unnatural_animal

Your Grace. ( In private, she will bloody-well use the title, thank you very much. Formality and decorum are far too thoroughly ingrained in her for her to do otherwise. ) It has been nigh upon a month now, since we spoke together at Caer Scima.

I would know, if you please: are you well? Did you contract the silver sickness? If you have and did not tell me, so help me..

( A sheepish laugh. ) I am sorry. I worry, you know. My most beloved sister and father both fell to illness. And while family has proven to be more a curse than a blessing In England for the most part for us both, I would never wish for aught to befall you.

In many ways, you are all I have left. You are my family. And I would know that you are well, if you please. Or I will find you, in order to ascertain the state of your health for myself.

( Her moment of sisterly frustration over, Elizabeth sighs, feeling herself soften. ) Also, I may miss you a very little bit.

[Richard isn't in the habit of replying to letters. He isn't in the habit of taking the initiative and sending the first missive either. It's nothing personal. He never wrote to his mother, he never wrote to Philip, he never wrote to anyone. He enjoys putting distance between himself and his emotional life, and on the Drabwurld it's little different. He had been so caught up in his own measured exploration of this new territory that he never thought she would care.

Elizabeth receives her reply a little late, and the voice behind it may be a little terse, but the mere fact that she gets a reply at all is something rare.]

My lady. [He is still rather uncomfortable with the locket and it sounds as if he is formally dictating to a scribe more than anything else.]

I assure you, your concern was misplaced. The sickness did not trouble me and my health is as it was when you saw me last. [Mostly by strenuous avoidance of the infected. He's no fool.] God grant that you have likewise escaped misfortune. If you require it, I can return.

( She'd been about to correct him, to urge him not to use formality. Because he shall be King long before she, God willing, shall be Queen. Yet.. no, she will let the matter lie. There can be no harm in having a little distance between herself and her family.

Though, the formality is more than enough, along with the physical miles which surely do separate them at this moment. Part of her hopes to come to know and trust him, despite her misgivings. She has never done very well alone, and Elizabeth somehow suspects that at least in part, he is not so much different. )

Concern for the well-being of one's family is never misplaced, Your Grace. I am gladdened to hear that you are well, wherever you are. Thanks be to Almighty God.

( Surprising herself, she is sincere in that sentiment. Elizabeth has long since thought God had turned His gaze from her. ) I was stricken ill, but healed in short order.

May I ask where you have gone? I would not be in residence at Caer Scima should you return there. I am in Leathann at this time.

He said, ‘Give me my battle-axe in my hand,
Set the crown of England on my head so high!
For by Him that shope both sea and land,
King of England this day will I die! One foot will I never flee
Whist the breath is my breast within!’
As he said it, so did it be;
If he lost his life, if he were King.

( A morbid, dark poem to be reading anyone, to be sure. But Elizabeth cannot share it with others. It is too personal, ironically enough, to speak of much outside the confines of family.

Though this prince knows not his namesake at all. )

I had an Uncle, named for you, I suspect. Some say he usurped my brother's throne, others that he did his duty as Lord Protector. He wrote a law and passed it in parliament to say my parents' marriage was "invalid". I have been angry with him in my thoughts, and often. But he was.. not a tyrant, either.

And on this day a year ago, he was slain on the battlefield attempting to defend the country from our invading cousin. There are none left at home now, to safeguard my four sisters, and younger cousins. I know not what to think of him, but I heard he was being toured around the countryside to show all he was dead.

Am I.. is it wrong, for me to feel pity? Despite all he has done. He was but thirteen years my senior.

[Richard wouldn't feel pity. Anyone who might stand between him and what he perceives to be his right deserves whatever they have coming to them. Including family. Perhaps especially family. Prison doors swing both ways, but coffins have no hinges.

But she doesn't want to hear that. She no doubt wants to be comforted, to hear that her feelings are somehow right. He can try his best, even if the trying rings false to him.]

A priest would likely tell you it's right. Pity and mercy can be admirable things.

( In fact, she is not looking for an affirmation of what she feels. He knows not what his namesake had done to her, in its entirety. What he had promised her. She dares not give voice to it, for obvious reasons.

But it does mean that she'd like to hear his honest opinion on the matter, otherwise. )

You are no priest, however. ( She takes a breath, and adds: ) Yes, but not always. Please, do not censor your thoughts on the matter.

[All right then. Honesty.]

Mercy is a noble quality, but only for those that can afford it. Were an enemy of mine to fall I doubt my heart would overflow with sentiment.

[The Young King's death will soon have its own anniversary. But Richard doubts he will remember his brother as anything but a fool.]

I think perhaps if he had not been our only protection, I might see it more as you do. There are none left to defend my sisters from Tudor. It is a sad thing, indeed, nigh upon pathetic that we had no one else to turn to but him.

he stole our birthright, our name, and rendered us bastards with no proof. ( Her voice gains a thread of tension, proving that act still angers her, and rightfully so. )

Nay, you are right. My father favoured mercy and compassion, and for the most part he was not wrong. But in the few cases he was, it led to traitors usurping the throne of his kingdom more than once. he would turn over in his grave, if he knew what my uncle had done. You know, he drowned his middle brother, George in a barrel of wine.

( For accusing her mother of witchcraft. Ooops. ) Neither of his brothers deserved mercy.

Brothers are usually more trouble than they're worth. [He's speaking from long experience here. Both Geoffrey and Henry were warring against him and their father when the Young King died and, when last he saw them, Geoffrey was in some way plotting war against him again. (Either with John or Philip or both. It hardly matters which.)]

Wine seems a tad excessive and dramatic though.

[Thank God, Young Henry had the grace to die of disease. And William to die before he was even born.]

Edited 2015-08-23 22:14 (UTC)

Certain brothers, yes. ( Her father's, for instance, had been naught short of difficult. Things had begun to fall apart the moment Edward had taken the crown and left Richard and George no longer on equal footing with him. But, she has a rosier, perhaps more idealistic view of her own. ) Mine were young, mere children yet.

Edward was not yet thirteen years old when he was slain. Some believe our Uncle was to blame, but it was Tudor's mother who ordered it. Richard had just turned ten ere I departed. All assume he is dead.

Well, my Uncle George was ever fond of theatrics. My Lord Father gave him leave to choose his own method of execution. Apparently, George chose the barrel of Malmsey wine because my mother favoured it.

( Take that however you will. )

Seems a waste of good wine. [Though perhaps that was the point.] He had a grievance against your mother, then? And chose to strike back by dishonoring her favorite drink?

A sizeable one, yes. She allowed my father to see his greed and treachery, in not one but two attempts to usurp him. George also married a lady of great standing without his permission.

For that, he in turn accused my mother of witchcraft. ( A beat, and then dryly: ) Publicly, at court.

[And here comes one of those funny differences that can pop up when three hundred years and a Black Death or so separate two different periods. For all its roughness and brutality, Richard's worldview is a highly skeptical one. There may be no renaissance and the church may have an iron grip, but within that grip...

The disbelief comes through in his voice.]

Was he an idiot? Witches don't exist. Any fool knows that. [Or so he has been taught to believe. Only pagans could be so superstitious.]

Edited 2015-08-24 06:42 (UTC)

( Her eyebrows rise, and she finds it nearly impossible to keep a straight face; good thing she'd kept it to voice. Or else he'd tell immediately. Richard has no idea that he is telling a witch that they do not exist. But the irony is there, and she can appreciate it in silence. )

According to the Church, every woman who knows her letters and enough of numbers to ensure her husband will not be cheated is a witch. Thinking is a crime, or nearly so. And my mother happens to think a great deal; and worse, my father listened to her counsel.

It was... ( With some wry humour: ) Unthinkable. Though, you know we are in Faerie, my lord? Magic abounds at every turn. It most certainly does exist.

Magic is not witchcraft. [He is patient with her. After all, his mother saw to it that he was highly educated and in this matter he clearly knows more than her.]

According to the Church, those who believe they are witches and gain supernatural power from the Devil are only mad. The Devil cannot act so in this world. [He means the proper world, naturally.] He might send visions into their heads, but that's all. Those who believe in witches or would accuse others to account for their own misfortunes are little more than superstitious fools.

Edited 2015-08-24 06:55 (UTC)

You do not... ah. ( She pauses, and then turns on the video function. It is best, perhaps, explained this way, after all. ) The Church changes much over the course of three centuries, my lord.

Superstition is ride everywhere, and my mother and grandmother both were put on trial for it. Be rest-assured, neither of them ever made a pact with Lucifer. You would not like what the world has become, I fear.

Magic does exist, though not, as those you and also I name as fools believe, by any connection to the Devil. There is a story told in Luxembourg, where my grandmother hailed from, of a fairy, a water goddess called Mélusine, or Melusina. Have you heard of her? Either way, it is said that the ruling family of that small territory trace their ancestry back to her, and that their blood carries magic.

I wonder, then, what you might make of that.

[He's quiet for a moment, thinking, before finally replying.]

It's said there was a count of Anjou who married a beautiful woman he found in the woods. She bore him four children and was in every way a great and noble lady. With one exception. While she went with her family to church every day, she always left just before the Host was brought out. Eventually people became curious, as people do, and one day her husband and his men tried to bar her way. In a rage, she grabbed two of her children, sprouted demon's wings and flew off through a window.

At times I've heard her named Melusine. At other times simply a daughter of Satan. In any case, it's all superstition.

[And he will not be swayed, even if that is, for him, a family matter. After all, if they have all come of the Devil, then it's inevitable that to the Devil they will go. That sort of thinking can ease a man's mind about a great variety of things.]

The moral of both stories is, of course, that a great deal of care must be taken when considering a possible spouse one found in the woods.

Edited 2015-08-24 07:38 (UTC)

God's nightshirt! Well, I should not be surprised at all; it runs on both sides, then. In all likelihood, a version of that tale is likely very true. No doubt it became embellished and exaggerated over the course of time.

( She sighs, and meets his gaze head-on, wanting to see his face when she admits: )

At times, I see things, ere they occur. Others, I am able to cause rain to fall, or mist to rise from a river. My mother did so, once, to protect my father at Barnet. He would have been slaughtered otherwise, outnumbered three to one.

By the opinion of the Church in my era, these things render me a witch. Though I have never met either the Devil nor God Himself. Here, I have met other gods; the Black Shuck, for instance, the god of Death in this world. But Thor, and also Aphrodite, more familiar to us. I do not suspect that makes me a witch any more than my relation to a faery.

( Oh, the irony in that statement, too! But for other, more pleasant reasons. Her mouth curves upward, and she smiles. )

My parents met on the side of the road, coincidentally, in a wood. She held the hands of her two eldest sons, standing beneath a great oak tree. By all accounts, it was love at first sight for them both. She was not, however, the French princess his cousin, the Earl of Warwick wanted for him, and so he rose against him. My era was plagued by civil war, our family destroying itself.

( She speaks naught of curses, for that, he could never understand, she believes. But the rest? Well, he may very well be more enlightened than any of the men in her day. )

[Richard's face, when she reveals her great secret betrays very little. He mostly just looks skeptical.]

We've come of the Devil and to the Devil we shall return. Why should men wonder if we snap and tear at each other along the way? Our families were not made for gentle lives.

Nay, they were not. But the fact of the matter is, I have seen my maternal Uncle and half brother executed when I was not in attendance. And the bloody battle in which my Uncle, named for you lost his life. My mother calls it the Sight.

Peoples of this world know it. ( She shakes her head. )

I had but read of that claim before. It would be called blasphemous and see us all excommunicated in my era. Since my arrival, I have realized how much I disliked what the Church has become.

[Richard looks remarkably unfazed by everything she is saying. After all, he remembers well his father's arguments with Becket. The Church is just another player and excommunication just another tactic. If he isn't threatened with it during his eventual reign he will be supremely shocked.]

That sounds useful. Though I think I would prefer it if you didn't see my eventual fall, even from a distance.

Here, it could be. At home, it was naught but a source of torment and pain; all I saw was death, and I could not stop it. I am glad that I have have more freedom in this world.

( Her features reflect dismay clearly for a moment, and then she glances away. )

I would not stand by and allow it to happen. I could never. ( Not again. ) You are a better man than my Uncle. I would protect you here, even as I know you will do the same for me.

Though if what I have been told is true, something must be done to save this world from the Void; and quickly.

Lady Clarke has recently had an audience with High Queen Morla. She was told we have six to nine months left, at best.

[And at that his face rapidly goes from unfazed to deadly serious. The slightly teasing uncle is gone and only the general remains.]

Did she give you any more information than that?

[Details, Bess. He needs concrete details. Then he can go out and fight whatever it is head on.]

Their power wanes, and many, many shards would be required to turn the tide. All the Seelie need do now is absolutely naught at all, and await the Void. That would destroy all worlds, including ours. We cannot allow it.

( She purses her lips together, and continues: )

And I have in my research uncovered that as the monarchs can, the Void might have an avatar. If this avatar is slain, the Void will cease to exist. Much as High King Ridire of the Seelie did in June. This is our best option, Richard. There is not the time to harvest that many Seelie shards. The courts are not our answer. Indeed, I believe they compound the problem.

There is a mercenary group called the Red Hand. They have no allegiance to either court, and work to find another way. We should work with them.

To Ser Richard, who will not speak of his knighthood,

You may put your locket to good use and seek an audience me this morning, if you would see a wonder.

( A dove perches upon the sill of a nearby window long enough to deliver this. With what rune magic Lauralae has taught her, it has been imbued for protection and good fortune.

A simple note attached reads as follows: )

If you would, please bear my favour into battle. May it bring you good fortune.

- Elizabeth

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