dustinzgirl
Mod of Awesome
- Joined
- Apr 28, 2005
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(special thanks to JD and Chris and anyone I forgot to mention who spent lots of time helping me with this before: there are only slight changes in this version but since I'm too lazy to search the OG post here is the rewritten version which might be really like the other version but with a few differences I think I'm ramblin' now, how about you?).
Ch 1 Lord Bartholomew’s Ride
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. A boy still by any standards, battle had not yet hardened his face, but he was strong and quick from years of training beneath his father. The boy had been raised in the shadow of his father, a well respected and feared warrior who had guided his son with a hand that had been as quick to praise the boy as to whip him. Bartholomew gripped the hilt of his sword, the thick metal and inlaid rubies cold against his sweaty hand.
As dawn came, he practiced his swordsmanship alone in the cool of the yard and remembered the last day he had seen 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 quickened his small mare to ride beside his father.
"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 ride."
Bartholomew sat up straight in his saddle, adjusting his chain mail. "You went on campaigns when you were half my age."
"True, 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 to stay home and watch 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’s what they’re for." Bartholomew almost pouted, realizing the trap his father had set. Go and leave the women with no protector. It was an unfair play on the boy's pride.
"Bah, they are not worth a spit, and you know it." The armoured man leaned across his horse and gave his son a hug. Quicker than his son could notice, Lord Drake reached down and undid the saddle strap. "You are brave boy, I'll give you that much. Tell you what; if you can stay on your saddle you can come."
At fifteen years old, he found himself staring into his father’s dark eyes. Eyes that sparkled with warmth and strength, and 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- his father wipe a tear from his scarred cheek.
The lord gave his son a quick grin, and kicked up his horse, throwing a wave over his shoulder. As Bartholomew kicked his own smaller mare, he had no intention of being left behind to miss the greatest battle of his young life.
The saddle fell away, and Bartholomew tumbled to the ground face first. He spat out a mouthful of dirt and pounded his fist into the earth. He watched his father join the armies outside the open gate with frustrated tears.
That was his last memory of his father, watching the man ride to his army without another glance to his son. Bartholomew could never forget how the armor had sparkled in the sunlight, how the black horned helm bobbed atop the massive steed, and big green flags rippled in the sun as they shadowed his father to war and death.
The young lord did not have much more time to wallow in the past. Older now, he shook away the sting of that last day. The memories—day dreams, his mother called them, came less frequently now. The rise of the sun had not lifted his spirits, and he 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. He had barely sat down for his coffee when his mother’s shriek grated on his already taunt nerves.
"Bartholomew!" Lady Theodora cried out as she walked in his study, trailed by his elder sister. "Set your maps and counting aside for now, son." The woman sat in the large overstuffed 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 [FONT="]bride[/FONT] 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 [FONT="]married[/FONT] 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.
He replied 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 as she leaned 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 had fallen in [FONT="]love[/FONT] with only to be handed their own hearts by her often 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 child.
"Enough." Lady Theodora interrupted the siblings. "Do not speak of the dead so frivolously, and Esmeralda, have some respect for your brother's place as lord. Now, both of you, mind your own places in my presence." Ever a lady of propriety and grace, Theodora kept her voice calm. It was the coolness of her words that was more frightening than any punishment. Theodora may look as thin and fine as aged porcelain, but she was as hard and cold as the glaciers in the barbarian holds of Hailstone Falls.
Bartholomew sat back, and Esmeralda's face flushed with embarrassment. Both siblings should have known 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 they knew her heart was still shrouded in silent, controlled 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 quietly 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 little attention to that minor fact. 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.” His voice dripped with sarcastic irritation as he blotted up the spilt ink.
Esmeralda was probably more fit than he to run matters of state anyways, at least from Bartholomew’s stance. The older sister had often taken care of local politics while their father and her [FONT="]husband[/FONT] had gone off to war.
Bartholomew was quite fond of his brother-in-law, and as Matteous entered without an attendant to announce him, the young lord gave him a thankful smile.
The First Captain Matteous shut the large door behind him softly, and his coming likely saved Bartholomew from a harsh tongue lashing. Matteous was a solid man, with girth one would mistake for blubber until he moved and the rippling muscles beneath his leather tunic could be seen. As it were, First Captain Matteous was, as far as Bartholomew could discern, the young lord's only and true [FONT="]friend[/FONT]. 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. Matteous was not unfamiliar with the look on his wife’s face, in fact he had seen that look directed at him once or twice. It was generally followed by screaming and blunt objects being thrown at his head. The First Captain was thankful Esmeralda’s sharp blue glare was not directed at him.
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, her small hands with only her wedding ring to adorn them swept the humid air.
Theodora gave a rare, sharp laugh. “I have decided that Bartholomew will be married on the first night of the Fall Festival.” The noble mother declared abruptly, her own pale and heavily ringed hand rising into the air, circling around. “There will be a merry-go-round this year, how exciting for our commoners!”
Bartholomew gave her a forced grin. "And how, pray tell, am I to be married so soon, 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, but she’d be damned if she would let insufferable men in on their plans. Besides, it was a small sibling rivalry victory to see her brother squirm, just a bit, since he became Lord.
In response to both men’s blank faces, Theodora smiled sweetly and fanned herself. "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 that will bring lovely 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 steel glare his noble wife gave him. Soft and petite as Esmeralda was, she certainly had a fiercer temper than any lady he had known, which was largely 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. He was never bored, at least.
"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!" Matteous slapped his leg for effect. "I suppose you lovely ladies already have the perfect bride picked out for our virgin lord?" The First Captain grinned beneath his thick and dark moustache, twisted upwards and soaked with oil that made it shine black. His moustache was his pride, and Matteous was rather vain about the long black twirls that curved around his mouth.
Esmeralda smiled, her blue eyes setting on her brother. "Actually, husband," her voice too honeyed for Bartholomew's taste, "we have picked a lovely bride for him, and 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, looking for the right word, "she is malleable. A trait mother and I find most befitting for you."
Of course, they would. Bartholomew thought, resisting the urge to roll his eyes. The two women had their hands in every pot except those of war (and the young lord wasn’t so sure about that), stringing him 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 of her 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 slumped back into the chair. "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 son an admonishing stare and tapped her lips with her gloved hand. The gesture alone was enough to rebuff him. "Her name is Princess Shia, and she is from the eastern holds. They do things very differently in the East, as you well know. The princess 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 turned upwards, and with her sharp face she looked much more like a bird of prey than a mother. "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 First Captain was too busy having a laugh at his expense to be any kind of a friend now. Bartholomew brushed a lock of sweaty black hair from his face. He squared his shoulders, and wrinkled his face in a manner that accentuated the sharpness of his nose, almost a perfect copy of his mother’s. The young man thought he was giving his mother and sister a hard glare, but he knew it had little effect on the two women. 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. "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 our way of life. Even your sister and Matteous had only met a few times before they were wed. He 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 spoiled discontent. You should be ashamed, and not I nor your sister." Lady Theodora paused for a moment, her eyes bored through her son. “I have lost my husband. My life has been shrouded with death and war. I need something beautiful to look forward to. Do not deny me this. You will either marry the girl I have chosen or one of your own choosing, but you will be betrothed at the Fall Festival.”
There was no denying that hard voice, and Bartholomew gave one, flat look at Matteous while pointedly ignoring his mother’s gaze. Then the young lord moved faster than he ever had before. He flew from the room like a pack of wild hounds bit at his heels, and before any could stop him the brass inlaid door was already slammed shut behind his fleeing backside. He ran down the hall, knocking servants and guards alike out of his way. His face was tight with sweat and consternation as the boy leaped over the small gate, headed 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 back to his shouting mother and sister.
Ch 1 Lord Bartholomew’s Ride
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. A boy still by any standards, battle had not yet hardened his face, but he was strong and quick from years of training beneath his father. The boy had been raised in the shadow of his father, a well respected and feared warrior who had guided his son with a hand that had been as quick to praise the boy as to whip him. Bartholomew gripped the hilt of his sword, the thick metal and inlaid rubies cold against his sweaty hand.
As dawn came, he practiced his swordsmanship alone in the cool of the yard and remembered the last day he had seen 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 quickened his small mare to ride beside his father.
"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 ride."
Bartholomew sat up straight in his saddle, adjusting his chain mail. "You went on campaigns when you were half my age."
"True, 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 to stay home and watch 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’s what they’re for." Bartholomew almost pouted, realizing the trap his father had set. Go and leave the women with no protector. It was an unfair play on the boy's pride.
"Bah, they are not worth a spit, and you know it." The armoured man leaned across his horse and gave his son a hug. Quicker than his son could notice, Lord Drake reached down and undid the saddle strap. "You are brave boy, I'll give you that much. Tell you what; if you can stay on your saddle you can come."
At fifteen years old, he found himself staring into his father’s dark eyes. Eyes that sparkled with warmth and strength, and 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- his father wipe a tear from his scarred cheek.
The lord gave his son a quick grin, and kicked up his horse, throwing a wave over his shoulder. As Bartholomew kicked his own smaller mare, he had no intention of being left behind to miss the greatest battle of his young life.
The saddle fell away, and Bartholomew tumbled to the ground face first. He spat out a mouthful of dirt and pounded his fist into the earth. He watched his father join the armies outside the open gate with frustrated tears.
That was his last memory of his father, watching the man ride to his army without another glance to his son. Bartholomew could never forget how the armor had sparkled in the sunlight, how the black horned helm bobbed atop the massive steed, and big green flags rippled in the sun as they shadowed his father to war and death.
The young lord did not have much more time to wallow in the past. Older now, he shook away the sting of that last day. The memories—day dreams, his mother called them, came less frequently now. The rise of the sun had not lifted his spirits, and he 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. He had barely sat down for his coffee when his mother’s shriek grated on his already taunt nerves.
"Bartholomew!" Lady Theodora cried out as she walked in his study, trailed by his elder sister. "Set your maps and counting aside for now, son." The woman sat in the large overstuffed 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 [FONT="]bride[/FONT] 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 [FONT="]married[/FONT] 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.
He replied 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 as she leaned 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 had fallen in [FONT="]love[/FONT] with only to be handed their own hearts by her often 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 child.
"Enough." Lady Theodora interrupted the siblings. "Do not speak of the dead so frivolously, and Esmeralda, have some respect for your brother's place as lord. Now, both of you, mind your own places in my presence." Ever a lady of propriety and grace, Theodora kept her voice calm. It was the coolness of her words that was more frightening than any punishment. Theodora may look as thin and fine as aged porcelain, but she was as hard and cold as the glaciers in the barbarian holds of Hailstone Falls.
Bartholomew sat back, and Esmeralda's face flushed with embarrassment. Both siblings should have known 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 they knew her heart was still shrouded in silent, controlled 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 quietly 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 little attention to that minor fact. 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.” His voice dripped with sarcastic irritation as he blotted up the spilt ink.
Esmeralda was probably more fit than he to run matters of state anyways, at least from Bartholomew’s stance. The older sister had often taken care of local politics while their father and her [FONT="]husband[/FONT] had gone off to war.
Bartholomew was quite fond of his brother-in-law, and as Matteous entered without an attendant to announce him, the young lord gave him a thankful smile.
The First Captain Matteous shut the large door behind him softly, and his coming likely saved Bartholomew from a harsh tongue lashing. Matteous was a solid man, with girth one would mistake for blubber until he moved and the rippling muscles beneath his leather tunic could be seen. As it were, First Captain Matteous was, as far as Bartholomew could discern, the young lord's only and true [FONT="]friend[/FONT]. 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. Matteous was not unfamiliar with the look on his wife’s face, in fact he had seen that look directed at him once or twice. It was generally followed by screaming and blunt objects being thrown at his head. The First Captain was thankful Esmeralda’s sharp blue glare was not directed at him.
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, her small hands with only her wedding ring to adorn them swept the humid air.
Theodora gave a rare, sharp laugh. “I have decided that Bartholomew will be married on the first night of the Fall Festival.” The noble mother declared abruptly, her own pale and heavily ringed hand rising into the air, circling around. “There will be a merry-go-round this year, how exciting for our commoners!”
Bartholomew gave her a forced grin. "And how, pray tell, am I to be married so soon, 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, but she’d be damned if she would let insufferable men in on their plans. Besides, it was a small sibling rivalry victory to see her brother squirm, just a bit, since he became Lord.
In response to both men’s blank faces, Theodora smiled sweetly and fanned herself. "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 that will bring lovely 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 steel glare his noble wife gave him. Soft and petite as Esmeralda was, she certainly had a fiercer temper than any lady he had known, which was largely 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. He was never bored, at least.
"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!" Matteous slapped his leg for effect. "I suppose you lovely ladies already have the perfect bride picked out for our virgin lord?" The First Captain grinned beneath his thick and dark moustache, twisted upwards and soaked with oil that made it shine black. His moustache was his pride, and Matteous was rather vain about the long black twirls that curved around his mouth.
Esmeralda smiled, her blue eyes setting on her brother. "Actually, husband," her voice too honeyed for Bartholomew's taste, "we have picked a lovely bride for him, and 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, looking for the right word, "she is malleable. A trait mother and I find most befitting for you."
Of course, they would. Bartholomew thought, resisting the urge to roll his eyes. The two women had their hands in every pot except those of war (and the young lord wasn’t so sure about that), stringing him 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 of her 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 slumped back into the chair. "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 son an admonishing stare and tapped her lips with her gloved hand. The gesture alone was enough to rebuff him. "Her name is Princess Shia, and she is from the eastern holds. They do things very differently in the East, as you well know. The princess 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 turned upwards, and with her sharp face she looked much more like a bird of prey than a mother. "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 First Captain was too busy having a laugh at his expense to be any kind of a friend now. Bartholomew brushed a lock of sweaty black hair from his face. He squared his shoulders, and wrinkled his face in a manner that accentuated the sharpness of his nose, almost a perfect copy of his mother’s. The young man thought he was giving his mother and sister a hard glare, but he knew it had little effect on the two women. 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. "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 our way of life. Even your sister and Matteous had only met a few times before they were wed. He 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 spoiled discontent. You should be ashamed, and not I nor your sister." Lady Theodora paused for a moment, her eyes bored through her son. “I have lost my husband. My life has been shrouded with death and war. I need something beautiful to look forward to. Do not deny me this. You will either marry the girl I have chosen or one of your own choosing, but you will be betrothed at the Fall Festival.”
There was no denying that hard voice, and Bartholomew gave one, flat look at Matteous while pointedly ignoring his mother’s gaze. Then the young lord moved faster than he ever had before. He flew from the room like a pack of wild hounds bit at his heels, and before any could stop him the brass inlaid door was already slammed shut behind his fleeing backside. He ran down the hall, knocking servants and guards alike out of his way. His face was tight with sweat and consternation as the boy leaped over the small gate, headed 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 back to his shouting mother and sister.
