Sir Braxton’s Alchemy

Savagely munching an apple purloined from the kitchen wench, Sir Braxton stormed his way through the outer courtyard, its stone walls ringing with the morning’s activities. Lord Hume had asked to see him in the great chamber and he could guess what that noble lord wanted.

“Damn and thrice be buggered!” he hissed, startling a milkmaid as she went about her morning chores. He snarled at her impatiently and threw his apple core in her general direction. She squeaked as she dodged the projectile and scurried away, avoiding aggravating his temper further.

Without ceremony, Sir Braxton threw open the door to the Great Hall, and stamped through the internal hustle with little regard for anyone in his way. At the far end was Lord Hume’s great chamber, the room in which he planned strategy and entertained nobles from near and far. Sir Braxton threw this door open with little regard for niceties, startling the man seated within.

“Ah, Sir Braxton, good of you to come.”

Sir Braxton, glared. It was not as if he was given any choice in the matter. He didn’t wait to be invited to sit, but pulled a heavy chair out from the table and threw his body into it with a grunt that spoke volumes.

“Do make yourself comfortable. Wine? Mead?” Lord Hume offered the jugs with good grace, but Sir Braxton just shook his head. A meeting like this required a clear head.

“You are my most trusted knight,” Lord Hume began effusively, and Sir Braxton snorted and lifted one eyebrow sceptically. He was under no illusions. If he were Lord Hume’s most trusted knight, then the sun was now rising in the west and setting in the east.

The nobleman ignored the outburst as he continued to expand upon Braxton’s sterling qualities. “You are honest and brave, and you certainly showed Lord Cumberland’s man just how the joust should be won. That man will not sit without being reminded of his humiliation for a se’night at least.”

Sir Braxton had enough of the flattery, false as it was. “Come, my Lord. Be straight and to the point. ‘Twill not change my answer, it is still ‘nay’. It matters not how much flattery and flatulence you fill this room with.”

“You’ve not yet heard my request.”

“You wish me to train your nephew.”

The Lord gaped like a floundering fish. “Do you read minds, good Sir Knight?”

“Nothing of the sort. You asked Sir Michael, Sir Garrick and Sir Tobin the same question yesterday. They, like myself, have given you the same answer—‘Nay!’ I am perfectly aware that I am your fourth choice for this request, possibly the fifth or sixth, if there were other poor sods you have asked to do this God blamed task.”

“Sir Braxton, you live here under my sufferance, eating at my table and swilling my mead. Not one person in this keep would stand up for you. Were I to cast you out, no one would care. In fact, you have endeared yourself to no one, and most, if not all, would likely cheer your departure.” Lord Hume let the words hang in the air. Sir Braxton couldn’t dispute the facts. He knew he was not well liked, but liking was not necessary. He cultivated the air of indifference and demanded nothing from anyone, lest they demand something from him.

“My nephew is my fosterling, and I am bound by honour to turn him into a Knight of the Realm. You, sir, have been chosen to instruct the boy, and I expect him to become the kind of man his father and myself can be proud of, or you may pack your bags in disgrace.”

Sir Braxton chewed his bottom lip. “There is no amount of alchemy that will turn that base metal into gold. Your nephew is a walking disaster.”

“Be that as it may, you are tasked with performing that miracle.”

Sir Braxton contemplated this, his eyes steady, never leaving the other man’s face. Silence was a weapon that Sir Braxton had often used to his advantage, accompanied as it was with a steady glare. Lord Hume reacted predictably. He fidgeted with his hands, shifted in his chair, and darted his eyes back and forth between Sir Braxton’s face and anywhere else in the room.

For his part, Sir Braxton was calculating how close Lord Cumberland’s lands were, and if that man was likely to hold a grudge against him for besting his champion.

“I have a keep. It is small and tidy, south of Hammerton. Do this, and it will be yours.”

The words arrested Sir Braxton mid thought. A keep. An entire keep for his very own. He was the younger son of a younger son. Such a gift was unbelievable. Was there a catch, besides the obvious? “Did you offer this keep to the others?”

Lord Hume flushed uncomfortably. “Err…” he hedged.

“You did, and they still refused.” The keep couldn’t be anything special then. However, the others were in line to inherit their respective properties, being the oldest sons of oldest sons. The inducement of more land was very little compared with the impossibility of the task required to earn it.

“Should I accept your task, but fail to adequately train the boy, what then?” He needed to know the worst. Would he be hung and drawn? Strapped in stocks to be humiliated? Turned out from the keep to fend for himself? Better that the worst was known up front.

“Should you fail, I’ll not blame you, but his father will know the name of the man who failed him.”

Sir Braxton weighed this information in his head. The boy’s father was King Harold, and the name of the man who would fail the King would not be Braxton, but Hume. King Harold hardly saw his lowly servants and praise or blame rested solely on the shoulders of his nobles. Perhaps Lord Hume was not aware of how little regard His Royal Highness would have for the lowly knight.

“Now that you have given me the time to reconsider, Lord Hume, I believe I will accept the challenge of turning your fosterling into the man his father would be proud of.”

***

The boy was all gangling limb and lank hair, and seemed severely lacking in anything resembling wit. He gaped at the sword that Sir Braxton pressed into his hand.

“That’s dangerous, that be,” the boy squeaked, eyes wide beneath the curtain of hair. The sword dropped to the ground with a clatter, and Sir Braxton winced.

“Yea, ‘tis dangerous.” Sir Braxton enunciated slowly to ensure the boy both heard and understood. “‘Tis why we handle it with care. If you drop it, as you just demonstrated, you are like to slice your toe off!”

“I am but a child. You should not give a child dangerous things.” The boy countered.

“If this ‘child’ does not learn to wield the dangerous blades with confidence and care, then this ‘child’ will like as much not grow to become a man. He will be slaughtered ‘ere he can reach the threshold of manhood.”

“Do you threaten me, sir? My father will hear of this!”

“I merely speak the truth. Boys who don’t learn to use their sword, will die. But you see, I do not care one way or the other. If you die, I do not need to train you, so by all means, stay ignorant and stupid. I will laugh as the other boys slice you apart.”

What little he could see of the boy’s face flushed an angry red. “You are horrid!” The boy blindly reached for the blade at his feet, and with a clumsy swipe, attacked Sir Braxton, announcing his strike with a childish, wild scream of frustration. Without even looking, Sir Braxton whipped his own sword from its scabbard and parried the blow, sending the sword tumbling through the air to land some distance away.

The boy shook out his hands, the sting of the contact sharp and painful.

“Owww,” he wailed. “That hurt!”

“Boy, if you had wanted to hurt me, you did everything wrong. If you intended to hurt yourself, then you did everything right.”

The boy stomped away, shaking his stinging hands and grumbling under his breath.

***

Sir Braxton sat beneath an old apple tree, happily munching the sweet fruit. He’d set the boy to gather fallen apples in a basket much too small to hold the bounty, and it amused him no end to see the boy struggling.

“‘Tis an impossible task that you have asked of me, Sir Braxton!” the lad shouted as yet another apple toppled from the basket.

“Pish-tosh! You merely lack the basic skills of a farmer’s wench. If you insist on not carrying a blade, we must train you for some or other role within the keep. Gathering apples should not tax your limited intellect too much.” Sir Braxton launched his apple core in the boy’s direction and laughed heartily when the child dodged the projectile, scattering his precious apples far and wide.

“You are a beast!”

“Beast? Come, child, surely you can be more inventive than that. The insult hardly wounds me. In fact, I am flattered by the compliment. A man who is a beast is feared in battle.”

The child pressed his lips together and glared at the Knight from beneath his shaggy curtain of tresses. The glare was as lethal as a butterfly, and he growled in frustration before he turned his back to sit like a stone, ignoring the older man completely.

***

Atop an old stone wall that surrounded the home farm, Sir Braxton could barely control his laughter, almost toppling himself from his perch. The boy ran, long, gangly limbs flailing as he chased the chicken round the yard. The cacophony of the crazy hen squawking in distress and the flutter of feathers as the animal scampered about the yard, always more than an arm’s reach away from the boy, was pure entertainment. The lad launched himself at the hen, a flying leap of his own that landed him headfirst in the dirt, a face full of dung and straw. He rose, spluttering and coughing out clumps of mud and excrement.

“Stop it! Stop laughing. My father will hear of this and then you’ll be sorry!”

Sir Braxton laughed harder. He heard this threat numerous times a day, and it had no more effect upon him now than it did the first time. He ignored the threat and focussed on the promise of a keep in Hammerton.

“If you will not train as a warrior, perhaps you’ll find your place as a farmer.” Sir Braxton yelled once he had control over his laughter. “Or maybe that skill is too demanding for your intellect.”

***

By the river’s edge, Sir Braxton leaned against a fallen log as he honed the edge of his sword. The long strokes sharpening the blade with a comforting, harsh sound. Down by the water’s edge, the boy scrambled in the mud, searching for worms. Today’s task was fishing.

The child’s bony arse waved in the air as he dug, and Sir Braxton could not resist the temptation it presented. He stood, laying his blade aside, and with two great steps, planted the foot of his boot in the child’s rump and shoved hard. The boy floundered, face first into the stream and came up spluttering, hair plastered to his face, limbs thrashing, as he screamed in anger. Without thought, the boy launched himself at Sir Braxton, fists flying. The man barely felt the impact and grasped the child by the arms, throwing him back into the water once more.

When the boy surfaced, he tried a different tactic. He made for the shore, where Sir Braxton’s sword lay gleaming in the sun, and staggered toward the blade. In one motion, he grasped the hilt and spun, flailing it about and launched a bumbling attack on his mentor and tormentor.

Sir Braxton merely laughed and thwarted the clumsy attack with his bare hands, easily disarming the furious boy. With his sword back in his own hand, he used his other to grab the child, flip him over and pin him down, face first on the ground, his knee wedged painfully in the boy’s back. He grasped the boy by the hair, forcing his head up, and slipped the blade before his nose.

“It would be so easy…” he threatened. There was no laughter now, just grim promise.

The boy was too frightened to even scream, his eyes wide as he stared at the glinting blade mere inches from his face. Suddenly, Sir Braxton whipped the blade up and sliced cleanly. The boy screamed, and Sir Braxton shoved him away in disgust, a handful of hair, cleanly sliced off, remaining in his fist. The boy scrambled to his feet, hands shaking as he assessed the damage.

“There, now you can see,” Sir Braxton rumbled as he threw the offending locks at the child who now stood with a raggedly cut fringe of hair that exposed two mismatched eyes, one brown one blue, that were filling with tears.

“You are a monster!” the boy gasped, pulling the remaining hair over his face.

***

The first flurry of winter deposited a healthy layer of snow upon the keep, and sent both man and boy outside in search of firewood. The snowdrift covered the boy’s boots and Sir Braxton let him forge the way through the snow, a skinny, shivering, miserable mess. He smiled to himself as he heard the boy cursing him under his breath. The child was getting much more inventive in his swearing.

The layer of snow was so fresh and crisp, that Sir Braxton felt the need to spoil the pristine vision. He scooped up a handful, compacting it into the perfect size for launching at a target. The target being the back of the boy’s head. The projectile splattered with a satisfying shower of white, icy powder and the boy screeched his outrage.

“You, sir, are a… a.. Ruttish, Rump-fed Ratsbane!”

“Oh, a hit, a palpable hit!” Sir Braxton chortled as he launched another well packed ball at the foolish boy’s face. It splattered with a satisfying sound, cutting short the next wave of insults with some of his own. “You are an Impertinent, Ill-nurtured Inchworm.”

With shaking hands, the boy scooped a handful of snow and hurled the loosely packed projectile at Sir Braxton, hollering the most foul insults he could imagine. “You Beslubbering, Beef-witted Bladder!”

Sir Braxton roared with laughter as the poorly prepared snowball disintegrated mid air and he hurled yet another perfectly packed snowball directly at the child.

The battle was engaged, and the boy ran for his life, followed relentlessly by Sir Braxton, who hurled both insult and snow while laughing uproariously. Soon the boy found a vantage point behind a fallen log and began to throw his own projectiles and insults at the older man. Sir Braxton was impressed. The boy might be hopeless with a sword, but his throwing aim was excellent and his insults most creative.

Soon, both man and boy collapsed, exhausted, into the now well churned snow.

“We have no firewood,” the boy gasped.

“And whose fault is that, you Flea-ridden, Impertinent Toad?”

“I believe the fault is yours, you Scabrous, Serpent-sired, Son of a Scullery maid!”

Sir Braxton howled with laughter.

***

In the bright light of an early spring morning, the sound of sword ringing upon sword echoed in the keep. It was punctuated with inventive curse words and creative insults, as the boy cursed his mentor, one curse for each hit and clash of the blade.

“Upon my word, what have we here?”

The words were spoken by a regal man in well worn and travel stained armour.

“Father!” the boy cried throwing his blade in the dirt, much to Sir Braxton’s dismay. “You have returned! You have no idea what this man has done to me. I demand that you give him what he deserves for his treatment of me.”

King Harold eyed the boy with a raised brow, then fixed his attention on Sir Braxton.

“I see you have worked some kind of miracle, sir. Name your reward.” The boy gaped openly at his father, his face a study of astonishment.

Sir Braxton looked beyond the king to Lord Hume. “I only ask for the keep at Hammerton, as promised.”

“Hammerton?” The King turned to Lord Hume, puzzled, and the other man shuffled awkwardly.

Realisation hit Sir Braxton like a wave of cold water. “There is no keep, is there?”

“Erm… well…” Lord Hume flushed and cleared his throat.

“There is no keep near Hammerton, but I do have a vacant baronetcy in Birmingshire. It is mine to give as I see fit,” King Harold announced.

A baronetcy, answerable to the King, to be daily at his beck and call. These thoughts flitted through Sir Braxton’s head and he made an abrupt decision.

“With all due respect and my sincere thanks, Your Highness, but I feel that Lord Cumberland might require my services from this day forth. His champion has been bested, and I think my skills may be best used in his service.”

Without waiting for a dismissal, Sir Braxton turned and walked away.

“Where do you think you are going, you Pus-ridden, Pig-snouted Pultroon! You can’t walk away from me! You haven’t finished teaching me how to fight.”

“Get gone, you Mewling, Malodorous, Minnow, you can find another mentor. I’m finished with you.”

Without a backward glance, Sir Braxton walked away, leaving the keep, his Lord, his King and his charge behind. Sometimes it was best to cut one’s losses and begin again. There was no time for such things as sentiment or regret. He swiped an apple from a kitchen maid’s basket as he left, biting deeply into the sweet white flesh.