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The Doom of the Griffiths (1858) by Elizabeth Gaskell, chapter 1

I have always been much interested by the traditions which are scattered up and down North Wales relating to Owen Glendower (Owain Glendwr is the national spelling of the name), and I fully enter into the feeling which makes the Welsh peasant still look upon him as the hero of his country. There was great joy among many of the inhabitants of the principality, when the subject of the Welsh prize poem at Oxford, some fifteen or sixteen years ago, was announced to be 'Owain Glendwr.' It was the most proudly national subject that had been given for years.

Perhaps some may not be aware that this redoubted chieftain is, even in the present days of enlightenment, as famous among his illiterate countrymen for his magical powers as for his patriotism. He says himself--or Shakespeare says it for him, which is much the same thing:

'At my nativity The front of heaven was full of fiery shapes Of burning cressets . . . . . . I can call spirits from the vasty deep.'

And few among the lower orders in the principality would think of asking Hotspur's irreverent question in reply.

Among other traditions preserved relative to this part of the Welsh hero's character, is the old family prophecy which gives title to this tale. When Sir David Gam, 'as black a traitor as if he had been born in Bluith', sought to murder Owen at Machynlleth, there was one with him whose name Glendwr little dreamed of having associated with his enemies. Rhys ap Gryfydd, his 'old familiar friend,' his relation, his more than brother, had consented unto his blood. Sir David Gam might be forgiven, but one whom he had loved, and who had betrayed him, could never be forgiven. Glendwr was too deeply read in the human heart to kill him. No, he let him live on, the loathing and scorn of his compatriots, and the victim of bitter remorse. The mark of Cain was upon him.

But before he went forth--while he yet stood a prisoner, cowering beneath his conscience before Owain Glendwr--that chieftain passed a doom upon him, and his race:

'I doom thee to live, because I know thou wilt pray for death. Thou shalt live on beyond the natural term of the life of man, the scorn of all good men. The very children shall point to thee with hissing tongue, and say, "There goes one who would have shed a brother's blood!" For I loved thee more than a brother, O Rhys ap Gryfydd! Thou shalt live on to see all of thy house, except the weakling in arms, perish by the sword. Thy race shall be accursed. Each generation shall see their lands melt away like snow; yea, their wealth shall vanish, though they may labour night and day to heap up gold. And when nine generations have passed from the face of the earth, thy blood shall no longer flow in the veins of any human being. In those days the last male of thy race shall avenge me. The son shall slay the father.'

Such was the traditionary account of Owain Glendwr's speech to his once-trusted friend. And it was declared that the doom had been fulfilled in all things; that, live in as miserly a manner as they would, the Griffiths never were wealthy and prosperous--indeed, that their worldly stock diminished without any visible cause.

But the lapse of many years had almost deadened the wonder-inspiring power of the whole curse. It was only brought forth from the hoards of Memory when some untoward event happened to the Griffiths family; and in the eighth generation the faith in the prophecy was nearly destroyed, by the marriage of the Griffiths of that day to a Miss Owen, who, unexpectedly, by the death of a brother, became an heiress--to no considerable amount, to be sure, but enough to make the prophecy appear reversed. The heiress and her husband removed from his small patrimonial estate in Merionethshire, to her heritage in Caernarvonshire, and for a time the prophecy lay dormant.

If you go from Tremadoc to Criccaeth, you pass by the parochial church of Ynysynhanarn, situated in a boggy valley running from the mountains, which shoulder up to the Rivals, down to Cardigan Bay. This tract of land has every appearance of having been redeemed at no distant period of time from the sea, and has all the desolate rankness often attendant upon such marshes. But the valley beyond, similar in character, had yet more of gloom at the time of which I write. In the higher part there were large plantations of firs, set too closely to attain any size, and remaining stunted in height and scrubby in appearance. Indeed, many of the smaller and more weakly had died, and the bark had fallen down on the brown soil neglected and unnoticed. These trees had a ghastly appearance, with their white trunks, seen by the dim light which struggled through the thick boughs above. Nearer to the sea, the valley assumed a more open, though hardly a more cheerful character; it looked dark and was overhung by sea-fog through the greater part of the year; and even a farmhouse, which usually imparts something of cheerfulness to a landscape, failed to do so here. This valley formed the greater part of the estate to which Owen Griffiths became entitled by right of his wife. In the higher part of the valley was situated the family mansion, or rather dwelling-house; for 'mansion' is too grand a word to apply to the clumsy, but substantially-built Bodowen. It was square and heavy-looking, with just that much pretension to ornament necessary to distinguish it from the mere farmhouse.

In this dwelling Mrs. Owen Griffiths bore her husband two sons--Llewellyn, the future Squire, and Robert, who was early destined for the Church. The only difference in their situation, up to the time when Robert was entered at Jesus College, was that the elder was invariably indulged by all around him, while Robert was thwarted and indulged by turns; that Llewellyn never learned anything from the poor Welsh parson, who was nominally his private tutor; while occasionally Squire Griffiths made a great point of enforcing Robert's diligence, telling him that, as he had his bread to earn, he must pay attention to his learning. There is no knowing how far the very irregular education he had received would have carried Robert through his college examinations; but, luckily for him in this respect, before such a trial of his learning came round, he heard of the death of his elder brother, after a short illness, brought on by a hard drinking-bout. Of course, Robert was summoned home; and it seemed quite as much of course, now that there was no necessity for him to 'earn his bread by his learning,' that he should not return to Oxford. So the half-educated, but not unintelligent, young man continued at home, during the short remainder of his parents' lifetime.

His was not an uncommon character. In general he was mild, indolent, and easily managed; but once thoroughly roused, his passions were vehement and fearful. He seemed, indeed, almost afraid of himself, and in common hardly dared to give way to justifiable anger--so much did he dread losing his self-control. Had he been judiciously educated, he would, probably, have distinguished himself in those branches of literature which call for taste and imagination, rather than for any exertion of reflection or judgment. As it was, his literary taste showed itself in making collections of Cambrian antiquities of every description, till his stock of Welsh MSS. would have excited the envy of Dr. Pugh himself, had he been alive at the time of which I write.

There is one characteristic of Robert Griffiths which I have omitted to note, and which was peculiar among his class. He was no hard drinker; whether it was that his head was easily affected, or that his partially-refined taste led him to dislike intoxication and its attendant circumstances, I cannot say; but at five-and-twenty Robert Griffiths was habitually sober--a thing so rare in Llyn, that he was almost shunned as a churlish, unsociable being, and passed much of his time in solitude.

About this time, he had to appear in some case that was tried at the Caernarvon assizes and, while there, was a guest at the house of his agent, a shrewd, sensible Welsh attorney, with one daughter, who had charms enough to captivate Robert Griffiths. Though he remained only a few days at her father's house, they were sufficient to decide his affections, and short was the period allowed to elapse before he brought home a mistress to Bodowen. The new Mrs. Griffiths was a gentle, yielding person, full of love toward her husband, of whom, nevertheless, she stood something in awe, partly arising from the difference in their ages, partly from his devoting much time to studies of which she could understand nothing.

She soon made him the father of a blooming little daughter, called Augharad after her mother. Then there came several uneventful years in the household of Bodowen: and, when the old women had one and all declared that the cradle would not rock again, Mrs. Griffiths bore the son and heir. His birth was soon followed by his mother's death: she had been ailing and low-spirited during her pregnancy, and she seemed to lack the buoyancy of body and mind requisite to bring her round after her time of trial. Her husband, who loved her all the more from having few other claims on his affections, was deeply grieved by her early death, and his only comforter was the sweet little boy whom she had left behind. That part of the squire's character, which was so tender, and almost feminine, seemed called forth by the helpless situation of the little infant, who stretched out his arms to his father with the same earnest cooing that happier children make use of to their mother alone. Augharad was almost neglected, while the little Owen was king of the house; still, next to his father, none tended him so lovingly as his sister. She was so accustomed to give way to him that it was no longer a hardship. By night and by day Owen was the constant companion of his father, and increasing years seemed only to confirm the custom. It was an unnatural life for the child, seeing no bright little faces peering into his own (for Augharad was, as I said before, five or six years older, and her face, poor motherless girl! was often anything but bright), hearing no din of clear ringing voices, but day after day sharing the otherwise solitary hours of his father, whether in the dim room surrounded by wizard-like antiquities, or pattering his little feet to keep up with his 'tada' in his mountain rambles or shooting excursions. When the pair came to some little foaming brook, where the stepping-stones were far and wide, the father carried his little boy across with the tenderest care; when the lad was weary, they rested, he cradled in his father's arms, or the Squire would lift him up and carry him to his home again. The boy was indulged (for his father felt flattered by the desire) in his wish of sharing his meals and keeping the same hours. All this indulgence did not render Owen unamiable, but it made him wilful, and not a happy child. He had a thoughtful look, not common to the face of a young boy. He knew no games, no merry sports; his information was of an imaginative and speculative character. His father delighted to interest him in his own studies, without considering how far they were healthy for so young a mind.

Of course Squire Griffiths was not unaware of the prophecy which was to be fulfilled in his generation. He would occasionally refer to it when among his friends, with sceptical levity; but in truth it lay nearer to his heart than he chose to acknowledge. His strong imagination rendered him peculiarly impressionable on such subjects; while his judgment, seldom exercised or fortified by severe thought, could not prevent his continually recurring to it. He used to gaze on the half-sad countenance of the child, who sat looking up into his face with his large dark eyes, so fondly yet so inquiringly, till the old legend swelled around his heart, and became too painful for him not to require sympathy. Besides, the overpowering love he bore to the child seemed to demand fuller vent than tender words; it made him like, yet dread, to upbraid its object for the fearful contrast foretold. Still Squire Griffiths told the legend, in a half-jesting manner, to his little son, when they were roaming over the wild heaths in the autumn days, 'the saddest of the year,' or while they sat in the oak-wainscoted room, surrounded by mysterious relics that gleamed strangely forth by the flickering fire-light. The legend was wrought into the boy's mind, and he would crave, yet tremble, to hear it told over and over again, while the words were intermingled with caresses and questions as to his love. Occasionally his loving words and actions were cut short by his father's light yet bitter speech 'Get thee away, my lad; thou knowest not what is to come of all this love.'

When Augharad was seventeen, and Owen eleven or twelve, the rector of the parish in which Bodowen was situated endeavoured to prevail on Squire Griffiths to send the boy to school. Now, this rector had many tastes in common with his parishioner, and was his only intimate; and, by repeated arguments, he succeeded in convincing the Squire that the unnatural life Owen was leading was in every way injurious. Unwillingly was the father brought to part from his son; but he did at length send him to the Grammar School at Bangor, then under the management of an excellent classic. Here Owen showed that he had more talents than the rector had given him credit for, when he affirmed that the lad had been completely stupefied by the life he led at Bodowen. He bade fair to do credit to the school in the peculiar branch of learning for which it was famous. But he was not popular among his schoolfellows. He was wayward, though, to a certain degree, generous and unselfish; he was reserved but gentle, except when the tremendous bursts of passion (similar in character to those of his father) forced their way.

On his return from school one Christmas-time, when he had been a year or so at Bangor, he was stunned by hearing that the undervalued Augharad was about to be married to a gentleman of South Wales, residing near Aberystwith. Boys seldom appreciate their sisters; but Owen thought of the many slights with which he had requited the patient Augharad, and he gave way to bitter regrets, which, with a selfish want of control over his words, he kept expressing to his father, until the Squire was thoroughly hurt and chagrined at the repeated exclamations of 'What shall we do when Augharad is gone?' 'How dull we shall be when Augharad is married!' Owen's holidays were prolonged a few weeks, in order that he might be present at the wedding; and when all the festivities were over, and the bride and bridegroom had left Bodowen, the boy and his father really felt how much they missed the quiet, loving Augharad. She had performed so many thoughtful, noiseless little offices, on which their daily comfort depended; and, now she was gone, the household seemed to miss the spirit that peacefully kept it in order; the servants roamed about in search of commands and directions; the rooms had no longer the unobtrusive ordering of taste to make them cheerful; the very fires burned dim, and were always sinking down into dull heaps of grey ashes. Altogether Owen did not regret his return to Bangor, and this also the mortified parent observed. Squire Griffiths was a selfish parent.

Letters in those days were a rare occurrence. Owen usually received one during his half-yearly absences from home, and occasionally his father paid him a visit. This half-year the boy had no visit, nor even a letter, till very near the time of his leaving school, and then he was astounded by the intelligence that his father was married again.

Then came one of his paroxysms of rage; the more disastrous in its effects upon his character because it could find no vent in action. Independently of slight to the memory of his first wife, which children are so apt to fancy such an action implies, Owen had hitherto considered himself (and with justice) the first object of his father's life. They had been so much to each other; and now a shapeless, but too real, something had come between him and his father for ever. He felt as if his permission should have been asked, as if he should have been consulted. Certainly he ought to have been told of the intended event. So the Squire felt, and hence his constrained letter, which had so much increased the bitterness of Owen's feelings.

With all this anger, when Owen saw his stepmother, he thought he had never seen so beautiful a woman for her age; for she was no longer in the bloom of youth, being a widow when his father married her. Her manners, to the Welsh lad, who had seen little of female grace among the families of the few antiquarians with whom his father visited, were so fascinating that he watched her with a sort of breathless admiration. Her measured grace, her faultless movements, her tones of voice, sweet, till the ear was sated with their sweetness, made Owen less angry at his father's marriage. Yet he felt, more than ever, that the cloud was between him and his father; that the hasty letter he had sent in answer to the announcement of his wedding was not forgotten, although no allusion was ever made to it. He was no longer his father's confidant--hardly ever his father's companion; for the newly-married wife was all in all to the Squire, and his son felt himself almost a cipher, where he had so long been everything. The lady herself had ever the softest consideration for her stepson; almost too obtrusive was the attention paid to his wishes; but still he fancied that the heart had no part in the winning advances. There was a watchful glance of the eye that Owen once or twice caught when she had imagined herself unobserved, and many other nameless little circumstances, that gave him a strong feeling of want of sincerity in his stepmother. Mrs. Owen brought with her into the family her little child by her first husband, a boy nearly three years old. He was one of those selfish, observant, mocking children, over whose feelings you seem to have no control; agile and mischievous, his little practical jokes, at first performed in ignorance of the pain he gave, but afterward proceeding to a malicious pleasure in suffering, really seemed to afford some ground to the superstitious notion of some of the common people that he was a fairy changeling.

Years passed on; and as Owen grew older he became more observant. He saw, even in his occasional visits at home (for from school he had passed on to college), that a great change had taken place in the outward manifestations of his father's character; and, by degrees, Owen traced this change to the influence of his stepmother; so slight, so imperceptible to the common observer, yet so resistless in its effects. Squire Griffiths caught up his wife's humbly advanced opinions, and, unawares to himself, adopted them as his own, defying all argument and opposition. It was the same with her wishes; they met their fulfilment, from the extreme and delicate art with which she insinuated them into her husband's mind as his own. She sacrificed the show of authority for the power. At last, when Owen perceived some oppressive act in his father's conduct towards his dependants, or some unaccountable thwarting of his own wishes, he fancied he saw his stepmother's secret influence thus displayed, however much she might regret the injustice of his father's actions in her conversations with him when they were alone. His father was fast losing his temperate habits, and frequent intoxication soon took its usual effect upon the temper. Yet even here was the spell of his wife upon him. Before her he placed a restraint upon his passion, yet she was perfectly aware of his irritable disposition, and directed it hither and thither with the same apparent ignorance of the tendency of her words.

Meanwhile Owen's situation became peculiarly mortifying to a youth whose early remembrances afforded such a contrast to his present state. As a child, he had been elevated to the consequence of a man before his years gave any mental check to the selfishness which such conduct was likely to engender; he could remember when his will was law to the servants and dependants, and his sympathy necessary to his father; now he was as a cipher in his father's house; and the Squire, estranged in the first instance by a feeling of the injury he had done his son in not sooner acquainting him with his purposed marriage, seemed rather to avoid than to seek him as a companion, and too frequently showed the most utter indifference to the feelings and wishes which a young man of a high and independent spirit might be supposed to indulge.

Perhaps Owen was not fully aware of the force of all these circumstances; for an actor in a family drama is seldom unimpassioned enough to be perfectly observant. But he became moody and soured; brooding over his unloved existence, and craving with a human heart after sympathy.

This feeling took more full possession of his mind when he had left college, and returned home to lead an idle and purposeless life. As the heir, there was no worldly necessity for exertion: his father was too much of a Welsh squire to dream of the moral necessity; and he himself had not sufficient strength of mind to decide at once upon abandoning a place and mode of life which abounded in daily mortifications. Yet to this course his judgment was slowly tending, when some circumstances occurred to detain him at Bodowen.

It was not to be expected that harmony would long be preserved, even in appearance, between an unguarded and soured young man, such as Owen, and his wary stepmother, when he had once left college, and come, not as a visitor, but as the heir, to his father's house. Some cause of difference occurred, where the woman subdued her hidden anger sufficiently to become convinced that Owen was not entirely the dupe she had believed him to be. Henceforward there was no peace between them. Not in vulgar altercations did this show itself, but in moody reserve on Owen's part, and in undisguised and contemptuous pursuance of her own plans by his stepmother. Bodowen was no longer a place where, if Owen was not loved or attended to, he could at least find peace and care for himself: he was thwarted at every step, and in every wish, by his father's desire, apparently, while the wife sat by with a smile of triumph on her beautiful lips.

So Owen went forth at the early day-dawn, sometimes roaming about on the shore or the upland, shooting or fishing, as the season might be, but oftener 'stretched in indolent repose' on the short, sweet grass, indulging in gloomy and morbid reveries. He would fancy that this mortified state of existence was a dream, a horrible dream, from which he should awake and find himself again the sole object and darling of his father. And then he would start up and strive to shake off the incubus. There was the molten sunset of his childish memory; the gorgeous crimson piles of glory in the west, fading away into the cold calm light of the rising moon, while here and there a cloud floated across the western heaven, like a seraph's wing, in its flaming beauty; the earth was the same as in his childhood's days, full of gentle evening sounds, and the harmonies of twilight--the breeze came sweeping low over the heather and bluebells by his side, and the turf was sending up its evening incense of perfume. But life, and heart, and hope were changed for ever since those bygone days!

Or he would seat himself in a favourite niche of the rocks on Moel Gest, hidden by the stunted growth of the whitty, or mountain-ash, from general observation, with a rich-tinted cushion of stone-crop for his feet, and a straight precipice of rock rising just above. Here would he sit for hours, gazing idly at the bay below with its background of purple hills, and the little fishing-sail on its bosom, showing white in the sunbeam, and gliding on in such harmony with the quiet beauty of the glassy sea; or he would pull out an old school-volume, his companion for years, and in morbid accordance with the dark legend that still lurked in the recesses of his mind--a shape of gloom in those innermost haunts awaiting its time to come forth in distinct outline--would he turn to the old Greek dramas which treat of a family foredoomed by an avenging Fate. The worn page opened of itself at the play of the Oedipus Tyrannus, and Owen dwelt with the craving disease upon the prophecy so nearly resembling that which concerned himself. With his consciousness of neglect, there was a sort of self-flattery in the consequence which the legend gave him. He almost wondered how they durst, with slights and insults, thus provoke the Avenger.

The days drifted onward. Often he would vehemently pursue some sylvan sport, till thought and feeling were lost in the violence of bodily exertion. Occasionally his evenings were spent at a small public-house, such as stood by the unfrequented wayside, where the welcome--hearty, though bought--seemed so strongly to contrast with the gloomy negligence of home--unsympathising home.

One evening (Owen might be four or five-and-twenty), wearied with a day's shooting on the Clenneny Moors, he passed by the open door of 'The Goat' at Penmorfa. The light and the cheeriness within tempted him, poor self-exhausted man! as it has done many a one more wretched in worldly circumstances, to step in, and take his evening meal where at least his presence was of some consequence. It was a busy day in that little hostel. A flock of sheep, amounting to some hundreds, had arrived at Penmorfa, on their road to England, and thronged the space before the house. Inside was the shrewd, kind-hearted hostess, bustling to and fro, with merry greetings for every tired drover who was to pass the night in her house, while the sheep were penned in a field close by. Ever and anon, she kept attending to the second crowd of guests, who were celebrating a rural wedding in her house. It was busy work to Martha Thomas, yet her smile never flagged; and when Owen Griffiths had finished his evening meal she was there, ready with a hope that it had done him good, and was to his mind, and a word of intelligence that the wedding-folk were about to dance in the kitchen, and the harper was the famous Edward of Corwen.

Owen, partly from good-natured compliance with his hostess's implied wish, and partly from curiosity, lounged to the passage which led to the kitchen--not the every-day working, cooking kitchen, which was behind, but a goodsized room, where the mistress sat when her work was done, and the country people were commonly entertained at such merry-makings as the present. The lintels of the door formed a frame for the animated picture which Owen saw within, as he leaned against the wall in the dark passage. The red light of the fire, with every now and then a falling piece of turf sending forth a fresh blaze, shone full upon four young men who were dancing a measure something like a Scotch reel, keeping admirable time in their rapid movements to the capital tune the harper was playing. They had their hats on when Owen first took his stand, but as they grew more and more animated they flung them away, and presently their shoes were kicked off with like disregard to the spot where they might happen to alight. Shouts of applause followed any remarkable exertion of agility, in which each seemed to try to excel his companions. At length, wearied and exhausted, they sat down, and the harper gradually changed to one of those wild, inspiring national airs for which he was so famous. The thronged audience sat earnest and breathless, and you might have heard a pin drop, except when some maiden passed hurriedly, with flaring candle and busy look, through to the real kitchen beyond. When he had finished his beautiful theme of The March of the Men of Harlech, he changed the measure again to Tri chant o' bunnan (Three hundred pounds) and immediately a most unmusical-looking man began chanting 'Pennillion,' or a sort of recitative stanzas, which were soon taken up by another; and this amusement lasted so long that Owen grew weary, and was thinking of retreating from his post by the door, when some little bustle was occasioned, on the opposite side of the room, by the entrance of a middle-aged man, and a young girl, apparently his daughter. The man advanced to the bench occupied by the seniors of the party, who welcomed him with the usual pretty Welsh greeting, 'Pa sut mae dy galon?' ('How is thy heart?') and drinking his health passed on to him the cup of excellent cwrw. The girl, evidently a village belle, was as warmly greeted by the young men, while the girls eyed her rather askance with a half-jealous look, which Owen set down to the score of her extreme prettiness. Like most Welsh women, she was of middle size as to height, but beautifully made, with the most perfect yet delicate roundness in every limb. Her little mobcap was carefully adjusted to a face which was excessively pretty, though it never could be called handsome. It also was round, with the slightest tendency to the oval shape, richly coloured, though somewhat olive in complexion, with dimples in cheek and chin, and the most scarlet lips Owen had ever seen, that were too short to meet over the small pearly teeth. The nose was the most defective feature; but the eyes were splendid. They were so long, so lustrous, yet at times so very soft under their thick fringe of eyelash! The nut-brown hair was carefully braided beneath the border of delicate lace: it was evident the little village beauty knew how to make the most of all her attractions, for the gay colours which were displayed in her neckerchief were in complete harmony with the complexion.

Owen was much attracted, while yet he was amused, by the evident coquetry the girl displayed, collecting around her a whole bevy of young fellows, for each of whom she seemed to have some gay speech, some attractive look or action. In a few minutes young Griffiths of Bodowen was at her side, brought thither by a variety of idle motives, and as her undivided attention was given to the Welsh heir, her admirers, one by one, dropped off, to seat themselves by some less fascinating but more attentive fair one. The more Owen conversed with the girl, the more he was taken; she had more wit and talent than he had fancied possible; a self-abandon and thoughtfulness, to boot, that seemed full of charms; and then her voice was so clear and sweet, and her actions so full of grace, that Owen was fascinated before he was well aware, and kept looking into her bright, blushing face, till her uplifted flashing eye fell beneath his earnest gaze.

While it thus happened that they were silent--she from confusion at the unexpected warmth of his admiration, he from an unconsciousness of anything but the beautiful changes in her flexile countenance--the man whom Owen took for her father came up and addressed some observation to his daughter, from whence he glided into some commonplace though respectful remark to Owen; and at length, engaging him in some slight, local conversation, he led the way to the account of a spot on the peninsula of Penthryn, where teal abounded, and concluded with begging Owen to allow him to show him the exact place, saying that whenever the young Squire felt so inclined, if he would honour him by a call at his house, he would take him across in his boat. While Owen listened, his attention was not so much absorbed as to be unaware that the little beauty at his side was refusing one or two who endeavoured to draw her from her place by invitations to dance. Flattered by his own construction of her refusals, he again directed all his attention to her, till she was called away by her father, who was leaving the scene of festivity. Before he left he reminded Owen of his promise, and added:

'Perhaps, sir, you do not know me. My name is Ellis Pritchard, and I live at Ty Glas, on this side of Mod Gest; any one can point it out to you.'

When the father and daughter had left, Owen slowly prepared for his ride home; but, encountering the hostess, he could not resist asking a few questions relative to Ellis Pritchard and his pretty daughter. She answered shortly but respectfully, and then said, rather hesitatingly:

'Master Griffiths, you know the triad, Tri pheth tebyg y naill i'r llall, ysgnbwr heb yd, mail deg heb ddiawd, a merch deg heb ei geirda' (Three things are alike: a fine barn without corn, a fine cup without drink, a fine woman without her reputation).' She hastily quitted him, and Owen rode slowly to his unhappy home.

Ellis Pritchard, half farmer and half fisherman, was shrewd, and keen, and worldly; yet he was good-natured, and sufficiently generous to have become rather a popular man among his equals. He had been struck with the young Squire's attention to his pretty daughter, and was not insensible to the advantages to be derived from it. Nest would not be the first peasant-girl, by any means, who had been transplanted to a Welsh manor-house, as its mistress; and, accordingly, her father had shrewdly given the admiring young man some pretext for further opportunities of seeing her.

As for Nest herself, she had somewhat of her father's worldliness, and was fully alive to the superior station of her new admirer, and quite prepared to slight all her old sweethearts on his account. But then she had something more of feeling in her reckoning; she had not been insensible to the earnest yet comparatively refined homage which Owen paid her; she had noticed his expressive and occasionally handsome countenance with admiration, and was flattered by his so immediately singling her out from her companions. As to the hint which Martha Thomas had thrown out, it is enough to say that Nest was very giddy, and that she was motherless. She had high spirits and a great love of admiration, or, to use a softer term, she loved to please; men, women, and children, all, she delighted to gladden with her smile and voice. She coquetted, and flirted, and went to the extreme lengths of Welsh courtship, till the seniors of the village shook their heads, and cautioned their daughters against her acquaintance. If not absolutely guilty, she had too frequently been on the verge of guilt.

Even at the time, Martha Thomas's hint made but little impression on Owen, for his senses were otherwise occupied; but in a few days the recollection thereof had wholly died away, and one warm glorious summer's day he bent his steps towards Ellis Pritchard's with a beating heart; for, except some very slight flirtations at Oxford, Owen had never been touched; his thoughts, his fancy, had been otherwise engaged.

Ty Glas was built against one of the lower rocks of Moel Gest, which, indeed, formed a side to the low, lengthy house. The materials of the cottage were the shingly stones which had fallen from above, plastered rudely together, with deep recesses for the small oblong windows. Altogether, the exterior was much ruder than Owen had expected; but inside there seemed no lack of comforts. The house was divided into two apartments, one large, roomy and dark, into which Owen entered immediately; and before the blushing Nest came from the inner chamber (for she had seen the young Squire coming, and hastily gone to make some alteration in her dress), he had had time to look around him, and note the various little particulars of the room. Beneath the window (which commanded a magnificent view) was an oaken dresser, replete with drawers and cupboards, and brightly polished to a rich dark colour. In the farther part of the room Owen could at first distinguish little, entering as he did from the glaring sunlight; but he soon saw that there were two oaken beds, closed up after the manner of the Welsh: in fact, the dormitories of Ellis Pritchard and the man who served under him, both on sea and on land. There was the large wheel used for spinning wool, left standing on the middle of the floor, as if in use only a few minutes before; and around the ample chimney hung flitches of bacon, dried kids'-flesh, and fish, that was in process of smoking for winter's store.

Before Nest had shyly dared to enter, her father, who had been mending his nets down below, and seen Owen winding up to the house, came in and gave him a hearty yet respectful welcome; and then Nest, downcast and blushing, full of the consciousness which her father's advice and conversation had not failed to inspire, ventured to join them. To Owen's mind this reserve and shyness gave her new charms.

It was too bright, too hot, too anything to think of going to shoot teal till later in the day, and Owen was delighted to accept a hesitating invitation to share the noonday meal. Some ewe-milk cheese, very hard and dry, oat-cake, slips of the dried kid's-flesh broiled, after having been previously soaked in water for a few minutes, delicious butter and fresh buttermilk, with a liquor called 'diod griafol' (made from the berries of the Sorbus aucuparia, infused in water and then fermented), composed the frugal repast; but there was something so clean and neat, and withal such a true welcome, that Owen had seldom enjoyed a meal so much. Indeed, at that time of day the Welsh squires differed from the farmers more in the plenty and rough abundance of their manner of living than in the refinement of style of their table.

At the present day, down in Llyn, the Welsh gentry are not a wit behind their Saxon equals in the expensive elegances of life; but then (when there was but one pewter-service in all Northumberland) there was nothing in Ellis Pritchard's mode of living that grated on the young Squire's sense of refinement.

Little was said by that young pair of wooers during the meal; the father had all the conversation to himself, apparently heedless of the ardent looks and inattentive mien of his guest. As Owen became more serious in his feelings, he grew more timid in their expression, and at night, when they returned from their shooting-excursion, the caress he gave Nest was almost as bashfully offered as received.

This was but the first of a series of days devoted to Nest in reality, though at first he thought some little disguise of his object was necessary. The past, the future, was all forgotten in those happy days of love.

And every worldly plan, every womanly wile was put in practice by Ellis Pritchard and his daughter, to render his visits agreeable and alluring. Indeed, the very circumstance of his being welcome was enough to attract the poor young man, to whom the feeling so produced was new and full of charms. He left a home where the certainty of being thwarted made him chary in expressing his wishes; where no tones of love ever fell on his ear, save those addressed to others; where his presence or absence was a matter of utter indifference; and when he entered Ty Glas, all, down to the little cur which, with clamorous barkings, claimed a part of his attention, seemed to rejoice. His account of his day's employment found a willing listener in Ellis; and when he passed on to Nest, busy at her wheel or at her churn, the deepened colour, the conscious eye, and the gradual yielding of herself up to his lover-like caress, had worlds of charms. Ellis Pritchard was a tenant on the Bodowen estate, and therefore had reasons in plenty for wishing to keep the young Squire's visits secret; and Owen, unwilling to disturb the sunny calm of these halcyon days by any storm at home, was ready to use all the artifice which Ellis suggested as to the mode of his calls at Ty Glas. Nor was he unaware of the probable, nay, the hoped-for termination of these repeated days of happiness. He was quite conscious that the father wished for nothing better than the marriage of his daughter to the heir of Bodowen; and when Nest had hidden her face in his neck, which was encircled by her clasping arms, and murmured into his ear her acknowledgment of love, he felt only too desirous of finding some one to love him for ever. Though not highly principled, he would not have tried to obtain Nest on other terms save those of marriage: he did so pine after enduring love, and fancied he should have bound her heart for evermore to his, when they had taken the solemn oaths of matrimony.

There was no great difficulty attending a secret marriage at such a place and at such a time. One gusty autumn day, Ellis ferried them round Penthryn to Llandutrwyn, and there saw his little Nest become future Lady of Bodowen.

How often do we see giddy, coquetting, restless girls become sobered by marriage? A great object in life is decided, one on which their thoughts have been running in all their vagaries; and they seem to verify the beautiful fable of Undine. A new soul beams out in the gentleness and repose of their future life. An undescribable softness and tenderness takes the place of the wearying vanity of their former endeavours to attract admiration. Something of this sort happened to Nest Pritchard. If at first she had been anxious to attract the young Squire of Bodowen, long before her marriage this feeling had merged into a truer love than she had ever felt before; and now that he was her own, her husband, her whole soul was bent toward making him amends, as far as in her lay, for the misery which, with a woman's tact, she saw that he had to endure at his home. Her greetings were abounding in delicately-expressed love; her study of his tastes unwearying, in the arrangement of her dress, her time, her very thoughts.

No wonder that he looked back on his wedding-day with a thankfulness which is seldom the result of unequal marriages. No wonder that his heart beat aloud as formerly when he wound up the little path to Ty Glas, and saw--keen though the winter's wind might be--that Nest was standing out at the door to watch for his dimly-seen approach, while the candle flared in the little window as a beacon to guide him aright.

The angry words and unkind actions of home fell deadened on his heart; he thought of the love that was surely his, and of the new promise of love that a short time would bring forth; and he could almost have smiled at the impotent efforts to disturb his peace.

A few more months, and the young father was greeted by a feeble little cry, when he hastily entered Ty Glas, one morning early, in consequence of a summons conveyed mysteriously to Bodowen; and the pale mother, smiling, and feebly holding up her babe to its father's kiss, seemed to him even more lovely than the bright, gay Nest who had won his heart at the little inn of Penmorfa.

But the curse was at work! The fulfilment of the prophecy was nigh at hand!

#Elizabeth gaskell #gothic #gothic stories #historical literature #spooktober #gothic literature #books and libraries

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mortispoxi · 3 years

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BBC’s The Watch Episode One Review: A Near Vimes Experience

Episode Review order: two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight

Hi! My name is Mortis and several months ago I made the dumb decision to review each episode of BBC’s The Watch when they got released, which if you do not know is a widely controversial entry in the anthology of Discworld adaptions. Its problems began when the show wrapped up production and in an Instagram post, the show runners neglected to thank the original creator of Discworld, Sir Terry Pratchett. This raised many red flags for fans of the series because if the people who had produced The Watch were not even acknowledging the person who gave them material to work with in the first place, what else were they hiding?

This show was neither approved by Rhianna Pratchett (Sir Terry Pratchett’s daughter) nor Neil Gaiman (Pratchett’s friend and colleague) and after the trailer was released during New York Comic Con 2020, Discworld fans could tell no care was put into the shows production to make it even remotely resemble the Discworld everyone knows and loves. It has been criticized of being overly dark and edgy as well as having way too many characters not resembling their book counterparts in the slightest.

So, I’m here today to give a recap and my thoughts about episode one of BBC’s The Watch, A Near Vimes Experience. Since many of the characters in The Watch differ significantly from the characters they are based on, I will be referring to them by nicknames I have created so you can differentiate between the tv and book characters. Ok here we go.

Episode Recap:

So right off the bat, we are treated to a flashback sequence of Raccoon Vimes’s (Samuel Vimes) past when he was a part of a gang lead by Gang leader Carcer (Carcer Dun) where we see them arguing about how Raccoon Vimes betrayed him by joining the city watch and not killing Captain John Keel. Already I was shaking my head when they made Carcer, one of the few black main characters in a cast of a white majority, the leader of a street gang that wants justice for the common people through violence. For those who have not read Night Watch by Terry Pratchett, which it seems part of this show is based off, Carcer Dun was a remorseless serial killer who Samuel Vimes chased through time to stop and apprehend. If that is too cryptic to unravel let me make it abundantly clear to you, the show writers made a character that was originally a murderous bastard into a black gang leader who is taking the law into his own hands by murdering authority figures like the police to “improve” the lives of civilians who gain nothing from the senseless deaths. I was only three minutes into A Near Vimes Experience when I realized that what I was seeing was copaganda.

The scene then pans back 20 years later to a drunken Raccoon Vimes, who is trying to arrest a little white dog which is a nod to the character Gaspode, while Himbo Carrot (Carrot Ironfounderson) runs by trying to catch Urdo van Pew (the president of the Thieves Guild but only in Guards! Guards! and is later replaced by Mr. Boggis in the rest of the books) who passes the raccoon man about to piss himself (I am literally not exaggerating this part; he was literally about to piss all over himself and the dog). Already The Watch is starting to show its true colors when an instrumental version of Bad Reputation by Joan Jett starts playing in the background to tell the viewer, “This show is supposed to be punk rock and edgy. You know, punk rock, that movement that’s entire identity centers around its anti-authority and fuck the cop’s messages in their songs.”

The next ten minutes are dedicated to introducing the main cast who occupy the watch house and why watchmen are so disregarded like they are. This merry band of characters includes:

Faux Detritus (Sergeant Detritus)

Werechipmunk Angua (Angua von Uberwald)

Tall Cheery (Cheery Littlebottom)

And of course, the others I spoke on, Himbo Carrot and Raccoon Vimes.

Since Fred Colon and Nobby Nobs were removed from the shows cast of characters, The Watch puts more of an emphasis on Angua, Carrot, Detritus and Cheery’s characters. An absolute travesty in my opinion.

The “plot,” if you can call it a plot, gets set into motion when Lady Vetinari (Lord Havelock Vetinari) calls upon Raccoon Vimes to find a stolen book because…the Librarian asked Vetinari of all people to report it stolen…no explanation as to why this book is of significance but for some reason is important enough for Lady Vetinari to see the raccoon man and tell him…could have made a police report but ok I guess. (Side note: The costume design is atrocious, See image below) The disappearance of the library book, The Summoning of Dragons, is a major plot point in the novel Guards! Guards! However, the show makes no mention of what the book is nor how it is important enough for Lady Vetinari to make it a priority for Raccoon Vimes to find. It then cuts back to Werechipmunk Angua giving Himbo Carrot some much-needed exposition by explaining how the guilds in Ankh-Morpork were established under Vetinari’s rule.

When Raccoon Vimes meets back up with his crew outside the Mended Drum, which has been turned into a night club for some reason, he spots GL Carcer making some sort of deal before running in after him…then getting drunk and passing out. It is revealed through another flashback (there’s a ton of random flashbacks) that GL Carcer shot and killed John Keel which causes Raccoon Vimes to run after and chase him up a tower with a lot of random purple lightning around it. By the way, this whole thing takes up 4 flashback sequences to tell which is annoying and stupid so I’m just going to recap the whole backstory here. After they get up on the tower, they fight a bit before GL Carcer eventually slips off and falls yelling over and over again to “Arrest me.”

A quick side note: They filmed the scene where Raccoon Vimes walks around the bar in the first person, so as he’s walking forward, no joke, it made him look like a dog with rabies. He’s just very gross to look at during the whole sequence.

Here is where we are introduced to Tall Cheery (Cheery Littlebottom) who I describe as tall because despite her being a dwarf, they chose an actor who is both taller than Werechipmunk Angua and Himbo Carrot. They of course try to explain it away by saying dwarfs come in all shapes and sizes but if you open any DnD manual you know that’s wholly untrue. There was controversy surrounding her character when the cast and crew described Cheery as nonbinary when in fact this is not the case. If you did not already know, Cheery’s character in the books established a binary in dwarf culture by identifying as a female in a society where all dwarfs are male. In the past, if a dwarf identified as female, they were forced to keep it to themselves out of fear of ostracization. Some would describe Cheery as a trans icon because she established her femininity in canon which led to a change in how gender was viewed in dwarf culture around Ankh-Morpork. However, in this rendition, Tall Cheery identifies as nonbinary but still uses she/her pronouns and apparently has also worked for Raccoon Vimes long enough to know about GL Carcer and his weird idiosyncrasies.

Anyway, Raccoon Vimes tells his crew that they are looking for a library book which causes Himbo Carrot to throw a mini tantrum about how he wants to be a real cop instead of whatever the fuck they are doing. He wanders off into a storage closet where he pretends to be a “real” copper in front of the mirror before the mirror starts talking to him. THIS IS NOT EXPLAINED BY THE WAY! (It may be a reference to Lilith Weatherwax in Witches Abroad but it was so out of left field that it’s worth mentioning)

Feeling confused? Congratulations! Me too! We’ve made it to the 20-minute mark and it only gets weirder!

After looking at a trashed jail cell which we later find out is because Werechipmunk Angua can’t control her werewolf powers in this rendition so she chills in there every full moon, Himbo Carrot announces that he wants to resign and goes to find the raccoon man. Raccoon Vimes on the other hand is out searching for GL Carcer and stumbles across an iconograph, the Discworld equivalent to a camera, and takes the pictures the imp living inside of it was painting. This is the point where I had to pause and take a deep breath because for some godforsaken reason, someone had the bright idea to make the images Raccoon Vimes views be on a sort of touch screen iPad device. I think whoever thought this up was trying to combine the concept of iconographs and moving pictures, the Discworld equivalent to film, into one device but my immediate first reaction upon seeing Raccoon Vimes using a touch screen (when Sam Vimes is in fact technologically illiterate) I said out loud, “excuse me what in the fuck?”

Another side note: If you watch the images on the iPad, you can see actual dwarfs walking around in the background! Which means they made Tall Cheery tall for no fucking reason!

Speaking of dwarfs, you know what was the most fucked up moment in the entire episode for me? When Carrot found the letter his dwarf parents sent to Raccoon Vimes on his desk and in the letter his own adopted family thought he was a monster because he accidentally hit his head on a support hoist and collapsed a mine shaft. Now this is a genuinely concerning development because in the books, Carrot’s adopted parents love their adopted son, but they realize that living in a mine is not sustainable for him because he is really a human and should live among the humans. Carrot keeps his identity as a dwarf throughout the book series and even continues to write to his family who live up in the mountains. To call Carrot a monster as a way of isolating a significant part of his original character in order to form a connection with members of the watch so that he can fit in the show’s message of misfits coming together to form a team is concerning. Carrot Ironfounderson was already a misfit the moment he walked through the city gates because he self-identifies as a dwarf. Him being accepted as a dwarf helps him sympathize with the plights of the dwarves living in the city. He is both on the side of human and dwarf so he can see both sides of a conflict and deescalate situations because he can sympathize. Carrot walked into Ankh-Morpork with the love from his family in his heart and with time it expanded into love for his job and love for the city itself. When you take that away from him and call him a monster then he’s no longer the Carrot Ironfounderson Discworld fans have come to recognize.

And now we reach the part of the episode where things really go off the rails and that is when Supermodel Sybil (Lady Sybil Ramkin) gets introduced. Upon waking up after getting clonked on the skull while following leads, Raccoon Vimes finds himself chained to a cement slab in a place called the Sunshine Rescue Centre for Broken Bedraggled Things in which Supermodel Sybil teaches, well forces people really, to realized that they are being brainwashed into believing crime is a profession. She still takes care of dragons but apparently everything about Sybil Ramkin’s original character was stripped down to just the frame and remade into a badass dragon lady who also…kidnaps…people… Yes, you heard me right, Supermodel Sybil is apparently mad about the existence of Guilds allowing for crime to be legal in a way that it can be regulated and controlled under Vetinari’s rule so that she can run off and be a vigilante. And since she has taken on this role of being this gone rogue hero, she joins Raccoon Vimes in finding GL Carcer because he’s a gang leader stockpiling and moving large quantities of drugs…which is also apparently legal under the protection of the Alchemists Guild despite the books being opposed to that concept.

All of this culminates in the end to GL Carcer returning into Raccoon Vimes’s life and the show hinting at time travel being used on top of GL Carcer summoning a dragon as a way of continuing his evil plan to…uh…yeah, I’m still not entirely sure what his plan is. One thing’s for sure, although I saw elements from other Discworld books were used to establish the world and some of its characters, it’s going to be largely based on Guards! Guards! and Night Watch.

Oh yeah, hey! Did I mention this episode is a series of flashbacks about ways Raccoon Vimes has possibly died throughout the show? Yeah! Both the beginning and ending of the episode is literally Death looking at him and going, “You’re probably wondering how you got here.”

If you’re gonna pull this bullshit Simon Allen then at least include Baba O'Riley by The Who to complete the picture.

Episode Review/Thoughts:

As someone who enjoys Discworld, I was willing to give the show the benefit of the doubt before I watched it. I’m one of those people who can look over character changes from book to cinematic adaption because I feel that if an actor can add onto or even improve upon the character then I’m all for it. However, the changes they made from book to show was done with such backwards thinking that it negatively impacted the way I viewed The Watch as a whole. They changed nearly every character’s main identity that allows them to stand out in the stories they were featured in and stuffed them with edgy bullshit to fit their cyberpunk narrative.

This is only the first episode and the story is all over the place. This show wants to be so many things but does not know how to convey it in a way that is easy to understand. It’s constantly trying to pull the viewers attention in different directions that by the end it leaves you reeling trying to figure out what exactly it wants to say. I think the thought process was if we throw a bunch of references at the fans who understand them then maybe we can get away with the entire episode being a literal mess. The Watch desperately tries to be a dark retelling of the city watch series but still wants you to laugh at the jokes that are barely entertaining while also trying to maintain itself as being a serious/no nonsense cop show. If I as the viewer can’t figure out what’s going on until twenty minutes in, then you’ve already failed at story telling! It’s confusing for no goddamn reason!

Minor Gripe- There were so many pointless flashbacks throughout the episode to explain the backstory it becomes downright annoying whenever there was a cutaway. If you’re going to tell us how Raccoon Vimes and GL Carcer had a falling out, then show the whole thing in one go or actually step up your skills as a writer and have an actual dialogue between the characters later on. How about you actually write a good Discworld adaption!

It’s only the first episode and it’s already not looking too good for the series as a whole!

Now for the fun part of the post I like to call...

Things in A Near Vimes Experience that made me go, “Wait What?”:

Goth ghosts/vampires showing up to ask Tall Cheery to join their band

Drugs! Drugs everywhere!

Whoever included the iPad I will hunt you down for blood sport!

Raccoon Vimes can and will pee on things to establish dominance

Supermodel Sybil locks people in her basement

Whatever the fuck these costumes are! (They did Vetinari so dirty!)

Honorable mentions:

“You became a cop to stop people from throwing babies at dwarves?”

The Mended Drum is a neon infused dance club

Dibbler has been replaced with a lady in a wheelchair named Throat that deals in drugs and information

Raccoon Vimes almost successfully committed suicide

Current Kill Count...

Supermodel Sybil: 2

#i subjected myself to this so you don't have to #enjoy!#bbc the watch #discworld #the watch reviews #review #mp

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libidomechanica · 2 years

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Untitled (“”)

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#poetry #automatically generated text #Patrick Mooney #Markov chains #Markov chain length: 6 #156 texts

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weavingthetapestry · 3 years

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2nd January 1264: Marriage and Murder in Mediaeval Menteith

(Priory of Inchmahome, founded on one of the islands of Lake of Menteith in the thirteenth century)

On 2nd January 1264, Pope Urban IV despatched a letter to the bishops of St Andrews and Aberdeen, and the Abbot of Dunfermline, commanding them to enquire into a succession dispute in the earldom of Menteith. Situated in the heart of Scotland, this earldom stretched from the graceful mountains and glens of the Trossachs, to the boggy carseland west of Stirling and the low-lying Vale of Menteith between Callander and Dunblane. The earls and countesses of Menteith were members of the highest rank of the nobility, ruling the area from strongholds such as Doune Castle, Inch Talla, and Kilbryde. Perhaps the best-known relic of the mediaeval earldom is the beautiful, ruined Priory of Inchmahome, which was established on an island in Lake of Menteith by Earl Walter Comyn in 1238. Walter Comyn was a powerful, if controversial, figure during the reigns of Kings Alexander II and Alexander III. He controlled the earldom for several decades after his marriage to its Countess, Isabella of Menteith, but following Walter’s death in 1258 his widow was beset on all sides by powerful enemies. These enemies even went so far as to capture Isabella and accuse her of poisoning her husband. The story of this unfortunate countess offers a rare glimpse into the position of great heiresses in High Mediaeval Scotland, revealing the darker side of thirteenth century politics.

Alexander II and Alexander III are generally remembered as powerful monarchs who oversaw the expansion and consolidation of the Scottish realm. During their reigns, dynastic rivals like the MacWilliams were crushed, regions such as Galloway and the Western Isles formally acknowledged Scottish overlordship, and the Scottish Crown held its own in diplomacy and disputes with neighbouring rulers in Norway and England. Both kings furthered their aims by promoting powerful nobles in strategic areas, but it was also vital to harness the ambition and aggression of these men productively. In the absence of an adult monarch, unchecked magnate rivalry risked destabilising the realm, as in the years between 1249 and 1262, when Alexander III was underage.

(A fifteenth century depiction of the coronation of Alexander III. Source: Wikimedia Commons)

Walter Comyn offers a typical picture of the ambitious Scottish magnate. Ultimately loyal to the Crown, his family loyalties and personal aims nonetheless made him a divisive figure. A member of the powerful Comyn kindred, he had received the lordship of Badenoch in the Central Highlands by 1229, probably because of his family’s opposition to the MacWilliams. In early 1231, he was granted the hand of a rich heiress, Isabella of Menteith. In the end, there would be no Comyn dynasty in Menteith: Walter and Isabella had a son named Henry, mentioned in a charter c.1250, but he likely predeceased his father. Nevertheless, Walter Comyn carved out a career at the centre of Scottish politics and besides witnessing many royal charters, he acted as the king’s lieutenant in Galloway in 1235 and became embroiled in the scandalous Bisset affair of 1242.

When Alexander II died in 1249, Walter and the other Comyns sought power during the minority of the boy king Alexander III. They were opposed by the similarly ambitious Alan Durward and in time Henry III of England, the attentive father of Alexander III’s wife Margaret, was also dragged into the squabble as both sides solicited his support in order to undermine their opponents. Possession of the young king’s person offered a swift route to power, and, although nobody challenged Alexander III’s right to the throne, some took drastic measures to seize control of government. Walter Comyn and his allies managed this twice, the second time by kidnapping the young king at Kinross in 1257. They were later forced to make concessions to enemies like Durward but, with Henry III increasingly distracted by the deteriorating political situation in England, the Comyns held onto power for the rest of the minority. However Walter only enjoyed his victory for a short while: by the end of 1258, the Earl of Menteith was dead.

Walter Comyn had dominated Scottish politics for a decade, and even if, as Michael Brown suggests, his death gave the political community some breathing space, this also left Menteith without a lord. As a widow, Countess Isabella theoretically gained more personal freedom, but mediaeval realpolitik was not always consistent with legal ideals. In thirteenth century Scotland, the increased wealth of widows made them vulnerable in new ways (not least to abduction) and, although primogeniture and the indivisibility of earldoms were promoted, in reality these ideals were often subordinated to the Crown’s need to reward its supporters. Isabella of Menteith was soon to find that her position had become very precarious.

At first, things went well. Although one source claims that many noblemen sought her hand, Isabella made her own choice, marrying an English knight named John Russell. Sir John’s background is obscure but, despite assertions that he was low born, he had connections at the English court. Isabella and John obtained royal consent for their marriage c.1260, and the happy couple also took crusading vows soon afterwards.

But whatever his wife thought, in the eyes of the Scottish nobility John Russell cut a much less impressive figure than Walter Comyn. The couple had not been married long before a powerful coterie of nobles descended on Menteith like hoodie-crows. Pope Urban’s list of persecutors includes the earls of Buchan, Fife, Mar, and Strathearn, Alan Durward, Hugh of Abernethy, Reginald le Cheyne, Hugh de Berkeley, David de Graham, and many others. But the ringleader was John ‘the Red’ Comyn, the nephew of Isabella of Menteith’s deceased husband Walter, who had already succeeded to the lordship of Badenoch. Even though Menteith belonged to Isabella in her own right, Comyn coveted his late uncle’s title there. Supported by the other lords, he captured and imprisoned the countess and John Russell, and justified this bold assault by claiming that the newlyweds had conspired together to poison Earl Walter. It is unclear what proof, if any, John Comyn supplied to back up his claim, but the couple were unable to disprove it. They were forced to surrender all claims to Isabella’s dowry, as well as many of her own lands and rents. A surviving charter shows that Hugh de Abernethy was granted property around Aberfoyle about 1260, but it seems that the lion’s share of the spoils went to the Red Comyn, who secured for himself and his heirs the promise of the earldom of Menteith itself.

Isabella and her husband were only released when they promised to pass into exile until they could clear their names before seven peers of the realm. John Russell’s brother Robert was delivered to Comyn as security for their full resignation of the earldom. Having ‘incurred heavy losses and expenses’, which certainly stymied their crusading plans, they fled.

In a letter of 1264, Pope Urban IV described the couple as ‘undefended by the authority of the king, while as yet a minor’. However, though Alexander III was technically underage in 1260, he was now nineteen and could not be ignored entirely. Michael Brown suggests that Isabella and her husband may have been seized when the king was visiting England, and that John Comyn’s unsanctioned bid for the earldom of Menteith may explain why Alexander cut short his stay in November 1260 and hastily returned north, leaving his pregnant queen with her parents at Windsor. Certainly, Comyn was forced to relinquish the earldom before 17th April 1261. But instead of restoring Menteith to its exiled countess, Alexander settled the earldom on another rising star: Walter ‘Bailloch’ Stewart, whose wife Mary had a claim to Menteith.

Mary of Menteith is often described as Isabella’s younger sister, although contemporary sources never say so and some historians argue that they were cousins. Either way, Alexander’s decision to uphold her claim was probably as much influenced by her husband’s identity as her alleged birth right. Like Walter Comyn, Walter Bailloch (‘freckled’), belonged to an influential family as the brother of Alexander, Steward of Scotland. From their origins in the royal household, the Stewarts became major regional magnates, assisting royal expansion in the west. The promising son of a powerful family, Walter Bailloch was sheriff of Ayr by 1264 and likely fought in the Battle of Largs in 1263. In 1260 Alexander III had the opportunity to secure Walter’s loyalty as the royal minority drew to a close. Conversely John Comyn of Badenoch found himself out of favour and was removed as justiciar of Galloway following the Menteith incident. The king would not alienate the Comyns permanently, but for now, the stars of Walter Bailloch and Mary of Menteith were in the ascendant.

(Loch Lubnaig, in the Trossachs, another former possession of the earls of Menteith)

Isabella of Menteith and John Russell had not been idle in the meantime. Travelling to John’s home country of England, they probably appealed to Henry III. In September 1261, the English king inspected documents relating to a previous dispute over the earldom of Menteith. On that occasion, two brothers, both named Maurice, had their differences settled before the future Alexander II at Edinburgh in 1213. The elder Maurice, who held the title Earl of Menteith and was presumed illegitimate by later writers (though this is never stated), resigned the earldom, which was regranted to Maurice junior. In return the elder Maurice received some towns and lands to be held for his lifetime only, and the younger Maurice promised to provide for the marriage of his older brother’s daughters.

It is probable that Isabella was the daughter of the younger Maurice, and that she produced these charters as proof of her right to the earldom. Perhaps Mary was her younger sister, but it seems likelier that Isabella would have wanted to prove the younger Maurice’s right if Mary was a descendant of the elder brother, and therefore her cousin. However despite Henry III’s formal recognition of the settlement, he did not provide Isabella with any real assistance: for whatever reason, the English king was either unable or unwilling to press his son-in-law the King of Scots on this matter. Isabella then turned instead to the spiritual leader of western Europe- Pope Urban IV.

(A depiction of the coronation of Henry III of England, though in fact the English king was only a child when he was crowned. Source: Wikimedia Commons)

A long epistle which the pope sent to several Scottish prelates in January 1264 has survived, revealing much about the case. Thus we learn that Urban was initially moved by Isabella and her husband’s predicament, perhaps especially so since they had taken the cross. Accordingly, he had appointed his chaplain Pontius Nicholas to enquire further and discreetly arrange the couple’s restoration. Pontius was to journey to Menteith, ‘if he could safely do so, otherwise to pass personally to parts adjacent to the said kingdom, and to summon those who should be summoned’. But Pontius’ mission only hindered Isabella’s suit. According to Gesta Annalia I, the papal chaplain got no closer to Scotland than York. From there he summoned many Scottish churchmen and nobles to appear before him, and even the King of Scots himself. This merely antagonised Alexander III and his subjects. Although Alexander maintained good relations with England and the papacy throughout his reign, he had a strong sense of his own prerogative and did not appreciate being summoned to answer for his actions, especially not outwith his realm and least of all in York. Special daughter of the papacy or not, Scotland’s clergy and nobility supported their king and refused to compear. Faced with this intransigence, Pontius Nicholas placed the entire kingdom under interdict, at which point Alexander retaliated by writing directly to the chaplain’s boss, demanding Pontius’ dismissal from the case.

Urban IV swiftly backpedalled. In a conciliatory tone he claimed that Pontius was guilty of ‘exceeding the terms of our mandate’ and causing ‘grievous scandal’. To remedy the situation, and avoid endangering souls, the pope discharged his responsibility over the case to the bishops of St Andrews and Aberdeen, and the Abbot of Dunfermline. Thus the pope washed his hands of a troublesome case, the Scottish king’s nose could be put back in joint, and Isabella’s suit was transferred to men with great experience of Scottish affairs, who should have been capable of satisfactorily resolving the matter. However, there is no indication that Isabella was ever compensated for the loss of her inheritance, and when the dispute over Menteith was raised again ten years later, the countess was not even mentioned (probably she had since died). Possibly her suit was discreetly buried after it was transferred to the Scottish clerics, a solution which, however frustrating for the exiled countess, would have been convenient for the great men whose responsibility it was to ensure justice was done.

(Doune Castle- the earliest parts of this famous stronghold probably date to the days of the thirteenth century earls of Menteith, although much of the work visible today dates from the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries)

The Comyns could not be dismissed so easily. Never resigned to losing Menteith, John Comyn of Badenoch claimed the earldom again c.1273, on behalf of his son William Comyn of Kirkintilloch. William had since married Isabella Russell, daughter of Isabella of Menteith by her second husband.* The 1273 suit was unsuccessful but William Comyn and Isabella Russell did not lose hope, and in 1282, William asked Edward I of England to intercede for them with the king of Scots. In 1285, with William’s father John Comyn long dead, Alexander III finally offered a compromise. Walter Bailloch, whose wife Mary may have died, was to keep half the earldom and he and his heirs would bear the title earl of Menteith. William Comyn and Isabella Russell received the other half in free barony, and this eventually passed to the offspring of Isabella’s second marriage to Sir Edward Hastings. Perhaps this could be seen as a posthumous victory for Isabella Russell’s late parents, but their descendants would never regain the whole earldom (except, controversially, when the younger Isabella’s two sons were each granted half after Edward I forfeited the current earl for supporting Robert Bruce).

Conversely, Walter Bailloch’s descendants remained at the forefront of Scottish politics. He and his wife Mary accompanied Alexander III’s daughter to Norway in 1281, and Walter was later a signatory to both the Turnberry Band and the Maid of Norway’s marriage negotiations. He also acted as a commissioner for Robert Bruce (grandfather to the future king) during the Great Cause. He had at least three children by Mary of Menteith and their sons took the surname Menteith rather than Stewart. The descendants of the eldest son, Alexander, held the earldom of Menteith until at least 1425. The younger son, John, became infamous as the much-maligned ‘Fause Menteith’ who betrayed William Wallace, although he later rose high in the service of King Robert I. Walter Bailloch himself died c.1294-5, and was buried next to his wife at the Priory of Inchmahome on Lake of Menteith, which Walter Comyn had founded over fifty years previously. The effigies of Walter Bailloch and Mary of Menteith can still be seen in the chapter house of the ruined priory: the worn faces are turned towards each other and each figure stretches out an arm to embrace their spouse in a lasting symbol of marital affection.

(The effigies of Walter Bailloch and Mary of Menteith at Inchmahome Priory, which was founded by Walter Comyn in 1238 and was perhaps intended as a burial site for himself and his wife Isabella of Menteith. Source: Wikimedia Commons).

The dispute over Menteith saw a prominent noblewoman publicly accused of murder and exiled, and even sparked an international incident when Scotland was placed under interdict. For all this, neither Isabella of Menteith nor John Comyn of Badenoch triumphed in the long term. Even Walter Bailloch eventually had to accept the loss of half the earldom after holding it for over twenty years. In the end the only real winner seems to have been the king. Although at first sight the persecution of Isabella and her husband looks like a classic example of overmighty magnates taking advantage of a breakdown in law and order during a royal minority, Alexander III was not a child and his rebuke of John Comyn did not result in any backlash against the Crown. Most of the Scottish nobility fell back in line once the king came of age, but the king in turn had to ensure that he was able to reward key supporters if he wanted to expand the realm he had inherited. Although it was important to both Alexander III and his father that primogeniture and were accepted by their subjects as the norm, in practice both kings found that they had to bend their own rules to ensure that the system worked to their own advantage. The thirteenth century is often seen an age of legal development and state-building, but these things sometimes came into conflict with each other, and even the most successful kings had to work within a messy system and consider the competing loyalties and customs of their subjects.

Selected Bibliography:

- “Vetera Monumenta Hibernorum et Scotorum”, Augustinus Theiner (a printed version of Urban IV’s original Latin epistle may be found here)

- “John of Fordun’s Chronicle of the Scottish Nation”, vol. 2, ed. W.F. Skene (this is an English translation of the chronicle of John of Fordun, made when Gesta Annalia I was still believed to be his work. It provides an independent thirteenth or fourteenth century Scottish account of the Menteith case

- “The Red Book of Menteith”, volumes 1+2, ed. Sir William Fraser

- “Calendar of Documents Relating to Scotland, Preserved Among the Public Records of England”, volumes 1, 2, 3 & 5, ed. Joseph Bain

- “The Political Role of Walter Comyn, earl of Menteith, during the Minority of Alexander III of Scotland”, A. Young, in the Scottish Historical Review, vol.57 no.164 part 2 (1978).

- “Scotland, England and France After the Loss of Normandy, 1204-1296″, M.A. Pollock

- “The Wars of Scotland, 1214-1371″, Michael Brown

As ever if anyone has a question about a specific detail or source, please let me know! I have a lot of notes for this post, so hopefully I should be able to help!

#Scottish history #Scotland #British history #thirteenth century #women in history #Menteith #earldom of Menteith #Isabella Countess of Menteith #John Russell #John Comyn I of Badenoch #Alexander III #Henry III #Pope Urban IV #Walter Bailloch #the Stewarts #House of Dunkeld #House of Canmore #Mary of Menteith #inchmahome priory

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multimetaverse · 4 years

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Jamie Johnson 5x13 Review

The season 5 finale was a great conclusion to Dillon and Jamie’s arcs and ended on a high note. And if you’re looking to fill the void left by the season ending, you should check out the New Zealand rugby drama, Head High, which is like Jamie Johnson meets Degrassi and features another main lgbtq sporty character. Let’s dig in!

Jamie finally makes a good choice! Though it does suck for Jethro that Jamie only realized that he still wanted to be a real footballer after stopping Jethro from advancing in the one hobby he has left

Those close up shots of Mike on the verge of tears were too much for me to handle. I’m glad though that he seemed to finally accept that he was so invested in Jamie’s career because of his own injury ending his career with Hawkstone

I’m glad that Mike ended up going to London. For once Ian did step up and was there for Jamie throughout the ep but Mike has always been Jamie’s staunchest supporter and in many ways more of a father to him then Ian ever was

It is interesting to that Jamie’s cynicism when he was in the hospital regarding Howard Royle truly supporting him after his injury was in fact correct

Loved the little inside Joke of Jamie forgetting his passport did like Louis did before Gothia

Dillon’s story this season has been truly remarkable and reached a great conclusion this ep. Ruby even uses the the term coming out while talking with Dillon about whether he’ll tell Phoenix that hes gay!

Graham finally came around and as awful as he’s been this season, his apology to Dillon and the hug he gave him were very sweet. I liked that Liam is still a little shit, rolling his eyes at the hug and telling Dillon that he’s still a disgrace for not signing for Foxborough

As much as the team clapping was cringey it was still great to see Dillon confidently come out to Phoenix after the long journey he’s been on and great to see all his friends be so supportive. Dillon even asked if Boggy was going to be at the game because he wanted to come out to everyone

That scene with Dillon and Jamie was so important. Having Jamie Jonhson himself be so supportive of Dillon and not letting Dillon’s sexuality change anything and walking off with him sends a loud and clear message to the audience

The big winner this season ended up being that silver fox Duncan ‘’Big Dunk’’ Jones. He not only ended up signing Dillon but also snagged Jamie for Northport. I think his firm stand against homophobia was what played the key role in convincing Dillon to sign for the Rovers so good on Duncan for that. As for Jamie though... well I’m not really sure what the moral is; that corrupt scheming doesn’t always get punished? that it’s better to just wait patiently and things will fall into place? Regardless, Duncan Jones has cemented himself as my third favourite Welshman after Sir Tom Jones and Llewellyn the Great

The mural was cheesy but does look like a bunch of 13 year olds came up with it

Glad Boggy is doing better and glad once again that Jamie apologized for not being there for Boggy

Loved the ending song, ‘’Movin on Up’’ by Primal Scream and that zoom out from the Northport Pitch was a beautiful shot

Man that clip of Dillon in blue in the S5 trailer was a massive spoiler eh?

Looking Ahead:

It’s wild to look back and remember that this show literally had no tumblr presence until a few weeks ago but I’m glad that a nice little fandom has sprung up for this excellent show

Once again, I highly recommend that fans of Jamie Johnson check out the New Zealand Rugby drama, Head High. It’s definitely for an older audience but it tackles a lot of great story lines, the blossoming Tai and Steven romance is very sweet and there’s only 6 eps in the first season. And with New Zealand being one of the few places on Earth that’s able to safely resume TV and Film production there likely won’ t be as long of a wait for S2 as there will be for other shows

Dillon’s story line was well done and there’s literally nothing like it on children’s tv right now. And with Disney Channel UK shutting down, it’s even more important that CBBC continues to push boundaries in children’s TV. Hopefully if it’s written in the staahs, Elliot will return late in S6 and we’ll get the Delliot endgame we deserve (and they can quit straight baiting and give us the Jamie x Jack endgame we deserve)

It might be a while before we see S6 but hopefully when it eventually airs the world will be in a better place. Stay safe out there folks and wear a damn mask when you’re out

Until next season Jamie Johnsoners

#Jamie Johnson #Dillon Simmonds #Mike Johnson #Boggy Bogson #Delliot #Elliot #Duncan Jones #Jamie Johnson Reviews

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mcustorm · 4 years

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Thoughts on Jamie Johnson 5x13

This finale started off pretty ight to me, but they had me in the first half. The show snuck up on me and put me in my feels. But more on that later...

Okay, nobody wants to say it? I’ll say it: the whole “cast plays as the video game avatars” is very uncanny valley-esque and very weird. But I suppose “weird” is the best way to describe this show’s dream sequences. IDK.

As Jamie and Mike were arguing yet again over this gaming vs healing thing that they’ve been doing all season, I was sitting there yelling at Mike, “You can’t want this for him! Just support him in what he does want!” He initially got half of the message. I’m glad Mike came around.

And speaking of “You can’t want this for him,” I was about to completely give up on Dillon’s dad. When Dillon asked him “What if I don’t want to play at Foxborough?”...that was a test, intentional or not, which Dillon’s dad promptly failed. But he too comes around and supports his kid’s decisions. We love to see it. We also love to see mothers, but I digress.

Man, fuck Jethro. All that taunting and for what? What was the reason? That man is the definition of clown right there. Sir, please find some peace.

The reveal that Royle was likely always gonna cut Jamie is one those “Of course!” twists that you should know, likely do know deep down, yet at the same time we’re all in denial. And that briefly makes you re-think the season. I honestly don’t know how I’d prefer that news to be given to me: asap, on the hospital bed and at my lowest moment, or after tons of rehab and me building up hope.

I liked the wall of legends. Jamie was in the middle because of course. I’d argue that Dillon, Boggy, and Jack have a better case for that spot but it’s whatever. At least Boggy is on the wall. That’s what the fuck I’m talmbout!

Dillon’s coming out was...completely overshadowed by Jamie finally deciding to drag himself out to see Phoenix. And well, if Dillon’s happy, I’m happy. Everybody claps for Dillon, and that’s when the feels started. We even got to see some Dillon/Jamie interaction, which is always welcome and we frankly haven’t seen enough of considering they’re on good terms.

If we consider a huge aspect of this show to be those two characters and their relationship, which we do, then this finale’s ending was flawless. Them playing together at Northport Rovers, that there is the shit I like to see. Neither of them made it large, at least not yet, but they made it, in large part because of each other. And that’s when I began to ask myself: Wait, why is this not the series finale?

There comes a point in some tv series’ lifetime where it hits a season finale out of the park: resolution to plots, characters finally being at peace, a nice sentimental song to play us out, etc. etc. It almost feels like a series finale. And for some shows, that’s because it should be. [Currently, I’m throwing shade at Shameless. The Office and Scrubs are guilty too]

But then the show keeps going, and it’s worse. Definitely worse. Because the story hit its natural conclusion and yet kept going. Let’s consider what happened as of this last episode of season 5:

Dillon’s dad finally completely accepts him and his decisions. Dillon comes out to the entire team, is applauded, and then “graduates” to Northport Rovers.

Jamie decides to come back to see Phoenix, apologizes, heals his leg, and graduates to Northport Rovers (unless that was a dream sequence, which please no).

Boggy is content with forever being at Jamie’s side. His personal healing is acknowledged, he is apologized to once again (#JusticeForBoggy), and he is thrown up on the wall with other Phoenix Legends.

Zoe and Kat are now friends. Zoe theoretically no longer beefs with girls because girls. They are also moving on up profesionally.

Alba and Ruby are now adopted into a loving family.

The kids are alright. The eighth graders have made up, and rightfully recognize Liam as a shithead.

We got a nice ending with Dillon and Jamie with a sentimental song in the background. Once enemies, now friends, paths forever intertwined.

Liam was not downright terrible this episode. Nuff said.

That was a series finale if I ever saw one. We only needed a few more things. Sorry for another list.

A scene of Zoe and Kat at their new team. Could be included in a montage.

I want a scene of Boggy actually deciding to do something *he* wants to do. I don’t know if the show wants that, but I do.

Elliot’s glorious return. He could’ve been in the bleachers at the game in the last scene. Two seconds of eye contact with Dillon,some smiles, I would’ve been content. Fuckit.

At LEAST 3 other cameos from our GOSC, or graveyard of secondary characters. Pick 3, any 3.

A scene with Jamie and his dad once and for all hammering out what their relationship is and what it’s gonna be.

Bonus: resolution with Aisha, Liam doing anything good, Jack coming back.

Where do we go from here? Do we follow each of these kids to their new locations? Do we send most our cast to the GOSC and bring in some new ones? Are the eighth graders just gonna start fighting again? Do we really want another season just for some more Delliot content? Unpopular opinion: Not necessarily!

So it will be interesting to see what the new status quo is. In the meantime, let me revel in the greatness of those last couple of scenes again. See you next season, friends.

BTW, Duncan really played the long game with that one. Well played, you son of a gun.

#jamie johnson #dillon simmonds #delliot #justiceforboggy #thanks for reading

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temeyes · 6 months

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RAHHHH I LOVE YOUR ART SO MUCH ITS SO SILLY SOMETIMES IT MAKES ME GIGGLE LIKE A TEENAGE GIRL💖💖💖💖💖💖💖💖💖💖

ALSO Can you draw all of the 141 like your pfp? The ghost literally made me cry laughing

But more importantly your art work is just:

EHE THANK U BESTIE!! so glad you like my stupid COD doods!! i really thought that i'd be a srs fanartist for COD but man was i wrong,, LMAO

and these took me a while to actually work on these but here!!

i added a textless version for Ghost too, i'll probably make versions for Alex, Farah, and Laswell too tomorrow. feel free to use these peeps! (WITH credit pls thankies uwu)

#answered asks #sir-boggy-himself #my art #2023 #call of duty #task force 141 #tf141 #ghost cod #soap cod #price cod #gaz cod #art #fanart #digital art

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madou-dilou · 4 years

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A Requiem for Opeli, a Dragon Prince fanfic (Viren x reader) (sort of)

Despite everything your parents may have said, you enjoyed attending mass.

In the shade of the semicircular vaults of the sanctuary, in the sweet coloured lights of the stained glass windows, in the golden halos of the candles, under the benevolent eye of the saints, surrounded by six chapels for the six sources, the atoms themselves seemed to be scented with incense. Carved in stone, the acanthus flowers and strange fruits decorated the column's capitals, reminding the lost blessing of Xadia. Everything felt so dignified, so humble, so respectful, so soothing, so reliable and so reassuring that it was easy to get carried away by the choir of the nuns. The wise sermons of the High Prelate Opeli, in particular, procured such fervour that you had more than once been caught raising your hand to your chaplain when the ringing of the coins gathered for charity was heard between the rows of benches. However, it was not your habit to pay for strangers, even less for beggars. The Katolis Crown was funding enough leprosariums and hospitals to make it unnecessary for you to contribute. It was always their Majesties Harrow and Sarai who completely emptied their purses filled with gold in the baskets of the Sisters. Even the royal bastard ... what was his name again? Calleon? Callus? Caramel? Chameleon? Anyway, even he did not fail once to loosen his little chubby hands.

Thus the honour of sharing the same bench as their Majesties paid for a similar purse on pain of incurring the royal contempt, and after Their generous contributions would clink no more than mountains of little dims, pennies and piecettes.

Led by the warm alto voice of the High Prelate Opeli, the choir of the nuns spread in pious solemnities.

Et lux fontes duce nos

Defendat nos temptationem

Salvos nos fac de tenebris

Nos, agni decidantur

Dimitte nobis debita nostra

Dona nobis gratia Hi autem de Xadia

On your right, Lady Vassileia yawned. You gave her a nudge:

"Ouch!" she protested softly enough not to interrupt the psalm of the High Prelate. "I wasn't even asleep!"

"Liar," you whispered to her. "Raise your head and listen."

Vassilea had a broken pout that her lace mantilla could not conceal:

"After our phenomenal bender last night, I wonder by what miracle I was able to drag myself to the sanctuary."

You could hardly blame her. In the euphoria that followed your tenth perfect execution of the complex Jarnac move, you had invited your fencing master and your best friend to celebrate the event with a glass of fine wine, a secular cuvée stung in the cellars of the castle in the provinces. One glassful had become a fifth, a tenth, a fifteenth, and to the wise and poignant melody of Who covets the lady the husband must kill had succeeded the bawdy and raucous notes of A sublimated dead for my rising athame, and this until very late at night.

"And not just any rotgut, please!"

"Some Sang-Réal! Heavens, are you insane!" cried Vassilea, seeing you go up from the cellars with two bottles under each arm. "But what will your parents say?"

"Nothing, as usual: they are buried in their books!" had you retorted. "The courses at the University take so much and so much time and energy from them, because who, yes, who will be able to deliver the little people from the sterile dogmas of Faith if not Their Nobility and Their Bookish Knowledge ?!"

The Royal University of Katolis had only opened its gates fifteen years earlier, - it was the late King Harrow's father who inaugurated it. Still, its fame was already reaching every corner of the Pentarchy. Students were taught about everything, aside from dark magic, of course. Mathematics, geometry, geography, politics, history, philosophy, astronomy, ancient draconic, neolandian, evenerian, delbarian, durennian, rhetoric, logic, literature, theology, accounting. Even corpse dissection was taught in this place, despite being legalised only twenty years before- the Faith had uttered loud cries, and it was necessary to double the theology courses to calm their whinings.

"After the hollering that the Faith gave when the Toreha was printed," joked your lord of a father, "no one wants to suffer its snivelling ever again !"

"Everyone has their own copy and everyone can now interpret it in their own way!" added madam your mother. "Obviously, the Faith does not want to lose its grip on consciences!"

"The Faith lost it a long time ago already" snickered sir, "and despite all High Prelate Opeli's booing and hooing to the Council. On the contrary, even, that only demonstrates the truth: if It struggles, it is that it's dying! But, (name), my darling", he added conspiratorially, "won't you shout it all over the place, hm? You know how much displaying scepticism is frowned upon. "

Only the nobles had the privilege of teaching at the Royal University of Katolis, for the moment at least. On the actions took for the education of the little people, to lower the cost of paper and to improve printing techniques, invented some two hundred years earlier, returned the credit for the meteoric increase in the number of students. Even if most of them came from the bourgeoisie and the nobility, and even if the printing works were strictly supervised by a censorship council which limited as much as possible the dissemination of pamphlets and more or less fraudulent wisdom, it was inevitable that this storm of knowledge would trickle over each layer of the population, from the marquis in his castle to the boggy swamp. The Toreha will kill the Church, they said, from murmurs to pamphlets to late drinking in manors, and Human will kill the old Gods of Xadia ...

The nuns' choir continued its hymn in the triforium:

Mors, et vita in morte Fontes nos in deliberationibus

De veteris Dryadalis Xadia quidem apostolos luminis

Accipient in humanitate

Et propitius ero peccatis nostris

Et pascam eorum magicae

Vassiléa yawned to unhook her jaw:

"And then what idea you had of placing us in the last row!" she whimpered as the High Prelate Opeli piously licked a finger to turn a page of the Toreha. "I can't see a drop of it. As if ancient draconic wasn't enough..."

"It's not my fault that we arrived late," you whisper with dignity. "If you had stirred a little earlier, maybe we would be ..."

" You little liar," whispered Vassiléa. "Look at me all these splendid attires. It is surely not to honour the Holy Sources that you took all this trouble ... You have always disdained mass, like your bookworms of parents. Well, I grant you", she added, her eyes bright with mischief," having a job requires a lot of energy ... "

"It isn't even a real job," you protested, feeling the shame rising to your cheeks. "It's generosity, and it has absolutely nothing to do with it."

Vassiléa ignored you royally and whispered in the same mocking tone:

"It is not in the first row that you have the best view, but in the last…"

"I beg your pardon ?"

"… you are not at mass for a priestess but a priest…"

"Vassilea!" you squeaked as silently as possible.

No priest had ever seen himself in the Holy Faith of Pyrenees. The white habit had always been worn by women. If men could regroup in monasteries or abbeys, it would be forever impossible for them to say mass and to pronounce even a single parody of the sacrament. Unless, of course, the reform project discussed for years by the Conclave finally comes to an end, but given the Prelates mulish brains, that was not for the next day ahead.

"You are our soul, our hope and our salvation, Lost sources of Xadia," babbled Opeli far ahead under the stone vaults. "You who were generous enough to give us life and teach us forgiveness and mercy, may you forgive the arrogance of some black sheep and bad apples ..."

"… a divorced priest moreover," persisted Vassilea, "willingly perjury about the vow of chastity, decked out in two brats, dressed endlessly in black and not in white, versed in goety, dissection, the dark arts, spells, occult practices and hmmm, anatomy… "

" Blah, blah, blah, I can't hear anything, the sweet voice of the High Prelate lifts me up in the divine light of the Sources ... and then all that is part of his charm..."

" ... whose arrogant air makes him barely bearable to almost half the yard ..."

" Not even true..."

"… whose endless snoring invariably prevents the whole court from hearing mass ..."

" Vassilea!" you exclaim loud enough to attract a "hush!" imperious from this old cold-fish of Lord Thibalt, sitting in front of you.

"… and whose huge ivory cane that he drags everywhere," replied Vassilea when the gargoyle had turned, "most certainly serves to compensate for a little something."

You suddenly turned your head to your right. Fortunately, the handsome, oh, so handsome talker, who even in his snoring sleep could not leave those, oh, so concerned features, had heard nothing of it. His daughter, on the other hand, a frail brat about seven years old, stuck to her father, looked up from her enormous book and threw a glance at you and your companion, so cold that you both shivered.

"Dirty little mongrel of a chick-crow," you thought, and you tightened your silk mantilla around your carefully braided bun.

Rumours and speculations concerning the kinship of Lord Viren's two children (Soren, nine, and Claudia, seven) were rife at court. They had been assigned for example the High Prelate - she and Viren bickered with such ardour that it could not have happened something between these two. His legendary aversion to clerics added to the strict prohibition of the latter from carrying offspring only made the thing spicier: The Dove and the Crow, what a beautiful heading for a song! Amongst the candidates were also Lady Esmeraldine, because she had black hair and green eyes like Claudia and, as the Queen's servant, some contacts were far from improbable; Erichtoë, a luscious Durenian servant who was said to know something about dark magic; and many others ... Even Queen Sarai had not been spared by hearsay. You had just arrived at the court when this stupid idea had crossed your mind. In your eyes, there was no doubt that a passionate threesome stood at the top of power.

« I don't know where you get these wacky ideas from," your mother sighed when you told her about your suspicions, "because it's common knowledge that the know-it-all crow Lord Viren divorced just two years ago."

You had shrugged. This version was not very compelling. Or, perhaps mentioning the difficulties opposed by the Faith to this still new practice ... but that was not worth the salt of the love triangle.

"And then," continued your mother, "It is enough to look at the queen to see that she refrains from strangling our Grand Mage as soon as he pretends to approach his majesty."

"Precisely," had you insisted, "Is this not proof of bold jealousy between these three? The tension is, at the very least, overwhelming. They spend all their days stuck together. They've known each other for years. And the little prince gets along wonderfully with Soren and Claudia, and he has green eyes like her, and ... "

"Listen, my dear," sighed your mother again, for she spoke only with a sigh, "you better get down to something useful. Or upping your nose with a rubber hose, because in case it escaped your piercing gaze, which I very much doubt, I try to analyse this most boring theology work for my next conferences. "

"But come on, mother ..."

"Frankly," she continued without even listening to you because she never listened to you, "I thank the printing press every day for existence. I can hardly imagine the despair of the unfortunate copyist who had to spend whole years on this crystal-waving nonsense ... "

Whether their progenitor was the fairy queen, a whore from the Suburb of Pillows or a laboratory test tube, little Soren and Claudia were both brought up at court. Despite their promptitude to sneak into the kitchens to raid the jams, to giggle at jokes of a very bad taste or understood only by themselves and to enrage the castle's guards with their tricks; each of them was promised to more than prominent positions.

By the-Sources-knew what bewitchment, Lord Viren had even obtained a very express favour from Their Majesties, however renowned for their intransigence: Soren could miss Sunday Mass (a privilege that the whole court envied him) to participate in the training of the royal guards. Or to parasitise, depends on your allegiance. Claudia meanwhile was required to attend sermons - and as her father's daughter and rightful heir, did not listen to a word of it and always brought enormous books to pass the time. Without willing the fantasy as far as becoming their second mother, you would readily see yourself as a benevolent and affectionate but firm chaperone. A veneer of manners would not do them any harm, did you dream in the secret of your room, and then their father would undoubtedly be delighted to see them find back a semblance of balance.

"Love your enemies," announced the High Prelate far to the other end of the nave, "do good, and lend without hoping for anything. And your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the All-Mighty Sources, for They are good even for the ungrateful and for the bad. "

Her Holiness licked her finger again and turned a page of her copy of the Toreha. Someone in the audience yawned loudly. Several had begun to doze. Viren jumped, fell asleep again, snored more and Claudia horned a corner of her book.

You reached into your pocket and felt the silk of the honey candy bag. Without a doubt, Soren and Claudia would appreciate this little something special. It was a well-known fact that every child loved honey candies. Viren, on the other hand…

Your hand came to curl around the second gift. You did not have to dig your brains too hard to find it, this one: it was the magic oyster from which came out the few precious pearls that you had sown here and there during this memorable evening, two weeks ago ...

Of all the balls celebrating the arrival of spring, Lord Viren had deigned to present himself to only one. However, he distinguished himself by his ease. His tall stature and haughty manners frightened the dancers, but you had not been intimidated. Oh, you still had chills just by thinking of the way his arms tightly surrounded you, hugged you gently as he spun you in music and a storm of silk.

"You dance marvellously, my lord," you had extricated yourself.

"You too, madam."

Then, silence. You had the most considerable difficulty speaking, breathing and thinking while you were in the arms of the High Mage. Not to mention that you have to unscrew your neck to be able to look it in the eyes. I dance with him, he talks to me, touches me. You could perceive the warmth and the firm muscles of his long body through the black brocade.

"Are you still so charming, or is it my lucky day?"

"Is it your rule to speak while dancing?"

You were not going to let yourself be dismantled for so little. You get a new sense of ease in the rhythm of the flute, the viol and the tambourine before responding.

"Only if I consider my partner as worthy of this honour."

Oh, he was worth all the trouble in the world, actually. Particularly draped in this half-cape of black brocade stapled in purple, in this tunic embroidered with sand arabesques, which espoused its movements so gracefully. His beautiful grey eyes narrowed:

"You are too kind. In comparison, my ignorance makes me feel ashamed. I cannot even remember your name."

Had you been a sort of chippy, you would have taken offence and left him there, but you only managed to emit a charmed chuckle as the music sent you to rotate each on its own:

"Oh, your remarkable brain must simply take note of too many things essential to the prosperity of Katolis ..." You accepted his gentle hand around your fingers. "... to think of cluttering up such trivialities."

He laughed, visibly flattered. What a charming laugh he has, you thought.

"Imagine, madam, a demarcated space that you divide in half. You can always divide the two halves into two other halves, and so on."

You were well aware of this paradox. Your parents had bent your hear with it for years; but now that it was spoken in such a low voice, with such gallant inflexions, you found in it all the charms of the world. What could be more normal, coming from a dark mage, and therefore an expert in charms, bewitchments, spells and incantations?

"So this is how memory works, in your opinion: infinitely expandable?"

Viren drew you close to him, and you found that this slightly interested expression suited him perfectly.

"Would you be so fond of paradoxes, my dear ..."

"(name)," you confessed, and you felt yourself blushing even more.

He looked thoughtful, but the two of you jumped at the cry from the pastry buffet: "Hey, father! Try "Cumulonimbus "!". You looked over your partner's large shoulder and the dancing couples to see the two chick-crows, Soren and Claudia, who, spurting out a storm of jelly tarts crumbs, giggled and exchanged elbows.

"Uh, I beg your pardon me, my lord," you stammered, disconcerted, "but ... what did your son just say ?"

Viren then rolled his eyes in the most exasperated expression you had ever seen:

"Something stupid, I'm afraid."

You separated for a few measures before coming back into each other's arms. Oh, those severe features... you felt like his solid arm around your waist was about to leave you, for all your beautiful assurance had abandoned you. Dirty brats ... a pox on them and their incomprehensible bellowings!

"Madam, tell me something."

You thought you heard it wrong. "I beg your pardon, my lord?"

"Tell me something." he went on, in the satisfied tone of someone who had spared his little effect. "If what you say is true, I will give you the next dance. Otherwise, I will leave you there."

You were propelled on a small primitive candy pink cloud while the viol flew away in the treble. The magic of the Sky-Wing elves surged through your human veins, and that of the Star-Touch sparkled your eyes. It was one of your parents' favourite paradoxes. Viren made it easy for you. He rolled out the red carpet for you, he tore the breach apart for you. To believe that he really wanted to feel your hand pass through his well-groomed hair, caress his sharp cheekbone, flatter his so baroque beard, follow the outline of these oh-so-concerned eyebrows, pass the alliance around this ring finger…

Just as you were about to mischievously pronounce the magic formula "You are going to leave me there", the music abruptly slowed down and stopped. The dancers were already bowing, including yourself, and looking up, Viren looked at you with such a contemptuous air that you were left breathless. Oh, but what made me wait so long? you vexed yourself, watching his black half-cape fall gracefully as he walked away towards the-Sources-knew-where, probably towards the cheese buffet, or pray her Grace Sarai to honour him with a dance, or interrupt the last marvellous idea of his brats. He took my silence for hesitation and foolishness. Oh, I ruined everything ...

And today was the perfect opportunity to correct the situation.

Having taken great care to your hair - carefully twisted by your maid in a braided updo in elven fashion, your outfit - purple silks embroidered with red, gold brooch and bear arms, and your perfume - you had tried one half a dozen before setting your sights on a rose fragrance; in short, you had carefully put all the odds on your side.

Of course, you were under no illusions: your good looks were not your only asset, far from it. Lord Viren was known for his unconditional love of libraries, being buried in books very late at night to the point that he had lost the use of beds to prefer that of the oh so uncomfortable benches of the Sanctuary. So your hand caressed the little volume in your pocket with all the kindness in the world. Enigmas, paradoxes and insoluble problems, headlined the cover page. And, calligraphed just below by your quill pen: "except perhaps for you." You had hesitated with "except, for you, perhaps", or "for you, except, perhaps", and to finish off with a "my lord", which gave a choice: "except perhaps for you, my lord "," except, my lord, perhaps for you "," My lord, except, for you, perhaps "and "for you, my lord, except, perhaps.". Then you realised that the formula would probably be too full to suit the close friendship to which you aspired, which made you set your sights on the first attempt. A close friendship, and maybe more. You simply added your first name and tenderly blew on the still fresh ink. Just your first name: there was no doubt that the dance was still as vivid in his memory as it was in yours.

"The Sources teach us that love is given without expecting anything in return," babbled the High Prelate under the vaults once the nuns had finished their pious fourths, fifths and sixths, "and that one can't buy love. They brought Xadia out of nothing, overwhelmed it with their generosity and their benevolence, expecting nothing in return for the spread of this love and this ... this ... "

You were drawn out of your flowery thoughts by the rustling of unsuccessfully turned pages, followed by annoyed mumbles. You and Vassilea unscrew your necks together: far away at the other end of the nave, Opeli was fighting with her copy of the Toreha:

"This ... forgive me, my lords, but this page ..."

She licked her finger, pinched the paper, muttered insults to the fool who had used this new printing ink which made the vellum stick, removed her richly decorated copy from the varnished ebony lectern. In the audience, there were wonderings, whisperings, chuckling.

"Opeli, perhaps I can provide you some help…"

"No, your Grace, you, slurp, you are very kind, but ... but ..."

You risked a glance to your right. If Viren still hadn't quit his sleepiness, you found that Claudia was exceptionally agitated, all of a sudden. Her back was shaken with convulsions, and her little legs were frantic in the incense dust. Look at her fidgeting on her bench. It's as if she had the devil in her.

"Is it me or ... is she just dying of laughter?" you murmured, but Vassilea did not hear you, as busy as she was babbling with her neighbour in front.

Should I have the sleeper? You caught yourself thinking you might wake him up with a kiss. However, you were torn from your reveries by the sound of a cough that emanated from the other end of the nave. Increasingly puzzled glances were exchanged. People left their drowsiness, people quit their reverie, people stopped cleaning their nails or their noses. The concerned survey flew from look to look and from mouth to mouth. Voices and coughs rose under the vaults of the sanctuary. Some rose from their benches and gathered around the gaping High Prelate; however, Queen Sarai had removed her her hood, opened the collar of her cassock and started to give her massive pats on the back while His Majesty cried out to let her some space. The little prince started to cry.

"No, kof, sire, I assure you ... I swear that everything is, kof, kof, perfectly, huurng... perfectly fine!" assured the High Prelate, whose borborygmus intensified until nausea.

"Breathe, Opeli, just breathe, that's it! Oh, you, just move away, you scavengers !"

However, the movement began to gain assistance, including nuns. Useless prayers were muttered, inutiles advices were shouted. The benches and the triforiums began to bleat like the lambs from the Toreha. Half of them were standing, wringing their necks for a better view. The other, whether driven by the opportunity to seize or seized themselves by fear, rushed casually through the central alley and the aisles towards the portal of the sanctuary with one idea: be with the devil as soon as possible.

"(name), come on! Get up!" peeped Vassiléa, grabbing your shoulder. She was apparently part of the second category.

It would have been wise to follow her, but you were as if you were screwed to your bench. And this little chick-crow choking on laughter. Poison, did you understand. Poison on the very pages of the Toreha.

You bound from the bench and grabbed Viren's shoulder. He was the only sleeper who hadn't woken up.

"My lord, get up!" you bellowed. "We have to go!"

"What are you doing? Just drop him!" squealed Vassilea before joining the silk tidal wave.

Faced with Viren who continued to snore, you hesitated to give him a slap. Out of the corner of your eye, you saw Claudia suddenly calming down. This child is mad, you thought, stark raving mad. From the chick-crow's lips pulled out something strange, which you did not understand. Then her eyes opened on a purple glow. An abyss of purple. You jumped, wanted to silence her, but could only remain crucified on the spot. So that's what Dark Magic is. When, in Claudia's eyes, a void of darkness replaced the purple, making her look like a fly, you knew this was the end. The Romanesque portal of the Sanctuary was wide open, and daylight pierced the nave on all sides. There was no one left under the vaults. Except for the convulsing, gaping High Prelate, the royal family, yourself, Lord Viren and ... this little witch ...

You close your eyes and prepare to die. Ô Six lost Sources of Xadia. In the name of the Sky, the Sun, the Moon, the Stars, the Earth and the Ocean. Amen.

A few seconds later, you opened an eye.

"Ho!" resounded the voice of the High Prelate, whose inflexions no longer foreshadowed imminent death. "I'm finally breathing!"

You swivelled and watched their Majesties pick up Opélie, hair undone, the collar wide open, the silver tiara crooked and the hood in disorder, but the skin as white and smooth as usual. "May the Sources be praised -burp… ha!"

To the cry of surprise echoed a ridiculous sound ... but so characteristic.

"Crôaaa."

Then, silence.

"Is it ... a toad?" you heard. Her Grace Sarai sounded just as lost as you were.

You had a thrill of horror. You had a holy terror of toads.

The king did not reply. Opeli, back on her feet, watched the beast hopping on the pavement of the sanctuary.

"What is... Six Sources, I..."

Hup ! A second one bound out from her lips. This is but a dream, you told to yourself, your nails clenching into your flesh. Nothing but a very strange dream, and I'm about to wake up.

"What the fuck is that..." her Grace Sarai muttered, back to her old soldiery level of language.

The little royal mongrel bent down, trembling, and picked up one while Opeli was getting her clothes together with a frenetic hurry. "It's a toad, mommy."

No one said a word, except the beasts which were going on with their grotesque wanderings under the high vaults in the sepulchral silence. From jump to jump, the little gargoyles were sauntering under the great saints' stone eyes. The incense was struggling to hide the smell of carrion with rose from the kings asleep under the marble. The candle's tiny glims almost had something pathetic. The dawn's daylight was splinting through the vitrals and the portal wide open like a wound. It was drowning the pious penumbra in a chasm of white light. Those little monsters appeared only clearer.

The stones had echoed nothing but nun's canticles, ever, but neither the Sources nor the gigantic wrapped praying statues rose to smite the outrage. The minuscule blasphemers were jumping and croaking in the holy light with complete impunity.

"Crôa."

You took a few steps in the centre alley, towards the altar, but you stopped, unable to move forward.

King Harrow seemed to be about to open his mouth when two chuckles rose into the nave, very close to you, two high-pitched laughs, two children's laughs, joined by a third one, lower and more discrete. Apparently, Lord Viren had woken up... and was laughing with Claudia while the other crow-chick, Soren, arose from behind a pillar, spitting out all his lungs by dint of laughing. He was the one who laughed the loudest.

But wasn't he supposed to be paraziting the royal guards' training? you heard yourself thinking, while Opeli stammered, straightening her cassock's collar :

"Lord Viren, will you, at last, explain to me what's going on in there ?"

As he didn't answer, to busy to retain a laugh, she rose her voice :

"As if you weren't satisfied enough with disturbing the mass..."

She put her hand to her mouth, to her stomach, bent over in two: wasted effort. A third toad leaps again from her pious lads, redoubling the hilarity of the crows family. You were speechless. To see Viren laugh so bluntly, he whose features were known as nothing but deeply thoughtful, exasperated by the stupidity of others or at best the vaguely contrite or amused grin; that was at least as extraordinary as the presence of toads.

«Opeli, say something religious." suddenly said Sarai, to the astonishment of sane people.

"I beg your pardon?" Opeli said «, and a fourth beast came to complete the croaking concert.

The crows chortled again. The din through the transepts, the triforiums, the naves, the crypts, the chapels, it aroused so much and so much echo that it seemed sanctuary's walls were going to crumble, collapse and fall too.

"My lord!" intervened the queen, and her voice resounded so dryly in the nave that the laughter died immediately, "Would you be kind enough to explain to us the reason for this masquerade. That you invariably spend the whole mass snoring because you are not surprised by your own grandeur, we can accept; but I will not tolerate your preventing ... "

"Oh no, your Grace," he replied. He had risen all at once, to his full height, and had even engaged his mage scepter by banging it against the marble paving which resounded loudly under the vaults; you were amazed by the coldness dryness of his deep voice. "Believe me, I had no idea what was going on today. I swear."

"The word of a dark mage? The big deal - burp!" spat the High Prelate as, summoned by the concept "Word", a fifth beast came to join its comrades. The king glared at her, and she remained silent:

"In this case, how do you explain this masquerade?"

"Mascewhat?" repeated the blond chick-crow with a perfectly bewildered expression.

You suddenly found back all your senses and your reason. Your hand was raised, and your index finger was planted on Claudia, whose face was ravaged by a barely contained giggle:

"She did this!" you denounced, and the resonance of your own voice surprised you.

The look that Viren gave you pierced your heart.

A look to blast Justice herself.

Gazing around, you realised that even their Majesties were frankly disapproving. The betrayal was all the more burning. Here you were who found yourself making common cause with the sanctimonious clap-trap spitter...

Soren stood in front his sister, his fists clenched, ready to fight, but the little girl released the hand that her father had put on her shoulder:

"It was Soren's idea, but I am indeed the prime contractor!" she squealed in a tone of immeasurable pride. "Well, the powder on the book, it was me, I had read it in a novel! It took me weeks to finish this selenic powder, especially since it had to stick to the pages without being seen! "

Your gaze came to rest on the Toréha, which had fallen from the lectern to crash on the ground. "After the bawling with which the Faith stunned us when Toreha was printed two hundred years ago, no one wants to undergo its whining again. Everyone has their copy now, and everyone can now interpret it in their own way!" Although only a printed copy, this book was made according to the rules of art. The illuminations were each hand-painted. The cover alone, crimson leather inlaid with precious stones, was a real work of art. Most of the pages had fallen from the fall, and the glue would render the copy forever unusable.

You had never been very fond of books, but this truth shook you.

"And we also had to put some in the holy water stoup so that everyone receives a little!"

"Ah," muttered the mage, "so that's why you insisted that I dip my hands in it…"

"Yes, and then a spot of dark magic so the prank more would be even more credible -"

"A prank?" remonstrated the High Prelate. "A prank! I almost died, your Majesties, you are witnesses! This child tried to poison me! You will not tell me that I am over-principles!"

You nodded with firmness.

"These ... creatures are from the selenial-shadowed magic," Viren explained in a low voice as if he was lecturing some of complete bonehead, "commonly known as "moon magic", which places them under the seal of illusions. Not only visual ones but also tactile, olfactory and auditory."

He put his staff against the bench with a thousand precautions - the object did not echoed less loudly, then he hunched his endless spine and bent his knee to grab one of the little blasphemers, then straightened up and began to pat it with the palm of his hand:

"In other words, these toads are only the product of a gigantic collective hallucination, and the Your Holiness's convulsions are only the natural reaction of a human body solicited from within by primal magic. It was nothing but an illusion, my lady, which means that at no time were you in danger of death. "

A dismayed silence followed the declaration. The infamous beasts pursued their a capella which resounded under the pious crossheads of warheads. Never had they seemed so real.

You took a deep breath, wiped your hands in your fine gown, bend down in a silk frill and overcame your repulsion to catch one of those. The coldness and the roughness of the pustular skin, the fixedness of the globular eyes, the absence of muzzle, the greyish colour, the viscosity of the drool which flowed in your hand. By the Sources, what a horror ... a grimace of pure disgust distorting your features, you closed your eyes, then your fist, suddenly. You open your eyes, your hand: nothing.

Your empty palm was stared at, then the abandoned benches and triforiums as well.

The idea that the Sanctuary had been deserted, emptied and ridiculed by the fault of mere chimaeras was almost simply inconceivable.

No conversation, no essay, no pamphlet, no book or rant had ever laid bare such a decay. The printing might have dug its grave, but it was simply inconceivable that the collapse would take so little, so little ... A shiver ran through your spine. The Toreha killed the Church, and the Human killed the Sources.

Opeli put her hand to her mouth, bur nothing came out.

"However," said Viren, who still continued to caress his toad, in a softer voice, a fascinated and even admiring tone, "it is the first time in my life that I have seen such tangible illusions and - "

"You, you will have plenty others occasions to show off, but right now, stop this," interrupted Sarai as little Claudia displayed a smug smile of pride. "You two," she went on to the address of the two chick-crows, stop all this shi ... pandemonium. At once."

As if with regret, Claudia pulled out a collar from under her collar and pulled out a shrivelled toad leg from her bag.

"Wait a minute!" Opeli interrupted her incisively. "I hope you don't plan on using dark magic in here! "

"Well, madam," said Viren, "it's either that or you spend the rest of your life spitting illusions and chimaeras. Oh, silly me, that's already the case ..."

"I BEG YOUR PARDON?! -burps! ha, you dirty beast!"

"Crôaaaa!"

"Enough, both of you!" growled the king, in the tone of someone who felt the headache coming.

The endless squabbles of the High Mage and the High Prelate were an integral part of court life, and they were regarded with a particular mixture of fun and lassitude, a bit like watching a brat always laughing at the same joke. Today, however, did not seem in the mood to tolerate their tussles. His Majesty, moreover, had not finished:

"Among all that you could have offered your father," he belched in a tone where pierced like a kind of mischief, "did your choice absolutely had to fall on this farce?"

"Hmm?" said Viren, stopping to caress the toad, which landed very unsightly on the marble paving. "What did you say ?"

You suddenly remembered the weight clogging your pocket and bit your lips.

Viren frowned. Opeli would have proposed to him that he did not look more dazed.

"HAPPY BIRTHDAY, FATHER!" bellowed Soren, without taking into account the resonance of the sanctuary which made the audience wince.

"Did you enjoy the show?" asked Claudia, pulling on the velvet doublet. "You had a lot of fun, huh, right?" Then, as he didn't answer, "Did you ? Yes, you did, did you ? Huh? Huh? Huh, right?"

"Right, dad! Right! Dadadadadadadadadadad -"

Your hand tightened around the small book. Insoluble enigmas, problems and paradoxes, except perhaps for you.

"Dadadadadadadadadaaaaaad -." The croaks of toads and crows, they made quite a duet.

A true Requiem... and not only to your blended family dreams.

Your eyes turned to the High Prelate. She was just as flabbergasted as you were, judging by her stillness and her gaping mouth. The stone seemed to have swallowed her. Petrified. A new statue for the nave, you thought, holy, helpless, pious and terrified facing the march of Progress. This wasn't just the white dove reached by the toad's drool. This wasn't just some sort of priestess carrion over which crows would have a feast on among her fellows dead villagers. This was the terror of the woman of the sanctuary in front of the lead letters, of the silver tiara in front of the race of time, the terror of the priesthood in front of the changing souls.

As you pinged in a whirlwind of silk, perfume, incense, discomfiture and disarray towards the portal of the sanctuary, you heard his Majesty inquiring with all the good nature of the world:

"Maybe you could stop the illusion now?"

"Yes," added her Grace, "it seems to me that you had enough fun for today. Or, wait, maybe you can tinker us some illusion of High Prelate, now that you've broken this one ? "

"Sarai!"

"What? I'm not right? Look at that, darling, it's not moving anymore. Oh, Opeli, please shut that mouth, or you're going to attract flies. And then, come on, smile a little, hey ! It's not the end of the world !"

"Ah, well, it seems you also broke your father, here he is petrified on the spot. They pair well, aren't they? Viren, if I say "history book"," melting camembert" or "crème brûlée torched with whiskey", will you find back the use of your smile or your legs? Aaaah, there, you see!"

"Oh, what a happy, united family... Aaaaaaw, you are so cute when you are happy, Viren !"

"Actually, no, you should stop smiling, it becomes really unhealthy. "

"Crôa, crôa, crôaaa."

"Callum, drop this notebook and this pencil! And you two, stop with these toads, that's enough!"

The last thing you heard before closing the gate on the tomb of the Age of the Gods was the voice of Viren:

"Oh no, Claudia."

Then: "Leave them a little longer, will you?"

And there you go ! : D

Well, I warned you that it was a somewhat special Viren x reader ...

But, I mean, look at the scene where Viren takes power Napoleon style (the one where he is a thousand times sexier than all the scenes of Aaravos put together): everyone completely ignores Opélie to acclaim Viren the Savior ... Okay, everyone is terrified of the elves, all right, but that's not enough to ignore the Church, the law and traditions. There had to be some deeper reasons. Same for Harrow's communism, moreover, he is so enlightened for an absolute monarch of divine right that it can only come from an intellectual broth having macerated for decades, even centuries ... And then look all these huge libraries throughout the castle! Look at how nobody cares about Opeli throughout the series!

I hope you enjoyed the dance in the arms of the dark, tall and handsome advisor ;) and that seeing the Magefam reunited and happy put a little balm in your heart during this complicated period. Fluff, fluff: 3

Reviews are appreciated :3

#viren #opeli #viren x reader #fanfiction #tdp fanfiction #tdp world-building #tdp viren #reader #religion in TDP

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apocfetau · 6 years

Text

The Treasure of Castle McDuck

A/n: I’m sick of not doing anything with this random adventure, I’m not going to finish it up but I want to share it.

Word Count: 2032

Summary: Uncle Scrooge takes the boys and Donald to visit Castle McDuck to make sure everything is in order, but the quest is on to find the treasure of Sir Quackly McDuck once and for all.

The Treasure of Castle McDuck

‘So what’s going on?’ Donald asked.

Scrooge grumbled to himself. ‘We’ll find Penny at the castle.’ He said climbing up onto the cart and snatching the reigns from Donald who winced. ‘Better sit down, boys, I haven’t got time to waste taking it slow.’

The boys all settled down in the cart and Scrooge cracked the reigns. ‘He-ya!’

The horse started moving.

The scenery was beautiful, Huey gave a smile as he recorded it all.

‘Is that for Webby or for class?’ Louie asked calmly.

Huey gave a smile. ‘Both.’ He switched the camera off and let it hang by the strap around his neck. ‘It’s really something isn’t it?’

Louie shot him a look and then looked to the sleeping Dewey. ‘Yeah.’

Huey rolled his eyes. ‘So why aren’t you on your phone?’

‘No signal.’ Louie grumbled.

Huey gave a smile. ‘Ah perfect bliss.’

‘Dang blasted!’ The cart slowed to a stop and Scrooge lept to his feet. ‘Oi! What’s the big idea putting a toll-way on a country road?’

‘Visitors pay the toll-fee-‘

‘Visitor!’ Scrooge yelled leaping from the cart onto the horses back. ‘I am Scrooge McDuck! I own most of this land!’

‘Get out of here, you canna be-‘

‘Why I oughta-‘

Donald gave a sigh. ‘How long since you were last here?’

Scrooge looked around to him. ‘That’s not the-‘

‘Like these kids know what you look like.’ Donald said and he reached around to a bag in the cart. ‘Where’s that passport?’

‘Passport! Why I-‘

‘Ah, here it is.’ Donald said pulling out an incredibly old and battered looking book, he hopped down from the cart and went over to the boys. ‘That should clear it up.’

The boys flicked through the book and gulped. ‘Beggin’ yer pardon, Mr McDuck, we didnae know it was you.’

Scrooge gave a growl. ‘What’re these tolls for?’

‘Road maintenance, the rains dang near washed the road completely away.’

Scrooge grumbled.

‘How bad is it?’

‘I navigated through the Dakota Badlands, I can manage a road.’

‘You might, but will the cart?’

Scrooge dropped down again on the cart and scowled.

‘Cain’t rightly say what all the road’s like, but the main road is frightfully boggy…’

‘Just like when I was hauling peat back in the day. Now open the damn toll-way.’

The two boys rushed to either side of the road and pulled the logs apart.

Donald barely had time to get back on the cart before Scrooge got the horse moving.

‘Geesh, the castle isn’t moving anytime soon, Uncle Scrooge.’ Donald said.

Scrooge shot Donald a glare. ‘No, but I’m not paying that boy any more to maintain the castle until I see how he’s been keepin’ it.’

Donald gave a sigh. ‘I should have guessed as such.’

‘Of all the insolent…’ Scrooge began griping again and Donald looked around to consider the boys, Dewey was awake now and Huey had stopped recording again, wincing.

Scrooge reined the horse in and leapt from the cart. ‘C’mon boys… come meet the family.’

They all hopped down from the cart and followed him through the cemetery, listening to Scrooge recite the family history, one grave at a time.

Dewey led the way through the castle, Huey taking a recording as they went. ‘This is amazing!’

‘Hey, what’s this?’ Dewey asked stopping. ‘It looks like someone swung a pickaxe here.’

‘Yeah… like they were trying to mine the wall.’

‘Let’s keep looking.’ Huey said. ‘If anything else we’ve got evide- Dewey look out!’ Huey rushed forwards dropping his camera on the ground and trying to fight the man who had grabbed Dewey.

‘Grab em…’

‘Hey! Let go!’

‘Run Louie!’

Louie did a take of the situation, three guys… no way was he strong enough to take them on, he grabbed the camera as he backed away, being sure to capture their faces on the film and then he ran, camera in hand back the way they had come. ‘Uncle Donald!’ He yelled out loudly.

‘I’m paying you to maintain the place not let it collapse underneath ye!’

‘Uncle Donald! Uncle Scrooge!’ Louie showed up panting for breath.

‘Oh there you are, lad… where are the other two?’ Scrooge considered him and Louie shoved the camera into his hands. ‘Three guys… looking for something…’

Scrooge turned his glare on the man. ‘Friends of yours?’

‘No sir, no idea what the lads talking about.’ Scrooge scowled and rewound the video finding the spot that showed three people and he held it out. ‘Who are they?’

‘They be the MacWarrens, never would expect this of them.’

Scrooge glowered at him. ‘Alright you listen here… if you’re in any way involved in this you’ll be paying back every shilling I’ve given you, go fetch the police.’

‘Aye sir.’ And away he scurried.

Scrooge turned and started forwards passing Donald the camera. ‘Come on.’

‘What are you kids doing here, anyway? Ghost huntin’?’ A bark of a laugh filled the air.

‘Don’t be stupid, no one’s seen any of the ghosts since the last McDuck died.’

Dewey mumbled against the gag.

‘What was that?’ The gag tied around his beak was undone.

‘Whoever told you that was wrong.’

‘Told us what?’

‘That Scrooge is dead.’

‘Scrooge?’ They looked between them. ‘Never heard of him.’

‘Talk about being rude, you break into a man’s ancestral home and don’t know his name?’ Huey said.

‘Ain’t no one living here.’

‘No but this is his castle, and he’s going to be really upset that you’ve kidnapped two of his nephews.’

‘Ah shut up.’ A slap of a glove on Dewey’s face made him wince but then he was gagged again. ‘We ain’t got time for this rubbish.’

Huey gasped and was gagged again, the three men went back to using their picks on the wall.

‘Pick up your sword boy! To arms!’

‘I told you-‘ The man looked from Huey to Dewey. ‘Alright, who said that, come on out!’

‘Could be the third one.’

‘He’s tied up you fool, how can he fight?’

‘Like a McDuck!’

Dewey considered his position and focussed on the situation, one hit into the ancient stone, this was his family’s ancient home being vandalised, another hit into the stone, he’d been kidnapped, slapped in the face, anger was filling him… A third hit into the stone, and they were going to keep doing this, for years and years, demolishing the entire castle one stone at a time for some long-lost treasure.

Huey mumbled next to him, trying to calm him down.

This was his family’s treasure in his family’s home, and they were going to keep on searching, this wasn’t the last of them… until the treasure was found… some stupid decision this had been! He adjusted, the ropes weren’t too tight around his wrists.

He squirmed silently slipping out of the ropes and ungagging himself before he undid Huey’s ropes. ‘Go get Uncle Scrooge.’ Dewey whispered.

‘Dewey, there’s three of them, you can’t take them all.’

‘I won’t have to if you hurry.’ Dewey hissed back.

Huey frowned and ducked away, and Dewey looked around.

He rushed over to a suit of armour. ‘May I?’ He muttered not expecting a response.

‘Aye, lad.’

He took up the sword and ran forwards with a shout bringing the sword down and the pickaxe was sent flying from the man’s hands.

‘eh? What the-‘

Dewey pointed the sword tip at the man’s chest. ‘Drop the picks or so help me.’

‘Ain’t that cute, the kid thinks he’s a toughie.’

‘Listen runt… there are three of us, and one of you.’

Dewey felt anger course through him, three?

‘Three of you? Bah, this boy is a McDuck through and through, he can take on an army!’

Dewey growled and spun around, bringing the sword down again with the full force of his anger, the sword went right through the middle of the pick splitting it clean in two.

The three stared at the remains and Dewey leapt forwards at the third man, the final pick clattered to the floor as the man was toppled backwards the sword pressed to his throat.

‘Get off of him! You little midget!’

Dewey used the hilt of the sword to knock the man out and he leapt to his feet swinging the sword.

‘Uncle Scrooge!’

He rushed over. ‘Huey? Where’s Dewey…’

‘He… said… to… come…’ Huey pointed down the stairs. ‘Too many stairs.’

Scrooge took the stairs three at a time the others following behind him.

He leapt down and stared around, three grown men, out cold on the ground and Dewey standing between them, he smiled slightly before rushing over. ‘Dewey? Are you alright?’

Dewey looked to him, and gave a slight smile before he passed out.

Scrooge caught him and lowered him to the floor checking for any injuries, besides a cut on the side of his beak Dewey was unharmed, Scrooge ruffled Dewey’s hair. ‘Atta boy, lad, take it easy now.’

‘There were these voices.’ Huey explained. ‘We all heard them!’

Scrooge sat silently next to Dewey who was sleeping on the lounge.

‘One of them told him to pick up a sword, and-‘

‘Oh come on, Huey, are you hearing yourself?’

‘I swear…’

‘Enough.’

‘What were they after anyway?’ Louie asked.

Scrooge gave a sigh.

‘Treasure.’ Everyone looked to Dewey. ‘In the wall.’

‘Is… he okay?’

‘Who told you about that, lad, do you know his name?’

‘Sir… Quackly.’

Scrooge leapt to his feet leaning over Dewey. ‘Is he with you now?’

‘Yes.’

‘Can he hear us?’

‘Yes.’

‘Uncle Scrooge?’ Louie asked.

‘Shh…’ Scrooge hissed waving them off. ‘Sir Quackly, this has to stop, the castle’ll be torn apart if this goes on.’

‘Then find it, lad, find it.’

Scrooge furrowed his brow and cursed silently. ‘Not even a hint?’

‘’Whence did thou become so impatient, Scrooge?’

‘I have to start with something.’

‘A challenge to you all then, the one who finds the treasure owns it.’

Scrooge looked around. ‘Alright.’

Dewey picked up the pick and walked forwards, somehow, he knew what he was looking for.

‘Am I cheating?’ Dewey asked quietly as he walked down a set of stairs. ‘What do I want treasure for anyway?’

He rounded a corner and gazed at the wall.

‘Sir Quackly, how did you get yourself into this situation?’ Dewey wondered as he lodged the pick into a tiny crack in the mortar. ‘Like seriously? How did you get into this situation? Who seals themselves in a wall? Treasure or not…’ Dewey froze. ‘Right, if Uncle Scrooge ever goes missing check the money bin thoroughly.’ He commented to himself before giving a smile. ‘I suppose it’s one way to be remembered.’ He continued levering the stone slowly out of place. ‘I should probably figure out how I’m going to top that one.’ Dewey said. ‘It’ll take me all my life to get that ending right.’

There was a chuckle of amusement. ‘Don’t be so certain, lad… Life throws many unexpected adventures one’s way.’

Dewey gave a grunt of effort and the brick fell away and Dewey started work on another brick, with a great rumble the wall collapsed, and Dewey leapt away… sure enough, collapsed in a suit of armour was a skeleton and a large chest was in his hands.

Dewey coughed on all the dust in the air as he dropped the pick and drew forwards. ‘Well, there it is, Dewey Duck treasure hunter strikes again.’ He tried to lift the chest. ‘Or not.’ He grumbled. ‘I need to get stronger if I’m going to keep finding treasure.’

‘Bless me bagpipes, you found it.’

Dewey looked around and gave a shrug. ‘It was actually rather obvious, this wall jutted out unlike the rest of the walls in the castle.’

Scrooge looked amazed.

‘Tell you what, Uncle Scrooge.’

Scrooge looked to him.

‘You can have the treasure, just leave me the castle.’ Dewey folded his arms with a smirk.

Scrooge considered him.

‘What am I going to do with treasure?’ Dewey asked calmly.

Scrooge came forward and opened the chest. ‘Alright then.’

‘Well, what do you make of the lads?’

‘They’ll do us proud.’

‘Aye.’

#ducktales #scrooge mcduck #huey dewey and louie #DonaldDuck

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scotianostra · 2 years

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On 22nd July 1298 William Wallace and the Scottish army lost a major battle at Falkirk.

After the defeat of the English the previous September, Longshanks decided to lead his army to Scotland himself this time, the force that he took with him was significant, perhaps 2000 knights and men–at-arms and almost 15,000 footmen. Wallace had at first not intended to meet the English in battle, and indeed it would appear he outmanoeuvred Edward. Instead of fighting him he sent most of his men to attack Carlisle.

However, by 22nd July Edward had succeeded in confronting Wallace on the field of battle. It is possible that Wallace was persuaded to attack the English because they were exhausted from the marching and were short of food. Equally it is possible he had been goaded into attacking by the nobles of Scotland, who felt it was unchivalrous not to fight the English.

At first glance the battlefield looked like a positive position for Wallace. He placed his men in three circular schiltrons facing the enemy. His archers were positioned in between the schiltrons to protect them from English archers, and his cavalry were on each flank, to protect his archers from being swept away by an English charge. If all went badly, the Scots could melt back into the woods behind and disappear.

There was a lot of confidence in the Scots army. They had been training throughout the winter months; they knew their positions and what to do in the attack. The Scots bowmen, despite suggestions to the contrary, were every bit as good as their English counterparts, many of them armed with longbows. They were just outnumbered.

Similarly, the Scots knights and men-at-arms were considerably outnumbered by their opponents, but they were well positioned. Wallace’s men, although outnumbered, held the defensive position: they were dug in and protected by stakes driven into the ground, and a boggy morass in front of them. So what went wrong?

The English cavalry attacked from both flanks at the same time. The Scots cavalry were unable to stand against the superior numbers, and they were defeated so quickly it gave rise to stories that they simply fled the battlefield. However, Fiona Watson suggests that the nobles fled so quickly in order to be able to fight at a later date. The English knights then attacked the schiltrons but were unable to penetrate the thick wall of Scots spears. However, the Scots archers didn’t have any protection and were quickly killed or scattered.

Unable to actually break the Scots formations, the English knights withdrew a little, waiting for their foot soldiers to catch up. With no archers of their own to counter the English longbowmen, the schiltrons were forced to weather a barrage of missile fire. The stakes they had dug into the ground made manoeuvring impossible.

As the numbers of dead and dying Scots increased, the survivors couldn’t maintain their schiltron formation. Finally the English knights charged again. This time there were too many gaps in the spear wall and the Scots were crushed. Thousands of Scots died, including Sir John de Graham, William Wallace’s good friend and Sir John Stewart of Bonkyll, who was in command of men from Argyll and Bute, including the Scottish archers, the “Men of Bute” held him in sich high regard, that when he fell and lay dying on the battlefield they died, to a man protecting him.

Wallace meanwhile had to be dragged from the battlefield, returning afterwards to personally carry de Graham to his burial place.

In his own mind his reputation was in ruins, Wallace resigned as Guardian of Scotland shortly after.

If you are in Scotland why not come along to the Battle of Falkirk commemoration tomorrow.

The following is on the memorial cairn at Callendar Park

Falkirk Remembers

Only Fakirk’s lonely Battlefield

Scots patriots did stand

One thought alone was in their minds

To defend their precious land

Their cause was just and noble

Liberty for allTo beat the proud usurper

Or together they would fall“

I’ve brought you to the ring” he cried Now dance the best you can

And dance they did all those brave men

Heroes to a man Their bravery was not enough

Their lives outnumbered so

But those whom some relied upon

From the battlefield did go

Each man died a hero

Though this fight they never won

For all who died that bloody day

We thank you Scotland’s sons

#Scotland #scottish #medieval history #medieval warfare #Battle #Battle of Falkirk #history #sir john de graham #sir William Wallace #Sir John Stewart

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progeny-of-the-fury · 6 years

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The Truancy of Guillemont | Part II

Log date: 11/27/17

OOC Note: The text in these logs are strictly for the reader’s enjoyment. Anyone using the knowledge displayed within this text without the participant’s knowledge risks the potential of blacklisting from future communication and roleplay. Please do not meta-game!

Tags: @darkknightsbread @pom-friend

A moogle is a strange creature. Tiny, plump, round, with a glowing pom up top and wings out its back. Innocent, quirky; a moogle is not good at a great many things. Their size does not lend to physical labor or combat, unless a great deal of aether is expended, and their eye for quality and crafting is but barely tapped into. One thing a moogle excelled at, outside of playing pranks on others, was getting a letter where it needed to go. And this particular letter found its way to Hikari, a woman formerly known as Uyraies, no matter where she was. The language within was rather urgent, only scarcely detailing that the De'bayle House was unable to find where Sir Guillemont was, and that we requested her presence to speak on the matter...

Denz and Adelise took the time away from their perusing of his study to meet with Hikari, while Astrelle continued piecing the parts together.

Standing beside her cousin, Adelise held her typical cold stare. She did not know this woman, nor was she very close to Guillemont. Even still, they were her family and she was here to find him. And they would find him, no matter what it took.

It wasn't all that difficult, moogle or not, to find Hikari if you knew what you were looking for. The persistent glow of her lantern shield gave her away from a malm off, even through the thick haze of the boggy air. With her letter clutched in one hand, Hikari trudged up the steps to the camp overlook. Her hair was shaggy and oily, unwashed and poorly kept. Her eyes were sullen; shy, nervous, and distant, even as they rose to search for a familiar face. Her armor was in poor condition and she was absolutely caked in muck, so thick that you couldn't even tell what color her boots used to be.

In contrast to the woman's tattered look, the two knights stood pristinely beneath the glow of the aetheryte. One of the knights would have a familiar silhouette, Denz's armaments taken after his brother. Perhaps a hopeful attempt to remind everyone why they here, or simply a thoughtless ploy to accidentally confuse Hikari. They stood, waiting for any sign of the woman, before her arrival hailed a small wave from Denz.

Hikari Inamoto freezes like a doe in a clearing when she sees the familiar shape of what she thinks is Guillemont. She stares, trying to decide if it's really him, shuffling forward on one foot until he waved to her. She sprinted towards the two, her face lighting up, until she realized something was amiss and stopped short. Her dark eyes flitted up and down Denz's form before her expression fell. "...You're too tall."

Adelise was almost honoured until she realized the the woman was definitely not referring to her. Sighing out an exhale, she glanced off in some small embarrassment.

A light chuckle rumbles through the helmet, before a hand came up to push up the visor. Blue eyes looked back at the woman, tilting his head. "Aye... I do not think we'd ask you to come out here to meet us if I were otherwise,” Denz says out.

"...Oh..." Hikari laughs, just once, but there's not much enthusiasm behind it.

Denz cleared his throat, gesturing to the woman beside him * "Have you met mine cousin, Adelise? She has joined us but a few months prior, been with us through some trying times."

"S...sorry. From...a distance, you looked just like..." Hikari stammered.

"Most... caused by me..." Denz added flatly.

Reaching hands up to unclasp her helm, Adelise respectfully removed it to expose her face. With it, long umber tresses came pooling out and toward her waist. "A pleasure," she remarked in a frigid tone.

"U...uhm. No." One mud caked hand raises to pull back some of her dirty hair. "...No, I haven't. I don't think." Hikari attempted a meek smile, lifting a hand in an offer to shake, but on a second glance at herself, she retracted it and bowed her head down in greeting instead. This woman was a mess.

"Aye. Our house has taken up new colors and Guillemont's armor was a fine model to take inspiration from." Denz waved a hand for them to follow him beneath a nearby canopy. "Before we turn to the main topic, have you kept well? You were under Father Salem's 'care' last we spoke, yes?"

Dipping her head toward Hikari, Adelise offered her a stone-hard expression. Eyes following the man as he walks off, Adelise glances back toward the woman before turning to walk herself.

Denz pulls off his own helmet as they settle under the cover, placing the plate object on the barrel next to him.

Over the Adelise’s shoulder, her blue wyvern sat perched dutifully. Watching, its deep gaze was nearly as piercing as the woman's he sat on.

"I--" Hikari paused. "...Uhm. I was, for a short time. Before I left for Yanxia. I've..." She pauses, biting her lower lip. "...somehow I felt m...more at home...back here."

"More at home here?" Adelise questions aloud. "Are you perhaps of mixed culture?"

"It's been. Uhm...it's been...a...strange time..." Hikari murmurs.

A plated finger came up to rub the side of Denz’s head, wondering if that was appropriate to ask.

A light of quiet dread lit up Hikari’s eyes for a moment. "...W...well, yes. Uhm. But...that..." She trails off, crossing her arms. Her filthy fingernails pick at the ties on her gauntlets. "B...but. Uhm. You can't...you don't know where Guillemont is? I...I visited him before I left..."

Adelise accepts the woman's hesitance for not wanting to discuss the subject, respecting that and not prying further. "Did you now? It was brought to my attention in the past two sennights that his room was vacant and his fish and plants dead."

"T...two..." She looks to Denz for confirmation.

"Yes..." Adelise’s head dips in some shame, "I knew very little of my cousin, but what I did know of him, he seemed rather disheveled.. So I did not think too much of this, I figured it was normal. That was an oversight of mine, that is unforgivable. But now is not the time for self-pity."

Denz nods his head. "Aye, two weeks, if not more that he has been gone. Beyond myself and our manservant, it is my knowledge you were the only other person who had visited him." Denz set his lips, trying not to sound blaming in his tone. "Do you know where he is?"

"N...No." Hikari shakes her head. "Since...since I came back from Doma, I haven't...I haven't really seen anyone at all… There...there wasn't any sign of where he had gone? And he left...he left his armor? His sword?"

"There are a few leads, musings, directions that we're being pointed in, though none of them are good. And no, he took nothing within when he left,” Denz recounted.

Beneath the dirt on Hikari’s face, the color drained away from her flesh. "Y...you don't...he wouldn't..."

"Wouldn't what?" Denz didn't even lead her on yet with their own clues collected.

“H...he wouldn't disappear someplace to do...uhm...to do something...to...you don't think..." She couldn't even bring herself to finish her thought, huddling into herself. Her chin lowered to her chest, the edge of her palm resting against her forehead. She trembled where she stood for a moment.

"We are unsure. Our recent leads have only shown us that he has taken a rather passionate interest in Kin- Voidsent." Adelise adds.

Hikari lifts her head again and blinks, eyes glistening from the formation of tears that hadn't yet fallen. "Voidsent?"

Denz blinks in surprise. He had always known the woman to be a tad awkward and quiet, but this was clearly something afflicting her emotionally. He gently went to put a hand on her arm, and gesture to the crate next to the name. "Uyra-" He clenched his face for a moment. Wrong name. "High-kari. Do you know -anything- that could help point us in the right direction? Our manservant was hesitant to say, but he saw Guillemont's behavior akin to that of a man possessed."

Hikari Inamoto shakes her head, struggling to keep herself together as she sat. "...No. I mean. He...Guillemont w...was pretty much always interested in...uhm...the darker side of things. At least, uhm...at least he always has been in the time that we've been friends...I don't...I..." Her face contorted, eyes squinting shut. She rested her elbows on her knees and bent forward, putting her head in her hands. "I-I sh...should have n-never have even left. I knew h...he was...having such...such a hard time..."

Denz looked at Adelise, eyebrows furrowing in pity for a moment, before crossing his arms in thought, musing to himself.

"You cannot berate yourself over this, Lady Hikari," Adelise affirms in a stern tone. "It will not fix what has happened, and it is not your fault. It is more his family's responsibility than yours, and we have all failed him. Even more so, it is his responsibility. But thinking on that will not bring him back."

"But I knew he sh...shouldn't have been left alone like that. After...after his arm was injured, he was so..." Hikari pauses, "If he...he didn't know what to even do with himself. Or how to live anymore...if he..."

"Did he tell you this as well?" Adelise asked with a narrow stare toward Denz.

"B...being a soldier was the only life he knew,” Hikari says quietly.

"He was a man bedridden by his wounds. I've been there as well, so I cannot be at fault for not thinking this would be the outcome." Denz shrugged his arms."He was studying history and magic, so he kept himself busy."

Hikari Inamoto sniffs an ugly sounding snort, smearing her face in whatever the cleanest part of her arm was.

"So he had told both of you, that he lost his will for life?" she asked incredulously. Shaking her head, Adelise exhaled through her nostrils akin to a scalekin. "There is nothing that can be done about this now, other than that we look for him. Next time either of you are told a person has lost their will, never leave them in that state without informing someone," she chides.

"H...he didn't...he didn't explicitly say..." Hikari began.

"Going missing, is the most beneficial of these evils. We are lucky to not have walked into his room to find him hanging!"

"I...I tried to..." Hikari flinches, drawing her lips into her mouth.

"Not everyone can help talk someone out of such a mindset, Lady Hikari," Adelise calms her tone, "but it is important those close to him be made more aware of the potentially deteriorating state he is in." Adelise sighs, rubbing her thumb and index to the bridge of her nose. "This is beside the point now though. What is important now is our strides in finding him. Did he not offer you any potential leads to his whereabouts?"

Denz furrows his eyebrows at Adelise. "Cease your chastising. It is getting us nowhere." He looked sidelong at Hikari. "You do not understand Guillemont as we have seen him. This is different, so we could not have foreseen this."

Motioning up a hand, Adelise held a dull expression, "already done, De'bayle," she remarks flatly.

Hikari shakes her head, not seeming at all reassured by anything Adelise had to say to her. When Denz speaks, however, she takes a breath to try to get a hold of herself again. "...No. I don't know where he could have been. I, uhm. I told him that he could still...still fight if he got to be skilled with magic, or he could become a trainer for new soldiers..."

"He was looking to investigate Red mage ruins in Gyr Abania." Denz shook his head. "From where I was taken, he is not there. The last bits of reading he seemed to be dwelling in were rituals and methods of summoning Voidsent."

"...Wh...what...uhm...what was that you said before about...s...someone said he looked like a man possessed?" Hikari asked.

"Our manservant, Gaspard. He was feeding Guillemont books and tomes on various nature to him, something he had taken to in his state. He would go through treatises and books within days and request more." Denz shrugs his arms. "Not exactly like Guillemont, but with nothing better to do..." He shakes his head. "I trust his words that Guillemont was not himself in those days. He was the one closest to him in his handicapped state."

Hikari listened, then adding, "Wh...when he got injured, do you think something else happened to him?"

"He was crippled by a Captain of the Skulls, those conscripted Ala Mhigans fighting for the Garleans. There was nothing but brute force behind the man, and no cursed weaponry involved anywhere. We checked." Denz stated.

Hikari Inamoto squints and wrinkles her nose, trying to think. "Was there...was there anything that he had taken with him when he left? A map, a book, an artifact, anything?"

Denz shook his head. "I don't know." He reached into his back pocket, taking out something he probably shouldn't have taken with him. It was a small silver medallion, a copper inlay of an eye in the center. It looked cheaply made and one of many, yet still seemed... off. He hands it over to her.

Adelise simply stood watching the interaction for the time being.

Hikari Inamoto blinks at the medallion. "Oh. That's..." She takes it in her hands, holding it over her lap. "I helped him dig for this. Early on when we met. He, uhm. He hired me to come along with him."

"It must be something precious to him then, if you two were close. That he would leave it behind..." Adelise taps the side of her fingers to her chin in thought.

Denz looks down at it carefully. "What is it?"

Hikari frowns shaking her head. "It's...an artifact." Clearly. "I don't remember what exactly it does or what it was supposed to do. It's been so long since then." Her thumbs run along the sides of the medallion, and she turns it around a few times in her hands. "I think I remember he had been contracted by someone else to search for it, but he must have...it must have fallen through, or not been the right thing they were looking for, if he still had it after all this time. I don't really remember m...many more details than that."

Denz nods his head as she speaks. Now they were making progress. "I need the name of the contractor, and the location where you two went searching."

"I...I can't remember the name, but if Guillemont keeps all of his letters or...or records of leves he takes...uhm...th...though I don't know why he...well, maybe, uh...tax purposes? I think you're supposed to...I'm not actually sure on that..." Hikari stops to consider. "B...but I remember exactly where we were digging."

Denz nods, holding out his hand for the medallion. "Alright. Adelise." He looked sidelong at his kin.

"It was in the Belah'dian ruins,” Hikari adds.

"Then that is where we will look," Adelise says firmly. "Shall we make haste there now? Or plan for an expedition there?"

Denz takes back up the medallion, pocketing it. "I'm going to question the Adventurer's guild for jobs regarding Belah'dian ruins. Most likely contracted in... Ul'dah." Denz says this with a bit of a sour tone. "I'm not keen to leave her in this state. Could you take her back to the house? Help see her cleaned up? If nothing else, Guillemont would be appalled if we simply left his close friend like this."

"Indeed. You will be coming with me, Lady Hikairi," Adelise remarked in more an order than a request. "I can see you are feeling a bit... lost yourself. Whether my cousin had requested it or not, I would not have left you like this."

"I...I don't remember if the job was one that was contracted through the Guild or not..." Still covered in mud, unwashed and sullen faced, Hikari looked between the both of them. "...Wh...what are you talking about? I'm...uhm. I'm j...just fine. I-I don't want to make...to be any trouble..."

His eyes cut to her harshly, perhaps mimicking Adelise's icy glare. It was not negotiable.

"Not a very convincing argument, my Lady," Adelise adds lamely. "If we thought you were trouble, we would not take you with us."

Hikarl wilts and mumbles out a tepid, "okay."

The knight loses his look quickly, placing a hand on her arm. "We'll find him, Hikari." With that, Denz nods to Adelise and curtly spins about to leave, heading southward... Until he ran back to collect his helmet.

Adelise had securely fastened her helm to her belt, "I will be your escort this evening, my Lady," she offers her an arm, "shall we?"

Hikari carefully extends her arm to Adelise, abashedly wiping some of the grime away from her hand first. She nods wordlessly.

The young woman hardly seemed to mind the Highlanders filth as she simply went about leading them forward.

The rest of the night came with a great deal of conversation. And piqued interest...

#The Dragon & the Hare #Journal #The Truancy of Guillemont

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