Fair Flower for a Fair Lady
Once the flower has bloomed, Anton wanted to deliver it to Lorraine. He hoped to deliver it to her and sing her a song composed on the theme "Fair Flower for a Fair Lady". He realized that his bardic art would be improved by having an instrument to play. He'd the 2 silver from his share of the gold cup, and used his free time on day 2 to go shopping for an instrument, something he could play while singing. Then he composed a song as above. That done, he proceeded to the palace to deliver the flower. [It may be simpler for continuity for the latter to happen on day 4, after the events of last run, whatever works best.]
[GM: Well, as we discussed at the game, getting an instrument (slightly used, but no serious nicks) was not too difficult, though it took all but pocket change. So, you got the instrument on day 2, composed the song on day 3, and on day 4 went off to play flower delivery hero. :)]
The Palace of Westmore
It was simple but tedious for Anton to get past the keepers of the gate; he was entitled to use the library, after all. However, he soon discovered that there were guards at each of the corridors between these semi-public areas and the rest of the palace. Asking after Lorraine duGryphon led to an impasse; only a small number of people were allowed entry to that part of the palace, and Anton was not on the list. He was given a choice of leaving his package for someone else to deliver or waiting until Lord or Lady duGryphon was contacted. That sure wouldn't work, he thought, and backed off to reconsider how to make his delivery. A steady stream of workers carrying food and supplies went to the east side of the palace with only perfunctory checks. With a shrug, Anton joined that line and was quickly passed with his delivery to the rooms on the ground floor of that side of the palace.
From the smells, this was where they hid the kitchen. The kitchen itself was a huge room with people running everywhere, the very definition of chaos. Circling the room, he found various small groups having a break and joined them. The easiest thing in the world was to get people to talk about their work; eventually he found the people that would eventually deliver lunch to the Gryphons. He was still talking to them as they left with big sets of dishes, and Anton juggled one of the smaller ones with his package as they all went to the west wing of the palace and up some stairs.
The apartments, he guessed they would be called, were some very light, high ceilinged rooms that fronted onto one of the palace's small internal courtyards. The doorway had a banner pinned to the wall next to it: a gold gryphon on a blue shield. Several tables with benches were set up in one of the rooms, and many soldiers, servants, and the like showed up to dig in with great gusto. He managed to ask one of the servers where the Gryphons were. "Oh, the Lord and Lady eat with their students. Part of the course the young lordlings have. These are their household."
"Of course Lorraine would be one of the students, that's how Paris met her," Anton thought. "This is getting more and more complicated." As they left, Anton fell a little behind the others. Some twisting through the nearly empty passages brought him to the courtyard he had spotted. There was a particularly easy tree to climb, and he nestled himself in the crook of a branch and made himself comfortable, munching on a bit of lunch snagged from a tray. Midafternoon, there was motion in the Gryphons' apartments, and a young girl's tinkling laugh.
He waited until he was sure of which window was hers, and repositioned himself on another branch to face it. He began lightly strumming his lute, and could tell when her conversation above stopped, and she moved to the railing of the window to look into the courtyard. He broke into his song as soon as he saw her, and she had a delighted smile the whole time he sang. With a final flourish, he picked up the flower and its pot and offered it to her. "A Fair Flower for a Fair Lady."
She laughed gaily. "Only 'fair,' Lord Troubadour?" she quizzed with a sparkle in her eye. "If I'm only passable then you should be passing."
"No, Lady, you are as the Faire that all the people of the town celebrate just because you are here." Not a bad reply, Anton smiled to himself.
She smiled at him for a moment, considering her reply. "If so, then what was the harvest? An odd musical fruit plucked from a tree?" And the battle of wits was joined, Anton replying, Lorraine smiling and jabbing. It was clear, though, that it was a challenge for her, she had to carefully think each reply. Anton noticed movement in the next window, an older woman peering out at him and then ducking back inside. With a sweep and a bow, he took his leave. Lorraine motioned to him to toss the flower up; he complied and she caught it with surprising grace. She mimicked blowing a kiss back to him; with a final flourish, he disappeared back into the corridors as he heard others arriving at the upper windows.
Anton thought, "I'm going to float on air for a while... literally. Then I'll compose an air on 'My Heart is Light as a Feather When I Think of My True Love', and then I'll see if I can manage to get the spell up and keep it running long enough to play the song while levitating."
[GM: :) As long as the song isn't much longer than the title...]
It was not too difficult to arrange for riding practice in the morning, and studying in the library in the afternoon. From a quiet window off the library, Anton levitated up to the roof. Carefully looking around, he moved across the rooftops, avoiding being seen by the few guards on the wall. If there were watchers in the great central tower, he couldn't be sure, but did what he could to keep from being seen. He arrived at what he thought was the right courtyard, a little later than he had seen her the day before. He levitated down the wall, past two other windows into empty rooms.
As his feet began to clear her window he heard a gasp and a movement. As his eyes came level with the window, he could see that large drapes had been pulled together, with only her eyes and a bit of long, dark hair visible. Anton launched into his song, time limited by the duration of his magic powers and the certainty that others would arrive when they heard his music again.
"My Lord Troubadour," her sweet voice came muffled through the heavy drapes, and her eyes continued to smile at him. "Your head must be full of feathers as well to spy upon a Lady not yet properly dressed."
'Oops,' Anton thought. "A thousand pardons, Lady, but I was drawn like a bird to the fairest of flowers."
Her eyebrows arched in mock surprise. "So, you presume to sample my nectar? What a prodigious beak on this songbird, to try such with my brother nearby."
Anton blinked and nearly lost the spell. 'Did she just say what I thought she said?' he wondered. "Nay, Lady, simply to see you exist gives my heart wings."
"So your heart engages in fancy flight to feed your flight of fancy?" The responses, flirtatious jibes, came faster than yesterday. Anton had a hard time keeping up the banter and the spell, and had actually lost track of how much of his power pool he had used when an older woman, the housekeeper for the Gryphons, he thought, leaned out the window over to his right. She looked at him, blinked once, and, as her eyes rolled up into her head, fell back into the room.
"Forgive me, Lady, I must fly," Anton said, bowing.
"Lord Troubadour, come tomorrow to the west gate about this time," she whispered. "Fly safely." The drapes closed fully. Anton tried to concentrate on gaining altitude, as he heard people running below. He arrived at the roof just as someone entered the courtyard below, and ran quickly across the rooftop to get back to the library. His power exhausted itself a few feet above the window sill; he had a few heart racing moments as he held onto the window railing and crawled back inside. He found it hard to study the rest of the afternoon; perhaps it was all the people running across the rooftops.
The next day he was outside the closed west gate of the palace. A few guards patrolled the gate, so he knew he couldn't fly up and over it. The viewport on the main door, in an alcove to the side of the great gates, opened. "Lord Troubadour," came the lilting voice, whispering. She was wearing some kind of cloak to prevent the others in the courtyard from seeing her, as her eyes peered out from the small viewport.
Anton launched into his newly composed song. [You come up with the title.] The acoustics were awful, echoing off of the narrow stone of the doorway. A couple of the guards looked down from the wall. There were a few chuckles from them, and some responses to his proffers of love that they found amusing. Her eyes, though, danced in delight, and the repartee that followed was as fierce and quick as it had been the day before. After too short a time, she heard someone coming and ran away again.
Again Anton was back at the narrow stone doorway, peering in to a far too small opening at the lady of his dreams. Sadly, he told her of having to go away on a journey, but that he would keep her always in his thoughts.
Her eyes seemed sad, almost on the verge of crying. "My Lord Troubadour," she whispered. "I shall think of you too. But we cannot meet longer, they will forbid it if they find out, and you have already risked much. Take this, and remember me each sunrise." She thrust a small cloth through the bars in the eye slot, turned, and ran back into the palace. He thought he heard sobs as she ran away.
He looked at the cloth, a small handkerchief in sea-foam green. On one corner a lute was embroidered; on the other, a sun rising between two pillars, that reminded him of a mix of background symbols on the cards of Temperance and the Moon.
"Anton's Story" copyright 1999 P.Shea & B. Eynon. The contents of this site are copyright 2004 Sheryl A. Knowles unless otherwise specified. All rights reserved.