Si Deus Nobiscum: A Polish-Lithuanian Scion Quest

Voting is open
Reader mode
[x] "I want them to know I know. That a foreign Prince witnessed their so-called French honor."
 
[X] "I just can't believe they could have done this, and I need to ask them to their faces."
 
[X] "I just can't believe they could have done this, and I need to ask them to their faces."

Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius.

God knows his own. They are just not those the murderers would expect.
 
[X] "Well, what if they do?"
[X] "I want them to know I know. That a foreign Prince witnessed their so-called French honor."
 
Last edited:
[X] "I just can't believe they could have done this, and I need to ask them to their faces."
 
[X] "I want them to know I know. That a foreign Prince witnessed their so-called French honor."

Nice to see this Quest still alive and kicking. :D
 
[x] "I want them to know I know. That a foreign Prince witnessed their so-called French honor."
 

Scheduled vote count started by Rolman on Mar 31, 2023 at 7:55 PM, finished with 26 posts and 24 votes.
Click to expand...
 
"I want them to know I know. That a foreign Prince witnessed their so-called French honor."

Really believed this story was already dead,guess the question is the other QM's quest still running?

Nevertheless this is pretty much the most epic moment our character can deliver, France's historical woes during this century are a bit meh to me guess I am still lamenting the fall of Brittany and Burgundy gotta hate those successful French oppressors.
 
Prologue IV. 3:01 A.M., August 24, 1572. Paris, Kingdom of France.
  • Threadmarks

    • "I want them to know that I know. That a foreign prince witnessed their so-called French honor." You spat out the words without thinking, like wanting water and getting liquor. Your face was hot.

    Pierre looked a bit offended but mainly stunned. "Well," he said, pausing, his lips forming silent words in the dim. He finally mustered something up: "then God be with you, Prince."

    "Thank you," you replied. "Get home safe." And, with all due respect, you proceeded to forget about him.

    You moved at a brisk and angry march but God's creation was middlingly concerned with the matter. Every dog in the city was barking, of course, but the cicadas still whirred, the rats still scurried over the cobbles. As the sky grew brighter with approaching dawn and distant fires, you could see now that the bats flew in whirlwinds against the gray-purple, evicted from countless rafters by noise and smoke and heat. This street was empty, every window with a shutter long since snapped shut.

    Your mind was an insect missing legs on one side, struggling with all its might to end up anywhere new; images of spittle flying at an amorphous Frenchman in a ruff, shrieking at the Queen Mother on her throne, beginning rehearsals of a speech and interrupting them with curses and teenaged memories of war.

    You walked with your head down past rioters and gawkers and guardsmen-rioters and guardsmen-guardsmen. Snippets of dozens of little massacres filtering into your ears: streets chained off and wiped out door to door, riders leaving for Lyon, for Rouen, for Reims, Tours and Dijon with sealed orders for more.

    A half-mile remained when you heard a hurdy-gurdy around the corner, playing a popular dance. The incongruence jarred you back into your body, and you found yourself jogging toward it, overcome with curiosity and confusion and a redoubled sinking feeling, mixing with adrenaline. Just a minor detour; you grabbed the hilt of your rapier for reassurance.

    The source of the music was coming from the middle of a side street, ringed with men and boys standing or taking knees. You walked to the edge of the congregation, and could see the balding player sitting on a stool with his brows knit, eyes closed, head bowed.

    One of the listeners noticed you. "Hey, who are you?" he asked, prompting everybody to turn around. The musician kept going.

    You stumble back. Everybody's about to draw whatever they have. "Where's his armband?" asked another voice, deeper in the crowd.

    They all start rumbling: "he's a scout, I tell you… I think I've seen him around… Courtier or rich kid… He'd only be out this late if he was…"

    An old man stepped forward and motioned for silence. The hurdy-gurdy rolled on. "Son – you best explain who you are," he said.

    You tried to answer and size up potential attackers at the same. Everybody's carrying a sword, if not a sword then a knife, if not a knife then a club or a tanner's mallet or a pickaxe or splitting axe or – Answer!

    "I – I live in the Louvre, I'm trying to get back. I'm a prince, actually," you said with a nervous chuckle. "I'm from a place called Lithuania, it's –"

    "I know where Lithuania is, seigneur. Do you reject the Pope?" he asked, stroking his beard.

    "No! No."

    The old man laughed. "Well, we won't kill you for that. Not this time, at least," eliciting chuckles from his closest men. "Do you understand what's happening here?"

    A Hugues? What did he mean by that? "I have some notion."

    "No, this," he replied, gesturing to the still-entranced hurdy-gurdy man. "Since we're going to our Lord this night, I felt the flock should be treated to one last secular piece."

    Your jaw actually dropped, and he smiled grimly. "This street will die on its feet. Understand now? Do you know if the churches are safe for women and children?"

    You shook your head. "God, I mean, I would hope so –"

    "So, you don't know, that's fine, seigneur," he said. "I wouldn't expect them to be," he added more quietly. He looked around at the shuttered windows of his block. "When you get back to your Lithuania – tell them what you saw here. I'm told your home is rather peaceful for good Christians."

    You agreed immediately and without thinking, launching into a stammering diatribe about the state of France in all your years here. The pastor listened and nodded the whole way through.

    "We could've used more noblemen like you," is all he said. "You ought to get home, seigneur, and you ought to let us work. Godspeed." And he turned to his little militia, ordering men to cover this alley and that, setting ambushes in courtyards and thresholds.

    You decided without deciding that you needed to run to the Louvre now, skidding slightly on the damp cobbles as the growling sound of a mob began to emanate from the direction you came from.

    Clap your hands, all you nations, replied the Huguenots, shout to God with cries of joy…

    You rounded a corner and slipped, staggering up only dimly aware that you pulled something in a leg. For the Lord most high is awesome…

    You hopped over a man-shaped mass splayed out on the street. The great King over all the earth…

    Three more dead obstacles. He subdued nations under us…

    The last corner now. Peoples under our feet…

    …He chose our inheritance for us, the pride of Jacob, who He loved…

    Their singing lost its words over the rooftops as the parapets of the Louvre at last appeared before you, silhouetted against the small hour-purple sky.

    You couldn't remember actually getting into the palace, the same way you can't quite remember the aftermath of Moncontour. The area all around the portcullis and old drawbridge was heaped with pale flesh and rivulets of red and flaking rust and you just tried not to look or think or feel or do anything but move forward. You remembered stepping over a single child's shoe, the cadence of the Switzers working the pile. "Ein, zwei –" splash. "Ein, zwei –" splash. "Ein, zwei –" splash.

    When you came to, so to speak, you were a sweating, wheezing, manure-splattered mess wandering the residential wing of the Louvre. Lesser courtiers and servants stepped aside without a word. The whole palace, understandably, seemed to be awake.

    Where are they? Where are they? Someone of the Blood, someone to explain all this, someone to scream at…

    There's one! You encountered him with his back turned, talking to his mignons in some little side room, you caught the tail end of whatever he was saying: "yes, no, he's with Mother. He's a wreck, laughing one second and crying the next –"

    One of his lackeys pointed you out, and Prince Alexandre turned around to face you. "Seigneurs!" is all you can think to half-shout.

    "Ah, Polonius Princeps," he said with a smile, offering an unrequited handshake – he glanced down at your rudeness and his happy countenance flickered. "You've got shit all over your boots," he added, a few mignons stifling snickers. "I take it you've been outside. Nasty business."

    "This country's gone mad," you snapped. "And all Christendom will hear of this. You know what's going on out there?"

    "You know, your manners are somewhat unbecoming of your –"

    "And this is unbecoming of humanity! Everybody said it was the Guises, that it was the King –"

    Alexandre threw his hands up as you talked at him. "It's somewhat unbecoming of both your raising and position –"

    He started talking over you and you over him until he finally snapped. "Enough! Prince Stanislas, you are in my kingdom, not me in yours. And so I ask you – what would you do if this was your Polonia, your precious Lithuania? There's a reason why kings speak of we and us and our."

    He moved in a bit closer, calmed down a little. "You and I – we're the same age just about. I was eleven, twelve, when the first war started. You forget, too – the roving court, I was there. I saw it all, same as you. And, you know, it's funny. You were always friendly with me – I thought you quite interesting, in fact – yet it always felt that, well, what with that whole melodrama you had over your confession…" he lingered for a moment, checking his nails.

    "What do you mean by that?" you get out through a tensed jaw.

    "Well, I suppose what I mean is that some of us feel as if you've always thought yourself a bit above us. A bit above our wars and our squabbles on faith and our feuding families. And what have you done but study?" His rhetorical pause went unanswered. "The bodies you've seen, the ruins of villages – none of those are yours, rather, they are ours. And I am a part of ours."

    You began to put the pieces together as Prince Alexandre continued. "And despite teeth-gnashing and the cauter-iron and the pus and blood and leeches – any man of sense would know he ought to cut out a tumor if he's got one, drain an abscess, pull a rotten tooth. Yes, we deal in the lives of people, the body is itself made of bodies. You will do the same someday, too, and then maybe you'll understand." He snorted. "Our God-given duty. Just a year or two apart, yet so much younger than I. Though your spirit is commendable and certainly Catholic, in its way."

    "Commendable," you echo disgustedly.

    "And for that, I'll let this go. Forget all about it. But you ought to learn something – any good prince talks little and listens much." He cocked his head. "You also seemingly forgot that old Sigismundus Augustus is dead and that at this very moment our heralds lobby for a French prince to sit upon the throne at your Cracovia. And who knows which prince that may be?" He smiled. "Now get some rest, Radzivilius Princeps, it seems you've had a long night."

    You stood there white-knuckled and shaking, nails digging into palms.

    "Need I repeat myself," he said, rather than ask. And that was that.

    You stopped leaving your chambers until the bodies floated down the Seine or were pushed beyond the city walls with sculling oars and pitchforks and the tips of halberds. That took the better part of a week. Then, when you emerged, you could hardly eat, hardly sleep, hardly study. Old enough to finish studying anyway, you wrote asking to be sent home and in early October a party of German mercenaries led by a few vassal lordlings at their head collected you from the Louvre. You looked for Pan Marszowski but he hadn't come along. Thank God, though – still alive and in one piece, they said.

    As you traveled up the Seine to a waiting ship in Normandie, signs of Saint Bartholomew's Day were present in every town, bones with half-dried sinew still attached on the riverbanks at places. You remained within yourself.

    It started with a little cough in the English Channel, but by the time Denmark loomed there was a Frisian surgeon aboard tending to you. Pneumonia. Bloodletting did nothing, nor did the poultices or potions or compresses hot and cold alike. "Bedrest and prayer, seigneur," said the medicus in halting French.

    You weren't sure if you were ready to die. You dictated a farewell letter to your father at the urging of your attendants but otherwise spent the next week or two in bed…

    [] Thinking.

    And maybe writing if you can get the strength up.

    [] Praying.

    Make peace with God.

    [] Delirious.

    You never could quite tell if you were awake or not.
     
    Last edited:
  • Threadmarks
    • Reader mode
    You must login or register to reply here.
    Voting is open
    Back
    Top