The Byzantine Wager

Chapter 23 - How Pons Got his Name

Chapter 24

How Pons Got his Name

He could not, try as he might, remember his mother. There was nothing there. A blank. Yet the word 'mother' gave him comfort. It made him feel warm. The smell of milk could make him feel the same way. Later - much later - when thinking back on her, he surmised that she must have been a peasant girl. She may have been a respectable woman - or a low one. The year he turned three years of age saw a plague strike which drew no distinction between whores and housewives. As for 'father' - there was not even a warm feeling associated with that word.

When he stopped to think about it, his earliest memory was of starving naked in the rain, his mud caked body shivering, covered in sores, scraggly hair crawling with lice - trying to steal slops from a trough before the pigs finished it all. A hungry pig wouldn't hesitate to take a bite out of a tiny child and his arms had the scars to show when he had been too slow. He also remembered the need to move quietly and stick to the shadows and underbrush. Most people threw stones at him. Others yelled at him to 'Go away!' They were terrified that this feral child carried the Death. Cold and starving the child wandered. Stealing to eat, drinking from puddles, sleeping under wagons. Spring turned to summer. Worms and insects can provide a surprising amount of nourishment. For a few weeks he stole eggs from a prosperous farm. He had slowly made friends with the large dog who guarded the demesne. Eventually they drove him off with kicks.

At some point in the autumn he approached a band of landless peasants. These poor souls made their living - such as it was - traveling from estate to estate. They followed the harvests, picking fruit in the summer, cutting wheat in the autumn, and starving the rest of the time. Many people in the countryside had died from the plague so their labor was needed, but they were not provided with a home. They were tolerated, but never welcome. Land was precious and not given up lightly. Traveling along with this band was a woman, a hair-lipped vagabond who sold curses and brewed love potions for female customers and sold herself to the males. She herself was tolerated but not welcomed among the wandering peasants, but she took a sort of pity on the boy and shared her meager portion with him. People came to her for cures, but it would be a kindness to refer to her as a wise woman, for in fact she knew little. The fortunes she told never came true, but she could set a bone when a man fell out of a tree picking fruit, and she could sew up a cut from a scythe.

She put the foundling to work doing chores and gathering firewood. Some cold mornings she would dip him naked in marshy bogs in order to pick the leeches off of him. The woman was often cruel and frequently drunk. A tag-a-long child to an outcast whore attached to landless peasants. Rosa. He could clearly remember that her name had been Rosa. What had he been to her? A pet? A slave? A son? And what name was his?

The Easter after Rosa found him, the band of roving workers paused their plowing for Holy Sunday and crowded into a village church. They stood at the rear apart from the regular local congregation. It was a sour rainy day and many were simply glad to be dry and in shelter. Perhaps food would be provided. A priest came to the pulpit and began to recount the story of Christ's final days from the gospels. He spoke Latin - a language which none of the faithful before him could understand. He also had a lisp which made the ancient language particularly inscrutable. Every time he came to the name 'Pontius Pilot' he made a popping sound and spittle would fly. To the orphan child, the priest in his robes sputtering and garbling was hilariously funny. He pulled away from Rosa and began to dance up and down the church in mid-sermon mimicking the priest.

"Pontius Pilatus! Pontius Pilatus!" he called giggling and singing mindlessly. The entire service was disrupted with laughter until Rosa was able to take a hold of him. She pulled him to the back, and cuffed him until his happy whoops of "Pontius Pilatus" changed to sobs.

The name, however, stuck. The field hands who wended their way over the land began to refer to Rosa's waif as "Pontius Pilatus" as a joke. They traveled from village to manor. They traveled from where water was called 'oh' to where it was called 'agwah.' He started to learn to talk. Speech had been knocked out of his mind during his months alone as had his own name. Over time "Pontius" became shortened to "Pons."

Over the years Pons learned 'akwah' was sometimes called 'vasser.' He watched and learned from the hedge witch: a bit about healing and wound tending, but more about using his wits to survive. Rosa was not a parent. Love, guidance, and care never came from her. He grew up tough and mean, fighting if he had to, but also using cunning.