False Shepherds

By the thirtieth night, nobody in the hall pretended they were not there for the story.

The King had the fires built up early. The Jester no longer performed. The Priest came and did not want to, and came anyway, and sat further back each time.

“He is unmaking them,” the Priest said. “Your people hear that a sheep may walk out of the fold and find God in a fish. What do you imagine happens to a flock that hears that?”

“You have said the word flock four times this month,” said the King.

“It is my word.”

“It was my word first,” said the King. “I have thirty thousand of them and I have never once stood among them.”

“Then stand among them,” said the Jester from the floor, “and see how quickly you are trodden on. It is very educational. I am trodden on nightly.”

“You are permitted to be funny,” said the Priest coldly, “not correct.”

“I know,” said the Jester. “It is the only licence I hold and I am always losing it.”

It was the Guard who surprised them.

He had not spoken in the hall in nine years except to say up and through here and Majesty. Now he said, without turning from the door:

“I have eight hundred men.”

Everybody waited.

“They do what I tell them,” the Guard said. “They do not ask why. If I told them tonight to burn the eastern road they would burn the eastern road and sleep well.”

He shifted his weight.

“I used to think that was discipline.”

“And now?” said the King.

The Guard did not answer.

For a moment he was a man considering a question.

Then he straightened his back and became a Guard again.

The prisoner, who had said nothing through all of this, said:

“You have all just told me the same thing in four voices.”

“We have not,” said the Priest.

“A congregation. An army. An audience. A kingdom.”

The prisoner looked around the hall without hurry.

“Four flocks, and four men who are certain they are not in one.”

The fire cracked.

“I left mine,” he said. “I thought that was the answer. It took me nine years and most of my life to learn that walking out of a field is not the same as waking up, and that a shepherd asleep is only a sheep with a stick.”

Nobody in that hall slept well, and for once it was not fear.