LANCED-A-LOT
By: Silenos
This story is a work of fiction and involves teenagers in sexual situations. If that offends you, don't read it. If you are underage, don't read it (like that's going to happen). This story belongs solely to the author and may not be copied or reproduced in whole or in part without permission of the author.
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Dear Reader: If you have not been following the story an explanation of where it came from is after the end of the chapter.
LANCED-A-LOT: Chapter 21
I think it was Idris, but might have been Gallant, who had remarked we would need a bigger bed in Mountview. Having let Lillian use his bed the rest of us had camped in Gallant's room which meant Shik, Michael and I were on the floor and none of us out of deference and for propriety's sake to the sleeping lady. While pleased with the response to our charade we three underlings were all on the tired and grumpy side when morning had come.
After my interlude with Idris in the Pleasure Garden (where pleasure had definitely been had), we break-fasted and I set off for the practice field. Everyone seemed a bit hung-over from the previous night's debauchery. The squires and pages were not prepared for the new lesson I had for them. I drew the pockey Brood aside to have a whisper in his ear.
"You do know I am leaving shortly?" I questioned and he nodded in agreement. "What we are going to do today will change things up. I need you to improvise and back me up, as you will be the real master at arms when I am gone for the summer." Again he nodded, not knowing what he was in for. I might still have thought of him as a lout but he was a stout lout and not lacking in brains. No matter he was ugly and preferred cunny to lance. Friendships are not born of sexual inclinations.
I turned to my students and one Page cheekily called out "What dance are we learning today?" Everyone laughed, thinking all we were doing was some sort of jest. That punched my teats, were they not getting it? This small passel of boys thought this a joke.
I scoffed and responded, "The kind to keep you from getting killed." That shut them up. Dying is not a favored subject amongst the young. "If you think I am kidding ask Brood, the master of you until I return from conquering the evil Welsh." That got a laugh and we moved on. Parry and thrust; backwards.
Brood looked dumbfounded. He did not know that everyone looked up to him and he was their leader. The only reason they put up with my "dances" was because of him.
"No matter," I went on. "today we will dance, but you must exchange your shield arms for your swords and vice versa. You have been learning how to dance and give battle, how to defend yourselves. Now you must learn how to take advantage of it. So you will now take your shield on your right and your wooden swords on your left and learn to dance backwards while advancing. If your third arm rises, pay it no mind. You are here to learn how to live and survive."
"Why would our lances rise?" questioned someone in the back.
"That is for you to figure out; and some will. Those who do not, pay no attention. Your eyes must remain on your opponent, their eyes and their bodies. Then, you must disable them and not slay them."
There was another moment of silence before that voice from the back spoke up again. The Squires were all in front so it must have been a page who asked "If on the field is it not our duty to slay as many of the enemy as possible?"
"No! Because if you go for the kill jab they will be expecting it. Disable and maim your opponent, make sure he is not a threat and then move on. Your duty is to protect your Knight but only after you have protected yourself. A man wounded on the field will call for help. The emotions of his companions will make them try and remove him from the fray. Thus you have eliminated three or more rather than one. Enough of this, time to dance backwards." I responded.
They set about it and Brood took over while I slipped away to the stables. I was to meet Maq at what was to be Mountview and discuss plans for the place. For once I was alone and put Agatha to a trot and made my way to the place in half the time it had taken us to saunter there as a group. She was not happy with me. I was elated as I had hopes Gwydion might be with him so we could finally meet properly. Disappointment was all that was there in that regard. Maq was standing there as I rode up and dismounted, he was very excited.!
"I found it! I found it!" he exclaimed as I drew up and dismounted a very annoyed horse.
"Found what?" I responded, as annoyed as Agatha, Gwydion was nowhere to be seen. My anticipation had made my temples pulse.
"A bath! A settlement this size had to have one and I found it. Near the edge of the old town." He hurriedly dragged me away after I tethered my friend and mount. Still irritable I followed the man to the place. It was a pile of fallen stone, but it dipped into the ground. I failed to see what would have put him in this state until he jumped into the dip and pointed.
"There, don't you see it?" He pointed at a clay tube sticking of the ground. "that is the feeding tube and then one over there is the bleeder!' I had no idea what he was talking about until he explained. The Romans had built a water channeling system from upper river where water flowed at higher ground. The bath was constructed to take advantage of that by using these clay cylinders called pipes to funnel off some of the river water to fill the bath, with the overflow being channeled back to the river at lower ground. Maq enthused that if they had done that they probably had a fountain of some sort somewhere in the village to take care of water needs in the village.
"If we can find the fountain, which will probably be somewhere in the center of this place, we will not need to dig a well. It also explains why the tower stands on its own on the hill. That is actually built over a well. Those Romans were very smart!" The man was excited beyond belief and it was catching.
"Then the main house should be built over the bath." I prompted "If we fortify the house with kitchen and stables on the far ends, and with the bath underneath in the center we can put the living spaces above." Maq listened and thought for a moment.
"That would be a rather unusual structure. Not a castle at all, It would have to be at least three floors tall and quite long, or square. A good idea; but how to protect the town?" He puzzled.
"Simple. We steal from Castlemount."
"What?"
"The way you built the castle, steal the idea. Build a wall and construct houses, and such against it on the inside, surrounding the main house and this fountain if it can be found. There is no need for a real castle here. We just need to protect against raiders and bandits, not armies. Let's face it, this is a stronghold not some gathering place of armies." I explained.
Maq's face lit up in understanding and he grabbed a stick and began drawing in the dirt etching out how Mountview might be laid out. "We put the main house over the baths, then place a market area around the fountain, then surround them both with houses, and needed buildings that create a wall. This is genius..." He suddenly paused. "Wait a minute," He strode off looking at the ground and ruins then pacing in ever widening circles to my puzzlement until he stopped.
"Found it!" Again those words, "This is the fountain." He proclaimed and then began roaring with laughter.
"What is so funny?" I asked stepping over to where he was then standing. The ground was ringed in stone in the remnants of a circle, with one of those pipe things barely poking of the ground at its center.
"Don't you see?" He kept laughing, "With the exception of the Great House you suggested, that is exactly the way this town had been laid out to begin with! All we really need to do is but all these stones back up as I had thought before. I just never realized what this place would look like when it is done."
I laughed too, realizing his conclusion was correct. "Then I guess I'm not so smart after all," I jested.
"Not at all, you are only as smart as a Roman." We both laughed again, finally recovering enough to begin pacing out and discussing the long house, number of rooms, space for kitchens and stables, and so on. By the time we were done we had determined to make the long house a square with a private courtyard in the middle. This would provide privacy and light to those within, as well as protection from those without.
We rode the short way to the fisher village where the Fisher Father greeted us. Introducing Maq, we took a look at the pier, or wharf's, remains. He easily saw how it stretched into the water even at low tide thus providing a berth for at least one ship too big to be beached at low tide. Maq explained it would be simple to rebuild only with stone rather than wood. Joking that it would last longer and "Lord knows there's enough rock round this place. The trick was to build around the tides by constructing a rectangular mortared shell wall that was empty in the middle and filling in the space with stone. Just the way real castle walls were built.
After thanking the Fisher Father and letting him know Rump was now called Shik, which he shrugged off, we set off back to what was to be Mountview. We let our minds wander to wistful things of what it could become, perhaps a bridge or a mill, I mentioned my idea of growing flax and he thought it would be a good one, but questioned if the land would allow it? We halted at the ruins so he could show me how easily the town could be reconstructed, assuring me he could get chimneys in, and discussing the practicalities of waste removal. A Knight, Nobleman, or peasant would have been bored to tears; but they fascinated me as practicalities.
The day was drawing on and I had not mentioned the absence of Gwydion when the boy appeared on a small pony calling out the familiar words of the day "I found it! I found it!" with a huge smile on his face, hair flying in the wind as he galloped towards us. Damn he was beautiful! I caught my breath and felt my heart pound harder. Why was my body doing these things?
He reined in his pony in front of us, dismounting breathlessly and repeating "I found it!"
"Found what?" Asked Maq as Gwydion came to stand beside me. The Mason's jaw dropped.
"The Quarry Da, I found the old quarry..." his sentence and the excitement on his face were cut off as he looked at his sire with concern. "Are you alright Da?"
"It is uncanny, the two of you could be brothers," Maq shook his head in disbelief "even to your ears. But it couldn't be, not if you both have 16 summers." I flushed at what he was saying and realized it might be true. I had, after all, been lying about my age.
This tale came to me from a wealthy friend who found it bound in his family's extensive bookshelves. Nobody could read it as it was in a strange hand and written in a mix of the common tongue and Norman French of its day. His family has lived in the same place, if not home, for centuries and are what one might consider landed gentry. My friend brought it to me in hopes I might be able to transcribe it into the English of our own time as that sort of thing is what I do. I have updated it only in that I have made such things as measurements, expressions, and such understandable by our reckoning today. What I found in my labors was quite startling. It would be wise for the reader to remember that mores were different then, and that the perception of "age" was as well. Average life expectancy was about 33 years, and people were smaller too, the average height being about 5'7". Insofar as I can tell these pages were written after the Norman conquest, but not by much. England, Scotland, Wales and Cornwall were all very much their own kingdoms, with petty kingdoms within, and Vikings could still be something of a nuisance in some parts even though history says their terror ended in exactly 1066.