REUBEN’S HONEST HEAD

Historically, the king owned everything in the forest where Reuben lived

It was the sort of day that Reuben really liked. It was a warm summer’s day, but not too warm. The sun shone from a sparkling blue sky, but the odd cloud came along to prevent it getting too hot. And he was drunk.

Not with alcohol, though, but with the power of his own thoughts. He got like that sometimes because, well, he knew just how clever he was. that

Because wasn’t everyone told and wasn’t it true that kings were chosen by the Almighty for their powerful minds, and ordered to rule over lesser people? And he knew that he must be a lesser person because, in his poverty and living as he did in a simple one-room home that he shared with a goat until it was time to slaughter said animal, he lacked the gold to ever become a king.

So, the day being lovely as it was he decided to go out into the forest in the hope that he might stumble on something precious, something that might elevate him from the bottom rung of humanity to somewhere a bit higher. Somewhere that he might be able to afford proper food for his goat so that the creature would grow fatter more quickly.

Everyone knew that the forest belonged to the king because, well, didn’t everything of any worth or merit belong to him? It was only right, he supposed, you can’t have kings going hungry like he did as often as he did. But on this lovely day he decided he was going to risk it. It wasn’t that he wasn’t allowed to walk the forest paths, of course he was, but woe-betide anyone who stole anything he might stumble on.

Hadn’t young Pauly done just that and not more than a summer ago, and hadn’t he surrendered his life as a consequence? Pauly had picked a daisy for its beauty and one of the king’s men had seen him do it, and that had been that. He’d been hauled in front of the king on a day when the king was in a bad mood, it being Sunday and he having to submit his royal autonomy to the Bishop because that’s what it said in the Bible, and he only knew that because that same Bishop told him. The King knew no Latin. He was too noble to learn such a thing as a dead language.

So Pauy had been executed for the daisy, which he’d been going to offer Maureen as a gift on what may or may not have been her birthday.

Reuben had such monumental thoughts as life and punishment and death in his mind when he went out into the forest, and he found himself musing about kings and particularly this particular example. Magnificent, he was, the way he rode a horse though the forest, the way he hunted the deer and the boar of the forest so that his belly might be filled with meat when it was cooked.

Dared he think the dreadful and forbidden thought? That the king just might have too much when all he had was his one room hovel shared with a goat? And, come to think of it, a goat reluctant to part with much in the way of milk?

No, that sort of thought might well lead him to the top of Gallow’s Hill where Pauly had surrendered his life for the price of a daisy flower.

It was when his mind was cluttered with such thoughts that he came upon the gemstone. He knew what it was because he’d seen one before, long ago, shining and twinkling as if with the power of the stars themselves. Back then it adorned the king’s hauberk like a precious star, and he had ridden past] in majesty.

Might he pick this one up? He could, maybe, and take it to a king’s man and say how he found it lying on a forest path and thought it might lie there forever if he didn’t rescue it and take it to the right person.

So that’s what he did, and for the next hour or two he nervously twitched whenever he heard a twig snapping or the rustle of a pigeon taking off in flight from the upper branches of a tree. He did not want to be accused of theft, yet if something as mindless as a boar or a deer trotted by it might have pushed the precious shining gemstone into the soft ground where it lay, and then it would be lost forever.

When he arrived at the castle gate that was h=guarded by one of the king’s men he almost had second thoughts. After all, it had been some time since he’d discovered the gemstone and nobody had challenged him yet. The stone was deep in a pocket, and there it might well stay with no man being any the wiser…

But no! If Pauly had been executed because of the flower he’d picked inside the forest then he might be double or triple executed if it was discovered that he had one of the king’s gemstones about his person.

But he hated the king’s men. They had power and they used it whenever they could, just to remind the common man exactly who they were.

So, in the end, he went up to the guard who stood limply by the gate to a drawbridge.

“Sir,” he said, his voice sounding feeble even to himself, “whilst walking in the forest I came upon a shining stone and thought it must belong to the king, so I have brought it hither rather than leave it on the muddy ground where bit might be trodden into the earth and be lost for good.”

Now, this guard might have been any sort of man, from downright evil to kindly, and it was Reuben’s good fortune that he was of a kindly, even a generous disposition, for her took the stone from Reuben’s hand once he had fumbled in his pocket for it and proffered it timidly.

“This is surely a precious thing,” grunted the guard, “and it is to your credit that you have brought it to the king. I will take it from you and if you tell me your name you may be rewarded for your honesty!”

“Reuben, sir, of a hovel near the forest where I dwell with my goat.” he replied.

Then he wandered back to his home, the word rewarded ringing through his mind like so much heavenly dust.

He’d almost forgotten the shining gem, because memories don’t survive for long when life is hard and hunger is never far away. But several days later a cavalcade of mounted men came towards his hovel, and riding in majesty before them, dressed in the finest of fine robes, was the king.

“I am looking for a serf called Reuben!” the monarch roared.

Reuben came from the meagre inside of his hovel, ashamed that a king should see how meanly he lived and how thin and gaunt his goat was.

“You found my precious gemstone?” the king shouted when he saw him.

Reuben nodded. “Yes sire, and I brought it to the castle in case a wild breast trod it into the mud, where it would be lost for ever,” he said, trying not to look too servile and trying not to wring his hands together like paupers might.

“Then you touched it?” roared the king, “with your peasant flesh, you touched it?”

Reuben nodded. Of course he had! How else would he have taken it to the king’s man?

“Then you soiled it, scum!” bellowed the king, “don’t you know that these forests and everything in them is mine and will be for my progeny, even to the end of time?”

Reuben nodded. Of course he knew that! The king’s flesh would always own everything, for everything was theirs, wasn’t it unless one of them chose to offer honours or a title with a patch of land as a gift to an honest pauper?

“This tumbledown shack you live it. That is mine too, for everything in this land belongs to me,,and it is only via my generosity that you have it to live in,” boomed the royal voice. “But you have soiled my gleaming stone with your peasant fingers, probing at it, picking it up and bearing it to my man at the castle gate. That is too much. A great deal too much.”

Then he turned to a fierce looking guard who was standing just behind him and clad in mail, with a sword at his side.

“Remove the scum’s head!” he roared, “And let all men know that I am the king and they shall not soil anything I own!”

And that guard in shining mail drew his sword from its scabbard and went right up to Reuben.

“Sorry about this,” he whispered because he really was, and he struck Reuben’s neck with his gleaming sharp-blade, slicing through it as if it was no more than made of butter, and slowly, headless, Reuben fell to the ground, quite dead.

“That’ll learn them,” hissed the king, and he laughed at the very sight of an honest dead man.

© Peter Rogerson 17.09.22

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