Andeyro

The greatest man of the age sits with me, and tells me of legends.

“And he steps out of the shadows then, the Master. I survey him as he surveys us. The distinguished beard, the flickering eyes of deepest grey. The locks of white and black that fall like a porcupine’s stripes to the nape of his neck and gather high in the topknot that makes him so recognisable as he walks the city streets. They say he is fifty. They say he is seventy. I don’t know. But I can see with my own eyes he is handsome now, and that perhaps, in his youth, he was a real spectacle. He leans on a stick, but he seems not to need it for strength. The very opposite, as self-evidently he is muscular. And quite soon I see it is for pointing. For, calmly and methodically, with regret and with kindness, he begins to point out those men that do not make his mark. The man beside me is among the first to go. He is disappointed, but in his way happy, for he has a tale to tell his children and grandchildren, and time enough to embroider it until he is in fact the inspiration for the commander on the horse outside the palace of Bolbando. And too much water will have run under too many bridges for his grandchildren ever to know for certain. And the family will have its myth, and the man will have his glory.”