A Templar’s Rat - Part two (Original Fiction)

by Michael Warner Molema

Novice Arthur and the rat found themselves within Arthur’s chambers, having just returned from Father Marlin’s study. The chamber was sparse, consisting of a bed, a small writing desk, a window, and a small heat brazier. The window looked out on the Novice’s Courtyard, where the Novice Master Brother Discours, was singing a hymn, as a choir of five, as he tended to the few late autumn vegetables.

“Your bed big enough to fit two?” The rat asked as he poked his head out of a fold in Arthur’s robe.

“It should be, unless you take up more space than I do?”

“I doubt it.”

Arthur sat down at his desk and pulled out his Journal. The rat ran to the edge of the desk and jumped onto the window sill. Arthur began his entry by dating the page, and then he began the entry:

Today the strangest thing happened.

Farther Marlin had asked me to take inventory of the food stores, and whilst I did I met a talking rat. I took the rat to Father Marlin and he said that the rat and I should stay together for a while. The rat is sitting on the window sill listening to the Discours-Choir in the courtyard.

“Arthur?”

“Yes?”

“Who is that man with five voices?”

“Brother Discours.”

“You thought I was him?”

“I did, and now you know why.”

“Indeed…”

The only sound in the room besides Brother Discours’ singing was the scratch of quill on paper. The room grew gradually darker as the day slowly waned. The rat broke the silence, “Do I have a name Arthur?”

Arthur stopped writing, “I don’t know, did your parents give you one?”

“No, rats tell each other apart through smell, so we have no names.”

“Do you want one?”

The rat jumped off the window sill and onto Arthur’s desk. “Just a moment.”

Arthur got up and used a flint to light the brazier. Using a small taper, he lit a candle, and then joined the rat at the desk. Arthur moved his Journal away from the flame, shrouding himself and the rat in the warm orange sphere of light.

Arthur drew out a piece of parchment and wrote across the top: Names for Rat.

“Okay, what name do you like?”

“I don’t know, but I think Arthur, Marlin, and Discours are not options. I would like a different name.”
Arthur wrote down the three names and drew lines through them.

“How about, …, Peter, James, John?”

“I don’t think any of those fit me.”

The names were recorded and crossed off.

“Daniel, Johana, Solomon, Samuel?”

“No, no, I’m not a king, no.”

Arthur did not pick up on the rat’s unusual knowledge of the Bible as he wrote down and crossed off the names. The pair went through twenty more names, many from the Bible, and many not, until the rat said, “Yes, that will be my name.”

“Eh? Rupert?”

“Yes, Rupert. Rupert the Rat, that will be my name. What do you think?”

“Rupert the Rat… I like, it fits.”