It is two weeks, and three days before Ivy finally arrives home with Siegfried in tow. The price of the war horse bought them passage across the German Sea from Amsterdam to Kent, and from there it has been a further boat ride up the Thames to where they now stand.
It is night time, so Siegfried can't see very much beyond the yellow glow of the single lantern Isabella is carrying, but what he can see shows a lonely jetty, leading a short distance to a roofed walkway with railings either side. To the left of it hulks the dark shape of a boathouse, to the right the walkway turns into a small pavilion, the rest beyond is clad in darkness.
"Come along, Siegfried," Isabella orders him with the same ease she has done so since she first found him. Her heels clunk hollowly on the wooden boards and he trails after her, shrugging the sword at his back into a more comfortable position.
She brings him to a stark halt though, when they come under cover of the pavilion. "Do not move," she whispers, and before he can ask why, she has brought finger and thumb to her mouth and let out a whistle so piercing that Siegfried flinches back, holding his ears.
Isabella's free hand instantly shoots out to grab him, stalling any further movement, and he realises that she was deadly serious in her demand. He sees why soon enough.
Darker shadows detach from the night and silently flow towards them. For a moment before they reach the pool of light spilling from the lantern, Siegfried wonders what demons she has employed to guard her home.
Dogs, it turns out. Or perhaps wolves, the resemblance doesn't bear much difference. There are three of them, small and shaggy with dark fur, and they sit obediently to attention as they come into the presence of their mistress.
Isabella squeezes his arm once more in warning to abide by her instructions and steps forward. She presents her hand to each animal in turn, and it is thoroughly sniffed and heartily licked with faint whimpers of approval from each. When all three dogs are appeased and sat relaxed, tongues lolling in contentment, only then does she turn back to him and beckon him forward.
"Present your hand as I did," she orders him softly, as he approaches her and the dog she stands beside. "Do nothing else and do not kneel down, they must know you and accept you as a superior before you will safely have run of the grounds"
Siegfried does as she tells him and watches as the first dog sniffs his hand and gives it a single lick before sitting back and smacking it's chops as if to savour the taste of him. "You have trained them to kill?" He murmurs as he moves to the second dog, Isabella at his side as he does so.
"Without hesitation, if the scent is not one they recognise."
Siegfried grunts his response, a sound ambivalent enough to mask the disapproval he feels.
Isabella seems to pick up on it, none-the-less. For someone who was so roundly fooled by his monstrous alter-ego for nearly a year, she is horribly perceptive of him. "I am away from home for great lengths of time," and he can hear the sharp edge in her voice despite it's softness. He hopes the dogs do not. "I have only the housekeeper and butler on retainer, I can't rely upon anyone else to protect this place while I am away. If anyone is foolish enough to trespass then it is on their own head."
She chooses not to look at him following her words, instead striding forward, dispersing the dogs before her and stepping from the pavilion and onto a gravelled path. The guardians of her house melt back into the night, beyond the pool of their one light, but Siegfried can sense them still, travelling with them as he hurriedly follows Isabella up the pathway, leading to her house.
It looms out of the darkness at them, a foreboding presence that seems to be a match for it's mistress. The gravel path widens out and then soon they are stepping up onto flags, and then climbing a set of steps that lead up to a wide front door.
Isabella passes him the lantern so she can dig the key out from the inside pocket of the pack she carries. The lock comes undone only with some effort but the thick oaken door swing open with barely a sound from the hinges. She ushers Siegfried quickly inside, taking one last, long look out into the night shrouded grounds before closing the door behind them and locking it again.
The darkness inside the house is even more profound than it is outside. Siegfried can only stand and wait as Isabella seeks out the lamps set along the walls and lights each one in turn from her lantern.
The new light reveals a cavernous hall. Two sets of stairs run up against the walls on either side, leading onto the gallery that runs round the first floor. Directly ahead at the other end of the hall is a massive fireplace, framed by the stair cases. The mantle is ornately carved wood, so old it looks to be black, and the wall directly above the fire bears what must be the family crest of the Valentines.
Siegfried stares at it for a moment and consciously reminds himself that woman who has brought him here is in fact a Countess, a member of the English aristocracy and not just a fierce warrior woman with an enchanted sword.
Isabella comes to stand beside him and looks up at her coat of arms. "Three black lion heads, on a white chevron against a black shield with red mantle. It has always been the lot of Valentine to serve the crown faithfully in war and peace. That ended with my father." With this she turns away.
Siegfried reads haltingly the Latin written above the helm, it has been a while since he has had to use this particular skill. "To ever strive and... increase?"
"More or less," she answers from behind him.
Suddenly he hears a door open somewhere above and footsteps come charging towards them from the left gallery. Siegfried looks up in the direction of the noise, hand automatically reaching for the sword at his back, and only at the last second does he clench his fist to prevent himself from drawing the Soul Edge.
A man, looking to be well into his sixties and skinny with age peers over the banister at him, a crossbow aimed directly at his chest.
"Who the hell are you and how did you get in here?" He demands furiously.
Siegfried only recognises about three words in the sentence that was spat at him, but the meaning is loud and clear. Desperately he looks to Isabella.
Ivy saunters over to him, heels clacking on the floor, in no real hurry to diffuse the situation.
"Master Beckett, this man is my guest, please kindly do not threaten him."
The old man recoils in surprise, then grins in delight at the woman staring up at him. "My Lady Isabella, oh finally you return, my good wife and I were despairing of you ever coming home!"
Ivy watches as he almost stumbles down the stairs in his haste to reach her, trying not wince as he narrowly misses firing the crossbow. Aware of his near miss, Beckett takes a great deal more care when he disarms the crossbow and lays it to one side against the wall, before bowing to his mistress.
The smile she gifts the man, her butler, is genuine and warm. "Well I am home now, and the journey has been a long one. I hate to rouse you in the middle of the night but could my room and one for my guest be prepared? I think a bath for each of us would be in order too," She looks towards Siegfried, wrinkling her nose. While she has done her best to wash regularly, the man she has travelled with smells particularly ripe, having ignored her constant admonitions for him to do likewise.
She has discovered that while Siegfried willingly allows her order him around without complaint, she has on occasion been pulled up short by some very subtle acts of rebellion. His refusal to bathe is one of them. The last three days trip up the Thames have been a constant battle against the temptation to push him into the river.
Siegfried looks back her guilelessly, quite honest in his ignorance of what she has said. While this is something Ivy thinks she would enjoy exploiting, attending to his education in the English language might be worth starting very soon.
Beckett is already making sounds of agreement; despite her order being couched as an honest request, he would never dream of actually refusing it. "I shall have Margaret make up the beds immediately, I will get the fires going in the bathroom myself."
"Do not concern yourself with hauling the water, I will have Siegfried make himself useful doing that," Ivy tells him.
Beckett glances swiftly toward the young man standing by fireplace, who is looking quite confused and not just a little worried. Beckett cannot blame the boy, really, for despite his great fondness for his mistress, he is quite well aware of how mercurial her moods can be. Quickly he goes back up the stairs to the room he shares with his wife, at least content in the knowledge that he can tell her the lady of the house is now home.
Ivy watches him go, before closing the remainder of the distance between herself and Siegfried. She wrinkles her nose once again as a whiff of his unwashed aroma manages to find it's way passed her nostrils. "You are having a bath," she tells him bluntly and this time in German. "No 'ifs' no 'buts', and if you refuse I will knock you out and wash you myself."
Siegfried's eyes widen at the threat, and he honestly isn't sure whether to be afraid or excited at the notion. It's clear that she isn't joking, however, and perhaps he ought to finally concede to this one demand, as even Siegfried has to admit that he's starting to smell like a midden heap. "No need for threats, my lady, I will bathe, as you say," he injects a hint of asperity into his acquiescence, Siegfried doesn't want her to think she has won this easily.
The house, he learns, has two bathing rooms on the ground floor of either wing, each with a large fireplace of width to accommodate two blazing fires and their attendant cauldrons. Most of the room is sectioned off into two further chambers, each containing a large wooden tub that actually seem to be plumbed in. This would have been more impressive to Siegfried if the pump for the water, he discovers, wasn't in the kitchen.
When Isabella assigns him to haul the water to the distant most bathroom, Siegfried doesn't quite believe her when she explains the nearer one that shares the same wing as the kitchen has fallen into disrepair and she has never found need to fix it.
By the time the cauldrons are filled and the fires are burning merrily, Siegfried decides he is quite looking forward to his soak. He cannot remember the last time he experienced hot water, and the feel of it against this skin. It was a long, long time ago, he thinks, when he was still home, living with his mother.
Beckett appears again to offload a bathsheet and a lump of what he calls 'soap.' "For washing with," the butler explains, helpfully, when Siegfried stares at it curiously. Except of course, Siegfried didn't understand him.
"What?" he asks.
"He said that it's for scrubbing your stinking hide with," Isabella announces as she sweeps in and Beckett makes himself useful filling the first of the baths. She has taken time to change while Siegfried laboured with the water and now wears a heavy brocade robe, belted tightly about the waist. She is also carrying a bathsheet and several other items that Siegfried can only imagine she plans to use while bathing. "Please ensure you use it," she continues, "as I will be able to tell."
"I had no idea you liked me that much, do you plan to share my bath, just to make sure?" Siegfried snidely asks.
Isabella sneers at him, "You know very well I can smell you from here, believe me it will take more than hot water to relieve you of that stench!"
"Oh, you wound me," Siegfried monotones in reply, rolling his eyes.
Ivy eyes the boy momentarily at this. This is the most Siegfried has even spoken back to her, usually all she gets for her brusque demands and sharp digs is a slightly sardonic "as you say, my lady."
This is new; perhaps he is going to start displaying some backbone in their interactions. Ivy isn't sure whether to pleased or annoyed at this. While having him around could make her life a little more interesting, he could quickly make of himself an irritant, especially if he proved useless when it came to the whole point of their alliance.
Despite many attempts, Siegfried would not be drawn on discussing the Soul Edge with her during any part of their journey. It proved itself to be very frustrating, leaving Ivy to suspect that what he disclosed to her during their first meeting was in fact the sum of his knowledge. She plays idly with the idea of beheading him should this actually prove to be the case. It would be no loss to her either way, and would leave her feeling quite vindicated.
Siegfried is shuffling his feet in front of her, staring quite fixedly at the ground, and Ivy suddenly realises she's been glaring at him all the while she has been thinking. Well, perhaps it would remind him of his place, here, she thinks. He lives only at her sufferance, and now he is in her house. He will bloody well do as he is told.
Magnanimously, she allows him to take the first filled bath. If only, she tells herself, so she can be sure he won't just give himself a quick dip and sneak off to stink out her house. If he should ever manage that, she'll leave him to sleep outside with the dogs...
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Siegfried settles back into the warm water, and admits quietly, that yes, perhaps bathing is a good thing. All his muscles have ached from the moment he woke to sanity, and he has managed mostly to put the discomfort from his mind, but the soothing heat brings it all back to the fore. He wonders if there is any strength in the old butler that he can persuade the man to give his shoulder muscles, at least, a good pummelling. He rather doubts Isabella would oblige, not without indulging in his pain a bit first.
She still feels like an enigma to him. In his younger days, Siegfried prided himself in his abilities when it came to dealing with the fairer sex, but while Isabella is indeed very fair, she is unlike any other woman he has ever met. Everything about her, thoughts, words and actions, seem calculated... yet he has caught her off guard several times, like just before, and then her gaze upon him is a different kind of considering.
He wonders what she is seeing then.
It's also the reason he has been loath to speak with her about the sword. She speaks of collusion while he said alliance. One does not stab one's allies in the back, but to collude provides no such assurance. He quite simply doesn't trust her yet.
Siegfried stares at the still-wrapped sword, propped up in a corner of the bathroom. It hasn't stirred once since he has woken, but occasionally he has come awake in the night since then, stirred from his sleep by terrors in the void.
He told the truth when he said he wasn't afraid to die, and that still holds now. What he fears more than anything is going to his grave with the blood of thousands on his hands and no means to show for grace. He has prayed so long in the depths of soul, when the depths were all that was left to him. He prayed to all the saints he could think of, to the Lady and to the Christos; prayed for a chance to be free and redeem himself for his sins. He is willing to suffer, but he will not suffer death, not yet.
He doesn't trust Isabella not to take his life if she decides in her whimsy or in her calculations that it is necessary. While she needs him, he holds some power, and without any other weapon right now it's the only power he has.
A/N The coat of arms described is in fact the Valentine family crest, though the motto I attributed to it isn't, but I figured that there at least should be one.