The Cut and Thrust

1587-11-10
Fechtschule, Maraisbourg

Days ran together yet each brought its own line to learn.
After dussack and halberd, Master Merryen set a rapier in my hand and told me to forget everything and remember it all.
“This is not a broadsword and not a lute. It is a line.”

I learned to send that line forward from the shoulder. The point speaks first. The arm finishes what the feet begin. Then he had me cut with the same blade, false edge then true, and recover to the thrust like a refrain. We fenced in measure, testing how a feint shows a door, how a short cut forces a guard, how the point closes the argument.

Around us the hall seethed with study. Burghers’ sons with ink on their cuffs. Hireblades home on leave. A nun in a plain habit whose knuckles were gray with ash watched footwork instead of windows. We traded sequences the way musicians trade melodies, each of us trying to keep time while stealing it.

At night my notes looked like a songbook written for steel. Guards sat on staves. Feints read like grace notes. I began to see that every weapon keeps both edge and point in its pocket, and the craft lies in choosing which to show and which to hide.