Work Text:
Samuel had gone early to the market, the kind of early that only those who have traded and bartered since youth find tolerable, leaving John still abed, curled beneath thick wool blankets in the upper chamber, vaguely aware of the faint clatter of hooves and wheels down in the street but unwilling to face the chill stones of the floor before necessity forced him.
When Samuel returned, his hands were raw from carrying the weight of the morning’s purchases, and his breath curled visibly before him as he pushed through the small yard gate, a wicker basket over one arm and, in the other, the stout, feathered body of a live goose. Its long neck curved warily, head bobbing and eyes bright with the kind of intelligence that made Samuel glance down at it and think, not without some reluctance, that it might notice if one looked at it too long in the wrong way.
He set the bird down, tied by a length of rope about one leg, in a sheltered corner of the yard, meaning only to keep it there until he had stored the rest of his goods, for there was firewood to be stacked near the kitchen and apples to lay out on the upper shelves where the damp would not find them, flour to be put away in the chest with the iron latch, and it was easier to do all that without a large, suspicious fowl flapping at one’s face. He left it there in the cold light, the mist curling like faint smoke through its feathers, and went inside.
John came down not long after, wrapped in a thick, fur-lined cloak that he wore more like a robe than anything meant for the street. He crossed the yard with the habitual, absent glance of a man passing through space that was his by right, and then he saw it: the goose, the soft cream and grey of its feathers luminous against the wet stone, the faint, wary hiss in its throat as it turned its head toward him.
Something in him halted there, and though John would never admit to being charmed outright by anything that could be cooked, he felt the sharp, inexplicable reluctance that sometimes takes root before a thing has yet met its fate. The bird was not beautiful in any obvious way, yet there was a dignity in the way it shifted its weight, in the unblinking steadiness of its eye. He crouched, letting the folds of his cloak pool on the stones, and murmured something low, words that had no meaning to the goose but which softened the line of its neck nonetheless, as it stretched slightly toward him.
By the time Samuel returned to the yard to fetch it, the bird was no longer alone. John was seated on the ground with his legs drawn up, the goose standing between his knees as if it had always belonged there, nibbling at a crust of bread that he held between two fingers.
“What are you doing?” Samuel’s voice was not unkind, but there was a trace of suspicion in it, the one he reserved for catching someone in the act of interfering with a carefully laid plan.
“Acquainting myself,” John said mildly, as though that should be explanation enough, and lifted his hand in a slow stroke down the goose’s back, ignoring the faint twitch of its wings.
“She looked friendly, and I wanted to say hello.”
Samuel gave him a look that might have been amusement if it were not layered so thoroughly with the pragmatism of a man who had paid good coin for a bird meant to roast.
„You wanted to say hello to our dinner?“
John only smiled faintly and did not answer, and by the time Samuel had carried in the apples and gone to fetch kindling, the goose was gone.
It did not take much searching to find it; the trail of fine down on the stairs was clue enough. John had carried it - how, Samuel could not guess without imagining the indignant honks muffled against the nobleman’s chest, up to his chamber, where it now stood by the hearth, neck stretched toward the warmth, one leg folded neatly beneath its body. The rope had been untied and lay coiled like discarded ribbon on the floor.
“This is not where it belongs,” Samuel said, but the firmness in his voice faltered as he saw the way the bird’s eye followed John’s movement, the ease with which it had taken possession of the small space.
“It is precisely where it belongs,” John countered, kneeling again to feed it another crust, as if the matter were settled.
“It is cold in the yard. I am not entirely without mercy.”
He wasn’t. Samuel knew that. And yet he asked himself if the long stay in the cellar had loosened something in his partner's brain. It must have been the poor air supply, he thought.
And mercy was one word for it; guilt, a form of it, was another. Samuel could see it in the set of John’s mouth, in the deliberate gentleness of his hand as he touched the bird’s wing, as though each stroke was a silent apology for what might have been. He said nothing for the moment, only shook his head and left, knowing full well that the goose would not be leaving the chamber anytime soon.
Over the next day the bird acquired a strip of worn linen tied loosely about its neck – “to mark it as ours,” John claimed. As though anyone else in the household might mistake it for a stray. It followed him into the upper rooms with an oddly proprietorial air, pecking at his boots when he ignored it, settling beside him when he read by the fire. Samuel began to suspect that if the two of them were left alone long enough, John would have it sleeping on the bed.
The problem, of course, was that the goose had been meant for the feast on the following evening, and when the cook inquired after it, Samuel had to choose between betraying its new hiding place or protecting John from the inevitable lecture about waste and extravagance. He chose the latter, not entirely without his own amusement, but the price of his silence was watching the nobleman squirm each time the matter of the feast arose.
John began offering other meats - “Surely a fine capon would be better?”- and suggesting elaborate vegetable dishes, all under the guise of variety, but the truth was plain enough in the quick glance he cast toward the stairs whenever someone spoke of roasting.
By the afternoon before the feast, Samuel found him sitting cross-legged on the floor of his chamber, the goose nestled beside him, both of them looking up as he entered with the faintly guilty expression of children caught at some forbidden play.
“You cannot keep it forever,” Samuel said, though there was no true force in it, because he already knew John’s answer.
“Why not?” John asked simply, with the careless logic of someone who has decided the matter in his own mind.
“Because,” Samuel said, crossing the room to stand over them, “or do you have given it a name already?”
John blinked as though this were not the incriminating evidence Samuel clearly meant it to be, and only after a pause did he admit, “Her name is Adelheid.”
Samuel’s mouth pressed into that thin, resigned line he so often wore, the one that was neither truly displeasure nor approval, but something between a look he might reserve for a friend whose mischief he had long since accepted as an unalterable fact. He lowered himself to the floor beside them, the skirts of his coat settling into a small fan against the rushes, and repeated, with the weight of inevitability,
“Adelheid, you say.”
The goose lifted her head at the sound, as though aware she was being spoken of, and John, utterly without shame, stroked the curve of her neck with slow, contented fingers.
Samuel sighed, the sound carrying equal parts exasperation and reluctant fondness. “You drive me crazy, you know that?” he said, not with heat, but with the quiet certainty of a truth tested many times over.
John’s mouth tilted in that particular way it did when he had no defence to offer and no need to give one. “I know,” he replied, his tone warm, a hue of laziness, as if it were a point of pride rather than censure.
They sat there for a while, the goose shifting to rest her head against John’s knee. Samuel’s gaze fixed not on her but on him, and if there was any scolding left in him, it was drowned beneath the small, traitorous curl at the corner of his mouth.
There was no roast goose at the feast that night. There was, however, a somewhat bewildered capon, and more apples than anyone needed in a single sitting, and the quiet satisfaction of a nobleman who had successfully spared a creature without openly declaring himself soft-hearted. Samuel caught him later in the corridor, slipping upstairs with a small bowl of scraps, and did not stop him.
· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·
In the days that followed, Adelheid wandered the yard as though she had been born to it, trailing John like a shadow, her linen ribbon bobbing against the curve of her neck. She learned the sound of his step and the particular cadence of his voice, answering with low honks that made the merchants snort into their sleeves and the maids exchange glances behind their hands. The craftsman whispered, half in disbelief, half in fond amusement, that a lord’s heart could be moved by a goose, and Samuel let them talk, because there was no malice in it.
He found them one late afternoon by the well, the air already thinning into the first bite of winter, John crouched with his cloak pooled at his feet, offering Adelheid water from his own palm as though she were some rare creature of impossible value. The goose drank without hesitation, and John smiled in that quiet, private way of his – the one that had no audience and no purpose but the moment itself. Samuel stood a while before speaking, and when John finally noticed him there was no guilt left in his face, only that strange, soft pride he sometimes wore when no one else was looking.
“She’ll live through the winter if we keep her inside,” John said, as if Samuel had been asking.
“I am sure she will,” Samuel agreed, and though he shook his head, it was with a half-smile he could not quite hide.
John only reached to smooth the feathers along her back, and Adelheid leaned into the touch as though she had understood the bargain. Samuel let it go at that. There were worse things, after all, than living and sharing your boyfriend with a goose - especially if it meant seeing John like this, unguarded and almost tender, as though Adelheid had carried off some small piece of his armour along with the crumbs she stole from his hands.