Ogres

M3 Margueritte: Tales, part 2 of 3

M G Kizzia Leave a comment

The afternoon began wonderfully, and full of celebration for the newborn child.  “Every child is like the Christ child,” Father Aden said.  But then there were horses in the fens, and four men came up quickly, followed by a fifth some distance away.

“Duredain, the king’s druid,” Bartholomew breathed.  He did not especially like the man, and neither did the people of the fens, many of whom were there under sentence of the druid acting as magistrate for the king.

“Lord Bartholomew.”  The druid was always polite to the Franks, but it seemed thin.

“Roan and Morgan I know,” Sir Barth said.  They were Brian, the chief of Vergen’s deputies.  “But who is this tall, lean one with you?”

“Finnian McVey.”  The man introduced himself.  “Lately arrived from the Irish shore and welcomed to the hospitality of King Urbon’s court.”

“You will cease and desist this distribution at once, on the king’s orders,” Duredain said, getting right to the heart of the matter.  “These men and women have been put to this hardship under penalty of law.  They are not to be aided in their sentence or comforted for their wrongdoing.”

Sir Barth reached up to rub his chin and think of what to say.  In the interim, Lady Brianna and Aden the Convert both spoke in unison.  “Nonsense!”  Fortunately, before the argument could begin, the fifth rider arrived; Thomas of Evandell, the king’s bard.

“Lord and Lady Bartholomew.”  He shouted from some distance to gain the attention of all.  “Lord and Lady Bartholomew.”  He repeated when he arrived.  “The king requests your presence in the court at this time.  Would you be so kind as to accompany me?”

“The girls.”  Lady Brianna voiced her first thought, and Father Aden nodded for her sake to indicate that they would be safely escorted home.

“Actually.”  Thomas negated the whole arrangement.  “The king has asked if you would bring the girls, if it is not inconvenient.  He has heard stories and wonders if he may hear more of the truth of the matter.”

Duredain the druid squinted at the girls.  He had not anticipated this, but it did make his job easier.  “Yes,” he said.  “I, too would like to hear about these things.”  He snapped at Roan and Morgan who did not get it at first but realized soon enough that their mounts were required.  They reluctantly got to their feet in the unfriendly crowd.  Sir Barth got up on one horse and took Elsbeth in his lap.  Margueritte got up behind her mother on the other horse and held on tight around her middle.  As they left the fens, she saw Aden the Convert try to turn the men to their drink.  The men seemed determined, en-mass, to scare the pants off Roan and Morgan who, after a moment of hesitation, fairly ran for their lives to the sound of much laughter.

“You bet your bippy,” Margueritte said in a language she did not know, and she laughed without having the least idea why she laughed.

In the house with the wooden towers, which was clearly more of a fort than a proper castle, Margueritte looked at everything while Elsbeth ignored it all.  Margueritte saw a great skill in the tapestries and that all the furnishings were well made and well kept.  Elsbeth yawned until they came to the armed guards and entered the courtroom.  The king sat at the end of the room with the queen beside him.  Everyone else stood, except for Brian, the very overweight village chief, who had a little chair off to the side, and Canto, his druid, stood there with him.  Duredain and Thomas went to one knee before rising.  Lord and Lady Bartholomew nodded their heads and simply said, “Your Majesties.”

“I have heard some strange tidings concerning these daughters of yours,” the king said and did not wait for the niceties.  He looked at the girls and Margueritte curtsied and nudged Elsbeth to do the same, which she did after a thought.

“Your majesty,” Margueritte said, as she momentarily looked down to keep her balance.

“Majesty.”  Elsbeth echoed.

Margueritte looked at the queen.  She heard so little about her, Margueritte could not even remember the woman’s name, but she looked like a nice older lady, and the queen smiled for her.

“Come.”  The queen spoke up to her husband’s surprise who still scrutinized the girls with his best, practiced glare.  “Come and tell me all about it,” the queen prompted.  Margueritte accepted the invitation, and Elsbeth followed.  When she sat at the queen’s feet, Elsbeth beside her, there arose some consternation in the gallery.  The king said nothing, however, as it was apparently what the queen intended.  The gallery became mollified and snickered a little when Elsbeth’s seven-year-old finger went to her nose.

“Well, it all started…” Margueritte began her story, and she told it almost word for word, exactly as she told her parents.  She stuck strictly to the truth as well as she remembered it.  The queen asked very few questions and the king asked none and only spoke at the beginning when the queen lit up at the word dance and said how she, too, loved to dance.

“You have the Maying, woman.  And that is enough dance for the year,” the king said.

When Margueritte finished, she felt satisfied that the real story had gotten out in spite of Elsbeth’s interruptions and embellishments.  And when the king and queen were silent, the king opened the floor to questions from the court.

Duredain the druid became one of the first to step up.  “You say you slapped this ogre, this very force of nature itself, and he crashed against the wall and fell unconscious?”

“Yes sir,” Margueritte answered forthrightly.

“And how is it that you, a little girl, were able to do this?” he asked with a smirk.

“I do not know sir,” Margueritte said honestly.  “Unless it was by the grace of God.”  She swallowed and added, “I am a Christian, you know.”  She looked to her mother and saw pride in her mother’s eyes.  Margueritte was not completely unaware of the political implications in her statement.  The queen appeared unmoved by the revelation, but the king sat straight up, and the druid huffed and puffed, but said no more at that time.  Instead he chose to stand warily beside his king.

“And how is it that lightning came from your fingers to strike the imp?”  A woman asked.

“I do not know,” Margueritte said.

“And there are no imps handy to show you.”  A man back in the crowd muttered and several of the courtiers laughed.

Far and away, most of the questions were about the unicorn.  Elsbeth could not say enough in praise and told over and over how she was healed of all her fears and torments simply by touching the beauty.  Marguerite, however, did not like the tone of some of the questions.  These were asked mostly by men at arms, hunters all.

At the last, the Lord Ahlmored stepped forward as if he had waited patiently for just the right moment.  “Well I, for one, do not believe a word of it.  Oh, I am sure the young ladies have told what they believe is true, but I suspect the truth is more that some ordinary thieves stole the girl in the woods when they had a chance, no doubt to hold her for ransom.  The lovely Margueritte followed her little sister and probably found a gentle old nag that had come loose of its tether and wandered off in search of a good graze.  Then by mere chance they stumbled on the cave of the thieves, sheep rustlers we might call them.  The leader probably slipped in the doorway to allow the girls to escape, which happens.” Lord Ahlmored shrugged.  “The nag, which was certainly lost and had nowhere else to go, then carried them off before the other thieves could stop them.  I suspect there is no more to the real truth than that.”  He shrugged again like that should be the end of the story and the discussion.  Reason prevailed.

Lord Bartholomew, however, had not been counted on.  Red with fury, he broke Brianna’s hold on him.  “Are you calling my daughters liars?”  He shouted and faced the African who merely smiled and bowed.

“Not at all,” Ahlmored said.  “I did say they honestly believe their own story, but you know how these things get built up in the mind, and especially in the imagination of children.”

Bartholomew only kept back when Baron Bernard and Bernard’s squire, his own son Michael stepped in front of him.  Sir Barth felt steaming mad, but he was not the only one.  Duredain the druid looked ready to spit.  Ogres and unicorns made sense in his world, even if they were encountered by one who had the audacity to speak of this Christ.  Arrogant Moslem ambassadors and their rationalistic “explain-it-away” sentiments, however, were intolerable.  For all his faults, the druid could never tolerate a closed mind.

“You’re a fool, Ahlmored,” he said, as Bartholomew looked at his girls.

M3 Margueritte: Tales, part 1 of 3

M G Kizzia Leave a comment

Samhain in the fourth year came only two months after the trouble with the ogres of Banner Bein.  Margueritte found that some garbled word of her and Elsbeth’s exploits had already reached the ears of people so when they arrived at Vergenville, there were more than the usual number of people that watched the Franks parade in.  A few even pointed at the girls and whispered.  Elsbeth, surprised, pointed back at the people, but Margueritte took it all in stride.  In her world, there were precious few entertainments apart from malicious gossip among the women and unendurable bragging among the men.  When a real adventure happened, that was worth holding on to and telling, and retelling, even if no one ever got the story quite right.

Lord Bartholomew found the ambassador from Africa, the Lord Ahlmored, at the door to the inn in anticipation of their arrival.  Both men appeared willing to pick up where they left off four years earlier.

“Lady Brianna.”  The Lord Ahlmored spoke with an air of slime about him.  “I must say, you look even lovelier than when I last saw you.”  He offered his hand to help her down from the cart, but she wisely refused it.

“I see your grasp of the Breton tongue has improved.”  She tried to keep to pleasantries.

“I see your manners haven’t,” Sir Barth mumbled rather loudly.  “Tomberlain.  See to the men.”  He waved off his son.

“Yes, Father,” Tomberlain said, and turned his horse to ride a little too fast back to the open field.

“Now, Lord Bartholomew.  I had hoped any un-pleasantries from the past might be forgotten,” Ahlmored said.  “Let us make a fresh beginning.  I came only to welcome you to the king’s court, sorry as it is.  I have prayed to Allah in the Holy Prophet on whom be all peace, that you Franks might bring a finer wit, a keener intelligence, and a more graceful beauty into our midst, even if only for a short time.”

“Bygones be bygones.”  Baron Bernard spoke up from the doorway where he held a flagon of hard cider and had clearly already started on the festivities.

“At least the beauty has come.”  Ahlmored bowed in his Arabic style to Lady Brianna.  Sir Barth, now dismounted, thought nothing of butting in and shoved the Saracen a couple of steps back.  Lady Brianna quickly grabbed Bartholomew’s hand before he could make a fist.

Ahlmored stayed ever the diplomat.  “Your pardon, but I was speaking of your most beautiful daughters who I hear have ridden on the purity of Heaven and mastered the very demons of the earth.  Why, your eldest with her long, dark hair nearly to her ankles and her skin as white as the cream from a goat, were it not for her fascinating green eyes, I would call her the very model of an Arabian princess.”

Margueritte grabbed Elsbeth’s arm just like her mother who held tight to her father’s arm and she poked her nose straight to the sky.  “They’re ogres, not demons,” she said. Elsbeth imitated her sister’s haughty stance, though stuck out her tongue first before the two marched into the inn.

“Your pardon, Lord Ahlmored.”  Brianna spoke quickly before anyone else could speak.  “But we have duties to attend to and gifts to distribute.”

“Ah, yes.  The Prophet Mohamet who is worthy of all praise, speaks highly of those who care for the poor and the wretched.”  He bowed again and backed away before he turned to walk off.

Lord Bartholomew relaxed, a little.

“So, I would guess then the worthy Prophet never speaks highly of Ahlmored,” Bernard quipped from the doorway.

“Damn African can insult you even in the form of a compliment,” Sir Barth said.

“He’s a diplomat,” Lady Brianna pointed out, but Bartholomew was not so sure.  They went inside.

“You, I will defend with my life,” Sir Barth said, and Brianna smiled and laid her head to his shoulder.  “But if he is beginning to have such thoughts about my daughter, I’ll kill the child molester.”  Brianna removed her head and slapped her husband’s shoulder instead.

“I understand they marry very young in that land.”  The baron spoke between sips of cider.

“Oh!”  Lady Brianna shot him her sharpest look.  “You’re not helping.”  But Baron Bernard already started laughing.  He knew full well he was not helping.

That year, Margueritte and Elsbeth got to go with their father and mother into the fens where the miscreant serfs, criminals, and debtors worked off their debts, by scraping a living from the rocks and sand.  The normal hard life got made nearly impossible, with never enough to eat, particularly for the women and children who went into purgatory with their men, and who often went without so their working men could have the strength to go on.

Brianna felt loathe to bring the girls into that place, not the least for the diseases that often raced through the fens and kept the population in check, but Bartholomew insisted on keeping his daughters with him.  He did not like the girls being pointed out and secretly vowed to find out which of his own serfs or peasants opened his or her big, fat mouth. Most of all, he felt terribly disturbed and almost violent at the sight of Ahlmored’s eyes all over Margueritte.

“Good timing.”  Aden the Convert met them.  “There has been a birth today and you’ve come just in time for the celebration.  Most of the people have already gathered.

“That will simplify things.”  Sir Barth commented, always being practical about such matters.  Lady Brianna said nothing, but Margueritte believed there was something about going from home to home and from woman to woman that she would miss.

For all the bad reputation, the Fens was really a tight-knit community.  Most of the folks were good and decent folks who simply fell on the wrong side of life.  In those days, the real, hardened criminals were put to death, so at least they had no chance of running into some murderer or the like, and as long as you held on to your purse, you would probably be all right.

Lady Brianna got right up into the cart and began to hand out packages.  The women all seemed to know her and respect her, and she knew most of them by name.  She apologized for the lack of woolen things, but with glances at Elsbeth and Margueritte, they all said they understood.

Father Barth rolled out a barrel of hard cider and tapped it for the men, most of whom he also knew.  It felt like Christmas, and a celebration indeed.

“Elsbeth!”  Margueritte suddenly scolded her sister who stood by a young lad to measure her hand against his.  “He may be diseased or something,” Margueritte said in the Frankish tongue, so as not to offend.

“He is not,” Elsbeth shot back in Breton.  “Just dirty.”  She turned to the boy.  “Don’t you ever take a bath?”  The boy shook his head, not sure what a bath was.  “I do.”  Elsbeth said, sweetly.  “Mother bathes us every Saturday night before the Lord’s Day.  I hate the water and all that soap, but I must say it feels good after it is over.”  She backed up to the boy to judge their heights.

“Oh.”  The boy understood.  “But we haven’t got any soap.”

“Mother?”  Elsbeth looked up to where her mother was not unaware of what her children were doing.

“Given out,” she said.  “But I will save a bar next time for your friend?”  She made it a question, and Margueritte saw that the boy was at least not without wits.

“Owien, son of Bedwin,” the boy said.  Then he remembered to take off his cap and added, “m’lady.”

“Yes, I believe your mother has some soap.  Perhaps she will give you a sliver, Owien, son of Bedwin,” Lady Brianna said.

“Yes.  Thank you m’lady,” Owien said, and he turned and gave Elsbeth a look so cold and hard it made Margueritte laugh.  Elsbeth did not look fazed at all as the boy ran off.  Margueritte laughed again and took her sister over to be under the watchful eyes of their father.  Then again, she was not altogether sure if perhaps she did that as much for herself—the way some of the older boys seemed to be looking at her.