Impromptu

[pierregringoire]

Gringoire is not Bound to Milliways in any way or form. But he is also not such an utter ingrate, a complete fool, as to leave a comfortable residence with ample food and endless books and warm rooms to go back into the cold and much of a late winter Paris alleyway. That's for when the bill comes due, a day he expects with certainty but without dread. Until then, he is making the most of his days, and his meals, the most recent of which he still has on the table.

Still, company is a bit...odd. There are so very few people here who talk any sense, to his way of thinking. So he's happy to see Jamie wandering through the Bar, and raises a hand--the one not occupied keeping Djali from eating his latest book-- in greeting.

Comments

[pierregringoire]

"Ah, an excercise in form, inspired by a writer from a time some years later than my own. I cannot believe it would find favor with my own patrons--"he totally has patrons! So many! He is very nearly going to be in high demand back in Paris, any day now! "-- but I think it may grant me a certain flair to be more familiar with the technique, and one must offer something a little new to the courts."

...But he's been at it a while. "And what diversion do you find here?" He is not exactly asking for distractions. But if a distraction were to wander by, he wouldn't curse at it, either.

[fieryface]

"Oh, aye? You don't think that's cheating?"

[pierregringoire]

Pierre frowns. "Cheating? You mean --to deviate from the standard form this way? It's not a though a patron wouldn't notice. They always have final say over a performance, certainly." And alas, at that.

[fieryface]

"No, to-- to base it on things that haveny come yet. You know, things you--" He flaps a hand to indicate their surroundings. "Found here."

[pierregringoire]

"Why, no more than I would think it cheating to learn of arts from another country. It is a risk,to be sure--something to stand out is good, but something too different, ah, the courts become suspicious."He sighs. "It is not as though I am stealing the words or even the forms of their poetry directly, you know--though there is some considerable work here that could do our times good, if only--! But no one would listen; it would be ignored, and I should become a Cassandra of the arts, sharing ignored prophecies of great things to come." It's genuinely distressing, to the extent Gringoire ever lets himself become distressed. "We could work to such greater effect--ah, but it would never be heard. Still, a man cannot unhear a sermon, or turn away from the message given him. And I cannot help it, what I have read will appear in my work will I or no, so it is better that I recognize it, and turn it to use, and keep my employments."

[fieryface]

"But you could not read it at all," he points out, which is what he's been doing. Oh, he's pulled down a book here and there-- and there was, of course, the volume of poetry-- but nothing about Scotland or England or France, their kings and history.

[pierregringoire]

..What.

"I could not read--?" What. "Do you mean-- did you think I was illiterate?" He smiles in confusion. "I've come to understand it's not a common skill for people in my time, compared to some, but really it is essential to my profession, after all!"

It's got to be some sort of miscommunication--the languages, or something. The alternative seems to be to that Jamie thinks a person might just choose not to read. Obviously that's ridiculous.

[fieryface]

Jamie gives him a funny look, confused now, too. "Aye, of course you can read, I know that."

[pierregringoire]

"The texts are not forbidden. And then, even if they are--"

He frowns, suddenly uncomfortable. Gringoire is a coward, and shamelessly so, and always ready to choose the easier path. But...

"...no one has said that any of the texts here are forbidden. And if they are then--then still they are not forbidden by the laws of Paris! And is it a crime to pursue knowledge?-- Yes, yes , I know it is, sometimes, but those are-- it is an error, like letting those water-wheels soak the bridges in winter, it causes only harm, there is no wrong in learning!"

It's not a conviction--Gringoire would maintain he has nearly nothing of the sort-- but it's very close to it. Learning is his joy and his only chance, and he's broken the law for it before. But--

But one doesn't speak of these things casually, even here, no. He cuts himself off and pulls back, before smiling awkwardly again, and shrugging a little. "--I mean no rebellion. But it's wise for a man in my position to make himself useful by learning where he can-- for a man in any position, I think-- and then, it really is breaking no rule I have seen."

...Oh god he's going to prison. He's too pretty for prison! And too skinny! "--And who would look after Djali, then?" he says, as one accustomed to talking only to himself.

[fieryface]

Jamie looks faintly overwhelmed by this monologue.

"I just meant, suppose you read something you dinny want to know-- about your own future, you know?"

[pierregringoire]

He shrugs. "I have always heard predictions of the future; they come true, or they do not. They are never clear enough to matter; there's an art to it, you know, to being convincing. Though if I were to read something clear--'on such and such a day, Maitre Gringoire walked on such-and-such a street, and someone threw a chamber-pot on his head and killed him", why , I should be most grateful and amend my ways. What else? Why should it not be much better to know?"

[fieryface]

"Ach, no!" Jamie cries, faintly horrified. "I know my Greek and Latin-- you canny change fate. That's how it always goes. You know it and everything you try to do to stop it is what makes it come. How would it be written down in the books from the future if it didny happen that way?"

It's in your blood, the things you'll do. He's been told since he was small about all the things he'll be and do, and he never doubts that they cannot be avoided.

[pierregringoire]

"Oh, the Greeks! The Romans! They meant to tell a fine story, and they did; but poets must pick and choose, and we write for an audience, and one can never fit all of an idea into even the longest poem--believe me! Ah, how easy life would be if it were just like the epics! A man would know how to behave, then." ... In a way Gringoire could never manage, is how. But he is happy to be wistful about the idea that will never be.

"And God's Will Be Done, certainly." If there's no great reverence in the comment, there's no sarcasm either; Gringoire believes in the power of God in much the same way a man of another age might believe in gravity. "But God himself sends prophecies that men are meant to act upon. If I saw a message from the future-one it was within my power to act on--I should take it as such an instruction. If I was wrong and it was inevitable, why, God will do as God will regardless of one poor poet. And if it is a thing that I was meant to change, I will change it." Which is to say--shrug. "If it is Fate, as you say, then one's own struggle is necessary as well."

[fieryface]

Jamie shakes his head fervently. "I don't want to know it. I don't want to see it if I canny change it."

[pierregringoire]

Gringoire scratches the top of Djali's head as she turns back to him, having given up on Jamie's potential for snacks.

Hmm.

"--I know something of my own fate as it is, in fact. When I go back through that door, into my own time, there are several very angry men waiting to take payment from me. They will say it is for walking in their streets, and who am I to argue? The King might argue, the landlords, they may say they have a better claim to my coin than those fellows; but certainly I never count money in my pockets as my own possession! --At any rate, they will be there. And someday I must return; even I, I have things I must see to. But I am forewarned; I can look to it, and try to run or be ready for a beating at least; or if some chance of earning real money comes here, I can prepare to have it ready for them, and perhaps answer their complaints in that way. And if not--why, all this time I am not having that conversation with them is more pleasant by contrast." It's sort of like winning! "So I think there is some good to be had for knowing even a bad fate that cannot be changed."

[fieryface]

He does not appear to find that argument very convincing at all.

"Well, you do as you like, of course," he says dubiously. He had no intention of mucking about with the future. It's one thing when you're worried about debt collectors, he thinks-- quite another when you might stumble across an account of the people you'll kill, the wars you'll start and lose, the kingdom you'll set to ruin.

[pierregringoire]

Gringoire smiles a bit at that. "Or as Fate commands? And would anyone know the difference, without a prophecy?"

Djali butts her head against Gringoire more insistently, and adds a very loud bleat for good measure.

"Ah-? Ah! Very well." He gathers his small collection off the bar. "I at least am fated to go outside at the moment."