the hat before: no, even when the kitchen beamed with sweat and heat. Food belonged to the Castellan, officially, but Bendys had specific instructions that he found specific instances to ignore, especially when it made men and beasts smile. It was the little coven where he stymied hours, Smyle’s labyrinth. A pickled mess of auburn dinnerware. 

And everyone there complained. This sound, that noise, that bloody barking, and the hat that never grew any whiter than the day before. But a lifetime of cursing, sucking and licking had given Smyle big lips. He loved that about him. When he chewed, as he often would out of that domination of his dish, he had a habit of talking out the side of his mouth. That’s why Bendys always kept him busy. 

When his nose grew tired of entertainment, and there were no more platters to try, he could always watch the dogs of the Marbleway run up and down and chase away birds. Smyle had found a specific place for waste. Bendys knew it, too. The summer romanced with the ivies and creeping vines on the back of the courtyard’s walls, where water weathered and bugs gathered, and the stony trough made all the dogs of the town below full. “And that’s the trick,” Smyle gathered his arms around the bowl, “that’s who we really cook for. Real patrons. So clean the footprints.”

A kick up the backside. A stain for each fault. Smyle had found a fawn of some young man, Bendys, a man who, despite the protection of his mother, possessed only one retinue. He knew it as silence, but people had found their own words for it. He enjoyed the layers of foldest pastry, the smoothing dressing and crisp apple chunks, a little spice as a treat. That one came from fifty miles away, Smyle pointed, checked his shoulder, and sniffed it, turning his nose up at it.. He forgot to mention it was late. The kitchens And it was only for a few hours of the week, and it was worth the scalding stew, and glazed breasts, he told himself. But now he found him at the end of his day, between good weeks, and with last words hanging on his lips.

They talked. Hunters had business here, said he, and your business might be worth something to me, or was it something else? You? Bendys smiled. There were no mistakes here, but there were no mistakes anywhere, according to the cook. Just poor judgements. Behind him was a small, poorly crafted chair that he let Bendys sit on out of generosity – he used it to cool pastry, and Bendys nodded whenever that became his priority. 

A little dame hit the round edges of her prison and sang for the hall below. Not once, not twice, but with each pull of the rope she hung from, six, seven, eight. It made his hairs stand on end. 

“It’s a stupid name for a bell, honey.” The man with the waxy beard sniggered. Bendys guessed what he would say next; was it the size of her, the fact she appeared so small, up in the tower, while she would have eaten any one of them inside her golden blouse, or was it that she was not Damely at all, and was more of a babe, as she had been only raised to that height two years ago? It could have been either, because the man, the Castellan, and the Hunter’s son gave their best chuckle. At the very least, chests went up and down. They had to sit down, and when they were sitting down, he could feel the Dame shake every bone he had. 

This way, he could not tell a fly from thunder behind him. This way, men thought that the Quiet Lord would not react, or turn, but he could always feel the air. A rush of it, two hands clapping together, and men who say “He won’t turn around!” and his mother, not too close, who kept her hair up high to show how her eyebrows never moved. The Dame dulled it all.

She would not stop singing.  Not while his brother made his way down the stairs, through the procession of blue-eyed faces, sacrosanct to all the shut lips of the world. Marriages were not easy, the scribe had written in his study, one night ago. And this marriage shall give ceremony, and love, its due praise; that this broad-shouldered Lord shall be weighted by a woman is a gift to us all. The note trailed off into hearsay, or perhaps something important. Bendys had only stolen the note for burning; parchment smelled like forgetting. 

And there was the lord of the land, his hair a glossful shriek, his heart something else. Not even the woman that shot her eyes into him; not the procession with their faculties; not the world with all its dogs and pigs. He had a grand view of it all at the back of the hall, past his mother in her ebony-cloak, and her brothers with their horned helms. They raised their swords, shouted something, something, into the hall. The priest made his case clear and spun legality into love. Crowns found their way on top of heads. 

“I wish it was that easy, mate.” The coughing, the chiming, the shouting, had stopped and his eyes danced around the bottom of a new stew. It looked too good for the ladies. “I envy you, you know.” Smyle spotted something green where there could only be red, and flicked. “And not for your fuck-off wealth.” 

The moon had plucked her head over the horizon by now. They were still talking, even if all of his family’s bellies were full. Hands crept behind cloth as Bendys sat on a counter. Smyle still had his eyes peeled for imperfections in the dish while his mouth wandered. If he had cared to look, as his lieutenant-at-the-stove, a man from the bowels of the world, lit a roaring fire, he would have seen Bendys creeping somewhere. 

“I wish I had your appetite for interaction. I don’t think, for a moment, you’re stupid.” A finger popped up and met his lips and ran around. “You luw me foo, fur instons.” 

Bendys had already lifted the valve at the corner behind the cupboard the same way he used to look for the next-day's store of peaches. He was almost there – eyes still forward, always forward.

Slop. “You’re simple, is all. And simple pleasures, my friend, are King. And – what?”

He froze. A fire burned in the back of Bendys’ eyes, but it wasn’t the fear that he had once watched through. He grew with the ivies on the side of the courtyard; older, wiser, angrier. He knew how to pull the pall back on burning eyes. Smyle was close, now. A slab of meat with fingers held onto his cheek. 

“Here. Taste this.” 

He thought about Martha and the tower and the little rose garden while Smyle slid his thumb into his mouth. Seconds turned into a minute, and his tongue found its way around two, no, three fingers. A small boy with a twig in his hands ran behind a stag and a bull, and he could not hear the bees buzz or his mother cry. Horns. All the colours, changes of wind, stolen moments under the sun, were locked behind a chest of drawers that smelled of nothing. He wondered if love was a lie and poetry was only made to be read and sung. He wanted to grow horns to give space to his mind. His eyes throbbed behind a pall grey with quiet. And then, and then – the fingers were gone. 

“Good. I love how you keep me honest.”

Slop. He had the document wrapped taught behind red knuckles by the time Smyle stopped licking his fingers. And there, just then: he knew how to bring it out of him, that cook. An honest smile. Yes, that was all there was to the world; men and beasts. 

Bendys had gone before any other courses were prepared. He slinked away behind a closed door and frayed linen tunic, behind this corridor and that. A little alcove with his name etched in on the door in somebody else’s hand.. After unraveling the document, and letting it sit on his mind, he takes another from a chest of drawers beneath his velvet bed framed with bundles, engravings, of white flowers. It was a gift. He doesn’t know why, but he can still smell the dog on him. One document finds the other. They were bound in flax, hugged in paper. 

Check-ups had come and gone, he had nodded to his mother’s requests, and Martha had not been to see him for some weeks. Four walls kept his mind racing about who or what said his name, and as he dreamed, and rose, and dreamed again, an unusual feeling had returned. 

For as long as his mother had left the window open, twenty years ago, a dimension of the world remained virginal. He had to express it in different words, like he was walking backwards through the atrium that everyone could already walk forward in. He always had options, Bendys reminded himself. But for every step he took, every victory behind the backwards world, there were stairs. And he fell, and bruised, and did not cry. His mother told him he was strong, my son, my Quiet Lord, and she nursed him to find another way. He was finally about to decide.

The sun had risen and fallen, risen and fallen, and then twice more. He had taken a special privilege in the counting of the days; a decision of this gravity deserved time to itself, space to vegetate, decompress. Bendys waits at the edge of the bed with one document hiding the other. A recitation of words, like a voiceless prayer. It ran like blood through his mind. 

"If power sought makes iron wrought, 

What good shall come from steel? 

If love's a lie I'll compromise, 

And all the Kings shall bend and kneel." 

The door was ajar and she was agape. Anne, who enjoyed her glazed breasts on a Sunday like this, was already outside his room. He could smell lavender and rocket behind the dog and gravy. 

“Were you saying something, Ben?”