Visions of Battle

1587-11-14
Fechtschule, Maraisbourg

Master Merryen did not stop at swords. He gave me a poleaxe and told me to grow taller. We cut at posts and learned to let the haft slide. Hammer. Beak. Axe. Each face had its own sentence. When my shoulders burned he set a pike twice my height in my hands and made me walk the length of the hall until the sway found a beat I could keep.

“Imagine men beside you,” he said. “A wall of steel and ash. You are not alone when you hold this.”

I closed my eyes and saw fields I had only ever sung. A damp bank along the Rhanube River. A chalk road in the Salt Dunes. Dry asquares that smell of powder. Ranks leaned together like chords. Cavalry broke like surf and fell back. The push of pikes was a slow drum that never missed a step. In those visions the drills became pieces of a larger pattern. What I did with my hands belonged to more bodies than mine.

By week’s end I moved with more certainty than I ever felt on a stage. My songs remained, but now they shared the room with ordered lines and patient spears. The form made sense because the field was beginning to.