Chapter 2: Love in Chains
You were holding me
Like someone broken
And I couldn't tell you but I'm telling you now
--
The Harvest always brought Roddy back to me, from his travels with Ser Aubrey throughout the villages under the protection of Highever. I had him during the fall and the winters, while during the spring and summers I learned about the nobility and the complexities of Ferelden politics. I was not permitted to become a knight, because of appearances again, having a daughter serve under the Cousland banner. I was expected to be on my back and heavy with child by my eighteenth summer.
There were also other barriers to becoming a knight, that daggers and archery and being light on your feet was more befitting of a woman fighter. I could not pick up a steel sword when the boys were beginning to fill out their forms, being at a disadvantage. There were many disadvantages to being a woman, but advantages too, I realized, as I learned the art of fighting with the daggers that I protested against originally, wanting so much to just be another boy. I was neither knight nor boy, but I became a rogue, the student of Ser Peter, one of the rare knights of the trade, who started out as a thief in Denerim and saved the life of Ser Aubrey once upon a time. He was a thin man who could nimbly scale any wall and who had the strength to wield two waraxes at once. I learned from him I could be much swifter than a man fatigued by heavy armor and burdened with a greatsword. Being able to counter great blows from a battleaxe or fend off mace and shield did not help me in Mother's scheming, her hopes of making a great match.
I was seventeen and the months were slipping away from me, the expectations and the responsibilities that I understood very well, because Fergus has drilled them into my head. I prayed many times to the Maker, that he would look kindly on me and change my fate, this direction that I seemed to be heading for. The Revered Mother thought I was too wild for my upbringing and once suggested that I become a chantry sister, but my mother pointed out what sorts of trouble I caused amidst the boys and that to unleash me into the ranks of the gentle sisters would be unfair.
--
"You don't mean to hide in the lofts," Roddy scoffed as we climbed the ladder to the top of the kennels. It was what I had planned on doing, since he knew me too well. This was a place where the pups were kept when they were few days old, where the ground was covered with layers of sweet smelling hay. I had the far corner to myself, where I had set up a table, chairs, and a blanket for times when I felt like a nap was a good choice.
"And where is your formidable hound at this time?" He looked around for a great body to charge of the darkness and try to knock him over. Eirik thought it was a wonderful game, this one called Take Down the Knight. A younger Roddy had often been knocked down with a great clang and landed in a sprawl in full armor, and Fergus would roar with laughter, saying that it was excellent training for battle.
"Probably in the kitchens. Nan's assistants like to slip him scraps." Nan also thought the dog was a menace, not knowing that it was her elven assistants that lure him to the kitchens with bones and bits of beef, just for the sight of their stern mistress running around trying to shoo him off.
"Glad to see that hasn't changed." He sat down heavily with a sigh, dropping the helm into the hay. He removed his gauntlets and unstrapped the heavy steel that protected his arms. I took them from him and placed them in the corner, while he removed the breastplate and set that aside as well.
It was difficult not to wear anything made of steel and not be sweating underneath with the strenuous task. He then had to stand in the hall for hours for the rites, endure the feast, the dining hall stuffed to capacity and the fires at full roar. The shirt clung to his skin, to the broad shoulders and the slim waist. His arms were heavy with muscle, like they had to be, being able to wield sword and shield and keep moving. He unwound the straps that were pulled through a loop that kept the greaves attached to his thigh and his lower leg.
"The girls ask after you, you know," I smiled. The servants gossiped in the halls, while working in the kitchen, and the ladies-in-waiting often chatted as they embroidered. "They talk about you choosing a wife, for the upcoming festival." Knights were allowed to marry, given title and lands of their own. I knew that father would reward him for his loyal service, the glowing accolades of Ser Aubrey for his squire.
"Do they?" He stood up, muscle rippling and I felt my heart catch for a second. I was not blind, not at all. For all they said that I was a ferocious woman, ferocious and cold, when I punched Brom in the face for trying to sneak a kiss after the boys made bets with a few coppers. They said I was a woman playing at being a man, with a man's taste for blood and sport, a man's taste in the gentler sex.
"I'm glad to see you had not forgotten about me, since I've been away," he murmured, finally able to pull me close to him, what I had been waiting for all this time, for the next harvest, the harvest after that. Our hands were tangled together, fingers linked. Joined.
"Was I that obvious?" Our lips met, just a brush against each other, a moth's wing. It was all of our childish barbs, sniping at each other with words, our familiar and aching distance.
"When you are jealous, lady, it means you missed me." He chuckled, the sound sending tingles through my now too warm body. My hands were emptied and clutching at nothing when he let go of them, but he ran his fingers down my side, made me shiver.
"I don't know what you-" He kissed me again, and I was effectively silenced. Our bodies remembered each other's touch, my hands gripping and recalling the rise of his back that I memorized the last time we parted. My mouth remembered the taste of him. Remembered –
--
I was fifteen and newly introduced to the feelings that develop between women and men. This harvest brought home a different man, one bearing gifts. A gift of wildflowers and a squire's hesitant admission. Elika, I have a confession…my full name meant something serious. The realization that I felt the same, that this restless, uncertain worry that had gnawed at me the months without him, and the constant reminders of his presence.
It was months after and deep into winter when the latest news arrived. "Mother means to marry me off to the Bann of Rainesfere," I raged. "She is talking to the Arl of Redcliffe, to arrange a meeting."
"Bann Teagan?" He raised a brow. "He is a kind man, they say. His lands are the richest of-"
"Do you think I care about his lands?" I paced in the small library. "Do you think I want to be married to some…some nobleman with soft hands who has no idea which end of a sword to hold?"
"Bann Teagan," Roddy explained patiently, "Fought at the battle of-"
"This is not what I want," I said, exasperated.
"This would be a good match," he said.
"Yes, it would be," I interrupted and then repeated what Fergus had said to me earlier. "Arl Eamon has not always seen eye-to-eye with father, and to further strengthen the ties between Highever and Redcliffe…" I couldn't even finish the words.
"A good match," I said again. To be the wife of a bann, to have an estate to run of my own, to have a family. It would be any girl's dream. To have servants and cooks to order about. An easy and spoiled life.
"Sometimes we do not always get what we want." I looked up, startled, to hear the emotion in his voice, but he went on, the words low and spoken in a rush. "Sometimes, we must keep to our holy vows to the Maker, to walk only the places that He bid us, even though our feet take us another direction."
"Roddy…" I put a hand on his arm, hesitant.
"Do you think I want to see you betrothed to a bann?" He brushed off my arm, the angriest I had ever seen him. The extent of his fury was in the great red blotches on his neck and his face. "Do you think I want to see you in your wedding finery, on the arm of another man?"
I was hurt that he thought I asked for this, that he believed me a liar for the feelings that I bared only few months ago. We only hurt those we love most, so I kissed him with the rage that I felt that our futures were not within our own grasp, that our choices were already made, the curious alignment of stars and the patterns that dictated our fates.
With whispers in the dark, we led each other and tripped over each other's feet as we made our way out into the frozen winter, into the warm kennels, where there were sounds of pups whining in the darkness, shuffling paws and quiet snorts. With fevered passion, there was a shedding of clothes, hot breath against arched neck. His heavy body on mine, but then retreating, drawing away, my body curling on itself from the lost warmth.
"We shouldn't…" He sounded strangled, breathing heavily. "Who you are, Lia, we shouldn't…"
"I could marry Bann Teagan," I said fiercely, tugged at him with selfish words, words meant to be cruel, to cut. "With titles and a manor and-"
We made our own constellations that night, with hungry hands and clumsy limbs, an impromptu first time of false starts and finishes, but we could become perfect, if they let us.
--
"Andraste's flaming sword!" There was a voice above us and I was underneath my knight's body, looking out towards the entrance of my make-shift haven. There was Terrell. Older and even taller still, but it was still Terrell, and I was naked and trapped underneath Roddy, who was trying very valiantly to hide my body from view while shielding parts of himself as well.
"Get out," I said with bared teeth, with the best glare that I could manage while naked and caught in bedsport by a man who could be my betrothed while under a man who most decidedly was not.
"Elika." Terrell choked out my name, having turned almost crimson. It was not the reunion after many years with Terrell that I imagined, not that I gave any thought to the second Winder after he left and made the castle a more pleasant place to live in.
"Lia…" came the low, warning tone of the man beside me, the one who knew me well, reminding that this man was a nobleman's son and not someone I could tear apart with my bare hands.
"I won't say it again, Terrell Winder," I said, and all modesty left me as I pushed Roddy aside and stood up from the hay furious and spitting. "I will stomp you like I did five summers ago, and I'll make sure to knock some more teeth out of that pretty face this time." Terrell flew out of there, having grown wings in a split second.
--
It was a scandal. An embellished scandal that grew like a huge beast. The rumor was that I pulled a knife on the bann's son, pressed him against the wall and threatened to gut him if he told. Mother was horrified, Father not knowing what to think of his little girl who he still thought was a young child playing in the dirt, while Fergus found all of this greatly hysterical and added his own embellishments as well to the story repeated often until the Autumn Festival.
They weren't quite sure what to do with Roddy, having him pledged as a Cousland knight just that morning. I defended him by taking the blame, knowing full well that my father would promise a talk later that never comes and Mother would do her best to fend off all of the concerned letters that came in, inquiring after the virtue of the youngest Cousland.
He was my knight, sent by whatever benevolent spirit that watched over us. And Maker, I would move heaven and earth to keep him.