The Noble’s Challenge

1588-04-01
Crescent Hearth

He came with rain on his cloak and pride in his step. The room went still the way a string goes still when a hand closes over it. He said that we taught cowardice and called our lessons a dance. I took up my lute and stepped into the street.

The cobbles were slick. Lantern light shook in the puddles. He drew bright steel. I set the lute against my forearm like a small shield.

Name your measure, I said.

He came in long. Wind carried me off the line. Stone took his cut on the lute’s rim. Water turned parry to parry without a break. Flame showed itself only once when his haste left him open. I rode the bind, traced a Bonona step on the rain-dark star, and placed a thrust an inch from his heart.

He froze. The rain did not.

Learn the pause between notes, I said, and lowered the point.

He stood with a different weight in his shoulders. My insult was loud, he said. My apology will be louder. He sent his steward running.

By dusk a small retinue crowded the hearth. A clerk laid out ink. A sergeant of the watch stood witness. The steward opened a narrow box lined with ribbon and wax. The noble wrote by lantern light while the rain ticked on the panes. When he finished he set his hand and seal to a writ that named our room a place of instruction and promised safe conduct within the city and its liberties. Let the Feather Guild and the Mark-Brothers wrangle at court, he said. You will have my voice at council.

The clerk sanded the page. The seal took the device clean. We hung the writ above the hearth where heat would dry the ink and light would find it first.

Word ran ahead of the storm. Sailors nodded as if to a chartered house. Apprentices bowed at the threshold before they crossed it. A bailiff doffed his cap as he passed. The Crescent Hearth had been a rumor. Now it had a seal.

The noble returned at first light with no sword on his hip.

Teach me the pause, he said.

We began with measure.