Authors: R. Cooper
Sometimes Bertie felt as if those dreams
were all he had. It was not as if he had anything else to offer
someone such as Godric.
Even now he was dirtying up Godric’s bed.
There was movement in the outer room, but for one more moment,
Bertie stayed where he was, holding onto his dreams for a bit
longer. In this dream, when Godric had come to him to say goodbye,
Bertie had kissed him and twined a wreath of flowers into his hair
as tradition demanded. Then in another, Bertie would do the same
again when Godric rode off to battle without him, as Godric more
than likely would.
Then the spirit of his brother, and his
father, and his mother, and even the Widow Flanders, compelled
Bertie to his feet. He had slept too long as it was, as the growing
light creeping into the tent told him.
Once in the outer room he stopped in place
and rubbed at his eyes. Then he smiled.
Godric was standing at attention near the
table, and near the opposite corner of the tent by three braziers
hot even at a distance, was a small bathing tub.
“I love you,” Bertie told him by way of good
morning. Godric’s shoulders went back and his glance over was
gently reproving though he said not a word. He was wearing armor
and a long fur cloak. Bertie’s shoulders felt tired just imagining
the weight.
Godric was armed as well, though he did not
wear a helmet and carried no shield. So no battle was imminent
then, but there was worry enough to have him ready for one. Bertie
tried to keep his smile and conceal his concern, but feared he
failed.
Godric seemed to misunderstand his frown and
gestured toward the bathwater. “Enjoy it. It might be your last
chance for some time unless you are willing to risk a stream.”
Bertie shivered as he removed his gold and
rubbed at his sore neck. “I am far too delicate for an icy stream,
Godric, everyone knows that.”
“Delicate,” Godric repeated, his chin rising
slightly. It fell again when skin-and-bones Godric headed over to
curl around his feet. Not hiding his envy of a cat, Bertie sighed,
then set to work untying the leather straps on his boots. “You are
perhaps soft, my lord, but not delicate,” Godric mused, possibly to
himself for he did not look at Bertie. “A delicate man would not
have survived in those mountains with winter approaching and danger
behind every tree. A delicate man would not have made a journey of
nine days in seven, with injured and weak people to care for and
only his stories of Camlann to keep them warm.”
Godric stared at the cat that bore his name
and so did not see Bertie freeze with his hands on his shirt
hem.
“My people? You saw to them.” Bertie had no
doubt Godric had cared for them, but he could not add to his
burdens. Once he was clean and dressed, he would go out and see to
them himself. His shoulders and neck still felt heavy but Bertie
was not certain the gold was entirely to blame.
“As requested, my lord.” Godric nodded,
going on when Bertie sighed again, with pleasure this time. “Beds
found. Mouths fed. Wounds bandaged, as needed.”
“Praise the Lady. Thank you, Godric.”
“I spoke to them,” Godric offered, and
Bertie glanced over curiously when this was all Godric seemed about
to say. Godric generally didn’t offer much in conversation unless
they were alone, and even then it was usually at Bertie’s
instigation, not that Bertie was complaining. He could spend hours
prodding Godric to talk, to explain how he thought out steps before
taking action, to offer his thoughts on everything from Northern
food to the cut of Bertie’s hem, without growing tired of it. He
rather liked the victory of getting Godric to speak at all, and of
knowing that few others shared his confidences. But this time he
did not have to wait long before Godric continued.
Godric hesitated once more, it was true, but
only for the smallest moment. “I spoke to Torr also.”
“Torr? Oh your unhappy captain.” Bertie
realized with a small start that the man had never offered his name
and had been content for Bertie to address him as “Godric’s
man-at-arms”. “He was not pleased to be sent on that mission, was
he? Go find the king’s fool brother if he’s not already dead, when
he was
clearly
needed here.” Bertie went on when Godric
seemed startled and ready to interrupt him. “Oh, don’t lie to me
now, Godric, or be polite. I walked through this camp last night.
This isn’t close to the entire army. This is barely a full company.
What’s happening? Where’s my brother? Where’s everyone else? You
should not have worried about me.”
He stopped there and swallowed because that
had not been an easy thing to say, though it had sounded quite
kingly, in a certain way, like something from a long cycle of
warrior poems.
“I do not want to imagine the winter you
would have faced if I had not.” Godric swung his gaze up from the
cat. For all his talk of winter, his gaze was so very warm.
“Neither do I, my love,” Bertie exhaled,
then flinched at his choice of words. “I… sorry. I know things must
be different in the South. I did not mean to offend you with my
ways.”
North or South, Bertie was crazy, it was
fact. He wasn’t sure
why
he had to say whatever was on his
mind the moment he had the thought, but he always seemed to, to his
eternal embarrassment and shame. Just as he had been intrigued
enough to befriend Godric when he’d first come to court and to
loudly defend him from anyone daring to scorn him for his low
birth, he had just as noisily realized that he’d fallen in love
with Godric and confirmed his own reputation for idiocy by
announcing his affection to the world before he’d ever thought to
say it directly to Godric, and in doing so seemed to have driven
Godric away.
For far too long after that there had been
no more careful talks over tea or vaguely amused lectures on how to
better ride a horse. Since then, until word of the raiders had come
to them at the Keep, there had been only distance and “my lord”
between them.
“I am not offended,” Godric interrupted,
then cleared his throat. “There are several companies with your
brother in the capital, preparing to move north.”
“You’re not with him?” Bertie threw his
shirt to the floor. He was cold, but it was a relief to his
sensitive skin to have it off. He pulled at his belt and the waist
of his breeches until they fell too.
When there was no answer, only a sudden,
tense kind of silence, he looked up. Godric was regarding the cat
with concentration, as though its shaggy fur was inspiring him to
formulate a battle plan. Since that was unlikely, Bertie could only
assume that once again he’d shocked Godric, though this time he
hadn’t said a word.
Someday, Bertie was going to make the
journey south to find if others there were so prudish. The first
time Godric had witnessed the drunken dancing and wild loving of
Keep’s harvest festival, he had flushed to his ears and stared,
flat-eyed and undoubtedly disapproving, as Bertie had consumed
glass after glass of wine and then called to him from the fields,
begging for a dance, a kiss, a tumble.
Admittedly, the mysticism of the night
tended to go to Bertie’s head, as did the flagons of wine and sweet
honey cakes. Of course, he had often wondered, tortured himself, if
it could have been the difference in their positions holding Godric
back and not mere distaste for Bertie, but the workers and field
hands of the valley around the Keep had never hesitated to join in
the festivities with anyone who was willing, whatever their status.
During the last yield of the harvest, as the new year and winter
approached, with the moon high and the sky dark, there was no
difference between noble and peasant. At least not to be seen from
the shadows of the bonfires. So as respectful as Godric always was
of Bertie, never failing to forget his title, this could not be the
reason.
Nonetheless, the drunken love around the
Keep bonfires was precisely why autumn was Bertie’s favorite time
of year. Travelling from the capital with a smaller court was an
additional reason to love it, but mostly the Keep was dear to him
because it meant days of riding with just Godric and a relative
handful of others and heading toward festivities which promised him
yet another chance to have Godric to himself amongst those bale
fires.
He looked over at Godric, who continued to
avert his eyes, and then stepped into the tub. The water was
lukewarm but it felt divine. Bertie moaned low in his throat.
“I… am sorry there is no soap for you.”
Godric’s voice was barely a whisper and stayed rough even when he
coughed. Bertie merely stared at him, deliriously contemplating the
water lapping at his chest and the rush of feeling that colored
Godric’s face when he finally looked over. “I have advised the king
and his ministers, but I could not leave the rest of the country
undefended or allow us to be outflanked. Though the north, by sea,
is to their greatest advantage, a determined, vengeful enemy might
attempt other routes.”
“Like over the Western Mountains.” Bertie
realized he was staring and ducked to get his hair wet and scrub
his scalp.
“…Thought that unlikely, but possible,”
Godric continued as Bertie brought his head back up. “They were
over-ambitious in trying. Those mountains are difficult enough for
one caravan during the summer. An army could not make it.”
“Enough of one did,” Bertie replied sharply,
then slapped a hand to his mouth. He glanced over helplessly.
Godric looked at him again, but only to bow
his head as though Bertie were welcome to put a sword to his neck.
“The failure is mine.”
“No.
No
.” First bath in two months or
not, Bertie stood up, gesturing until he saw Godric’s gaze on him.
It travelled down, then slowly came back to his face. “You tried to
tell me.” Bertie’s voice softened without his permission, perhaps
at the renewed cold that left him trembling, or the heat in his
blood at odds with his prickling skin. But he remembered that
moment all too well, the morning light blinding as it had bounced
off Godric’s armor, the cheers and cries from the people outside,
silence between them as he’d fought not to say anything.
Godric seemed to as well. The distance
between them had never been so great, and then Godric plucked a
length of fabric from the table and came forward to offer it as a
towel. Bertie took it without turning away, compelling Godric to
look at him. “You tried to tell me, but I stayed behind and ordered
the soldiers to go.”
“You had your obligation, my lord.” He could
not tell if Godric was answering obediently or teasing him. Most
people would have teased since Bertie had never been the sort of
talk of responsibilities. But Bertie’s mind was clouded and dizzy
with all of Godric near and attending to him and he could not seem
to think clearly.
Staring through the wet strands of his hair,
Bertie couldn’t see much, but he gasped at the brief second when
Godric did not relinquish the towel, and he was surrounded by
Godric’s arms. His shiver as they left him was not for show, just
as it wasn’t only exhaustion that made him ache.
It had been so long since he had been with
anyone, and this was his Godric. He was burning with need at the
barest touch.
“Godric, please,” he whimpered without
shame. “I beg of you. Don’t call me “my lord” again.” In the early
days of knowing him, Godric had addressed Bertie as everyone else
but Aethir did, as Lord Aethelbert. Of course in those days, Bertie
had not realized his feelings and so had not sung them at every
opportunity and become the bane of Godric’s existence. He didn’t
think it was entirely in his mind that he and Godric had grown
close in that far away time, though he sometimes daydreamed about
the morning they had shared a bowl of the daisy tea favored in the
South. He had only himself to blame that those times were over.
“It offends you?” Godric lowered his voice
even more to ask the simple question, seeming to choose his words
carefully. Bertie shut his eyes tight and set about rubbing away
the wet chill as Godric kept talking. “Am I not addressing you
correctly? I can never be sure with you Northerners, but a lord is
a lord. It’s not wise to forget that. I learned that at a young age
and have been reminded of it often since then.”
Bertie stilled with one hand in his hair,
his throat dry and tight.
Godric was low born, it was true, but it was
not a subject ever directly questioned, not with his worth proven,
not with the king’s esteem for him. Others might still scorn Godric
for his way of speaking, his frankness of manner, everything that
made him who he was, but Bertie never had, not even when he itched
to sew new clothes for him and keep his armored polished. He looked
over.
His beloved had turned from him and was
seated with the cat in his lap. His hand dwarfed the dainty
creature but it seemed content enough.
Godric petting Godric, the cat that had
nearly… no, it had not been the cat, but Bertie’s reckless mouth.
Elated from so much time spent in the company of the country’s
hero, and yet relieved to be at the Keep and no longer on the road,
Bertie had been a bit over exuberant, as usual.
It was a trait that the people of the valley
had always seemed to regard fondly, unlike the stuffier members of
his brother’s court. Maybe it was something about the valley
people, a difference in attitudes as large as the difference in
customs between Camlann and the southern cities. In the valley
below the Keep they kept their feet bare in the summer as well as
in the warmth of early autumn, and held all children, especially
those conceived outside of marriage at the harvest, to be
sacred.
Bertie joining them with his feet bare
beneath his skirts only seemed to delight them. He did not know how
it made Godric feel, if it upset his sensibilities or pleased him
or merely amused him, but it made Bertie wonder and dream more.
Sometimes about dancing with him, sometimes about someday seeing
Godric’s feet. It was yet another reason to adore the annual trip
to the valley with all its rituals; it gave him a tradition that
might mean he could see Godric tipsy among the fires and hay, and
that someday he might see him laughing.