Therefore be
merry, coz; since sudden sorrow
Serves to say
thus, 'some good thing comes
to-morrow.'
--Henry
IV Part Two; IV.ii
Fianola of Vassford paused as she crossed the yard for one last time. Her belongings had been sent off the this morning, and tonight she would be fifteen miles outside Corus at Great-Aunt Sebila's estate. "I'll be on in a moment," she called to the man-at-arms, who had by now gotten some distance ahead, and she watched him raise a hand to his forelock in acknowledgement.
She had made the right decision. Once upon a time, she had imagined coming home weary from her knightly duties and greeting laughing children; whenever she had practiced a drill she had imagined how she might teach it to her son, or her daughter. But she was fifteen years old, now; she was wiser, now.
She should hurry on. It was getting dusky already; the seasons were changing rapidly, and she shouldn't have delayed. But she hadn't thought that bribing the Post would have taken so much time. She didn't like to think about that. It didn't seem honorable to subvert the Crown's servants for her own purposes. There was something not quite right with a system where even the training master advised it, where something underhand and wrong was commonplace and accepted. She should hurry: she knew that she should, but she could not help standing and watching the training yard where she might never come again.
It wasn't simply the Post, or the way that everyone learned to put purely academic demands second, in spite of Sir Padraig's yearly exhortation to mental as well as physical excellence. Fianola watched the snow-dust in the cracks in the north-face wall, or the training of pages. She brushed a finger along an inlet, knocking out a little cold powder. Had the snow stayed here even through the thaw of this past week? The sun had been shining this morning when she had woken early to settle her accounts and give her room the final once-over. She looked up; now the sky was clouding over, although it was hard to tell if the sun was hidden or was simply low on the horizon behind the crenellated wall. They said that a woman could do anything that a man could do; there was Alanna the Lioness, and there, Lady Keladry. But really, you couldn't. Really, you had to endure a thousand poorly truncated vulgarities in the older pages, and the squires, and the men-at-arms and even the masters. Really, even if no one told you that you didn't belong, they looked askance at you, and were impressed when you beat them in archery, or lasted honorably in a bout of broadswords, or when you hit the quintain. Really, you had to pretend you didn't hear the comments they made about maids and the queen's ladies and even the queen, because to say something acknowledged that you didn't belong in this sphere anyway. The appearance simply did not match the reality.
It seemed good and true, but it was rotten underneath. Perhaps the rot had only been exposed now, with the king's murder. When she put it like this, Fianola did not feel so sad to be leaving. She was rather proud to recognize and reject the faulty appearance of truth. The words did not match the reality, anymore. It was odd how she had not come to think about these things until she so recently. Fianola knelt down and impulsively traced "WORDS" in the half-dirt half-ice. It had gotten cold. "FIANOLA," she wrote, admiring her script -- 'as neat as a scribe's or a lady's' someone had told her. "CHIVALRY." "GOOD."
"M'lady?"
"Only a moment more!" she called. The words expressed something old and beautiful, she thought: the Book of Gold, or the Code of Chivalry. They reflected a simplicity and a certainty that wasn't present in the world anymore. One could change the words, or one could try to change the reality. "A knight does not bend his ideals to fit the passing whim of anyone," Sir Padraig said, "but he keeps them straight and true, and trims the world to that guide of truth and justice." He had taught her more about ethics than any Mithran priest! But those lessons came back to her all the same. One could not say, "Let it be good that officers of the Post accept bribes to pervert their duties." But could one say, "Let the officers of the Post carry private messages and parcels"? That, too, seemed like bending the ideal. But one could send messages with friends and relatives; one could send parcels likewise, or take them oneself, or send them with merchants. Pages, perhaps, should bring no more than they themselves could carry when they came to the Palace. When she sent her sons, she would make them adhere to this rule.
And this was true for larger things as well. King Jonathan was dead; he had been killed by the son of a lady knight. Whatever she had said to Lady Alanna, it was difficult not so see Mithros's justice in the way her son had struck the king down. Lady Alanna had tried to match the words -- she had matched the words, as Lady Keladry matched them! They were glorious lady knights: strong, brave, loyal, just, and true! But the words did not match the reality. A boy who was the son of the realm's greatest knight was a traitor. Did blood mean nothing? Did breeding mean nothing? This was not the way the stories were, and it was not the way things should be.
But she could think about this later. Now she had to say her final farewell to the palace and make her journey. But as she tried to will herself to leave off thinking and follow her great-aunt's man, Fianola had the feeling that she was on the verge of making the past week's swirling thoughts cohere into something important and solid. If only she could formulate it, instead of circle around this not-quite -known center of her ponderings…
"Hey! Fianola!" She turned, startled, and her heart sank a little. Alberic. "I thought you had left already," the short stocky boy said when he caught up to her. He was a little out of breath. "Without saying goodbye, even. It's a lucky thing I caught you."
Mithros keep her she hadn't wanted this! Fianola bit her lip and blinked to keep the sudden tears out of her eyes. She had wanted to leave quietly, where all the tumult of the trial would make her absence go unnoticed until she was far away. It was as Lady Alanna had said: there was some shame. But she had sponsored Alberic of Groten, and they were friends; she supposed she ought to have taken leave of him. "Gods keep you, Alberic," she said, reaching to hug him. "I'll miss you."
"Don't know why you're leaving," Alberic said, his voice muffled for being pressed against her. "You're as good as anyone here, almost."
He didn't understand either. "That isn't it, Alberic," she said. "But I've realized that my duty lies elsewhere." She imagined for a moment that her words fell serenely on the younger page's ears; that he would remember them, and remember this moment when some Truth had been revealed to him through her self-sacrificing person. She was being ridiculous, she told herself even before Alberic cut her off.
"We never had that match, and now you're leaving."
The match. How could he have remembered that, when barely half a day later the king was dead and everything in disarray? How could he bring it up now?
It wasn't that Alberic didn't have tact, she explained to herself, but that he was oblivious to certain things when others were on his mind.
"I'll go get practice swords," he said.
"Alberic-- I'm already… I can't…" Fianola began, but he had started back across the court. "Alberic!" She shouted. "The match is off! I'm not a page anymore! There isn't time! I'm sorry." She bunched up her skirts in frustration as he seemed not to hear her. She couldn't… she wasn't dressed properly and, besides, it was thoroughly wrong to have a practice bout here and now. She had given this up, and Alberic surely had other duties he was shirking.
"Alberic," she said as he appeared once more. "I cannot do this. I cannot. Not here, so… informal."
He looked at her. "Why not?"
Fianola shook her head. "It's… disrespectful, with the king… Mithros be merciful…" Alberic followed her lead and traced the sign against misfortune on his chest. "Fighting isn't a contest, or… or a game. It's like Sir Padraig always said: approach combat with the same reverence in your heart that you hold for the altars of the Gods."
"This is practice," Alberic said, "and practice is serious."
Why wouldn't he leave her alone? First Lady Alanna's lecture, and now this… she had made her decision. "Don't you understand?" Fianola said in anger, exasperated, "I am not going to be a knight; I AM NOT GOING TO BE A KNIGHT! Practice is useless to me!" Her voice broke off into a scream at the end, and she was crying. She sank down onto the court, realizing that Auntie Sebila would be furious if she arrived so disheveled and late, and that she wanted to keep training to be a knight. But it was too late to remedy either of these things…
A giant gap of blackness opened up. She did not feel grown-up and resigned any longer; that particular mask convenience had fallen away. Now, she would have to face the real passions that were fighting her acceptance of duty. But Fianola wondered explained the situation to herself if phrasing it that way wasn't simply making another false and glorified reconciliation…
An arm reached around her. "But I need to practice," Alberic said. "Please? Because you were my sponsor."
"I'm hardly in a state," Fianola began, but she couldn't help thinking that it would do well to go out having won a match. It would help -- something. " Oh, all right. But it will have to be quickly done." Alberic helped her to her feet. Her cloak and overrobe were hung from a protruding buttress, and she did her best to kirtle up the skirts of her underdress and knot them off to one side.
"I can see your garters," Alberic teased, blushing.
"And I can see you tied your points clumsily this morning," she replied. "Now give me one of those swords." Once she had the sturdy weight of a practice sword in her hand, she felt much better, and wished she had not skipped her drill this morning. With nearly four years to Alberic's scant one and a half, however, she had plenty of advantage.
As she and Alberic took their positions and saluted each other, Fianola felt late-Autumn chill. It was cold without an overrobe and cloak. But the exercise would warm her. She new she should end the match as soon as possible, but it seemed unfair to take advantage of Alberic's terribly patchy guard and score her touch right at the start. First strike. Hook. Feint-hook. Cross strike first. Squinting strike third. And then Alberic somehow found an opening to the strike himself, and she was on the defense. Now how had she let that slip through? Guard one. Long sword. Rage strike - scalp strike. If he hadn't ducked, she might have knocked him out. But the strike was back with her, now, and this time, she wouldn't be so kind. First. Fourth. First. Feint-second. First. And there! She forced the pommel of her sword around and against his and forced it out of his hand. "Yield."
He backed away from her sword. "I yield. But that's the last time you'll beat me."
Fianola smiled inwardly at his naïveté as she leaned her sword carefully against the wall. "It's the last time you'll fight me." The last time. No! It couldn't be the last time she would wield a sword… she was going to practice at home, and when she came to court, she was going to join the queen and her ladies in their morning sparring. It occurred to her suddenly that Queen Thayet might not continue to do that. She was old, after all, and after the king's murder… She pushed that thought from her mind. It would work out. If she could train as a night, she could make anything work out.
"I'll be waiting for you when you come back," he said, "and then I'll be a squire, and a proper swordsman, and then I'll beat you."
"But not if you don't learn to block overhead strikes," someone said. Fianola turned, startled. The king's squire was watching them. Alberic wrinkled up his face and looked down. Where had he come from -- who would be crossing the yard at this time? Had he watched the entire match? She wondered how many mistakes she had made, and how many openings she had left unblocked. The Lioness's son was reputed to be no poor swordsman -- he probably despised her like Lady Alanna did, and must be thinking that the Crown was well-rid of someone who was a clumsy as she had been.
"Please, sir," she said, "Do you have any criticism for me?" It must be the nearness of her departure that was making her this reckless.
Squire Alan looked a bit discomfited. 'Actually,' Fianola imagined him saying, 'your technique was flawless.' But that dream only lasted a moment, if it had ever been real. "You lag in recovery after strikes in Third," he said after a moment. "You left more than enough time for an enemy to kill you, between the strike and the next. If you don't know where you are going to attack next, always resume a guard as soon as possible. At least you'll protect yourself." He seemed even more embarrassed to have said so much. He bowed to her. "Gods keep you on your journey and give you happiness, my lady." A bell tolled the hour. Oh dear, she really would be late. Squire Alan seemed startled by the lateness as well. He looked at Alberic for a long moment. "Take this to King Roald," he said, handing him something, "and tell His Majesty that Alan of Pirate's Swoop is grateful for his kindness, and begs his pardon for not returning this in person." It seemed as if there was something more he wanted to say, but the squire simply nodded again and let his eyes flick from Alberic to Fianola and back to Alberic. "Don't lose it," he said at last, and with a final nod to Fianola, he left them, walking quickly across the remainder of the yard until he disappeared into the palace proper.
"What is it?" Fianola asked, trying to ignore the sudden hole in her stomach. She wasn't a page; she wouldn't be treated like a page… she was some sort of lady, now. Alberic opened his hand to show her a ring with the Conté seal.
The Conté seal! "He must trust you a lot."
"No," Alberic said. "He hates me; he's always really hard on my in training."
"That's probably because," Fianola said, rebuttoning her overrobe and putting on her best mother hen voice, "he recognizes that you've got talent and he wants to push you."
"I'm not really that good," Alberic said, "and I don't think he likes me at all."
"Nonsense."
"I will be waiting, when you come back, and I will beat you."
This time she smiled outwardly as well. "I'll miss you, Alberic." She hugged him, then picked up her cloak. "You'll write and tell me how everyone is? Whether they passed the examinations and who their knight-masters are?"
"Course I will."
"I'll write you, too." This was it. "Good luck!"
"And to you."
Fianola turned away before the farewell prolonged itself even farther, and walked through the archway to the stable yard.
"S'about time," her aunt's servant grumbled, but she ignored him. 'A knight should always be punctual.' Sir Padraig's words echoed in her mind. She could feel her cheeks flushing.
"I'm sorry to have kept you waiting," she said, "but it's hard to say goodbye." The servant grunted some sort of assent as he held offered a hand to help her mount. "Thank you; I've no need."
As they rode on towards the gates, Fianola looked back for Alberic, but he was already gone.
GRATUITOUS NOTE: Well, at last an end appears to be in sight for this story. I think I only have two more chapters, I've started them both, and I hope to upload soon!
