Notes: I wrote this two or three weeks ago, but never got around to typing it up; I was just happy to get the idea out of my head. Jocelyn's perspective.
Set: Before Jocelyn goes to Will (or, eh, Ulric). You know what I mean.
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The Champion
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I do not fear many a thing and rarely a person, for it is my experience that to fear something - and thusly someone - is to give it greater power, over one's mind, making it feeble with uncertainty. What my father sees me as, the judgment of the Lord God, whether or not I am quietly cursed by my femininity: these small details give me pause, that I hesitate and think again on what it is at hand. I know I should be most grievous to ever cause my father shame, no matter what I may at times think, and I shall never be fool enough to question the Lord God, shall do all I can not to be blasphemous to His immortal name. It is the last one, though, that has me unmoving before a pain of rosined glass in the cathedral, peering with squinted eyes at the ethereal reflection the flickering cast of light the delicate candles grant me, as though unsure of what I wish to see.
Forgiveness is a virtue extolled on many an occasion by those chosen men who sermon the Bible, in voices that may be harsh and condemning, perhaps young and quick; to hold bitterness and sulking pain close to oneself, whether bundled within or held disdainfully up for all curious eyes to behold, is foolishness. It is a means of solemn destruction, of one's tentative grace with God, for if I cannot forgive then I should not expect such in return. Simples lessons, those, and ones I recall clearly now as the candles grant me a dim, wavering image of myself scattered in the glassy red pan wavering before me.
My fingers graze a damp coolness of sorts when I touch the stones beside the window and I wonder, briefly, if it is the stones supporting me or I them, as I close my eyes to set free my last murmur of forgiveness to the soft, wettened winds that trickle through the gaping night doors. I had not thought it so, but some shell of me, a dismal part yet a fool and leery of what I do not know - perhaps the tiny essential deaths my mother suffered - but still a part I find I must acknowledge: this fragmented shell could not forgive him his outburst of unintentional cruelty, and even that shallowness caught within my soul must admit he did not know how his heated words stung.
He will never know, if I can see fit he will not; my fingers coil of their own volition to my palm, knuckles scraping the fluid stones sharply and nails gently ripping at the rounded parts of my hand. T'was a youthful girl's silliness that gave me thought to co-ordinate my raiment to that of his, a giddy wonder at this golden boy-man who flattered me with his honest thoughts and yet did not seek to champion for me. I have few liasons of a romantic nature to my claim - a few kisses stolen from the fourth son of a duke, that handful and little else - and though the mere thought of him sparks the queerest tugging throughout the whole of my body, I am not sure I shall be willing to dabble further. Nevertheless, I had asked out of realization, having some knowledge of what lengths women will go to in hopes of possessing an unclaimed man such as he, and if I should not stoop as low, I could at least lay a foundation about him, to match him and thusly attach myself in sight to him.
It was done, then, out of selfish preservation of my stirring love, to keep this brawny young man no older than I out of hand, to mark him as my own by simple means of attire that matches. I cannot help but to smile, unable to prevent myself from marveling at the odd ways people have of claiming one another, and with thoughts of knights jousting for ladies and ladies dressing for knights, I draw my hand slowly from the wall; absently, I place it there again. The woman in the window flutters as does the candle, her dulled face expressing peace that belays her inner jumble of elation, peculiar melancholy, longing, and a thousand other things grander than a green tunic and hastily demanded proofs of love.
I demanded and he gave, at the suffering of bodily harm; but as he could not see beyond his own pride, I, too, could not, and in that doubted the truth of his love, and the depth of his declaration on such, knowing he held the matter of his honor in greater regard than he did the lady he professed to love.
My fingers uncurl along the stones, thin ridges of mortar peeking shyly between the smoothly hewn rocks, hand pressing in touch to the wall as I smile, feeling the corners of my mouth tilting happily up; it does not matter now, the mean things we said callously so recently. He has jousted, and lost, and proved victor again as the proof of his love as well as for the sake of his mortal pride, sacrificing in accordance to my demand when I feared he would not suffer to lose: he has proved a thousand-fold the desperate sincerity he feels by simply accepting without reply the damaging blows delivered him. My father, I recall with small sadness, had often let it be known the matters of a nobleman's pride, of the priority such a thing of honor held in light of a woman's matters, and though I have cause, frequently, to harbor my suspicions on this view, I still feel a consuming relief, knowing in spite of his pride, he would fail if I asked.
The thought - he loves me! - is potent yet though the sun has long set and the hours since drifted past in a joyous tranquility, pulling my lips up and back in a breathless smile echoed by the crimson-shaded woman in the candlelit window. I feel, deeper than knowledge and more absolute than any emotion has filled me before, that I love him; and even as I think such, pressing my brown hand to the window as if to draw strength from its mosaic Jesus, it seems as if the word, the title and name given this powerful, flooding state of heart, is too trivial a thing to use in label of my heart's stirring.
"How odd, then," I murmur to myself, to the saints and angels bearing witness, "that I should turn to speech of poetry when I feel so strongly." Poets speak, for the most part, of love in eloquence, and in that heartsick thoughtfulness I consider them, now in the humid sanctity of the cathedral, to be among the ethereal nature of the heavens. Sky and light, I think absently and am interrupted by the partly disguised query of a churchman:
"Have you come for confession, milady?" he asks politely, but with a hinted taint of frigid dislike. Like his fellow clergy he is both splendid and humble in appearance, his white robes pale in the vain light of the candles and round face formless with aged, forced humility; he is also, I note wryly for my own benefit, the same overwhelmed man who had tried to silence me when I gave my challenge to Ulric. He looks at me in the dim light with poorly veiled distaste, and I summon countless days of etiquette recitals and ladylike schooling to become suitably demure.
"I have not," spoken carefully bland, in a self-possessed tone. Smoothly, I dip my body in a deep, proper courtesy amidst a rustle of folded skirts. "My sincerest apologies," the words are practiced and spring easily to the tongue, but I do feel sorry for my incensed treatment of this religious man, "for my behavior this morn. I was rather rude to you and I ask your forgiveness." As I lower my head, wanting stubbornly not to and quite grumpily thinking I should be free to apologize from my own decision, I wonder briefly why forgiveness seems to be circulating through my mind.
He has a look of pleasure on his homely features, but remains nonetheless stiff when he bows his own head formally, the very image of superior authority and slightly surprised leniency; his mouth sets gravely when he speaks, dark eyes solemn and haughtily suspicious, "You are forgiven in the eyes of the Lord." Then, reluctantly, as if he would prefer to be petty and deny that last dismissal, "Go with God, young mistress." A betraying muscle in his jaw twitches with displeasure, but he is honorable as he and his brethren should be, etching a protecting cross in the damp air with the unwavering side of his hand. He murmurs a standard incantation for the Spirit of God to watch and protest my feminine sensibilities, that I should not be hesitant or wicked in sin.
I do not appreciate his manner of speaking - curt and derogatory; he expects weakness and thusly can only see faults - but whisper a general thanks, bobbing in a second courtesy as he straightens, smug and radiantly peaceful.
"Christiana," I call hopefully, wanting to escape into the night where freedom awaits to think over my freshly gained knowledge. "Shall we leave now?" My voice echoes, lonely, in the vaulted rafters above for but a moment, and then her head rises from a lax position, as swarthy and raven-haired as my own.
"If you are ready, milady," she smiles carefully, flickering her eyes pointedly in the direction of the ceremonially robed man though her mouth twitches, amused, only once. "I should think your father may wish to hear you have retired at a respectable hour so perhaps it is wise to take our leave?" It is delicate phrasing she uses, suggesting something under a layer of innocent questioning; Christiana has always been dangerously good at it, and we often found ourselves in trouble for it as children, with my sharp tongue and her sly gift.
Shaking my head slightly, to ground my thoughts from reminiscence, I smile and courtesy elegantly once more to the clergyman, saying gravely, "We shall be on our way then. May you go with God as well."
With a continued expression of polite smiling sewn unto my face, I gesture to Christiana as she discreetly moves toward me. "Let us go, Christiana; we would not wish to give Father reason for concern." Or a nick in his honor, I add silently, an old certainty that has grown too worn to be truly bitter; Christiana and I permit last smiles and our shoes rubbing softly over the stone, hurry to leave the flickering shadows and uneven candlelight within the cathedral.
We keep our tongues still and throats silent until we are well along the wide path to the sponsoring lord's home, and then Christiana begins to giggle as I grin, a fool, to the moon. "Today has been an eventful day, has it not been?" she says between giggles and my own dreamy grins. "A proof and a joust," she turns and smiles broadly at me, answering my unending smile with one of hers. "Though it was most surprising to hear the way you spoke to Sir Ulric in church this morn." She looks pleased and so belies her words. "I haven't seen you so straightforward with a man since you and I were children."
The addition is unspoken, a common remembrance of before one is judged by attire, perfumes, jewels, and rare creatures, when one, such as two small girls of French blood, is still innocent and feels no leprosy in boldness and freedom.
Now, under the stars and canopy trees, it seems as though she and I can grasp again the innocence before ceaseless rules and social foolishness overtook us, as though I am again Jocelyn with the sunburnt cheeks and she Christiana of the dirt-smeared knees. "It is strange," I speak slowly, remembering how our dresses would tear, fingernails growing ragged, with no fear of my father's disdain, "that I feel content enough - as if I was a child, now again - to argue openly, or, or give him my life without care. I can move as I so wish, and be treated as an equal - as though we are the same!" I curve my fingertips, recalling the warmth and roughness of his palms, old, laboring calluses on his fingers, on the flesh pads of his hand as he squeezed my own shyly; with my fingers clasped to my palm, I can summon to mind the ghostly texture of his coarsened fingers and know he is more than he appears, as am I, as is Christiana, as even - I suppose - is the clergyman.
"Isn't it odd?" I wonder aloud, staring up through the webbing branches to the stars, "that of all the people other than you and Maman, I should feel so utterly freed, awful and good all at once, when I am with a man? He cannot be a day older than I, yet he makes my heart beat as if I am a child, a babe, looping upon the face of one gloriously older."
I touch my collar, to the brown skin above my breast, and sense the deep fluttering beats of my heart, my entire being washed over with the grace of earth and sky, swallowing me deep within its shared core. As I delve into that pulse, connecting its powerful rhythm to life, I find I murmur thoughtfully, recalling a day when we - closest of friend, Christiana and I - learned painfully that childhood's luxuries were truly lost to us, as we cried in the trees: I for a foolish dream lost, she for the unjust burden of inequality forced upon her by society.
I ask, "Do you remember our pact?" A beat, resounding in my chest, and I wonder if Ulric has known the bitter flavor of cracked and discarded reams. "That one we made so long ago, in the rain and mud?"
"Yes," answers Christiana, as lost in dusky thought as I. "That we agreed to do whatever your father said, what he expected," to protect ourselves from his pride, "but that we would not give up anything to any man," pride, heart, soul, body; we had vowed it with tearful sincerity and deep hatred for the race of men in that grey morning, scratching out names solemnly in the soft mud, signing a contract with the rain and our shifting world.
"I fear I am breaking our vow," I admit, closing my eyes for a few steps, feeling again in my fingers the rough heat of his hands, the lean cut of his chest under his green tunic. A butterfly blossom of warmth hidden in the depths of my body spirals into existence, more primitive than the aching beauty of love, and I open my eyes, startled; perhaps, then, the clergyman was not so degrading in his prayer for my female matters to be kept under guard.
Christiana's reply is what startles me more, though, as she confesses meekly, "It is not so odd; I fear I, too, am casting aside our vow." I look, questioning, at her, and she is unable to keep a small grin from her face as a blush of secretive pleasure - he must be darling, I think, to woo her so - rises in her cheeks; grinning still, she announces boldly in a quiet whisper, "His name is Roland, Jocelyn, and he is your lord Ulric of Gelder's companion." Though I laugh once, delighted for knowing, however vaguely, of whom this Roland is that she speaks of, she rushes, eager, to describe: "He is a kind man, with a timed face and gentle words, and he is most suitable, as Maman would think. He is most sweet, and I am certain he should prove to be a wonderful beau."
"Oh!" I exclaim with a laugh, "you and I, and our foreign suitors. A shame," I feel aged and solemn for a moment reflected in her face, "to have spent eight years keeping to our contract and in three months time have we begun to break it." We are silent, quietly shuffling to the stone manor before us, and turning to her, I say, "Am I at wrong, to know just as I can possess and control him, he may possess and control me in turn?" It is fair, murmurs the justice of a child within me; Father always controlled Maman, while she did not him, and this I will never suffer or allow one I love to suffer.
"Then I am at wrong as well," Christiana says simply, and we smile like fools, like sisters, at one another until the manor lord's youngest son, riding upon a night steed and drawing toward the far stables, calls out, "Good eve, lovely mistresses!" He is little more than two-and-ten, covered with dust and wearing an earnest face as he cuts across the path, along the wobbly road to the stables.
Giggles overtake us and though I cannot vouch for her, I feel absently giddy, drunk and sober on the thought of Ulric with his crimped gold hair and pale, eager eyes; the long minutes as we clamber to our chambers, she to the maid's room and I to mine, are remote in thought and I know I wander, content and brilliantly lit within, about my hewn chamber, only vaguely aware of the bath Christiana has pulled for me before retiring with a smile to her room. The rustle of cloth - the layers of my dress - shift, garters, rolls of cloth dropping from my body to the floor, falling away from my skin, are recognized with a dreamer's drifting remembrance. It is the shock of water, cool and fragrant with the scent of a soft perfume, on my naked skin that truly wakes me from my walking dreams of Ulric. I exhale nosily, legs bending up to fit my small body in the even smaller basin, the curves of my knees piercing the air as I shift in the water.
Seeing those knees, instinctively knowing where each nick and nearly invisible scar from the escapades of my childhood rests, I am swept with old thought, the familiarity of my body. Years have been spent, daily life continuing, and as my body changed with burgeoning womanhood, I learned through time the hollows and curves of my body. Closing my eyes, surrendering the cleansing of my skin to the water, my heart and mind drift again to my young, golden knight, a champion with a frank and mortal way of speech that lends to poetry; I remember again, unwitting, the glimpse of skin and muscle under tunic and white undershirt, and I want, brazenly, to know the hollows and crevices of his body.
Propriety reclaims me in an instant, and I scowl at my wayward thoughts, impatiently casting about in the water for the stiff brush to scour over my skin; I am suddenly furious at myself, angry and berating my foolish desire, knowing full well the dangers even such thoughts of improper want can bring if known. The sharp bristles of the brush are harsh on my arms and I scrub harder, upset at my wanting and even angrier at my being upset, at Ulric for chasing me, for throwing himself into my life until I could not help but to love him. It startles me to realize tears, angry and lonely and happy, are slipping down my face, and i throw the brush into the water, thrusting myself out of the tub.
Pools of water form around my feet, dripping off my fingers and knuckles as I fold my arms, shivering and inexplicably frustrated, over my chest. I step gingerly on the humid stones, coursing hurriedly on the tips of my toes to the forlorn, heavy towel in the corner.
"God forgive me my lusting thoughts," I grit out even as I recall a phantom dance that did not follow the rigid constrictions of proper dance, but shifted and rolled in laughter, a smooth flow as perhaps dancing was meant to be shared.
"Forgive my mind its wandering trails," as I wrap the towel around my body and remember the heat of his pale body near mine, but too far; it is ironic, that I should wistfully think we did not dance as close as I would have it be, when our nearness than was nearly scandalous.
"Grant me the chastity that befits," and I stop.
I cannot pray for what I do not want, for the distance and stiffness of the courtships deigned lordly and thus correct by the hawkish madams of society; such courtships would hold fair Ulric and I beyond contact, chaperoned at dances and banquets, forbidden to touch and kept to formal courtesies and the restrictions of proper letters. I want him more than just the quiet delights of touch or flattery, things of favor and equal-footed arguments, and certainly more than the pining a vague courtship would stir. A mad thought seizes me - not mad to me!, but oh how shocked Father would be by it; he would think his youngest child daft, insane - and with the towel not yet wrapped fully around me, I realize something profoundly, staring at my sopping wet, swarthy reflection in the length of polished silver above my vanity.
I love him, this I have known, but I feel no caring or want about his title or his exploits, nothing more than apathy for the honors of courting a knight. I do not love his dukedom, his knighthood or his honor, for they are mortal transparencies, just as my land and money are useless in the eyes of God. Ulric is what, and who, I love; Ulric with the tangled hair that glitters gold, the broad plane of his nose and the youthful span of his shoulders, as pale as I am dark and a dreamer where I am usually serious. He is eager, and reserved, and every inch the capricious poet; and what I have realized is this: I love Ulric, and I shall say it, scream it, laugh it, in my head or with my voice, until my mind pounds and my throat is hoarse. If he were a farmer or a stable-boy, a servant or a king, an angel, a devil! - I would love him yet, for the sake of who he is, for him alone.
"Can I be damned for this?" I ask my smooth reflection. My hands know a purpose I have yet to grow aware of, and the towel shifts from my hips to dry, hurrying, the dampness along my upper torso with a preoccupied urgency. "To give him all my love - I do not think I shall be ruined for that." And I feel, resolutely, as the towel quickens to dry my calves, that God knows something of love, of the dark and light depths it hold, and with that knowledge He surely understand. My apology, my thanks, my love, is owed my gleaming champion, and I turn to let the towel crumple at my feet, padding quickly to the bed conquering most of the room.
As I fumble with the laces of the dressing gown, tugging it sharply over my head and sliding my arms carefully through the allotted holes, I plan a hasty sketch of where to go and how, should I wear more than a thin gown or simply cast a robe upon it, modesty or sense? Sense, of course, prevails, and I find my robe, pulling it on and shifting the wet curls of my hair from the hemmed collar. I pause and feeling again the weighty dampness of my hair, move to my vanity, robes and filmy gown whispering against one another as I stoop for the towel; dry hair is easiest managed, and knowing the discomforts of sleeping with my own hair when wet, I should surmise he would not find it terribly pleasant or romantic. Determined, I scrub at my hair with the towel for a few minutes, claiming a more or less dry state in place of unneeded wetness, and shift the towel aside on the vanity when done, grasping my brush.
The rhythmic tugs of the brush yanking carefully through my hair fades, my hands working seemingly of their own volition, and I only notice when I grimace at a particular sharp pull. I can, and will, give him everything - if he should ask, I would forsake my family, the meaningless honors of nobility, every penny to my name, and he only to ask it of me - as reparation for his sacrifice of pride and flesh; and though I have long assumed I would be wed and anxious when I first lay with a man, I feel little more than a calm determination and the excited butterflies, both content and fidgety, that he stirs inside me. I exchange my brush for ribbons, carefully piling the curls in a swirling stack on my head - I want to be beautiful for him, I want so badly to be a true lady in his eyes - and knowing, in absolution, that this I will give him.
And I wonder, then, at how exchanging the innocence of virginity will beget the innocence of love for me, for Ulric, for our future, be it bleak or sunlit, wealthy or poor.
I love him.
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End
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Feedback: Standard fare. Yes, I know it was melodramatic and sappy, but go ahead and review. Flames are not appreciated.
Disclaimer: 'A Knight's Tale,' as is doubtlessly expected, is not my propety. But as they say, live and let live!
Set: Before Jocelyn goes to Will (or, eh, Ulric). You know what I mean.
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The Champion
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I do not fear many a thing and rarely a person, for it is my experience that to fear something - and thusly someone - is to give it greater power, over one's mind, making it feeble with uncertainty. What my father sees me as, the judgment of the Lord God, whether or not I am quietly cursed by my femininity: these small details give me pause, that I hesitate and think again on what it is at hand. I know I should be most grievous to ever cause my father shame, no matter what I may at times think, and I shall never be fool enough to question the Lord God, shall do all I can not to be blasphemous to His immortal name. It is the last one, though, that has me unmoving before a pain of rosined glass in the cathedral, peering with squinted eyes at the ethereal reflection the flickering cast of light the delicate candles grant me, as though unsure of what I wish to see.
Forgiveness is a virtue extolled on many an occasion by those chosen men who sermon the Bible, in voices that may be harsh and condemning, perhaps young and quick; to hold bitterness and sulking pain close to oneself, whether bundled within or held disdainfully up for all curious eyes to behold, is foolishness. It is a means of solemn destruction, of one's tentative grace with God, for if I cannot forgive then I should not expect such in return. Simples lessons, those, and ones I recall clearly now as the candles grant me a dim, wavering image of myself scattered in the glassy red pan wavering before me.
My fingers graze a damp coolness of sorts when I touch the stones beside the window and I wonder, briefly, if it is the stones supporting me or I them, as I close my eyes to set free my last murmur of forgiveness to the soft, wettened winds that trickle through the gaping night doors. I had not thought it so, but some shell of me, a dismal part yet a fool and leery of what I do not know - perhaps the tiny essential deaths my mother suffered - but still a part I find I must acknowledge: this fragmented shell could not forgive him his outburst of unintentional cruelty, and even that shallowness caught within my soul must admit he did not know how his heated words stung.
He will never know, if I can see fit he will not; my fingers coil of their own volition to my palm, knuckles scraping the fluid stones sharply and nails gently ripping at the rounded parts of my hand. T'was a youthful girl's silliness that gave me thought to co-ordinate my raiment to that of his, a giddy wonder at this golden boy-man who flattered me with his honest thoughts and yet did not seek to champion for me. I have few liasons of a romantic nature to my claim - a few kisses stolen from the fourth son of a duke, that handful and little else - and though the mere thought of him sparks the queerest tugging throughout the whole of my body, I am not sure I shall be willing to dabble further. Nevertheless, I had asked out of realization, having some knowledge of what lengths women will go to in hopes of possessing an unclaimed man such as he, and if I should not stoop as low, I could at least lay a foundation about him, to match him and thusly attach myself in sight to him.
It was done, then, out of selfish preservation of my stirring love, to keep this brawny young man no older than I out of hand, to mark him as my own by simple means of attire that matches. I cannot help but to smile, unable to prevent myself from marveling at the odd ways people have of claiming one another, and with thoughts of knights jousting for ladies and ladies dressing for knights, I draw my hand slowly from the wall; absently, I place it there again. The woman in the window flutters as does the candle, her dulled face expressing peace that belays her inner jumble of elation, peculiar melancholy, longing, and a thousand other things grander than a green tunic and hastily demanded proofs of love.
I demanded and he gave, at the suffering of bodily harm; but as he could not see beyond his own pride, I, too, could not, and in that doubted the truth of his love, and the depth of his declaration on such, knowing he held the matter of his honor in greater regard than he did the lady he professed to love.
My fingers uncurl along the stones, thin ridges of mortar peeking shyly between the smoothly hewn rocks, hand pressing in touch to the wall as I smile, feeling the corners of my mouth tilting happily up; it does not matter now, the mean things we said callously so recently. He has jousted, and lost, and proved victor again as the proof of his love as well as for the sake of his mortal pride, sacrificing in accordance to my demand when I feared he would not suffer to lose: he has proved a thousand-fold the desperate sincerity he feels by simply accepting without reply the damaging blows delivered him. My father, I recall with small sadness, had often let it be known the matters of a nobleman's pride, of the priority such a thing of honor held in light of a woman's matters, and though I have cause, frequently, to harbor my suspicions on this view, I still feel a consuming relief, knowing in spite of his pride, he would fail if I asked.
The thought - he loves me! - is potent yet though the sun has long set and the hours since drifted past in a joyous tranquility, pulling my lips up and back in a breathless smile echoed by the crimson-shaded woman in the candlelit window. I feel, deeper than knowledge and more absolute than any emotion has filled me before, that I love him; and even as I think such, pressing my brown hand to the window as if to draw strength from its mosaic Jesus, it seems as if the word, the title and name given this powerful, flooding state of heart, is too trivial a thing to use in label of my heart's stirring.
"How odd, then," I murmur to myself, to the saints and angels bearing witness, "that I should turn to speech of poetry when I feel so strongly." Poets speak, for the most part, of love in eloquence, and in that heartsick thoughtfulness I consider them, now in the humid sanctity of the cathedral, to be among the ethereal nature of the heavens. Sky and light, I think absently and am interrupted by the partly disguised query of a churchman:
"Have you come for confession, milady?" he asks politely, but with a hinted taint of frigid dislike. Like his fellow clergy he is both splendid and humble in appearance, his white robes pale in the vain light of the candles and round face formless with aged, forced humility; he is also, I note wryly for my own benefit, the same overwhelmed man who had tried to silence me when I gave my challenge to Ulric. He looks at me in the dim light with poorly veiled distaste, and I summon countless days of etiquette recitals and ladylike schooling to become suitably demure.
"I have not," spoken carefully bland, in a self-possessed tone. Smoothly, I dip my body in a deep, proper courtesy amidst a rustle of folded skirts. "My sincerest apologies," the words are practiced and spring easily to the tongue, but I do feel sorry for my incensed treatment of this religious man, "for my behavior this morn. I was rather rude to you and I ask your forgiveness." As I lower my head, wanting stubbornly not to and quite grumpily thinking I should be free to apologize from my own decision, I wonder briefly why forgiveness seems to be circulating through my mind.
He has a look of pleasure on his homely features, but remains nonetheless stiff when he bows his own head formally, the very image of superior authority and slightly surprised leniency; his mouth sets gravely when he speaks, dark eyes solemn and haughtily suspicious, "You are forgiven in the eyes of the Lord." Then, reluctantly, as if he would prefer to be petty and deny that last dismissal, "Go with God, young mistress." A betraying muscle in his jaw twitches with displeasure, but he is honorable as he and his brethren should be, etching a protecting cross in the damp air with the unwavering side of his hand. He murmurs a standard incantation for the Spirit of God to watch and protest my feminine sensibilities, that I should not be hesitant or wicked in sin.
I do not appreciate his manner of speaking - curt and derogatory; he expects weakness and thusly can only see faults - but whisper a general thanks, bobbing in a second courtesy as he straightens, smug and radiantly peaceful.
"Christiana," I call hopefully, wanting to escape into the night where freedom awaits to think over my freshly gained knowledge. "Shall we leave now?" My voice echoes, lonely, in the vaulted rafters above for but a moment, and then her head rises from a lax position, as swarthy and raven-haired as my own.
"If you are ready, milady," she smiles carefully, flickering her eyes pointedly in the direction of the ceremonially robed man though her mouth twitches, amused, only once. "I should think your father may wish to hear you have retired at a respectable hour so perhaps it is wise to take our leave?" It is delicate phrasing she uses, suggesting something under a layer of innocent questioning; Christiana has always been dangerously good at it, and we often found ourselves in trouble for it as children, with my sharp tongue and her sly gift.
Shaking my head slightly, to ground my thoughts from reminiscence, I smile and courtesy elegantly once more to the clergyman, saying gravely, "We shall be on our way then. May you go with God as well."
With a continued expression of polite smiling sewn unto my face, I gesture to Christiana as she discreetly moves toward me. "Let us go, Christiana; we would not wish to give Father reason for concern." Or a nick in his honor, I add silently, an old certainty that has grown too worn to be truly bitter; Christiana and I permit last smiles and our shoes rubbing softly over the stone, hurry to leave the flickering shadows and uneven candlelight within the cathedral.
We keep our tongues still and throats silent until we are well along the wide path to the sponsoring lord's home, and then Christiana begins to giggle as I grin, a fool, to the moon. "Today has been an eventful day, has it not been?" she says between giggles and my own dreamy grins. "A proof and a joust," she turns and smiles broadly at me, answering my unending smile with one of hers. "Though it was most surprising to hear the way you spoke to Sir Ulric in church this morn." She looks pleased and so belies her words. "I haven't seen you so straightforward with a man since you and I were children."
The addition is unspoken, a common remembrance of before one is judged by attire, perfumes, jewels, and rare creatures, when one, such as two small girls of French blood, is still innocent and feels no leprosy in boldness and freedom.
Now, under the stars and canopy trees, it seems as though she and I can grasp again the innocence before ceaseless rules and social foolishness overtook us, as though I am again Jocelyn with the sunburnt cheeks and she Christiana of the dirt-smeared knees. "It is strange," I speak slowly, remembering how our dresses would tear, fingernails growing ragged, with no fear of my father's disdain, "that I feel content enough - as if I was a child, now again - to argue openly, or, or give him my life without care. I can move as I so wish, and be treated as an equal - as though we are the same!" I curve my fingertips, recalling the warmth and roughness of his palms, old, laboring calluses on his fingers, on the flesh pads of his hand as he squeezed my own shyly; with my fingers clasped to my palm, I can summon to mind the ghostly texture of his coarsened fingers and know he is more than he appears, as am I, as is Christiana, as even - I suppose - is the clergyman.
"Isn't it odd?" I wonder aloud, staring up through the webbing branches to the stars, "that of all the people other than you and Maman, I should feel so utterly freed, awful and good all at once, when I am with a man? He cannot be a day older than I, yet he makes my heart beat as if I am a child, a babe, looping upon the face of one gloriously older."
I touch my collar, to the brown skin above my breast, and sense the deep fluttering beats of my heart, my entire being washed over with the grace of earth and sky, swallowing me deep within its shared core. As I delve into that pulse, connecting its powerful rhythm to life, I find I murmur thoughtfully, recalling a day when we - closest of friend, Christiana and I - learned painfully that childhood's luxuries were truly lost to us, as we cried in the trees: I for a foolish dream lost, she for the unjust burden of inequality forced upon her by society.
I ask, "Do you remember our pact?" A beat, resounding in my chest, and I wonder if Ulric has known the bitter flavor of cracked and discarded reams. "That one we made so long ago, in the rain and mud?"
"Yes," answers Christiana, as lost in dusky thought as I. "That we agreed to do whatever your father said, what he expected," to protect ourselves from his pride, "but that we would not give up anything to any man," pride, heart, soul, body; we had vowed it with tearful sincerity and deep hatred for the race of men in that grey morning, scratching out names solemnly in the soft mud, signing a contract with the rain and our shifting world.
"I fear I am breaking our vow," I admit, closing my eyes for a few steps, feeling again in my fingers the rough heat of his hands, the lean cut of his chest under his green tunic. A butterfly blossom of warmth hidden in the depths of my body spirals into existence, more primitive than the aching beauty of love, and I open my eyes, startled; perhaps, then, the clergyman was not so degrading in his prayer for my female matters to be kept under guard.
Christiana's reply is what startles me more, though, as she confesses meekly, "It is not so odd; I fear I, too, am casting aside our vow." I look, questioning, at her, and she is unable to keep a small grin from her face as a blush of secretive pleasure - he must be darling, I think, to woo her so - rises in her cheeks; grinning still, she announces boldly in a quiet whisper, "His name is Roland, Jocelyn, and he is your lord Ulric of Gelder's companion." Though I laugh once, delighted for knowing, however vaguely, of whom this Roland is that she speaks of, she rushes, eager, to describe: "He is a kind man, with a timed face and gentle words, and he is most suitable, as Maman would think. He is most sweet, and I am certain he should prove to be a wonderful beau."
"Oh!" I exclaim with a laugh, "you and I, and our foreign suitors. A shame," I feel aged and solemn for a moment reflected in her face, "to have spent eight years keeping to our contract and in three months time have we begun to break it." We are silent, quietly shuffling to the stone manor before us, and turning to her, I say, "Am I at wrong, to know just as I can possess and control him, he may possess and control me in turn?" It is fair, murmurs the justice of a child within me; Father always controlled Maman, while she did not him, and this I will never suffer or allow one I love to suffer.
"Then I am at wrong as well," Christiana says simply, and we smile like fools, like sisters, at one another until the manor lord's youngest son, riding upon a night steed and drawing toward the far stables, calls out, "Good eve, lovely mistresses!" He is little more than two-and-ten, covered with dust and wearing an earnest face as he cuts across the path, along the wobbly road to the stables.
Giggles overtake us and though I cannot vouch for her, I feel absently giddy, drunk and sober on the thought of Ulric with his crimped gold hair and pale, eager eyes; the long minutes as we clamber to our chambers, she to the maid's room and I to mine, are remote in thought and I know I wander, content and brilliantly lit within, about my hewn chamber, only vaguely aware of the bath Christiana has pulled for me before retiring with a smile to her room. The rustle of cloth - the layers of my dress - shift, garters, rolls of cloth dropping from my body to the floor, falling away from my skin, are recognized with a dreamer's drifting remembrance. It is the shock of water, cool and fragrant with the scent of a soft perfume, on my naked skin that truly wakes me from my walking dreams of Ulric. I exhale nosily, legs bending up to fit my small body in the even smaller basin, the curves of my knees piercing the air as I shift in the water.
Seeing those knees, instinctively knowing where each nick and nearly invisible scar from the escapades of my childhood rests, I am swept with old thought, the familiarity of my body. Years have been spent, daily life continuing, and as my body changed with burgeoning womanhood, I learned through time the hollows and curves of my body. Closing my eyes, surrendering the cleansing of my skin to the water, my heart and mind drift again to my young, golden knight, a champion with a frank and mortal way of speech that lends to poetry; I remember again, unwitting, the glimpse of skin and muscle under tunic and white undershirt, and I want, brazenly, to know the hollows and crevices of his body.
Propriety reclaims me in an instant, and I scowl at my wayward thoughts, impatiently casting about in the water for the stiff brush to scour over my skin; I am suddenly furious at myself, angry and berating my foolish desire, knowing full well the dangers even such thoughts of improper want can bring if known. The sharp bristles of the brush are harsh on my arms and I scrub harder, upset at my wanting and even angrier at my being upset, at Ulric for chasing me, for throwing himself into my life until I could not help but to love him. It startles me to realize tears, angry and lonely and happy, are slipping down my face, and i throw the brush into the water, thrusting myself out of the tub.
Pools of water form around my feet, dripping off my fingers and knuckles as I fold my arms, shivering and inexplicably frustrated, over my chest. I step gingerly on the humid stones, coursing hurriedly on the tips of my toes to the forlorn, heavy towel in the corner.
"God forgive me my lusting thoughts," I grit out even as I recall a phantom dance that did not follow the rigid constrictions of proper dance, but shifted and rolled in laughter, a smooth flow as perhaps dancing was meant to be shared.
"Forgive my mind its wandering trails," as I wrap the towel around my body and remember the heat of his pale body near mine, but too far; it is ironic, that I should wistfully think we did not dance as close as I would have it be, when our nearness than was nearly scandalous.
"Grant me the chastity that befits," and I stop.
I cannot pray for what I do not want, for the distance and stiffness of the courtships deigned lordly and thus correct by the hawkish madams of society; such courtships would hold fair Ulric and I beyond contact, chaperoned at dances and banquets, forbidden to touch and kept to formal courtesies and the restrictions of proper letters. I want him more than just the quiet delights of touch or flattery, things of favor and equal-footed arguments, and certainly more than the pining a vague courtship would stir. A mad thought seizes me - not mad to me!, but oh how shocked Father would be by it; he would think his youngest child daft, insane - and with the towel not yet wrapped fully around me, I realize something profoundly, staring at my sopping wet, swarthy reflection in the length of polished silver above my vanity.
I love him, this I have known, but I feel no caring or want about his title or his exploits, nothing more than apathy for the honors of courting a knight. I do not love his dukedom, his knighthood or his honor, for they are mortal transparencies, just as my land and money are useless in the eyes of God. Ulric is what, and who, I love; Ulric with the tangled hair that glitters gold, the broad plane of his nose and the youthful span of his shoulders, as pale as I am dark and a dreamer where I am usually serious. He is eager, and reserved, and every inch the capricious poet; and what I have realized is this: I love Ulric, and I shall say it, scream it, laugh it, in my head or with my voice, until my mind pounds and my throat is hoarse. If he were a farmer or a stable-boy, a servant or a king, an angel, a devil! - I would love him yet, for the sake of who he is, for him alone.
"Can I be damned for this?" I ask my smooth reflection. My hands know a purpose I have yet to grow aware of, and the towel shifts from my hips to dry, hurrying, the dampness along my upper torso with a preoccupied urgency. "To give him all my love - I do not think I shall be ruined for that." And I feel, resolutely, as the towel quickens to dry my calves, that God knows something of love, of the dark and light depths it hold, and with that knowledge He surely understand. My apology, my thanks, my love, is owed my gleaming champion, and I turn to let the towel crumple at my feet, padding quickly to the bed conquering most of the room.
As I fumble with the laces of the dressing gown, tugging it sharply over my head and sliding my arms carefully through the allotted holes, I plan a hasty sketch of where to go and how, should I wear more than a thin gown or simply cast a robe upon it, modesty or sense? Sense, of course, prevails, and I find my robe, pulling it on and shifting the wet curls of my hair from the hemmed collar. I pause and feeling again the weighty dampness of my hair, move to my vanity, robes and filmy gown whispering against one another as I stoop for the towel; dry hair is easiest managed, and knowing the discomforts of sleeping with my own hair when wet, I should surmise he would not find it terribly pleasant or romantic. Determined, I scrub at my hair with the towel for a few minutes, claiming a more or less dry state in place of unneeded wetness, and shift the towel aside on the vanity when done, grasping my brush.
The rhythmic tugs of the brush yanking carefully through my hair fades, my hands working seemingly of their own volition, and I only notice when I grimace at a particular sharp pull. I can, and will, give him everything - if he should ask, I would forsake my family, the meaningless honors of nobility, every penny to my name, and he only to ask it of me - as reparation for his sacrifice of pride and flesh; and though I have long assumed I would be wed and anxious when I first lay with a man, I feel little more than a calm determination and the excited butterflies, both content and fidgety, that he stirs inside me. I exchange my brush for ribbons, carefully piling the curls in a swirling stack on my head - I want to be beautiful for him, I want so badly to be a true lady in his eyes - and knowing, in absolution, that this I will give him.
And I wonder, then, at how exchanging the innocence of virginity will beget the innocence of love for me, for Ulric, for our future, be it bleak or sunlit, wealthy or poor.
I love him.
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End
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Feedback: Standard fare. Yes, I know it was melodramatic and sappy, but go ahead and review. Flames are not appreciated.
Disclaimer: 'A Knight's Tale,' as is doubtlessly expected, is not my propety. But as they say, live and let live!