April 1070
Things didn't get a chance to get too awkward, as Robert came back in the evening. Given night was falling and I was still dealing with… everything, I didn't go out to meet him, and he didn't bring me in to see him. I spent most of the evening just staring at Amoracchius, which I'd brought back to my room.
I remember wondering if I should get a sheath for Amoracchius, and whether that implied I was going to be transporting and using it, along with a bunch of other random thoughts to distract myself from the kiss and the music. There may have been some pacing and muttered… "stupid"s, "stupids", what even is the right punctuation and spelling there?
Whatever.
Come morning I still had no clue what I wanted from Elfleda, but it didn't take me long to realize that things would get rather awkward during the lesson, assuming one happened. So I did what any middle-aged man who had no clue how to deal with women or relationships would do: I mustered my courage and then proceeded to do something else entirely.
After making breakfast for both myself and Shadowfax, I took my horse on a brisk walk around the town before heading off to the castle and handing him off to the stablehands. Then I went looking for Robert.
I found him very quickly in the courtroom, holding court – resolving legal disputes and complaints, that sort of thing. My first instinct was to go lean against a column and wait for him to finish. Then I spotted Elfleda, and moved to the back of the room. I'd say she didn't see me, and she might not have, but she almost certainly felt the slight chill in the air.
The whole shebang went on for another awkward hour, at which point Robert's irritation boiled over and he called for a recess. Or, well, not exactly, but I'm being vaguely polite and legalistic here. I started moving towards Robert at that point, and my height meant he spotted me quickly. A few quick words later, and we were heading towards his meeting room.
"You don't usually come to see me," Robert said. He took a seat, then waved at a nearby chair.
I sat down. "We don't usually have anything to talk about."
Robert nodded. "And you do now?"
Well, sort of. I wanted to strike while the iron was hot, get the ball rolling on convincing local nobility of the benefits of the project by starting with Robert. Only, as I went to respond, I realized that I probably should have consulted with Elfleda first.
But instead I avoided her out of awkwardness. So instead, in the immortal words of Bill O'Reilly, passed down to me by Murphy from the bizarre nether realm that is "the Internet", in that moment I thought: Fuck it, we'll do it live.
"Do you remember the school we talked about, uh…" I looked around briefly. "Right in this room, actually."
Robert furrowed his brow, and then nodded after a second. "Yes, the school you and… Helga wanted to found. What about it?"
I had two objectives here: get Robert to help me, and make sure he didn't think we were skipping past his brother somehow. Now, I was good at bluffing, less so at lying, so I decided to just hammer home on the first part and hope he didn't think of the other consequences.
"We've made progress on some of the practical concerns, enough to start actually planning… it," I said.
By which I meant, "we had a workable prototype for the detection spell and we were no longer going to be catering just to practitioners." Though I didn't say that.
Out loud, I continued, "What I'd like to talk to you about is the curriculum and the student body."
Robert furrowed his brow further. "Very well," he said slowly. His tone made it obvious he didn't get it.
I thought about how to best phrase my explanation, then decided to just cut straight to the point. "We're going to be teaching a lot of mundane, normal subjects. Natural philosophy, or in broader terms literacy, mathematics, philosophy, physics–"
"Physics?" Robert asked.
"How and why objects move. Massive, massive simplification, but that's the short summary of it," I said. "And medicine, disease prevention, so on."
"That seems a worthy goal," Robert said slowly. "But what does that have to do with me?"
"Two reasons. One, because we plan to open our doors to… well, essentially everyone, but practically just the people that can make it to wherever we set up and keep pace. And two, because some of the students that will graduate will need to look for work later. And they'll know how to read and write and count and do math and all the useful skills you'd want someone like a scribe to have."
"Ah. Yes, I see how that could be valuable, but I still don't quite grasp what you want from me, unless it is some kind of permission to… induct farmers and city-dwellers."
"That would be nice, but we were looking at also teaching these things to the nobility. And you hold a lot of land and have a lot of vassals. I was hoping you could help me get in touch with other lords, start spreading the word."
Robert frowned somewhat. "You would be building one school, yes? In England or Scotland?"
"Probably in England," I said. That had been the final conclusion for the front-facing part of it, and we were approaching the Hidden Halls as more of a bonus. If we got them, great, we'd figure out how to work them into the plans, probably set up some kind of Portkey from there to wherever we built the school, but as a general institution meant to handle hundreds if not thousands of students setting it up in Scotland, where none of us had any connections, was just not practical.
"And you would be doing all the teaching there?"
"Yeah," I said.
"And this would take time, years?"
"Well, basic literacy may not take that long, but for everything… yeah. Years."
"Then what is the… the draw, the reason to come?" he asked. "Say I had a son. What is the benefit of sending him to your school instead of sending him to be a page, or a squire? Or, when he would be older, of going himself rather than staying in court or going abroad to earn renown and experience?"
See, this right here is where Elfleda would have been really useful. Because honestly, up until this point, I'd completely overlooked how the nobility tended to do child-rearing.
There was something he said that stood out to me though. "You don't have a son?" I asked.
Robert's expression turned dark. "No," he said. "Fifteen years and all I have to show for it is three daughters."
"Do you have something against them?" I asked, the air in the room getting a little warm.
"No, they're excellent girls, but I need a son. But unless you can fix that there is no value in dwelling on it right now." He paused and furrowed his brow. "Could you?"
"I would have no clue where to start," I said. "There is, so far as I know, no way to decide the sex of a child with magic." I decided to not say anything about inducing fertility; I didn't know how to do it, and I didn't need Robert thinking he could force his wife to repeatedly have kids until she bore a son.
I'd known something was off in the state of their marriage for a while now, courtesy of the fact I'd never seen his wife – or any of his daughters – but this was the first sign I had that it was more than simple dissatisfaction.
Come to think of it, was Lucille somehow using Robert's lack of a son to manipulate him? I'd have to look into that possibility.
"But to answer your question, we can break up the role of the squire into two main parts: to be an attendant, and to learn how to be a knight," I said.
"In essence," Robert agreed.
"Well, you don't necessarily need a squire-squire, a noble, to be an attendant. I know it's tradition and all, but it's not like there is any intrinsic need that a squire be a noble boy," I argued.
"I suppose not, but the goal of a squire is to become a knight. Yes, I could take on other attendants, but that would not resolve the desire to have sons squire. They don't just do work, they learn. Even if you hired people to teach how to fight, how to ride, it would not be the same."
I sighed and ran a hand through my hair. I didn't know what to say in response to that. At least Robert was being helpful and patient.
"Perhaps you would be better served arguing the benefits of replacing the page," Robert suggested.
"Okay. What does a page do?" I asked.
"You do not know?" Robert asked, frowning.
"Nope. I'm not a noble, and I didn't grow up like one either," I said.
"Hmm. Well, to put it simply, a page is an attendant. Yes, they are trained in combat and horse-riding and other, less physical things, but otherwise they're too young to truly be anything other than servants."
"Less physical things like?" I asked.
"It varies. Music, chess, sometimes literacy. Courtly things," Robert replied.
"Okay. And how long is someone a page?"
"Usually, but not always, a boy's early life is divided into three seven year segments. Until seven they're raised at home, from seven to fourteen they're a page, from fourteen they're a squire, and around their second decade they're likely to become a knight and are unquestionably a man."
"Alright. Then assuming that, when it comes to nobles, the school replaces pages, then we would be offering a more consistent, broader, and higher quality education than a page is likely to learn from a sole chaplain or scribe or whatever. They'll learn how to read and write and count to manage their future affairs, and they'll learn how to interact and socialize with others. Get enough people in there and it's a prolonged social gathering where people can build connections for the rest of their lives." I frowned thoughtfully. "Who's responsible for teaching before the age of seven?"
"The mother, normally. An older sister or aunt or grandmother if the mother is lacking," Robert said.
"So there's a benefit to taking in girls and women too. They learn skills that will be useful later on in their life, to their family."
A brief aside: just about every woman I've ever known would kick my ass at the implication that a woman's only use is to her family. And hey, as much as I acknowledge I have a somewhat chauvinistic viewpoint, it's from the "women should be protected" angle, not the "women should be in the house making babies" angle. So don't take my words the wrong way. But Robert didn't strike me as being very gender-egalitarian, so that argument was never going to get anywhere with him.
Case in point: Robert frowned uneasily. "That I am… less confident about."
"What's the problem? You don't think women should learn how to read and write and do math, get educated?" I asked.
"I can see the benefits, but I am hesitant about sending my daughters far from my court. And once they are married they won't have the opportunity to spend years traveling and learning."
"Your daughters are in Normandy right now," I said. "Half an island and a Channel away. That's a lot farther than a few weeks ride."
"Yes, but they're at my court."
"Okay, but then you aren't arguing from a position of 'they're too far away', you're saying you don't think they're safe elsewhere. Which, alright, I can understand that argument, but it's something that can be addressed by taking safety measures in the school."
"Let us put aside that argument for now," Robert said, clearly avoiding the topic.
I suppressed a sigh and a roll of my eyes and said. "Fine. Back to the page thing. Is the argument I made a good one?"
"It's convincing. But for it to be truly worth it, you would need to convince many families to send their young sons not to serve as pages, but to go to your school," Robert said.
"Which is what I'm asking you to help with," I said. "Introduce me to these other important lords, to your vassals, support my argument. Even if everyone just ends up hiring scribes to do all the drudge-work, the ability to properly oversee those efforts, to understand what's going on, is very valuable."
Robert put his hands together and started drumming his fingers along the backs of his hands. "I will think on it. This is not a denial, mind you, but with the recurring instability and insurrections spreading this idea could be difficult. But there is someone I can introduce you to that could help you more, were you to convince him."
"Who?" I asked.
"My brother Odo, Bishop of Bayeux. He is the king's regent in England, or rather while William is here Odo is his right hand, his administrator. He's the Earl of Kent, which when combined with his other duties means he's often found in the south of England or along the coast of Normandy. I am not entirely sure where he is, but it should not be difficult to meet him somewhere along the way."
"Along the way where?"
"In a few weeks, likely two, perhaps three, I am planning on returning to Mortain. There are some matters there I must see to in my own domain, and to the south there is a revolt in Maine that William has asked me to survey and ideally put down. I am not confident I can succeed in the latter course, not without the troops that William presently commands, but he should not be too long behind me."
"So you're, we're, going to France," I said.
"Normandy," Robert corrected. "And while you do not have to come, and I do not have the ability to command you, I would appreciate it."
I sighed and sat back. Normandy, France, whatever. Robert was going south to where a vampire had influence, if not outright control, over a nation's armies. Where, perhaps, the White Court were heavily embedded in the local political structure. To put it a third way, he was going to vampire central.
Things never ended well when I went to vampire central. Every single time I've gone to vampire central, I've nearly died and caused some political shakeup. In fact, the blame for half of the shit that happened in my life can be traced directly back to me going to vampire central at one point or another.
"I'll think about it," I said. "Will you be taking everyone else at court here with you?"
"Not everyone, I don't think, but just about," Robert said.
"Everyone" included a few people I'd prefer it didn't. Like Elfleda. And maybe Eva. And Lucille, who would, if I'd read her right, be utterly terrified at the prospect of running into her father.
Ha. Ha. Ha…ah fuck. The vampires have a swear for this kind of situation, what is it… oh, right.
Empty night.
Author's Note: Buckle in boys and girls, we're heading to vampire country, and don't forget to pack your sunglasses; it's full of sparkles.