The Shards of Arthur’s Shield

Chapter 1: The Lady’s Carriage

The shadows of the forest just beyond the lord’s grain fields called to Thomas. When lying in bed, the youth could swear he heard voices coming from the hidden pathways, hidden by the forest’s tall, imposing oaks. Even here, standing in the fields cutting down swaths of barley for those who would come behind him to collect, he heard that Siren’s call. Adventure, just past the domain of the light, called to him. “Thomas…” The song came again, louder this time. That was not the Siren of the Woods, he realized, that was his father, “Thomas!” This brought the youth’s mind out of the daydream and back to the present.

“Yes, Father?” The boy stopped swinging his scythe and looked to Jeremiah, his father, who had been overseeing the whole field.

“Are you losing your ears as well as your sense, Thomas?” Jeremiah walked around the uncut field along the hewn barley stalks, approaching his son.

“Father?” Thomas took a moment and looked around. The woman who had been following him, gathering his harvest into sheaves, was nowhere to be seen. “Where has everyone gone, Father?”

“They blew the quitting whistle minutes ago, Son.” Thomas’s father set his hand on the youth’s shoulder. “Come on. Your mother and sister are waiting for us by the hearth”

“You go, Father. I should take care of these last few sheaves.” Thomas glanced from his father’s years-worn face to the hewn carpet of barley laid out several feet behind him. “Our lord will be furious if I let this go to waste because of my mindlessness.” 

“True. I will wait for you on the road.” Thomas set to work before his father had even turned around, gathering stalks and tying them together in bundles that were about half as wide as he could have hugged. He tossed those bundles onto piles a few dozen yards away that were being loaded onto carts to be taken into the village. The bundles would end up either in the lord’s manor at the heart of the town, or sold to one of a few booths in the village, some to the baker for bread, some to the saucier for his soups, and the last few, usually the smallest or most sick-looking bundles, would be sold to the village priest to either turn into communion wafers or to be made into loaves for the poor.

Thomas smiled as he put the last bundle on the cart. His friend Lewis, the driver of that particular cart, waved back at Thomas as the load was topped. Thomas waved at his friend, feeling a sense of accomplishment. He knew that he had a small part to play in the woven tapestry that was the village. Thomas had not spent much time in Alnwick since his father pulled him out of the church school. Despite that, Thomas had managed to maintain relationships with the priest and the friends he made while studying there, Lewis being one of those.

The young man, sixteen years of age, wiped his hands off on his pants as the cart pulled away. His father, as promised, was waiting on the road. Thomas had caught a reflection of himself in the river’s stream enough times to be able to know that he was the spitting image of his father. Jeremiah stood with his burly arms crossed and a curly brown beard hugging his aging face. He had crow’s feet forming next to his eyes, and the smile he wore only enhanced the effect. His clothes were simple: a cloth shirt, cloth pants, and a leather belt. His thighs and knees were girded by a leather apron, which aided in keeping the bits of barely (that would get everywhere) from getting into his pants and tearing them up while he worked in the field. Thomas approached and embraced his father. The two turned and began toward home.

“You know giving away your labour like that, son, is bad form.” Jeremiah jokingly remarked.

“Like what, Father?” Thomas pointed at the sun, which was still above the horizon, “I am beginning to think our quit-whistler is going blind. There is still at least a half-hour of sunlight left.”

“Our ‘quit-whistler’?” Jeremiah guffawed. “Did you learn that word during your time at Oxford, Thomas?”

“Well, I guess it just made sense,” the boy shrugged at his father’s laugh. “They whistle our quitting time, so ‘quit’ plus ‘whistler,’ it only seemed logical.”

“I suppose. You have a sound head on your shoulders, Thomas, but I can tell you that they are called more properly and simply, ‘whistle-blowers.’” Jeremiah and Thomas crossed over a bridge that crossed over a river which ran through the barley fields. Their house was on the edge of the river that separated the barley fields from the greenlands. That second bridge was still about an hour’s walk away. Thomas’s family lived to the north of the border river, to the west of the lord’s woods, to the south of the village, Alnwick, and the greenlands they lived on became cattle fields as they continued west.

As they continued north toward the second river’s bridge, Thomas and his father stepped off the road to allow a carriage to pass by. Thomas assumed it was some lord or lady coming to visit their local noble Lord Benedict III. He regretted looking into the window of the carriage because he recognized the face. It was Benedict’s daughter, Venessa. She saw him and screeched for the driver to stop. The young lady stuck her upper half out of the window and waved at Thomas.

“Thomas! Oh, Tommy!” she cried.

Thomas raised a hesitant hand in response. “Hail, my lady, Venessa.”

“Come up, Thomas, I can give you a ride home to your father’s house,” Venessa offered. She was very bold.

“Would that would be appropriate, my lady?” Thomas called back. He and his father had begun walking again, both slowly approaching the carriage.

“Oh, do not be so prudish. Besides, your father can come in too; the cabin is plenty big.” When the pair of men did not immediately jump at the offer, she added, “I have chilled wine.”

That was enough to convince Thomas’s father. “Do not look a gift horse in the mouth, Thomas.” The older man then addressed the lady, “Lady Venessa, we would be honored to receive your hospitality.”

“Or a ‘gift lady’,” Thomas muttered under his breath.

The pair of men climbed into the cabin and, after they had settled, Lady Venessa slapped the outside of the carriage twice. The wooden box on wheels began moving again as the driver whipped the horses into motion.

“Thank you, my lady.” Thomas’s father bowed his head in thanks to the young woman.

Thomas would hate to be rude and not thank the lady, but any guilt he might have felt at not thanking her dissipated when she held up her white silk-gloved hand and clasped her nose closed. She pushed her golden blond hair out of the way with her other hand and intoned, “My goodness, it must have been a productive day in the field.”

“We beg your forgiveness, my lady. We were on our way home to wash up.” Thomas’s father bowed his head.

“Oh, no forgiveness needed, it does not offend me to know my father’s servants were productive today.” She laughed a small, royal laugh.

Thomas sighed and shook his head. He turned his head away from the girl and closed his eyes to try to erase the image from his mind. She was beautiful, an absolute angel on the outside, but Thomas had seen things that told him who she really was. Underneath her slender physique, her beautiful blonde hair, her enrapturing blue-green eyes, and rosy cheeks was the heart of a noble. Perhaps if he could look beyond her atrocious heart and just enjoy her visage, this arranged marriage business would be more palatable.

“Is something wrong, Thomas?” Venessa asked him as he turned away. “You look sick.” There was genuine concern in her voice. That was the worst part, Thomas silently admitted to himself. She really loves me… There was no denying her heart, and Thomas was preparing his for a life of denial.

“Nothing is wrong, my lady,” he said. “Forgive me, I just got a tad queasy due to the motion of the carriage, I think.”

“Here,” she said, “this might help settle your stomach. Remember what the Apostle Paul said, ‘a little wine for the stomach.’” She giggled as she handed him a small goblet half-filled with wine. His father got the same from the lady, and they both raised a toast to her. The chill of the wine as it slipped past his lips and fell down his throat sent shivers throughout Thomas’s body. It also began working away the tension in his shoulders.

They spent the next dozen or so minutes in polite conversation. Venessa explained that she was returning from Camelot, the capital of the kingdom, with news for her father to disseminate as he sees fit. This news did not seem to please the young lady. She flirted with Thomas a few times, and the young man was careful not to offend, to remain polite, and, at the non-verbal insistence of his father, even compliment her once or twice.

Finally, the carriage stopped outside the hut that Thomas and his father called home. Venessa had seen it many times and understood their disposition. Thomas thought that this may have been why she wanted to marry him, kind of like a boy finding a discarded puppy in an alley. It presented a challenge and the chance at companionship. Thomas hated being seen as a project.

The men departed and said their farewells to Venessa and walked toward their home as the carriage drove away. The place that Thomas called home was more than an average pauper’s abode. It had been gifted to Thomas’s father as an unofficial dowry; officially, it had been due to Jeremiah’s outstanding performance as a leader among the field workers. Thomas took in the view again and sighed, the thatched roof and wooden walls had rarely been so inviting. He could not wait to see his mother and sister.