His father was drunk again.
Stumbling about the sitting room, like a dancing bear, his father lifted the bottle to his lips, spilling more on his tunic then drinking it. With a curse, the man stumbled over to an armchair and sat, sighing heavily. Lifting the bottle again, he sighed and drank, the bitter, red liquid calming him.
The boy watched, with a look of clear disinterest, as his father unstopped another bottle of wine. It had always been like this, ever since his mother's death and, he being a only child, had to oversee that the fief could be left in his hands. But he was more then capable with running the estate with the philosophy that was constantly shoved down his throat by the castle tutors. Really, he didn't mind, losing himself in a book or in a lesson, it kept his mind off the constant fact that his father was, yet again, wasting time in drowning out his sorrows. In fact, it happened so often, that he didn't notice until his father would be walking about the home, complaining about a hangover.
For his sixteenth birthday, his father gave him a bottle of ale. Golden, smelling terribly like rotting onions, and tasting bitter on his tongue, the boy could tell it was not cheap ale and best kept for another time.
He's kept it in the back of the cabinet ever since that first sip.
0o0
He regrets the night he drank too much, after his father's funeral, and that the running of the fief was a little unstable, but most of all, he feels sorry for ever touching the foul drink. All it caused was miscommunication, stumbling, confusion and, in the morning, a constant gods-forsaken throbbing in his head.
He'd gotten used to the feeling after a while, but even years later, it didn't surprise him that, as a man, Sir Myles of Olau was called something he'd never consider as one of his 'titles' while growing up:
The court drunk