rix_scaedu

I wrote this to kelkyag's prompt:

"Jonna. Does her family know where she's vanished to? Also, she's spending a lot of time learning from, well, everyone, but she's also coming into this situation with a lot of skills and knowledge already. Any chances to shine?"

Phillippus the Pigman, Phillippus Grieverhock as he was in the parish records, was not at all confused although possibly he had the right to be. His daughter, Jonna, had gone off to escort some pillock, who’d been disturbing the pigs by wandering around as a talking frog before she’d changed him back, out of the forest and back to where he’d come from. Now, it seemed, Jonna wasn’t coming home. Instead, he had a messenger, someone he would have expected to have been going to see one of the surrounding lords or dropping a message with the village reeve on his way through, supervising a crew of workmen in his yard.

‘Bride price’ had been bandied around to explain why a solid new sty and cow byre were going up round the edges of his farmyard. Jonna, the messenger said, had married the pillock’s brother. The buildings, and the two cows with calves at foot, were to compensate the farm for the loss of her labour and, Phillippus thought shrewdly, for not being able to call on his son-in-law and future grandchildren when he needed a few extra hands. He understood that perfectly well, just as he understood that the pillock had been the Crown Prince. In some ways, he understood the King’s position completely – one son a pillock, the other locked in a tower under a curse and then a pretty, bright, sensible girl with no important relatives drops into your hand…

Phillippus suspected that his problems were going to start after the messenger and his workmen left. The parish and its village didn’t come under the auspices of any of the local lords, there’d been so many disputes between them over who was its overlord that the current king’s great-grandfather had declared himself both tired of the business and the village’s direct overlord. In return for a company of free archers to the King’s Muster and maintenance of the King’s Highway through the parish, they were allowed to manage their own affairs under the law. That didn’t keep the neighbours at bay of course. Once a generation for each of the three local lordly families they’d had to send a protest to the King as a new incumbent lord tried to claim rights over them and theirs he didn’t have. Phillippus kept quiet about how many pigs he and his family actually owned for good reasons and he thought that this shiny, new construction was just asking for problems.

Problems arrived sooner than he expected, before the messenger and his men had left but while they were still cleaning up at the back of the farm sheds where they’d put their horses and cart. The problems were Sir Sander sur Helcrom and his men at arms, who simply rode into the farmyard and dismounted.

“You,” said Sir Sander, striding up to Phillippus and seizing him by the throat of his shirt, “have cost me a valuable opportunity. You can start repaying me with those two fine cows you’ve so recently acquired and you can either give me those nice, new building materials too or I’ll take a couple of your offspring for my estate.”

Phillippus managed to stutter out, “I don’t know what your lordship is talking about!”

“My daughter had that enchanted frog in her hands, she was one kiss away from being the next queen, you dolt! But for that blasted hawk and your meddling daughter, I’d be about to become the Crown Prince’s father-in-law.” Sir Sander tightened the fit of the shirt around Phillippus’ throat as Phillippus decided that perhaps the Crown Prince wasn’t as much of a pillock as he’d thought. “Do you have any idea how much that enchantment and the transportation cost me?” The neighbouring manor lord’s voice dropped to a hiss. “I’m going to be taking it out of your peasant hide for years.”

“Well, now,” the new voice from behind Phillippus was the messenger, one Sir Wendell who claimed to be no-one of real importance, “that sounded rather like a confession of treason, didn’t it, Captain Bouche?”

Phillippus recognised the sound of swords being drawn, then the workmen’s supervisor, a man his own age whose scars were suddenly making a lot more sense, ordered, “Drop that man and your weapons, in the name of the King!”

I wrote this to kelkyag's second prompt.

“She could be a great deal worse,” said Lady Addew calmly as she sipped her tea.

“She is very pretty,” agreed Lord Addew, her husband.

“That’s not what I meant.”  She smiled at him in that way he recognised as meaning he’d completely missed the point.  “She knows a great deal of herb lore and she understands the basics of household management, though of course she’s no experience with this scale of household.  She can measure and make a good shirt and I’ve no qualms about handing responsibility for Prince Rupert’s shirts over to her immediately.  She’s economical with her fabric but she still gives a generous fit.  She can’t embroider at all but that’s understandable if her family can’t afford the materials and Jonna is willing to learn.  That’s helping a great deal.” Her ladyship sipped her tea. 

Lord Addew asked, “Did she ask you for advice?  Wedding night advice, I mean.”  He flushed a little.

“No,” Lady Addew replied calmly.  “From what she’s said, her mother is a sensible woman who made sure she knew everything she needed to know some time ago.”

“Oh, well I thought Prince Rupert might have asked me for advice,” Lord Addew seemed disappointed.  “I suppose he might have asked Sir Norwell or Master Samsell instead.”

“Quite possibly he did, dear,” then Lady Addew added, “at the relevant time.”

“But their wedding day was the relevant time.”  The look on his wife’s face made him add, “Wasn’t it?”

“Prince Rupert is an attractive young man,” Lady Addew smiled, “and sometimes, dear, older ladies are merely girls who’ve had a lot more experience.”

“What?  Who?”  Lord Addew was flabbergasted and a little worried.

“Lady Ysun, the Dowager Countess of Highford and Lady Reine, that I know of,” his wife told him calmly.  “It’s probably a very good thing he’s gotten married, otherwise he might have developed a reputation.”

“But they’re all…,” Lord Addew floundered for the right phrase.

“In the prime of their lives as you are, dear.”  The fondness in her smile took any possible sting out of her words.

I wrote this to aldersprig's ninth prompt.  This follows After The Fairy Tale and is followed by After The Fairy Tale III.

They’d told her that she was going home with a new dress as a reward for helping Prince Terrence.  A new dress, a completely new dress, never worn by anyone else before was certainly worth bathing for.  Jonna could agree with that but she hadn’t expected the enormous bath tub that could hold her and one of her sisters easily, someone to scrub her back, someone else to wash her hair and the towels.  Towels almost as big and as thick as blankets.  The maids had descended on her with those as soon as she’d climbed out of the water and then, when she was dry, they’d dressed her.  Jonna had protested at that, only small children needed help with their clothes, and when they’d stood her in front of a mirror (a full length glass mirror!) she’d been horrified.

“I can’t wear this!”  She’d tugged at the skirt made of a fabric she’d never touched before.  “It’s silk isn’t it?  I can’t wear this, it’s only for ladies.  Besides, I’ve the pigs to look after.”  Jonna couldn’t help but feel that this was going to end badly.

“Well, you couldn’t expect a gift from the king to be anything less than silk,” pointed out the oldest of the maids.  “We’ll parcel your old dress up for you and you can keep this one for best.”  Jonna would have been happy to have a dress just like the maid’s for best.  The king no doubt meant well but her family couldn’t afford to keep a silk dress, not when selling it would get them money for something useful like a barn or a cow byre and a cow.  “Sir Wendell will be here in a moment to take you home,” the maid tweaked the skirt out of her hand.  “Everything will sort itself out, I’m sure.”

Sir Wendell did arrive shortly and he escorted her carefully through the hallways, down the stairs and out to the coach.  He seemed to consider it normal for him to offer her his arm for safety’s sake going down the stairs and she was glad to take it because her skirts were a little longer than she was used to.  She was glad, as she avoided tangling her feet in her own hem, that the parcel of her own dress and shoes had been sent down to the coach by footman.

Sir Wendell helped her up into the coach and climbed in to sit on the seat beside her.  Jonna, of course, had never been in a coach before and she wasn’t sure that it compared favourably to a hay wagon but she’d been more relaxed on the hay wagon.  Here she was worried she might damage dress or the interior of the carriage.  However Sir Wendell began to talk to her almost immediately about the weather, which led into last winter’s floods, trouble maintaining the King’s Highway where it crossed the loops of the Seridwine near Jonna’s village, the prospects for this year’s harvest and the salt trade.

“Of course we’re interested in how much salt is,” Jonna told the surprised knight.  “We have to buy it for ourselves, of course, but we raise pigs.  If people can’t get salt then they can’t cure the meat so they don’t want as many pigs.”

Which was when they drove in the gate of another castle.

Jonna looked accusingly at Sir Wendell.  “You told me you were taking me home!”

“I did, I’m sorry.”  He looked entirely unrepentant.  “There are reasons you were brought here.”  The carriage came to a stop.  “Now we need to get out.”  The look Sir Wendell gave her wasn’t unkind but it was firm, “Please, I would prefer not to sling you over my shoulder to get you out of here.”

Jonna stepped down from the carriage to find that there was a second carriage in the enclosed courtyard backed by a tall tower.  The king, a priest, a middle-aged lord and a young man were clustered beside the other vehicle.  Sir Wendell put her hand on his arm and led her over to the small group where he bowed and Jonna did her peasant’s bob of a curtsey.

“My dear,” the king smiled broadly at her, “I do hope you had a comfortable trip.  May I make known to you: my chaplain, Father Tain; Lord Addew who is the Warden of the Tower; and my younger son, Prince Rupert?”

Jonna bobbed to each of the men in turn.  Father Tain blessed her and the two other men bowed in their turns.

The king went on, “Prince Rupert, this young lady is your wife.  Her given name is Jonna.”

“Wife!?”  Jonna and Prince Rupert exclaimed in unison.

“Yes,” the king continued to smile.  “The two of you were married by proxy this morning.”  He added kindly, “You were bathing at the time.  It was a very touching ceremony – the queen and her ladies cried.”

“Married?”  Prince Rupert, who was wearing brown leathers and looked like he’d been called here untidied from something he’d been doing, looked at the priest and asked, “Shouldn’t there be rings and things?”

“I have your marriage bands here,” Father Tain said, handing something to the prince.  “Normally for a royal wedding there would be an illuminated declaration as well but this all happened so quickly it will take a while for the scribes to catch up.”

“Thank you, Father.”  Prince Rupert walked over to Jonna who was working hard not to cry.  He picked up her left hand and said, “Here, let me put your ring on,” and slid a plain gold band onto her ring finger.  “Now let’s you and I go for a little walk over here and you can tell me what’s wrong.”  He led her far enough away from the other men to give the illusion of privacy and asked, “Now, what’s the problem?”

Jonna looked up at him for a moment.  He seemed calm, capable and rather like Shrimblestraw Jack back in her village.  “I was going to go home,” she told him and burst into tears on his chest.