Disclaimer: Somebody else owns the rights to the film and not me.
Thanks to Lynn and Penny for beta reading this.
A Damsel in Distress
Arthur called a meeting of the knights to discuss the news that the previous night a large group of Woads had managed to cross the bridge over the River Irthing to the west of the fort of Cilurnum. Most had been killed by the Romans on patrol on that part of the wall but quite a few had escaped into the dense woodland and so the threat of a second attack was a serious possibility. Arthur then asked Tristran to keep a look out for any signs of Woad activity over in that direction.
Tristran was glad when the meeting was over. He'd planned to go down to the river to wash out a blood stain from the sleeve of his linen shirt that was there. There had been a slight skirmish between the knights and a small group of Woads the night before as the knights were making their way back to the fort, resulting in a deep cut on Tristran's arm from a Woad's knife. Slashing Tristran's arm was the last action that Woad ever made and for his trouble he now lay dead.
Tristran was able to conceal his wound from the other knights and had managed to bathe the wound and apply healing herbs and a bandage to his arm. Unfortunately, the tell-tale blood on his shirt would be a give-away if one of the women who did the knights' laundry saw it in his room. He liked to keep things like that a secret as he was too proud of his battle skills to admit to receiving wounds, especially from Woads. He was worried that if he tried to wash the shirt in his room somebody was bound to come in and disturb him the way they often did and so he didn't want to take that risk.
He got back to his room in the knights' quarters and took his shirt and a small quantity of salt to put on the stain. The material was torn as well, but it was a small straight tear and he could easily manage to get that fixed. The women were used to mending clothes that had been torn in battles and he would ask one of them to sew it up for him.
Fortunately, the weather was quite warm so nobody would think anything of it by seeing him going down to the river. They knew he was often down there for one reason or another so never bothered to ask him why.
When Tristran reached the river he noticed a large group of children were enjoying themselves playing in the shallow part. He recognised some of them as being the sons and daughters of Bors; the others he'd seen around the vicus before but he didn't know or care who their parents were.
Not wanting to get too close to where the children were playing, he moved further down the riverbank and hoped they would not disturb him. A last glance at them saw them still engaged in paddling in and out of the river and happily splashing each other in childish merriment so Tristran set to work on the task he'd come to do.
Satisfied with his work, the stain was almost out and what was left would not be noticed much and would fade in time. He took his shirt and placed it on a huge flat stone where the warmth of the sun would soon dry it. He was pleased that the weather was fine, it would have been much more difficult to do this task quickly if it was raining.
He sat on the riverbank and regretted not bringing his fishing rod with him as it was a perfect day for fishing. Those children would have probably have driven all of the fish his way and he could have caught a few. He sat gazing into the water and admired the reflection of the trees played out by the warm sun shining on it. A few insects buzzed around the flowers in the grass beside him. He could hear the noise, too, from the nearby fort as soldiers went about their duties. What he then noticed was the sound of the children or rather the lack of it. They had suddenly grown silent, and on looking towards them he soon saw why.
He could see the children trying to get to the middle of the river. A small child was lying motionless in the water and they were trying to reach it. A boy was running towards him in a state of panic. Tristran recognised him as being one the sons of Bors.
"Please help us," the child pleaded when he got closer to Tristran. "My sister went too far in and slipped and hurt her head on a rock. She's not moving. I'm scared in case she dies."
Tristran knew he only had seconds to get the child out of the water and ran as fast as he could to get to her. He went in and found the child was still unconscious, but fortunately the other children's attempts to try and get her out had managed to move her head so that her face had been turned out of the water. Her forehead was bleeding and she had the beginnings of a huge bump forming there. Tristran picked her up and carried her to the riverbank; there he found her still breathing. When Tristran laid her on her stomach with her head turned to one side, she began to cough up some of the water that had gone down into her lungs.
"Will she live?" One of the other girls asked this of Tristran as the children all huddled around looking worried at the plight of their friend.
"She'll live," Tristan replied curtly. "Now she needs to be taken home and cared for by her mother."
"My mother will punish me for not taking care of her," the boy who Tristan knew to be called Gilly complained. "I'm not looking forward to that."
Tristran then picked the little girl up again and carried her back to the vicus. The rest of the children walked silently along with him, each deep in their own thoughts. When they were almost there she began to recover from the ordeal and began to complain about her head hurting and started to cry. This made Tristran walk faster as a crying child was not a particularly favourite sound of his. All he wanted to do right now was hand the child over to her mother and get back to what he'd been doing earlier.
The other children then ran on ahead and told Vanora of her daughter's accident and how Tristran had saved her life, and he was bringing her back home now. 'Bors is never around when I need him, probably in the tavern if I know him,' she thought.
Gilly received a verbal tongue lashing and was told to go and find his father while Vanora left the other children in charge of her eldest daughter.
Vanora went to meet Tristran and her daughter and saw Tristran just outside the entrance to the vicus and ran up to meet him. "How is she?" she asked anxiously as she tried to see how her child was. The little girl had grown silent again now in Tristran's arms after she was told that she was being taken home to her mother.
"She'll live," Tristran repeated the words he'd said earlier. "She'll need you to nurse her for a few days for the bump she has on her head."
He continued to carry her back to her home with Vanora at his side. Once inside, he laid the child down on a bed. The little girl once again began to cry for her mother. "Take those wet clothes off her and I'll go and tell the surgeon to come and tend to her," Tristran said as he walked towards the door.
Vanora smiled in gratitude and said, "Thank you for what you did for Gwenny. When she is well again I'll see that she thanks you herself."
Tristran nodded and went out of the house. After stopping by to tell the fort surgeon to call at Vanora's home, he went to his own quarters to collect his sword, food and other equipment then went to the stable and saddled up his horse.
"We're going west for a while, on Arthur's orders," he told his horse as he fed him a carrot. "Then I won't have to face unnecessary praise and thanks from Bors and the rest of them here for doing something any man would do. By the time I come back the incident will probably have been forgotten."
He led the horse out of the stable and rode him down to the river where he collected his now dry shirt and put it in the saddlebag. Then after leaving Cilurnum he rode westwards to find a good place to hide to watch out for any further Woad activity just as Arthur had asked him to do. For once Tristran was grateful to the Woads for giving him a chance to get away from the fort for a short while.
The End