A Queen's Hart

Author's Note:

Hello lovely readers. Just as a bit of a note to start, this story features a hodgepodge of Welsh language and English dialect words/names; but the events aren't intended to take place in a specific real-life country or historical period. They're there for some vaguely medieval set dressing and are best not thought about in terms of geography too much!

This is also a Winter Story Contest entry, so please don't feel shy of voting and commenting.

Now, let us trudge through the snow-covered forest, cold to the bone in our leather boots, into the echoing throne room of a grey castle...

♥ A Queen's Hart ♥

"Owain Rees. You stand accused of trespassing, poaching and theft against the crown, how do you plead?"

The burly guards that held me at each elbow shook me for an answer before I had time to give one.

"Guilty," I said, clear and civil. I had no designs on making any more trouble for myself than I was already in.

"Very well, would Her Majesty prefer to pass sentence now, or take a moment to deliberate?"

I dared myself to look up the stairs before me at the splendid lady seated in her throne. Fair skin and fairer hair, her blade grey eyes took account of me. I put my gaze right back on the floor.

"I should like to see the quarry," she said coolly, "I am not one for jailing men over trapped hares."

My stomach sank.

It took four men to carry the beautiful beast into the chamber and set him on the floor. The imposing mass of his body lay between me, and Queen Seren, the decider of my fate.

A white hart is always a sight to see, but this creature had been magnificent. The stag's fur shone with good confirmation, his haunches and neck were thick with muscle, and his grand antlers had never been broken. Dry blood muddied his muzzle. My arrow jutted jarringly from the blood-caked wound between his ribs. I wanted to congratulate myself for the improbable shot. But his dead eyes kept me sober.

"Cariad," the Queen breathed. Beloved. I gritted my teeth. This was not a good sign. If this stag was her pet, I was a dead man.

"How did you manage it?" she asked.

"It was a hard hunt," I admitted, "We tracked him with a lymer, but the weather turned and we lost him in the snow. We almost gave up, but some of the lads on horseback eventually herded him into a clearing. I took a clean shot from a tree. That part was quick."

"He deserved a better death than that," she shook her head in disbelief, "All these years he evaded my capture... and your group of louts brought him down... even in the snow..."

Being called a 'lout' ordinarily might have injured my pride, but next to this pale lady's elegance I felt common and clumsy. Besides, the mounted men in my hunting party had all fled upon the guards' arrival, leaving me to scramble down a tree trunk to surrender. They were not dutiful men.

I dared to glimpse up at Her Majesty again. She was not in place. Her feet hidden beneath the volume of her mauve velvet skirts, she seemed to float down the steps to the stag's body. Her expression was sombre. Now that she was closer, I realised that she might be older than she had seemed. There were fine lines about the corners of her eyes and mouth and streaks of white running through the cascades of her long blonde hair. But then, though I might be younger than she, there was no doubt grey in my own rusty hair.

The room was silent as she lifted the creature's head in her hands. She gazed as if spellbound into the hart's lifeless face. She mouthed words, but issued no sound. Then very carefully, she set him back down on the stone flags. Now she circled, considering, it seemed to me, matters beyond merely the nature of my punishment. Her velvet train enclosed the white body. It looked like a pool of dark glimmering blood.

She came to a stop. She reached out.

She wrapped her right hand tightly around the arrow, at the point where the shaft met the stag's flesh. With a twist and a pull, she freed the head from the viscera. A line of new blood trickled from the puncture wound, marring the perfect hide.

The Queen's fingers too were scarlet with fresh blood. She was untroubled.

"This arrow," she addressed me, "Is very finely made. Where did you get it?"

"Crafted it myself, Your Majesty,"

"Is that so?" Her eyebrows arched, either impressed or disbelieving. She ran a single finger from her bloodless hand over the stiff feathers of the fletching. She waved a hand to motion to her advisor to join her, and he descended the steps to stand beside her. He prepared his parchment and ink to record her ruling.

"Owain Rees," She projected her voice and it filled the throne-room. There was fear in my belly. You hear tell that men are beaten, branded, hung, drawn and quartered for crimes less than this.

"I sentence you to pay a fine of equal measure to thrice times your annual taxes. If you cannot pay the fine, you will labour within this castle until you have covered the amount that you owe. This is the lawfully appointed will of Queen Seren."

"May her justice reign everlasting!" chanted all else who were present. Including me. Tears ran down my face.

She had loved that beast in the obsessive way that thwarted hunters often do. That Cariad had not been her kill was a humiliation and pain to her. She could have had me killed for taking that honour from her if she wanted. But she didn't, and I sobbed like a bairn.

"Thank you, Your Majesty, thank you," I repeated over and over.

She offered me a thin-lipped smile.

"See that you are a better citizen from now on," she turned once again to her advisor, "This arrow really is very good, if he cannot pay the fine I would like him put to work with our fletchers." The advisor nodded.

As the guards dragged me away, I glanced back over my shoulder for one last look at the fair Queen. She was knelt beside her Cariad, stroking his thick fur.

***

Of course, I hadn't a hope in hell of paying such a high fine. I'd inherited my parents' small cottage -- the very one I was born in -- years ago, selling it would have raised the money, but also leave me homeless in the dead of winter. This I did not exactly relish. I had no wife or children awaiting my return to the hamlet, so altogether, to accept the work making arrows for the crown made the most sense by far. Besides - I was eager to repay the Queen for her mercy.

There were other criminals working in the castle, but I was lucky to be given a skilled job out of the cold while they mucked horses and mended chicken coops. Their mockery of me for this was relentless, but always in good humour. Most of them were young, and had gotten too ambitious in their salmon poaching, or tried to steal doves from the castle cree. We all do these things in the winter, when we get hungry. They were good lads.

What surprised me most about working in the castle was how often I saw the Queen. She took great interest in her horses and hounds, but also kept ferrets and other small beasts. She crossed the frosty yard with a cheerful stride each dawn to take her grey mare out for a gallop. Even with the cumbersome arrangement of the side-saddle, she looked natural and carefree when mounted.

The first time I saw her in the yard, I forgot myself. I waved joyously at her, as if we were well acquainted. She raised her thin eyebrows heavenward, and gave me a pitying smile. It was an expression that said, 'You get away with this once, silly man'. I dropped my arm, fell into a bow, and did my best not to feel embarrassed. By the time I dared raise my head again - she was gone.

And so I did my best not to dwell upon her. I made arrows the way my father taught me and forged camaraderie with the other fletchers; who ridiculed me for being coarse, just as the young lads in the sheds gave me grief for being soft. But I reckon I gave as well as I got.

We were given hot meals everyday and slept in sturdy bunks. As a life in this harsh world goes, I was for the most part content. Except at night, I saw Queen Seren's face floating before my eyes, her eyelids slowly closing, her lips pressing themselves into the shape of a kiss... One doesn't like to follow such a thought too far when his chamber is shared by eleven other men. (Even if other less considerate 'gentlemen' might have indulged themselves when the candles were out.)

I dreamt of her often.

***

After a month however, I found my body ailing. A pain in my neck and shoulder that shot like an arrow down my arm with every movement of my wrist. It made work slow going, and my foreman was quick to notice.

"You're too good a worker to be letting that get any worse, Owain, take a couple days rest and see if it mends," he told me, "Visit the hot spring, that'll help a muscle. Away with you,"

I set off up the mountain at first light. I'd missed the outdoors. The crisp cold air and the crunch of frost underfoot. I was a little way up the mountain slope when I paused to look back at the castle. Below, the Queen was in the courtyard, saddling her mare. She was but a pale speck in the grey early morning at this distance. But my chest pounded just the same.

The hot spring on this mountain was thought of as divine by the forefathers of this land. As I slid my aching naked body into the steamy water, I couldn't but agree with them. It wasn't just the sharp ache in my neck and limb that were eased. Little odd pains in my knees and ankles -- so old that I'd stopped noticing them -- all melted away in the heat of the spring.

It was a long time since I had felt so good in my own skin. I touched my body gently, as if by way of an apology for neglecting it for so long. Feeling the bump in my collarbone where I'd fallen from a pit pony as a little lad, then the scars that embroiled one ankle where I'd stumbled drunkenly into one of my own rabbit snares as a younger man, then the puncture mark in my upper arm where a marra's misfired arrow had pierced my skin -- but thankfully not gone much deeper. My body was a map of small survivals.

I reminded myself that it might be a long time before I got this much privacy again. I placed my hand upon my manhood. Perhaps the most neglected part of my body. It responded slowly. Blood moving languidly. I massaged the dormant organ in my hand. Incomplete imaginings of some fictitious lover rolled listlessly over me between memories of my youthful hedgerow dalliances and a Queen whose image I couldn't bear to sully and yet did; over and over. I thought of all the ways I could hold her tight against me, her bare breasts pushed flat against my heaving chest, with her pale legs wrapped tight about my hips; or her swan-neck spine pressed to fit the contour of my torso, that I might meet her sweetly between her thighs.

My guilt did not halt me. My desire and longing outpaced it. Intoxicated by my own racing thoughts, I shuddered in hot orgasm.

There was a sadness in me. I'd never had a wife to warm. I looked at my calloused hands, with their raised veins, skinned knuckles and bitten nails. Likely I never would.

I dozed there a short while. The sky lightened into a pink winter morning. I remained submerged.

"Master Rees, is it?" The Queen's cool voice cut me free of my daydreams.

"A-aye." I stumbled in my response, taken aback by her sudden appearance. Any person would have shaken me -- but that it should be her! You cannot know the depth of my mortification! "Aye Your Majesty. Though I'm not used to being addressed as such."

She nodded.

"Owain then,"

"You remember my name, Your Majesty," I was stunned.

Her lips stretched into a thin, sad, smile.

"I could not forget the circumstances that brought you to me. Perhaps your name is incidental, but I have not forgotten it."

I lowered my head. Heavy with the burden of the pain I had caused her.

"I would like you to leave now, Owain," she said plainly.

"Oh?"

"Yes, I have come here to bathe and will not do so while you are still present. Leave."

Shame turned my face strawberry. I shifted uncomfortably, gathering myself in my hands, hoping, as I had hoped through this whole encounter, that the mist hid what swayed in the water and that she had not seen it.

"I will not ask again." Her voice was stern.

I turned away from her and began the humiliating walk towards the edge of the pool, my body revealed a little more to her scrutinising gaze with each step, until my whole unsightly backside was exposed to her. I gathered my clothes hurriedly, scrambling still sopping wet into them without much care for buttons or belts. I swore I could still feel her eyes on me as I flustered with my bootlaces, loosing the capacity for basic coordination entirely.

But as I turned to dart back down the mountain away from my incredible embarrassment, I saw that she was not watching me at all but tending to her mare, wholly disinterested.

I began my dissent under a cloud of indignity, furious with myself for my vanity as much as my improperness and stupidity. To think I'd thought that beautiful, merciful, elegant lady would care to look upon my tired buttocks! What an eejit!

***

I returned to my work, better in my body than I had been in years. I crafted my arrows with ease and agility. Even found myself singing! The other fletchers didn't even laugh at me -- they said I was good! I sang all my mother's old folk songs of bonny lasses and bright blue skies.

And it was during this afternoon cheeriness that the door behind me swung open, the room around me fell silent and I dropped my song mid-verse to turn and face our visitor. Who should it be but Her Majesty.

She was dressed all in brown furs; hat, shawl, gloves and boots. Her silver-blond hair was tied into a thick braid. She held a bow on her arm and a quiver on her back. No advisor or lady-in-waiting at her side.

We all fell to bowing.

"Thank you gentlemen," The Queen said briskly, "Carry on your business. Not you Master Rees. I should like you to come with me."

"Of-of course, Your Majesty," I spluttered.

She turned on her heel and I scurried fretfully after her, racking my brains for anything I might have done to induce the punishment of being removed from my task. Perhaps she was not happy with the quality of my work after all? Perhaps I was forbidden from visiting the spring?

She walked in quick, graceful strides across the courtyard. I followed, anxious to remain behind and not beside her. She looked back over her shoulder at me.

"Have you a bow, Owain?" she asked.

"No longer, Your Majesty, it is in holding until my release," I said.

"I see,"

She abruptly changed direction. I followed.

"Will I be needing a bow?" I managed.

She almost rolled her eyes, but there was a smile on her lips. Yes, you daft fool, that's why I'm asking.

When I didn't seem reassured, she explained.

"There's a bear on the mountain. It must have come out of hibernation too early. We can't risk any livestock this time of year. I know you to be a good marksman if only by your own account. We're going hunting."

This... was both good news and bad. I was mightily relieved not to have disappointed or angered her. But I was not overjoyed to be off to kill a bear. I don't know whether you yourself have ever killed a bear, but it's not exactly a night of larks and ale.

We entered the outbuilding where tack, fishing rods and hunting gear was housed. Quivers, knives, nets and every other stuff lined the walls. When I did not close the door behind me, Queen Seren gave me a pointed look. I closed it awkwardly, as if I'd never shut a bloody door before.

With the door fastened, the windowless room was almost dark. Lines of pale light fell through between the slats of wood. It was worrisome to be alone within the close walls of the dimly lit room with her; I was scared to step on her skirts.

"Let us improve your bow situation," she said lightly.

After a moment's deliberation with the tip of her white finger pressed against her bottom lip, the Queen lifted her chosen bow from the wall and offered it to me in two hands.

It was a splendid piece of kit. Expertly made from fine materials -- with a silk string and a yew stave. I received it humbly, my head bowed.

"Thank you, My Queen,"

She smiled her restrained smile, but there was a greater measure of tenderness to her voice.

"Think nothing of it, Owain,"

She looked quickly away, and I thought for a moment, that her cheeks might have coloured. But it seemed too unlikely to believe. It was gloomy in there after all.

She walked by me to leave the little building. Her sleeve brushing against mine as she passed. Inside I bubbled with the rush of being near her. She opened the door and stepped out into the winter-white courtyard.

I followed her, always a step behind, to the stables to saddle my borrowed horse for the hunt.

***

It was the Queen who left first with the lymers. Each of the two dogs was a fair muckle size, but even so, I didn't much fancy their chances should they meet a bear that wasn't sleeping. We awaited her return, no sense rousing the whole forest with a blast of hunters.

The hunting party was half-a-dozen strong, and rag-tag at that. I've been member of some motley assortments in my time, but the Queen's gathering was by far the strangest.

There was the gamekeeper, Morgan, a stout, ruddy woman with a laugh like lit gunpowder. She'd not seen a bear in these parts for years and her demeanour of barely supressed excitement - rather than the appropriate concern - troubled me.

Then there was the stable-marshal, Dafydd, a lanky young man who had spent so much time in the company of horses that he had somewhat begun to look like one. He were a bit daft, but kind enough.

The elderly knight, Sir Stefan, was every bit as dour as his grey eyes, grey hair and grey face suggested. At least someone was taking this escapade seriously. (That or he was always in such grim fettle.)

The final member of the party was the Queen's niece, Princess Teegan, who was less than fourteen, pudgy and freckled. Four members of the group were in agreement that she should not be present, but none were brave enough to put the suggestion to Her Majesty.

"A young woman must be bold," the Queen had announced approvingly, squeezing the bairn's arm. The girl had hugged her hunting horn tightly and nodded, resolved not to let down her aunt whatever her own feelings.

We set off on horseback through the icy forest, with the Queen at the lead. We ignored the usual quarry of partridges and parcels of yearling deer, watching the way for damaged trees and heavy prints in the hardened snow.

Early in the hunt, we were silent and watchful, alert for any signal. But as the sun reached the highest point in the sky, we grew lax; whispering amongst our selves and letting our horses graze on trailing frost patterned leaves.

The crisp snow sparkled on the path ahead. Every now and again you had to duck your head under an icicle-laden bough. Sir Stefan almost brightened, telling tales of his squire days to a very patient Princess Teegan.

"Hush." Low and quiet, the Queen's urgent voice cut through the conversation. We were all absolutely silent at her command. She pointed ahead. I strained my eyes through the bare trees and holly bushes.

Our Queen raised a hand. We halted. Morgan clasped her cudgel. I gripped my bow.

Nearer than any man would prefer, was a glossy brown bear, with bright black eyes and dry blood on her muzzle. The big beast snuffled at the ground, investigating the scents around a hollow fallen log.

Her Majesty pointed to me. Gave a nod. Then bade that I went with her.