Correl of Otley
It had been nearly a week spent in House Gauwynn, and if Correl was honest, she was dreading the thought of leaving. For the first few days she was cautious, quiet, even suspicious of the inhabitants of this mountain castle. Someone had tried to kill Lord Brighid here, and she wasn’t even sure who it was. Of course she needed to be on edge. But she spoke with them, house servants, knights, the kitchen staff, the courtyard staff… None of them seemed murderous, if anything they were simply very nosey. Interested in everything Correl said, everything she did… It was all very uncomfortable.
They’d ask questions about her time as a page, about her time at Caer Wren, they asked about her travels with Lord Brighid and they asked a lot about that. See she learned, that the lord had never taken a squire before this point, even vowed to not do so on several occasions, so they wondered if there was “something” about Correl that had encouraged Lord Brighid to change her mind. She hated those questions the most. The servants would poke and prod about personal details, or apparently intimate ones, and Correl had never wanted to melt into the ground before, but the feeling had very quickly become a natural one. And yet…
They were very kind, giving her new clothes that flashed her new status as a knight of Gauwynn. Dark blues and golds adorned her new pants, her new vests, overcoats, even her shoes and socks! The knights here were concerned about Lord Brighid training a squire, and took the time to talk with her and even brought her out to the courtyard, an enclosed sort of arena behind the main castle, surrounded even more by the mountains and by the biting cold. They trained her, at least as much as they could. But Correl was grateful for it. They fed her until she was full, and gave her a whole new room. Her room… She loved it, and was still furnishing it until she was satisfied.
Welcome home, Lord Brighid had said that first day. And it was starting to feel like it, Correl felt terrible when she tried to think of who could possibly have tried to kill the Lord of Gauwynn. Maybe they’d left? Tried to chase after her and gotten lost? That’s what Correl wanted to be true. But she felt in her heart that the moment she started to truly believe that would be the exact moment that something would happen. That was just how things like that worked.
In the wake of Lord Brighid’s newest plan, however, and the new journey she’d created for them, well… Correl could see the peace diminishing fast, like the shadows of a long day, stretching into black night. At some point tonight, she realized she would be entrusted with their map, with their lives as it were. And the very thought was making it very hard to focus for her. She trusted her of course, more than anyone else really, but… well, it wasn’t much of a stretch to say she’d never really had that many people to trust up until this point.
Tonight was essentially the beginning of a countdown as to when they would leave, and Correl wasn’t too sure of their odds of returning to House Gauwynn again.
This had been occupying most of her thoughts, keeping her awake thought out most of the last night, and holding her in a daze for the majority of the morning so far. The only thing that snapped her out of it was one of her kinds mentors to House Gauwynn, calling out for her to dodge an errantly thrown hand-axe. She waved her thanks and had begun to space out once more when the familiar, somewhat whiny voice of Winston began to buzz in her ears.
“Why are you never on my side for this?” He pouted, settling on the bench where Correl had stationed herself.
They were sitting in an indoor courtyard surrounded by three floors of the mountainous keep that made up the knight’s barracks. This was the only indoor place to train in the whole of House Gauwynn. Correl had taken to this place like a moth to a flame, not only for training, but because this was one of the only places where the house servants could not easily come in and annoy her, as it was too dangerous. It appeared that Winston was a knight hopeful however, because he was usually let in to observe the training. He almost always, in Correl’s opinion, used this time to bother her on the “Lord’s study” issue.
“I don’t know what you mean…” she mused, blinking a bit to reclaim focus on the everything happening around her. She heard Winston snort and turned to look at him.
“You aren’t even remotely curious about what’s in Lord Brighid’s study? Not even a little?” He pressed, leaning against Correl’s side.
Correl laughed, shaking her head, “Not in the slightest. I was told that I would not be allowed entry into the study, and I believe her lordship.” Winston groaned louder, dramatically leaning further onto Correl, until he was practically hanging off. She laughed the smaller boy off and gently lowered him onto the ground where he continued to groan. Teenagers… She’d begun to be glad she hadn’t been one in years.
“Don’t you think, Winston, that if she had something to show us or tell us, that she would?” Correl offered, leaning over Winston as much as she could, and letting her hair roll off of her shoulders to cover his face.
Immediately, the boy shot up in another huff, narrowly avoiding colliding with Correl’s forehead. “Hmph! That’s fine and dandy Correl, I’m more interested in all the stuff she must hide in there!”
“All the stuff?” Correl raised a questioning eyebrow.
“Like… Lord Brighid is a rather private person right?” Winston started, waving his hands around wildly to accompany his point, “Yet she’s had all these cool adventures and quests, and whatever else! There’s got to be some sort of proof that these things happened!!”
“You mean aside from the various eye-witness accounts?” Correl countered slyly.
“Well, she doesn’t brag!” Winston whined again, “So she’s gotta be the type of person who keeps little trophies of her adventures, to remind herself of whenever she’s back home!”
The boy pulled himself off the ground and proceeded to pull Correl off of the bench where she sat, “And like, they don’t decorate the halls, or the corridors, so where are they? In. Her. Study.”
Correl shook her head. She’d never had younger siblings, nor was she close to the younger pages from her home, so she was going off of speculation, but… Winston had a distinct case of younger brother air about him. That is to say, he was certainly doing his best to find trouble, “Why can the lord not just be a private person? What if she has no reminders of her conquests?” She offered again. Between Winston here in House Gauwynn and Lord Brighid on the road, if she didn’t stop him now she would never return to a regular sleep schedule.
“Well that’s how they did it in Caldune.” Winston offered, then seemed to cut himself off, face immediately darkening.
For a moment it was silent, at least between the two of them while the rest of the knights carried on about their business around them. Months ago, Caldune had been among the first targeted by the very perpetrators Lord Brighid was trying to find. With their leader, Lord Petrel lost in madness over his wife, Lady Tor’s death the entire house had fallen into chaos. Winston had been among a gaggle of people displaced in the turmoil and forced to move. Correl had not personally been to Caldune, but had definitely heard of the situation from Lord Brighid on the way to Gauwynn.
Winston never seemed to want to talk about it, but sometimes he would go from an excitable child to a very tired man in a matter of moments, clamming up and quieting suddenly. The only times you could see him excited where among the knights in the barracks or whenever he spoke with Lord Brighid. Correl’s heart bled for him, truly. She couldn’t remember how she coped with her own loss, it being so long ago, but for such tragedy to have happened within the current year…
“…I don’t know about treasures or trophies, but” Correl started, voice quiet, “I do know that Lord Brighid will be wanting me to take ownership of a map for our journey, and I wouldn’t mind-” before she could even finish her sentence, Winston’s eyes lit up and the boy hopped around excitedly, “-I would not mind if you wanted to look it over with me.”
Winston seemed happy to accept Correl’s counter-offer. It wasn’t walking around some forbidden place, with the lord of the house, but… it was something. Correl was hoping that’d be enough. She was able to talk to Winston more about the map that Lord Brighid had instructed her to keep. Winston constantly asked if he could se the map, if Correl would let him see it or even hold it. She agreed after a moment of hesitation, but only for a few seconds. She mentioned to him that once their map was in hand that they’d be leaving shortly after.
At first Winston seemed to get quiet again, but before the silence could settle, he asked, “Could you bring me a prize from your journey back, then? Sort of like a welcome home gift?”
That was something she could do. For sure. Welcome home gift.
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