dustinzgirl
Mod of Awesome
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OK there is another version of this floating around somewhere, but for those of you who have read it before you will notice that I have made quite a few changes. I know this is long, but this is the first chapter and I couldn't think of a good place to break it off.
It had not been a night of rest for the young Lord Bartholomew. He had risen well before dawn and found himself in the courtyard, practicing with his sword. Lord Bartholomew was young still by any standards. Battle had not yet hardened his face, but he was strong and thick nonetheless. The boy had been raised in the shadow of his father, a well respected and feared warrior who had guided his son with a quick and heavy hand that had been just as quick to praise the boy as to whip him. Bartholomew gripped the hilt of his sword, the thick metal and inlaid rubies were cold against his sweaty hand.
As dawn came, Bartholomew remembered the last day he saw his father.
"Ho there, boy, where are you going?" Lord Drake asked from his horse, his face darkened by the bright summer sun behind him.
"With you Pa, of course." Bartholomew tried to climb on the massive war horse and his father smiled, reaching out a hand.
"Your mother will have my head if I let you go boy." His father used a gauntleted hand to rub his black moustache. "Besides, this war has no place for a boy who can barely get on his steed."
Bartholomew sat up straight in his saddle, adjusting his chain mail. "You went on campaigns when you were half my age Pa."
"True son, but that was a different time, and the enemy not so great." The lord leaned over, clasping the boy's shoulder. "Besides, I had four younger brothers who stayed and watched over your grandmother. You can't leave women to their own devices boy. Gaia knows what they would be up to."
"There's the house guard that is what they are for." Bartholomew almost pouted, realizing the trap his father had set. Go and leave the women with no protector if he did. It was an unfair play on the boy's pride.
"Bah, they are not worth a spit, and you know that." The armoured man leaned across his horse and gave his son a hard hug. Lord Drake undid the saddle strap, too quick for his son to notice. "But you are brave boy, I'll give you that much. If you can stay on your saddle you can come."
Bartholomew, at fifteen years old, found himself staring into his father’s hard dark eyes. There was warmth of pride and strength in Lord Drake’s eyes. Bartholomew had never felt so proud, so adult. He shook away the tears that were forming in his own eyes, and saw-much to his surprise- father wipe a tear from his scarred cheek.
The powerful lord gave a last smile to his son, and kicked up his horse without a word or a backward glance as Bartholomew kicked his own steed, not intending to be left behind and miss the greatest battle of his young life.
The saddle fell away, and Bartholomew tumbled to the ground, almost face first. He pounded his fist into the earth, and watched his father join the armies outside the open gate.
That was his last memory of his father, watching the man ride to his army, never giving another glance to his son. Bartholomew could never forget how the armour sparkled in the sunlight, the horned helm bobbing atop the massive steed, and big green flags wavering in the sun, carrying his father to war and death.
The bright sun had not lifted Bartholomew’s spirits. Lord Bartholomew found himself in a particularly foul mood as he stomped from the courtyard and to his study. It was well that the servants recognized his frustration and, in the manner of many castle servants, kept themselves silently invisible. Bartholomew chose to ignore the whisperings of his ill temper that started just after he passed them. Gossipers, the lot of them.
"Bartholomew!" Lady Theodora, cried out as she walked in his study, trailed by Lord Bartholomew's elder sister. "Set your maps and counting aside for now, son." The woman sat in the large chair opposite Bartholomew, her gold and green gown embroidered with a multitude of small, intricate vines and flowers. She fanned her face with an equally designed silk fan, but the look on her face was nothing short of abrupt and almost, Bartholomew thought, condemning. “You have not chosen a bride yet, son.”
“Mother, please. There is more at hand than my choice of a wife.” Bartholomew grunted.
“I know you are preparing another campaign east. Tell me, do you really think you should leave without a seed to carry on?”
“Mother, not now!” Bartholomew shouted, his curled fist thudding onto the table top. A vial of ink spilled over and he uttered a curse.
“You are sixteen years old now, Bartholomew. That does not mean you are a man and it does not give you permission to use such language in my presence. Secondly, young man, it is our tradition that you be married before you ride off to war. Boys do not go to war, men do.”
"Listen to our mother, Bart." Esmeralda said, her younger son situated on her hip. Unlike her mother, the noble daughter wore a plain green robe with little embroidery other than across the high neckline, in reverence of her earth-goddess. She let her hair lay loosely braided. Esmeralda had little care for the twisting and twining involved getting her long black locks to fit in the steeped henin her mother favored.
Lord Bartholomew answered them with a scoff and a wave of his hand to dismiss them from his office. "I am busy, ladies. If you will show yourselves to the door?"
"Planning your campaign, I know. There is always time for war, boy. There is not always time for life.” Esmeralda said, leaning over his desk and studying Ursula's Pass. "Father would not want you wasting your life on his revenge." Plump and pretty, his sister's soft face was a mask for the calculating and intelligent woman, one that many a man fell in love with, only to be handed their own hearts by her sometimes cruel hand. "This is insanity, brother, and you know this."
"You think I should forget our father’s death? That I should not be angry enough to send all of our men to their death? And to send myself? This is war, Em. Do you think our father would want me to let them be?" Bartholomew's young voice trembled with anger. "They killed our father!" He shouted now, only inches from Esmeralda's face. His nephew began to cry and Esmeralda glared back, shushing the boy.
"Enough." Lady Theodora interrupted her children. "Do not speak of the dead so frivolously, and Esmeralda, have some respect for your brother's place as your lord. Now, both of you, mind your own places in my presence."
Bartholomew sat back, and Esmeralda's face flushed with embarrassment. Both siblings should know better than to talk so about their dead father, especially in front of their mother. Theodora had been a gracious and loving wife who had finally stopped wearing black only a few months ago, almost a year past the standard mourning time, but her heart was still shrouded in pain. To speak so openly and carelessly about their father was disrespectful to Theodora's grief-stricken spirit.
"Would you ladies kindly excuse me, and let me finish my work?" Bartholomew said and kept his brown eyes on the floor.
Of course, the two women ignored him duly. He was the lord of this castle, but his mother and sister often paid that no mind at all. Bartholomew tapped the inkwell with an ill-humoured glance for the women.
"What would possible happen Esmeralda, if your brother left without a wife and heir to die in a war that has not yet reached our northern borders?”
"Perhaps a cataclysmic event would occur, mother, sending the earth into balls of fire and ice."
“It was only tradition, after all.” Bartholomew’s voice dripped with irritation as he blotted up the spilt ink.
Esmeralda was probably more fit than he to run matters of state anyways, and she often had while their father and her husband Matteous had gone off to war. The woman had a shrewd intellect about her. That is not to say that Bartholomew was less intelligent than she, but the noble priestess had an affinity for politics, where Bartholomew preferred his blade and soldiers.
Matteous entered without an attendant to announce him, the First Captain was a humble but stoic man who disdained things like servants. He shut the large door behind him softly, and his coming probably saved Bartholomew from a harsh lashing from Lady Theodora's tongue, entering the grand office with little flourish. Matteous was a solid man, with a girth one would mistake for blubber until he moved and the rippling muscles beneath his leather tunic could be seen. Just before the First Captain entered the room, Bartholomew had been about to speak rather harshly towards his mother, but seeing his friend and captain at arms the boy promptly closed his mouth. Which was an entirely smart thing to do, Lady Theodora could tear a man limb from limb with nothing but harsh words, and many a foolish nobleperson had been sent from her court with a red and shamed face.
As it were, First Captain Matteous was, as far as Bartholomew could discern, the young lord's only and true friend. The muscular man still wore Lord Drake's sigul across the chest of his tunic, but Bartholomew knew this was out of homage to Lord Drake and not discontent with the young lord's rule. Matteous gave both women a sweeping kiss across their cheeks. With a second kiss for his wife he picked up his youngest son and tossed the giggling toddler in the air.
Esmeralda smiled with an overly sweet and unnerving look for her brother, and Matteous had the nerve to ask a simple question, seeing that glint of the eye the two women shared.
"What are you ladies about this early morn?"
Esmeralda feigned ignorance.
Lady Theodora gave a rare laugh that was almost happy. “I have decided that Bartholomew will be married on the first night of the Fall Festival.” The noble mother declared abruptly, her pale and heavily ringed hand rising into the air.
Bartholomew gave her a grisly grin. "And how, pray tell, is that to be dear mother?"
"Why, do you not know?" Esmeralda said, a sick innocence dripping from her voice as she sliced cold beef for her husband and poured coffee. She knew very well that Bartholomew did not know what plans the women had for him.
In response to both Bartholomew and Matteous blank faces, Theodora smiled sweetly and leaned over the desk, her bright golden hair reflecting in the sunlight. "Soon, we will have a wife for you. There will be a party this evening, do you not remember? Bringing in the Fall Festival, an early party for our Lord and with it will come ladies of fine and noble birth who wait for your discerning eye to set upon one or the other. Of course, the planning of it was a hurried thing, since you have been ever so busy with your conquests, your sister and I thought it best not to interrupt you for such a small thing as a party."
Matteous burst into a horrid fit of laughter, ignorant of the fierce glare his noble wife gave him. Noble as Esmeralda was, she certainly had a fiercer temper than any lady he had known, which is a large part of why Matteous loved her. The fact that she clung unmercifully to tradition and religion was her only true downfall, but the beautiful and sharp witted young mother made his blood boil, even eight years after their nuptials.
"Well, dear Bart, you are hung, to be sure. These fine ladies will have you dancing the Song of the Stork in no time at all!" The man slapped his leg for effect. "I suppose you lovely ladies already have the perfect bride picked out for our virgin lord?" Matteous grinned beneath his thick and dark moustache, twisted upwards and soaked with oil that made it shine black. A man's moustache was his pride, and Matteous had quite a bit of pride in the long black twirls of hair that curved around his mouth.
Esmeralda smiled, her dark brown eyes setting on her brother.
"Actually, darling husband," she spoke far too sweet for Bartholomew's taste, "we have picked a lovely bride for him, since my brother has seemed unconcerned with his own bloodline." Seeing the look on her brother's grim face, Esmeralda added: "It is far too late to worry about that now brother; you should have attended more delegates and parties. You will like the girl, she is quiet and," Esmeralda paused, her plump face growing sharp, "she is malleable, a trait mother and I find most befitting for you." Of course, they would. The two women had their hands in every pot except those of war, stringing the young lord along as if he were bait at the end of a fishing line. "Stop sulking Bart, it makes your face rather unbecoming." Esmeralda finished her coffee, peering at him over the golden brim of the porcelain cup.
"You cannot do this!" Lord Bartholomew shouted, and was instantly sorry that he did, his face slacked in defeat. "I don’t even know this girl." He pouted and voiced his discontent, slumping back into the chair. Bartholomew slowly shook his head, and his dark eyes admitted defeat as they pulled again to the floor. "It is not fair, you know, not fair at all. What manner of girl would marry a man without knowing him, anyways? Is she hiding something?"
Lady Theodora sighed heavily, irritably. She gave her youngest child and admonishing stare and tapped her lips with her gloved hand. "Her name is Princess Shia, and she is from the eastern holds. They do things very differently in the East, as you well know. She was bred in a world of culture and wisdom. The young maid is a scholar in her own lands, and well respected. It would do you well to marry her, for she is a pretty thing, with a kind heart. This marriage will bring more than an heir. It will stake our holds on two ends of the continent." The noblewoman's hawk like nose, almost a copy of Bartholomew's, turned upwards, and in that debasing face she looked much more like a hawk set on its prey. "No sense in whining about it now, son."
The young lord glared at them in silence, and Matteous's chuckles did not help him at all. Friend! Ha! The captain at arms was too busy having a laugh at his expense to be any kind of a friend now. Bartholomew brushed another lock of unruly black hair from his face. He squared his shoulders, and wrinkled his face in a manner that accentuated the sharpness of his nose. The unmarried young man thought he was giving his mother and sister a hard glare, but from their end his eyes seemed to widen with apprehension, not irritation. Lord Bartholomew tugged at the bottom of his plain jerkin, and stepped slowly from behind the massive oak desk.
"It is about time, Bart." Matteous stood, clasping his thick hand on Bartholomew's shoulder. "You want to be a man, and so you should learn how men behave. War and fighting and leading are only a part of manhood, boy. A family with a good wife and beautiful babies completes a man unlike any sword, bow, or baugh could. You would do well to listen to your mother and sister, for they have always had your best interests at heart."
And their own, Bartholomew thought, but instead he said "I am not ready for this responsibility. I cannot even take care of myself without mother ordering my bath, for Gaia's sakes! Yet you all think I should marry some girl from some country in the east, and then everything will be just fine. In fact, you expect me to attend some party and just meet this girl, and then be married by the Fall Festival! The party is tonight, and the Festival less than a month, you think I should love this girl by then? Are you all mad?" He pounded his fist on the table, knocking his now cold coffee to the floor.
Esmeralda gave a start in her seat, but it was Lady Theodora who answered her son. "Young man, your father and I had never met before our wedding day. It was an arranged marriage, and I loved him the moment the priest blessed us. That is life, son. Even your sister and Matteous had only met a few times before they were wed. Matteous was always too busy and off to this campaign or that, but your father asked him to marry your sister, and they did so. And you would dare to say that our marriages were wrong? How you spit on tradition son, you shame us and look down on our lives and our loves with your discontent. It is you who should be ashamed, and not I nor your sister."
The noble and sometimes cold Lady Theodora paused for a moment, her light eyes penetrating her son. “I have lost my husband. My life has been shrouded with death and war. I need something beautiful to look forward to, dear son. Do not deny me this.”
Bartholomew gave one, flat look at Matteous, and then the man moved faster than he ever had before. Bartholomew flew from the room as quickly as if a pack of wild hounds bit at his heels, and before any could stop him the brass inlaid door slammed shut behind him. The younger brother ran down the hall, knocking servants and noble cousins alike out of his way. His face was tight with sweat and consternation as the boy leaped over the small gate, heading straight for the stables. Bartholomew saddled his mare in such a quick and careless fashion that Fenzick, the stableman, nearly had to tackle the young lord before he hurt himself, or the horse. Once the nobleman's steed, Marrigan, was properly saddled, the young lord jumped upon it and rode through the gates without as much as a glance to his shouting mother and sister.
It had not been a night of rest for the young Lord Bartholomew. He had risen well before dawn and found himself in the courtyard, practicing with his sword. Lord Bartholomew was young still by any standards. Battle had not yet hardened his face, but he was strong and thick nonetheless. The boy had been raised in the shadow of his father, a well respected and feared warrior who had guided his son with a quick and heavy hand that had been just as quick to praise the boy as to whip him. Bartholomew gripped the hilt of his sword, the thick metal and inlaid rubies were cold against his sweaty hand.
As dawn came, Bartholomew remembered the last day he saw his father.
"Ho there, boy, where are you going?" Lord Drake asked from his horse, his face darkened by the bright summer sun behind him.
"With you Pa, of course." Bartholomew tried to climb on the massive war horse and his father smiled, reaching out a hand.
"Your mother will have my head if I let you go boy." His father used a gauntleted hand to rub his black moustache. "Besides, this war has no place for a boy who can barely get on his steed."
Bartholomew sat up straight in his saddle, adjusting his chain mail. "You went on campaigns when you were half my age Pa."
"True son, but that was a different time, and the enemy not so great." The lord leaned over, clasping the boy's shoulder. "Besides, I had four younger brothers who stayed and watched over your grandmother. You can't leave women to their own devices boy. Gaia knows what they would be up to."
"There's the house guard that is what they are for." Bartholomew almost pouted, realizing the trap his father had set. Go and leave the women with no protector if he did. It was an unfair play on the boy's pride.
"Bah, they are not worth a spit, and you know that." The armoured man leaned across his horse and gave his son a hard hug. Lord Drake undid the saddle strap, too quick for his son to notice. "But you are brave boy, I'll give you that much. If you can stay on your saddle you can come."
Bartholomew, at fifteen years old, found himself staring into his father’s hard dark eyes. There was warmth of pride and strength in Lord Drake’s eyes. Bartholomew had never felt so proud, so adult. He shook away the tears that were forming in his own eyes, and saw-much to his surprise- father wipe a tear from his scarred cheek.
The powerful lord gave a last smile to his son, and kicked up his horse without a word or a backward glance as Bartholomew kicked his own steed, not intending to be left behind and miss the greatest battle of his young life.
The saddle fell away, and Bartholomew tumbled to the ground, almost face first. He pounded his fist into the earth, and watched his father join the armies outside the open gate.
That was his last memory of his father, watching the man ride to his army, never giving another glance to his son. Bartholomew could never forget how the armour sparkled in the sunlight, the horned helm bobbing atop the massive steed, and big green flags wavering in the sun, carrying his father to war and death.
The bright sun had not lifted Bartholomew’s spirits. Lord Bartholomew found himself in a particularly foul mood as he stomped from the courtyard and to his study. It was well that the servants recognized his frustration and, in the manner of many castle servants, kept themselves silently invisible. Bartholomew chose to ignore the whisperings of his ill temper that started just after he passed them. Gossipers, the lot of them.
"Bartholomew!" Lady Theodora, cried out as she walked in his study, trailed by Lord Bartholomew's elder sister. "Set your maps and counting aside for now, son." The woman sat in the large chair opposite Bartholomew, her gold and green gown embroidered with a multitude of small, intricate vines and flowers. She fanned her face with an equally designed silk fan, but the look on her face was nothing short of abrupt and almost, Bartholomew thought, condemning. “You have not chosen a bride yet, son.”
“Mother, please. There is more at hand than my choice of a wife.” Bartholomew grunted.
“I know you are preparing another campaign east. Tell me, do you really think you should leave without a seed to carry on?”
“Mother, not now!” Bartholomew shouted, his curled fist thudding onto the table top. A vial of ink spilled over and he uttered a curse.
“You are sixteen years old now, Bartholomew. That does not mean you are a man and it does not give you permission to use such language in my presence. Secondly, young man, it is our tradition that you be married before you ride off to war. Boys do not go to war, men do.”
"Listen to our mother, Bart." Esmeralda said, her younger son situated on her hip. Unlike her mother, the noble daughter wore a plain green robe with little embroidery other than across the high neckline, in reverence of her earth-goddess. She let her hair lay loosely braided. Esmeralda had little care for the twisting and twining involved getting her long black locks to fit in the steeped henin her mother favored.
Lord Bartholomew answered them with a scoff and a wave of his hand to dismiss them from his office. "I am busy, ladies. If you will show yourselves to the door?"
"Planning your campaign, I know. There is always time for war, boy. There is not always time for life.” Esmeralda said, leaning over his desk and studying Ursula's Pass. "Father would not want you wasting your life on his revenge." Plump and pretty, his sister's soft face was a mask for the calculating and intelligent woman, one that many a man fell in love with, only to be handed their own hearts by her sometimes cruel hand. "This is insanity, brother, and you know this."
"You think I should forget our father’s death? That I should not be angry enough to send all of our men to their death? And to send myself? This is war, Em. Do you think our father would want me to let them be?" Bartholomew's young voice trembled with anger. "They killed our father!" He shouted now, only inches from Esmeralda's face. His nephew began to cry and Esmeralda glared back, shushing the boy.
"Enough." Lady Theodora interrupted her children. "Do not speak of the dead so frivolously, and Esmeralda, have some respect for your brother's place as your lord. Now, both of you, mind your own places in my presence."
Bartholomew sat back, and Esmeralda's face flushed with embarrassment. Both siblings should know better than to talk so about their dead father, especially in front of their mother. Theodora had been a gracious and loving wife who had finally stopped wearing black only a few months ago, almost a year past the standard mourning time, but her heart was still shrouded in pain. To speak so openly and carelessly about their father was disrespectful to Theodora's grief-stricken spirit.
"Would you ladies kindly excuse me, and let me finish my work?" Bartholomew said and kept his brown eyes on the floor.
Of course, the two women ignored him duly. He was the lord of this castle, but his mother and sister often paid that no mind at all. Bartholomew tapped the inkwell with an ill-humoured glance for the women.
"What would possible happen Esmeralda, if your brother left without a wife and heir to die in a war that has not yet reached our northern borders?”
"Perhaps a cataclysmic event would occur, mother, sending the earth into balls of fire and ice."
“It was only tradition, after all.” Bartholomew’s voice dripped with irritation as he blotted up the spilt ink.
Esmeralda was probably more fit than he to run matters of state anyways, and she often had while their father and her husband Matteous had gone off to war. The woman had a shrewd intellect about her. That is not to say that Bartholomew was less intelligent than she, but the noble priestess had an affinity for politics, where Bartholomew preferred his blade and soldiers.
Matteous entered without an attendant to announce him, the First Captain was a humble but stoic man who disdained things like servants. He shut the large door behind him softly, and his coming probably saved Bartholomew from a harsh lashing from Lady Theodora's tongue, entering the grand office with little flourish. Matteous was a solid man, with a girth one would mistake for blubber until he moved and the rippling muscles beneath his leather tunic could be seen. Just before the First Captain entered the room, Bartholomew had been about to speak rather harshly towards his mother, but seeing his friend and captain at arms the boy promptly closed his mouth. Which was an entirely smart thing to do, Lady Theodora could tear a man limb from limb with nothing but harsh words, and many a foolish nobleperson had been sent from her court with a red and shamed face.
As it were, First Captain Matteous was, as far as Bartholomew could discern, the young lord's only and true friend. The muscular man still wore Lord Drake's sigul across the chest of his tunic, but Bartholomew knew this was out of homage to Lord Drake and not discontent with the young lord's rule. Matteous gave both women a sweeping kiss across their cheeks. With a second kiss for his wife he picked up his youngest son and tossed the giggling toddler in the air.
Esmeralda smiled with an overly sweet and unnerving look for her brother, and Matteous had the nerve to ask a simple question, seeing that glint of the eye the two women shared.
"What are you ladies about this early morn?"
Esmeralda feigned ignorance.
Lady Theodora gave a rare laugh that was almost happy. “I have decided that Bartholomew will be married on the first night of the Fall Festival.” The noble mother declared abruptly, her pale and heavily ringed hand rising into the air.
Bartholomew gave her a grisly grin. "And how, pray tell, is that to be dear mother?"
"Why, do you not know?" Esmeralda said, a sick innocence dripping from her voice as she sliced cold beef for her husband and poured coffee. She knew very well that Bartholomew did not know what plans the women had for him.
In response to both Bartholomew and Matteous blank faces, Theodora smiled sweetly and leaned over the desk, her bright golden hair reflecting in the sunlight. "Soon, we will have a wife for you. There will be a party this evening, do you not remember? Bringing in the Fall Festival, an early party for our Lord and with it will come ladies of fine and noble birth who wait for your discerning eye to set upon one or the other. Of course, the planning of it was a hurried thing, since you have been ever so busy with your conquests, your sister and I thought it best not to interrupt you for such a small thing as a party."
Matteous burst into a horrid fit of laughter, ignorant of the fierce glare his noble wife gave him. Noble as Esmeralda was, she certainly had a fiercer temper than any lady he had known, which is a large part of why Matteous loved her. The fact that she clung unmercifully to tradition and religion was her only true downfall, but the beautiful and sharp witted young mother made his blood boil, even eight years after their nuptials.
"Well, dear Bart, you are hung, to be sure. These fine ladies will have you dancing the Song of the Stork in no time at all!" The man slapped his leg for effect. "I suppose you lovely ladies already have the perfect bride picked out for our virgin lord?" Matteous grinned beneath his thick and dark moustache, twisted upwards and soaked with oil that made it shine black. A man's moustache was his pride, and Matteous had quite a bit of pride in the long black twirls of hair that curved around his mouth.
Esmeralda smiled, her dark brown eyes setting on her brother.
"Actually, darling husband," she spoke far too sweet for Bartholomew's taste, "we have picked a lovely bride for him, since my brother has seemed unconcerned with his own bloodline." Seeing the look on her brother's grim face, Esmeralda added: "It is far too late to worry about that now brother; you should have attended more delegates and parties. You will like the girl, she is quiet and," Esmeralda paused, her plump face growing sharp, "she is malleable, a trait mother and I find most befitting for you." Of course, they would. The two women had their hands in every pot except those of war, stringing the young lord along as if he were bait at the end of a fishing line. "Stop sulking Bart, it makes your face rather unbecoming." Esmeralda finished her coffee, peering at him over the golden brim of the porcelain cup.
"You cannot do this!" Lord Bartholomew shouted, and was instantly sorry that he did, his face slacked in defeat. "I don’t even know this girl." He pouted and voiced his discontent, slumping back into the chair. Bartholomew slowly shook his head, and his dark eyes admitted defeat as they pulled again to the floor. "It is not fair, you know, not fair at all. What manner of girl would marry a man without knowing him, anyways? Is she hiding something?"
Lady Theodora sighed heavily, irritably. She gave her youngest child and admonishing stare and tapped her lips with her gloved hand. "Her name is Princess Shia, and she is from the eastern holds. They do things very differently in the East, as you well know. She was bred in a world of culture and wisdom. The young maid is a scholar in her own lands, and well respected. It would do you well to marry her, for she is a pretty thing, with a kind heart. This marriage will bring more than an heir. It will stake our holds on two ends of the continent." The noblewoman's hawk like nose, almost a copy of Bartholomew's, turned upwards, and in that debasing face she looked much more like a hawk set on its prey. "No sense in whining about it now, son."
The young lord glared at them in silence, and Matteous's chuckles did not help him at all. Friend! Ha! The captain at arms was too busy having a laugh at his expense to be any kind of a friend now. Bartholomew brushed another lock of unruly black hair from his face. He squared his shoulders, and wrinkled his face in a manner that accentuated the sharpness of his nose. The unmarried young man thought he was giving his mother and sister a hard glare, but from their end his eyes seemed to widen with apprehension, not irritation. Lord Bartholomew tugged at the bottom of his plain jerkin, and stepped slowly from behind the massive oak desk.
"It is about time, Bart." Matteous stood, clasping his thick hand on Bartholomew's shoulder. "You want to be a man, and so you should learn how men behave. War and fighting and leading are only a part of manhood, boy. A family with a good wife and beautiful babies completes a man unlike any sword, bow, or baugh could. You would do well to listen to your mother and sister, for they have always had your best interests at heart."
And their own, Bartholomew thought, but instead he said "I am not ready for this responsibility. I cannot even take care of myself without mother ordering my bath, for Gaia's sakes! Yet you all think I should marry some girl from some country in the east, and then everything will be just fine. In fact, you expect me to attend some party and just meet this girl, and then be married by the Fall Festival! The party is tonight, and the Festival less than a month, you think I should love this girl by then? Are you all mad?" He pounded his fist on the table, knocking his now cold coffee to the floor.
Esmeralda gave a start in her seat, but it was Lady Theodora who answered her son. "Young man, your father and I had never met before our wedding day. It was an arranged marriage, and I loved him the moment the priest blessed us. That is life, son. Even your sister and Matteous had only met a few times before they were wed. Matteous was always too busy and off to this campaign or that, but your father asked him to marry your sister, and they did so. And you would dare to say that our marriages were wrong? How you spit on tradition son, you shame us and look down on our lives and our loves with your discontent. It is you who should be ashamed, and not I nor your sister."
The noble and sometimes cold Lady Theodora paused for a moment, her light eyes penetrating her son. “I have lost my husband. My life has been shrouded with death and war. I need something beautiful to look forward to, dear son. Do not deny me this.”
Bartholomew gave one, flat look at Matteous, and then the man moved faster than he ever had before. Bartholomew flew from the room as quickly as if a pack of wild hounds bit at his heels, and before any could stop him the brass inlaid door slammed shut behind him. The younger brother ran down the hall, knocking servants and noble cousins alike out of his way. His face was tight with sweat and consternation as the boy leaped over the small gate, heading straight for the stables. Bartholomew saddled his mare in such a quick and careless fashion that Fenzick, the stableman, nearly had to tackle the young lord before he hurt himself, or the horse. Once the nobleman's steed, Marrigan, was properly saddled, the young lord jumped upon it and rode through the gates without as much as a glance to his shouting mother and sister.
