NOND'S CHILD
Disclaimer: These characters, this world belong to Tamora Pierce. Thanks to lyredenfers for letting me use the lovely poem below.
Sally, this one's for you. Yes, it's that one (the birthday-Christmas-birthday-Christmas-okaynevermind fic), because I suck that much. Love, me.
"Nond's Child..."
Nond's child is fair of face,
Tirragen's child is full of grace,
Goldenlake's child is full of woe,
Trebond's child has far to go,
Queenscove's child is loving and giving,
Naxen's child works hard for his living,
And the child that is born in the Conté way
Is both bonny and blithe, good and gay.
--by lyredenfers, adapted from the traditional nursery rhyme "Monday's Child"
Francis trotted up the tiny winding staircase, slightly dizzy and out of breath by the time he arrived. He pounded on the wooden door, calling "Raynel, it's me! Hey!" Impatient at the lack of answer, he tossed aside his manners and started to fumble at the lock with the key in his hand. It turned grudgingly and the door opened with a sullen creak as he swung it into the room.
Francis stepped inside, searching around eagerly. The room was empty at first glance. It was a tiny circular room, the hollow innards of one of the turrets that topped the small Nond castle. A narrow rectangular slit in the stone wall served as a window, letting in clear sunlight that showed a rather shabby and bare interior. The only objects on the scuffed wooden floor were a washstand, a dresser and a bed. Then the lump on the unmade bed twitched and unraveled itself into a faded quilt and Francis's brother.
"….mmmpgrrr…." said the lump.
"Wake up!" said Francis. "I'm home for a fortnight and I've got all sorts of things to tell you from the Palace."
One bleary eye opened. "G'way. M'sleeping."
"It's past noontide and well into midday, you ass. When were you planning on getting up?"
"Whassa point? Can't go anywhere. M'locked in," Raynel grouched. But he sat up anyway and looked a little more alert.
"Why is it that every time I come home you're being punished?" Francis asked.
It was the wrong thing to say. Raynel scowled and swung his legs down off the bed so he could start kicking at the dent in the side of his dresser.
"It's the Old Lady," he said. "She's completely unreasonable."
"Stop that," Francis said mildly, meaning the kicking. "And you shouldn't call her that. She's our mother. You should show her some respect."
"Why?" said Raynel contrarily. "She doesn't respect me." But he left the dresser alone.
Francis looked at his younger brother. They both had the same fair colouring, regular, pleasant features and slender build. But Raynel's blonde curls were untidily long and rumpled from sleeping. The hazel eyes and pink and white skin that had been referred to on Francis as 'darling' by female relatives, causing him untold amounts of embarrassment for years, did not have the same effect on Raynel. His eyes were red-rimmed and his expression sullen. Raynel had charm that melted people when he actually bothered to use it, but he also had a strong rebellious streak. Their nurse had called him her 'wicked imp' and her 'changeling child,' saying he was sent by the Folk-'neath-the-Hill to plague her for her sins.
Neither Nond son was big but Francis had finally gotten his growth and shot up by a head's height, and his arms and chest were filled out from hours on the practice courts. Raynel seemed younger than just the one year that separated them in comparison. He was so skinny that the description 'like a scarecrow' was more true than funny. He kept refusing to practice his swordplay or horsemanship, or take any kind of physical instruction. The biggest difference however was in character. Francis knew from looking in the mirror that he had a face that was quiet and mild. He was shy even with his closest friends—with everyone in fact except Raynel. Raynel had a smile that lit up the room like a beacon and a cynicism that would be better suited to a grumpy old man than a thirteen-year-old boy.
Francis only saw his brother once a year since he'd gone to the Palace to train for his Knighthood, but Raynel was still the person Francis loved best. Raynel was curious, imaginative and fearless. He was the one who always had the ideas about what games to play and what trouble to get into, and he'd make Francis do everything with him. Francis was an obedient child and he would have had a very boring childhood without Raynel as his brother. Raynel had sulked and missed him badly when he'd gone to Corus to become a Page. He'd refused to write a single letter and wouldn't speak to Francis for an entire week on his first visit back to Nond. Lately their Lady Mother complained that his behaviour was even more impossible than usual. Right now Raynel looked like he was working himself up for another fight.
Francis looked earnestly at his brother sitting on the messy bed. "What's all this Mother says about the latest thing you've done? She wouldn't give me any details—just said that you'd given some grave insult to Stone Mountain's eldest girl. She was pretty wild—you know how she carries on."
Raynel gave a grunt.
"She was talking about trials of law and hanging by the neck if you weren't so young."
"She's exaggerating as usual. It's hardly the big affair she makes it out to be. All I did was sketch Norry."
"That's it?" said Francis, puzzled. "I know she doesn't like you drawing, but it's hardly anything she'd lock you in your room for a week for. Come on Rayne," he said, using the old nickname, "Why was she so upset?"
"She threw a fit because Norry posed for me without the top part of her dress," Raynel said in the reasonable tone of someone who can't understand why the crazy people insist on making such a fuss. "She walked in the room and screamed, and carried on in a ridiculous and over-the-top fashion. She insulted Norry by calling her a hussy in front of her mother—which was completely untrue and rude, by the way—and then," and here Raynel was clearly getting to the ultimate indignity, "then, she went and burned my sketchbook." Full of righteous outrage, Raynel waited expectantly for sympathy.
"You drew Norry…. naked?" stammered Francis. He was bright red.
"What did I just tell you?" snapped Raynel. "No, she was not naked, she was nude from the waist up." This was clearly a sore point.
"But Rayne—" protested Francis.
"Oh come on Francis," he said impatiently. "It's not as though I lured her there with candy and ribbons and ripped her dress off. I was showing her my sketchbook—you know, lots of portraits of the castlefolk and the villagers—and she thought they were quite good and asked if I'd ever done one of a nude model. And I said no, because of course if I ever tried to persuade one of the locals to pose for me like that it would get out, and the Old Lady would skin me alive, and then she'd talk my ear off about the responsibilities of nobles and not taking advantage of helpless commoners. So you see, Norry asked me, and of course I said yes, how stupid do you think I am? How am I ever going to be able to draw, let alone paint, anatomically-correct people if I never get to practice?"
Francis really wanted to laugh, because it was so like Raynel to have a completely reasonable explanation for a social disaster, but he was too embarrassed. Among the pages, Raoul and Gary and the Prince liked to talk about girls and how far they'd gotten, while he and Alex and Alan always listened without contributing, but he'd swear that it was all just talk and that none of them had even kissed a girl. And here his thirteen-year-old brother—whose voice hadn't yet dropped!—had seen a girl's naked… chest. And Norry was both older, about sixteen, and quite pretty, with dark shiny hair and a confident way of speaking that terrified Francis so that he never knew what to say to her.
"I guess it was mostly a misunderstanding then," said Francis tentatively.
"Yes," said Raynel. "Finally, somebody sees my point of view."
"I can see why Mother would be upset though. She's very particular about manners and etiquette. I don't think we're supposed to see any girls –er, naked, or partly naked, until our wedding night."
"Yes, well, some people have funny opinions. And I do my best to pretend to ignore them for the sake of everyone living together, as long as they see that I have a right to my own opinions. Do I try to tell the Old Lady who she can or can't see naked?" demanded Raynel, making Francis's face go pale and his eyes wide. "No, I don't. You see, she's absolutely impossible to live with."
"Yes, but you know she can't help it," Francis offered. "It's just how she is."
"Speak for yourself," said Raynel. "You've always been Mother's 'Darling Boy'—the good son. She can't stand me, and after Father died she got twice as bad, like she had to make up for all the things he wasn't there to pick on."
This was a familiar and well-worn argument, and Raynel seemed abruptly bored. He crouched down in front of the dresser and started tugging on the bottom drawer, which always got stuck.
"As long as you're here you might as well make yourself useful," he said, not looking up. He pawed through a tangle of ratty stockings and hose and pulled up the bottom of the drawer to reveal a space above the bottom of the dresser crammed with inks, quills, bits of charcoal, a roll of good white paper, small tubes of coloured paints, different sizes and shapes of brushes, a jointed wooden person without a face, bits of board and smooth stones of some size. Out of the jumble Raynel pulled a canvas roll. He handed it to Francis and went hunting under the mattress of his bed until he retrieved a fat book of blank pages and a stub of charcoal. He sat on the messy bed.
"Well?" he said impatiently. "You have to unroll it first."
Francis carefully opened the old canvas, which was yellow and stiff, to reveal a painting. It was a portrait of an old man. He had fluffy white hair under a black cap. His black robe and rings were tasteful and wealthy. His face was yellowish and wrinkled and he was scowling a little, like he had been engaged in a staring contest with the painter of the portrait, daring them to try and slip nostril hair or a wart past him. He had the Nond eyes.
"Who's this?"
"Great-Great-Great-Uncle Volennis. Hold it in front of you. No, not like that. In the light, so I can see. Good. Now don't move."
Raynel immediately started to sketch, while Francis stood a little awkwardly, holding the canvas on either side, trying to keep it open and still. He had to use his chin at the top, which made talking tricky.
"Why are you stealing the Family Portraits to make sketches? I thought you said the locals were better subjects because they were real people."
"They are. But I've sketched every single person in our fief two or three times over, some of them more. I've also sketched more cows, pigs, sheep and chickens then I knew could live in one small holding. I need to start painting, seriously painting, not fooling around, and I can't put it off any longer. I don't have a teacher so I'm making copies of the portraits in the family gallery."
All the while Raynel was deftly marking the page with the charcoal. The outline of Great-Great-Great-Uncle Volennis had taken shape and he was beginning to fill in the detail.
"But I thought you said the family portraits were third-rate and lousy," said Francis, puzzled.
"They are," said Raynel sourly. "But I can at least learn to pick out where they went wrong so I don't make the same mistakes. And until the Old Lady lets me go to Corus to see some real art, I don't exactly have any other options. So it'll be just me and Great-Great-Great-Uncle Volennis." He was feathering in the many wrinkles.
"I keep trying to convince her to let you visit me," Francis said hesitantly, "but with this thing with Norry I don't think she'll let you go any time soon."
"Great-Great-Great-Uncle Volennis was actually an interesting fellow," said Raynel, pretending not to have heard, shading in the black coat in thick strong strokes. "Did you know that he was a third son and he ran away to sea when he was young? The family cut him off without a penny, but they took him back years later when he came home with a fortune made in the spice and tea trade with the East. He'd fought pirates and everything."
"I've never heard of him," Francis said, fascinated. He had no idea how Raynel knew these things, but he always seemed to find bits of information, seemingly from thin air, that were sometimes useful and sometimes only curiousities, but always right, as far as Francis could tell.
"He never married," said Raynel. "He had loads of mistresses instead—lots of scandalous affairs with Players and people like that. He drove the family nuts." Raynel sounded almost impressed. "He wrote a book of dirty poems about his love affairs and had it published in Tusaine. There's a copy in the family library, you know. It was hidden on one of the shelves that holds the old agricultural records from last century."
"Rayne, you didn't read it, did you?" asked Francis despairingly. "You're much too young to be reading things like that."
"Nooo..." said Raynel unconvincingly. "But you see Francis, Great-Great-Great-Uncle Volennis never let anyone tell him what to do. If I have to be a Nond, I'd rather be like him then like Father or Mother. There! Done," Raynel said, holding up the sketch.
Francis looked at it. Great-Great-Great-Uncle Volennis stared challengingly at him under his droopy old-man brows. He felt bad that Raynel was so bored that Great-Great-Great-Uncle Volennis was an acceptable subject to draw.
"It's really good Rayne," Francis said, rolling the canvas painting he was holding back up, dropping it gently into the drawer, and stretching out his stiff neck.
And it was. Every time he came home, Raynel was measurably better at drawing than before. The sketch didn't look like something a boy had drawn. The lines were firm and bold, and the sharp, critical way that Great-Great-Great-Uncle Volennis stared out of the page wasn't something that most thirteen-year-olds would be able to see, let alone copy.
"Huh," Raynel grunted at the sketch, apparently dissatisfied. He looked at Francis. "Well, weren't you going to tell me all about your exciting adventures as a Royal Whipping Boy?"
"Oh, yes!" said Francis, his happiness returning. He sat down on the bed and hitched himself along until he was lying back comfortably in the heap of worn quilt, his boots dangling off the side of the bed. Raynel got the stiff drawer shut again by a creative combination of holding it tilted at a funny angle, pushing, and banging it in with his foot. He sprawled out opposite Francis and turned his sketchbook to a blank page.
"Raa-ayne," whined Francis, "you're not going to draw me, are you? You've done it a hundred times already, and you always end up complaining I move too much."
"That's because models are supposed to hold still," said Raynel severely.
"Well I'm obviously not cut out to be a model," Francis laughed.
"Just be quiet and tell me about all the idiotic things you've been doing instead of the really idiotic things you're actually supposed to learn," said Raynel, already starting to draw.
"That barely even made sense!" grumbled Francis, but it sort of did anyway.
So he did.
Francis talked about the bet that Raoul and Gary had made that had gotten their privileges taken away for three months when Duke Gareth had found out. He talked about his new horse, a proper tall one with an easy long stride that he'd named Bounder, and the way that he made a huge mess with his food and jumped a foot over anything Francis set him at. He talked about the Queen's birthday, when they'd had the night off and had all gone down to the main bridge in the city to watch fireworks explode and leave puffs of smoke in the sky, while coloured reflections danced in the river below. He talked about how much more difficult swordplay was to get right than staff work, but that he was working really hard and determined to get it; how awful the food was in the Pages' Mess, but if you got there early for breakfast the nice cook would slip you some of the baking meant for the Palace with a wink; how quickly the new boy Alan had made friends with Francis' group, and how he was really funny without even meaning to be; and how the First Viol's younger daughter, the one with the tawny hair and eyelashes who played the flute, how she smiled at him every time he got serving duty at parties and he hung around the Musician's Balcony, so that he could listen to the music and watch the players.
Francis had been gone for a year, and by the time he was done talking, Raynel had long since finished the sketch and put the book away.
"Prince Jonathan sounds like a prat," Raynel said from where he was comfortably propped up on a pillow.
"Rayne, you can't say things like that," Francis said in the half-laughing way that people get when someone says something shocking. "He's the Prince and the heir to the throne. And he's not a prat—he's my friend. He's not stuck up at all, even though you'd expect him to be."
"Hmmmm…." Raynel said doubtfully. "Well he sounds like a prat to me, but at least he has the good taste to be friends with you."
"He wants to meet you, you know," said Francis. "I told him about you. How you want to be a painter, and that you're really good; and all the trouble you used to get us into when we were young. He thinks you're funny and really smart for wanting to do something different than all the other nobles."
"Huh," said Raynel, poking at a hole in the quilt and trying to pretend he wasn't pleased.
"What about you?" Francis said, meaning he wanted to know how Raynel's year had been.
Raynel scowled. "Oh, you know. Fighting with the Old Lady, trying to avoid my stuffy tutor and our moronic master-at-arms who still thinks he'll turn me into a warrior. Going out of my head with boredom."
Francis didn't know what to say. He was living an interesting and usually enjoyable life at the Palace, even if he sometimes worried that he wasn't good enough for Mother's and the Realm's expectations. But Raynel was miserable and he was Francis' little brother. There should be something Francis could do to make things better, only he had no idea what that could be. He met Raynel's scowl awkwardly.
"Rayne—I'm sorry…"
Raynel's scowl deepened alarmingly. "What on earth are you sorry for?"
Francis looked at him with concern.
"It's not like any of this is your fault," Raynel snapped. "It's not you who has completely narrow-minded notions about noble birth, and duty, and one's station in life, and a complete inability to understand wanting to do something different than what everyone's ancestor and their great-aunt's nephew to the fifteenth generation has done before them! That would be the Old Lady. She's the one who hates that I draw, and won't give it up: and makes me do it in secret so she can't take it away! She's the one who thinks it's a 'phase' I'll grow out of if she sends me to my room enough times, like a child! She won't listen to a word I say! I swear Francis," and Raynel's eyes flashed ominously, "if she doesn't let me go to Corus soon then I'll have to do something drastic; like run away to Carthak to study art the way I should—with the best painters in the world. It would serve her right!" he said vehemently, his mouth set in an angry, obstinate line. "She can't stop me! I'm going to be the best painter Tortall has ever known!"
Francis looked at his brother, furiously kneeling on the bed and clenching the quilt with white-knuckled hands like one of the ferocious stone gargoyles that glared down from the corners of the oldest part of the Palace, frozen mid-struggle.
"I know," Francis said.
"What?" Raynel looked slightly startled and forboding.
"The best painter in Tortall. I know: you've been telling me for ages. You always end up doing the things you say you will—remember the time you wouldn't eat anything at all until Cook stopped making us have oatmeal in the mornings? And when you said you'd learn enough Old Tallan from the library to speak it to the Priest who visited from the City of the Gods? No one thought that you could do it, but you did. And you're really good at art Rayne—I know it. I believe you." Raynel was watching him a little warily but listening. "Just please—don't run away! I'll try and get Mother to let you come to Corus, I swear it, but running away would be really dangerous," Francis said, his voice getting louder with urgency. Francis had seen enough of Corus and court life in the past few years to know that the world was bigger and more complicated, and people more dangerous, than he had ever thought possible growing up in Nond.
"There's highwaymen on the roads, despite His Majesty's patrols, and pirates on the seas, and the Carthaki ambassador and his wife give me the creeps—they always say polite things to people, but they look like they're thinking something else entirely. And people say they have slaves in Carthak. If you're unlucky the slave-catchers will take you and sell you, and the Southern Lands are so big, no one would ever be able to find you! And even if you were all right, it's so far away! I'd never see you," said Francis, upset, before he ran out of words.
"Pirates, huh?" Raynel said consideringly, after a pause. "I don't suppose they could use a cabin boy."
It was Francis' turn to glare.
"I was joking, Francis," Raynel said airily. "I didn't really mean it—it was just an idea. I'm not going to run away. You worry too much"
Francis looked at him, skeptical, but Raynel was calm again. He seemed to be in a good mood for the first time since Francis had walked through the door. Francis hoped that Raynel had really meant it when he said he wouldn't run away.
"Promise?" said Francis. "Raynel," he insisted, when Raynel continued to look airy.
"Fine," said Raynel, put upon. "I promise I won't run away to Carthak, or seek out a thrilling life of adventure and piracy at sea. Happy now?"
"And don't call her the 'Old Lady,'" Francis said, testing his luck.
Raynel just rolled his eyes. He flopped down on the quilt on his back. "So what are we going to do to celebrate your first day back in Nond?"
"Let me guess," Francis said. "You have an idea." He waited expectantly.
"We-eeeeell…" Raynel said. "You've missed many important Nond-ish events since you were away. You were gone for a whole year, you know." He nodded decisively. "You'll have to catch up. It wouldn't do for the future Lord of Nond to be out-of-touch with his loyal subjects."
"What did I miss?" said Francis seriously, playing along. He received long letters each month about the affairs of the fief from both Mother and Steward, but he doubted they would bear much resemblance to the events Raynel deemed 'important.'
"The black cat in the stables just had a litter, and one of the kittens has six toes on each foot."
"Really!"
"Yes," said Raynel. "As well, they dredged up Beale's Pond to turn it into a field for planting, and found in the mud a sealed crate of imported Tusainie spirits that were bottled over sixty years ago and half a boat."
"Which half?" said Francis, the corner of his mouth sneaking upwards despite himself.
"The back half," said Raynel. "The work party was thrilled until Master Vintner confiscated the entire crate, for study purposes he said, on account of it being so rare and valuable."
"Of course," Francis nodded gravely. "Was there anything else?"
"Hmmm…" Raynel considered, chin tilted thoughtfully. "Mae Taverner and Tam Cottar got found in a haystack together, and everyone was in an uproar because her parents wanted her to marry Master Wellsley from Kilgarton. Mae threatened to throw herself in the marsh, but it all came to nothing once little Jo Taverner let slip that Mistress Taverner and Master Cottar had been having their own 'meetings in haystacks' for the past year. They hadn't a leg to stand on," said Raynel, mischief in his eyes. "The wedding was held after Midsummer—Mae and Tam's, that is."
"And Joe at the tavern can belch an entire verse of 'The King's Long Lance' without stopping for breath in-between," Raynel informed him, finishing his recitation with the satisfaction of one who knows they've done well. "That's Broken-Leg Joe, not Drunk Joe."
Francis couldn't help it. He had to laugh. He was gasping a little for air by the time he was done, and Raynel was smiling, well-pleased.
"Now that I need to see," Francis said.
"What, no kittens?" said Raynel with mock-disapproval.
"The kittens too," Francis agreed.
"Right!" said Raynel. "Sneaking out should be tricky, but I think that the servants will be feeling kindly towards you since you're home for a visit, so you should go first as lookout and distract them if they get in the way—What?" he said impatiently. "Why are you making faces at me Francis?"
"We don't have to sneak out Rayne. Mother gave permission for you to leave your room. Here," Francis dug the key out of his belt pouch and thrust it hesitantly at Raynel. "I forgot to say."
Something unpleasant and hard flashed across Raynel's features as he stared at the outstretched key, but he shook it off and took the key. "Do you suppose if this were to be dropped in the muck pile—purely by accident of course—on the way out, that anyone would miss it?" he said lightly, dangling it by its cord.
"Perhaps not," said Francis solemnly. "Things just get lost sometimes. There's no help for it." He bumped Raynel's shoulder with his own. "What shall we see first?"
"All of it," said Raynel grandly. "The stable first, and then the tavern. And who knows what else may come up. I'm afraid we may not be back in time for dinner."
"That's all right," said Francis. "I expected as much."
Together they left the tiny round room with the messy bed and shut the door, as the warm afternoon sun slanted across the boards of the wooden floor.
Fin
A/N: So Raynel of Nond is, of course, the young Volney Rain. I never would have thought to wonder about Volney's background or make him a Nond without three earlier stories: 'Portrait: Volney Rain' by lyredenfers, and 'The Talented Volney Rain' and 'All's Fair' by Gavin-Gunhold. They're three of my favourite stories in this fandom.
There's a sequel planned for this, if I ever get it written, about how Volney gets his start in Tortall as a young artist just arrived from Carthak (the idea being that when Francis dies of the Sweating Sickness shortly after this story, Raynel does run away to Carthak to study painting and rejects his noble birth. I have no idea if there were pirates involved though.).