Tale As Old As Time

Chapter 1: Little Town

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a man in possession of an occupation must be in want of a life.

For an occupation narrows one's activities, thoughts, conversations, and ambitions. If one were, for instance, to be a baker, then the hour one awakens is set by the task. Well before dawn, though well past midnight, so that by the time others in the village awaken the baker is not only awake, but has bread on his tray. As always.

The constancy of this task meant that smoke rose from at least two chimneys in this quiet village as Belle crested the hill overlooking it. Long trails of thin grey smoke rose from thatched roofs atop brick walls. It appeared, save for the most minute of differences, the same as it had the day before, or any other day one could find on the calendar. The only variance in the scene came from the time of the year affecting how much daylight shone on the village, and the wind affecting the length of the trails the smoke made in the air.

To a habitual observer, it might even appear as if the seasons and weather was the variable, and the village was the constant.

"Perhaps watching my village is where Newton conceived of the clockwork universe," Belle said to herself, as was her habit. Belle was long resigned to conversing alone, as the idea of having an idea had not yet occurred to most of the denizens of that quiet little village. The thought was very nearly enough to turn her around and send her back to home.

But resolutely, she made the contemptibly familiar journey down the hill and via the old Roman road a budget conscious lord had first built the village around. It was, of course, near universally called the old Roman road, as if there were some new roads the Romans had built since their collapse. Calling the road old was an exercise in insulting tautology, much as pointing out to your elders that they were advanced in years, and long faded past the presentation of their prime.

The last laugh belonged to the elderly in that regard, Belle felt. After all, they built the new village around an old Roman road, rather than one of their own commission. Like not trusting a baker's apprentice because the young lad just wasn't as competent.

And with that thought Belle reached the village just in time for the baker's wife to throw open the shutters of her bedroom window, lean out, and say "bonjour!"

To which came the reply of a half-dozen villagers, doing the same. The baker followed the copied cry by stepping out with the same tray of bread and rolls he stepped out with every morning to sell. "Morning Belle," said the baker.

"Morning monsieur Jean," Belle replied.

"Where are you of to?" The baker, Jean, asked. The man looked confused, and slightly put out. As if Belle were somehow a wrench in the gears of the town's perfect clockwork synchrony.

"Finding myself agreeing with the church about book burning. I just read Emile, by Rousseau," Belle said, and she dared to try and say more. "The way he feels it unnecessary to educate women, as if he hoped his home life wouldn't involve a single thought."

"Sounds boring," Jean replied.

Belle wondered at that response. She couldn't tell if the man had just espoused his sex's preference by dismissing her thesis, or agreed with her and expressing his support for her dim opinion of Rousseau and the cad's writing. But before she could dissect the truth, and possibly revise her opinion about this little town, Jean was halfway down the street with his baking.

Only as she watched him depart, did it occur to Belle that she would have liked one of his bread rolls.

But she and her hunger carried on in a resolute and largely uncomplaining manner. She passed the blacksmith, where he and his apprentice glanced at her as if her presence in the street were strange. "Dazed and distracted, can't you tell?" the blacksmith asked. And though he was pointing down at the anvil, toward's his apprentice's work, Belle rather suspected that she was the subject of his criticism.