Thread #6393577
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You come into the world on a cold morning in a room that used to be a storehouse.
Your mother bleeds on a straw mattress while the midwife works between her legs and your father prays in the hall. He prays standing. Kneeling is hard for him now. His left leg was shattered below the knee two years ago by a mace blow at the siege of Chauvency, and the bone never quite set the right way. He does not limp so much as lurch. He was captured in that same battle, dragged from under his dead horse, and held for a ransom that cost him everything.
Everything. The silver plate. The grain stores. The warhorses, all three. The income from two villages, pledged to the abbey of St. Rémy for six years. And the castle -- your great-great-grandfather's castle, the seat of the family for five generations -- signed over to the man who captured him. Sire Gérard de Valenne, who lives there now with his wife and children and hounds, and who nods to your father at mass on Sundays with the faintly superior courtesy reserved for men one has ruined.
There is only the manor house now. Stone foundations, timber above, a leaking roof your father lacks the constitution or the silver to mend. A mere forty souls in the village depend on upon him. Yet he serves them well. He hears their complaints, settles their quarrels, forgives their debts even when he shouldn't. The old servants, the ones who knew him from his boyhood and followed him from the relinquished castle, say he is a different man since the siege. They mean it as praise. Certainly, your mother found a new depth of love for him in his weakness, his humiliation. You were, perhaps, the product of it.
The midwife holds you up, still bloody, and you scream.
She carries you to the hall, where your father turns from his prayers. He takes you in his arms -- carefully, because his grip is not what it once was -- and studies your face with grave attention, as though your destiny were writ in the lines above your eyes and he alone the augur who could decipher them. The midwife watches too. So does old Agnès, your mother's woman, who has opinions about everything and a liberty to air them that could only come from long, trusted service.
Naturally, it is Agnès who breaks the peace.
>She says you have your father's jaw, set firm, even now, as though daring the world to move you. A proud nature.
>She says you have your mother's eyes, wide open, watching, beautiful, taking everything in and giving nothing back. A patient nature.
>She says you have your grandfather's ears, big for a newborn, with fleshy lobes and disposition which seems to suggest their frequent use. A suspicious nature.
>Write-in
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They christen you on the third day, in the chapel of St. Demetrius.
The chapel is far older than the manor, older than the castle it once served. The stone is river-gray and fitted without mortar in the old way. The baptismal font is older still -- rough granite, its rim worn smooth by centuries of use, carved along the base with shapes that are not quite leaves, not quite letters. Father Silvain does not like to discuss them.
Father Silvain is young for a parish priest. Thin, dark-eyed, handsome, with beautiful, manicured hands, the fingernails stained with ink. He preaches sermons too clever for his congregation but always manages to make them feel elevated rather than stupid.
Your three godparents stand at the font. For a great lord's son, you would have dukes and countesses. For you, there are these:
Abbot Thierry of St. Rémy. Your father's creditor and now your spiritual guardian. He agreed to stand when your father asked -- on his knees, in the abbey chapel, with all his debts still unsettled. He holds your body with soft hands accustomed to jeweled chalices and account books in equal measure.
Sire Arnaut de Gressy. Your father's oldest companion, who fought beside him at Chauvency. He has come twelve miles on a swaybacked mare, for he sold his good horse many years ago. He grasps your left leg with a soldier's grip. His eyes do not quite rise to the level of your father's.
Dame Isabeau de Lys. Your mother's elder sister. She holds your right leg and weeps openly, because she weeps at everything, and because your mother -- still too weak to attend -- asked her forgiveness and mercy. To be your godmother were their terms of sisterly reconciliation.
Father Silvain speaks the words. Abbot Thierry lowers you into the water.
You do not cry, but you fuss ferociously. The candle flames bend toward the font as though drawn by a great breath inward, and the water seems to catch a light that has no earthly source. Then you are lifted out, gasping, screaming, and the moment passes. Father Silvain's eyes linger on the font.
Afterward, in the yard between the chapel and the manor, your father walks with Sire Gérard de Valenne, who came late and stood at the back. They speak in low voices, your father's expression gradually darkening with the progress of conversation. Agnès, watching from the doorway with you in her arms, cannot hear the words. But she sees (and shall soon report to your mother) your father close his eyes, and nod.
There remains the matter of your name.
>Hugues. Your great-great-grandfather's name. Five generations bore it. To name you this is to say: we remember what we were.
>Martin. The soldier-saint who halved his cloak for a freezing beggar. Your father's choice. To name you this is to say: what we lost matters less than what we give.
>Roland. The paladin of Roncevaux, who died with his sword in his hand and his face toward the enemy. To name you this is to say: we will not go quietly.
>Write-in
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>>6394037
>Lucien. From Latin, meaning light. For the ray of joy he has brought into his parents’ hearts, a small spark that has filled their darkest days with hope for the future. To name you this is to say: you are our light, our joy, and the promise that better days will come.
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They call you Lucien.
It is a strange name, so you hear all your life. No man of your blood has borne it. There is no dead lord attached to it, no ancestor to imitate, no tomb beneath the chapel floor you might share. Your mother says that is all to the good. Your father only smiles and says that light is no bad thing to ask of God.
Six winters pass.
You are in the bailey with a wooden stick you've carved by long exertion, defending the woodpile against an assault of greater numbers--three village boys--and winning by attrition, tricking them to fight you one at a time--when Agnès catches you by the shoulder and declares the war concluded. The other children howl victory after you as she marches you across the yard.
The grown folk are preparing for the winter, an endless task. The hayrick is smaller than it ought to be. Two hens have gone missing to fox or hunger. In the kennel, a bitch has whelped one runt too many. At the dovecote, a stable lad holds up a little sparrowhawk tangled in net, furious, striking at his glove with claws no bigger than thorns.
Nearby stands a shaggy pony the color of old mud, head down in a halter rope. It is out of the old brood mare that once foaled riding horses for your house, though this one came late and poor and likely ought to have gone to market already. It is narrow in the chest, rough in the coat, but handsome enough that even Agnès finds it sympathetic.
The kennelman wants the runt drowned before it grows attached to the pack. The stableman wants the pony sold before it eats hay worth more than its back. The cook wants the hawk's neck wrung before it steals another dove.
Your father listens to all in perfect silence. Then he beckons you nearer. Takes you on his lap.
"If we keep a beast through winter, we pay for it every day."
Your mother, on a chair beside his, occupied with sewing, asks whether six is not too young for such lessons. Your father answers that six is young for many things, but the necessities of hunger and care are indifferent to age.
So the matter is laid before you.
The pony will eat dear hay, but if it winters well you will have a mount of your own before other boys are done clinging behind their mothers' saddles. The runt will live on scraps and kitchen bones (and whatever food you sneak him), and if you train him true he will know your whistle in dark woods and among strangers, and give loyal chase to whatever quarry you deign to pursue. The sparrowhawk is the noblest creature of the three but the least forgiving. It will need meat, saintly endurance, a hood made for its small head, and hands willing to be bloodied.
Your father says you may keep one. Not as a plaything, he warns, but as your charge. You will feed it, clean after it, and answer for it when it sickens or misbehaves. The other two will be gone by tomorrow.
>Keep the shaggy pony
>Keep the kennel runt
>Keep the little sparrowhawk
>Write-in
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>>6396038
>Keep the shaggy pony
Six is a good age to learn riding and tending to a horse. We don't need a hawk for now (would be cool though and probably make us tougher too) and the dog would lessen our need to socialize and to compete with others our age I fear.
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>>6396038
>Keep the shaggy pony
This, but see if you can't find a different home for the runt.
We can't keep it, but that doesn't mean someone else might not want it.
If no one wants it, then there's nothing we can do, but drowning is a horrible way to go for the poor thing.
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They say a beast knows whether the hand upon it is fickle.
All winter you come to the pony before breakfast. You carry hay, break ice in the trough, rub dead hair from his coat, and pick his hooves while he snorts steam in your face. At first he mouths your sleeve, treads on your foot, jerks from the halter, and once sends you backward into the mud to the delight of the half dozen boys at the fence.
You return the next morning, and the next. Watching you stand quiet through one of the pony's tempers, your father says, almost to himself, "God keep that in you."
By spring, the horse's rough coat shines sleek. His eyes are bright. In the sun he is handsome enough that even the stableman, who wanted him sold, calls him a little gentleman. He comes to your whistle and lowers his head for your hand. He carries you about the yard while boys stare and ask, too casually, whether you mean to let anyone else ride him.
You do not.
On the day you complete your seventh year, Agnès scours you back to infancy. The cook makes honey cakes. Father Silvain blesses you after chapel. Your mother fastens a new belt about your tunic with her own hands. Her gown has been let out again since winter, the third time in your memory (though the last two are never spoken of) and when you fling your arms round her she laughs, then holds you a moment longer than usual before sending you to your father.
He waits in the hall with Sire Arnaut and Father Silvain.
Your father looks from the belt to your face and then past you, at the wooden horse and blunted stick abandoned near the hearth.
"Seven is no great age," he says.
Sire Arnaut snorts. Father Silvain folds his hands and closes his eyes.
From that morning, you are told, your days cannot belong wholly to play.
You must learn what a lord's son must know before he leaves his father's house: how to sit a horse, how to speak and listen, how to reckon, how to pray, how to look at men and remember what they need, what they owe, and what they hide.
"But not all at once," says your father, too quickly.
"No," says Sire Arnaut, resting his hand on your shoulder. "Not all at once."
So each stakes a claim upon your days.
Your father would have you ride the bounds with him and the reeve, learning every field, tenant, debt, and quarrel still owing your house.
Sire Arnaut would have you with him in yard and lane, to make your seat sure, your hands bold, and your body obedient before it grows any longer.
Father Silvain would have you at chapel and table with wax tablets and psalter, so that letters, numbers, and the fear of God may enter your head while it is still pilant enough to receive them.
None are escapable, but one holds your attention more than the others.
>Riding the bounds with your father
>Training with Sire Arnaut
>Education with Father Silvain
>Write-in
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QM note:
We're now at the start of Lucien's pagehood. Seven is the shift from being mostly under his mother's care to being taken in hand by the household. He is not being sent away yet; that comes in his early teens, when he goes to another lord as a squire.
From here on there are four visible stats:
Sword -- arms, riding, nerve
Tongue -- manners, persuasion, reading people
Pen -- letters, sums, accounts, law
Cross -- faith, prayer, and the uncanny
These have ranks:
Sword: Unblooded -> Trained -> Tested -> Hardened -> Redoubtable -> Peerless
Tongue: Unmannered -> Mannered -> Persuasive -> Courtly -> Commanding -> Silvered
Pen: Unschooled -> Lettered -> Clerkly -> Learned -> Shrewd -> Masterly
Cross: Uncatechized -> Devout -> Fervent -> Revered -> Consecrated -> Hallowed
Higher ranks unlock options that would otherwise stay hidden. Early ranks come fairly quickly in boyhood and squirehood. Later ranks are much slower and usually need major life events.
Stats are separate from nature. Lucien's Patient nature can open or close options regardless of rank. Two more natures will reveal themselves in time.
This vote is about focus. He has limited time and attention, so whichever training you pick now will shape his early build:
Father: Tongue + Pen
Arnaut: Sword
Silvain: Pen + Cross
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>>6396476
>Riding the bounds with your father
A quick wit, a perceptive mind and a sound reasoning will help learning everything else or at the least help motivate others to make up for our weaknesses, I hope. It's also respectful towards our father and seems to come naturally after our dear mother's care.
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At first light Sire Arnaut has you in the yard, mounting from either side, falling without tears, and learning how heavy a blunted sword grows after three hundred strokes. After chapel Father Silvain sets wax tablets before you. You scratch letters, smooth them out, count by pebbles on a board, and begin again when the sums match his own.
When the morning reports are done, your father takes you riding with the reeve.
There you learn that a poor lord's wealth is seldom silver. It is oats in sacks, hens in wicker, cheeses on boards, hay under thatch, labor owed at harvest, and knowing which tenant still has a sound plow-ox. The reeve counts everything aloud. Three days with cart and beast from one yard. Two capons from another. So many sheaves from the demesne. What little money comes in from tolls and mill-fees already has a name on it before it reaches your father's purse: salt, iron, wax, a farrier, a mason, St. Rémy.
At the stream beyond Vaux he points across to fields that once fed your house and says only, "Those go to the monks till the term is done."
You learn to keep these reckonings in your head while your pony crops roadside grass and grown men talk in circles about ditches, pigs, and broken hedges. If a peasant rambles, your father does not stop him. In the midst of his warm silence, the truth generally appears.
One noon you ride to the alder copse called Lesseux, where the boundary has been quarreled over since before you were born. The old stone is down again. On your side, village women gather fallen branches for fuel. On Gérard's side, three woodcutters and a mounted forester are taking green ash and young oak and loading them on a cart better made than any your house owns.
The forester touches his cap to your father only after finishing his order to the men.
"My lord Gérard holds to the streambank now," he says.
The reeve swears under his breath. Last winter it was deadfall. The winter before, a strip of brush. Now it is timber fit for beams, and your own hall roof still leaks.
That evening three counsels are laid before your father.
The reeve asks to send your villagers at dawn to gather every fallen stick up to the old stone, with the oldest men of both hamlets to witness it. Yield nothing, but spill no blood.
Sire Arnaut says he will ride out this instant with household men, overturn Gérard's cart, and drive the cutters off before theft turns into custom.
Father Silvain says he can write to Gérard and to Abbot Thierry, naming the old boundary and demanding a formal viewing of the bounds after harvest.
Your father hears them all, head heavy in his hand.
The answer seems obvious enough to you.
>You agree with the reeve.
>You agree with Sire Arnaut
>You agree with Father Silvain
>You have your own solution [Write-in]
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>>6396673
>You agree with the reeve
Long-term, I think it being established in the minds of the peasantry that Gerard is a thief is valuable.
Also, I don't think.we should fight the neighbor lord who is wealthier and more powerful than us
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>>6396673
>You agree with the reeve.
>You also partially agree with Father Silvain and partially agree with Sire Arnault: Father Silvain should record Sire Gérard de Valennes behavior, for he is the one who disregards the treaties and arrangements. Kicking a man that's already down is not very becoming of a good Christian and disrespecting lawful arrangements erodes the trust others will grant to his words. Meanwhile Sire Arnault should ride out there and inform Gérards men that these lands are our fathers, they should cease their actions and them proceeding will be nothing short of theft for all we know of love, law and god. There should be no demand from Father Silvain nor violent action from Sire Arnault though.
I strongly agree with >>6396842 that we should not indulge in violent action against our fathers captor (yet). The long game seems much more appropriate to our position within the powers for now.
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Your father notices your face. "You look full of thought," he says. "Speak, Lucien."
You stand, grasping your trembling hand steady. "I think the reeve is right."
Your father's brow tightens. "And when Gérard says we came thieving with carts before dawn, what answer have you then?"
Heat rises in your face, but the question does not empty your head. "That we took no green wood. That we crossed no farther than the old mark. That his men were free to count every branch. If there is peace, all see it. If there is blood, all see who first broke it. And it is recorded."
"Well answered," your father says, smiling. He turns to the reeve. "At dawn."
Joy rushes through you. Your first counsel! And it was heeded!
At first light the carts roll for Lesseux. The reeve brings six villagers and the oldest men he can fetch from both hamlets. Arnaut rides beside them with a spear across his saddle (which he spent the night personally sharpening). The mounted forester waits with the same woodcutters and a cart half-loaded with green ash.
Your father reins up by the fallen boundary stone. "My people take deadfall to the old mark. No green timber. Let all here witness it."
The forester formally protests. The reeve formally answers. Under the old men's eyes, your villagers begin gathering branches.
At first Gérard's men only mutter. Then one of the younger cutters laughs. "Just like the lame lord to come carting sticks. Dead wood suits him."
"Hold your tongue," snaps the head forester.
The man grins and keeps on. "Stone went from him, green wood goes from him--"
"Shut up, you lout."
He presses on. "And if his lady loses another--"
The head forester wheels and strikes him across the mouth hard enough to throw him against the cart. "I said shut up."
Arnaut's horse is already moving. Your father says only, "Arnaut."
That one word checks him.
No blow passes. Your carts go home with every fallen branch up to the old stone. Gérard's men keep the green timber already cut. It is no victory, but it is not surrender.
On the ride back your father lets the others drift ahead.
"You gave good counsel, son," he says.
You look down. "You only wished to see whether I understood what was already in your mind."
"No," he says. "I would have gone with Arnaut."
You look up with surprise.
He keeps his eyes on the track. "I am ashamed that my body fails me, and ashamed too that vanity and temper yet remain. I thank God they did not rule me today. And I am proud they do not rule you."
At the yard his bad leg catches on the dismount, and for an instant he leans on your shoulder before finding his cane.
"You have the makings," he says quietly, "of a far greater man and lord than I ever was."
>Say you're only following his example, only wishing to become the man he is now.
>Promise that when you are grown, no man will dare speak to him so again.
>Claim you know of no greater lord or man, no one more beloved of his subjects or his household
>Write-in
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>>6397063
Point taken, perhaps anon was right. We'll see, the future will tell.
>Say that whatever we become grows from the foundation our ancestors built, and he maintained (if not in land and lucre, then in tradition and character).
Don't limit our horizons to what our father has achieved, he evidently doesn't want that given his abilities did not avail him on the battlefield, nor did he overcome his limitations and succeed in reversing our family's fortunes. But don't degrade him, he's raising us well.
I wouldn't make promises we can't keep or claims from ignorance, but it would make sense for a child to do so. Still, none of the prompts strike me, we are patient not prideful (probably).
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>>6397063
>Promise that when you are grown, no man will dare speak to him so again.
Aspiration is good for a lad and it will take many years.
>>6397105
Support. I wouldnt frame it as prideful. We took time to train up our pony in form as well as in manner. Being able to personally duel someone down or outspeak them is a matter of years spent honing those arts. Ideally one good enough to do the job.
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>>6397063
>Claim you know of no greater lord or man, no one more beloved of his subjects or his household
We didn't know him when he was young, we only know him now. And this version of him is ruled by temperence, kindness, charity. It is the truth, he is beloved
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"Then when I am grown," you blurt, "no man will dare speak to you so again."
Your father studies you a moment, then sighs and with great effort, kneels and takes your shoulders in his hands. "Hot vows are cheap," he says. "Men make themselves feared or respected over many years, and may lose it in a breath. If you mean to keep that promise, Lucien--and I do not say I am worthy of it--keep it with your life. Keep it here." He taps your chest. "Not here." He taps his ear.
The months that follow are full. You redouble efforts in everything and your masters answer in turn. Arnaut seems intent on shaping you as one does a sword, sparing no blows now that you refuse to whimper or cry. Father Silvain fills your head with feats of the saints in between the more tedious lectues. Your father and the reeve teach you how a house is saved (or lost) by inches.
By the time your eighth birthday nears, you have counted the feast a dozen times. Honey cakes, if the bees have not failed. A blessing after chapel. The lamb fattening in its pen. Agnès says you monitor it like a slavering wolf. You wonder whether the new baby will make the day half theirs. It seems unfair. Then you feel ashamed. Twice before the house hoped and was disappointed, it's ill omen to think such thoughts.
The rain comes in that night, hard enough to drum through the roof. The midwife is fetched, grumbling, for the last two times it was false alarum. You stay in the hall with your father while your mother cries out beyond the chamber door.
Near midnight Father Silvain arrives soaked. You are sent away under the pretense of fetching some cider from the kitchen, but you hide by the door a moment.
"If it is a girl," Father Silvain says, "she ought to have something put by from the first."
"With what?" your father snaps. "A son may win his bread with service. A daughter must be given one safe road or another."
"St. Rémy is no bad refuge," says Father Silvain.
Your father stares into the fire. "No. If God gives us means, she shall have her portion. If not, the cloister is no cruel fate. Better prayer and peace than a hard house under a hard man."
Toward dawn the cries abruptly stop, followed by a new mewling scream. Your father pales. The door opens.
"A daughter," says the midwife.
Inside, the room smells of blood, wet wool, and rosemary. Your mother is white with sweat and smiling faintly. Agnès lays the child in your arms first. Your sister is red, furious, and louder than seems possible for so little a thing. She thrashes once, looks up at you with wandering eyes, and goes still.
Her hand closes around your finger.
"Look," Agnès whispers. "She knows her brother already."
By the cradle stands a little walnut chest, empty but for a scrap of linen. The beginnings of your sister's means.
>[Pen] Put the silver buckle of your belt into the chest.
>[Sword] Vow privately to become someone who can protect her.
>[Cross] Give your birthday feast to St. Rémy in her name.
>Write-in
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