Post-Shrewsbury, Barplace

[newredmuses]

Harry would have hoped that death would be a little kinder to him, for all his sins. He rebelled against an anointed king, true, but surely God or the Devil would have forgiven that, given the justness of his complaint. He does not see this afterlife as a rebuke of his passions, nor his tendency to curse or lose his temper or fall prey to his own pride. A true punishment would have been directed. This -- this is mere aimlessness, a new set of rules and no familiar boundaries.

To the best of his reckoning, it has been a month since he arrived, bleeding and gasping on the floor. Warkworth, the king's court, Glendower's keep, Shrewsbury, all of it confounds his sense of what's real. He was in a hospital bed for some time, then told that the way home was shut to him and his clothes were not salvageable. Every morning, in the strange, small room he's been provided, he stares at his reflection and feels nothing like himself. Who is Harry Percy without his sword, his horse, his battered jacket, his life? This scruffy man in jeans and a t-shirt never led armies nor defied princes.

Harry was never one for sitting still, but he has grown too frustrated with pacing. He has been told that he may choose what to do next, but what does a choice mean when none are fulfilling? It is a thing he wrestles with, sitting by himself at the Bar, his back to the door, staring into the tea Bar believes he will like.

When he is this quiet, the other patrons have learned to leave him alone.

Comments

[adivasheadvoices]

The news came to her via Northumberland, Harry's father, and if truth be told she had more than half expected it. Hotspur left her for Shrewsbury like a man in a nightmare, running as hard as he could after she knew not what. After his death, it seems.

She took the news with a stony face, and did not let her heart break and her tongue wail until she was alone in their bed yet again. Then she cursed Henry the Prince of Wales, and Henry the King, and Henry her husband and Henry his father, and finally fell asleep on her side of the bed surrounded by the ghosts of Henrys.

But there is always work to be done, and now more than ever. Northumberland is only barely recovered from his illness and already talks of battle again. Kate has seen her own terror and grief reflected in her mother-in-law's eyes. And while they tend to Northumberland's ills and reason with his pride, the household must yet be run and the lands looked to. So when the day finally comes that Northumberland takes himself off to Scotland, Kate Percy puts on her widow's weeds and ties back her hair and goes to work again.

And, one day, opens the door to the cellar and finds herself instead in the magical tavern. She stops in the doorway, startled -- and more uncertain than she normally allows herself to be.

[newredmuses]

A man in a tavern's got certain instincts, see.

Allan A Dale's a good man, or so says Djaq, when she wants him to do something her way, but most of the time he's a man with survival on his mind, and that's not anything to do with good or bad, is it. So maybe he's been nabbed once or twice by Bar security for an innocent game of cups. He's a clever man, has to be, so it's just a matter of finding the right way around all that. Maybe some of that is being a bit of a different person.

Will makes terrible fun of him for his accent, but that's because Will's a know-nuffink lad who's never left Nottingham. Still, though, Allan's broad Cockney makes him stick out like a sore thumb no matter where he goes, it seems, and there's nothing like practice to iron out a thing like that. So there he is, then, strolling through the bar, muttering to himself in his best approximation of a northern accent. "I come up from Newcastle. My brother's a tanner there, see? I'm from--ah, bugger. My name's Tom, I come--I come up from Newcastle..."

[adivasheadvoices]

That voice.

Kate straightens up as though struck, her eyes frantically scanning the crowd for him.

[newredmuses]

How would old Hotspur get it said? If he wasn't off sulking into his tea, Allan would have nabbed him for some lessons, like they'd had when he was in hospital.

That's a point, though, isn't it. He can't just be Allan A Dale -- no one listens to him. He's got to slip his skin and be someone else. He stops, near a corner, and stands up a little straighter. "I'll not be kept by a welpling like you. The devil rot you, my horse!"

Yeah, yeah, that felt pretty good!

[adivasheadvoices]

There.

(Is it--? He's been dead a month, and she knows how memories can warp and shift. Can it be?)

She picks up her skirts and starts towards him, trying not to hurry and mostly failing.

"Harry? . . ."

[newredmuses]

Noisy place, Milliways. Can't assume everything you hear is directed at you. Allan is satisfied with his performance at that spot, and picks up his perambulations again.

[adivasheadvoices]

"My lord!"

God in heaven, this feels like one of her nightmares. She picks up her pace and starts to catch up with him.

[newredmuses]

Funny feeling at the back of his neck, Allan's got. In the forest, that usually means someone's about to fire arrows at you. He pauses, and scans the floor. Should he be worried?

[adivasheadvoices]

Her breath catches.

"My lord?"

She's near enough now to put out a hand and catch his shoulder, and so she does -- though she's almost afraid he'll melt away if she touches him.

[newredmuses]

"I ain't done anything--oh, hello."

He's not being funny, but this is the best mistake that's happened to him all month. What a looker this one is. He can play along.

[adivasheadvoices]

Kate blinks hard, as if avoiding a blow. That's never her Harry, and yet he is the very picture of her lord.

"Do you know me, sir?"

[newredmuses]

He laughs, once. "Begging your pardon, madame, but I'd remember knowing you. Happy to make your acquaintance, though."

Oh, she is out of his league, and he doesn't need Much around to remind him, but it can't hurt to be as charming as possible, can it.

[adivasheadvoices]

"Ah--"

The sound escapes her before she can stop it.

"Do you not know me, then, in sooth?"

[newredmuses]

He's not entirely thick when it comes to reading emotions. Maybe the jokey normal approach isn't what's best here.

He touches her elbow, a bit cautiously. "Can't very well know you if I don't know your name. But we can fix that, eh? I'll start. Allan A Dale, Sherwood Forest, at present. 1192 on my side of the door."

[adivasheadvoices]

She slaps his hand away, drawing herself up.

"What sayest thou? Allan A Dale of Sherwood? How comes it, then, that you stand before me in the likeness of my lord who's dead?"

[newredmuses]

His face drains then.

Oh. Oh heaven.

He holds up his palms. "Hang on, hang on. Your name wouldn't happen to be Kate, would it?"

[adivasheadvoices]

Her eyes widen.

"I am Lady Elizabeth Percy, called -- called Kate, by some."

By one in particular.

[newredmuses]

Oh heavens. Oh hell.

Shit. Shit shit shit.

"Ah. Would you like to sit down, maybe? Have a bit to eat, something to drink? Relax, calm down a little? There's everything here, no laughing."

[adivasheadvoices]

"No." She backs away a step.

"Be calm? No! What calm is there for me in such a place as this, where devils take the shape of him I loved and call me by my name? Tell me how you know my name. Damn your eyes, tell me and say true!"

[newredmuses]

"Hey, I'm not a devil! He didn't have to come swanning in here wearing my face either, did he."

Wait, that didn't--he didn't mean to let the news come out quite like that.

[adivasheadvoices]

"Is he here?" she manages, after a stricken moment. "Is my Harry here?"

[newredmuses]

Allan searches for words. "He's had a bit of a rough time of it. Maybe we'd better take this slow, yeah? Let me go and warm him up for you."

[adivasheadvoices]

She wants to say no, and demand that he bring her to her husband forthwith.

"What do you mean?"

[newredmuses]

"Well, he's despondent, isn't he? Can't go back home."

Kate's face, though, that's a broken heart through and through. Allan thins his lips, then sighs. "Right, I can bring you to him. Just--stay a bit back until I give you the go-ahead, maybe. Some fella named Poins was around last week and nearly got his head stoved in."

[adivasheadvoices]

"He may try to break my head," she mutters, "and he shall find it harder than any other."

She nods. "Go to, then, I pray you."

[newredmuses]

"Yeah, all right."

He motions her to follow him through the bar. He'd offer his arm or something, but she doesn't really seem in the mood to accept. Probably can't really blame her.

Is that set of hunched shoulders at the Bar the one he wants? Yeah, looks like. He glances at Kate and holds a finger to his lips. "I'll go get him."

[adivasheadvoices]

Kate nods, drawing to a halt, and wraps her hands in her skirts to hide their trembling.

[newredmuses]

Allan is an outlaw, a man who lives by defying the odds and flouting authority. Except this, even though Hotspur's his friend, this is really twisting him up. He approaches him from the side and clears his throat. "Harry, how you doing? Feeling good today?"

He doesn't look up. "Why today different than any other day?"

Allan glances back at Kate. "Well, you've got a visitor."

"Last you said that it was the boon companion of him who killed me. I think not."

"No, I really think you'll want to see this one."

"God rot you, thou incessant prattler, can't you once let me be?"

"Listen to me, Harry--"

"Listen to you what?" He glowers and gestures with his cup. "My tea is getting cold."

Allan looks back to Kate with a helpless expression.

[adivasheadvoices]

That's him.

That's him, that's him. Her heart hurts with the wild laughter welling up inside her -- laughter, or tears, she knows not which, and now her hands in her skirts serve to hold her back.

"My dear?"

[newredmuses]

He stops.

And doesn't turn around.

"Allan," he says quietly, "tell me what it is that's making sounds at us just like my Kate."

"Look, I told you you'd want to see this one."

[adivasheadvoices]

"My lord," she says, her voice shaking, "pray look on me and know me, else I shall be a stranger to myself."

[newredmuses]

Shyness doesn't become him, and he is not used to shame, but it's slowly that he turns around nonetheless.

It's her. By the devil and all the angels, it's her. He pushes out of his seat and stands, gripped with a terrible fear.

"You're yet living, are you, my love?"

[adivasheadvoices]

She lets out a hitching laugh with little humor to it.

"I am, Harry. By God's grace or by His vengeance, I know not, but I yet live."

Swallowing, she holds out her hands.

"Pray let me touch you?"

[newredmuses]

"What's this? Timid? Not my Kate, in faith."

He closes the space between them and sweeps her close, and tight. She smells like home. The t-shirt does not hide him much; she may feel him tremble too.

Allan, wisely, decides to back out and leave them to it. His work here looks to be done.

[adivasheadvoices]

"Oh--"

She wraps her arms around him and suddenly all she can do is touch him, map him everywhere with her hands: the lines of his back and the curve of his hip and the grain of his hair between her fingers.

She's clutching him tight. Mayhap her hands are not as gentle as they should be, but the bruises she leaves on his arms are her proof that he's flesh and blood and real. Dreams don't bleed.

[newredmuses]

By heaven, he'll not begrudge her that. Left to his own devices he'd never release her himself.

"How do our friends?" he murmurs, his chest still tight. "My mother and father?"

[adivasheadvoices]

Another laugh, still bitter, muffled against his shoulder.

"Your father is infected now with remorse, that he did not send his men to you. But he will not throw away that which remains him on those who still talk of rebellion -- that your mother and I have seen to. He is flown to Scotland and bides there 'till we better know the fortunes of the Archbishop and Mowbray."

[newredmuses]

He stares straight ahead, his cheek pressed to her hair. "We almost won. I'd have killed him if I'd just done it quicker. I'm so sorry, Kate."

[adivasheadvoices]

"Be quiet," she snaps, looking up and taking his face in her hands. "Do you think I haven't tortured myself enough with thoughts of what might have been if this and what should have been if that? I'll not hear it from you, Harry, I will not, not now."

[newredmuses]

He snorts. "Well enough for you to say so. There's little else for me to bend on here. That I must sit here and be unable to finish--"

[adivasheadvoices]

"And why art thou here? This is not Heaven, by my troth."

[newredmuses]

"Why, I came to the Gates of St. Peter and the good old man asked me if I'd care to come in. 'Not I," I said, 'for me, a death in a tavern is what I've always craved. I'll take my eternal reward with two sugars, an' it please.'"

[adivasheadvoices]

Kate bursts into laughter.

And then, before it can turn into weeping, kisses him.

[newredmuses]

Oh, now this is fit to extinguish all petty rages. He puts his hands to her cheeks and leans into her. This feels real, at last.

When they break away, his fingers have already found themselves in her hair. "I know enough, it is not hell. I am glad to see you, very so."

[adivasheadvoices]

"My lord," she murmurs. "My love."

Her cheeks are wet.

[newredmuses]

With one hand he takes up hers, and cradles her cheek with the other. "My one," he says softly, "shall we go somewhere a while?"

[adivasheadvoices]

She manages a smile, now.

"Aye, Harry, that we shall."

[newredmuses]

Not that it's eavesdropping, it's hard not to overhear those two -- but one fellow in particular may just have done a little fistpump to see the pair of them head hand in hand off toward Hotspur's room. Not that he was snooping or nothing. You know how it is.