This is the book of the history of the Sacred Beggar Boy, known to most in present day as the son of Anonymous Gentry, as his name, and therefore lineage, was recorded in the annals of Kaenisbeth.
No mortal man yet lives who could tell you wherefrom sprang the Sacred Beggar Boy1 or, indeed, much else, beyond the oral stories of his more pious acts as told by the brothers of the Celtaic Brasiscaen Alter Worship of Finer Vegetation.
What we do have is the writing left to us, such as is often made by persons who were considered to be important enough to be given paper and asked to keep just such records. One entry alone stands for his life, in regards to his “name,” and that on his death certificate.
Yet, if we look to those other, less scientific sources, the oral traditions, which I have herein written out in the hope of broadening the work of this former avid grower of crops, we find a treasure trove of information.
The birth of the Sacred Beggar Boy was in this way: During the time his mother, Rose, was promised in marriage to Woodrow, she was found to be pregnant before they were united.
Woodrow did not wish to make a public spectacle of Rose’s indiscretion and sought to untie their bans of engagement before it became widely known that she carried another man’s child.
Rose, however, insisted that the child was not that of man at all but that she was overpowered by a most enigmatic god in one of his less enigmatic moments, and so it was that her son was conceived out of wedlock but in a state of grace, all the same.
Woodrow was at first in shock that she would blatantly make false claims simply to deny the truth of her shame. As time went on, he became convinced that Rose really did believe these claims and that somewhere in her mind a gear had slipped.
That being the case, he resolved to stay with her despite her indiscretion, though he did beg her to stop announcing her pregnancy, and how it was not due to him, in the public square, especially at the times of day when traffic was most fierce.
“Rose, I love you girl, so I do” he would tell her “but if one more man rubs your belly and snickers in my general direction I’ll go mad!”
Rose set up a small concession stand just to one side of the public square, from which she sold T-shirts that proclaimed her joy at having been chosen by the gods to bear one of their offspring.
Woodrow begged her to stop telling her parents that she had been with another but to keep it quiet and he would go or stay as she saw fit.
Rose made invitations to the birthing ceremonies and sent them out to all her kin.
Woodrow begged Rose to stop telling his father that someone else had gotten her with child as it made it hard to digest food during family meals.
Rose embroidered a large tapestry to hang on the wall which said “Blessed be this house now that Rose hath conceived from an outside source.”
Woodrow went home and packed his bags, preparing to seek his fortune out in the world, well away from the home of his formerly intended. But, look: as he was preparing to leave a man of swirl-some capery appeared quite suddenly at the door of his tent and proceeded to say things at Woodrow!
What things this man spoke, they were not the ordinary things as One might expect a person appearing at the door of One’s tent to say. He did not, for example, announce how his associates were offering half off on all Ox cart rentals. Nor did he mention that he could mend Woodrow’s front tent panel for the price of a good meal and a bed for the night. For this was not an ordinary person prone to doing ordinary things1.
“Woodrow,“ the stranger began, “your wife to be, Rose, will bear a son who shall be called son of Anonymous Gentry. Yet do not be afraid to take her to your home and to raise this child as your own for what Rose speaks is the truth. I have impregnated her.”
Woodrow is the only human, in all of recorded time, known for punching an enigmatic god in the face. Alas, afterwards curiosity got the better of him and he stopped to ask questions, stooping over this be-caped stranger and demanding answers in a fiercely threatening manner.
”Why her?” he bellowed and growled down into the bleeding countenance.
The First Course
Rough draft from what became my published novel ‘Chronicles of Ordine: Book I: Sacred Beggar Boy’ which is for sale on Lulu.com