bedlamsbard (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
bedlamsbard) wrote2011-03-06 09:27 am
bedlamsbard) wrote2011-03-06 09:27 am
Narnia fic: "Be Bold, Be Bold"
Title: Be Bold, Be Bold
Author:bedlamsbard
Fandom: Chronicles of Narnia bookverse/movieverse
Rating: PG
Content Advisory: None
Summary: Be bold, be bold, be not too bold. He can't keep calling her the lady in the green kirtle.
Disclaimer: The Chronicles of Narnia and its characters, situations, settings, etc., belong to C.S. Lewis. Certain characters, situations, settings, etc., belong to Walden Media.
Author's Notes: A follow-up to Charmed Life. Be Bold, Be Bold uses Warsverse backstory. It does not use material from The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (2010). Title from Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene.
Rilian isn’t writing poetry because he wants to write poetry, because as far as he’s concerned, no one ever wants to write poetry, unless it’s some boring old sod who’s been dead for centuries now, or maybe Glenstorm, but centaurs are the exception to a lot of rules. He’s certainly not sitting in his study rapping out feet on his desk and trying to figure out whether “sweetness” is an iamb or a trochee because it’s his idea of a good time. Anyone who is, Rilian decides firmly, is completely mad. Including Doctor Cornelius, since this is his stupid idea in the first place.
Eventually Rilian decides that “sweetness” is a trochee instead of an iamb and scratches it out, since if he leaves it in he’s going to have to explain why he made the decision to change up the meter and “because I thought it sounded better” isn’t a valid reason, at least by Doctor Cornelius’s standards. This might be entertaining if he was writing anything like what Glenstorm writes, which is all stirring epics of battles that involve kings winning their crowns and (more interesting) enemies getting limbs hacked off and heads split open, but instead he’s working on the asinine court fashion of the day, which is some kind of simpering sonnet that he wouldn’t care about if Doctor Cornelius wasn’t making him. He’s fairly certain he wouldn’t have known about it at all if Doctor Cornelius hadn’t presented him with a stack of suitable examples, making noises about appropriateness and the circular nature of poetry – apparently, these kinds of sonnets had been popular in the eighth century, and for no reason Rilian can glean from reading them, have swung back around.
He chews on the end of his pen. All he has of his assigned composition is one miserable line, and he’s not entirely sure it’s even in tetrameter. At this point, Rilian doesn’t think he cares, because he’s been at this for hours and he hasn’t gotten any further than the third foot of the second line. Sweetness. He needs a synonym for sweetness. He stares at the blank page in horror and wonders what in the name of Aslan Doctor Cornelius was thinking; at this rate, he’d rather go back to composing dialogues in Old Narnian.
He’s saved by a tap on his door. Rilian all but springs out of his chair and almost trips over his riding boots in his hurry to get it open, kicking them hastily under his reading couch after he gets free of them. When he finally gets the door open, he has to adjust his gaze to look down; the person standing there is a good head shorter than he is.
“Oh, good,” Rilian says. “You’re a poet, Master Jonstone, come and help me.” He reaches out and grabs the playwright’s arm, dragging him into the study. The door shuts behind him, solemn as a prayer.
“Your highness?” says Benjavier Jonstone, his mouth quirking slightly at the corners. His gaze flickers quickly around the room, taking in the mess, but then his attention is back on Rilian, steady.
“Doctor Cornelius has me writing this sonnet,” Rilian explains, “and I’m having trouble –”
“I can only hope I can be of assistance,” says Jonstone gallantly. He’s taller than Doctor Cornelius, though not by much; a short, squat half-dwarf with red hair and a short pointed red beard. Rilian’s not sure which of his parents had been the human and which the dwarf. “May I see what you have so far, your highness?”
Rilian snatches the paper up to show him, and Jonstone moves closer to the window, where the light is brighter. “Doctor Cornelius said I should write a Telmarine sonnet, that’s iambic pentameter, but I wasn’t sure what to write about –”
“A woman, of course!” Jonstone says, and grins. “Or a man, I suppose,” he adds as a gracious afterthought. “There are other subjects, of course, your highness – I suppose your tutor has assigned you Blackmar’s ‘Salute’ – but most of the corpus is love poetry.”
“I know,” Rilian says sadly. “I don’t –” He means to say that he doesn’t have anybody to write love poetry about, and then he stops, thinking of the lady in the woods. “Maybe I do,” he says instead.
Jonstone grins at him. “Does that help some, your highness?” He looks down at the sheet of paper in his fist. “Do you mean to have the feminine ending for your first line?”
“No!” Rilian says. “Which –”
“You’ve an unnecessary accent mark on ‘gazed,’” says Jonstone, pointing it out. Rilian takes the paper from him and scratches it out hastily.
“Did Doctor Cornelius send you to come help me?” he asks, crossing out what he’d written of his second line. The first line is still good, but what little he’d had of the rest won’t work at all, not for her.
“No, your highness,” says Jonstone. “I came of my own accord.”
Rilian’s not stupid. He puts his pen down and looks up at Jonstone. “Is there something I can do for you, Master Jonstone? You’ve been very helpful,” he adds as an afterthought; Doctor Cornelius would probably appreciate the formality.
Jonstone tenses slightly. “I don’t mean to be forward, your highness,” he says, “but my partner and I had put together a masque for your royal mother before her passing. It was meant to be performed – well, I suppose that doesn’t matter now. Coloma and I were hoping that you might speak to your father and, er, persuade him to let the performance continue –”
Rilian remembers vaguely that Coloma is that woman who designs the sets for his masques. Mother had liked the Sea Queen’s Palace she’d built for the Masque of Tethys –
He swallows. It’s been a month now, and he still thinks that Mama’s still going to come back, just walk in and smile at him, and – but she isn’t. Not ever.
“I’m not really good at persuading my father of things,” he says. “But I’ll ask him.”
Jonstone looks relieved. “Thank you, your highness,” he says. “Do you require any further assistance?”
Rilian looks back down at the page, brimming with ideas now. “No,” he says reluctantly, because Doctor Cornelius probably wouldn’t like it if he had a professional poet guiding his every penstroke. “But can I send for you and ask if there’s something else?”
“Of course, your highness,” says Jonstone. He bows from the waist, then leaves. He’s wearing lifts the way Doctor Cornelius does; his steps are heavier than they should be.
Rilian doesn’t even wait for the door to shut behind him before he drops back down into his chair, reaching for his pen. He doesn’t know if he’ll ever see the lady in the green dress again, but he wants to.
*
Rilian doesn’t see his father for another two days. He was supposed to have dinner with him, but Father has suddenly decided to take off to go and personally adjudicate some case in Glasswater, so instead Rilian is left with Doctor Cornelius. At least he has his sonnet to offer up, giving him a few minutes of peace while he shoves food into his mouth and Doctor Cornelius reads it.
“Did someone help you with this, your highness?” says Doctor Cornelius, after five minutes of blissful silence.
“I wrote it!” Rilian protests, a little insulted by the implication.
Doctor Cornelius raises an eyebrow at him.
“I wrote it,” Rilian repeats firmly. “Master Jonstone came and looked at it and gave me some suggestions, that’s all.”
“Benjavier Jonstone?”
“Yes. The one who writes – who wrote – Mother’s masques.” He curses himself for the slip, but Doctor Cornelius doesn’t seem to notice it.
“Benjavier Jonstone came here, to talk to you? Or – did you send for him?”
“He came –” Rilian says, and explains, wondering why Doctor Cornelius cares. He doesn’t like Master Jonstone, everyone knows that. He used to say that Master Jonstone was a dabbler who wasted his talent on writing court spectacles, though he never said that where Mother could hear.
Doctor Cornelius listens, holding the paper with the sonnet on it in one hand. “Was That Woman with him?”
“That – er, you mean Mistress, um –” Rilian can’t remember her surname. “The one who makes his sets? He came by himself.”
“I see,” Doctor Cornelius says, disapproving. “Well, I would not bring this incident up to your father –”
“Why not?” Rilian asks. “It’s a reasonable question.”
“Your father is unlikely to be receptive to Master Jonstone’s request,” Doctor Cornelius says, then changes the subject and resists all of Rilian’s attempts to find out why. When he finally leaves, he takes Rilian’s sonnet with him and assigns him a translation of Prince Seabright’s proposal to Queen Lucy in The Most Tragicall Historie of the Laste Prince of Terebinthia. Rilian’s always thought that play was horribly misnamed; there’s still a prince in Terebinthia today.
Father is back the next evening, long after Rilian’s supposed to have gone to bed. He’s lying on the reading couch before the fire, his nose in one of the trashy novels Doctor Cornelius disapproves of. This one’s about some Telmarine knight in the early days of Caspian the Conqueror who’s been cut off from the rest of his lord’s train after a terrible snowstorm. Right now, Sir Sandale is wandering helplessly around in his forest, leading his horse and hoping to find shelter before he dies.
Sir Sandale has just realized that not only has he been going in circles, but that there’s something stalking him in the snow, when Rilian hears the castle gate opening and a cry of greeting. He drops the book and scrambles over the back of the couch to see who it is – Father, come back late, with Lord Drinian and Lord Trumpkin on a pony. Rilian grips the edge of the windowsill, looking down at them through the diamond-shaped glass panes of the window. He wants to go down and say hello, but he’s supposed to be in bed –
Trumpkin looks up at him, then leans over from his pony and jostles Father’s elbow as Father dismounts, pointing up. Father follows his finger, then smiles and waves to Rilian. Rilian waves back, then Father makes a gesture that means, “Go to bed, Rilian,” so Rilian waves again and retreats from the window, smiling.
He sees Father again, properly this time, in the morning, when he goes to Father’s solar to have breakfast with him and Doctor Cornelius. Father hugs him, and Rilian kisses both cheeks obediently before they sit down to breakfast.
“How was the case, Father?” Rilian asks, peeling an egg.
Father shrugs. “It was quick and clear, at least. There was a woman who was ill-treated by a man,” he adds, when Rilian opens his mouth to ask what it was about.
“All Narnians have the right of first appeal to the Crown,” Doctor Cornelius reminds Rilian.
Since it looks like he might be preparing for a lecture on the Narnian legal code as supposedly set down by King Edmund himself, Rilian hastily heads him off by asking, “Did he do it?”
“Yes, he did,” Father says, looking grim. He spreads jam on his toast, and Rilian shreds an egg shell between his fingers, feeling awkward for asking.
“Can I go with you next time?” he says.
Father blinks. “On law cases? You’re a bit young –”
“I’m the same age as the High King when he took the throne!” Rilian says, indignant. “Besides,” he adds, searching for a convincing argument, “I’ll have to adjudicate them when I’m king, and I need to start getting experience as soon as possible.” He looks at Doctor Cornelius, hoping he’ll agree, and Doctor Cornelius murmurs something to that extent.
Father’s mouth quirks slightly. “I see. I’ll consider the matter. I’ve been thinking we might go on a Progress next year –”
“Would we get to go to the Lone Islands?” Rilian says hopefully. He’s never been out of Narnia, and there are all sorts of stories about the Lone Islands; he’s always wondered if the skeleton of the dragon King Gale killed is still there on Felimath, the way the legends say.
“I don’t see why not,” Father says. He smiles fondly at Rilian. “We’ll have to go in spring or summer, when the seas are good.”
“Is that wise, your majesty?” Doctor Cornelius says doubtfully. “So soon after –”
Father glowers at him, and Doctor Cornelius stops mid-sentence.
“Oh,” Rilian says, remembering, “Master Jonstone came to see me the day you left. He said –”
“Master Jonstone?” Father says, frowning.
“Benjavier Jonstone,” Doctor Cornelius reminds him. “The playwright. He lives with That Woman – Lady Coloma Gergiore,” he corrects himself, when Father raises an eyebrow.
That’s right, Rilian remembers belatedly. The woman who builds the sets is the daughter of one of King Miraz’s lords; she’d run away from her husband to live with Master Jonstone. Doctor Cornelius doesn’t like scandal.
“What did he want, Rilian?” Father asks, putting his fork down.
“He wanted to know when the masque he wrote for Mother could be performed,” Rilian said. “He seems nice, he helped me with my…” He trails off, because Father is looking furious. “Father?”
“A masque,” he repeats. “That man thinks that now is the time for a masque, of all the damned things –”
“Perhaps a memorial tribute –” Doctor Cornelius suggests. “The title seems fitting, though of course I shall have to read the work to be certain that there is nothing offensive –”
“Absolutely not!” Father snaps. He pushes back from the table and goes to stand by the window, looking out at the open ocean to the east. Rilian squirms in his seat, not knowing what he’d said wrong.
“He seems nice,” he says again, lamely.
“Now is not the time,” Father says grimly. “Your mother would never – your mother would understand why. Cornelius, send a message to Master Jonstone and Lady Coloma informing them that their services will no longer be required in Cair Paravel; they are free to find employment elsewhere. Perhaps the Tisroc wants a scribbler and a carpenter.”
“Your majesty –” Doctor Cornelius says, frowning.
“Do it! Ben Jonstone was the queen’s man, not mine, and there is no queen anymore.” He sets his jaw, thudding his fist into the stone wall. Rilian winces and scrambles up, leaving the remnants of his breakfast strewn across the table.
“I’m going riding,” he says, and flees. Father and Doctor Cornelius don’t appear to notice.
*
The weather has been good, but Rilian hasn’t had much opportunity for riding lately, and Juniper’s been neglected. Nobody stops him when Rilian hauls out Juniper’s tack and starts to saddle him; the guards even wave farewell when Rilian rides out the front gate. He thinks that it’s been on his father’s orders that he’s been cooped up in the castle. What happened to Mother was an accident, everyone knows that, but that doesn’t stop Father from issuing orders to keep Rilian in Cair Paravel.
He makes it all the way to the Narnian Quarter before he sees someone he knows. It’s the last place he would have expected to find a familiar face; most of the people he knows at court live at the castle, except for some of the wealthier nobility with their great houses and beautiful gardens on the hill. Juniper’s stuck behind a carter carrying a load of barrels; the street is too narrow for Rilian to pass him, and he’s grinding his teeth in frustration, desperate to get beyond the city walls and give Juniper his head.
“Your highness!” he hears, and turns to find Master Jonstone on the sidewalk. The half-dwarf’s head only comes up to the shoulder of the human woman he’s holding hands with.
“Hello, Master Jonstone,” Rilian says, looking down at them. The woman is rather plain, with a mass of dark curls pulled back behind her head; Rilian makes a wild guess as to her identity. “And – Lady Coloma?”
She lets go of Master Jonstone’s hand to curtsy. “At your service, your highness,” she says. She straightens back up, eyeing him boldly. “Can we be of service to you?”
“I’m just going for a ride,” Rilian says. “Um – you might get a message from my father. He’s not very happy.”
Master Jonstone stills slightly, reaching for Lady Coloma’s hand again. “May I ask what His Majesty’s response was to my request, your highness?”
“He, um – well, he could change his mind,” Rilian says, suddenly realizing that maybe he doesn’t want to break this news to them. Master Jonstone is looking increasingly dismayed. “I’m sure he’ll send a message –”
Up ahead, the carter turns a corner, leaving the road clear all the way to the Lion’s Gate. Rilian looks at it a little frantically. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Lady Coloma stand on Master Jonstone’s foot and then say, “It was an honor to speak with you, your highness. I pray that my partner and I will have a chance to do so again.”
“Yes, an honor –” Master Jonstone says, unable to hide his dismay.
“It was good to speak with you too,” Rilian says awkwardly. “Well, um – goodbye,” he adds, and nudges Juniper quickly into a trot, ignoring someone’s curse as they hurry out of the way.
Getting into the open fields below the city is a relief. Rilian blows out his cheeks, sighing at the freedom, and turns Juniper across the Bridge of Sighs to go north, into the uncolonized lands of Narnia. Once he’s on the other side of the Great River, he gives his horse his head. The breeze whips his hair back from his face, and Rilian whoops in excitement. Aslan have mercy, he’s been cooped up in Cair Paravel so long, since the funeral –
He rides for a long time, until Juniper slows to a walk as they enter the forest. Rilian looks around curiously, patting Juniper’s neck. He hadn’t meant to come here, but he’s suddenly glad he didn’t. Outside the forest it’s spring; inside it is as well, but it’s a darker, more muted kind of spring. Most of the trees are evergreens up here, with little difference between winter and spring; the sun filters down through the tree cover, leaving everything layered in shades of light and shadow. Somewhere a bird chirps, another one answering it a moment later.
Rilian swings down out of the saddle, his boots nearly silent on the forest floor, and leads Juniper forward. He can hear the burbling of the fountain where Mother died somewhere nearby and he follows the sound. He’s not sure why, but – he’s here. It seems disrespectful to ignore it and leave.
When he enters the clearing, the woman in green is sitting on the edge of the fountain.
“I thought you might come today,” she says, looking up at him. She’s wearing the same brilliant green as before; Rilian thinks the gown might be different, but he’s not sure, and he doesn’t think he cares.
“I didn’t know I would,” Rilian admits. He takes a breath, suddenly nervous, and drops Juniper’s reins – the horse is well-trained enough that he won’t wander far. “May I sit?”
“If you like.”
He goes to sit next to her, not so close that it’s awkward. “You’re not running away from me this time,” he says curiously. The chipped marble is cool beneath his thighs; the still-flowing water of the thousand-year-old fountain tinkles gently into the bowl, misting the back of his left arm slightly.
“Why should I run?” says the woman in green. She tips her head to one side, curious.
“You did before.”
“You chased me,” she points out.
Rilian can’t deny that. “I just wanted to talk to you,” he says, a little lamely. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
She stares at him until he looks down, hasty. Her eyes are green, too, and piercing. “I was not,” she says, “scared.”
“Oh. Um, I didn’t…” He trails off, not knowing what to say. “What’s your name?” he says finally. He can’t keep calling her the lady in the green kirtle.
She gives him a dismissive look. “I don’t have one.”
“How do you not –” Rilian says, utterly startled. Everyone has a name. Even the wild Narnians in the north have names.
“In my land we don’t get names until we’ve done something to earn them. I haven’t, yet.” She tips her chin up, smoothing her skirts in her lap, though they don’t need it. A bird chirps in the trees nearby, then thinks better of it and takes to the air.
“That’s – doesn’t that get confusing? Not knowing what everyone is called?”
That gets him a raised eyebrow. “Are your people so dull that they can’t tell each other apart otherwise?”
“Well, no, but –” Rilian still can’t imagine it. Even the talking beasts name their children, though some of the old stories say that they haven’t always done so. But that was a long time ago, in the days of the Long Winter, or even earlier – the Dark Age, some of the Telmarine scholars like to call the period. Father doesn’t approve of the label; he thinks it’s a value judgment, but Doctor Cornelius likes to point out that it’s an accurate assessment, since almost no writing remains from the years before the White Witch. No Narnian writing, anyway. Rilian wonders what it was like back then, if it was really as savage as the Telmarine scholars like to say. Doctor Cyriacos, who wrote one of the histories Doctor Cornelius has assigned Rilian, says that names are a sign of civilization. Rilian wonders what he’d think of the woman in green.
“I didn’t mean anything by it,” he adds, a little awkward. “It’s just – it’s not something we do.”
She sniffs. “Indeed.”
They both fall silent. Juniper wanders around the clearing, taking delicate bites of some of the new growth. Rilian looks down at his gloved hands, tugging at the embroidered cuff of one. Next to him, the pale green fabric of the woman’s skirt falls over her knee, not quite brushing the ground and exposing the tip of her riding boot. It’s green too, calfskin dyed dark green with geometric patterns on it.
Father did surveys when he first took the throne, and every seven years since. There are a few ruins up here in the owlswood, but nothing close to civilization; the Marsh-Wiggles even further north hardly count. Rilian can’t think where the woman in green might be from, unless she’s from the far north, beyond the River Shribble, but no one lives up there except the wild giants who pay tribute to Narnia. No humans. No one like her.
They sit there for a long time in silence, Rilian fidgeting and the woman as still as one of the White Witch’s statues in the tales. Occasionally a breeze stirs her dark curls. Rilian tries not to look at her out of the corner of his eye, but it’s harder than he’d think it would be. She’s very beautiful.
“I should leave,” he says finally, when the light filtering down through the forest cover tells him that it has to be around noon. Father and Doctor Cornelius will have realized that he’s gone by now – gone from the castle and Cair Paravel, and that he left without taking an escort or a guard, the way he’s supposed to. “I ran out on breakfast with my father –”
“Will you come back?” says the woman in green. Rilian eyes her, trying to decide if she sounds wistful or not.
“Yes,” he says, and blurts out, “I – I wrote you a poem. But my tutor took it from me.”
“A poem?” she says, her tone idly bemused.
“It was for an assignment,” Rilian says hastily, feeling his cheeks color. “I didn’t, I mean – if you don’t want to see it, I don’t have to –”
She puts her head to one side, like a curious bird. “I’d like to.”
Rilian blushes even more deeply, cursing the fair complexion that his father lacks, though if she takes any notice of it he can’t tell. “I’ll bring with me. The next time I come. I – when will you be here?”
“I’ll be here when you’re here,” she says, hesitates for half a beat, and then smiles at him.
Rilian smiles back, then gets to his feet and goes to catch Juniper, who’s wandered a little ways into the undergrowth. The woman watches him the whole time.
“I,” he begins, when he emerges. He clenches Juniper’s reins in his fist, feeling the leather of his gloves stretch over his knuckles. “What will you do to get your name?”
The woman in green smiles again, calm and still on the edge of the fountain where Rilian’s mother died. “Something spectacular.”
end
Author:
bedlamsbardFandom: Chronicles of Narnia bookverse/movieverse
Rating: PG
Content Advisory: None
Summary: Be bold, be bold, be not too bold. He can't keep calling her the lady in the green kirtle.
Disclaimer: The Chronicles of Narnia and its characters, situations, settings, etc., belong to C.S. Lewis. Certain characters, situations, settings, etc., belong to Walden Media.
Author's Notes: A follow-up to Charmed Life. Be Bold, Be Bold uses Warsverse backstory. It does not use material from The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (2010). Title from Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene.
Rilian isn’t writing poetry because he wants to write poetry, because as far as he’s concerned, no one ever wants to write poetry, unless it’s some boring old sod who’s been dead for centuries now, or maybe Glenstorm, but centaurs are the exception to a lot of rules. He’s certainly not sitting in his study rapping out feet on his desk and trying to figure out whether “sweetness” is an iamb or a trochee because it’s his idea of a good time. Anyone who is, Rilian decides firmly, is completely mad. Including Doctor Cornelius, since this is his stupid idea in the first place.
Eventually Rilian decides that “sweetness” is a trochee instead of an iamb and scratches it out, since if he leaves it in he’s going to have to explain why he made the decision to change up the meter and “because I thought it sounded better” isn’t a valid reason, at least by Doctor Cornelius’s standards. This might be entertaining if he was writing anything like what Glenstorm writes, which is all stirring epics of battles that involve kings winning their crowns and (more interesting) enemies getting limbs hacked off and heads split open, but instead he’s working on the asinine court fashion of the day, which is some kind of simpering sonnet that he wouldn’t care about if Doctor Cornelius wasn’t making him. He’s fairly certain he wouldn’t have known about it at all if Doctor Cornelius hadn’t presented him with a stack of suitable examples, making noises about appropriateness and the circular nature of poetry – apparently, these kinds of sonnets had been popular in the eighth century, and for no reason Rilian can glean from reading them, have swung back around.
He chews on the end of his pen. All he has of his assigned composition is one miserable line, and he’s not entirely sure it’s even in tetrameter. At this point, Rilian doesn’t think he cares, because he’s been at this for hours and he hasn’t gotten any further than the third foot of the second line. Sweetness. He needs a synonym for sweetness. He stares at the blank page in horror and wonders what in the name of Aslan Doctor Cornelius was thinking; at this rate, he’d rather go back to composing dialogues in Old Narnian.
He’s saved by a tap on his door. Rilian all but springs out of his chair and almost trips over his riding boots in his hurry to get it open, kicking them hastily under his reading couch after he gets free of them. When he finally gets the door open, he has to adjust his gaze to look down; the person standing there is a good head shorter than he is.
“Oh, good,” Rilian says. “You’re a poet, Master Jonstone, come and help me.” He reaches out and grabs the playwright’s arm, dragging him into the study. The door shuts behind him, solemn as a prayer.
“Your highness?” says Benjavier Jonstone, his mouth quirking slightly at the corners. His gaze flickers quickly around the room, taking in the mess, but then his attention is back on Rilian, steady.
“Doctor Cornelius has me writing this sonnet,” Rilian explains, “and I’m having trouble –”
“I can only hope I can be of assistance,” says Jonstone gallantly. He’s taller than Doctor Cornelius, though not by much; a short, squat half-dwarf with red hair and a short pointed red beard. Rilian’s not sure which of his parents had been the human and which the dwarf. “May I see what you have so far, your highness?”
Rilian snatches the paper up to show him, and Jonstone moves closer to the window, where the light is brighter. “Doctor Cornelius said I should write a Telmarine sonnet, that’s iambic pentameter, but I wasn’t sure what to write about –”
“A woman, of course!” Jonstone says, and grins. “Or a man, I suppose,” he adds as a gracious afterthought. “There are other subjects, of course, your highness – I suppose your tutor has assigned you Blackmar’s ‘Salute’ – but most of the corpus is love poetry.”
“I know,” Rilian says sadly. “I don’t –” He means to say that he doesn’t have anybody to write love poetry about, and then he stops, thinking of the lady in the woods. “Maybe I do,” he says instead.
Jonstone grins at him. “Does that help some, your highness?” He looks down at the sheet of paper in his fist. “Do you mean to have the feminine ending for your first line?”
“No!” Rilian says. “Which –”
“You’ve an unnecessary accent mark on ‘gazed,’” says Jonstone, pointing it out. Rilian takes the paper from him and scratches it out hastily.
“Did Doctor Cornelius send you to come help me?” he asks, crossing out what he’d written of his second line. The first line is still good, but what little he’d had of the rest won’t work at all, not for her.
“No, your highness,” says Jonstone. “I came of my own accord.”
Rilian’s not stupid. He puts his pen down and looks up at Jonstone. “Is there something I can do for you, Master Jonstone? You’ve been very helpful,” he adds as an afterthought; Doctor Cornelius would probably appreciate the formality.
Jonstone tenses slightly. “I don’t mean to be forward, your highness,” he says, “but my partner and I had put together a masque for your royal mother before her passing. It was meant to be performed – well, I suppose that doesn’t matter now. Coloma and I were hoping that you might speak to your father and, er, persuade him to let the performance continue –”
Rilian remembers vaguely that Coloma is that woman who designs the sets for his masques. Mother had liked the Sea Queen’s Palace she’d built for the Masque of Tethys –
He swallows. It’s been a month now, and he still thinks that Mama’s still going to come back, just walk in and smile at him, and – but she isn’t. Not ever.
“I’m not really good at persuading my father of things,” he says. “But I’ll ask him.”
Jonstone looks relieved. “Thank you, your highness,” he says. “Do you require any further assistance?”
Rilian looks back down at the page, brimming with ideas now. “No,” he says reluctantly, because Doctor Cornelius probably wouldn’t like it if he had a professional poet guiding his every penstroke. “But can I send for you and ask if there’s something else?”
“Of course, your highness,” says Jonstone. He bows from the waist, then leaves. He’s wearing lifts the way Doctor Cornelius does; his steps are heavier than they should be.
Rilian doesn’t even wait for the door to shut behind him before he drops back down into his chair, reaching for his pen. He doesn’t know if he’ll ever see the lady in the green dress again, but he wants to.
*
Rilian doesn’t see his father for another two days. He was supposed to have dinner with him, but Father has suddenly decided to take off to go and personally adjudicate some case in Glasswater, so instead Rilian is left with Doctor Cornelius. At least he has his sonnet to offer up, giving him a few minutes of peace while he shoves food into his mouth and Doctor Cornelius reads it.
“Did someone help you with this, your highness?” says Doctor Cornelius, after five minutes of blissful silence.
“I wrote it!” Rilian protests, a little insulted by the implication.
Doctor Cornelius raises an eyebrow at him.
“I wrote it,” Rilian repeats firmly. “Master Jonstone came and looked at it and gave me some suggestions, that’s all.”
“Benjavier Jonstone?”
“Yes. The one who writes – who wrote – Mother’s masques.” He curses himself for the slip, but Doctor Cornelius doesn’t seem to notice it.
“Benjavier Jonstone came here, to talk to you? Or – did you send for him?”
“He came –” Rilian says, and explains, wondering why Doctor Cornelius cares. He doesn’t like Master Jonstone, everyone knows that. He used to say that Master Jonstone was a dabbler who wasted his talent on writing court spectacles, though he never said that where Mother could hear.
Doctor Cornelius listens, holding the paper with the sonnet on it in one hand. “Was That Woman with him?”
“That – er, you mean Mistress, um –” Rilian can’t remember her surname. “The one who makes his sets? He came by himself.”
“I see,” Doctor Cornelius says, disapproving. “Well, I would not bring this incident up to your father –”
“Why not?” Rilian asks. “It’s a reasonable question.”
“Your father is unlikely to be receptive to Master Jonstone’s request,” Doctor Cornelius says, then changes the subject and resists all of Rilian’s attempts to find out why. When he finally leaves, he takes Rilian’s sonnet with him and assigns him a translation of Prince Seabright’s proposal to Queen Lucy in The Most Tragicall Historie of the Laste Prince of Terebinthia. Rilian’s always thought that play was horribly misnamed; there’s still a prince in Terebinthia today.
Father is back the next evening, long after Rilian’s supposed to have gone to bed. He’s lying on the reading couch before the fire, his nose in one of the trashy novels Doctor Cornelius disapproves of. This one’s about some Telmarine knight in the early days of Caspian the Conqueror who’s been cut off from the rest of his lord’s train after a terrible snowstorm. Right now, Sir Sandale is wandering helplessly around in his forest, leading his horse and hoping to find shelter before he dies.
Sir Sandale has just realized that not only has he been going in circles, but that there’s something stalking him in the snow, when Rilian hears the castle gate opening and a cry of greeting. He drops the book and scrambles over the back of the couch to see who it is – Father, come back late, with Lord Drinian and Lord Trumpkin on a pony. Rilian grips the edge of the windowsill, looking down at them through the diamond-shaped glass panes of the window. He wants to go down and say hello, but he’s supposed to be in bed –
Trumpkin looks up at him, then leans over from his pony and jostles Father’s elbow as Father dismounts, pointing up. Father follows his finger, then smiles and waves to Rilian. Rilian waves back, then Father makes a gesture that means, “Go to bed, Rilian,” so Rilian waves again and retreats from the window, smiling.
He sees Father again, properly this time, in the morning, when he goes to Father’s solar to have breakfast with him and Doctor Cornelius. Father hugs him, and Rilian kisses both cheeks obediently before they sit down to breakfast.
“How was the case, Father?” Rilian asks, peeling an egg.
Father shrugs. “It was quick and clear, at least. There was a woman who was ill-treated by a man,” he adds, when Rilian opens his mouth to ask what it was about.
“All Narnians have the right of first appeal to the Crown,” Doctor Cornelius reminds Rilian.
Since it looks like he might be preparing for a lecture on the Narnian legal code as supposedly set down by King Edmund himself, Rilian hastily heads him off by asking, “Did he do it?”
“Yes, he did,” Father says, looking grim. He spreads jam on his toast, and Rilian shreds an egg shell between his fingers, feeling awkward for asking.
“Can I go with you next time?” he says.
Father blinks. “On law cases? You’re a bit young –”
“I’m the same age as the High King when he took the throne!” Rilian says, indignant. “Besides,” he adds, searching for a convincing argument, “I’ll have to adjudicate them when I’m king, and I need to start getting experience as soon as possible.” He looks at Doctor Cornelius, hoping he’ll agree, and Doctor Cornelius murmurs something to that extent.
Father’s mouth quirks slightly. “I see. I’ll consider the matter. I’ve been thinking we might go on a Progress next year –”
“Would we get to go to the Lone Islands?” Rilian says hopefully. He’s never been out of Narnia, and there are all sorts of stories about the Lone Islands; he’s always wondered if the skeleton of the dragon King Gale killed is still there on Felimath, the way the legends say.
“I don’t see why not,” Father says. He smiles fondly at Rilian. “We’ll have to go in spring or summer, when the seas are good.”
“Is that wise, your majesty?” Doctor Cornelius says doubtfully. “So soon after –”
Father glowers at him, and Doctor Cornelius stops mid-sentence.
“Oh,” Rilian says, remembering, “Master Jonstone came to see me the day you left. He said –”
“Master Jonstone?” Father says, frowning.
“Benjavier Jonstone,” Doctor Cornelius reminds him. “The playwright. He lives with That Woman – Lady Coloma Gergiore,” he corrects himself, when Father raises an eyebrow.
That’s right, Rilian remembers belatedly. The woman who builds the sets is the daughter of one of King Miraz’s lords; she’d run away from her husband to live with Master Jonstone. Doctor Cornelius doesn’t like scandal.
“What did he want, Rilian?” Father asks, putting his fork down.
“He wanted to know when the masque he wrote for Mother could be performed,” Rilian said. “He seems nice, he helped me with my…” He trails off, because Father is looking furious. “Father?”
“A masque,” he repeats. “That man thinks that now is the time for a masque, of all the damned things –”
“Perhaps a memorial tribute –” Doctor Cornelius suggests. “The title seems fitting, though of course I shall have to read the work to be certain that there is nothing offensive –”
“Absolutely not!” Father snaps. He pushes back from the table and goes to stand by the window, looking out at the open ocean to the east. Rilian squirms in his seat, not knowing what he’d said wrong.
“He seems nice,” he says again, lamely.
“Now is not the time,” Father says grimly. “Your mother would never – your mother would understand why. Cornelius, send a message to Master Jonstone and Lady Coloma informing them that their services will no longer be required in Cair Paravel; they are free to find employment elsewhere. Perhaps the Tisroc wants a scribbler and a carpenter.”
“Your majesty –” Doctor Cornelius says, frowning.
“Do it! Ben Jonstone was the queen’s man, not mine, and there is no queen anymore.” He sets his jaw, thudding his fist into the stone wall. Rilian winces and scrambles up, leaving the remnants of his breakfast strewn across the table.
“I’m going riding,” he says, and flees. Father and Doctor Cornelius don’t appear to notice.
*
The weather has been good, but Rilian hasn’t had much opportunity for riding lately, and Juniper’s been neglected. Nobody stops him when Rilian hauls out Juniper’s tack and starts to saddle him; the guards even wave farewell when Rilian rides out the front gate. He thinks that it’s been on his father’s orders that he’s been cooped up in the castle. What happened to Mother was an accident, everyone knows that, but that doesn’t stop Father from issuing orders to keep Rilian in Cair Paravel.
He makes it all the way to the Narnian Quarter before he sees someone he knows. It’s the last place he would have expected to find a familiar face; most of the people he knows at court live at the castle, except for some of the wealthier nobility with their great houses and beautiful gardens on the hill. Juniper’s stuck behind a carter carrying a load of barrels; the street is too narrow for Rilian to pass him, and he’s grinding his teeth in frustration, desperate to get beyond the city walls and give Juniper his head.
“Your highness!” he hears, and turns to find Master Jonstone on the sidewalk. The half-dwarf’s head only comes up to the shoulder of the human woman he’s holding hands with.
“Hello, Master Jonstone,” Rilian says, looking down at them. The woman is rather plain, with a mass of dark curls pulled back behind her head; Rilian makes a wild guess as to her identity. “And – Lady Coloma?”
She lets go of Master Jonstone’s hand to curtsy. “At your service, your highness,” she says. She straightens back up, eyeing him boldly. “Can we be of service to you?”
“I’m just going for a ride,” Rilian says. “Um – you might get a message from my father. He’s not very happy.”
Master Jonstone stills slightly, reaching for Lady Coloma’s hand again. “May I ask what His Majesty’s response was to my request, your highness?”
“He, um – well, he could change his mind,” Rilian says, suddenly realizing that maybe he doesn’t want to break this news to them. Master Jonstone is looking increasingly dismayed. “I’m sure he’ll send a message –”
Up ahead, the carter turns a corner, leaving the road clear all the way to the Lion’s Gate. Rilian looks at it a little frantically. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Lady Coloma stand on Master Jonstone’s foot and then say, “It was an honor to speak with you, your highness. I pray that my partner and I will have a chance to do so again.”
“Yes, an honor –” Master Jonstone says, unable to hide his dismay.
“It was good to speak with you too,” Rilian says awkwardly. “Well, um – goodbye,” he adds, and nudges Juniper quickly into a trot, ignoring someone’s curse as they hurry out of the way.
Getting into the open fields below the city is a relief. Rilian blows out his cheeks, sighing at the freedom, and turns Juniper across the Bridge of Sighs to go north, into the uncolonized lands of Narnia. Once he’s on the other side of the Great River, he gives his horse his head. The breeze whips his hair back from his face, and Rilian whoops in excitement. Aslan have mercy, he’s been cooped up in Cair Paravel so long, since the funeral –
He rides for a long time, until Juniper slows to a walk as they enter the forest. Rilian looks around curiously, patting Juniper’s neck. He hadn’t meant to come here, but he’s suddenly glad he didn’t. Outside the forest it’s spring; inside it is as well, but it’s a darker, more muted kind of spring. Most of the trees are evergreens up here, with little difference between winter and spring; the sun filters down through the tree cover, leaving everything layered in shades of light and shadow. Somewhere a bird chirps, another one answering it a moment later.
Rilian swings down out of the saddle, his boots nearly silent on the forest floor, and leads Juniper forward. He can hear the burbling of the fountain where Mother died somewhere nearby and he follows the sound. He’s not sure why, but – he’s here. It seems disrespectful to ignore it and leave.
When he enters the clearing, the woman in green is sitting on the edge of the fountain.
“I thought you might come today,” she says, looking up at him. She’s wearing the same brilliant green as before; Rilian thinks the gown might be different, but he’s not sure, and he doesn’t think he cares.
“I didn’t know I would,” Rilian admits. He takes a breath, suddenly nervous, and drops Juniper’s reins – the horse is well-trained enough that he won’t wander far. “May I sit?”
“If you like.”
He goes to sit next to her, not so close that it’s awkward. “You’re not running away from me this time,” he says curiously. The chipped marble is cool beneath his thighs; the still-flowing water of the thousand-year-old fountain tinkles gently into the bowl, misting the back of his left arm slightly.
“Why should I run?” says the woman in green. She tips her head to one side, curious.
“You did before.”
“You chased me,” she points out.
Rilian can’t deny that. “I just wanted to talk to you,” he says, a little lamely. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
She stares at him until he looks down, hasty. Her eyes are green, too, and piercing. “I was not,” she says, “scared.”
“Oh. Um, I didn’t…” He trails off, not knowing what to say. “What’s your name?” he says finally. He can’t keep calling her the lady in the green kirtle.
She gives him a dismissive look. “I don’t have one.”
“How do you not –” Rilian says, utterly startled. Everyone has a name. Even the wild Narnians in the north have names.
“In my land we don’t get names until we’ve done something to earn them. I haven’t, yet.” She tips her chin up, smoothing her skirts in her lap, though they don’t need it. A bird chirps in the trees nearby, then thinks better of it and takes to the air.
“That’s – doesn’t that get confusing? Not knowing what everyone is called?”
That gets him a raised eyebrow. “Are your people so dull that they can’t tell each other apart otherwise?”
“Well, no, but –” Rilian still can’t imagine it. Even the talking beasts name their children, though some of the old stories say that they haven’t always done so. But that was a long time ago, in the days of the Long Winter, or even earlier – the Dark Age, some of the Telmarine scholars like to call the period. Father doesn’t approve of the label; he thinks it’s a value judgment, but Doctor Cornelius likes to point out that it’s an accurate assessment, since almost no writing remains from the years before the White Witch. No Narnian writing, anyway. Rilian wonders what it was like back then, if it was really as savage as the Telmarine scholars like to say. Doctor Cyriacos, who wrote one of the histories Doctor Cornelius has assigned Rilian, says that names are a sign of civilization. Rilian wonders what he’d think of the woman in green.
“I didn’t mean anything by it,” he adds, a little awkward. “It’s just – it’s not something we do.”
She sniffs. “Indeed.”
They both fall silent. Juniper wanders around the clearing, taking delicate bites of some of the new growth. Rilian looks down at his gloved hands, tugging at the embroidered cuff of one. Next to him, the pale green fabric of the woman’s skirt falls over her knee, not quite brushing the ground and exposing the tip of her riding boot. It’s green too, calfskin dyed dark green with geometric patterns on it.
Father did surveys when he first took the throne, and every seven years since. There are a few ruins up here in the owlswood, but nothing close to civilization; the Marsh-Wiggles even further north hardly count. Rilian can’t think where the woman in green might be from, unless she’s from the far north, beyond the River Shribble, but no one lives up there except the wild giants who pay tribute to Narnia. No humans. No one like her.
They sit there for a long time in silence, Rilian fidgeting and the woman as still as one of the White Witch’s statues in the tales. Occasionally a breeze stirs her dark curls. Rilian tries not to look at her out of the corner of his eye, but it’s harder than he’d think it would be. She’s very beautiful.
“I should leave,” he says finally, when the light filtering down through the forest cover tells him that it has to be around noon. Father and Doctor Cornelius will have realized that he’s gone by now – gone from the castle and Cair Paravel, and that he left without taking an escort or a guard, the way he’s supposed to. “I ran out on breakfast with my father –”
“Will you come back?” says the woman in green. Rilian eyes her, trying to decide if she sounds wistful or not.
“Yes,” he says, and blurts out, “I – I wrote you a poem. But my tutor took it from me.”
“A poem?” she says, her tone idly bemused.
“It was for an assignment,” Rilian says hastily, feeling his cheeks color. “I didn’t, I mean – if you don’t want to see it, I don’t have to –”
She puts her head to one side, like a curious bird. “I’d like to.”
Rilian blushes even more deeply, cursing the fair complexion that his father lacks, though if she takes any notice of it he can’t tell. “I’ll bring with me. The next time I come. I – when will you be here?”
“I’ll be here when you’re here,” she says, hesitates for half a beat, and then smiles at him.
Rilian smiles back, then gets to his feet and goes to catch Juniper, who’s wandered a little ways into the undergrowth. The woman watches him the whole time.
“I,” he begins, when he emerges. He clenches Juniper’s reins in his fist, feeling the leather of his gloves stretch over his knuckles. “What will you do to get your name?”
The woman in green smiles again, calm and still on the edge of the fountain where Rilian’s mother died. “Something spectacular.”
end