Please note: This is an apocryphal tale of Simon Pariah, told from a perspective other than that of his Journals. The veracity of this anecdote in the canonical body of the Journals cannot be verified.
Beneath a luminous full
moon the traveler slept, wrapped loosely in his bedroll beside
the small, cheery fire that he had built for his supper and left
burning to keep him warm through the night and hold off the forest
creatures from his impromptu bedchamber. Unfortunately,
not all the creatures in the forest this night were intimidated
by the flame. Rather, some were actually attracted to its
glow in the cold and dark of the night.
Baldur the Brigand
was not known for his courage. Given an opportunity, he
would gladly flee any confrontation and risk the label of coward
rather than stand and hold ground against even the weakest of
opponents. "Better a live coward than a dead brave
man," he was known to remark on times. Of course, neither
was Baldur the Brigand particularly known for his skill at thieving.
More skilled cutpurses would remark, often in his earshot, that
he would very likely get arrested if he tried to pick his own
pocket. The fact that he had acquired the name "Brigand"
amongst the criminal community was more a sarcastic joke amongst
that brotherhood than it was an assessment of any ability on Baldur's
part.
Because of this
lack of essential character roundness, and because of an incident
involving three fresh meat pies and a farmer's wife with a rolling
pin, Baldur found himself alone in the forest this particular
night, peering from behind a tree at the inviting glow of the
traveler's fire.
In the glow of that fire, Baldur could see the fine, supple pair of leather boots that stood on this side of the makeshift hearth. Baldur glanced down at his own unshod feet, cold and wet since his ragged slippers had fallen off in the stream he had crossed at a run to escape the hard, wooden wrath of the wife of Farmer Lorenzo. Feeling so acutely the pathetic state of his current affairs emboldened Baldur uncharacteristically, and he grinned broadly to himself, considering what good fortune had crossed his way. "What a fine pair of boots," he mused. "Why wit' me poor soakin' feet in the like of them, what I couldn't make of meself! Why, a pair of boots like them could walk a man a t'ousand miles, and do all kinds of wondrous t'ings. A man could be king of the world!! Sure, it'd be nuttin' to get them meat pies from ol' Missus Lorenzo if I had them boots to run in!"
So far went the philosophical musings of Baldur the Brigand.
Reasoning that,
as tough as the traveler appeared to be, he was asleep and all
the way across the fire from the boots, Baldur decided to take
advantage of the good fortune offered to him and with a single
bold dash across the small clearing, snatched the boots and disappeared
again into the ring of trees, large with self-satisfaction.
Next morning, Simon woke with the sun as it poked its golden eye above the tops of the trees. Sitting up in his bedroll, he stretched out the kinks earned from his lumpy "mattress" and was in the process of rising to dress when he caught the very noticeable absence of his footwear from the place in which he had left them the preceding evening. A deep frown crossed his features, as he quickly reached the obvious conclusion and chastised himself silently for being so lax in his alertness. It would not be so bad, were it not for the fact that he was at the moment in a stage of travelling light, and those boots had been the only footwear he had been carrying. He had quite a distance to go until the next town, and this would make going a little rough for a while.
Still, resigned
to the facts of the situation, he shouldered up his bag of belongings
which constituted the entirety of his current estate and set off
along the road to the town, his bare feet prickling from the stony
terrain with each step.
About three hours
later, just as the sun was indicating that it was a little too
late for breakfast, but if you would hang around for a while it
would be getting to lunchtime very shortly, Simon reached the
town. Far from being any place of great size or renown,
it would nevertheless serve his current needs. It did not
have a restaurant, nor much of an inn, nor even a proper marketplace.
But, it did have the one thing he required more than any other
at present: a cobbler's.
Skirting around
a child and a dog playing with a hoop in the middle of the street,
bidding a good morning to the washerwoman in a doorway who nooded
curtly at first, then frowned in disapproving curiosity when she
saw his unshod state, Simon proceeded to the shop with the sign
of the shoe, pushed open the heavy wooden door and stepped into
the dusty gloom of the interior.
Seated at a low
workbench which ran most of the width of the interior was the
cobbler, a trim old gentleman in a white shirt and black vest,
with a shining, bald pate and leathery face. He appeared
to be evolving into a piece of his own handiwork, a buffed, polished
brown shoe of a man.
He seemed about
to speak, perhaps to ask what he could do for Simon, but then
his eyes caught the pack on the traveler's back, and then followed
a straight line down to the bare feet which disturbed the dust
on his floor. Grasping the situation immediately, he held
out his polish-stained hand and said "Four silver pieces".
It was not a price which invited bargaining. Simon, not
being able to meet that price on this present day, thought he
would try anyway...nothing to lose, whatever the outcome.
"One silver piece is all I have....can you not find a few
scraps of leather to sew together for me?"
The cobbler lowered
his chin and looked up at Simon from under bushy white brows.
"Four silver pieces. That is my price. The leather
would cost me at least two, and it would take hours to put together
something suitable for traveling." As he spoke, his
hand went to his little wooden hammer as if he expected to need
to defend himself against a violence.
"Well, four
silver pieces it is then. I am afraid it is too steep for
my purse at present. I thank you for your time anyway."
And Simon made to exit the shop once again, regretfully but definitely.
Discovering that
no robbery was to be afoot, and that further argument would not
hinder his work this day, the cobbler took quick stock of his
departing customer. Noticing the straightness of Simon's
back and the cut of muscle in his forearm, he saw that this was
a man who was not unaccustomed to work, and so hit upon an idea.
"Wait,"
he spoke to Simon's back. "Perhaps we can come to some
kind of agreement after all." As Simon turned back
to face him, the old man held up one bony finger in inspiration
and winked knowingly.
An
hour later, Simon found himself up to his neck in chores.
Wood needed cutting, the old man had explained to him, and floors
needed mopping. It seems the boy contracted to be his apprentice
had decided to pursue an easier, more popular line of work, perhaps
something involving sheep. Rather than keep an unwilling
servant, the cobbler had let him go, with the result that he now
found his home and shop "falling down around his ears",
as he had put it. As he worked to keep up with his steady
flow of orders from this and the surrounding townships, his daily
chores and worse, his diet had begun to suffer. In exchange
for a good days work, he would stitch a pair of boots that would
be adequate to Simon's needs.
So, Simon mopped,
and chopped, and swept and hammered and sawed and mended and even
cooked. For the better part of the day, until the sun was
settling down to evening, he labored at the duties of the cobbler's
home and business. By the time he finished, the property
looked as good at it had for many a day. Certainly better
than when that shiftless shepherd boy had tended it. Simon
would not be any gentry's first choice for butler or master carpenter,
but he was as good a handyman as ever was, and was never afraid
of the work or of getting dirt on his palms.
When the sun lit
the sky with the day's last explosions of crimson, he brought
the evening stew to the cobbler, along with a bowl the craftsman
had told him he could claim for himself. For a short time,
they ate in silence. Simon shared some of the old man's
beer, but refused the offered pipe....tobacco was never much to
his liking. With the meal done and the cooking area cleaned
once again, the cobbler produced to Simon the boots he had spent
a fair part of the day working on. They were nothing fancy,
no silver buckles for a gentleman, nor silk brocades or supple
suedes to display while prancing one's pony through the township.
They were dusty gray, stiff, thick and heavy, with most of the
weight coming from the soles. They were oiled to keep out
the moisture, and the heels were solid and sturdy. Simon
knew that they could slosh their way through bogs if they had
to, and would not permit the stones of the road to cut his feet
anytime soon. The heavy rough leather would keep his feet
warm in winter, and the stiff soles would give him good purchase
in awkward terrain. They were a good pair of boots, and
his thanks to their maker was genuine.
Their bargain
concluded, Simon shouldered his pack, and set off on the road
again. The cobbler had offered a bed for the night, but
Simon thought that to accept would be to take unfair advantage
of the man's good nature. Instead, nightfall found him again
in the forest, spreading his bedroll before a cheery fire to warm
him through the night. His new boots, barely marked and
little dusty from the few miles he had walked in them, stood nearby
in his line of sight. Tired and content with his day's lot,
Simon lay down to sleep.
Baldur the Brigand could not believe his good fortune. This traveler was simply asking for it, offering up his goods to be plucked. From his vantage point in the trees, he watched as Simon lay down several yards away from his new boots. With his own feet shod in the ill-gotten gains of the night before (they were a little tight, but didn't they look good!), he had gained a temporary measure of self-confidence, and his presence this night was due to his quick theft of a round of cooked sausage from Stanley the butcher, with which he had hurried off to this forest clearing to make his supper. His banquet complete, he had been relieving his bladder in the trees when Simon had come into the clearing and begun to set up camp. Recognizing his pigeon of the night before, and seeing the fresh new pair of boots that Simon had placed by the fire, greed welled up strong in Baldur's fiendish mind, and he stayed hidden until Simon fell asleep. What a fine new pair of boots! Maybe even better than the ones he was now wearing! If he had those, he could keep the better of the two, and sell the other pair! What luck! What fortune!!
Made bold and
perhaps a little careless by his recent feats of bravery, Baldur
stole towards the fire, paying little attention to the sleeping
figure a few feet away. Snatching the new boots under one
arm, he straightened, then froze as he felt a point at his neck.
The traveler had awakened, and was holding a wicked looking dagger
at a point just beneath Baldur's chins, having obviously stolen
up to the thief while he was preoccupied with his treasures.
Baldur knew that there was no way to hide from his guilt in this
situation....no explanation or excuse could get him out of this
fix, and he felt the pork sausage rumble uncomfortably in his
stomach. Putting on his meekest face, trying to look small,
harmless and penitent all at the same time, he held up the boots
to Simon as if he had just finished polishing them and was now
presenting them back to the owner. Simon only frowned, an
expression that was made all the more sinister by the deep shadows
the firelight cast on his features. His was not a merry
face at the best of times, and now not a hint of forgiveness or
mercy showed in his ancient eyes. Glancing down at the thief's
feet and recognizing his own lost boots of the night before, he
fixed the thief's eye again and grinned in a way that could only
be called "hungry". Baldur tried to reswallow
his innards as he contemplated the horrible tortures this person
had in mind for him that would make him smile so. Too fat
to run, too guilty to lie, and too scared to faint, he simply
cringed, closed his eyes, and waited.....
Shortly after, the wood creatures were disturbed from their sleep by hoarse panting, and the sound of running feet, as Baldur fought his way through the woods to find a hiding place for the night. The ground was cool, and the pine needles and acorns were sharp; roots seemed to wait to trip the fleeing thief. This observation was brought painfully home to him by the fact that his feet were bare as a babe's, and he was not the sort used to either the exertion or the exposure.
Back at the fire, Simon lay back again in his bedroll, fairly sure that he would have no further interruptions this night. Before he closed his eyes to sleep, he took one last, fond look at the two pairs of boots, one new, one slightly used, standing within easy reach between him and the fire.