Chosen
by Ephemera

Chosen

by Ephemera

I was chosen because of my mother. She is favoured of Lady Ellan, has been for so long that I barely heard the innuendoes by the time I left the manor, and even at 16 I did not pretend to myself that I was chosen for any merit of my own. If I have a talent it is to be overlooked, invisible, and that is not a talent designed to be noticed in a manor court full of peacocks and a manor kitchen full of busyness and braggarts both. Being chosen changed things for a brief while, but that faded with the midwinter evergreens.

The announcement of Callen's departure was not unexpected. I saw my mother often enough in those days that she had given me hints aplenty that the time was due for Lady Callen to take her place at court, and that her eldest brother would accompany her. Where better to arrange an advantageous marriage, after all? She took such pains, painting pictures of the palaces, the home away from home that would be established there for the family, the long term plans to have Callen joined in turn by her siblings - all brothers save Lena, the youngest.

That I would be chosen to travel with the family, trained to take my place as Luce's man, however, was a shock that made my cheeks burn and my head spin. Small fry compared to the clamour about Callen's entourage, which stripped the manor of half the hunters and more than half the well-turned calves and pretty faces, much to the disgust of those left behind. Small fry, but in the small pond of the house boy's dorms, it made me a big fish for a few nights. I was giddy then, with so much to be done, to be learned, and neither myself not my master fit to bear the title 'man' at that age.

That was some four years past. Luce turned 15 in the bleak grey days of early spring, and that summer our cavalcade of coaches, riders and out-runners set out for the capital with all due pomp and circumstance. I believe that was the first time I saw my Luce falter, for it doesn't happen often, and I am proud that, even then, it was my hand he sought hidden in the folds of his cloak, to keep his voice from wavering as he declaimed his short and formal farewell. Callen - Callen has always been everything an heiress is meant to be. She was brave and bonny and bright, reading her speeches with sparkle to leaven the decorum and laughing with her fellows at the front of the parade. If there was a moment when she realised that she was leaving home and nothing would ever be quite the same again, well - I never saw it, nor heard tell of it.

Not that that means it never happened, seeing as my status and my sex both keep me away from the gossip from her chambers. Mind you, none of them will ever hear from me anything but praise for my own master. There is much of that to give, and what value is a body servant you cannot trust to keep your heart's secrets safe from prying eyes? No. He is my charge, and I'll not spread gossip about him.

We scarce knew each other then - formal meetings after the announcement, and a handful more when I was being fitted to his livery or shadowing the house servants to learn best how he took his meals and the pattern of his days. Nothing that prepared him for sharing quarters with me every night for the fortnight's journey, my thin bedroll at the end of his pallet to watch over him, his first nights of true adulthood.

He told me later that it wasn't till the second night that he realised that it was me who had been serving his meals, drawing his wash water, lacing his tunics, saddling his horse and guarding his sleep. Not until he'd cried himself to wakefulness a third time with homesickness and nightmares and I was there with a small lamp lit and a sleeping draught. No one in that whole assemblage ever knew that he'd needed such a thing, and I believe that's when he first gave me his trust.

The nightmares continued to chase him out of sleep for weeks, and I grew wary that he would become dependent on my small supplies of herbs, so before we had even reached the palace we were in the habit of sharing more than a chamber. Another body breathing next to him in the unfamiliar darkness and a listening ear to his worries seemed to do as much good as any medicine. That is how we became something more than simply master and man. Offering comfort was merely an extension of my duty to care for him, and if some nights he wanted to hear of me, my family, my dreams, my poor attempts at song, then it was as nothing to give them to him. Perhaps it is not as uncommon as all that, after all. It was never mentioned in the weeks of tutoring I received from the housemen, but then - it is not something you would speak of in company, now is it? Still, these three years later, when the nightmares plague him it is second nature for me to slide under heavy linen sheets and chase the shivers away with body heat and better thoughts.

I do not think it has changed at all for him in those years - I flatter myself that I can perhaps serve as a point of constancy in the ever-shifting waters of the court. No, for his part the occasional comfort of someone holding him through the night has changed in meaning not one jot, and I take care that he does not come to realise that it might have altered for me, lest I lose that too. There is nothing to be gained from talking. It is not my place to burden him with the knowledge and as more than once the nightmares have been triggered by some lordling's unwanted attentions I am sure that it would only hurt him. Hurt us both. I am unwilling to lie, but it's easy enough to keep quiet, and I can answer his occasional questions about the girls in the servant's wing honestly enough.

He, though. He himself is transformed. I doubt anyone who didn't know him then could see the shadows of the country manor child who was teased for his awkwardness, his accent, and his ignorance when he first came to court. The first formal banquet he attended he knew even less than I of etiquette and if my training hadn't covered acting as trencher-attendant for just that purpose he would have tasted the first dish ahead of both the Royal Table and myself.

At court he is quite the beau, flattering and teasing his way amongst the heiresses, and shining amongst the other hopeful lords. Both his appearance and his attainments flatter him. Admittedly his musical talents have never caught up with the fashionable, and perhaps he was allowed to follow his sister a little too often for true decorum when they were children. Somehow, though, he turns his prowess in the saddle and with the bow to charm rather than offend, and he cuts a fine figure with his hair grown out long in imitation of Lord Berrick. Luce for light, Callen teased last summer, all golden hair and sun-bronzed skin, and she was not the only one amongst the court to have noticed.

Of course, that was last summer before the unwelcome facts of Lady Ellan's failing health and waning fortunes. Our status here has been unalterably changed by that. We keep our current quarters only though Callen's efforts and her own purse's subsidy, and the titles of those he is invited to spend time with have diminished beyond all care of his desirability. Luce's share of the tithe has been rendered negligible by the plague that pocks and kills cattle and sheep alike. Because he has the heart of the true gentry he has done what is in his power to turn the little that comes into his accounts back to those who feel the loss the worst, even if it leaves him with painful choices.

Choices he made and argued for with his sister and mother both. I never thought to see the day he would stand his ground and send them back, point for point, reasons such as those, but... choices he has made, and certainly he seems to relish the strange sort of freedom it gives.

Straitened circumstances and brothers still at home - a two year turn in the Huntress' Harem is at the least two years of pay and luxury, and at best may be taken as a recommendation by a certain class of family. Not the class his mother was hoping for, but the best of those who would still consider him these days, and at least serving the huntresses will not harm Callen's reputation, provided he does well there.

It made me nervous to see him enter his name for the Judging knowing he had those thoughts on his shoulders. He was red eyed from lack of sleep after nightmares for weeks, no mater what stories I told or how closely he held me, but we hid that with the smoky kohl of an Intended. Hid the evidence with makeup and the nerves with a bitter sort of joking, and may it be that only I and his sister know him well enough to have heard that behind his voice.

He showed none of it in his bearing, and I owe thanks aplenty to Callen for arranging to have me accompany her servants into the hall to watch him walk his path. There was no sign of nerves or nightmares in the steady progress of his walk, broad shouldered and trim waisted, braids and beads in his hair to catch the candlelight and make him glow amongst the crowd. There are always more Intended than can be taken, and to be chosen is... it is a dream for many. An unobtainable dream for most, but no one could doubt that Luce would be picked to face the challenges, standing tall and strong, seductive with the sort of confidence only a lifetime of being born into respect can give, amongst stable boys and merchants sons. Luce and the other gentry born were easy choices. You wouldn't line up with the hoi polloi if you weren't sure of that much.

The challenges worried him. The night he was selected to go forward, no sleep was even attempted: rather he trusted me with all he'd heard about what to expect, the criteria upon which they were to be judged, his own fears about how he would measure to their standards. The huntresses want young men who know at least the basics of pleasing a woman, strong and healthy with fast recovery times, endurance and an absence of emotional complications. Such are the qualities of a living sex toy to be shared with so many. My cheeks flamed and it took every measure of control I have learned these years to lie in the dark, head pillowed on his firm chest and listen to him recount his experiences of pleasing women and fretting about techniques and restraint.

If he hadn't passed their challenges I should still be berating myself for not sharing at least the fruits of my own experiences in that last regard, but I could not force the words around the selfish feelings of my own heart, and as it happened he was none the worse for it. In fact he came back tossing a heavy satin pouch and very pleased with himself, having turned what should have been discourtesy into laughter and seduction, betting on himself against none other than the hunt's section leader.

The Intended arrive full and bound, and he took as a dare her taunts that he was too young, too eager, too inexperienced in the ways of hard-bodied clever-fingered women, to do more than shoot the second he was touched. Five florins that it would be within a ten count of being first touched and fifteen that it would be as soon as the knots around his balls were loosened. He spent more than five florins of his winnings on drinks for all his fellow Harem once he was chosen and had proved her wrong.

He was glowing, golden, fired with success and friendship and a sense of taking control of his destiny once more, and if his sister's mouth made a little moue of dissatisfaction with his less than sober appearance then it didn't dull his celebrations. He was happy then, those brief days of winding up his affairs and preparing himself to enter the Harem. Happiness like that is rare and cannot be begrudged, not if you care anything for the person radiating it, and I hold those memories close, for all they cut at me now.

Cut at me like knives to think on them while he must go back to it tomorrow for another two-week tour of duty, and tonight lies twitching with nightmares and tears because the reality is nothing like his dream.

I should have seen and I should have warned him. Instead there is nothing I can do now but fight Callen's Chamberlain by simply not leaving and maintain Luce's new room in Callen's suite. There are no words that he would hear, so instead I offer my heart in actions. I make sure that there is someone to come back to and somewhere for him to release his tears in safety. His sister is kind enough to allow us both that. It is not enough, but it is all I have to give and my heart, my self, is already his.

He thought he had been chosen, that chosen meant wanted and special and noticed and desired - all the things he has ever craved from his mother's knee to his court flirtations. All he's ever wanted and he let himself believe it would come true in the Harem, and now he has to face another sixteen months of being little more than furniture. He cried the first night he came back to his sister's chamber that the huntresses value their dogs above their boys. Tears burnt at my own eyes, unshed on that occasion, because of course they do. Trained dogs are hard to come by.