Work Text:
“Careful,” said Engleterre. “The water is deeper than it looks.”
Francia eyed the moss-covered boulders scattered across the gurgling stream doubtfully; Engleterre had clambered over in the blink of an eye, nimble as a small woodland creature, but Francia was less familiar with the wilderness. The water looked shallow, running fast and clear; the pebbles and fallen branches perfectly visible at the bottom. He didn’t sense any danger; but then, he wasn’t the one who spent nearly all his time living alone in the woods.
Seeing his indecision, Engleterre made his way back, stood on the small, round stone nearest the bank, and extended a hand.
“Hold onto me,” he said.
Sighing internally – if he’d known Engleterre was going to invite him on a jaunt through the forest, he’d have worn something else – Francia gathered the wide hem of his dress in one hand, then edged carefully down the small slope, reaching.
Halfway down, Engleterre caught him – calloused fingers thin and cool, but grip surprisingly strong. Before Francia could suck in a breath, Engleterre had tugged him over: feet slipping along the slope before he landed with a yelp on the stone, nearly bowling Engleterre into the water behind. Engleterre let out a muffled grunt, but managed to stay on his feet, and somehow balanced Francia’s wobbling weight against his smaller frame, too.
“Oh!” said Francia, clutching at Engleterre’s bony shoulders, out of breath and giddy with it, laughter bubbling up his throat. “That was close!”
Engleterre grumbled, but kept a steadying hand on his waist. “Told you to be careful. Come on, then.”
He skipped deftly over to the next stone, then held out his hand again. Heart in his throat, Francia made the leap over; he landed on both feet this time, but grabbed Engleterre’s hand, anyway, laughing, pretending to lose his balance and bump against the other.
“Stop that,” Engleterre muttered, turning away; Francia saw the shell of his ear redden beneath the messy blonde fringe.
They went the rest of the way more sedately, the faint spray of water splashing up at their shins; despite himself, Francia let out a relieved breath when finally they’ve clambered up the opposite bank, feet slipping in the wet soil and pulling each other up, fingers all atangle.
“Dieu,” said Francia, catching his breath. “How do you stand it, living here all the time?” And all alone, too, he didn’t say.
Engleterre was checking the underbrush for something Francia couldn’t see.
“You get used to it,” he said, without turning around. “Plus, I like it. Better than people, anyway. This way,” and set off. Francia groaned, then got up and followed.
Deeper in, the woods were shrouded in mist, shades of green all around, disorienting; the foliage overhead swallowed up most of the sun. Engleterre cleared the way with a large branch he picked up somewhere, stopping to wait for Francia once in a while.
Francia was going slowly, the brambles snagging and catching at his dress and hair; some slashed at his exposed hands and wrists, opening shallow scratches and cuts. It was as if the woods itself didn’t want him here; involuntarily, he began to recall Engleterre’s stories about faeries, and sprites, and all manner of unheard-of beasts.
The wilderness of this land were strange, prickly, and lonely – just like Engleterre.
“That’s odd,” said Francia, musingly. “That you don’t like people. We’re really only here because of them, you know.”
“I know,” said Engleterre; Francia couldn’t discern his tone. “I just don’t want to be near them, is all. ...Most of them, anyway. Oh, here’s one,” he said, and hurried ahead, bending down to check something on the ground.
Curious, Francia struggled out of the clutching embrace of yet another patch of thorns – the sleeves of his dress tore with an ominous sound, but there was already no saving it, anyway – and edged closer.
It was a pre-laid trap, made of twigs and a large, flat piece of rock, clearly sprung. At first he didn’t see what it had caught; he had to go around to the side before grey, blood-speckled fur and spasming limbs came into view: the hare hadn’t been caught but for hours, and the rock had crushed its spine. The hind legs jerked uncontrollably, making a disquieting noise upon the grass.
Engleterre took out a short hunting knife from the pouch by his waist, and with a swift slash released the creature from its dying throes.
Francia couldn’t quite help flinching. “Poor thing,” he murmured.
Engleterre paused, then sent a glance backwards and up at him, unreadable. “If not us, then it would have been a fox, or an eagle.”
“True,” said Francia, frowning. “But we don’t strictly need to eat, you know.”
Engleterre shrugged, using a length of twine to tie the hare to his belt. “If you’d like to go hungry tonight, be my guest.”
“Never said I wasn’t going to eat it,” said Francia cheerfully. “I’ll even help you skin it, how’s that.”
Engleterre harrumphed, busy re-arranging the trap. “Wonder where you learnt that.”
“Contrary to what you may believe, I don’t actually spend all my time at court.”
“Certainly seems like it.”
“Well, you’re wrong.”
Still bickering half-heartedly, they moved on to the next of Engleterre’s traps. This one was a hole dug into the ground, with a woven net over it: a squirrel was tangled in the net, already dead. Engleterre cut its neck: dark blood oozed out, not quite congealing.
“Still good for eating,” he declared, and tied it to his belt.
The rest of the traps weren’t so fortunate, however: aside from another hare, most of the traps lay sad and empty. One had seemed like it’d been sprung by some creature, but only dried blood remained, and a little fur. Engleterre inspected the soil and underbrush around it, and by some traces that Francia couldn’t see, concluded that the prey had been snagged by a fox.
“It’s like this most days,” he said, unconcerned. “If it were that easy to hunt, peasants wouldn’t starve to death when war comes.”
Francia raised an eyebrow. He hadn’t gotten the impression, from Engleterre’s reclusive habits, that he knew or cared much for the people of his land, peasant or otherwise. But he supposed appearances could be deceiving; it must be hard, or downright impossible, for a nation to remain indifferent about the humans who constituted him, however unwillingly.
The sun had begun to slant towards the west; its honeyed light seeped through the dense net of leaves and branches, casting long, trailing shadows upon the ground and underbrush like cobwebs. They’d been going for another hour now without checking on any more traps, and still Engleterre refused to tell him where exactly they were going.
“Anglia,” said Francia, whle climbing over yet another overturned log, a whining note crept into his voice. “My dear, sweet Anglia. Please tell me you haven’t gotten lost.”
Engleterre actually turned around to glare at him, as if offended at the mere suggestion. The pinched, incredulous look so resembled a cat with its tail caught that Francia nearly burst out laughing. Really, for such a fierce little thing, Engleterre could be so adorable sometimes.
“If I’ve gotten lost, then what’s this,” said Engleterre somewhat testily, lifting a net of overgrown vines and pointing ahead.
Up ahead, the thick, almost impassably dense vegetation had given way to a small clearing, the afternoon sun pooling liquidly upon the grassy floor, illuminating a moss-grown structure towards the back: a shack, almost falling-down, but with signs of recent habitation. A few mid-sized boulders were scattered around the clearing in the manner of seats, and there was a small, stone-lined pit dug into the middle, with a pile of blackened logs half-filling it.
Flowers lined the edges of the clearing instead of brambles, and more flowering vines crisscrossed the tall tress all around; a handful of small, white butterflies flitted to-and-fro. Not far away, Francia heard the telltale burbling of another stream; finches and wrens chittered invisibly in the foliage overhead.
As far as beauty went, it was different from the airy courtyards and high towers of the Palais, the wide, well-paved main thoroughfare of Paris, or the pale, square solidity of Saint-Denis. It was wild, and irregular, and secretive: it was, somehow, magical, in the way that Engleterre himself was magical.
Engleterre had already picked his way over to the firepit, his whole bearing now easy and familiar, his gait even and sure, at ease. All of a sudden, Francia had a strange feeling: as if he’d seen, in a flash, the nation that Engleterre would go on to become, a nascent, deadly grace that for now was only hinted at in the nimble coltishness.
Unconsciously, Francia’s fingers drifted towards the dagger belted to the back of his waist.
“Oi,” said Engleterre, looking up. “Didn’t you say you’d help with the butchering? Not just boasting, were you?”
*
They skinned the squirrel and one of the hares, the one with the crushed spine, and hung the hides to dry on a flat stone. Engleterre worked at reigniting the fire with a piece of flint, while Francia fetched a pail from the shack and went to retrieve water.
He was knelt there in the shallows, patiently washing out the blood crusted into his nails and splashed onto his sleeves, when he felt the undergrowth around him stir. Paws, more than one set, sussurating on the grass; a flash of grey fur between the trees. He stood up, wiped his hands on the hem, and unsheathed the dagger, sighing.
“Perhaps I ought to make Engleterre pay me back for this dress, after all,” he murmured, as the first, winter-starved wolf poked its head out from behind an oak, baleful eyes glaring.
Its companions emerged from the low bushes to either side as the first one pounced: eyes wide-open, Francia feinted to the side at the last moment and rolled, arm coming up in the same movement as the growling creature ran smack into the trunk of the tree behind. A howling wail: the blade caught it in the side, but not enough to incapacitate.
It was doubling back, and in a moment was upon him again: steeling himself, Francia ducked as it descended, and, barely looking, with a backwards slash severed its hamstrings; but its companions were now on him. He rolled out of the way of one, going for his legs, but the other one darted in and caught his knife arm in its mouth, teeth crunching savagely down – a flash of red-hot, blinding pain – even as the first wolf limped, whimpering, off to the side.
Oh well, he thought, blood-hazy, bad luck for Engleterre, having to contend with my corpse, but he would probably wake up back in Paris, fresh and whole as if he hadn’t just been chewed to death by rabid beasts, just like every time before –
A faint whoosh: the wolf on top of him whined and shuddered, dark blood spraying pungent into his face; then it went limp, crashing down on top of him, and he heaved it off by feel. A second whoosh: an arrow skidding past, glancing off stone and sand, and the last beast darted away, calling to its whimpering companion.
The dead one, struck through the neck, lay spasming on the muddy bank next to him; Francia wiped a hand over his mouth, tasted iron and acridness. Then he turned to smile up at Engleterre, who was stepping out of the trees, stony-faced.
*
“They must be really hungry,” said Engleterre, helping him cut off a strip of his clothes for dressing. “If they dared venture out here. Normally they know not to go after humans.”
“It was the blood,” said Francia absently, absently flipping and catching the knife he’d just used with his free hand. “They smelled it on me. Honestly. I haven’t seen wolves around for – it must’ve been two centuries by now. This is what you get for living in the woods with wild animals, by the way, instead of in a village somewhere, or with your king, like a reasonable nation,” he finished, a little pointedly.
Engleterre’s stubborn silence told him all that he needed to know about what the other thought of the message, as always, and he rolled his eyes.
“Here,” he said, tossing Engleterre a bundle of herbs he’d foraged on the way to the stream. “Those can go in the soup, too. Careful not to burn it – ah.”
Engleterre paused, hands freezing, then eased up on the tightness. The bone was undoubtedly broken, shattered, and Engleterre had set it as best he could, but it was going to be unpleasant growing back. Francia ground his teeth together and made not one sound, not even a hiss, blinking away dark spots in his vision.
“Will you be all right?” said Engleterre, low, having finished. His fingers lingered around the knot he’d just tied over the blood-soaked wound, as if afraid it was going to come undone the moment he left it alone. The light, butterfly-quick touches tingled around bruised skin, distracting.
Francia looked at the tightness around Engleterre’s mouth, the small unhappy moue, the way he hovered, uncertain, and felt – he wasn’t sure what. The rush of danger past, exhaustion was following swiftly in its wake. The sun had almost entirely set, and the clearing was mostly lit by the small, jumping flame Engleterre had stoked in the pit. The heat of the fire was comforting in the chill descending across the forest, wet and clammy.
“Wake me when the it’s ready,” he only said, in the end, and curled up on the forest floor on his uninjured side, towards the flames, his eyes falling shut. A moment later, he heard the shuffling of fabric; then he felt Engleterre’s cloak drape over him, heavy and scratchy where it touched his exposed skin. It smelled like Engleterre, too: a clean, grassy scent. The weight of it held him down, enveloped him; he fell almost at once into sleep.
*
He woke feverish. Engleterre helped him sit up, held the bowl while he choked down a little soup, too nauseous with pain to have much; then he lay down again, feeling alternately hot and cold, and sank murmuring into another unsettled sleep.
When he woke up again, the fire had dimmed to a faint, red glow, and he’d stopped feeling quite so cold. He struggled to sit up, but soon realized he was entangled: Engleterre had crawled under the cloak with him, and the other’s thin arms encircled his waist, holding on tightly. Steady, even breaths puffed against the nape of his neck. Francia stilled, and thought for a moment; then he turned around, slowly, carefully, listening to the unconscious murmurs from behind, until he was facing the other.
A gibbous moon shone weakly through the clouds and leaves overhead: just enough to make out Engleterre’s features in the wane light. Even in sleep, his brows were faintly knitted together, as if he was in pain, or having terrible dreams.
The soft-cheeked childishness was leaving him, in degrees; his nose and jaw becoming sharper, cheekbones coming out. He was a solid two inches taller than the last time Francia had seen him, limbs thinning in the telltale way of a child about to have a growth spurt, wrists and ankles poky and jagged. Francia was still more than half a head taller than him; with the way Engleterre was growing, however, maybe not for long.
“You’re not allowed to grow taller than me,” Francia murmured, reaching up to tap the younger nation on the tip of the nose, like imparting a command, or a curse. “Not ever.”
Engleterre muttered something in his sleep and tightened his arms, as if holding onto a favorite toy. A blade of grass was stuck in his messy fringe, softening his angular features. His mouth was downturned, pursed mullish and small, vulnerable-seeming.
“...Really, I should kill you in your sleep,” said Francia, sighing; Engleterre murmured something again, indistinct, as if protesting even in sleep. Francia tugged more of the cloak to cover the other’s thin shoulders, and closed his eyes.
*
In the morning they skinned the dead wolf and packed up some of the meat with the hide – the whole was too heavy to carry. Then they reheated the rest of the soup for breakfast and packed up camp. As they were setting out, Engleterre handed him a short tube of wood, carved-smooth, with evenly-spaced holes in it. Francia stared at it, uncomprehending; Engleterre took it back, impatient, and blew a few notes out of it, disjointed and tuneless.
“Huh,” said Francia, surprised, and studied the thing.
“Someone showed me one of these, a while ago,” said Engleterre, cryptic. “Tried my hand at recreating one. Not that I have much use for it.”
“In other words, you’re quite hopeless at it,” said Francia, gleeful.
His arm had almost entirely healed; there was a bubble of lightness in his chest, expanding with the moment: the birdsong overhead, the sunlight dazzling through the foliage, and Engleterre, small and grouchy and with grass stuck in his hair, carefully feigning indifference by his side.
He set his lips to the makeshift flute, thought for a moment, then haltingly figured out a folk tune he’d heard in the countryside at some point. Two passes later, he had it down, and they picked their way through the dense forest with their own song to join to the birds singing overhead.
He didn’t ask Engleterre where they were going; somehow, it didn’t matter. He could quite easily have followed him to the ends of the world, from one sea to another, from the verdant green of the south to the frozen plains of the north, right up to his brother’s doorsteps.
As it happened, they didn’t have to go that far. By mid-morning, the dense forest had given way to sparser woodland, and an hour later, through the trees, Francia saw the edges of a small village: cooking smoke trailing thin and pale towards the sky, the sound of dogs, the palpable presence of humans.
Francia felt his eyebrows go up.
“Finally decided to stop being a hermit, have you?”
Engleterre rolled his eyes at him.
“Contrary to what you may believe, I don’t actually spend all my time avoiding people,” he said, echoing Francia’s statement from yesterday. “Sometimes it’s necessary to trade for things, or where do you suppose I came by my clothes.”
Francia blinked. He really hadn’t thought that much about it. Maybe Engleterre had a point, after all – he had been spending too much time at court, lately.
He assumed they’d be heading to the small market square, and he was proven correct: it was a Sunday, and market was in progress. Little more than a few tables laid out with eggs and produce, nonetheless they were able to trade the hides to the tanner and the meat to the butcher, which money Engleterre promptly exchanged into beets and turnips and half a dozen eggs, and even a small cut of a grey, mildewy-looking cheese that Francia scrunched up his nose at.
“What is that,” he said, disgruntled. A strange smell wafted from it, milky-sour and faintly unpleasant. “I am sure that it’s gone bad, at least a little.”
“It is what they have,” Engleterre shrugged. “It is what we have. And it is what she is used to.”
“She?” said Francia. “Who?”
He had his answer soon. It was only a five minutes walk that took them to the very edges of the village, to a run-down little shack almost swallowed up by reeds, by all signs uninhabited. But Engleterre went up to it with confidence, his bag of haul in one hand, and knocked on the door. A long moment later, it creaked open.
An old women stood in the doorway, older and more wizened than almost any human being Francia had seen before: she was probably as old as Queen Brunhilde had been, towards the end of her life. She had a head of dandelion-white hair, and her eyes were clouded over, unseeing. She smiled, however, at hearing Engleterre’s voice, and the two exchanged a few words in staccato English – to Francia’s ear, all short snaps and consonants – that he didn’t understand, before Engleterre carried the bag of things into her house, laid it by the fire pit in the corner, and came out again.
Seeming to sense Francia’s presence, she turned curiously to him, and – judging from her tone – posed a question.
“...What does she say?” Francia asked, curious and slightly discomfited. There was a familiar ring to her words – something like the language his kings used to speak, but drifted just far enough away that he could only grapple at the meaning, but not quite understand.
“She asks who you are,” said Engleterre, in French. He looked stumped; Francia wondered what he’d told her about himself. It did not seem as if she understood that Engleterre was the embodiment of her people, and all that it entailed.
“Tell her I’m – ” Francia was about to give a random human name, just to make matters easier, then he paused, some memory stirring. A moment later, he said,
“Francis. Tell her my name is Francis.”
*
The woman stood by the door, waving in the direction they had left, long after they had gone out of her hearing and into the woods. They walked for a while along visible trails worn by hunters and loggers, before these were swallowed by briars and brambles, and then all visible paths were gone altogether and they trudged through pure, uninterrupted wilderness, towards some destination that only Engleterre knew.
“...Francis?” said Engleterre, after a while.
“Short for Franciscus,” said Francia. “Alcuin used to call me that, back at Aachen, when I was with Charles’s children. He used to call me Hyacinthus, too...Oh, that’s right, he was one of yours, wasn’t he? Didn’t you know him?”
“No,” said Engleterre, hacking away at a patch of undergrowth with his stick, in a rather violent fashion.
“Don’t you like it?” said Francia, mystified. “I think it has a nice ring to it.”
Engleterre was silent for a moment. Then he said, “I’ve never met him, because he spent nearly all his time with your king. And no one has ever given me a human name before.”
Ah, thought Francia.
They went on in silence for a while. Distantly, Francia thought he heard the sound of waves, crashing on shore.
“Who was that old woman, by the way?”
“Hilda,” said Engleterre promptly. “She had three sons. All served in King Harold’s army. One died at Stamford Bridge. Two at Hastings.” He paused. “She’s the last of the widows of Hastings, I think.”
He said this the same way he might’ve commented on the weather, or the grass underfoot, but Francia felt as if he’d been struck, with such force that he stood reeling from it a long moment before he was able to go on, stumbling blindly after Engleterre.
They went without words the rest of the way, along the crest of the hills, while a wet, salty wind blew steadily stronger into their faces, and the rhythmic, rushing sound of waves crashing against shore came closer all the while. The trees thinned, until at last they emerged onto a vast, flat, grassy plain, overlooking a grey, tumultuous sea: storm clouds gathering in the distance, heralding rain.
Engleterre led the way across the wide, featureless plain, almost up to the very edge: there, overlooking the crashing waves beneath and watched by the wheeling gulls overhead, was a small, unmarked mound, almost indistinguishable from the natural rises and dips of earth all around. A small bundle of wilted flowers lay at the bottom, and a few pebbles, some kind of childish offering.
Engleterre came to a stop before it, staring down. Francia came up to him belatedly, and stopped a few steps away.
Somehow, he knew without having to be told. What it was, and whose bones lay under it.
“In another fifty years, no one will remember that he was buried here,” said Engleterre, quiet. “Perhaps they’ll forget him altogether, and his line of kings, too. But I will remember. I always will.”
Francia thought briefly of Queen Brunhilde, Charles, and Alcuin. While they were alive, he had loved them; after their passing, he had mourned them, but only briefly. He wondered what it would be like, to mourn a human he had barely even known, only caught a glimpse of. To love, so strongly and deeply, someone he had known from the beginning he was going to outlive, for centuries upon centuries.
He couldn’t really imagine it.
“I never really know what to offer him,” Engleterre murmured. “Since I never knew him, and what he liked. I suppose it doesn’t matter much. It isn’t like he’s still under there, not really.”
Francia stood behind him, watching the way the sea wind toyed with the younger nation’s short, blond hair, lifting up his fringe so that the sharpening angle of his brow bone became visible. The forest-green eyes, narrowed against the wind; the pressed-thin mouth.
From the beginning, Engleterre had never acted as a vassal to him, nor had Francia insisted on the point. Even now, when virtually all his nobles spoke French and not English, Engleterre held himself aloof, apart, and proud. He knew that if Engleterre had had his way, he would have remained as independent, free, and isolated as he had been for centuries. He knew that the Norsemen, for all the damage they’d done, was far more kin to the English than the French could ever be.
It was then that the name occurred to him.
“Arthur,” he said into the lengthening silence. Engleterre turned around to look at him, a question in his eyes.
“If you would like a human name,” said Francia, surer the more he thought on it. “In Bretagne, they tell of the deeds of such a king, before the Anglo-Saxons came to this land. A king who sacrificed himself for his people, who fell in battle...and who will rise again, and again, if his country were ever in need.” He shrugged. “It’s powerful imagery. And I do think memory of him will survive, even if all other kings have gone.”
“Arthur,” Engleterre repeated, tasting the name. He frowned. “It is...familiar.”
“Of course. The Bretons were yours, originally; that is, I do not know if you have been born at the time of their exile…”
Engleterre looked away. “They do not feel as repulsive as the Normans,” he said, briefly.
“Careful, Arthur,” said Francia, smiling, testing the name out. “I might think you are beginning to love me, after all, the way you go on about me and mine.”
Engleterre looked up at him, and his gaze flickered for a moment. Francia’s heart skipped a beat. Then Engleterre smiled, too, a small, hard glint in his eyes.
“Sure, I will,” he said. “The day I have conquered you, in my turn.”
Francia blinked. The wind rose; suddenly Engleterre did not seem at all a child, standing there on the vast, desolate plain, but a young warrior, already casting his gaze over a future prize. The air was pregnant and oppressive with approaching storm, the light dimming; his skin prickled, hairs standing on end.
Francia breathed deep of the storm-potent air, turning his face towards the wind. The first of the rain had begun to fall, one drop, two; a roll of thunder in the near distance promised more, later.
“I’ll wait for you, then,” he murmured, without looking back at the other. “For when that day comes.”