The Captain's Tale

(Names have been changed to protect the paranoid and implicate the innocent. I paid good coin for my artistic licence, and I intend to get value for my money!!)

When story-tellers gather amongst my people, they say that a story must have a root, to grow big and strong with the telling, and it must have a time and a place. The root of my story is two squabbling old men, the time is some 60 years ago, and the place is all the lands of Middle-Earth.

The first old man was called Willhelm. He was a trader from Rohan, reknown as both a trader in horse flesh but in later life also as a designer and builder of roads. He appreciated how a good, well made road could only increase the demand for the horse's he sold, as well as aid the defense of Middle-Earth from the perennial threat of robber bands of all species. And he grew rich and took a beautiful young wife, a distant cousin of the King, and brought great honour to his family. As was the custom of the Rohan, the wife rode at her husbands side during his many trips and adventures. And as was the custom of married woman, she did not cut her hair but allowed it to grow long and which made her look even more beautiful. When in the due course of time she bore her husband a daughter, the child too travelled with them, wrapped papoose style. Willhelm disguised his feeling well, for he knew there was still many child-bearing years in his wife and soon there would be a son.

They called the child Daisy, to remind them of the beautiful little flowers that grew so freely in the grasslands of Rohan. One day, when Daisy was about three, they stopped to make camp for the night. It was early autumn, and the ground, baked after a long summer's sun, had proved exceptionally dusty. Her mother went to wash her hair in a nearby stream. As it does at that time of year, it suddenly became dark, and a slight chill was in the air. For some reason, the mother leant over the fire to dry her hair and.... (The Englishmen looks distant for a moment, a tear in his eye).. well despite the ministrations of the best horse doctor in a thousand miles, the mother died. During his feverish attempts to save her, he also realised that she was once more with child, and in his heart he knew it would have been the son his bloodlines demanded. And so his heart died too, in a nameless plain, beneath a thousand stars.

And what of Daisy, silent witness to death and horror. For the rest of her life she would wear her hair short, defying the traditions of her people. And she could never love, for things you love are cruelly hurt and taken away. And the fear grew in her that her father had eased the passage of her mother from this world into the next, and that someday he would come and do the same to her. For from now on, there was no love in her father's heart. He blamed himself at first for the death of his wife, for he knew only horse-doctoring, but somehow this grew so that Daisy was to blame as well. So he sold all his horses and concentrated on the road-building and other civic works. They would move from town to town, and always there was a house-keeper or a land-lady on whom the child could be dumped. Most were indifferent to the child, some were cruel. There was never time to start a school, so education was on a makeshift basis. The other children teased her restlessly about the devotions she made to the horse god, the religion of her people. But she also sought out any from Rohan that crossed her path and pumped them for every last story of a homeland and a lifestyle she could barely remember. Until at the age of thirteen, she came to North Town.

But I told you there were two squabbling old men. The second was simply known as Old man trouble - if he had a first or last name, well few men were brave enough to look him in the eye and ask it. He was a bar-room brawler, a thief and in later years a drunkard. Where did he come from - well anywhere that was too far away for the local constable to make enquiries too. He would take a wife, sire half a dozen children or more by her, see her into an early grave worn out by childbirth, and then take another one. He was a stout follower of the the Church of the Body, would thrash his children, womanise and drink, then confess it all once a week in church before starting all over again. In his early days they said he showed great promise in the ranks of the Army of Gondor, rising rapidly and showing an intelligence that marked him out for higher things. But he could never escape his lowly roots, and a weakness for the drink saw him dismissed. After that he went wherever he could get work. He was a sail-maker, a boot-maker, a rag-and-bone man, a wharf-side porter, anything to keep a roof over the head of his ever expanding family. When he met his third wife, Katerine, she persuaded him to come and settle down in North Town, her birth place. As well as his other children, by Katerine he had four living children;Steffan, Romuald, Terrell and Livy. To supplement their income they would take in lodgers, and so it is to this house that Willhelm & Daisy came to stay.

(To be continued\....)

<<For some reason, the mother leant over the fire to dry her air and.... (The Englishmen looks distant for a moment, a tear in his eye).. well despite the ministrations of the best horse doctor in a thousand miles, the mother died. During his feverish attempts to save her, he also realised that she was once more with child, and in his heart he knew it would have been the son his bloodlines demanded. And so his heart died too, in a nameless plain, beneath a thousand stars.>>

At this, the dragon, who had been sitting wide-eyed entranced by the Englishman's story, let out a mighty sob. Anatole quickly grabbed him up and held him to her to quiet him so as not to disturb the story teller. After soothing the dragon some by petting his head and holding him, he eventually settles down to listen to more of the story.

Katerine looked up from the kitchen sink as the strangers opened the front gate. Her husband, she knew, had done another deal in some back-street tavern the night before. Look out he said, for a sour-faced man with a wisp of a maid in tow. A widower of some ten years, with gold in his pocket. Why this man shirked the higher class places, where he would meet those of his own kind her husband did not know or care to find out. Katerine smoothed her dress down, and tried frantically to gather up the wisp's of prematurely greying hair and return them to the safe keeping of her headscarf as she rushed to the front door to greet them.


Daisy day-dreamed as she followed her father through the large oak gates, towards the big merchant house. At least it wasn't as drab as many of the places they'd stayed over the years. Her father said there were others of her age at this place. If they were cruel, well she was old enough and tough enough to see off their cruelty, and she could always escape into her own inner world. The best she could hope for was that they would leave her alone.
As she walked down the surrounding streets, she wondered why the district now seemed so run-down, despite the obvious wealth of those who had paid for these houses to be built. She'd heard her father talk of why he'd come to this town but she still didn't really understand. The earth had quaked some three years earlier and the wellwater in this part of the town had turned sour or dried up altogether. Her father was to oversee some way of putting this right, and had spent the previous day studying plans and walking the surrounding hills.

The bag she carried, full of tally sticks to mark work done, suppliers to be paid and wages due, hung heavy on her shoulders. Their other things had been left in the safe-keeping of the tavern owner where they had stayed the night before. There was no value in those things, they were just perfunctory items that could be replaced without a second thought - for that was how they lived. Only the tally sticks had any value, and her only reason for existing her father told her over and over again, was to guard those tally sticks with her life. Some times the lesson was administered with a beating.

The door opened as her father raised his hand to knock. A large women greeted them with a smile on a face that had so obviously known as much sadness as joy. But her greeting seemed sincere enough. As her father started to haggle over what their board and lodgings money would include, ("laundry daily, with starch for the finest"), he gestured to Daisy to wander and explore. The front of the house was of fine redstone, with many shuttered and mullioned windows. As she rounded the corner to explore the back, she heard the happy sounds of children laughing and playing . Intrigued she headed towards the sound, until a voice just above her head said, "Hello, who are you?"

Daisy jumps, taken unawares by the sudden voice. She hurriedly scans the windows on the side of the house, but all are closed. The flower beds are overgrown and the shrubbery inpenetrable. Almost instinctively her eyes are drawn in to the boughs of the apple tree beside the path. She makes out a human form, almost camouflaged against the leaves, with short leggings, a cut down workmans blouse and bare feet and arms. The child slips lithely down from the tree to stand on the Path before Daisy. At half a head shorter than Daisy and topped by a mop of red-hair, Daisy cannot believe that she did not spot the child easily.


"I'm Livy and I live here", the child announces. Without thinking, Daisy blurts out, "But your a girl" for she had seldom found few of the rich town girls who had lived the outdoor life, and this child must be the merchants daughter.
Livy bristled at being reminded of her sex. "Do you want to fight about it" she said. Daisy assessed Livy again and thought, if I was brought up the Rohan way I would be deeply insulted - the horse god taught that both the mare and the stallion could lead the herd and carry man & woman alike. From the depths of her memory she dragged up the traditional Rohan woman retort to such a challenge. "Not if we can find some men to beat up first"

And with out knowing it, Daisy had made a friend for life.

<<"Not if we can find some men to beat up first">>

I've got to remember that one, that's a good one.

Briar chuckles into her mug of ale. Daisy has just earned her respect.

btw, Anatole, did you read the fist fight thread in random thoughts a few days ago? I posted about the little incident with that Tilton kid, back in jr. high school. Not that I'm proud of it, mind you. Violence is never the answer. Even if it felt great to feel my fist connect with his face and the sight of his swollen black eye was one of the most satisfying things I've ever seen.

<<btw, Anatole, did you read the fist fight thread in random thoughts a few days ago? I posted about the little incident with that Tilton kid, back in jr. high school. Not that I'm proud of it, mind you. Violence is never the answer.>>

Can't say as I did. I loved how you tried to make your last comment almost not there so as no one would notice. How's this for size:

Even if it felt great to feel my fist connect with his face and the sight of his swollen black eye was one of the most satisfying things I've ever seen.

Sharon, I love you.

Violence and Lesbian love action - I knew this story was short on something......

oh, and Johnny Depp!



Right, now I've got your attention, back to the story.

Livy grabbed her new friends arm and the two ran laughing and giggling to the lawn at the back of the manor house. The gardens, once neatly kept were now run down. It appeared that the grass was the only part still tended - due to the grazing of an old nanny goat which now turned its baleful eye upon Daisy.

Two boys were kicking a ball back & forth, in the manner of the game much loved in those lands. Livy pointed to each in turn. Stefan the older and bigger of the two, was 16, and already working as a cellarman at a tavern in the town. The younger lad was Romuald, age 11 and "a pain in the rear" as far as Livy was concerned. The first surprise was that Livy was only two months younger than Daisy, despite being over a head shorter. The second surprise was when Livy pointed into the shadows of a low growing Oak tree - "and that's my brother, Terrill, who's 12". Shading her eyes against the bright sunlight, Daisy realised that there was a shape in the shadow, a boy carving a piece of wood. The boy looked up and scowled. " Oh ignore him, he's just sore because he's had to give up his room for you and move back in with Romuald"

Livy explained that the other occupants of the house was their Uncle James, who had only one arm and collected glasses in the tavern where Steffan was the cellarman. There was an older half-brother, Hans, who was a constable in the town watch. Hans and Livy's father did not see eye to eye, but for now there was a truce between them.

They were also living in the mansion as house-keepers. After the water turned sour, most of the merchants of the district had moved out to the hotels in the town. To prevent looting, famillies had been hired to live in. They had been lucky - father was working as a wharfman for the merchant who owned this house. Trouble was that Terrill and Romuald spent over half the day carrying water from down in the town to top up the big tank in the roof of the house, and so had no time for schooling.

And so Daisy came to the Merchants House in North Town, and for the first time in her life she knew what family could really mean. The children lived in fear of Old Man trouble, and would sit neat and still for the family meals that he attended, but he was just as likely to go straight to a tavern and not be seen for days on end. Then there was much laughter and gaiety in the household.

Daisy, Livy & the brothers would climb over the walls of the other merchant houses and play explorers. Sometimes they would find other children to play with or fight with, sometimes it would end in a chase with some over-zealous guardian. Daisy & Livy would carry a water bucket between them and tip it into the tank after the boy's had hauled the big water buckets up on the pulley. It was Daisy who came up with the idea of "accidentally" tipping the bucket as it reached the top, so that several gallons fell out on to Terrill & Romuald below. Katerine scolded them for their clumsyness, but their was a twinkle in her eye, as behind her the two brothers shivered in their soaking long johns beside the big iron cooking range.

wooooooooooooweeeeeeeeeeeeeee.....i love me some johnny