A hand closed on Eleanor’s shoulder; the pressure on a few particularly raw bruises both recalled her attention and made her wince.
“I said,” Hugh repeated patiently, “that your manner is subdued today.” His eyes narrowed as he removed his hand. “Or perhaps I am mistaken, and you are only sulking.”
“Or thinking.”
“Then I would find it obligatory as to enquire what about, to have such a marked effect on your demeanour.” Hugh linked his hands at the small of his back. “Penitential thoughts of a change of ways, I might hope?”
Eleanor continued to meet his gaze, unspeaking. If he knew what she had done … She repressed a shudder, sick to the pit of her stomach at the thought of what would happen.
At last she turned away, chin tucked in. “Leave me alone, Hugh. I am sore, tired, and heartsick, and in no mood to be baited.”
“I do not bait. That would be unworthy. Indeed, it seems to me that you attempt to bait me.” If he was expecting some kind of contrition at that, or denial, or anything else then he was sorely disappointed. “I find,” he said when it became more than plain she would not speak, “I must now enquire as to what makes you heartsick. I see nothing to cause you hurt, though much should, and that it does not is a mark of your woeful lack of duty or familial feeling. Therefore, this being so unknown to me, I cannot offer the slightest assistance.”
Eleanor lifted her head to give her brother a flat stare. “I shall not even dignify that with a response.”
“Quite impossible.” Hugh strode away to stand at his own window again, looking down at the view of the training grounds it offered. “Still, I should doubtless expect no different than for my offer to be flung back in my face.”
“It is the stupid question I fling back, nothing more. There is plenty of reason and I am immune to none of it, though my vulnerabilities may be different to yours.”
“Such disrespect-”
Eleanor stopped paying attention; perhaps with some good fortune his rant would keep him entertained for a while, leaving her free. Fulk had sat with his back to her, shoulders curved inwards a trifle, half dressed. His words she remembered perfectly. “I won’t bother you like this again. I’ve disgraced myself enough.” Pause, then as an afterthought, “Disgraced with my selfishness, I mean.”
Oh dear Jesù, as if she needed more complications and worries. If he had disgraced himself, then what precisely did that say of her? And to be abandoned so quickly - that said much, and none of it complimentary. Anyway, she had only done as he told her, as she should, so honour was intact and if there was any fault it was his. Which was not comforting. What would he do now? Probably much as she’d thought before. Not that she could really say whether she was disappointed or not that the experience wouldn’t be repeated; while there had been definite good things other parts had been rather … um. Yes. Maybe very.
Hugh slapped her across the mouth; the blow stung but she thought it did no damage that would last past a few minutes. He said, “I will not be ignored. This is the second time. You will reflect on your manners. It is not fitting for one such as you.”
One side of Eleanor’s mouth twisted upwards. “Quite true, brother dear. No matter how poets ramble on to the contrary that last is quite true.”
Hugh scowled, deepening the shallow creases that were slowly beginning to permanently mark his skin. “You make no sense. No poet has ever numbered rudeness or like vices amongst the virtues fit for one in your place.”
“No, I would think not.”
“Rather patience, meekness,” that one he stressed even more than the others, “charity, piety, obedience,” again emphasised, “nobility, humbleness-”
“And a certain knowledge of one’s own worth,” Eleanor added. “Well, that I can claim, if none of the others.” She knew the value of what she had given … or thrown away, as some would have it. Not quite the value of her maidenhead, but still a good portion of the almost obscene horde of wealth and gains she could bring. Not, she reassured herself, that she cared about such things anyway, and not that anyone would ever know to be in a position to be outraged and decry her as … well, not quite a whore, as there was generally considered to be a trace of honour in such restrained dealings … so far as there could ever be any honour in something so disreputable. But she was married to the man in question, damn it!
Fed up with herself, and knowing she needed to do something about her brother, Eleanor pointed at the view from her own window. “Anyway, why did you bring me here, place me in front of this window and demand I wait?”
“You will see,” he snapped. With that he turned back to his own window and stared out with such concentration he stopped blinking.
After a while she did see. Hugh might not have summoned her here to watch Fulk but there was no point in wasting her time further than had already been the case.
As Fulk took to the field and began to limber up the few spectators braving the drizzle subtly shifted so a significant proportion of the women were now watching him. As Eleanor scowled in their direction a couple more scurried out to join the little throng of gossiping ninnys. All very well for some, having nothing better to do and the freedom that came with being unimportant. It should not be allowed!
Fulk worked his way through a variety of twists, stretches, and exercises designed to keep honed his muscles and sense of balance, armour glinting in the weak sunlight. He had thrown his entire being into the exercises that Eleanor knew he could complete flawlessly while chatting away on a variety of subjects with a princess, and this unnecessary absorption allowed him to steadfastly ignore his audience without being rude.
Absorbed with her watching, Eleanor started when Hugh spoke. “Now, here it is.”
‘It’ came in the form of another knight, armoured, his surcoat the colour of dark wine, two squires bobbing along in his wake bearing his great helm and his lance, and a few friends following at a looser distance. The coat of arms on the shield he bore was known to her: Sir William of Beverley.
Fulk didn’t let the other man’s hail interrupt his cartwheels; he answered as he went. What was said Eleanor didn’t know; the little antechamber on the second floor of the great keep afforded an excellent view but fine detail like the movement of lips was lost.
“I thought it might prove educational for you to see the ending of what you have wrought.”
Eleanor stilled her panic as best she could, turned to glance at her brother, and said calmly, “Pardon?”
“Your knight; you allowed him to damage my own guard’s honour. Therefore it is now necessary to allow things to be … settled. Before the poison can worsen and dispute become hatred and covert war. I saw fit to confine matters to blunted weapons.”
Bastard! And he had brought her here to watch.
Eleanor looked back to find Fulk was now standing, engaged in heated debate with the other knight and his entourage. Sir William chopped a hand through the air, shouting something. Fulk only folded his arms; if he replied his words were far calmer. Sir William spun away to where Fulk’s shield waited, propped against his lance and great helm. A well-placed kick sent the shield tumbling face first into the mud, defacing and befouling the coat of arms. Then he spat on the shield.
Eleanor gasped at the magnitude of the insult.
Fulk’s hand dropped to his sword and began to draw. No more than a few inches of steel must have cleared the scabbard when he let the weapon drop back. Words were said, not many, and then he was away, striding to where Sueta waited with the man at arms he had taken on as his new squire.
“He cannot hope to win,” commented Hugh. “Your knight. He is talented, but he spent overlong without a warhorse, and is thus less able then he aught to be in the true mode of knightly combat.”
The space used for tilting practice had been cleared and spectators had moved to get a better view of the action. Word was beginning to spread that more than the usual training was happening; new people were appearing on the grounds and in doorways and windows.
Fulk was ready: mounted, head covered entirely by his bucket-like great helm, lance at rest and shield levelled, waiting on his fidgeting destrier at one end of the run. There was nothing there that Eleanor saw which spoke of anything but comfortable confidence; she hoped he had grounds for it, and wasn’t just bluffing.
Hugh’s man took up his position at the other end of the run, and set his spurs to his stallion’s flanks going from walk to charge without stopping to see that his opponent was ready.
Fulk’s reaction was admirably fast. Not fast enough; they clashed before the centre point, Fulk having less time to build speed and momentum. His lance tagged Sir William’s shield and skittered off as the knight angled the surface to throw the blunt point. Sir William’s hit was solid; the sound of the impact carried all the way back to Eleanor, and Fulk reeled back in the saddle, his armoured back slamming into the narrow top of his high-backed cantle. Eleanor held her breath, thinking he would fall. Somehow he didn’t.
By the time he reached the end of the run he was settled again, slowing Sueta and resettling his lance and shield for another go. Instead of stopping and waiting for the other to also be ready to start the next run, Fulk turned and spurred back to the charge as soon as he reached the end of the grounds. Hugh’s honourless churl of a knight did likewise.
The thud of the dual impact carried again; both men hit their targets and both were flung back by the shock, but both managed to deflect the pressing force so they were not unhorsed. Fulk had done better than his first run, but it appeared Sir William’s aim had been truer than his.
Three runs; that was the usual. Eleanor stopped breathing as they turned and spurred back towards each other. She saw Fulk lower his lance and couch it firmly under his arm, stand in his stirrups, lean a little forward, tilt his shield to carry the enemy lance on out past his shoulder harmlessly. But for the clarity of that, she didn’t know how it came to be that his lance shattered and he rode away all but lying on his horse’s back, one foot kicking free while the other bore much of his weight and efforts to retain his seat. Sir William emerged as unshaken as the previous times.
Eleanor turned to her brother with a delighted laugh. “He won! He broke his lance where yours did not – he won.”
“This is not a tournament. The rules are different. Your knight lost. Any can clearly see he is not a match for his opponent. Even in a tournament such would hardly be an undisputed win, being simple luck.”
“How am I supposed to know about tournaments anyway,” Eleanor muttered, face flaming at her error. So much for the very little she knew of one of the nobility’s favourite obsessions. Trempwick deplored them as crudely violent affairs filled with muscle and not a jot of sense. “Never been to one. They change the rules all the time too, to suit the sponsor, so I could have been right.”
Back outside it appeared the same argument was taking place. Heatedly.
Unwilling to settle for such a clouded end, both men dismounted, drew their swords and moved to the middle of the ground. Eleanor didn’t know how Fulk had swung the advantage back his way, but she was grateful enough to send up a minor prayer of thanks. After the battering he had just received – and heaven forefend it had done fresh damage to his healing wounds! – he must need any and every advantage.
She had never seen Fulk fight before, not truly, as the times when he had put his all into battle she had also been busy. The graceful flow, one move going into another, and another, a never-ending dance, stances changing unpredictably to threaten his enemy in new ways and guard himself against the other man’s own threats, it was hypnotic. Then a pause, circling, waiting, probing, before he surged back into action again. In his hands it was an art. And he was so
fast.
It was the tilting all in reverse; both combatants clearly skilled, but one able to dominate the other to such a degree he was left devoting himself to hanging on and not to winning.
After a while Eleanor began to feel stupid for ever having doubted he was in fit condition to prod someone else with a sword. You wouldn’t even know he was wounded, watching him now.
Fulk engaged Sir William in another exchange of blows and parries, moving at a blur and blocked at every attempt. Until he out-timed the other knight, hooked the cross guard of his sword on the rim of Sir William’s shield, yanked it aside and delivered a cut that, if done with edged weapons instead of wood, would have cut through coat of plates, mail, flesh, muscle and deep into the bone of the left shoulder. A slow killing blow. The three separate attacks were strung together so smoothly they appeared but one planned move arranged between the two men beforehand to the novice eye, not a gambit and two reactions to take advantage of successive weaknesses.
“Well,” beamed Eleanor, “I think there is no doubt that time. He won. Quite tidily, too.”
Hugh held his pose, staring out of the window. He lifted his hands free of the stonework of the window ledge with a small jerk, as if they rested in a sticky substance. “We should take warning from this. It was surely God’s judgement on Sir William for his unknightly conduct preceding and during the engagement, and in his quarrelsomeness in not accepting the first verdict and entering into a second round.”
Eleanor didn’t bother pointing out that almost every knight in the realm would have acted the same, doubtless including Hugh himself to the extent of wanting a clear and glorious victory. They were a silly bunch.
:rolls about on the floor, laughing her froggy socks off at the indignant, mortified Fulk, who is stalking up and down and shouting that really he knows all this helpful advice people are giving him, thank you very much, because he is not hopeless, useless, inexperienced, or just pointless, and really is actually very good, actually, and he was only working in the limitations of what he had and being considerate and about as honourable as circumstances allowed! Froggy also laughs at the bemused expression on the gooseberry’s face, just for good measure.:
I’m shocked! Fulk originally lost – there was no sword fight, just the three runs with the lances. Then he sort of snapped when he found what people were saying. He rolled up his sleeves, said, ”Right!” in that nastily meaningful way people have, and forced things to a course which suited him better so he could smack someone a wee bit hard and vent some frustration. All I could do was go and hide behind a solid object and hope this didn’t damage anything in the story.
:froggy dips her quill in a pot of ink and begins to write in her best handwriting.:
Dear assorted mob of characters who bother me endlessly.
I am writing to you in the hopes that I may be able to encourage you to cheer up. I would like it very much if you would all stop worrying, fretting, stressing, doubting yourselves and others, and generally being Right Depressing Pains. Also, please stop expecting horrible doom every other page. Cheer up! Stop whinging! Be happy! If those glum thoughts threaten again, sing a happy song!
Thank you.
Yours sincerely,
Froggy.
PS: I do not mean happy as in be mushy. Please stop that. It’s not fair on a frog. All these POVs, and all of them infested with mush, gah!
:froggy folds up the bit of parchment, puts her own special froggy seal on it, and sends it to the cast via her fastest messenger.: Not that it will do any good; they will ignore the frog and go their own sweet way as per usual, happy or sad. But it had to be said. Bah!
coz1: Fulk has been noted as, er, entertaining himself for a while. It was a single line thing some time ago, so I can't blame you if you forget. I am not sure if I pity him or want to laugh at his predicament - he has been living next to a gooseberry for a bit more than half a year, had a variety of women throw themselves at him during that time, and all he's admitted to doing is one visit to a brothel, some stay at home fun, and his assorted moments with Nell. Whereas his past was rather more active and he's only being so restrained now because of the awkward combination of loving a princess and despising substitutes, which would be the normal, expected way out. I do wonder if I should be sceptical at him for those days before he fell for Nell so completely, when he told me less. Unlike her I wouldn't worry about him now. But then I can see his POV and she can't
Scrooge: Yes, it was a sin. This is why Fulk says "Any sin will be mine, so you won’t have that to worry about, and I can confess it without casting even a hint of suspicion in your direction." But so were many other things, like killing, stealing, adultery, fornication, oath breaking, the use of contraception, vanity, wearing rich and extravagant clothes, taking part in a tournament, going against the Pope and church in any way ... The clergy was famous for having wives, mistresses and bastard children, and for eating, dressing and living very well. So really I'd be utterly amazed if they took any more notice of this relatively minor order than they did of the rest.
Fulk isn't French (I hear a certain reader saying "Damn right he isn't!"
You know who you are
). He only stayed in France for the 8 years between the death of his father and his meeting with Nell; he doesn't like sea travel and believed he had nothing to go back home to, except ignominy.
As for what else he might have done, er, humph. A lot of things considered normal today were viewed as disgusting, unnatural or worse back then. Er, now probably making myself look like some kind of perverted frog, I'll say that in all my reading of medieval sources and so on, and of books on the era (and believe me, it seems a lot of books now branch out into such subjects, which is admirable, really, because it breaks the old trend of focusing entirely on Big Events and Important People instead of life and other such things, and in the process bring out a whole load of primary evidence that has been shoved into a corner because it didn’t fit the old pattern) I've only encountered two medieval schools of thought on how to actually please a woman. One being the obvious, with all else being a part of or lead up to this. The other was in a medical text as advice for dealing with all the fainting fits and so on virgins and celibate women supposedly get. The direct quote sort of burned into my poor mind: The midwife should inset a finger covered in oil and move it vigorously about.
o Humph, midwives and oil really shouldn’t be required in this case though
Highly effective though that may be, it will almost certainly result in breaking or damaging the hymen, meaning no more proof of Trempy being a liar. That side effect was why it was right at the end of the list of redemies, after marriage, travel, and medicine, in that order.
Avernite: Any problems were most likely down to the fact that I really have no idea what I am doing with such scenes. Practice will cure that.
And indeed, less mush and angst and more something - anything - else! Will no one think of the poor frog writing this?
Rhialto: True, the dictionary does explain the word as just exile, drive away, etc, but I have heard it used in this way often enough. Whether that is a mistake or not I can't say. I do like the way it sounds when used in some combinations, like with Fulk's debt, and the meaning is clear enough. I shall wait in the hopes someone more knowledgeable can provide an answer as to what is going on with it.
Fulk is very grateful for your lone voice of support.
Fanclub updates:
Trempy: 3 members (asking in a very tired voice why the idiotic knight didn't just hire a few goons to hit Fulk with cudgels in a dark alley somewhere. To death.)
Anne: 2 members
Fulk: 6 members (Hail the conquering hero
ompom
Nell: 6 members (Now joint most popular. Frowning ever so slightly in an ever so elegant way. At least it is only Fulk, not someone else, like that Godit person)
Godit: 5 members
Constance: 2 members
Hugh: 2 members (secretly glad he is not a betting man)
Jocelyn: 5 members
Richildis: 1 member
Miles: 2 members
Hawise: 2 members
Mahaut: 1 member
Anti-Trempy: 3 members
Anti-Aveline: 1 member
Anti-Hugh: 1 member
