[LMB] speaking of cazaril

[Tzivia Adler]

someone mentioned cazaril.  someone else mentioned a cat watching people
bathe.  someone else mentioned boys in the bathroom, and how old is old
enough not to worry about perverts?

apparetnly, while i was working, my back-brain took these ideas like a
kitten with three balls of yarn to play with.  hopefully this post will be
somewhat coherent, not just a  tangled t/a/i/l tale. . .

CoC starts off with cazaril slogging down the road, thinkng that it would be
lovely, just lovely, if the dowager provincara would give him a small job,
which would let him eat at the end of the table.  he trudges a little
further and thinks that it might be just as good to sit at the fire and not
be yelled at by anyone scarier than the cook.  perhaps if he kept going, he
might think of a yet lower, more invisible, place for himself, but he is
interupted by beautifully shined soldiers.  he thinks he was once as proud
as them, which means he once had a place rather higher than the 'end of hte
table', and certainly no cook would have yelled at him back then.

a soldier accidently tips him a gold coin instead of copper. [1]  cazaril
wisely decides to get off the road before someone comes back to retrieve it
from him - apparetnly he's been beaten off -quite- often enough.  the barn
which shelters him from the road also shelters a corpse ... cazaril hopes he
won't be blamed.  however, the corpse is already known and a farmer is going
to burn it.

cazaril: going to burn the clothes, too?  farmer:  ick, i'm not  undressing
him!

so vagabond cazaril goes to town with a gold coin and a rich man's clothes.
far from being lower than the cook, he thinks he might present himself to
the provincara after all.  more than that, he can afford the luxery of a
bath!  what a happy thought.  the emotional bungee cord is on its way back
up.

but a bath means attendants, and this attendant was pretty young. [2]  i
don't quite know how young, but he had to be at least tall and strong enough
to lift a heavy bucket higher than a man's head.  he is also young enough to
be afraid of a man with the scars of a rapist [3].  the bath owner throws
cazaril out with many insults for 'his sort'.  cazaril's emotional bungee
cord is not only on the way down, it seems to have snapped.  his pride has
pretty much splattered on the floor with his bath water.  maybe he won't
even ask for a position as scullion.

the kindness of hte laundress [4] both in letting him stay until his clothes
are ready, and in giving him a blanket when he dozes off, seems to restore
him a bit.   putting on rich clothes - with no patches even!  - restores him
even more.

now heres a question:  if he had not gone straight to the castle, but to an
inn where the bath people had gossiped, and if he had been thrown out in
shame:  would he still have gone to the castle or would the daughter's
courier have been thrown off the path? [5]

ziviya, on topic - yay!!! [6]

[1] the thought the the daughter of spring most likely made her soldier's
fingers slip is a thought for another post, if anyone wants to pick it up

[2] and here it all ties together!  cazaril, watching people bathe, and
perverts in the bath-room.  bet  you thought i'd never get here :)

[3] either a virgin or a boy.  what if the boy wasn't a virgin, is it still
the same punishemtn?

[4] imagine one of the polished soldiers finding himself in a situation of
accepting kindness from a laundress without taking furious insult.  my mind
is breaking.

[5] for want of a nail the shoe was lost, the horse was lost, etc etc

[6] in a footnoting mood today



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