Emissary by Uvatha the Horseman

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Poverty

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Chapter 8 – Poverty

In the Philosopher's Stone that afternoon, he asked the serving maid if she knew of anyone who needed someone to wait tables, preferably after classes. She named the Broken Sword and the Once Proud Goose, but both of them were near the University and catered mostly to students. He knew he had to work, he accepted that, but it would be humiliating if anyone at school saw him.

"Do you know of anything else?"

"You could try the Boiling Frog. It's on the main road, just inside the inner walls. As soon as you're through the gate, look to the right. You'll see the sign."

It was just as she said. Just inside the old city walls was a tavern sign of a black cauldron with bubbles rising from its surface. A green frog peaked over its rim, a look of dismay on its face. This must be it, the Sign of the Boiling Frog.

He looked through a wide opening in the wall and saw a courtyard surrounded by buildings on three sides, typical of the better sort of Inn. On the left was a stables for accommodating the guests' horses, a stone water trough in front of it. Opposite the stables was the tavern associated with the Inn. A Boiling Frog sign hung over its glass-paneled door.

Urzahil tried the handle, and it opened easily. Harness bells jingled against the door frame. He squared his shoulders and stepped inside. A long room full of tables and benches, with a stone fireplace at the end.

"I'm sorry, we're not open yet. Come back at six bells." The Innkeeper stood behind the counter, drying earthenware tankards with a rag.

"I've come about the position. Did you need someone to wipe tables?"

"I don't know how you heard of it, I scarcely told a soul, but aye. Grab an apron and help me with these."

By suppertime, he was wiping down tables and scraping plates in the kitchen. The wages were meager, the real money came from tips. If he served ale or worked at the bar, he could earn enough for next year's tuition by the end of the term, but that assumed the tips were as good every night as they were tonight.

He asked Allard, the Innkeeper, about a second job. The Inn provide accommodations for the guests' horses in the stable across from the Inn. Allard said he could come in at first light to water the horses and muck out their stalls.

Urzahil never went out with his friends anymore, and most days he came home exhausted. He had no time to study unless he stayed up past midnight or got up before dawn, so his schoolwork began to suffer.

One evening, a few of his classmates came into the Boiling Frog and saw him behind the bar, rinsing tankards.

"Urzahil, what are you doing in here?"

"Well, there's a perfectly good explanation, and, um … I'm writing a story, and I'm collecting material for it. But it's just for a day or two."

Urzahil had already been working at the Boiling Frog for several weeks, but his classmates didn't need to know that.

-o-o-o-o-o-

"I'm sorry I missed class. My father died suddenly." Urzahil felt his throat getting tight.

"My poor boy. I'm so terribly sorry." Palan's eyes were full of sympathy.

[description of the things studied in class – celestial navigation for sea captains, learning to recognize the constellations, horoscopes, watching the skies for omens, movements of the planets, unexpected events like comets, falling stars, novae.]

At the end of class, Urzahil stayed behind to get the reading assignments he'd missed during the last five days.

"Remind me, why were you out?" Palan asked him. Urzahil's mouth hung open. How could anyone not remember?

-o-o-o-o-o-

After Coastal Geography, Urzahil followed his classmates to the Refectory for the noon meal. Tûlmir appeared at his elbow like a plump, overeager puppy, blind to rejection.

Urzahil didn't feel like sitting beside him, so he put his satchel on the bench where he though the merchant's son would want to sit. It made no difference, Tûlmir sat down across from him

"Urzahil, you've got yourself quite an admirer." Marös laughed and sat down a few places over.

As best Urzahil could figure, the merchant's son had identified Urzahil as a low caste member of the nobility and regarded him as more approachable than the others. He'd latched onto Urzahil as an aristocratic toehold in his planned social climb.

"I'm sorry about your father. I don't know what to say," said Tûlmir.

How about saying nothing? I'm not in the mood to talk.

-o-o-o-o-o-

It rained hard during the night, in the morning, the pavement was wet and covered with leaves and small branches knocked down by the storm. Urzahil splashed through puddles on his was to school.

When he arrived, class had already started. Caldûr was striding back and forth across the small stage in the front of the classroom under a huge water stain on the ceiling. Every so often, a drip fell from it. Hopefully the University would repair it, but the broken bench in the back of the classroom was still listing to one side, so Urzahil didn't expect much.

Caldûr seemed unaware of the drip above his head, he strode back and forth across the small stage in the front of the classroom, waving his arms as he spoke.

"It was the year 1700 in the middle of the Second Age, when out of nowhere, a seemingly invincible warlord swept across Arda, burning everything in his path. He called himself Tar-Mairon, or Admirable Lord, a generic title that said nothing about who he was or where he came from. It was the Elves who first realized he was the spirit who'd accompanied Melkor from the Underworld in ancient times, the one called Sauron Gorthaur."

Caldûr stopped pacing and faced the class.

"You've been studying Sindarin all term. How would you translate 'gor-thaur'?"

"dread-horror," the class answered in unison.

"And so he was. He was a demon, and no ordinary one. When he first appeared in Arda, he took the form of a giant wolf and ate the Firstborn Elves. How do you think they felt about him?"

There were a few responses scattered around the classroom. "Fear?" "Horror?" "Terror?"

Caldûr waved a hand dismissively. "These were Elves. They didn't cringe, they fought back. Here's a hint. How would you translate 'saur-on'?" [1]

"excrement - large amount of," came a voice from the back of the class.

Urzahil turned around on the bench and glared at the speaker, Mírdan, a non-serious student who attended University only because his father made him. Hopefully only the offender would be punished, and not the whole class. But when Urzahil looked back at the stage, Caldûr was smiling.

"That is correct. I'm surprised only one of you was able to translate. Your Sindarin instructor must not be teaching you any Elvish swear words. Yet contrary to popular belief, Elves do curse, they say 'saur' when they stub their toe. But don't repeat it in polite company, it really is a bad word. My point is, the Elves despised Sauron. They still do."

Caran, the charity student fascinated by naval history, raised his hand. "Wouldn't the Black Númenorians also have hated Sauron, after he destroyed their home? They'd rallied around him when he first came to Númenor, but that must all have changed when Sauron killed their king and sank Númenor."

"I think they felt much the way Black Númenorians do today. We find him … interesting," said Caldûr.

-o-o-o-o-o-

U answered a question brilliantly, expecting praise, but Palan turned away, his mouth pressed into a thin line.

Palan says, "a pale, indistinct star more like a fuzzball than a true star. But's it's no more real than a glass reproduction of a Silmaril, or a bastard passing himself off as a nobleman."

Urzahil recoiled as if slapped. Do you realize what you just said? But it probably wasn't on purpose, Palan wasn't good at remembering details about people. Even so, it was tactless. Urzahil wondered if he stay after class and speak to him about it.

-o-o-o-o-o-

Now that his father was gone, the friction between himself and Lady Lintoron was getting worse.

One evening when Urzahil came home from the Boiling Frog, his school satchel wasn't on the table where he'd left it. He looked in his room, but it weren't there either. The rest of the household had already gone to bed. He needed those books, he had to memorize a script for Diplomacy the next day, and he hadn't even read it yet. In desperation, he pounded on the door to Lady Lintoron's chamber.

"Where are my books?" He didn't bother to hide the annoyance in his voice.

Lady Lintoron opened the door and stared at him through the crack. "I moved them. We needed the table for eating." Her voice was thick with sleep.

"I need my books to study. You're going to make me fail Diplomacy. Why are you being such a witch?"

"Urzahil, apologize at once!"

"I'm sorry I called you a witch, I didn't realize you thought it was a secret."

Lady Lintoron yanked open the door and drew herself to her full height. She was in her nightclothes, and her hair was hanging in her face.

"Urzahil, this isn't working. You need to find somewhere else to live."

He went to his room feeling stunned, even though he didn't think she meant it.

The next night, Urzahil came home late, exhausted from a long evening at the Frog. He needed to memorize a list of Sindarin verbs for class tomorrow, but he was tired, and decided to go straight to bed.

He climbed the stairs to his room, opened the door, and froze. For a moment, he thought he'd entered a storeroom by accident. Wooden crates lined the walls, and the curtains and bed hangings had disappeared. The drawings he'd hung on the walls, the inlaid box his father had given him last birthday, everything that made the room his own was missing. He wanted to crawl into bed and pull the blankets over his head, but he couldn't. The bed had been stripped.

He lay in the dark on the bare mattress, so angry he couldn't fall asleep. When he did, he woke to bad dreams. It was still dark outside when he got up. There was an oil lamp in a niche in the wall, but he didn't have an ember to light it. He discovered by feel that his clothes were still in his clothes chest, he packed a small bundle in the dark.

On his way to the back door, he passed his father's study, and on impulse, he went inside. The room still smelled like his father. Urzahil stood there for a moment, remembering, then shook it off. He felt in the back of a desk drawer and removed a pouch of coins. If the theft were discovered, he would never be able to enter this house again. He hesitated, and put the purse in his pocket.

It was beginning to get light. From the corner of his eye, he saw something orange and red in the bookcase behind his father's desk. It was the painted crab Urzahil made for his father when he was small. He and his father used to walk along the jetty together and watch the brightly colored crabs climbing over the rocks. Once Urzahil found a stone he thought was crab-shaped. He brought it home and pained it red and orange and blue, with its legs tucked and its eye stalks lying flat. He didn't realize his father had kept it. Urzahil picked it up and studied it, then slipped it into his other pocket.

Urzahil stepped into the alley between houses and pulled the side door shut behind him. He whispered goodbye to his brothers, still asleep in their beds upstairs, and walked away from the house he'd grown up in without looking back.

He walked with his school satchel and bundle of clothes through the streets of Umbar, which were already filling with people at this hour even though the sun wasn't fully up. The shortest day of the year was approaching, and it was already beginning to get cold. There was frost on the ground and he could see his own breath. Earlier in the year, he would have slept outside until he found somewhere to stay, but he couldn't now.

He reached the Boiling Frog and slipped into the livery stable, hoping he hadn't been seen carrying the bundle. It was warm inside the stables, sheltered from the wind, and even though there was never a fire for heat, warmth from the horses made it comfortable.

In the dim light, he climbed the ladder to the hayloft. A drift of hay against one wall would make a good bed. If he wrapped himself in a horse blanket and slept here, he'd be comfortable. He concealed his things under the hay in a corner, then climbed down the ladder to water the horses.

If he were to live here, he couldn't light a lamp because of the danger of fire. He didn't know how he was going to study, but i was just for a few days, until he could find a friend to say with, or if he were desperate, take a room in a rooming house.

Urzahil thought of friends he could move in with. Of all the people he knew, there wasn't one who could put him up. Most of his friends were from noble families. The ones from Umbar mostly lived with their parents, the ones from the provinces mostly stayed with relatives in Umbar. The charity students either lived with their parents or were already sharing with someone else. Urzahil felt sure Ardamin would take him in if he asked, but it was better to sleep in a hayloft than let his friends learn that he was destitute.

After class, Urzahil asked about rooms at rooming houses near the University, but they were prohibitively expensive. He looked in the rougher parts of the city, on the streets closer to the docks, but rooms on the waterfront didn't cost much less. He resigned himself to sleeping in the hayloft that night.

The truth was, he couldn't afford to rent a room, any room, not even one he shared with another student or on a street where it wasn't safe to walk at night. If he wanted to enroll next term, every cent he made had to go towards school fees.

He went back to the livery stable and saw to the horses. He climbed the ladder to the hayloft and studied until it was time to go to the Boiling Frog and help set up for the evening meal. He took orders, served ale, and wiped tables.

He took an armload of dirty plates to the kitchen and started to scrap the table scraps into the slops bucket for the hogs, but hesitated. Why waste a half-eaten meat pie and an untouched piece of bread? He looked up and saw that he was alone, then ate them himself and drank a few inches of ale left in a tankard. His cheeks were burning, but he wasn't going to bed hungry.

He didn't have to live like this. He had two jobs, he earned enough to rent a room and buy his meals at a pub. The trouble was, he could afford his living expenses, or his school fees, but not both. He wasn't ready to give up the dream of being a scholar, or failing that, a position in the Diplomatic corps. Unless he finished University, he had nothing.

The end of the term was approaching. Urzahil counted down how much money he still needed for tuition against how many days there were in which to earn it. He asked for extra shifts at the Frog, and took on additional work at the livery stable. He was exhausted. He'd given up all time he spent with friends, and all recreations.

Even the charity students were better off than he was. They worked, but they only had to pay for lodgings and food, as their tuition was waived. If he were a charity student, he could afford lodgings, a rooming house that provided meals. He could have new clothes, maybe secondhand, but not as worn and faded as his own. But asking for charity would mean admitting how low he had fallen, and he was too proud.

-o-o-o-o-o-

Urzahil was in the kitchen of the Boiling Frog, elbow-deep in soapsuds and hot water. His back was tired. He needed to be studying for his Diplomacy exam, not scrubbing grease off plates.

Why did his father have to die? Or to be exact, why did his father have to die without a will? He'd told his advisor what he wanted in it, so why didn't he? Urzahil's schooling would have been for and he would be living the same sort of life as his friends, if only his father had found time for that one little chore.

The crash startled him. A starburst of soap suds clung to the wall for a moment, then slid to the floor. Urzahil's hand flew to his mouth and he looked around, hoping he hadn't been observed.

"What was that? I thought I heard something fall," the landlord called from the other room.

"It's nothing. I dropped a plate," said Urzahil, as he bent down to pick up the shards. His eyes welled, and he despised himself for being so angry with someone he loved so much.