Disclaimer: This is a work in progress as part of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). You are reading the work product of a first draft writing session and not a finished product. Comments are welcome, but bear the first draft nature of the work in mind. Thank you and enjoy!
Chapter 3
“Absolutely not,” Lady Elena Westgate said to Cori. Her mother’s level gaze to the other assembled members of the family was one they all knew too well. Lord Radnor sighed as his daughter looked to him in protest, but she got no support there either. Logan, who had arrived yesterday, five days after the announcement of the impending war, just stared in his cup of mulled wine. Jonathan was present from the monastery, but Cori knew he would be of no help. If Logan or her father, who both knew of her skill with the bow and in the forest hunting, would not come to her aid, she had no hope of winning over her mother.
“Corinne,” her mother continued. “Marching off to war is no pursuit for a noble lady of our caliber.”
“But mother, half the castle staff, men, and women, have enlisted in the cause,” Cori protested. “Even my own maid, Cecily, has joined the local Westgate militia levy. If she can go off to war, certainly I can as well?”
“You will stay here, by my side, Corinne.” Her mother continued as if not hearing her argument. “You will help me run the province in your father’s and brother’s absence. That is a noble pursuit as well. Without the support from home, the armies on the march would quickly fade and lose hope. We must continue to gather the harvest and send what we can to the troops in the field. We must defend the Western reaches against incursion while your father and brothers are far from home with the troops.”
Cori turned again to her father, pleading with her eyes. “Father, will you please tell Mother that it is as much my right to go to war, to defend this land, as it is my brothers’ right?”
“Cori, my fierce Corinne, huntress of the western marches,” he continued using the amusing moniker he had bestowed on her when she first took up the bow as a young child and terrorized the rats that lived in any town and castle. “You know that your mother and I rule here together in Solon. I try not to ‘tell’ her anything.” He chuckled which infuriated Cori in some ways more than her mother’s flat denial.
That her father was so condescending as to think her wish to go to war was cute in some way made her angry and hurt. She had known that her mother would be against her plan to join the Legion and fight with her brother. She had never approved of Cori’s venturing into the forests and learning the bow, knife and tomahawk from the huntsmen who supplied the castle with meat. It was a bone of contention between her parents that Lord Radnor had allowed it. But now Cori saw that his acquiescence to allow her to play in the forest was just that. He would allow her to play in the forest here where it was safe, but he would never allow her to venture off to war. That was where his defiance of her mother’s wishes ended.
Logan took the opportunity to speak up during the pause in the argument. “Sister, you are many things and an accomplished hunter is one of them but going off to war and killing other men and women in battle is something I would not have for you, either. It changes you, inside and out. That doesn’t even count that you may not survive the coming war. None of us may return.”
“Don’t say that, Logan,” Lady Elena interrupted him. “I’ll not consider that you or your brothers won’t return safely.”
“Mother, I have every intent on returning, if it lies within my ability,” Logan said. “But fate, war, and combat are fickle mistresses. They truly hold no love for any one man and are just as likely to turn their back on me as on one of my companions.” He turned back to his sister. “I will lose companions in this upcoming war. Good and close friends. I would not put your life at risk among them. That would be something I could not bear, were something to happen to you. Do as mother says. Stay here and help her run the province while father and I are away. You can be a force for good here at home just as much or more than you could ever be on the march with the Legion or any of our forces.”
“But even Jonathan is going. He doesn’t even like war and fighting,” Cori protested.
“I don’t wish to go to war, it’s true, sister,” Jonathan said from where he stood, apart from the rest of the family in the private dining quarters. “But father wishes to send a contingent of us with each of the units fielded from Solon. I will be joining Logan with the Legion not because I want to go to war or see men and women kill each other, but because I wish to do what I can to heal those who are injured and to prevent disease and sickness on the march. Do not envy me that task. Logan is correct. There will be much sorrow in the coming war. No one wants that for you.”
“So I must stay here and play the dutiful daughter while you and Father go off to war and glory?”
“There is no glory in war, Cori,” her father said. His voice was somber. “There is only death and dying and thankfulness that you are still alive at the end of a battle. The glory is what is perceived by those who did not fight or watched from afar. Those who are in the fight, on either side, spend the entire conflict in terror and near-panic.”
“You were never afraid, Father,” she countered. “When you tell of your time with the Legion in the northern border war, you speak of the friends you made. I’ve seen you in the reunions you have held here at the castle. I’ve heard you speak to your old companions and their families.”
“Those were the words of an old soldier remembering comrades from long ago. I speak of the fond memories of shared hardship and bonds that go beyond friendship at those events,” Lord Radnor said. He held her gaze as he continued. “You also should remember when, at the end of each of those reunions, I hold up a goblet of wine to toast our fallen comrades lost in battle many years before. Think on that moment and remember the silent reverence that each of the old soldiers holds in that moment. Each is remembering a lost companion, someone who will never marry, never watch their children grow up, never grow old as the rest of us do. That moment still strikes each of us with a cold chill even not, many years later. I would not have that for you, Cori.”
Cori knew she had lost all hope of turning things around at that moment. She looked at each of her assembled family members, from Logan’s sad smile to her mother’s satisfied smirk, and she knew that they would never understand why she needed to do this. They would never understand that this was something she had been practicing for all her life. Each of the hunting trips in the forest, learning to track and stalk prey, all had been because she wanted to join the Legion should it ever be called to re-form in a time of war. She had heard the stories of her father and the ballads of the visiting musicians. She wanted that to be part of her legacy as well. Now that hope was dashed by the selfish demands of her family. All her older brothers would be part of the coming conflict, and she would be stuck here at home, learning to keep accounts and books and whatever else her mother did in the household of a lordly manor. It was all so unfair.
She set her jaw, deciding to keep her thoughts to herself. Saying anything else at this point would only serve to anger her parents, and her Father wouldn’t allow her to say what she really wanted to say to her mother. She hated her mother at that moment. This was the final straw in her controlling influence over Cori’s life. She wanted nothing to do with staying at home with her mother during the war, and the spark of a plan began to hatch in her mind as she thought of that prospect.
“By your leave, Mother, Father,” Cori said in a respectful tone. “I think that I must retire to my chambers. I think that I have said all that I may at this time and wish to be excused.”
Her mother and father considered her for a moment, and then her father, Lord Radnor spoke. “Cori, you may retire if that is what you wish to do. Know that we do what we do because of our love for you, and to protect you from things that you don’t understand yet.” She just inclined her head and gave a small curtsy before turning and leaving the room.
———
Cori’s sad walk back to her rooms soon became a determined march. The hint of the idea she had thought of during the confrontation with her parents grew into a solid plan for her to achieve her goals. She would do what she desired despite the wishes of her family. She would need a day to assemble the things she needed to enact the plan. Then she could finally show them all that she was right and that she deserved to help in the coming war. She would prove them all wrong.
—-
Disclaimer: This is a work in progress as part of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). You are reading the work product of a first draft writing session and not a finished product. Comments are welcome, but bear the first draft nature of the work in mind. Thank you and enjoy!