A Melrinuan Tale

by Simon von Wolkenstein

A little less. Just a little less. I want no more than I can hold in one hand and even then...

After he had shrugged off his complicity and squared all the blame on my shoulders, Melkin the candle-maker had stared blank-faced for some time, the hairs on his neck growing noticeably during the stand-off. I stood my ground, trembling inside. Again I said:

“Of all the trumped up charges...” I faltered.

The candle-maker, snapping out of his petit mal, lunged for my throat, his grubby whale fat hands reeking of his last week’s industry.

“Fat oaf!” I squeezed out the words before his hands clamped round my windpipe.

“Fat chance!”, he roared, his blotchy face leaning inches from mine. He smiled a turnkey smile as he locked his hands into a slimy death grip.

I had seconds, no!, moments, to react before passing out. And then I remembered the boot-maker...

Last week I had charged Sisal the bootmaker with making for me a bespoke boot for my shrunken left leg; half the size of my right leg but fully functional. A leg with muscles and bones and strength, just lacking in length. No limply hanging appendage this, not like the sail-maker’s arm. I thought of Yarrow the sail-maker sewing those thick canvas sails with one arm, one leg and the needle and thread in his teeth. You admired a man like that, sewing a sail a full half-acre in size for the merchant vessels that frequented this port. Many a man with two good arms would have struggled over a doily but not Yarrow. Down each day at his favourite pub, ‘The Sailmakers’ Arms’, plying his trade and spinning yarns with Sisal the bootmaker. Sharing a pint and discussing the bootmaker’s latest commission: a wondrous left boot, sized for a child but with a heel a full half yard high. Made for Bomble the gelder, the finest castrator in the land.

I hung now an inch from the ground, with seconds left of life. The great gelder, Bomble, soon to be a full-stop in the history of this town, a mere mention in the Melrinuan chronicles. I remembered the candle-maker’s offer as clear as if he had just spoken it:

“I’ll offer you a trade of sorts, Bomble. If you castrate the bull of my neighbour, Carick the rag and bone man, I’ll give you enough candles to light your way through your upcoming studies. What say you?”

For it were true that with the guild papers already dispatched and my submission under consideration by the tinsmithing craft elders there was much study to be done if I was going to successfully exit one trade and enter another. I had grown tired with gelding my way across this land: horses, roosters, eunuchs and the such. Big as my reputation was, and no man mocked Bomble, I had had my fill of castration and dreamed instead of making things with these two tanned hands of mine. ‘Bomble the tinsmith’, the words rested easy on my shoulders and I looked forward to the way the townsfolk would soon look me in the eye again as they ordered their tin knick-knacks.

But now with mere moments of god-blessed air in my lungs, hanging like a limp doll in the candle-maker’s deathgrip, this dream seemed to be evaporating before me. His hot breath roasting my skin. Like the rag and bone man’s bull the night I crept in to do the deed. For I had eventually signed a contract with this waxy devil in return for enough candle-light to study for 3 months. I had snipped the bull quickly and muffled its cries with ether so its owner was none the wiser. And now that the candle-maker had the only functioning bull in town he could charge as he liked, for this precious seed, to the teamsters who plied their wagon trade. But it was I who paid the price for this illicit deal. This damned candle-maker had reneged on his offer, crying ignorance and leaving me to face Radley the constable when Carick the rag and bone man had been given a hint of my culpability by Gauling the mudlark who had spied me leaving the bullpen on that particular evening. It had all become so complicated, so rapidly.

The great Bomble, gelder to the King, reduced to begging for his freedom before Horace the Legal Scrivener.

“Please”, I begged, “this last snip was a grave mistake but do not let it eclipse my former glories. Why Horace remember when I castrated, for free, the wildpig that stole berries from your land? Surely this counts for something?”

And to my surprise it did. The scrivener and the constable huddled and spoke out a plan to rid the town of this hated candle-maker, untouchable until now. His rapid rise up the ladder of wealth through dubious dealings and nightime murders all without a single clue. Until now. They promised freedom, an untainted public record, a clean transition from gelder to tinsmith, if I would only bring him down.

And now fractions of a second away from unconsciousness, I acted. My short left leg, dressed in that shiny new boot, kicking out with the force of a stallion straight into his clackers! Dropping me with a scream, louder than Satan, as he folded up and keeled over his candle-making equipment. I gasped and threw the gunpowder, I had held in one clenched hand throughout this ordeal, into the air. Then, ignited by his own candlework, a flash of light to blind this oaf from further attacks.

I lay gasping on the floor as Radley the constable burst through the door, handcuffs at the ready. Listening from the nearby window Horace the legal scrivener had written down every incriminating word that crafty waxer had uttered. Melkin’s candle-making days were over. A long stretch of prison-time stretched out in front of him.

And so as I triumphantly turned from gelder to tinsmith, this villian turned from Melkin the candle-maker to Melkin the convict. All for the commerce of a couple of balls.