For a man who spent most of his time half asleep by the fire, Remy’s passing cast a long shadow. Even Mirda had failed to reckon on just how many people came in for the ‘odd word with himself’ over the course of a day.
No one had ever been privy to these conversations until the wake, when folks came from all over the Midlands to share warm memories of the man who’d found his place by accident. His old troop commander came, her face reminding Mouse of a half apple left to dry with its broad cheekbones and withered flesh draped over it. Carried by litter from the Citadel itself, she told the story of how Remy had asked for his full release once he’d asked Mirda to wed and she’d said yes.
“Allus thought he’d be back, Remy,” the old woman wheezed asthmatically. “Prided myself on knowin the true soldiers from those that’d drift in and out, and he had the heart of a fighter, he did. Knew the way of the blade better’n any man I’d met before or since. Such a waste,” she shook her head for a moment before recalling herself. “Not that he was wasted here, missus,” she said quickly. “Ach, don’t mind me, I’m just missing the good swordsman of our youth. And if my eye spots it right, this un will be his spit and imagine once he’s grown.” She thumped Mouse’s shoulder with her cane.
Mirda dabbed at her eyes with her apron and cast a speculative look at her youngest son. “D’you think so? To think that he’s not really gone,” and Mirda trailed off, burying her face in the apron.
The commander, no longer having a hand to administer pats to, reached instead for Mirda’s shoulder. “I do think missus, and it’s right glad I’d be to put a letter in the hands of the High Priest that he send someone to see the lad if it please you both.” Her rhemy blue eyes glared fiercely at Mouse. “You ever play at swords, boy?” she barked.
Mouse, unused to being addressed so abruptly, startled before shaking his head. It prompted a pursing of lips and made her look even more like the dried apple than before. “Martin!” the old woman screeched suddenly. “Martin, where are you, you useless scut!”
The summons drew a long boned man with a shock of sunbleached hair from where he’d been leaning lazily against the bar with a tankard in his hand. Without hurry, he drained the good brown ale from Remy’s last brewing and placed the vessel on the bar with a smile to Mouse’s oldest sister who was minding it in Mirda’s stead. “My Lady Pia?” he said, kneeling so his mistress would not need to crane her neck nor shout again.
“Lady me again, and you’ll see this old woman can still beat you with a rapier, cocky boy!” This was emphasized by a whack at his shins, one that did not land as Martin agiley swept the leg to one side. Pia snorted with amusement before pointing her cane at Mouse, who very sensically recoiled to outside her reach.
Even Mirda managed a watery chuckle at the general laughter that broke out then. Mouse’s heart was gladdened that she could still smile, that anything so normal could be happening in a world without his father.
“Take this lad out back and try him. For all his sweet face, I think he might could be his father’s son, and that sort it’s best to find afore they find themselves in some spot of trouble.”
Martin bowed his head reverently as he gave Mouse’s shoulder a nudge and jerked his head over his shoulder. It wasn’t until he was out of the cane’s reach that he gave his mistress a salute and said, “As my Lady commands.”
That brought another round of amusement that was needed, and as the twosome made their way to the backyards, Mouse heard the voices of the gathering turn to the more light hearted rememberances.
“Thank you,” he said softly, and to his surprise, Martin nodded in understanding.
“The worst of the sorrows are past now, you’ll see. It’s that folks need to let them out, and it’s best done together, that no one break their hearts feeling alone in the love that they still hold. It’ll be better.” He ruffled the boy’s dark hair before his tone turned brisk. “Let’s see what you know, then.”
Remy had kept practice blades in the garden shed, though Mouse didn’t ever remember his brothers or sisters picking them up. It gave him a pang, to wonder if his father would have liked to have one of his children take an interest. It made him straighten up to do his best, that he would do his father proud by being whatever it was Pia saw in him.
Once Martin put the leaded wooden blade in his hand and directed him to watch him and do as he did, Mouse felt a subtle shift in perception. He didn’t need Martin to tell him to stand with his sword hand to the fore to make his body a smaller target for the imaginary enemy. He didn’t need to be told that if he lunged, he could put the entire weight of his body behind a blow, instead of the meagre force in his wrist and arm. As Martin explained the different forms for attack and defense, it was as though Mouse was not being taught, but was remembering things his arms and legs already knew. For the first time he could remember, he felt graceful and deft, like he’d perfected one of the dance steps his sister Sylva had taught him once.
It wasn’t until dark fell that Martin made him stop. “Here now, your sweet mother is like to skin me; I’d be surprised if you’re good for anything tomorrow after swinging that thing around all afternoon.”
Only then did Mouse notice the aches in his shoulders and legs from the hours they’d spent in the yard. It felt good, and he grinned unrepentantly up at Martin’s rueful frown. “Ah, hells, I don’t know why it surprises me, but the lady’s called it again,” he said as he took the blade away.
“So I was good?” Mouse asked, his head cocked to one side, dark eyes fixed firmly on his erstwhile mentor’s face.
The boy’s whole heart was shining in his face, and if it had been another lad and another trial, Martin may have waved the query away with a cryptic remark. Or a teasing one.
But you can find a friend in a laugh, Martin knew you could find one in learning, too, and it was clear this boy needed a friend just then. He slung an arm across Mouse’s shoulders and pulled him to the watering barrel. “You were so good that I’m going to have to dunk your head in here to be sure the lady doesn’t see how careless I’ve been. Have you a clean tunic, lad?”
Mouse nodded, and Martin sighed dramatically in relief even as he produced a clean cloth to help with the tidying up. “I didn’t ask, what do they call you?”
“Mouse,” he said, taking care to vigorously scrub behind his ears. Like most busy mothers, Mirda considered dirty necks and ears to be the pinnacle of filth and took it as a personal mission to eradicate them whenever possible. Usually with a certain degree of force and loud commentary that the boy didn’t care to experience when it could be avoided.
“Ahhh,” Martin said, the first uncertain tone he’d uttered. “Well, we’ll find summat for you, lad, never fear.”
With a last clap on the back, the young soldier left him to head back to the common room and another tankard of the fine brown ale. By the time Mouse had cleaned himself up and changed his clothes, the stories were being told that brought smiles and tears in at least equal measure.
He stood on the back stairway and leaned against the wall for a moment, closing his eyes. Tomorrow, Mouse knew, his arms and back and legs would ache, and he’d have to figure out how to keep on going. To stop looking at Remy’s corner, or fetching and carrying for him, or finding the word he was looking for in the middle of a conversation. He hadn’t realized just how much of his day was spent near his dad til now, and how incredible was it that the world could just go on without him.
And so, to stay there just a moment longer, to hear the chatter and clatter of folk in the common room, like any other night and be able to even briefly pretend it was any other night was a comfort. It wasn’t true and the moment of feeling something normal wouldn’t last, but for just that small space of time, Mouse could pretend that his father’s voice would call out for him. That there would be more stories, more small secrets they kept from his mother, that all the family was gathered for midwinter or to make the wine.
It was the sound of someone crying softly that spoiled the illusion and brought Mouse back to himself. Certainly no one cried during those festive occasions. And the older, wiser part of him knew that he couldn’t spend the rest of his life making believe and it was best to hold onto the memories.
He sighed and went back to sit by his mother’s side as he would have his father’s. To his surprise, she gave his back an absent pat and went on talking to Lady Pia. Martin stayed at the bar and flirted with Banda, his oldest (and prettiest) sister. That she was long married with children of her own was not of concern, particularly as her brooding husband was in the far, dark corner of the room speaking rather grimly with a number of the farmers from the outer districts. Of his five brothers, only two were in attendance, as they had chosen to stay in the Midlands. The eldest, Lestin, had gone to the Citadel to learn from the mages, and the next eldest to Mouse, Endal, had set out to become a traveling peddler. They didn’t hear much from the two of them, though Mouse had heard Lady Pia promise to carry two letters upon their journey back and see that they were circulated for them.
Mirda was philosophical about the matter. “My girls have all stayed close, so if a few of my lads choose to wander, I only hope they’ll make lives for themselves.”
Sylva sniffed as she placed a plate of small sugar iced cakes on the table. “It’d be nice if they’d write once in awhile, mam. If only so’s we’d know they were gettin on well.”
“Tshh now,” Mirda said, a glance that clearly said family matters were best left with family. It was one of her rules that she stringently enforced, considering how much of their lives were public gossip as it was. “You’ll see yourself one day when your children grow on,” and she smiled, her eyes turning misty as she laid a hand on Sylva’s belly. “Love, if it’s a lad, would you…?”
Holding her mother’s hand to the new life within her, Sylva pressed her lips to Mirda’s forehead. “Of course, mam.” She sniffled, dashing the tears away with the flat of her hand impatiently. “Didn’t he always say that’s how life goes onward?”
Feeling awkward with the sentiment and out of place in the conversation, Mouse shifted on his stool. He glanced toward Lady Pia, and saw her wry look of understanding.
The night passed on that way, until the groups began smaller and the voices became softer. In all his almost ten years, Mouse could never remember having been up so late. Though his head ached from the tears he’d cried earlier, when everyone else had been crying too, and his body was already beginning to protest the exertions of the day, he’d never felt more awake.
Pia was also still very much awake, now settled into what had been his father’s place close to the fire. Out of habit, Mouse went to fetch and carry for her til she bade Martin to seek his bed.
“Don’t I have a fine page in this lad right here? Off with you, and mind you sleep alone. I don’t need to be hearin the shouts of yon outraged husband,” Pia said, stamping her cane on the floor as her eyes darted to the sour expression on the man Banda had married.
“Heard and obeyed, Dama,” Martin said with a rueful grin. “Though if he called me out,” he said, giving the broad shouldered man an appraising look before turning his back dismissively.
“It’d be a poor repayment to Remy’s memory, lad. Pick fights over pretty girls some other time, hey?”
Martin laughed, a little louder and longer than a casual remark called for, and bowed himself from the room.
The old woman watched him go, shaking her head fondly. “He’s a good sort, quick with a word or a blade,” she told Mouse with a smile before looking about to gauge how many ears were likely to be listening. “And he was quite impressed with you, young man.”
“Ma’am, if you please,” Mouse said, his voice soft and timid as his name.
“It likely does, so ask your question, child,” Pia said, cocking her head to one side and waiting, her dark eyes sparkling but her face unreadable. The fire had burned low, and the shadows seemed to wrap around Pia so that her face stood clear and pale, her gaze deep with mystery.
Pinned by that dark stare, Mouse cleared his throat. “Who was my father that you came so far to walk with him into the dark?” Just saying the words brought the clammy chill from the tomb Remy had been laid in back, and Mouse shivered with the memory.
“Interesting question, so let me ask you one in return. Who do you think your father was?”
Something in the boy writhed in shame, that of all the stories he’d heard told by Remy, for Remy, about Remy, and he still felt a chasm of emptiness instead of an answer. When Remy had told his stories, Mouse had envisioned someone else, someone like Martin. Dashing and clever with words, out in the world, having adventures.
It was like having a broken bowl before you, and you couldn’t quite see how the pieces were supposed to fit back together to make a whole. Remy had been an old man when Mouse was born, and maybe once his shoulders had been broad, but it was hard to imagine.
Sitting before the old woman’s gaze, it was a very uncomfortable thought, certainly not one he wanted to voice. “He was a soldier,” he finally answered in the smallest of voices.
“Mmph.” Pia’s gaze did not shift away. She leaned her chin on the end of her cane, and Mouse could have sworn she was picking every thought out of his head, and blushed.
“Well, that part is true, but not true.”
“It’s not?” Mouse asked.
“Remy was within a season of taking his final vows to Erdu when he was called home. Talk at the time was that he’d be made a Champion.”
Mouse blinked. He’d never known that his father had almost been a priest. Somehow, that part of the stories where his life had drastically changed track were always glossed over.
And to have been a Champion!
Those were more stories Mouse had heard, though now he realized, never from his father. Champions of Erdu were charged with riding all over at the bidding of a god to mete out justice. They were the best of fighters, but also wise to the ways of the peoples of the all the corners of the world. It was the highest of honors, along with the most stringent of duties.
And it was very uncommon for them to marry, have families, and be able to put down roots in one place. Mouse swallowed hard, thinking of the life of glory and renown his father had given up…
… to be here. It made Mouse look around the room he’d taken for granted his whole life and see it, really see it for the first time.
With the high ceilings, it could be bright with the polished oak floors and whitewashed walls when the sun splashed through the wide windows of a morning. He remembered the great debate over the cost of glass that gave them the leaded windows by and by, and how proud Remy had been of the fine linen curtains to be drawn over them and keep out the chill on the stormy days. Excepting Mirda’s bar, the rest of the furniture had a catch as catch can feel to it; one elaborately carved arm chair may sit next to a simple wooden chair with a wicker bottom. It was all sturdy and comfortable, with a certain lived in charm that only comes with time and use.
There had been so many happenings here, from wedding parties and hoisting tankards after a good harvest. It was where any news would be first found out, with everyone from the matrons of the town dropping in to fill their stewpots for dinner to children selling fresh caught river fish from their barrows.
It was home, and Mouse felt a lump gather in his throat for the feeling of peace it gave him as he hoped his father had felt it too. Why had he never thought to ask him, really ask him in a quiet moment like this one?
And then, he realized, clearly Remy had felt the same, enough to give up a whole different life to embrace the one he’d found.
While his mind was whirling, the old woman leaned back into the shadows, content to remain silent. Watching the boy called Mouse closely, it took longer than she’d thought it would for the next question to come. She almost hoped he didn’t ask, that he would be content with staring out at a wholly different life, then back at the comforts of all he knew and stay right here. Support his bustling little mother, always at her right hand until the day many years down the road when he would sit just where she was now, and tell the story of how his father had almost been a Champion. She wondered if he’d be the happier for it, then pushed the musing away.
Erdu didn’t need her regrets.
He needed priests and Champions to do his will.
“How do you become an initiate of Erdu?”
Pia sighed before leaning forward. “You dedicate yourself to the study of battle, intensely, so much so that you gift Him five years of your life in which you do nothing but learn, perhaps with nothing to show for it at the end.”
“Five years?” Mouse said with a gasp.
Oh how she wanted to pull the grieving child into her arms and tell him that the day would come in which five years would pass in the merest blink of an eye, and He whom they served may only wake once within his lifetime if he were lucky.
Curiouser and Curiouser 