| Waifs, Wards, and Strawberry Pie |
| Summary: | Ser Kaspar, his squire and his page meet Ondine and her array of western wards, as well as the famous Ser Orland Hightower. |
| Date: | (15/04/2014) |
| Related: | Feasting the Tarbecks |
| Players: |
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Grand Dining Hall, the Hightower
The boy and the youth are heard before they are seen, the one half-again the height of his cousin, with an unruly mane of copper hair. His doublet is pristine: a red castle with two prodigious drum towers, his boots are immaculately polished, and his sleeves are unblemished by dirt or crumbs. The boy he pursues is anything but flawless. His boots are caked with dirt, so too his trousers. The jerkin is of the finest doeskin and adorned with a prodigious gold pin wrought in the shape of a single watchtower. His hair is straw-hued and brittle. His face pale face a riot of freckles. Page and squire rush into the great hall, the one in pursuit of the other. The younger boy, the Grafton, leaps upon a table and descends. His pursuer leaps atop the table fast on the smaller boy's heels, kicking over a pot of hunter's stew, unsetting a tray bearing a trencher of venison.
"Buuurton! Ernarrr!" The knight appears, albeit only after page and squire have upset four dishes set for the afternoon meal. The knight does not pay mind to the irate cooks standing beside the kitchen, or the redfaced scullery maid pursuing the younger boy while his fellow pursues the Grafton child from the opposite table-end.
Kaspar Royce, looks upon the elder boy. "I told you not to bully your cousin. Try my patience and it will earn you a clout on the ear." The elder boy looks at his knight, but does not seem anxious, or intimidated. Promptly, the young Redfort resumes the chase after his Grafton cousin.
But the pair from the Vale are by no means the only highborn children in the hall. A rather more solemn knot of little boys - and a couple of slightly older girls - to the number of six or seven, all in all, are sitting about glumly at the great chamber's other side. On the whole, they have the buttery hair, ruddy complexions, stocky build and bright eyes of the Westerlands; but when it comes to those eyes, some of their glances and brighter than ever from tears, and others dulled with resignation. The western children regard the unruly little Valelords with obvious envy liberally mixed with pointed dislike. "So that's how she was brought up," one of the older, bolder girls - wimpled and robed in the creamy garb of Serrett - dares to mutter aloud. The comment carries, as such comments more oft than not do, for all their emphatic quietness.
Ser Orland strides from one end of the hall to the other, and his stride is indeed a weighty one. Gesticulating with a roasted chicken leg in his right hand he proclaims some anecdotes of his youth. The two young man following him, located somewhere between lackeys and bastards on the complexly entwined branches of Hightower noblesse engage in the occasional laughter. Their expressions look even genuine enough to indicate their amusement, polite as it may be, is caused by his actual words, instead of his rather ambitous attire. He wears a doublet in crimson red, the sammet subtly stretching around the golden buttons, his pants are tight and white, his boots elegantly shining. The sword at his hips is obviously not made to be used as more than an ornamental statement, since both the towers and the flowers at scabbard seem to be made a bit too daintily, a bit too neatly to have ever been in touch with blood or mud.
As the two little Valelordlings are dragged over the coals by another knight, a jovial smile appears on his face. "Yes, young man. Be stern. They won't regret it, once they ride at your side on the fields. Or rather you won't."
Spotting the young ladies in the room his mien even brightens up a bit more, and next bite he takes of his chicken is indeed an appreciating one.
The knight leaps upon the table where squire, page, and maid race about like horses at a track. A deft grab for the elder boy's doublet puts a halt to his pursuit of the younger vale lord. The boy's final tug against his knight's hold upon his red cloak engenders a destruction of yet another delicacy. Kaspar's hand slips upon a pool of wine atop the table and the right side of his face collides with a rather prodigious strawberry pie. The young Grafton lord stops dead in his tracks. His face becomes a shade redder than the ruined fruit smeared across Ser Kaspar's face. The boy collapses, clutching at his chest. The scullery made begins to batter him with the straw of her broom, but the maid is quite old, her blows week, and sight of his knight bedecked with half a strawberry pie is too diverting to take not of the maid's blows. The elder boy grins then collapses into a gale of laughter. Kaspar Royce rises from the table, wiping away at the fruit and pastry crumbs with a length of linen drawn from his coat. "You have till the hour of the bat to clean your arms and mine, if there's speck of rust or dirt, you will spend the morrow in the Sept in Brother Cosmas's care!" This engenders something akin fear. The boys leap to their feet and run toward the door, presumably to the knight's apartments. Kaspar Royce pushes the length of line across his face. He looks to the heavyset Hightower knight and favors the man with a knife thin smile. "I suppose I should switch them, but my mother grandmother switched my sisters, and there wasn't a more horrible woman who ever walked ramparts of Runestone."
When Kaspar catches sight of the throng of morose Westerland children, he very nearly shudders. Then, he stares. "Shouldn't a Septa accompany these waifs?"
"The waifs to whom you refer have no need of a septa, cousin," a voice as chill and rough as hoarfrost replies without further ado. "They are the wards of a true and devout household…and the Reynes, when they thought to turn me Faithful, taught me myself quite enough to help these well-bred creatures at their prayers."
Lady Ondine Tarbeck strides from behind a fearfully convenient dark blue arras, herself in the starriest, most azure, most defiantly western costume silver can purchase, though garnered about with as many guards in the serpentine liveries of Lynderly as some other noblewoman might wear jewels at her throat. Ondine prefers to keep herself hedged with blades, sheathed or otherwise.
"Lady Emmeline Serrett. You have a good, clear speaking voice, unfortunately for you," Lady Tarbeck now admonishes the girl in cream. "Go and attend his lordship, and while you're about that, ponder your insult to these young lords of the Vale. Consider the sorrow, the forgiveness, and the…patience…of your foster-mother. Off you go. Quick about it."
As the Lady Regent watches the humbled western maid's retreat, her eyes catch, as if by accident, the has-been Hightower knight's. "Aye, she's scarce untoothsome to behold, is she, ser? Are you a married man yourself? By the trepidation, the…reserve, with which your whole House have treated me and mine so far, I would have thought you had scarce a bachelor left in this whole Hightower, and were all kept taut under fearsome wifely thumbs indeed…"
Ser Orland laughs uproariously as knight and page and pie are knotted into a pile of strawberry scented amusement. Much like the other boy's his mirth seems to be boundless, he even has to dab off a tear of laughter before he manages to respond to the Valeknight again.
"Don't switch them too easily, the steel is just as good as the smith." Still surpressing a persistent chuckle, he reaches out to pick a crumb out of his younger companion's derranged hair. "To be honest, they remind me much of myself back in the days. And someone managed to make a proper knight of me, at least."
The chicken leg is swiftly put aside, as the new arrival enters his reach, Orland's big hand subtly cleaned at one of his companion's white shirt that has miraculously stayed white during the vivid interlude of the young boys. He dives into a deep, sweeping bow.
"The charming guest from the West, Lady Lydden it is, if I recall rightly? If they treated you with trepidation and reserve it must have been because they were in awe of your beauty and your flawless posture, he greets and adds to the Valeknight. " Here you can see how the young ones are forged to become useful!"
After clearing his throat in mild constraint he continues to explain "Well, mylady, my wife's thumbs have been indeed a powerful smith of my humble self, but as it happens the Seven took her all too soon from me. "
"The steel must needs suffice, Ser. Tourney blades and an ewe." Kaspar Royce mops at his face, wiping away globules of strawberry and specks of pastry until the pale hand of a lady parts an arras. Kaspar watches in some amaze as Lady Ondine steps into the great hall following by an Echinda's cloak of swords. "Have you purloined the House Wode's crest, my Lady of Tarbeck?" Kaspar's smile is slim as a dirk. "Doubtless your vocation as surrogate wet nurse necessitates the swords, dear cousin?"
Kaspar looks next to the knight of the pyre-tower. "Was she very young Ser, your lady wife?" He favors the man with a look of genuine interest. Then opens his mouth as if to speak, stops, and then finally speaks. "I heard that a plague ravaged the city, some years ago."
"Oh, there aren't so very many little pin-pricks about me here, you know," Ondine Lynderly, as was, banters back with mock-innocence. "As it happens, …have you seen the Maesters play at magnets? You must have, residing in this fine, scholarly old city. I simply keep blades by to draw more blades, the ones I truly need. Yours might even do, noble cousin of Runestone. I hear it is very renowned."
She takes a step nearer to Ser Kaspar with an undeniably flirtatious gait…then swirls about and cranes solicitously towards her host's portly treasurer, kinsman, and, it would appear, principal food taster. "I feel your loss so very nearly," Ondine purrs now with little sincerity but much syrup. "My own lord husband was taken from me far too soon. His name was Tarbeck, not Lydden, but I suppose that for a great tourney knight such as you, Ser Orland, even the doughtiest western houses are apt to blur amidst each other."
That last 'supposition' seems as calculated to please the vainglorious old champion as it has evidently irked Ondine's western charges, who appear ever the sourer. Lady Tarbeck seems, disconcertingly, to have the advantage of all these new acquaintances of the Reach, being perfectly acquainted with their names and reputes. After all, her last week or so has been very sedate…though never idle.
The Valeknight's compassionate interest in Orland's late wife causes him to engage into a deep sigh. "My dear ladywife has been young enough and thriving! In fact we shared our nameday, so no one could have ever expected what happened to her. She has managed to stay healthy through the year of the plague and even the year after, but then, all of the sudden sickness pried her out of my very hands. I still remember her last coughs… oh."
As soon as his tragedy is properly elucidated his mood shifts nonchalantly back to its jolly beginning, fueled by Lady Ondine's words. "Please, mylady, forgive me. A few years ago, when I was still fitting into my finest armour, I would not have made this mistake. Lady Tarbeck. The red ox, of course. Well, they say you should not eat pheasant, it makes you forgetful. Maybe I have sinned in that way, but, ah, who hasn't? It is an honour and a pleasure, my fair lady, an honour and a pleasure, but a short one. My dire duties summon me away."
"Well met, knight of the strawberry pie," he humorously adds to the Valeknight, turns and disappears.
"I had heard that you detested your late Septa's tutelage. Clearly you found arithmetic a more, ah, functional investment of idle hours, cousin?" Kaspar Royce looks to her the dowager Lady Tarbeck's quills, swords bearing her Lord father's crest. "I had thought you would be feasting in your husband's halls. Strange how one stopover by the white mare can upend the best laid plans, cousin?" Kaspar looks to the oafish Hightower, he favors the man a look of distaste. Up to this point, he'd rather liked him, but there is nothing so repulsive as a self-important faux tourney knight, save perhaps a faux war captain. "I have no love of the boar. We should speak, soon, privily, sweet cousin."
Lady Tarbeck looks almost fondly - almost - after the wake of the old Hightower's wobbling departure. "What a charmer that fellow was, dear Ser Kaspar! Red ox, forsooth…but he who loves himself so dearly may often, oddly enough, be purchased rather cheaply. I wonder if he can even count at all, let alone to the degree you were kind enough to credit me with just now. He is supposed to be the Hightower master of coin, after all. I suppose it's a pretty…munificent…duty whether one knows how to calculate it or not."
Some of the young Western wards giggle nervously, united by Lady Tarbeck's cruel humorisms with the Vale nobles against the Reach knight…or else just currying favour. Either way, Ondine pays them no attention. "Yes, indeed, Ser Kaspar Royce," she replies formally, seeming to savour every syllable. "And I expect we shall. Good day."