Chapter 3 #2
She carefully walked Jeanne through the exercise one more time.
They moved slowly, with Dorotèa numbering each tableau they hit.
Invite from the knee. Attack forward. Riposte.
Hit. Jeanne, still young and fit herself, was a quick learner.
Dorotèa delighted in just having one pupil, and was sure she would have even if Jeanne had been a talentless hack.
Such delight bloomed beyond even that when Jeanne had offered to host their sessions inside the city manor.
It meant Dorotèa didn’t have to find a quiet spot outside city limits or don her Venetian volto mask and become someone else.
It meant she could speak freely and not play the part of a fool.
Dorotèa nodded. “Now you try.”
Jeanne flipped her waves of brown hair behind her and adjusted her stance. She started to move through the routine back and forth, back and forth, but like every session, found a matter to discuss as she did. “How’s the job with Oste?”
“I only just started,” Dorotèa retorted.
“Come now, Tèa.” Jeanne smirked and sent her rapier’s point home.
Dorotèa blinked, expressionless, as the leather tip prodded her sternum.
She had a great deal she really wanted to say, but knew she’d promised him some privacy, or something of that sort.
She hated keeping secrets, even though her entire identity was one.
“Docteur Lézin isn’t quite himself yet.” She adopted her opening stance again. “He… has a stressful lifestyle.”
“‘Docteur Lézin’,” Jeanne repeated back. “Listen to you.”
Dorotèa huffed when she carried out her failed riposte. “I’ve got to be proper, Jeanne. I’m his maidservant. Or his… servant. Or his… assistant? No, no, it’s assistant, I remember now. But would you still call me his comrade?”
Jeanne jabbed her again and snorted. “I was going to go with ardent admirer.”
Dorotèa furrowed her brow. “Eh? What are you going on about? Switch again.”
“I’m only saying,” said Jeanne between the paces, “that I know you quite well, and know how quickly you volunteered for the task. I mean—” Tap! “—he usually comes up every session of ours.”
Dorotèa poked Jeanne and accidentally shouted her answer. “I didn’t trust anyone else to!”
“There’s that, and also that you find him to be very, very lovely.”
“He’s a good fellow!”
“I’m only saying that it’s certainly some way to get close.”
This time, when the women met in riposte, Dorotèa’s instincts took over.
Instead of stepping into the simple hit as before, she continued to hook her rapier until it wrapped around Jeanne’s, slid over its length, and sent it flying in a spurt of rapid bladework.
She had her leather point raised up at Jeanne’s neck in the same breath.
Her friend raised her brows in surprise, but the side of her mouth twitched, then quirked.
She inclined her head, and Dorotèa saw fit to answer.
“I didn’t take the job for love.” Dorotèa raised her chin and lowered her rapier. “I took it to get him back to form so I could fight him.”
That. That was her mission and her greatest joy.
She used to count down the days to the ones she’d mark out as not too soon and not too long, then don that mask and garb of hers as she sought him out.
She’d never said a word to him during those meetings; to do so could have exposed her.
But he’d answered every challenge. He’d laugh when they crossed swords in the open, in an alley, anywhere.
His style was addicting, even though she usually beat him.
It was so unpredictable, so playful and unlike anything she’d ever seen from trained duelists, like the men who visited her father’s workshop.
They’d go at it again, and again, and again, until they were sweating and empty.
He’d call her a great rival, and she’d nod and bow.
The evening their archbishop fled the city with a cluster of Huguenots had put an end to that. It was an ugly footnote of bloodstained snow.
Dorotèa would have gone through the simplest paces with him, just to get another taste.
She’d asked him and the Saint-Mitre boys before the duelist was ever born, and they’d said no.
She asked again after that horrible winter day, this time to him alone, playing the part of a novice who could get into it as he got his bearings back.
Again. No.
Women didn’t fence. No matter that she did, and that Jeanne now did, too. Women weren’t meant to fence. They weren’t supposed to let a rapier be an extension for defense or for play, even though Dorotèa happened to think they were the people who needed it the most.
Marie, she thought, was proof enough of that.
Jeanne stretched out her arms and let go of a sigh before she spoke.
“I haven’t, you know, obviously asked him directly about it, and neither has Eflamm, but I do think he feels similarly.
He told us he thought he’d either die or get back to living quicker than he thought.
I’m… not sure he was prepared at all for the third option in between those. ”
“Well, he’s the one who decided to ride a horse into the middle of the riot.”
Jeanne held out her palms. “These are trying times.”
“You don’t say?” Dorotèa groaned, then dramatically lowered her own sword and slid down to her hands and knees.
She banged her hands on the wooden floor in frustration.
“Why’d he have to do it? Merde, don’t answer that, because I know it’s his stupid sense of honor, but we had a good thing.
I mean, Aix has always been outrageous, and the conflict has made things unpleasant, yes, and largely dreadful, but I hadn’t realized how deeply the horrors went.
I hadn’t! I was blind to it, and I’d misplaced my contentment as ignorance. ”
Jeanne crouched down in front of Dorotèa and rubbed her shoulders. She was good at that—motherhood had taught her such things; but even if it hadn’t, having her kept artist Eflamm as a lover produced similar skills.
“There, there,” Jeanne hummed. “I enjoyed being blind, too. Blind and distracted.”
“It feels like a punishment for treating the confraternity like a social club,” Dorotèa shuddered.
“Even when people were strung up in the trees, I didn’t think it would come for us or anyone I loved.
How could I believe Oste could be killed for being in the wrong place, or being tolerant?
God, he was my distraction, and then my distraction was full of holes. ”
“I think…” Jeanne started, her voice gentle, her pats soft and sweet.
“…I think that’s what he’s always wanted out of Saint-Mitre, Tèa.
I think Oste likes that it can be a pleasant distraction for the people who need it, or a platform for people who want to use it.
You found a home there. Now you see it for something else.
I think whether you just come and drink wine at the meetings or help us with the charity, he’s delighted simply because you’re there. ”
Dorotèa shook her head. “He doesn’t even know who I am. Not really.”
“If you wanted to tell him, I think he’d take it better than you think.”
“I don’t think he needs excitement like that right now. And I don’t think I’d be ready for it.”
“I’m only saying, if you decide to, he’s more of a free thinker than most. I mean, Saint-Mitre is comprised of Catholics for freedoms. That would get us hung here and there.
Almost here. As well as—it’s not much my place, but I know you’re fond of him, and just in case you did want to—if you did think to…
see about a different sort of relationship, he just—he’s not an easy man. He has quirks.”
Dorotèa looked up. Her misery ran off her face almost in full. “His proclivities? I know all about those.”
Jeanne twitched, mouth agape.
“Well, not all about those.” She shrugged and continued on.
“I obviously haven’t witnessed anything.
But some of those Saint-Mitre boys ought to be more careful, because when I’ve had the mask on and skipped my way out of there, I’ve heard more than a few jokes.
And I did spar once with that Huguenot, Laurens Carmandas, and he even told me to aim up the arse where Oste likes it, which Oste threw him into the river for. ”
“Tèa—”
“And I also know that—I mean, it’s not exactly a massive secret anymore—that he’s the mastermind who distributed that new print of On Liberation in the Bedroom—you know, that one with Eflamm’s fine illustrations—”
“Tèa!”
“—and I’m sorry for mentioning him, too, but rest assured, I’ve only ever treated it as an anonymous creation!
Really, it was a clever way to make a small fortune in university.
I’m fond of that earring that Oste bought after they did.
I know that, and I know also that it was one of those editions that caught the piece of bullet flying towards his heart, and not the Bible like all those idiots have tried to claim.
I heard that it scored perfectly through a diagram of a woman’s—”
“Tèa! Tèa, Tèa, I’m a bigger sinner than most, mark my words, but I am near about to perish!”
“Oh. My apologies.”
Jeanne dragged her hand down her face. “Well, I’m just glad you’re aware. His interest in the female sex, erm—that way—is not always as expansive as the alternative.”
“I’m not overly interested in what a man can do in bed. I’m more concerned how well he can handle a sword.”
Jeanne’s eyes cast down. Dorotèa saw what she was going to say even before her friend raised her chin and voiced it, mild as creamed honey. “It isn’t all bad. I know your experience has left a lot to be desired, but I’m afraid to see you deny yourself forever.”
Stiffness rolled down Dorotèa’s vertebrae, then rooted her feet like leaden weights.
The absence of expression on her face mirrored the way she’d felt when she let herself be touched and explored what her mouth could do.
She didn’t know how far she might have gone if she hadn’t gotten a copy of that book herself and learned about sanctity and pleasure.
Her mother’s ghost could not have taught her, and her father, evidently, had not cared to.
He taught her everything she knew about defending herself, and nothing about what she was meant to be defending herself from. She’d figured that out when she voiced a rejection that the other party didn’t like.
“Don’t misunderstand.” Dorotèa picked at the leather tip atop her sword. “I would like a family. In fact, I very badly wish for it. And I presume, through familiarity, that I would find enjoyment out of… enjoyment. But I am ill-suited, Jeanne. I don’t pursue it or give it much thought.”
“Ill-suited.” Jeanne rolled her eyes and stretched out her arms. “You’re beautiful and clever; a desirable woman even if your family wasn’t well-connected.”
“Mmh, desirable enough for the men of the thermal quarter that I was too stupid to walk away from.”
Her lashes fluttered. “You weren’t stupid. Look at me, I’m the one who went and got a child in me before my wedding. You changed as soon as you realized you wanted better for yourself. It’s your father’s fault, damn him. Let you go like a free-range barn cat…”
Dorotèa couldn’t help but sport a conniving smile. “So, you confirm I am ill-suited, but argue my father is to blame for it.”
“That’s not what I—”
“I know.” She swallowed and brushed her hand over Jeanne's. “If it wasn’t for you, I’d be hopeless in earnest. I’m just trying to make do. Fencing makes more sense than all of that.”
It always did. It offered no room for distractions.
If she didn’t fence, there’d have been so much more time to consider every other pitfall she possessed.
Her fantasy of feminine grace and belonging was done away with as soon as her father had no sense to arrange chaperones or see to her manners and education.
She’d been thrown to the wolves that Oste’s father made a career out of tracking.
All she’d been given was an apology for her weakness, a sword-arm to use for it, and nothing.
She felt closer to a blade than a woman, but a good sword ought to have been easier for another to hold.
“Well.” Jeanne crossed her arms and looked out the window. “I simply promise that one day soon you’ll find yourself very happy with some armful of man, and you’ll come and tell me, ‘Heavens, Jeanne, you were right’.”
Dorotèa shrugged and stood back up again. “Is Eflamm much good? I’d hope he is, with a nickname like ‘Vermilion Chevalier’.”
She spun her sword in a victorious flourish. Jeanne’s cheeks turned pink.
“Dorotèa! I’m—it isn’t—my period of mourning is still—I’ll not marry for another—”
“So he’s very good, then.”
Jeanne whispered. “Didn’t you want to become polite?”
Dorotèa beamed. “Later. Let’s have a spar proper! I need to stay fresh for when I get the chance to beat Oste again.”
Jeanne scooped her sword back up and stood at the ready with a scowl. She tucked her arm behind the arch of her back. “You’re nothing if not devoted.”
Dorotèa lightly tapped her rapier against Jeanne’s, still grinning. “What’s a woman without a cause?”