“Was sehrt, das lehrt.”
What hurts, teaches. Thus says Captain von Berlepsch in the armory of the Wartburg Castle as he schools fourteen-year-old Seppel in the art of swordsmanship. More than once in Kingdom of the Birds, Seppel is to learn the truth of the captain’s words.
My own childhood experiences with sword fighting were considerably less dramatic. After watching Errol Flynn movies on WGN’s Family Classics, my brothers and sisters and I would hurry out to the barn to reenact our favorite scenes by brandishing pointed sticks at one another in the hayloft.
After years of daydreaming about wielding a genuine blade, I signed up for fencing as a P.E. credit in college. The group instructor was a disinterested coach with a whistle around her neck. Clad in T-shirts and gym shorts, a dozen of us freshmen stood dutifully in two lines and stepped forward and back for forty-five tedious minutes. At the end of each session our weary instructor told us to put away the equipment and then disappeared in search of real athletes.
Her exit signaled our transformation into a melee of pirates and musketeers. Down two flights of stairs the twelve of us battled lustily, thrusting and parrying, metal clanging on metal, deep into the dungeon level of the old brick gymnasium.
I never did become a swordsman, but twenty-five years later I found myself studying a translation of a sixteenth-century Fechtbuch, or fight manual, looking up from my scribbled notes to brandish a pen and try to figure out the moves in Seppel’s first encounter with an actual opponent. And when Kingdom of the Birds was published in 2010, the launch party provided opportunities for guests of all ages to wield a sword.
kingdomofthebirds.wordpress.com 