All The Queen's Ladies [NaNoWriMo Project]

An Interlude

Who are the Harwoods?

Once, four or five centuries ago, there was a man by the name of Harlow, Domerin Harlow. He was a woodsman, and his woods were the Doesbridge Forest, named for a time sung about, but never put to print, when a restless prince went a-hunting in the woods. His men tell him not to hunt does, for without the does there would, eventually, be no stags, but the prince doesn't listen. He sees the most perfect creature; pure white, with big dewy eyes and fur that looks so soft he can feel it in his fingers already. He chases after her, chases so fast and hard that he leaves his men behind, and still the doe stays just out of reach, no matter how fast he goes. Soon he is lost in the depths of the woods. His horse collapses under him, and the doe disappears. Crying for help, the prince wanders. He drinks rain to survive. He eats bark. After some days he is near delirious, imagining he sees his lost loves amid the trees, and almost by accident he stumbles on a wide stream, with a wooden bridge across it. In the centre of it stands the doe, his doe. He knows it is her. He lets out a cry and runs towards her, arms outstretched, a ragged mossy mess of a man, and this time she doesn't run. As his arms fasten around her, the bridge breaks. The two bodies eventually wash up in front of the palace, locked in an embrace; the doe's pelt hangs in a secret room somewhere, nobody truly knows where, but it is there. The bridge in the forest is long gone. There are a few men living in the villages nearby who claim to have pieces from it. One shard of wood looks very like the next, and nobody pays them any quarter.

These are Domerin's woods, and they are troubled by outlaws; a band of men and women turfed out of their own land for poaching, who call each other by the colours of the rainbow. They number anywhere between twenty and one hundred. A girl of his village refuses Garth the Green. That next day, the outlaws surround the village. "Bring out the girl," says Garth, "or we'll put you all to the torch." The girl is about to surrender herself when her admirer - or lover - Domerin steps forwards. He challenges Garth to a duel for the girl's honour. Garth agrees, but Domerin insists that they will fight as equals, so Garth has to take off his ill-gotten armour and fight in nothing but cloth. He loses. The outlaws vanish into the woods, but without Garth's leadership they disband and are picked off, one by one. It is revealed there were only ten of them.

Domerin takes the body of Garth the Green to the High Palace, to prove that he is dead. The king knights him. He becomes Sir Domerin Harlow of the Woods, Harwood for short. As a reward for ridding the kingdom of Garth the Green, he is given a generous parcel of land; half of the Doesbridge Forest, and the ridge of land around it. There is a castle there already, abandoned when the last lord died. Domerin cannot afford to renovate it, so he lives in the gatehouse, waiting for an income to build up. It does so slowly, so he renovates slowly, stone by stone, but when he dies the castle is unfinished and they still cannot afford glass.

Two generations later, his son and daughter provide a tenth of the wood's trees for boats, to pacify the straitslanders. These boats win them the battle. The king raises them to lords and ladies and gives them the rest of the land in the area, taking it from the disgraced Sir Lorren, whose wife was a straitswoman and who refused to take any part in the scuffle. With the extra income, they finish the castle and name it Harwood Ridge. They have hunting tapestries commissioned, of the reckless prince and of Sir Domerin. Sir Lorren's old estates swear to them. The daughter marries one of the sons, the son one of the daughters, and their children marry other petty lordlings and little ladies from near the Doesbridge woods. It continues this way until Branwen Harwood is taken into the service of Princess Cerys, for reasons nobody seems to know, and marries Ranulph Clare, the heir to almost all of the lushlands.

These are the Harwoods.

Who are the Clares?

It is not even a question that needs answering. They always have been, and always will be. They must have been small and weak once, but if so it was in the time before record, before the kingdom was whole, when everybody was small and weak. What matters is that for as long as we know they have ruled the massive green and temperate fruit bowl known, with reason, as the lushlands. They have taken whatever tithes they want, married whoever they want, hunted and feasted and fought however they want. There are bastards with the tell-tale wide eyes all over the grasses, in every orchard, plying their trade on the rivers. The legitimate family trade overseas. Their pedigree is impossible to recite, unless you have a few days to listen to it, and it is painted on the ceiling in their great hall, which is almost the size of the outer bailey at Harwood Ridge.

They have outlasted at least four royal families and have stood by them all loyally, excepting that time most recently, when the Carrogans fought the Laiths to keep their throne. Then they stood by, waiting, watching, until they could be sure of a winner. Thirty thousand men can turn a war, and did. The Laiths love them, and are the better for it. After all, without them, they would go hungry. And it is well and good, because then a war comes along and Lord Ranulph Clare is first to the front, with all his men behind him, leaving behind his wife and sisters and, hopefully, the next in an infinite number of generations.

These are the Clares.

Who are the Delles?

Garef Delles is the son of Rhys Delles, who is the son of Griff Delles. Griff is the son of nobody, or so it seems; he was found as a babe, crying by the well in Harhurst, when none of the local girls was known to be with child. He is taken in by all the families at once. Word reaches the castle on the ridge, where the current Lady Harwood has a sentimental streak and three grown children. She has the babe Griff brought up to the castle. She admires him, as women do, and finds him a nurse among her own ladies, and waits for him to be claimed. Nobody comes. Golden-hearted, she gives him to the family steward and his wife, who are old and barren, and who love him and care for him as if he were their own.

Griff marries Martha, a kitchen maid. They have five children with tight brown curls; only Rhys and Elaine survive. Elaine leaves the castle to find her fortune in the city, any city, anywhere that doesn't feel as if it is falling apart around her ears. Rhys replaces his father as steward, marries one of the groom's daughter's, and has a son, Garef, who is quick and able. He harbours hopes he might be able to find a knight's daughter for him, not a landed knight, but one with a title, but Garef has other ideas; he marries Holly, a woman near ten years his senior from the village, who dies birthing his son, Gweon. Gweon is a bold child with an aptitude for sums, his mother's turned up nose and a mass of dark curls, who plays at being a knight.

These are the Delles.