#Sir John Collings Squire

[muhammad-ubaidullah-khan]

ON DESTROYING BOOKS

by J. C. Squire

[irene-sadler]

Sir Reynard and the Red Knight

notes: 1. here's a (relatively) short n' interesting discussion of the history of the St. Bartholomew Day Fair in London, which was held roughly annually from sometime in the 12th century to sometime in the 19th century. I casually yanked some ideas (ull find this thing about rabbits casually mentioned with no explanation in the source) from events that took place at this specific festival to apply to my much much smaller Winter Solstice Fair held in Rivia.

translating any irl medieval holiday/fair/feast into a fantasy setting is a lil tricky b/c 95 percent of what happens and what makes them so interesting (to me anyway) is tied up in and totally inseperable from medieval Christian religious expression. however, when a lot of my source material was written (usually several hundred years ago bc public domain ebooks) there were still some weird obviously pre-Christian traditions in common use in parts of England. more on this next chapter b/c some of them are fuckin bizarre and so ofc I ganked them.

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8.

The next day dawned cold, but the blue cast to the sky promised clear weather. The Queen had long since collected a list of names from a page, and sat scribbling figures and notes in the margins as she considered the best way to arrange forty contestants into equitable matches. Isbel proved unsurprisingly unhelpful; the Baroness, however, offered advice on the matter in a slightly imperious tone:

    “There’s no way to match these names up, by perceived skill, and if you try there will be hurt feelings. Random selection won’t answer, either; my suggestion is to choose from whoever is standing around when we arrive and let them sort themselves out as best they can after.”

    Meve shuffled the papers a moment, admitted to herself that she had no better ideas, and nodded grudgingly.

    “Yes, you’re probably right. First come, first served it is, then. Here, look after these,” she said, handing the papers over to the older woman, “I have to go; the Mayor will be wanting something from me within the hour and I’ve other matters to attend to, first.”

    She left the Baroness and Isbel eyeing each other suspiciously over their breakfasts and strode rapidly away to the stables. Reynard’s horse, dozing alone in his stall, greeted her with polite disinterest; she spotted a light flickering from inside a little storage room nearby, where she found his owner carefully examining his armor under Pug and Gaspar’s vacant stares. Reynard smiled tightly at her, Gaspar glowered from under his unkempt hair, and Pug sketched a lazy gesture resembling a salute.

    “Anything to report?” she asked them all, in a slightly falsely cheerful tone. Reynard glanced at Gaspar, who eyed Pug, who squinted up at the Queen through her single eye.

    “Well, someone came in after midnight rung, but we put an end t’ his fucking skulking, quick,” she explained, then pointed at a few dark spots on the dirt floor. “And you can see the blood right there.”

    “So you can,” Meve said, not at all displeased. “Don’t suppose you managed to get a look at the culprit?”

    Pug shook her head, then, considering a moment, noted, “A tall bastard, whoever. Gaspar got ‘im right in th’ ankle from the shadows.”

    “Tall, with a limp,” the Queen considered.

    Gaspar hesitated, and brushed his hand against his own pox-scarred face, glancing at Pug.

    “Might’ve had a beard, also,” she translated.  “Hard t’ say anything else.”

    “Better than nothing at all to go on. Where’s Gascon?”

    Reynard shook his head. Gaspar glanced at Pug again; she chewed her right thumbnail and shrugged idly.

    “Don’t know,” she said, cooly studying the dried blood on the floor; a breathless page then hustled in, bowed to all present - Pug croaked a laugh at him - and announced that the Mayor requested the Queen’s presence, urgently.

    “What, already?” she asked. “All right; tell him I’ll be along shortly. You two can go as well,” she added, to the brigands, “Thank you for your assistance, and tell the Duke to report to me the moment you next see him.”

    “As for you,” she added quickly to Reynard, as soon as the room cleared out, “In case I don’t see you later - “

    He put his helm down wordlessly, stepped across the few feet between them, and kissed her; she took her time pulling away, despite the city government’s looming crisis, and said, “Good luck, not that you need it; I look forward to your victory.”

    “Yes, thank you,” he said, somewhat embarrassed, “I’ll do my best.”

      An hour later, the event was already underway. The brilliant sun pulled a faint fog from the frozen ground, and flashed on the armor of the first two contestants as they met with a resounding crash.

    “Coll, and Bohault,” Giselle reported; they had put her in charge of keeping track of the course of the jousts, and she accordingly drew a bold check in red ink beside Bohault. The Queen nodded her congratulations to the man, who returned her notice with an answering, professional jerk of his head. The next contestants were familiar, as well, and the third set strangers, not unexpectedly; twenty rounds had to be got through, and some of the names on the list had a distinctly foreign flavor. One such man, called Devyn, provided the judges’ first opportunity to deliberate, as he and John Kimborne knocked each other down in the same moment.

    “Sir Kimborne’s a proper knight, which ought to count for something,” Meve said, “And that sweep with the lance on his opponent’s part was, I believe, not quite legal, which is no doubt why he was unseated.”

    “It’s hardly Devyn’s fault that he’s from Novigrad, which doubtless is why he didn’t know not to do that,” Giselle said, smiling encouragingly at the young man. “Also, I think he is well, you know, handsome, for a foreigner.”

    “Yes, I’m sure you do,” the Baroness said, rolling her eyes. By unspoken consent, she reigned as their chief; accordingly, when she pointed impatiently at the knight, her decision was accepted without further comment and the contest carried on. They made good time under her able command, assisted by the timely appearance of mulled wine and sandwiches at midmorning. The names and men rolled by, ticked off in red; they made it past the unpronounceably named Sicg Sicgurdssen, a group of brothers whose names all began with with same letters, Ethan, who put the third and final of the brothers down and received a brilliant smile from Giselle in reward, and as, the Baroness and Queen grew bored and were chatting idly about the relative merits of different styles of tilting helms, Sir Holt, who won his match easily. The Queen eyed him darkly and then abruptly lost interest in side conversation as Reynard appeared, defeated a man named Hall in a few passes, and departed again. The Baroness accepted the sudden silence with faint amusement.

    “Nolda,” Giselle read, next, “And Sir Eres. That’s the knight, there. Who is Nolda?”

    Meve cracked a surprised, but pleased, smile, pointed across the field, where a lanky woman in well-used armor stood apart from the other contestants and said, pleased, “That is Nolda; she was an Aedirnian defector, fought for us in Angren. I hadn’t known she was still here in Rivia; I thought she’d have gone back home.” The Baroness squinted at the woman, with a thoughtful air. Sir Eres scowled at his opponent, glanced hopefully toward the judges, found no leniency in their stony stares, shut his visor and rode to his place. The match lasted all of ten seconds: Nolda held her lance left-handed, at an odd diagonal angle, and then at the last moment straightened it, smacked her opponent’s spear aside with a sweep of her shield, and knocked him away. The Baroness hummed thoughtfully under her breath.      

    “Unusual tactic, but not, I as far as I know, illegal,” Meve commented. Giselle shrugged and crossed out Sir Eres’ name, as the knight picked himself up and stalked angrily toward the judges.

    “It may not answer a second time, but it certainly took him by surprise,” the Baroness said, agreeably, and added, to the clearly disgruntled man, “What’s the problem?”

    The problem was that Sir Eres was a sore loser, Giselle supposed; Meve privately suspected it had as much to do with Nolda herself than it did with his defeat at her hands, but if he was hoping for sympathy he found none. The Baroness turned him away with a few blunt phrases and the contest continued.

    By noon, they had only three names left. Giselle read them off in a doubtful voice: Brossard, Gaheris, Saban. They sent a page to find out where the absentees had got to, and took a break. Giselle hurried off into the crowd with a promise to return in due time, and Meve and the Baroness settled into a debate of the various methods of arranging the second round and soon arrived at a prospective bracket. The page returned, indicated a short, bearded warrior on a sturdy horse, said, “The dwarf, there, is Saban; as for the Duke, nobody seems to know where he might be found, and the squire Gaheris is injured and can’t fight.”

    “I suppose, under the circumstances, that we could simply advance Saban to the second round,” the Queen remarked, frowning at the news of Gascon’s absence, as Giselle came running, slightly flustered. “You’re late,” she added, to the younger woman. Giselle flushed and looked apologetic.

    “Someone had let a bunch of rabbits out into the street, and a crowd of boys was chasing ‘em,” she explained, and then, spotting something on the field, abandoned the tale and gasped, “Look!”

    Meve turned and smiled as she was finally proved right: a man in black armor, mounted on a black horse, sat at the farther end of the barriers. He slowly pointed his lance at Saban, who turned to stare at the judges, baffled. Meve shrugged at him, which he seemed to take for permission; he pulled his helmet on briskly and kicked his horse toward the appointed starting position without delay.

    Saban rode well, but it was obvious that he was an amateur; the black knight unseated him in their first pass without apparent effort. He stood, collected his lost helmet from the ground, picked a clod of dirt out of the visor, and shrugged pragmatically. Meve squinted at the departing black knight’s back, and said, “Well, that was - quite interesting. On to the next round, I suppose. Who is it, Giselle?”

    It was Bohault and the unfortunate Ethan, who stood no chance against the veteran; he received another, slightly less congratulatory smile from Giselle, who then drew a second mark beside the soldier’s name.

    “So,” Meve said to the Baroness, conversationally, watching the next combat with a fine appearance of attention, “Care to make a prediction on the winner, yet?”

    “Of this match? Sir Brewes,” the older woman replied promptly; the knight in question was unseated by his opponent a half minute later. Meve smiled smugly at the winner.

    “Nolda seems to be doing well for herself, doesn’t she? - but I meant overall, in general.”

    “Ah. Well, Sir Odo, Sir Kimborne, perhaps Sir Holt if should he get lucky with his matchups -”

    “What about that black knight?”

    “Oh, him? Well, it’s hard to say, for sure.”

    The conversation paused again as Count Odo made his second appearance, against Sicg, the knight from Skellige. The Count won his second match far more quickly than he had his first. Meve, knowing from long experience that he had been studying the competition for most of the last round, to prepare himself, was unsurprised.

    “Although,” the Baroness continued thoughtfully, as he rode away, “I have seen a black knight fight at a recent tourney, I can’t say as it’s the same one who’s here today. Armor can be changed, but this one doesn’t seem to have the same style, at all. However, he does seem familiar, but they all do after near thirty-five years of watching them in tournaments. Almost all, at least.”

    Meve was growing used to the older woman’s subtle hints, and therefore was sure she’d caught a significant note in her comments. She thought back to the tournament, suddenly recalled the Baroness’s parting behavior with a frown, and re-evaluated her previous assumption: perhaps, after all, there was no confusion about herself and Gascon, and - she realized with mild annoyance - the Baroness had figured out the true reason for her absences, one way or another, but said nothing about it at the time. The same gleam of a secret joke was in the other woman’s eye when she looked away from the field, where Sir Holt was riding away from yet another victory. Meve stared at her, momentarily at a loss. The Baroness smiled slightly and looked back to the lists.

    “So,” the Queen asked, deciding it was best to not to inquire further, “Who do you think it could be, this time?”

    “I’m not sure; I’ll need more time to consider the matter,” the Baroness said, as the black knight returned, last of the pack again, and lined up against Sir Orlac, who had been lingering about as if waiting for him.

    “They’ve fought before,” Meve said, remembering suddenly. “Sir Orlac received an unexpected cold bath, as I recall.”

    Sir Orlac took his second defeat and stood up, swearing loudly at the black knight’s back.

    “At least he didn’t get wet, this time,” she added.

    “What a fall,” Giselle said, “Do you think he’s hurt?”

    The knight was limping slightly, but Meve shrugged dismissively and said, “Oh, no. He’ll be fine. Anyway, who do we have left?”

    Giselle held up the list; the Queen glanced at the six names remaining, nodded, and signaled to the herald.

      “This is going well,” she reflected, after watching Nolda defeat Bohault, to acclaim from the growing audience. “Perhaps I should do it again, next year, but with fewer participants, so it doesn’t take all day.”

    “Hm,” the Baroness said noncommittally, and then, during the next fight, “I do believe I like Sir Kimborne’s chances to win out; what do you think, young lady?”

    Giselle considered.

    “Well, the black knight’s very mysterious; it would be interesting if he won, like a ballad.”

    Nobody bothered to ask Meve for her opinion, but she took no notice, as she was closely watching the knight in question and Sir Holt ride onto the field. The black knight sat dead still on the nearer side, but the red knight passed him and approached the judges, scowling. The Baroness addressed him, in a tone that rivaled Meve’s for arrogance:

    “What’s th’ issue, sir?”

    “I don’t want to fight this - this fellow,” he said, sulkily. “It ain’t proper.”

    “What do you mean?”

    “Well, for one, he might not even be a knight; it could be anyone under all that armor - any man at all, or a woman, even, for that matter.”

    “Heard this sort o’ thing before, a hundred time,” Giselle said quietly to Meve, “He’s chicken.”

    “I heard that,” the knight growled. Giselle blinked innocently at him.

    “Well, your other option is Sir Kimborne,” the Baroness said, growing slightly annoyed. Sir Holt opened his mouth, then closed it with an uneasy frown, obviously unsatisfied by the alternative offer.

    “Didn’t this same knight defeat you, a month or two ago? I would think you’d want to avenge your loss,” the Queen noted, idly. He scowled at the reminder, clearly inclined to argue further. The Baroness turned a hostile glare on him; he thought better of it and rode away, muttering, to take his place by the barricade.

    “What an ass,” Meve said.

    The knights completed a pass, to no avail on either side.

    “Didn’t your man Odo duel him, lately?” the Baroness said. “Can’t say I blame him, now, though I thought his behavior uncharacteristically impulsive at the time. Watch and see if the red knight don’t overcommit on this next run.”

    He did, badly; instead of his usual hesitation, he drove in a rush. Meve suspected he had lost his temper. The black knight took the attack on his shield and turned it away.

    “Yes, well, next time I’ll leave you to deal with him instead,” Meve remarked. “It seems to be more effective.”

    Sir Holt took his third run far more cautiously; his usual hesitation returned, and Meve glanced downward to hide a malicious smile as the black knight took advantage, aimed true, and knocked his opponent down hard.

    “I have five sons,” the Baroness replied, flatly. “Th’ egos of these fool knights can’t compare.”

    Gaheris limped heavily onto the field and collected Sir Holt; Meve looked from him to the black knight, who appeared to be watching the squire closely, a slight frown crossing her face. Giselle, meanwhile, made a bold red mark through the loser’s name and said, “It’s Sir Odo and Sir Kimborne, now.”

    It was a fight that the Baroness watched approvingly, making comments to Giselle, as Meve was, again, distinctly uninterested in conversation. The Count finally wore his opponent down from sheer weariness after half a dozen passes, drawing a pleased smile from the Queen. They then broke off for ten minutes, reckoning it was only fair to let their last three knights have a rest before the end. The judges spent the time in conference, deciding how to arrange their semi-finals; the no-shows had ruined their early arrangements, leaving them with an odd number of contestants. The Baroness eventually ruled that Sir Odo, being the senior knight, should be given a free round, and Nolda and the stranger would go against each other, as a result. Meve squinted at her.

    “Have you really not figured the black knight out, yet?”

    “Oh,” she said, mysteriously, “I think that by the time we’re done, we’ll know who he is, one way or another.”

      The black knight, however, did not appear when summoned along with the other two, leaving Nolda sitting alone at the barricades. Reynard, after a while, offered to go against her, on the chance that the third contestant would turn up very late to fight the last match; Nolda agreed, somewhat reluctantly. The Baroness overruled them, claiming that there was no knowing whether their third party would actually appear. The contestants therefore settled in to wait, Reynard with a distant frown and Nolda looking moderately suspicious of the sudden delay. The crowd chattered in the background, bored and uncertain of the future prospects for its entertainment.

    “How long are we going to wait?” Giselle asked, five minutes later; the black knight had failed to show.

    “Damn him,” Meve snarled quietly, “I planned this blasted event to flush him out, and he still somehow slipped away through my fingers. What now?”

    Giselle stared at her; the Baroness sighed and said, “Well, th’ only thing we can do is declare the match forfeit; Nolda will just have to fight Sir Odo, gods help her.”

    The contestants were summoned and the plan explained to them. Nolda did not seem overly relieved at being spared the black knight, probably due to being confronted with the Count as a result. He himself appeared mildly perturbed by the unusual situation, glanced at Meve’s tense smile, and said nothing.

    “I don’t know as it’s necessary that the Count should go against me now,” Nolda said doubtfully, “To tell the truth, I’m only here because Captain Bohault - he’s my husband - said could do better than me at this game, which I’ve proved he can’t.”

    “That you have,” the Queen said, mildly amused despite herself, “But the contest has to be won by someone. If you’re intending to spare Sir Reynard a fall on account of his age, I assure you there’s no need.”

    Nolda, who appeared to be roughly the same age as the knight, frowned, apparently unsure whether the Queen was joking. Sir Reynard’s expression turned mildly pained, but he did not roll his eyes at her.

    “I have no objections,” he said, stiffly. Nolda shrugged and said, “Well, I’m game, then.”

    “Good,” the Baroness said, “We’ll start in twenty minutes.”

    The combatants rode down to opposite sides of the field, where Reynard sat on his horse, exchanging a few words with his squire. Nolda stood at her horse’s head, deep in conversation with Bohault; the occasional audible phrase and the cavalryman’s complicated hand gestures suggested a strategy session was underway. Meve struggled to appear neutral, if she couldn’t manage anything else, despite her continued irritation at the black knight’s disappearance. The effort became supremely more difficult as, from behind and under the stands, a familiar voice whispered, “Meve! I mean, Your Majesty! I need t’ talk to you.”

    She turned, slowly, forced a casual tone, and said, “Ah, Duke Brossard. I’m glad you’ve decided to join us at last.”

[muhammad-ubaidullah-khan]

"On Destroying Books" By Sir John Collings Squire

"It says in the paper" that over two million volumes have been presented to the troops by the public.  It would be interesting to inspect them. Most of them, no doubt, are quite ordinary and suitable; but it was publicly stated the other day that some people were sending the oddest things, such as magazines twenty years old, guides to the Lake District, Bradshaws, and back numbers of Whitaker's Almanack.  It some cases, one imagines, such indigestibles get into the parcels by accident; but it is likely that there are those who jump at the opportunity of getting rid of books they don't want. Why have they kept them if they don't want them?  But most people, especially non-bookish people, are very reluctant to throw away anything that looks like a book.  In the most illiterate houses that one knows every worthless or ephemeral volume that is bought finds it way to a shelf and stays there.  In reality it is not merely absurd to keep rubbish merely because it is printed: it is positively a public duty to destroy it.  Destruction not merely makes more room for new books and saves one's heirs the trouble of sorting out the rubbish or storing it: it may also prevent posterity from making a fool of itself.  We may be sure that if we do not burn, sink, or blast all the superseded editions of Bradshaw, two hundred years hence some collector will be specialising in old railway time-tables, gathering, at immense cost, a complete series, and ultimately leaving his "treasures" (as the Press will call them) to a Public Institution.

But it is not always easy to destroy books.  They may not have as many lives as a cat, but they certainly die hard; and it is sometimes difficult to find a scaffold for them.  This difficulty once brought me almost within the Shadow of the Rope.  I was living in a small and (as Shakespeare would say) heaven-kissing flat in Chelsea, and books of inferior minor verse gradually accumulated there until at last I was faced with the alternative of either evicting the books or else leaving them in sole, undisturbed tenancy and taking rooms elsewhere for myself. Now, no one would have bought these books.  I therefore had to throw them away or wipe them off the map altogether.  But how?  There were scores of them.  I had no kitchen range, and I could not toast them on the gas-cooker or consume them leaf by leaf in my small study fire - for it is almost as hopeless to try to burn a book without opening it as to try to burn a piece of granite.  I had no dust-bin; my debris went down a kind of flue behind the staircase, with small trap-doors opening to the landings. The difficulty with this was that the larger books might choke it; the authorities, in fact, had labelled it "Dust and Ashes Only"; and in any case I did not want to leave the books intact, and some dustman's unfortunate family to get a false idea of English poetry from them. So in the end I determined to do to them what so many people do to the kittens: tie them up and consign them to the river.  I improvised a sack, stuffed the books into it, put it over my shoulder, and went down the stairs into the darkness.

It was nearly midnight as I stepped into the street.  There was a cold nip in the air; the sky was full of stars; and the greenish-yellow lamps threw long gleams across the  smooth, hard road.  Few people were about; under the trees at the corner a Guardsman was bidding a robust goodnight to his girl, and here and there rang out the steps of solitary travellers making their way home across the bridge to Battersea.  I turned up my overcoat collar, settled my sack comfortably across my shoulders, and strode off towards the little square glow of the coffee-stall which marked the near end of the bridge, whose sweeping iron girders were just visible against the dark sky behind.  A few doors down I passed a policeman who was flashing his lantern on the catches of basement windows.  He turned. I fancied he looked suspicious, and I trembled slightly.  The thought occurred to me: "Perhaps he suspect I have swag in this sack."  I was not seriously disturbed, as I knew that I could bear investigation, and that nobody would be suspected of having stolen such goods (though they were all first editions) as I was carrying.  Nevertheless I could not help the slight unease which comes to all who are eyed suspiciously by the police, and to all who are detected in any deliberately furtive act, however harmless.  He acquitted me, apparently; and, with a step that, making an effort, I prevented from growing more rapid, I walked on until I reached the Embankment.

I was then that all the implications of my act revealed themselves.  I leaned against the parapet and looked down into the faintly luminous swirls of the river.  Suddenly I heard  a step near me; quite automatically I sprang back from the wall and began walking on with, I fervently hoped, an air of rumination and unconcern.  The pedestrian came by me without looking at me.  I was a tramp, who had other things to think about; and, calling myself an ass, I stopped again.  "Now's for it," I thought; but just as I was preparing to cast my books upon the waters I heard another step - a slow and measured one.  The next thought came like a blaze of terrible blue lightning across my brain: "What about the splash?"  A man leaning at midnight over the Embankment wall: a sudden fling of his arms: a great splash in the water.  Surely, and not without reason, whoever was within sight and hearing (and there always seemed to be some one near) would at once rush to me and seize me.  In all probability they would think it was a baby.  What on earth would be the good of telling a London constable that I had come out into the cold and stolen down alone to the river to get rid of a pack of poetry?  I could almost hear his gruff, sneering laugh: "You tell that to the Marines, my son!"

So for I do not know how long I strayed up and down, increasingly fearful of being watched, summoning up my courage to take the plunge and quailing from it at the last moment.  At last I did it.  In the middle of Chelsea Bridge there are projecting circular bays with seats in them.  In an agony of decision I left the Embankment and hastened straight for the first of these.  When I reached it I knelt on the seat.  Looking over, I hesitated again. But I had reached the turning-point.  "What!" I thought savagely, "under the resolute mask that you show your friends is there really a shrinking and contemptible coward?  If you fail now, you must never hold your head up again.  Anyhow, what is you are hanged for it? Good God!  You worm, better men than you have gone to the gallows!"  With the courage of despair I took a heave.  The sack dropped sheer.  A vast splash.  Then silence fell again.  No one came.  I turned home; and as I walked I thought a little sadly of all those books falling into that old torrent, settling slowly down through the pitchy dark, and subsiding at last on the ooze of the bottom, there to lie forlorn and forgotten whilst the unconscious world of men went on.

Horrible bad books, poor innocent books, you are lying there still; covered, perhaps, with mud by this time, with only a stray rag of your sacking sticking out of the slime into the opaque brown tides.  Odes to Diana, Sonnets to Ethel, Dramas on the Love of Lancelot, Stanzas on a First Glimpse of Venice, you lie there in a living death, and your fate is perhaps worse than you deserved.  I was harsh with you.  I am sorry I did it.  But even if I had kept you, I will certainly say this: I should not have sent you to the soldiers.