Chapter Text
He had a youngest sister, though.
And an eldest, who was buried with deux jours avant tiers on a little stone debossed next to her flat marker.
And an elder, who taught him to shoot pigeons when their governess was napping, and laid out the birds and would hiss happily: “This one is all the way from Gascony, you can tell because it is so blue.”
And two elder brothers, who fought like dogs, and another, who was not born of his mother because he was only a month older than the youngest, who didn’t last the winter.
The youngest at the time, for his parents had no more children, divvying up the land for their strong, healthy sons and leaving their equally strong daughter to roam the green her brothers would one day inherit, peering at the ducks and fiddling with the slow-match.
Then the rain cleared one April morning and the brothers griped that there was another boy to complicate matters, and couldn’t it have been a stupid little girl they could ignore.
When they got their wish, nobody had expected the old couple to have any more children, certainly not living ones, but the little daughter was named Demetria for she was born before the harvest, and her parents had always been admirers of the old pagan beliefs, as was the fashion. (Her mother had shot down Dionysia for the eldest, although they owned a vintage.)
The boys were grown and had packs of dogs and vied for their father’s favouritism, but Phoebus was only four, only had a mouse he had befriended in the family chapel, and only vied for his governess.
“It’s good she’s a girl,” mused Marthe, having received the news. She kept the child in a room far from his parents, because they couldn’t have little feet running around at that time, and if the infant were dead it was better he never knew about it.
“Why?”
“Messire de Châteaupers has been wanting to match his estate to that of the landlord of L’Origanorum, whose wife is pregnant. God willing it will be a boy.”
“A boy?”
“Mm. Your sister will have a secure life ahead if that is to be.”
“Why?”
“Because—” Marthe drew him onto her lap. “Oh you are getting heavy— because, she will be married eventually and they are a good family.”
“Can I married the family?”
She laughed; she laughed at him often but always to make him relax his fidgeting and be at ease, smiling along with her. “Not them, sunshine, you are promised to your cousin Aalis.”
“I promise?”
She laughed again, and Phoebus mischievously put his little hands over her mouth. “Shhhh! He say Maman is sleeping he, he say that.”
“He did; she is fine and the baby is fine. Very happy day!”
He had almost forgotten. “I promise?”
“Your father and mother promised. You don’t need to promise anything right now, chéri. It will all be in place when you’re older.”
· · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · ·
“Where’s Marthe?”
His father regarded him dully, then took more interest in the undusted baseboards. Interest was a strong word, it was still dull; Phoebus knew it wasn’t right to say things he didn’t mean, although the rhetoricians always did and he had much to untangle of their half-truths and obfuscations. The lessons were becoming exhausting and he had only wanted to curl up at Marthe’s skirts while Demetria tried to parse through Delia’s letters, her still-learning tongue catching on every irregular vowel. She was six and a slow learner, but Delia didn’t write fancy. Phoebus believed she wrote in a way they could read, although, he thought, he could read much better than the baby.
“Where’s Marthe?”
“Gone to the country.”
“To the vintage?”
“The farther country, then.”
For a moment he was excited for her. “Shall we read her letters now too? It will only take a few days, she must miss us already.”
“You have plenty to read, and I’ve heard you’ve fallen behind in your chemistry.”
“… Yes, father.”
He waited ten days and a half-night for a letter, but when a women came in drenched from the storm and his mother showed her to the governess’ room, the stranger’s apologies for the late hour distinctly not of Marthe’s volume, not already dear to his mother, not asking about him and Demetria, he lay grated against the railing all night. Heliot tripped over him when he went downstairs.
“Villain, you are not a dog! Get upstairs or I’ll kick you the rest of the way down.”
Phoebus rubbed his bleary eyes and his side, which had already met Heliot’s boot. “M’sorry.”
“I’m late.” He was dressed in riding attire, but all the ties were undone and his uncombed hair bristled like fire.
“I’m sure the horses won’t mind.”
Heliot nudged him aggressively and Phoebus skulked away from the hard-toed boot. “The horses aren’t going to wait if father decides to bring them in and give me another tongue lashing. I’m leaving first.”
He was fully awake now. “Leaving? Where? How long?” … Father is angry?
“Don’t worry your stupid head about it. I just wanted to have some fun,” he grumbled, stomping down the steps before seemingly regretting that and softening the weight of the hard soles.
“Marthe has left too.” Phoebus felt the sting of tears. “Please tell me, did father say where he sent her?”
The momentum stopped, his brother swaying forward before digging the balls of his feet down to centre himself. “Ah— no, seems he didn’t give her as much time to get her bearings as he gave me. I hadn’t even noticed, oh get up, only Demetria needs a governess.”
“What? He didn’t give her time?”
Heliot’s indulgence was wearing thin and he bounced anxiously, his balance on the single stair threatening to skew to and fro. “Let’s just say I wanted to try it with an older woman, and she kicked me in the kneecap and fled like a banshee.” He pulled his head back, sly like they were sharing a joke. “Not very good in father’s eyes.”
“Tried what?”
“You’re almost a man, Phoebe,” he snarled suddenly, “don’t be stupid.”
“It’s Phoebus!” And he was only ten. “What did you try? What did you do?”
But Heliot’s boots fled under the staircase ceiling where Phoebus could see him no more.
· · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · ·
Her name was Nafsika, the household called her Nana, her mother was from Thessaly and her father was a bailiff of Monsieur de Châteaupers, she pressed grapes in the vintage, her hair was mousy brown and down to her ankles, there was grape juice on the ends, and Phoebus was going to ask her to be his girlfriend.
They were only fourteen, but Delia had brought him to a wedding after he’d missed hers from stomach flu, and he’d looked at the young bride in yellow and green and could only see Nafsika.
(Aalis had died sickly at seven years old, and Phoebus remembered her grave like his eldest sister’s grave: flat and telling how God called her back to Him. Little children were the luckiest of all, being so favoured as to only be apart from Him for a short while before He bade them back, missing them dearly, gathering them close in all the warmth of Heaven. That’s what Marthe had said. Aalis had been very cold when she died, he knew because her mother had wailed through the hallway crying she was cold, she was cold.)
Nafsika ran cold, she said the chill of the grapes ran up her legs, she had seeped up so much of it. Phoebus fancied himself warm like the summer sun and thought they would balance each other out, a romantic notion for a teenager.
She was alone in the grove, pressing grapes the old way, the skirts she half-heartedly hiked up dyed purple at the hems like royalty.
Phoebus dismounted. “Achilles, stand.” Sheepishly, with his tunic all rumpled and his hair wind-whipped, he passed through the trees in the yard. It was too sunny without them, and Nafsika wore a straw hat as wide as her arm.
“Away from the city, on business? The wine is still new, not ready, go away.” The lines of her face wobbled with held-back amusement.
He fell to one knee in dramatic supplication. “Διὰ σὲ ἦλθον, Ναυσικᾶ.”
“Οἶδα, Φοῖβε.”
It was a little running joke they had.
He stayed crouched. “Is your father around?”
“No, and don’t look relieved.”
“I, uh. I am relieved, Lady, but don’t take me for a tramp. I leave tomorrow morning.”
“Right.” Her outlines drooped sadly, sinking into the stomped grapes. Then she shouted: “Vassiliki!”
Not alone in the grove, then. Her elder sister ducked behind the tree she had been spying on them from.
“Vassiliki! Away with you, and bring me a doctor, I fear I will die tomorrow.” A stage-whisper: “Don’t let anyone near.”
Vassiliki shouted something in Greek about young people, annoyed, but leaving.
Nafsika was giggling. She had little dimples, and her face didn’t blush easily. It just didn’t, although she could get quite embarrassed, so he could tell she was embarrassed now by how she unmindfully untangled her hair.
He was about to embarrass her a whole lot more, and himself while he was at it. “I am in love with you.”
Clearly he had been too loud, and too hasty, for clearly Vassiliki had not yet left as squawked objections sounded from just past the trees.
“Shut up!” her sister shouted, turned for a fight in her direction. Then she turned back. “You’re in love with me?”
“Yes, is that okay?”
She giggled fiercely and tugged on her hair. “Okay!”
She splashed mushy grapes everywhere rushing forward to kiss him.
When they broke apart she looked worried. “What about your cousin?”
“Fleur-de-Lys?” Aalis had a sister. “I’ve barely met her. The betrothal is my parents’ domain, I have more important concerns.” He met her lips vigorously once more to prove that.
She pierced his ears with her laugh, then it became suddenly soft, bittersweet, such a change he figured there was a question in.
“I will write you letters, well, I will copy bits of your books. And I can sign my name. Would that be enough?”
He wouldn’t be able to take all his books as a trainee-at-arms, there wouldn’t be space for a frivolous yet very bulky collection out in camp. He could think of nothing sweeter. Nothing but another kiss, at least.
They pulled away, regretfully, gaze locked softly even as the stench of new wine bade his attention elsewhere. Despite the promising grape harvest he didn’t care to drink much of it with his brothers and the valet, he didn’t care he would be missing out this year. He imagined, achingly, a picture framed in interlacing vines hanging down prettily as curtains protecting an inner sanctum, an internal light source defying science, like soft unpolished gold, him looping elbows with her and tipping their little glasses back.
“Nafsika de Martin, do you take my hand duly welded to yours in holy, um, girlfriend-boyfriend…trimony?”
She cackled again. “I duly join my hand to yours, but we have no priest!”
“A vow of the natural sort, then. We have the grapes and the bees as witnesses.”
“We have no rings!”
“I will make ones for us out of the greenest vines.”
“Who will throw the rice?”
“Your sister!”
“She’d rather throw your head.”
“I’m sure she’ll come around, I’m very charming.”
“We have no rice.”
“Some shrivelled-up grapes, then?”
Nafsika paused then. Nervous, or uncertain— no, determination gleamed in her eye. But, nervous. “Am I to take your name? The rings are innocent enough, but… Your mother would be furious. She’d have me flogged.”
Phoebus, every so often, was reminded of how disobedient he was being. He didn’t need reminding to worry that these actions of his could get Nafsika hurt. “I would never ask that of you. I’ll take your name!”
She sank slightly to the side, grapes squelching in the grass, with a look almost tortured and almost betrayed. Almost incredulous, almost hoping. “You couldn’t. That’s unheard of.”
“Then hear me now: I will miss you terribly and what’s a little more rule-breaking in our long itinerary?”
“You can’t enlist like that—”
“Maybe not,” he steadied her with calm manner, much calmer than he probably should be. It was the sinking from the precipice of hurt into grief, preemptively. He already missed her terribly; she was only inches away. “Maybe not, but if anyone does find out, they will have no idea the reason.”
She wavered, not out of uncertainty for him. She was not a girl he was supposed to choose, and they both couldn’t shake that, even here cloistered by wines and silenced by cicadas, guarded by her wary sister.
Then, a deep breath, collarbones rising. A heavy drumming from the heart shook them, and he pressed a hand to it. Calm down. No one will find out.
She began. “By the grapes, I do.”
“By the bees, I do.”
· · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · ·
Saint-Luc Fermat was chewing on plantain leaves and Phoebus was chewing on clovers. Or rather, he was eating them.
“We’re not going to get big muscles if Sieur Thiboust keeps harrying our dinner.”
“What, the rabbits? Those lean little things? Hardly get any meat off their bones, now clovers, succulent nutritious plant that they are, a man could grow tall as Talos eating only these.”
“You’re in denial.”
“I am so in denial, I wanted those goddamned rabbits.”
Luc snorted, and almost choked on his plantain. He hooked fingers behind his molars to extract it, coughing a couple times with a pound to the chest while Phoebus laughed meanly. Then he rolled fabric aside slightly to a glimpse of purpling bruises in a curious constellation of small circles. He spread the mush in his hand and pressed it to the spots.
“Caned again?”
“Honestly, we should be spending our precious downtime whittling more canes for Thiboust. He loves them more than the sword.”
“Well, better to be caned than stabbed?”
“You’re an incurable optimist and it’s pissing me off.”
“I’m not an optimist.” Phoebus grinned, still feeling a bit mean although something loud clamoured behind his eardrums, hurt him again, always hurting him, can’t help. “We’ll probably both die gruesome deaths and be used by the enemy to fill pot-holes in their victorious march inland.”
“Trampled under-boot, our bodies crumpled in pits, huh, that sounds almost as bad as the cane. Don’t give the master any ideas.”
“Don’t be too quick in tomorrow’s trek east, he’ll use those of us in front to even out the terrain!”
Peals of laughter closed his eyes, but not before he noted there were raised pustules hidden in the topography of bruises, before Luc surreptitiously posed a hand to cover the skin.
“Hey,” Phoebus whispered, as if the sparse surrounding sparrows would tell on them, “I snuck an extra honey-cake, been saving it, my pocket’s all sticky now, uh, this’ll make you feel better?”
The cake was noticeably covered in lint, the same colour as Phoebus’ tunic, but although he must be disgusted Luc only took it with a smile. A smile Phoebus never got to see since joining the ranks of young men emblazoned by hunting fowl and deer, wanting to hunt bigger. Hoist a catch more glorious, a rival lord’s banner or the shield of an Ottoman. Even better, a severed head or a foreign prostitute. Phoebus was inundated every mealtime by grandeur of conquest, loot, glory, and snickers of possible kinds of women to make use of.
“Do you think we’ll get out of this intact?” he asked.
“You said yourself, remember, bodies in a field and all—”
“No—” he drew up a breath, too laborious to look casual. “Do you think if we survive we’ll still be— you know what, let’s say I’m an optimist. Everything will be fine.”
“What were you going to say?” Why did he have to be so worried, so genuine, so present and worming his way in—
“Nothing. Nothing. Eat your honey-cake before I snatch it back.”
· · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · ·
It was a warm summer’s day, Phoebus was fifteen, and Luc had collapsed at first call that morning, frothing at the mouth.
Phoebus didn’t do anything but be helpful with perfunctory emotion and the restraint of a boy with other boys’ eyes on him. Now he sat on a little tin stool and ate a flavourless slab of black bread. The stool clattered against the stone whenever he so much as breathed.
“Hé, de Châteaupers!”
Clatter.
“Where’s your little wife? He already looked dead this morning, only a little ways to go now!”
Clatter, clatter.
“What are you holding?”
Clatter. “None of your concern.” His voice was hoarser than when he was wracked with a violent cough several years before.
A sixteen-year-old too pallid to be healthy came at him from the side and kicked the stool into the delicate flesh of his inner knee. Phoebus folded and hit the ground with a crack, so sharp it felt metallic, sharpened arrows driven up through his kneecap.
In his daze it was all too simple to whisk the letter out from his faltered grasp.
“ὣς οἳ μὲν στενάχοντο κατὰ πτόλιν— Homer? Adenet, look at this— there’s our Latin alphabet there at the bottom, ‘My love, Nafsika de Martin’, you’ve got this poor girl copying books for you?”
Phoebus rose with grit teeth and the wailing behind his eardrums deafening.
“Wait, now, can she not write words of her own?”
The boys, even those unamused by the petty violence and letter-snatching, chorused in to cajole him.
“You’ve got a woman-scribe who can’t read? The monasteries will never accept her now!” Laughter.
“They’d never accept her because she’s a girl, idiot—”
“Your grasp on sarcasm is as sure as a cobweb holding a running horse in place.”
“What?”
“They’d never accept her anyways, she’s illiterate, who would painstakingly write out poetry they can’t read?”
“You’re fraternizing with an illiterate girl, Phoebe, how much does she charge for these letters?”
“Must be a whore.”
“Must be, look, some Greco-Parisian whore, quite a specimen—”
“Bet she’s ugly as a hag.”
“I bet she’s beautiful!”
“Doesn’t matter if her face is Helen or gorgon if you’re only going at it from the back—”
Garnier’s procession of little white teeth was thrown into panic as Phoebus’ fist collided like a battering ram. Chipped enamel was shrapnel thrown, a wake of slivery trains of blood following after each piece. The boy fell hard, face hidden by contorted shoulder. He howled and rose to meet him again, brandishing what he had, fists and the letter. Blood clothed his chin. Phoebus was quicker and raked his fingernails just below the eye, catching on the wispy hairs below the ear and pulling. He pulled and tried to rip out hair, nails digging until they chipped like teeth, animalistic.
He hadn’t slept in days because Luc had been sleepless and freezing and encircled his waist with trembling arms and clung there. Phoebus had to stay awake knowing they were both going to go out the coming morn to spar and study; he couldn’t sleep because the thought made him nauseous. He had to control his ceaseless breathing all night to keep it at bay, because if he puked or broke out in a paroxysm of tears then someone would be awoken, they’d find him there, he wasn’t supposed to be there, and they’d remove him.
He spent the next week digging lavatories as penance, and Luc died alone in sticky summer heat in the infirmary choked by linen curtains unwilling to let a breeze in.
· · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · ·
“You can provide your own full set of armour, with the exception of rerebraces, vambraces unless thou is an archer, and tassets if necessary, and gauntlets may be leather if necessary, no parts of which are to be outdated past 1450, according to this here, and helmet of the following styles, see here?”
“Yes sir.”
“Your own sword, single-handed, of a knight?”
“Yes sir.”
“Six livre at your immediate access?”
“I think— Yes sir.”
“There are a number of Italians employed, you must be able to follow simple questions and imperatives within the fortnight.”
“Yes sir!”
“Debility or deformity of the lower extremities suffered as a child or any recent injury?”
“Um, a broken leg when I was eight. And a horse hoof to the groin… last week. Sir.”
The man jotted something down. “No matter. Can you use that sword, son?”
“Yes sir.”
“Father’s name, Christian name.”
“De— de Martin. Phoebus.”
· · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · ·
It had rained and the snails scattered about, sometimes curiously poking their tendrils out and hastening inside at a drop of water, sometimes clustered around the crushed shells of their brethren, crawling over them, in soundless lamentation.
Phoebus kept his head up, in proper gentlemanly fashion, unheeding the quiet splintering of shells under his boots. He had a weighty sword at his side, and armour, no doubt increasing the strain on the poor creatures underfoot, the worst armour he’d ever worn in his eighteen years. It was off the rack and he was pretty sure he’d been slightly scammed, but iron was iron. Maybe a somewhat shittier alloy, but still. It was functional. He hated it but it was functional.
A new sensation of crushing implored him to look down. It was squishier, giving even less resistance than the snail shells. Grapes. Big purple grapes splaying their dark insides. They were in an overgrown vineyard, and it was beautiful, leaves sagging with bulbous droplets and lightly percussed by the patters of rain. The droning sound was sleepy and lonesome. He looked down again. Little shoots of plantain communed between the grapes. Another snail, living, weaved through this microcosm of a garden. Phoebus took care to avoid that one, and the man behind him bumped into him with an invective.
He bit back an apology and continued with his head up.
· · ─ · ♱ · ─ · ·
Like the burning of grasses, rows of short fires cramped together and cut off at the ends, like herringbone, with smaller rows of smaller flames where the fuel was insufficient for the greater. This caustic army spread out in its own great agora, a land from before God brought rain and life. Phoebus was distinctly aware that humans were not meant to exist here, but he pressed onward, his metal armour discarded and the remaining leather and thick linen his only protection from scorching. The local serfs had been ordered to set ablaze their own land.
What his company was supposed to besiege lay only a handful of leagues away, but this wasn’t western Burgundy right now. This was fire and smoke; hundreds of acres of burning field, or perhaps only a few, it was all there was. There was no end to the manmade wildfire, yet no end meant he was trapped.
Phoebus had gone after Gueux and d’Arcy but they must’ve fallen behind, or he fell behind. He just kept walking.
They were supposed to be pillaging. That’s what noble men did, they pillaged. There was nothing to pillage. He wasn’t following orders. He wasn’t following anything.
The fires were quiet, each lick of it gnawing happily on its tether, millions of termites eating into the ground, yet somewhere in the near distance, or all around, right in front, rising from everything eaten alive was a continuous howl. There was no thinking to the fires yet the howl was pathos itself, a complete lack of thought. He was hearing the voice of Chaos, older than God, and there was something older than Hell in that expanse.
Livy, Plutarch, Aeneas in his burning city couldn’t have prepared him for this. Nothing is like standing in a fire. Phoebus couldn’t even breathe, there was no air, only that dreadful sound. He didn’t cough the smoke out, there was nothing to replace it with; if his body tried to save itself— this was unliveable. He kept walking as something wrought of metal, of daedalic technology or magic.
The feast grew brighter upon a mound, and as he approached he saw it was a deer. Its neck tapered from the body, and sunk into a pit between the trunk and head. The neck had been collapsed into a bowl, fire boiling the blood there. Dirt had been riven up into the neck, covered in blood’s thick inescapable layer, creating little raised lumps; in their crevices the blood bubbled madly, desperately, trying to evaporate but trapped in the pit. The rest of the deer was gradually melting down too, unsheathing a white ribcage.
Phoebus didn’t stop walking.
He tripped over something cushy and righted himself without a sound. Only after he was past it did his eyes capture what was perceived. A dead man, flames curious but not yet upon him. Soft light smoke curling gently from his skin meant he still had moisture in his body. Recently dead, then. He had black hair; d’Arcy had black hair, but d’Arcy wasn’t a dead man. He was alive, Phoebus had seen him an hour ago. Phoebus had been with him on the outermost flank, horribly unorganized, disgustingly nonchalant, thinking they could handle some bushfires barely up to their ankles.
He passed the body of a farmer splayed in such a violent manner as to have been struck down. From a hole in their stomach blood convulsed and peaked like the fountain of a weak spring.
Phoebus threw up, from the smell of burnt human flesh, from the smoke, his body couldn’t do it anymore but he kept walking. He hadn’t turned aside, no mental fortitude to remember dignity, so the bile just covered his hoqueton, effacing the embroidered sun. Dripping down his chin, coalescing at the valleys in the hem, sizzling on the dirt.
The smoke was beginning to thin, and there hadn’t been any bodies for some time. He didn’t know. It could’ve been hours, days, five minutes. But there was a hint of air, real air, not the smoke with particles as large as locusts and as numerous. Suddenly he couldn’t bear his own weight, coughing, spitting bile mixed with dust. The dust coated his mouth like otter’s fur, soft and thickly amassed. He tried to spit it all out.
It was only then he realized the fires had been behind him for some time, long before the smoke thinned.
“I want to go home.” It was all he could say between the wretched noises of expulsion. He was nineteen years old and salaried at two coins a day to keep marching, to keep his sword clutched close.