Kaelin's Prayer

“Tell me you didn’t throw the first punch, Duncan.” Kilmeny sighed ruefully as she smoothed some of her sister’s salve gently along the lad’s bruised cheek, tactfully ignoring the hints of tears that trailed through a coating of Autumn dust. Grey eyes met her own defiantly and a small chin jerked upward. “No m’lady. Th’last one.” She bit her lip, stifling an unseemly grin. “I see.” She thought she did. Always, when outsiders came in to benefit from the harvest’s bounty, there was some young idiot with a mouth. “These people are guests in our lands, lad. That wasn’t right welcoming of you,” she chided gently. The other children were abandoning their apple-picking now, drawing closer in support of their friend. A dozen murmurs beginning with ‘but-...m’lady, but-’ buzzed like bees about the orchard. “Hmmm?” she held the boy’s gaze, and eventually the words tumbled out: “They called us Farmer’s brats!” It would have been a youngster his own age, she thought, some new-made squire, their pride as stiff as their first set of armour. It usually was. “I see. Well, we are, aren’t we?” She smiled gently round at their mutinous faces, and beckoned them to sit in the shade of the tree. “You, me, my sister, all of us - there’s a reason people call us the ‘House of Farmers’. Only those outsiders, sometimes they forget what that reason is. And my dears, it’s something you must never forget, so I will tell it to you again.” She set the basket of apples moving around the circle. Honestly, sometimes she wondered if they started trouble just to get a story. And an apple, of course. “Who here remembers the name of the founder of our House?” All of them. “Drake! Drake Thatcher!” “And who knows what he did? Why is he a hero?” “He was one of the Nine!” “He helped slay the Dragon!” “Dragon!” Then hesitantly, a smaller voice: “He healed the land.” “That’s right, Gelis. When the fighting was over, the weapons sheathed, and the Dragon lay dead, the rulers of Bernicia looked about them and counted the cost. And they saw that there was one place where the enemy had worked its greatest evil, lands that had suffered longest and most. Where the forests were tangled and dark, and the rivers choked with poison and weeds, and the fields were ash. From which any wholesome animals able to flee had fled, and no birds sang. “Drake Thatcher saw this, and his heart grieved. And when the Crown would reward him and his companions he made only one request: “Those broken lands give to me and mine. We will heal the land. We will cleanse the waters. In Sastrines’ name, we will work without rest to restore and nourish and protect this place.” Kilmeny looked slowly around the circle. “And now you live in a land of tended forests, my loves, of crystal waters and golden harvests. Harvests so plentiful we have abundance to share with neighbours, and gladly given. A land we will protect forever.” She reached out to ruffle Duncan’s hair. “So next time some fool from off calls you ‘farmer’s brat’, you feel that burn in your heart for the true honour it is. You tell them it’s true, that’s what we are right enough - you, me, Lady Shay, all of us - and damn proud to be.”