The first woman to become a Knight was, in fact, Octavia of Elice, the daughter of Aurelius’ officer, Tatius, so famed for his leadership during cavalry charges. Octavia grew up in the legion camps and was said to have been able to ride before she could walk, and so it should perhaps not surprise us that she was chosen as the first Exarch of Saint Rahab, an Angelus who presents as distinctly feminine, and who has a tendency to select only women to serve her. It is said that Octavia never married, so devoted was she to her duty, though she did live for many years with her close friend Camilla. Since the very first days of Narvonne, then, there have always been a minority of female Knights, or Dames as they are styled.
* François du Lutetia
☀
5th Day of New Summer’s Moon, 297 AC
Clarisant caught Yaél in the hallway, just outside of Baroness Arnive’s solar, as everyone was leaving to attend to the tasks the King had assigned. “Squire,” Claire said, drawing up the child before she could scamper off to who-knew where.
“Yes, m’lady?” Yaél’s eyes flicked down the hall, like a mouse who’d been cornered by the cat and was desperate to escape.
“These past three days have occupied nearly all of our time with reading and composing notes,” Clarisant admitted. “But do not think that I have forgotten you. There will, no doubt, be a feast before the armies split and march from Falais. It is past time that you presented yourself in the appropriate fashion.”
“I dunno what you mean,” Yaél said, squirming. “I sit with all the other squires.”
“That is true enough,” Clarisant allowed. “But you sit as a boy. Come. We will bathe you in my husband’s tower room, and I will send Henry to fetch us a dress maker. The Baroness has several on retainer whose use she has promised me.”
“I’d love to,” the girl baldly lied, “But I have to get to the practice yard. Isdern said he- ow!” Clarisant took a firm hold of Yaél’s right ear and simply began walking. “Alright, alright, I’ll come, just let go!”
“We need to do something about your diction,” Clarisant sighed, “But that will be a long term project, I expect, and there should be plenty of time for it on the road. If I release you, you will make no attempt to run away?”
“I promise I won’t!” The girl whined.
“You are a squire, to be a knight one day,” Clarisant reminded her. “Your oath is sacred to the Angelus. Remember that.” She released the ear, which Yaél immediately covered with her dirty hand. “Come along now,” Claire said, picking up her pace, content there would be no more attempts to flee. Along the way, she caught a maid and asked her to have a bath drawn for them.
Yaél held her tongue as various servants of the Baroness ducked out of their path, and even through the courtyards on the way to the North Tower, though her steps did drag a bit at the sight of the other squires in the practice yard. It was not until they were in the stairwell, on their way up to Trist’s rooms, that she started in.
“You’re not going to make me wear dresses, are you?” the girl made a face. “You can’t use a sword in dresses.”
“You can go right on wearing breeches and a linen shirt while you are at the business of being a squire,” Clarisant allowed. “I have no objection to that. Though I think we are going to have two or three doublets cut for your shape,” she continued, upon further thought. “How old are you, Yaél?”
The squire shrugged. “Not sure,” she confessed. “Maybe eleven. Maybe twelve.”
“As I thought,” Clarisant muttered to herself, then opened the door off the stairwell. “Henry,” she said, stirring the hunter from where he was fletching new arrows, “Could you please go and fetch Miren, the dressmaker? If you ask any of the Baroness’ servants, they should be able to point you in the right direction.”
“Of course, m’lady,” Henry said, rising. “Be back as quick as a cat.”
“Don’t actually,” Clarisant said kindly. “Give us a few hours. Do your fletching in the courtyard, or go into town and get a few necessities for the road.” She reached into her purse, and passed him a handful of silver. Henry nodded his head, and turned to depart down the stairwell, having to duck out of the way of two serving men carrying a round wooden tub.
Clarisant let them deal with the actual process of preparing the bath, beckoning Yaél to follow her into the bed chamber while the men worked. She shut the door between the two rooms, and took her seat in the chair by the tower window. “Does Isdern know that you are not a boy?” she asked, keeping her voice low enough not to reach the workers outside the door.
Yaél looked down at the floor. “No,” she admitted.
“I didn’t think so,” Clarisant said. “Come, take a seat. Listen to me; I am not here to torture you, or to be your enemy, or to turn you into someone you are not,” she tried to assure the girl. “You are my husband’s squire. That means I bear responsibility for you, just like he does. I want to help you. Do you believe me?”
“I guess so.” Yaél shrugged, avoiding her gaze. “But I’m not some fancy lady like you. I’m just an orphan. And when you’re living on the streets, it's safer to be a boy than a girl.”
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“Yes, I expect that it would be,” Clarisant agreed, with a sigh. “And yet, you are not living on the streets any longer. You are among people who will protect you, and who in return trust you to protect them. And I cannot abide seeing you make the same mistake that faerie made.”
“Acrasia?” Yaél’s head came up now, though her confusion was writ plain to see in her face.
“The same,” Clarisant said. “She met my husband when he was but a boy, do you know that?”
Yaél shook her head. “No. He doesn’t like to speak about her much. I get the feeling she upsets him.”
“She is the cause of a great deal of pain, for both my husband and I.” Clarisant pursed her lips, then continued. “She never told him she was a faerie; let him believe, for years, she was a mortal girl, just like he was a boy. Their entire relationship was built on a lie, Yaél. Do you understand?”
“But I’m not lying to Isdern!” Yaél protested. “I’m just not… telling him everything.”
“I expect that if you went to her chapel and asked her, Acrasia would say something very similar,” Clarisant pointed out. “Listen. No matter how much you might wish to hide it, you cannot pass yourself off as a boy forever. Your body is going to begin to change soon, to take the shape of a woman. Your hips and your chest are not going to be those of a man. Your choice is not whether he finds out; your choice is when, and whether you are the one to tell him. Do you want him angry at you, for the lie? As it is, you’ve known him less than a moon. If you explain why you were afraid to let anyone know-”
“I’m not afraid,” Yaél protested. “Silly to be afraid of something as small as this when I’ve faced down daemons.”
“Just so,” Clarisant said, smiling and not challenging the lie. “Will you take responsibility, then? Or wait, and find matters spun out of your control? Perhaps break his trust in you forever? I know which I would prefer, in your place.”
Yaél let out a heaving sigh. “What do I do, then? Just pull him aside after sword practice?”
“When and how you tell him is your decision,” Clarisant said. “But best you do it quickly, before we depart. Which brings me to the feast, and the fittings. You may be certain that the evening before the troops march, the King will throw a great feast; it is good for morale. They must already be preparing, as we find ourselves pressed for time. I propose that such a feast would be the perfect time to make your debut, so to speak.”
“In a dress?” Yaél winced.
“In a dress.” Clarisant smiled. “Green and black, I think, the family colors. It will go well with your hair. If you let me, I will ensure that there is not a doubt in young Lord Isdern’s mind that you are very much a girl.”
“I don’t want to give up learning to fight,” Yaél pressed again.
“Did Dame Chantal give up fighting?” Clarisant asked. “She commands a tower for the Baroness. Did Ismet ibnah Salah? She is an Exarch, and now commander of the Caliphate army. Have you ever heard of Dame Margaret, Exarch of Rahab? She was part of the late king’s personal guard at Cheverny, and she was as graceful on the ballroom floor as she was terrifying with her glaive.” Clarisant frowned at the memory; if Sir Guiron was to be believed, Margaret had died mere days ago, in the fall of Cheverny.
“In fact,” Clairsant mused, shaking herself, “Perhaps we can ask Exarch Ismet to take a hand in your training.”
“She’s not better than Trist,” Yaél gamely defended her knight.
“No, I do not believe she is,” Clarisant agreed, thinking back to a morning at Rocher de la Garde when she and Enid De Lancey had watched two brothers practicing in the yard below. “But she may have something to teach you, all the same. Now come along. Let’s get you cleaned up before the seamstress gets up here.”
After Yaél had been scrubbed so clean the bathwater had turned gray, and after the dressmaker had taken the girl’s measurements, Clarisant sent her off to practice in the yard with the rest of the squires.
“Two dresses for now, I think,” she instructed Miren, who turned out to be a diminutive woman with curling hair gray as steel and a sharp tongue, “Each in black and green, but the opposite in balance. Make both suitable for her to wear to a feast or to court, as needs must.”
“One black with green trim, the other opposite,” the dressmaker agreed, accepting Clarisant’s silver. “Done before the army marches, m’lady?”
“Yes. And be certain one is ready for the feast the night before,” Clarisant specified. “Thank you, Miren. You are a great help.”
Once the woman had departed, Clarisant stepped out into the stairwell and climbed up to the next floor, where she rapped on the wooden door with her knuckles. She could hear the baying of hounds through the wall.
The door opened, and Sir Lucan nodded his head in greeting. “My lady,” he said warmly. “It is always a pleasure to see you.” He turned to call back into the rooms behind him: “Baron, Lady Clarisant is here.”
Wolf and Bear, the two hounds, rushed the door together, getting momentarily stuck in the frame, then finally slipped past Lucan into the stairwell, where they licked at her hands and crowded her with their wet noses, wagging their tails furiously. “Thank you, cousin,” Claire said, with a giggle. “Such good boys! Come along!”
“I will leave the two of you,” Lucan said, stepping past her into the stairwell. “I want to fetch him a plate from the kitchen, anyway.”
Her father was at a table in the sitting room he’d been provided, with a quill pen in hand and a sheaf of parchments before him. There was a bottle of wine, as well, not yet half empty. “Claire!” he said, rising with a smile, and for a moment it was just like when she’d scampered into his solar as a girl. “If there has been one good thing about this fighting,” Urien de Rocher de la Garde, “It is that I have gotten to see you again. Though it was also the fighting which made us miss your wedding,” he grumbled.
“Aye, both of them,” Claire agreed, fetching a goblet and pouring herself a splash of red.
“How are you, really, my girl?” Urien asked, brow creased. “You have been through things your mother and I had never imagined for you. Never wanted for you.”
Claire took a sip, and considered. “The night Percy died was terrifying,” she confessed, trying not to let her shoulders hunch up at the memory. “Like a monster out of a children’s story come to life. When I woke the next morning, I prayed it was a nightmare, but he was still dead.”
Her father wrapped his arms around her, and Claire allowed herself to take comfort in it, though she was a child no longer. She took a deep breath, the scent of his beard oil as familiar as her old bedroom at home, or the smell of the bay.
“And now?” he asked, after a moment.
“I’m better,” she said. “Truly, Papa, I am better. Trist is a good man. He makes me feel safe.”
Urien released her. “He’s become something of a hero. Now. You haven’t come to see me just for a hug and to pet the dogs.”
“No,” Claire admitted. “I want to go with the army, Papa. I’m not staying behind this time.”