Abelard was soon to learn that Felicity was far less fussed than he by the rules of engagement he remembered as essential to the maintenance of a broader peace. Summer was just handing the season off to a reluctant autumn when Oliver showed up. He had arranged to spend a year at a nearby French hospital. Diligent study had given him a good working knowledge of the language and his curiosity about Abelard had propelled him to alter his career path for a year, at least.
Any excuse for a good dinner at a fine restaurant was welcome and Oliver’s appearance was as good as any. They would go into town to Le Beauharnais, noted for their tiny birds, stuffed with expensive mushrooms. They drove in the slowly fading daylight through the old forest that surrounded Fontainebleau. Approaching the intersection which would put them on the main road into the town center, they noticed a commotion near a popular area bar. Spectacles being barely resistible to most people, even if only for the merest glance, Felicity slowed to creeping speed and all three craned their necks to catch the unfolding episode. There were evening crowds on their way home and elsewhere and they also turned their heads to look, but did not slow and gave the scene a wide berth. Three men were beating a fourth, who had just fallen, his arms about his head and his body in a protective fetal position. As far as Abelard could tell, there was no mad rush to put a stop to the assault.
“We should do something?” Felicity declared, her tone leaving little room for debate.
“This is not our affair,” Abelard said with equal determination. “Unless there is a good personal reason to intercede, such matters are best left alone. We have no idea why they are beating him. It might make perfectly good sense. I do not think I would like others to intervene in my affairs.”
“What if that were you?” Oliver asked, a bit incredulously.
“It would never be me,” he answered, with a chilling confidence.
From what he is able to recall, that’s the way things were always done. If it wasn’t your family, at least those with whom you were not quarreling, or if it wasn’t your lord, to whose aid you were obliged to come, or if it had nothing to do with personal enrichment, then it was the unwritten rule that you kept away from the business of other people.
Felicity was having none of this. She chose to precipite events. She abruptly pulled right up to the curb and began honking her horn and screaming at the men to stop. This they did while they undertook to locate the source of the unwelcome annoyance. During this pause in their initial enterprise they took the opportunity to walk over to the car, where the one wearing a metal studded leather jacket, three earrings in his right lobe attached to a completely shaven head, that sat solidly on an oversized neck, put his hand through the open window and made the mistake of grabbing Felicity’s hair.
Abelard had been sitting in the back so that Oliver would have the better view, as all the sights were new to him. Annoyed as he was at Felicity’s inability to restrain her meddlesome impulses, he could not simply abandon her, as much as he thought it would be an edifying experience. She fell somewhere between categories one and two in his rules that governed when intervention was permissible. While Oliver was still fiddling with his seatbelt, he was already out the door and smashing his extra large fist into giant-neck’s face, while gripping his shoulder to keep him steady. After a moment he tired of the routine and began smashing the head against a conveniently located lamppost. His two colleagues were slow to react; surprise having confused the apparently simple circuitry of their minds. When they did finally stir, it was with surprising nimbleness for such big guys, but it was already too late. Giant-neck lay bleeding on the sidewalk and Oliver had by then mastered the seatbelt mechanism and slipped quietly behind them. He delivered a single powerful blow to a right kidney, which instantly deactivated its owner. The remaining thug never saw the circular kick to his head that launched him against the same lamppost which had so disagreeably pulped his buddy’s skull.
Then something took place which Abelard found highly unusual. The fearful crowds that had kept their distance were now converging on Abelard and Oliver and clapping and smiling and thanking them for their heroic intervention. In all of Abelard’s memory, he had only once undertaken a purely selfless endeavour and that had failed. He felt conflicting emotions now. He believed that Felicity had acted stupidly and that they should never have intervened. But there was no denying he did not dislike the praise and admiration, even if it was for something he would never have voluntarily done. He would file these mixed messages for later analysis.
“Abelard,” Felicity whispered, “It may be best if you just went along now and met us at the restaurant. It wouldn’t do for you to have to answer any questions the police might have. They will probably be here at any moment.” Abelard slipped away into the gathering darkness.
In the confusion the original victim had been forgotten. He was just pulling himself up and trying to regain his balance. The three thugs had also limped off into the evening gloom. The sirens were growing louder and the relieved onlookers had begun to chatter loudly. An ambulance closely followed the police cars and it was only a moment before the victim was on a stretcher and the police began to question Felicity and Oliver, while the crowd was shouting obscenities at them for leaving a helpless citizenry to fend for itself. Very soon they were asking about the apparent hero that had so aroused the crowd, and so were Felicity and Oliver, wondering where that silent hero had disappeared to. No one had actually seen him emerge from the car. It would remain a mystery.
The victim had been transported to the same hospital at which Oliver would be taking up his new position. He would later learn that the man was a local small time thief and the men beating him were acting on behalf of a well known lender of last resort, who did not wish to write off any more loans than he absolutely needed to. This fringe banker sometimes used delinquent debtors to encourage all his other clients to closely respect their own individually designed payment schedules. To Oliver this somewhat diminished the pride he had felt in taking a risk to help a complete stranger. To Abelard it only reinforced his principle of non-intervention. He firmly believed that they had meddled in a legitimate business dispute between a financier and his client. This last thought, he felt, might be misunderstood and should be kept to himself.
But smug self-satisfaction was not all that Abelard saw in this felicitous episode. Ever vigilant for opportunity, he spotted here the solution to a vexatious problem. He had no identity. Anytime there was even the smallest possibility of contact with the authorities, whether for something as mundane as a traffic offense, or more serious such as being a material witness to a crime, Abelard had always had to quickly and quietly disappear. Travel outside of France was impossible, as would be the ordinary task of applying for admission to a business school. Both he and Felicity had for months now been silently mulling over this problem. He made known his thoughts that the delinquent debtor might be the key to his acquiring a false identity.
“Abelard,” Felicity sighed, “I’ve never done anything like this.” Looking at Oliver’s wide eyed stare, she added, “and I’m guessing that neither has the good doctor.”
“Besides,” Oliver intoned, “you’d be putting your trust in someone with apparently little regard for his own word. He’s already tried to renege on people who take such things very seriously. You would be just something else for him to trade for his personal gain. I’ll bet he has commerce with the local gendarmes; they look the other way now and again as long as he feeds them information that is good for their business, arresting charging and convicting malefactors and anti-social cretins.”
“You are quite right, Oliver. We should not deal with him. We should deal with his creditors. They will eventually come looking for you and Felicity and when…,” he was saying when Felicity interrupted him.
“What are you saying?” she asked, somewhat exasperated, by Abelard’s matter-of-fact tone. “What do mean when? How do you know all this?”
“Let’s just say I have a feeling about such people.??
?
In Abelard’s memories power was mostly in private hands. There was no real state to speak of and the local nobility, with their own armed forces, was usually structured around powerful barons to whom they pledged to send their men whenever he needed substantial armed forces to engage in organized, large scale violence, the King being at the top of this well heeled gangster fraternity. They made and enforced their own laws. His father, during periods of open conflict in the Hundred Years War, often called upon his vassals to send armed men so that he could fulfill his own obligations to the English. The powerful barons also had a rule; unless you were planning a hostile takeover, never interfere in someone else’s conflicts.
*