rix_scaedu | Entries tagged with sir wendell

I wrote this to kelkyag's second prompt, "Something after Fairy Tale Aftermath," which it follows straight on from.

Sir Sander sur Helcrom did let go of Phillipus, so he could draw his sword. Phillipus took the opportunity to get out of the middle of a sword fight before the actual fighting started, backpedalling away from the visiting lord and his men while taking care not to stay between Sir Sander and the king’s men. Sir Wendell and Captain Bouche, for their part, took stock of their opponents. Sir Sander and his vassal men at arms had all drawn swords to face them, with Sir Sander looking confident that their numbers would carry the fight. Sir Sander’s two hireling men at arms had not drawn their swords though and Phillipus thought they looked worried.

Phillipus knew he had no place in this fight, his best weapon for hand to hand fighting was a cudgel or a knife and the archery skills he practised on the green twice a week with the other menfolk of the village weren’t of use here. Besides, he didn’t have his bow and arrows with him. There was one thing he could do though, and he did it. He threw back his head, cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted, “’Ware foes! ‘Ware foes! ‘Ware Foes!”

“Fie, go to! There are more of them?” That was one of the vassals, drawn sword at the ready.

Meanwhile one of the hirelings was hissing, “Your lordship, these are the King’s men! You can’t draw on them!”

“No-one’s going to go back and tell His Majesty who did for them, let alone the pig farmer or his peasant sons! That’s two of them against seven of us, if you two milksops do your part,” Sir Sander snapped back.

“That’d be seven of us against Brien Bouche and Sir Wendell ald Grenham,” replied the other hireling. “I think I prefer to take my chances on the King’s Mercy.” Some of the vassal men at arms looked at him with odd expressions, those names apparently meaning something to them.

At that point the soldiers of Captain Bouche’s troop charged out from behind the new cow byre and took their places behind Sir Wendell and their leader.

“So, gentlemen, before we begin,” drawled Sir Wendell, “anyone like to reconsider their position?”

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 aldersprig's paid extension. This follows on from After The Fairy Tale and After The Fairy Tale II.

Prince Rupert let her cry for a few moments then fished a handkerchief out of a pocket and pressed it into her hand. “Here, use this,” he said kindly. “Is being married to me so bad, Lady Jonna, that you’d rather return to you father’s manor?”

“I’m not a Lady,” she sobbed. “I’m a pig herder, from a family of pig herders. I don’t know how to be married to a prince!”

“I would imagine,” answered Prince Rupert sensibly, “that some of it is very much like being married to anybody else. To tell you the truth I don’t have very much experience with young ladies, Lord Addew’s always been insistent that they would just lead to trouble. Having met some very…instructive older ladies who’ve visit here in the past few years I think I have some inkling of the nature of his concerns.”

Jonna dried her eyes, blew her nose loudly on the handkerchief, and asked curiously, “You really don’t know any girls?”

“Lord Addew doesn’t let any in and I don’t go out,” he shrugged, “so I don’t meet any.”

“Why don’t you go out?” She was still curious.

“I’m under a curse-.”

She interrupted, “What is it with curses and your family? Can’t any of you dodge?”

“I was in my cradle when it happened,” he said appeasingly, “I was too young to roll myself over, let alone dodge.”

“That’s a good reason,” Jonna agreed grudgingly. “So what is this curse? Do you turn into something dangerous once a month or something like that?”

“No, I don’t transform.” Prince Rupert sighed, “If I ever meet my brother, Prince Terrence, face to face then the nation will be at civil war. To avoid that, I’ve lived in here ever since the fairy made her pronouncement at my christening. My parents visit sometimes but of course my brother doesn’t.”

Jonna cast a critical eye over the courtyard and the tower. “It doesn’t look like you’ve been locked up here alone.”

“Well, no, I haven’t,” he agreed. “The Warden and his wife, nannies, a governess, tutors, instructors, guards and servants, there are a lot of people here besides me. No-one of your age and gender though. I suppose you know lots of men who are sort of my age?”

“I know a few,” she added shyly, “but I’ve not been walking out with anyone.”

“What does that mean?” He looked puzzled but interested.

“Walking out is when you start spending time with someone to find out whether you want to marry them.”

“We’re past that stage, aren’t we?” He smiled and offered her his hand. “Now why don’t we go and see what else my father has to say?”

They covered the return distance to the group by the carriage hand in hand.

“Wedding day nerves?” The king smiled benevolently. “I’m sorry everything was so rushed but once you rejected Prince Terrence I needed to act quickly.”

Prince Rupert turned to Jonna, surprised, “You turned down my brother? Why?”

“I was well and truly annoyed with him by the time I got him back to the palace,” she explained and dropped Prince Rupert’s hand so she could count off on her fingers. “He has no sense of direction. He insisted on trying to protect me from things that weren’t dangerous but then he was oblivious to things that were. He took me away from what I was supposed to be doing, which was minding the pigs, and he was fixated on something called the Carthmanian Protocols which had nothing to do with what we were doing.”

“Prince Terrence is not a woodsman,” admitted the king wryly, “but the Carthmanian Protocols? Perhaps I should review the details of that treaty…”

“But why did you need to act quickly once I said I wouldn’t marry Prince Terrence?” Jonna was still confused.

The king looked helplessly at Sir Wendell who explained smoothly, “Prince Terrence has a strong aversion to…physical intimacy and has long said that he would rather not marry and spend his energy on being the best Crown Prince and then King he can be, rather than spending much of his time trying to make sure he hadn’t completely ruined some poor woman’s life. He’s also pointed out that his brother leads a forcibly confined life and would have much more time to devote to being a good husband and father. Admirable sentiments but not necessarily practical.” Sir Wendell sighed. “We could have gotten him to the altar with you from a sense of obligation but when you turned him down, Prince Rupert became our only option for heirs. You have many fine qualities and no foreign ruler is going to marry off his daughter to spend most of her life in confinement, so-”

“So you mended best with what you had,” said Jonna tartly.

“Yes, we did,” agreed Sir Wendell mildly.

“Perhaps,” Prince Rupert intervened, noting the signs of rising temper on his new wife’s face, “it would be best if I took Jonna on a tour of our home now and introduced her to people.”

“But there should be a formal introduction to the staff,” protested Lord Addew.

“You can organise that, while we do this? Father, perhaps we will have the honour of you and Sir Wendell joining us at lunch when we can talk about other matters?” He took Jonna’s hand, bowed, which was followed by her bob, and led her towards the main entrance to the tower saying, “This is the way into the atrium.”

Jonna was heard to ask, “What’s an atrium?”

“A fancy word for entrance hall.”

“You know,” commented the king to Sir Wendell, “this could actually work.”

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.

I wrote this to aldersprig's fourth prompt. This continues in After The Fairy Tale II and After The Fairy Tale III.

“No!” The pig herder, a slip of the girl really, crossed her legs, folded her arms and glared back at the king from her chair. “I will not marry some friggin’ prince just because I managed to unenchant him. If he was any use he would either have unenchanted himself or never have gotten himself enchanted in the first place.”

“What do you want to do?” The king leaned back in his own chair on the other side of the desk. There was a certain pungency to the firm minded young woman seated opposite him. No doubt it had a lot to do with pigs, physical labour and infrequent ablutions.

“Go home. Look after the pigs. Hope Tom the woodcutter, young Shepley or Shrimblestraw Jack asks me to walk out with them. Avoid enchanted…anythings.” She continued to glare at the king.

“You would prefer one of these young men to my son? Why?” The king steepled his fingers in front of him.

“Physical competence, for a start.” She leaned forward. “And they have families who won’t look at me like something the cat dragged in. Can Your Majesty honestly tell me you won’t have this chair burnt after I leave or that you’re looking forward to introducing me to the other kings?”

The king gave her a tight smile, “If you will excuse us for a moment, my dear? Sir Wendell, with me if you please.” He rose and walked to the far end of the room, the knight who’d been standing behind his right shoulder following him. With his back to the peasant girl he said quietly, “Damn it all, Wendell, she’s right.”

“I hear a ‘but’ in there, Sire.” The knight had been the King’s right hand man for internal matters for years.

“I want all of that for my grandsons – common sense, practicality, fire and determination. She crossed her legs at me!” He suppressed a chuckle. “My wife does that when she disagrees with me.”

“Nice knees, pretty ankles and a good head of her own hair.” Sir Wendell cleared his throat. “Nice cleavage too, if you like that sort of thing.” He did.

“She won’t have Prince Terrence, so what’s to do?” The king knew there were options but he didn’t voice them.

Sir Wendell had no such qualms. “There’s always the one in the tower. It would solve both problems.”

“Should we do that to her?” The king looked over his shoulder with a pang of guilt, his subjects’ safety was his responsibility.

Sir Wendell put a comforting hand on the king’s shoulder, “Needs must, Sire, needs must.”