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November 06
Hardback
• Paperback
Jester Leaps In
by Alan R. Gordon
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Reviewed by Jeanne M. Jacobson
When I came in, everyone suddenly became quiet. She looked at me and said, "What are you?" "Your new fool, mistress," I replied. She looked at her chamberlain, who hadn’t a clue why I was there, then back at me. "I gave no orders for a fool," she says. "That’s why I’m here," I said. "If you give an order to a fool, would you expect [the fool] to follow it? If you ordered me to appear, I would vanish. But since you ordered no fool, I came as quickly as I could, mistress."
One tiny change has been made in the text quoted, to preserve a secret. Jester Leaps In, following hard on the heels of Thirteenth Night, is, like its predecessor, sparklingly bejewelled with secrets, and the secrets of both must be protected until they unfold before entranced readers. Those who come now to Alan Gordon’s magnificent new series can enjoy both mysteries without an interval, since the paperback edition of the first book is being issued simultaneously with this.
Gordon’s intriguing premise is that, in the ages we call "middle," a secret guild existed. Its members dedicated their lives to averting or mitigating political evils--wars, massacres, persecution, and civic cruelties. As troubadours and minstrels, they traveled freely across dangerous borders; as jesters and fools, they advised and cautioned power-maddened rulers. Members of the Fools’ Guild were, literally, a motley crew. A jester’s costume--clothes of wildly colored patches, face brilliantly painted--was a perfect disguise. A successful fool could become the daily companion of even the most paranoid ruler, and, in jests, warn, advise, and guide. (In our advanced times, the idea of such a guild of beneficent, wise, and daring fools is something to yearn for, enmeshed as we are by the garish and Dowd-y entertainers of today, little emperors and empresses competing to retain their paper or televised thrones without regard to public good.)
Thirteenth Night ends with a fool pinned to the wall by an arrow from a revengeful villain’s crossbow. Jester Leaps In begins with the fool painfully exercising his wounded leg. In the brief time between that ending and this beginning there has been a secret marriage, and a new apprentice fool is secretly practicing juggling, tumbling, and the art of the insult. And soon two fools will accept a mission to go to Constantinople, where the six fools sent earlier by the Guild have vanished without trace. Gordon’s deft descriptions of the great city in its fading glory make clear the topography --"shaped like a horse’s head"--and portray vividly the labyrinthine palaces, the great churches, the mammoth baths, the huge sites for public entertainments.
The Emperor Alexios, usurping the throne of his brother the Emperor Isaakios, had been merciful, preventing Isaakios’ return to rule by blinding him rather than killing him (a mutilated man could not remain as emperor), and granting him a comfortable exile--until persuaded to move him to a dungeon. And foolhardily, down into the dungeon goes one of the fools, armed only with his lute and apples to juggle, the knives he uses for juggling confiscated by the guards--down into a filthy, lightless cell.
I heard a chain rattle, and sensed a body shuffling quickly in my direction... "I’m sorry," I said. "But I can’t see anything." There was a low chuckle coming from all directions.
"Join the club," said another. "The Fraternity of the Gouged. Don’t worry, you’ll get used to it."
"Poor fellow," said a deep voice. "Are you in much pain?"
"Thank you for your concern, but I am not blind," I said.
"Really? Then you’re in the wrong dungeon. You really should complain," he said, and the room echoed with the raucous laughter of the others.
And having convinced Isaakios’ deep-voiced, blind protector and the feeble-voiced Isaakios himself that he is not an assassin, the fool juggles in the dark for an audience who cannot see, and spends the night conversing with them about Plato’s allegory of a cave, in which chained prisoners see the world only as shadows cast on a wall. And plays his lute until a member of another guild--the Cult of the Assassins--also descends into the cell, where, "in the country of the blind, the advantage belongs to those who have lived there the longest."
Those happy couples who read this glorious book together may discover, in addition to present delight, useful turns of phrase to add to their conversational repertoire: "We have somehow been led down the garden path to a wrong tree, which we are now barking up"; the occasional ominous aphorism: "The people who build roads sometimes forget that they run both ways"; and the neatly-turned insult:
"Oh, by the way, Brother Dennis was inquiring after that horse he gave you."
"Zeus is well," I said. "His manners have not improved overmuch. Does Brother Dennis want him back?"
"No. He said, and I quote, ’If he can stand that vicious, willful cantankerous bastard, he might as well stay with him.’"
"That’s a fine way to speak about a horse."
"He was talking about you."
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