[FICATHON] Pessimi Poetae, for likeadeuce
Title: Pessimi Poetae
Author: speak_me_fair
Play: Richard II
Recipient: likeadeuce
Characters: Harry Percy, Aumerle, Chaucer, Richard II, mention of Kate Mortimer.
Warnings: Bad Latin, worse poets, crack, drunkenness, non-explicit slash, mention of canon death.
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Catullus is a tit. Harry Percy is a worse one.
Chaucer doesn't mind evenings at court. He gets an evening of free wine out of it and often some sort of gift (usually monetary, and he's always grateful for that, however cheap it makes him feel a few hours later), and even if whatever pleasure he's bringing the King is as cold and hard and surface-glittering as everything else in the man's daily facade, it's more courtesy than most people are receiving from him these days.
So he'll take what he can get, and consider himself fortunate that so far, he hasn't committed some incomprehensible offence and got himself banished or imprisoned or had everything stripped from him in a moment of irritated pique.
Compared to all the things that could happen, court attendance is incredibly mild.
Unfortunately, he also tends to forget that being at court means other people, who aren't the King, don't particularly care about facades, and are not precisely - admirers - of his art.
People, in fact, like Harry Percy. Harry Percy, on which particular subject entire books could be written at this moment in time. Long books. Books detailing with enormous precision how exactly one conducts the most unsuccessful courtship known to mankind.
Chaucer considers that this is, in its own way, a curiously impressive achievement, especially being as the lady in question is obviously not averse to Percy himself, just to his ways of dancing attention on her.
Shortly afterwards, when Katherine Mortimer has left the hall and a depressed-looking Percy, and the would-be lover has come over to Chaucer's table in search for either bad company or more wine, or possibly just more wine than he is likely to get while waiting for a passing servant to notice the severity of his need, Chaucer revises his assessment of his feelings with regard to court rapidly upwards (or perhaps downwards, depending on one's perspective) from 'don't mind' to 'positively loathe'.
Because there are times when there is quite simply not enough wine in the world. And a conversation with a once-again-rejected and incredibly-sorry-for-himself Percy is definitely among them.
**
Harry Percy isn't quite sure as to why his every attempt to get on Kate Mortimer's good side is doomed to failure, but he thinks that it is quite possibly because a higher power has it well and truly in for him.
It's not that she actively hates him
(at least he doesn't think she does)
it's just that every time he tries to do something that works for other people, he makes a complete pig's ear of it.
Like the poetry.
The poetry with which he'd managed to completely insult her, and really, it wasn't his fault, and he doesn't see why she has to make a public issue of it, and he is really and truly going to kill Aumerle the next time he has a chance to talk to him properly, because how in God's name was he supposed to know that Catullus hadn't just written love-poems, but a whole ream of scurrilious verses as well? He'd wanted to impress Kate, not infuriate her.
Unfortunately, like every other time he's tried something which most people take for granted
(and he's never going anywhere near flowers again)
it's gone horribly wrong, and just like all those other times, Kate's decided to let him know where everyone can hear exactly how he's cocked it up.
It doesn't help that everyone, including the King, is having a good laugh at his expense - even if in Richard's case he's at least trying to conceal his amusement, Harry can still tell he finds it all incredibly funny, and it just adds to the humiliation that someone's even trying to be nice enough not to laugh out loud, and what with it being the King on top of that, life has just gone from miserable to unbearable.
It's a hot evening, and embarrassment has made him hotter, and if there's ever been a time in his life when he felt more uncomfortable and out-of-place than now, watching Kate leave the hall, he's damned if he can think of it. Stranded in a sea of people, all of whom now know most of his inborn deficiencies
(and quite a few that he'd have sworn blind until now he didn't have in the first place)
he's as unhappy as he's ever been in his life, and even thoughts of just what kind of violence he's going to wreak on Aumerle aren't doing much to cheer him up.
When he catches sight of Chaucer at one of the lower tables, it's almost a relief.
At least here's someone who'll be able to understand why poetry is so incomprehensible and annoying. And if he doesn't, well -
He should bloody well be told.
Besides, there's a faint chance he might be able to help Harry out - and at least he can be pretty sure it won't involve Latin. It might even involve things that rhyme and make sense, and even if they don't, he'll at least be able to say he tried to ask for something good.
Even if he might still have problems understanding why any of it matters in the first place.
**
"And poetry is useless but she seems to want me to do things like other people do things so you need to write me some, even if I think it's pointless, because she'll probably like it."
"Merciful God," mutters Chaucer, wondering exactly when everything got so thoroughly out of his control, and how he missed it happening.
"Because you could. And it wouldn't matter that it wasn't me. Because I'd have 'made the effort'." From the sharpened little edge to the last words, Chaucer guesses it's an accusation that's been made very recently indeed as to something which wasn't being done.
And Christ, he's starting to think in convoluted sentences that are just like the poor tortured instances being pushed at him, like the nose of a balky horse, by this would-be critic of all things excellent in language. It's quite simply utterly unfair.
"I don't write to command," he comes up with, uselessly, because all that gets him is a disbelieving look from the young Percy and a very pointed nod in the King's direction. "Yes, that's different."
He feels rather strongly that this is something he really shouldn't be forced to explain.
"Not commanding," Percy mutters. He looks about six, and that is so very very wrong, considering what he's just asked Chaucer for, that the poet feels his brain make a determined effort to escape into the drunken stupor he's been aiming for all evening and now, when it's here, really does not want or need. "Asking."
Fantastic.
"You're asking me -" oh God, why him, why is this his life, why? "to write you a love poem."
The eager nodding is in fact the precise opposite of encouragement.
"Can't you just -" go away and pretend we never had this terrible conversation and leave me to keep drinking - "use something already written?"
"I tried that." Percy looks a lot less like an earnest six-year-old and a lot more like someone who spends his days thinking about cutting people up with swords. It's actually an improvement, and God, isn't that a frightening prospect?
"It didn't go well?" Being as Chaucer just heard how well it went, it's a fairly redundant question, but it's also an irresistible one - if nothing else, just so he can watch the impressive shade of scarlet embarrassment someone's skin can go under the force of immediate memory.
Percy mutters something about Catullus being a tit. Chaucer feels a vague twinge of something like sympathy, and a strong and far less vague wish to never, ever be forced to consider or think about or, please God, hear just what exactly the bloody boy got his hands on in the first place. The hints he's now putting together from the snatches of diatribe he overheard are more than enough.
"Her Latin's much better than mine," Percy says eventually. Chaucer winces, because the myriad of horrors suddenly opened by that little admission is just painful.
"Ah."
"Might've called her a slut. Or Catullus did. Not sure."
"Oh."
"And I found that romance poem you wrote about that flower but it's - well. Honestly? It's depressing. Better than arse-licking, or whatever it was I ended up sending her, but still depressing."
"Er. Thanks. I think." Chaucer tries very, very hard not to laugh.
"I tried to find a happy bit in it, but they weren't about love when they were happy. The bits. I mean, sorry, the words. Not the people. The poetry bits that are words. So I can't use it."
"I see." He doesn't, really, but since it won't help him or this horrible conversation if he says so out loud, he's not going to try and ask for any kind of elucidation. He's terrified he might get it.
"And I don't think, anyway," Percy says, warming to his theme, "that she's going to like being compared to someone dead. Or think I'm ever going to go around being mournful."
Since the last is quite blatantly untrue, Chaucer abandons monosyllables for another drink. It's not a poetic kind of mournful, to be sure, but mournful Percy most certainly is.
"So can you?"
Chaucer gives up. It's easier.
"Yes," he says in defeat.
**
An hour later, he wonders when he went insane, because he must be completely mad to have even thought for one second about seriously trying to do this, and madder still to keep trying in the face of all opposition to metaphor or indeed nouns, let alone any further attempt at description which might, in fact, lead someone to consider that what is being produced merits the name of poetry.
Half an hour after that, he wonders why no-one has ever noticed Percy is insane, and unhealthily obsessed with swords and horses with it.
Five minutes after that not terribly startling instance of unwanted enlightenment, his evening gets unimaginably worse, because it turns out that he's not the first person Percy asked for help, and the last person he didask for help is the man responsible for introducing Percy to Catullus.
It's a fairly understandable grudge to hold, Chaucer has to admit, especially considering the things the Lady Katherine had been saying very loudly about illiterate idiots.
It's just unfortunate that the object of said grudge is the Duke of Aumerle.
**
Of all the things Aumerle has been forced to consider in his life, just how unbearable the advent of summer would make Richard has not, until now, been among them.
He supposes he should have expected it. He's not unfamiliar with the pain that even anniversaries of past joy can cause - that a vivid, unavoidable reminder of ever-present sorrow could be far worse should never have been from his mind.
And yet somehow it was, and somehow every display of it still is, and he was terribly, horrendously unprepared for the savagery with which Richard, so careful in public, met and is meeting it in private.
He cannot find a single way of ameliorating or assuaging Richard's grief.
He is finding it almost impossible to disguise his own misery.
The unexpected, highly vocal attack from Harry Percy comes as the first relief he has had in weeks - because here, finally, he can let something of his pent emotion escape.
Responsive anger may be a pale reflection of all that he feels.
It is infinitely preferable to his careful, self-imposed silence.
**
It's not that Aumerle is a particularly unpleasant or unkind man, Chaucer thinks. He just - doesn't respond well to being shouted at and accused of things it's almost certain he never intended in his life.
Not that he can think of anyone who does - after all, most of his long-ago rows with Philippa tended to start in much the same way - but Aumerle leads a life which is reasonably fraught at the best of times, and an exercise in a bolted mouth and chained tongue when things are normal, and absolutely unimaginably awful when they are at their worst, so it is not exactly surprising when he starts giving Percy more than as good a mouthful of abuse as he's getting.
Considering Percy's command of any language at all, Chaucer thinks rather uncharitably, this isn't very hard - but on the other hand, it might be something he wants to try and head off, because an open brawl in front of the King is probably not the best way for either of them to be seen.
He might, just possibly, have left it a little late.
"I don't like being made a fool of on purpose -"
"What makes you think I'd waste my time on that when you do it so perfectly well all on your own -"
"Anyone would think you wanted Kate for yourself -"
"And what makes you think I couldn't have her if I -"
"I think you both need to shut up right now," Chaucer cuts in a little desperately, because several people are looking over in their direction with a worrying amount of interest. Needless to say, it has no effect at all.
"She'd no more look at you than she'd -"
"Since she's certainly not interested in looking at you -"
"Listen, you jumped up little cata - m - mmf!" Percy's diatribe is cut off by a hand being clamped hard across his mouth. Chaucer's more than a bit surprised to find out the hand is, in fact, attached to his own arm.
"Seriously," he hisses, trying not to think of the way Percy's mouth is opening under his palm, because he's almost certain it's a prelude to his getting bitten, "everyone is looking at you."
It's going to be seconds, he just knows it, before that everyone includes a so far deliberately, implausibly oblivious King Richard. And since there is only so long that obliviousness can possibly be maintained even with effort (especially considering the volume at which something has just almost been said), time is running out for them all incredibly fast.
Percy mutters something very muffled that is more than likely the fact he doesn't care, and almost certainly has something about Chaucer's parentage thrown in for good measure, but at least it's better than teeth and biting and possible future infection and hand-amputation. Aumerle's whole face closes down into a sort of self-contained fury, which at least is quiet, thank God, and he lets out a slow, stuttering breath while he gets control of himself.
There is peaceful, blessed silence. Aumerle sits down. Everyone else loses interest - slowly, because Chaucer still has his hand over Percy's unstoppable mouth (mostly in absolute terror of what might come out of it once he lets go) - and they all go back to whatever the hell they were doing before, which quite honestly Chaucer couldn't care less about one way or the other as long as they get on with it and look somewhere else.
Richard continues to take an enormous interest in the middle distance.
Eventually, Percy taps Chaucer on the back of the wrist.
"Mmnn-nna sss-nnnfnn."
Chaucer charitably translates that as 'thank you so much for saving me from public mockery and an extreme instance of a display of royal wrath, and I promise to behave from now on', and lowers his hand.
"Sorry," Percy mutters as soon as he can talk again. Judging from the way he's now the one getting glared at, Chaucer's fairly sure the apology isn't aimed at him.
Aumerle shrugs. "Well. I've heard worse." He looks almost serene, before he smirks a little. "Only because you didn't quite get to say it, of course..."
Percy snorts. "Could say it again..."
"Yes, I think we'll go with a unanimous round of no you bloody well won't," Chaucer interjects as pleasantly as he can manage.
Aumerle laughs outright. "So what are you really up to, the pair of you?" he asks genially, and for some reason that is what reduces Percy to a stuttering incoherency that would have been a great deal more welcome several minutes ago, and Chaucer is left to explain.
He's not entirely certain he does a much better job of it than Percy's halting, half-finished syllables, but at least he manages to get part of the message across, because Aumerle's eyes widen in comprehension, and he nods with what seems, unbelievably, like sympathetic understanding.
"I really didn't know about your Latin," he says to Percy at last, and it's amazing how he can deliver apology and insult all in one little sentence.
Percy goes red, but stays quiet. There is, apparently, a God. Or possibly he's just realised how lucky he was to escape Richard's notice the first time, and has cottoned on to the fact that he's not going to be as fortunate the second time around. There's a distinct element of 'uncomfortably close to disaster no-one can ignore' in the air, and apparently even Percy can't ignore it completely.
Aumerle, probably from longer exposure to getting away with things, is evidently absolutely aware of his good fortune, and trying to compensate for what almost-happened by staying around and attempting pleasantries.
"Right," he says after a bit (far, far too cheerfully for Chaucer's peace of mind), "how can I help, then?"
Percy groans. Chaucer wants to join him, and restrains himself only by an enormous effort and the aid of swallowing most of another cup of wine.
"Please," he says fervently, "don't."
**
Aumerle's not that bad, Percy thinks, or at least he isn't once you get about half a gallon of wine into him. He's still superior and too-quick with words, and he still acts like he's got a thick glass wall between him and the world
(and Harry's really not going to think about that properly, or the why of it, because some things aren't up for discussion, and he knows if he thinks something he tends to say it pretty soon afterwards, so he's not thinking quite determinedly, and thank God for Chaucer earlier, because that was pretty close to it all, even if it wasn't exactly what he's not thinking about)
but he's all right as long as things stay superficial.
He's also brilliantly, amazingly unhelpful at romantic lyrics, but he's got a whole list of really filthy rhymes, and altogether it's a lot more fun than watching Chaucer try not to scream while he comes up with yet another poncey sentence that's not appropriate to Kate in the slightest.
Less inky, too, on the whole.
He doesn't notice when Chaucer excuses himself
(or at least only notices when there's no-one sitting next to him any more)
and he definitely doesn't pay any attention to the slightly sad pat to Aumerle's shoulder that the poet gives as he leaves.
It doesn't make any sense, anyway, so he doesn't see why he should worry about it.
No more than he's concerned with how very diligently Aumerle isn't looking anywhere near the dais.
It occurs to him that maybe he's getting a bit better at the whole glass wall thing himself, but then Aumerle comes up with a whole new list of words you can completely wreck, getting them to rhyme with Kate, and he's too busy laughing and being not-miserable or defeated or confused about how he's going wrong, and focusing on not spilling any more wine on either of them, to let his mind drift back to that again.
The hall's almost empty, but it's too hot to be tired even if Harry were capable of sleep with this much wine in his system, and it only makes sense to agree to carry the evening on in Aumerle's chambers.
He tries to tell himself, as they leave the hall, that he's not being as careful as Aumerle not to look over to where Richard remains alone on the dais, like a glittering effigy of who he should be, his blank, hard eyes always searching these days, and more than ever tonight
(Harry knows, though he refuses with all the sobriety left to him to acknowledge the fact)
for something none of them can see
(none of them have ever seen it or ever will, since Richard's bleak vista is his and his alone, and Harry thanks God for that whenever his thoughts even brush against that concept)
or will ever be able to give him.
He tells himself that it's only for support that he wraps an arm over Aumerle's broad shoulders in the corridor. He tells himself Aumerle only leans into him that little bit because of what was probably more than just half a gallon of wine.
He tells himself it's got nothing to do with him who breaks whose heart, because it's not his and so it's not important.
He tells himself that whatever happens next
(and he knows it's going to)
will have nothing to do with comfort or care, and all to do with the last vestiges of anger, and getting rid of them. They'd probably be practising sparring if it was actually light and they were a bit (a lot, if he's honest, a lot) more sober, and there's no difference.
He thinks.
He's good at telling himself what to think, after all. Just in case he ever says any of it aloud.
**
If Aumerle wishes that the hands on his body belonged to someone else, he never says.
If Harry suspects that wish, he never lets it show. He knows all too well how to make himself into something that can be enough for a moment.
The morning will be time enough for dislike to be resumed, and for words to take the place of knowing fingers and bitten skin; for those words to take the place of bruises that will fade long before memory quite manages the task of relinquishing; it will be time enough for amusement and affection and foul half-endearments to become threats.
It is easy, in the half-light of drunkenness and burgeoning lust, to dismiss that knowledge as mere imagining. It is easy to ignore what they know they are doing.
But even with all their deliberate, wilful, ignorance, they know that the gage has been thrown down between them long before it crashes into devastating reality.
**
Chaucer, sharing a chamber with three other people and determinedly grateful for the fact he's been given somewhere to sleep, thinks that it is one of life's greatest ironies that when he sees something which deserves to be given words, he cannot do so and hope to stay alive.
He thinks of a grief to which he once put an entire garden of adjectives to work
(I have of sorwe so gret won
That joye gete I never non... )
and how much it pales beside what he has just witnessed.
He thinks that he might have seen disaster where it waits.
He knows he will never be able to utter even a breathed hint of it.
He falls asleep with Richard's gilded, unmoving, impassive figure before his eyes.
He dreams of weeping, but when he wakes to a chill morning and the lowering promise of rain, he is dry-eyed, though his throat aches with something he has no desire to name.
He never speaks to Harry Percy or the duke who will become a traitor again.
And he mourns for Richard years before his death becomes a fact.
**
Harry wins his Kate.
It is his own particular irony that this is when he allows himself to begin to think.
It is only when he finally gains what he longs for, that he recognises his part in what was to come. It is only then that he lets himself consider what he might have lost
(integrity, honesty, all the things he prides himself on possessing in abundance)
in the very moment of accepting Aumerle's unspoken offer.
He simply never finds the words to explain it. He only finds his way back to all-consuming, familiar rage, and a means to express it that even he cannot fault in himself.
He has always been better with a sword, after all.
I seyde 'Mercy!' and no more.
Hyt nas no game; hyt sat me sore.
Author: speak_me_fair
Play: Richard II
Recipient: likeadeuce
Characters: Harry Percy, Aumerle, Chaucer, Richard II, mention of Kate Mortimer.
Warnings: Bad Latin, worse poets, crack, drunkenness, non-explicit slash, mention of canon death.
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Catullus is a tit. Harry Percy is a worse one.
Chaucer doesn't mind evenings at court. He gets an evening of free wine out of it and often some sort of gift (usually monetary, and he's always grateful for that, however cheap it makes him feel a few hours later), and even if whatever pleasure he's bringing the King is as cold and hard and surface-glittering as everything else in the man's daily facade, it's more courtesy than most people are receiving from him these days.
So he'll take what he can get, and consider himself fortunate that so far, he hasn't committed some incomprehensible offence and got himself banished or imprisoned or had everything stripped from him in a moment of irritated pique.
Compared to all the things that could happen, court attendance is incredibly mild.
Unfortunately, he also tends to forget that being at court means other people, who aren't the King, don't particularly care about facades, and are not precisely - admirers - of his art.
People, in fact, like Harry Percy. Harry Percy, on which particular subject entire books could be written at this moment in time. Long books. Books detailing with enormous precision how exactly one conducts the most unsuccessful courtship known to mankind.
Chaucer considers that this is, in its own way, a curiously impressive achievement, especially being as the lady in question is obviously not averse to Percy himself, just to his ways of dancing attention on her.
Shortly afterwards, when Katherine Mortimer has left the hall and a depressed-looking Percy, and the would-be lover has come over to Chaucer's table in search for either bad company or more wine, or possibly just more wine than he is likely to get while waiting for a passing servant to notice the severity of his need, Chaucer revises his assessment of his feelings with regard to court rapidly upwards (or perhaps downwards, depending on one's perspective) from 'don't mind' to 'positively loathe'.
Because there are times when there is quite simply not enough wine in the world. And a conversation with a once-again-rejected and incredibly-sorry-for-himself Percy is definitely among them.
**
Harry Percy isn't quite sure as to why his every attempt to get on Kate Mortimer's good side is doomed to failure, but he thinks that it is quite possibly because a higher power has it well and truly in for him.
It's not that she actively hates him
(at least he doesn't think she does)
it's just that every time he tries to do something that works for other people, he makes a complete pig's ear of it.
Like the poetry.
The poetry with which he'd managed to completely insult her, and really, it wasn't his fault, and he doesn't see why she has to make a public issue of it, and he is really and truly going to kill Aumerle the next time he has a chance to talk to him properly, because how in God's name was he supposed to know that Catullus hadn't just written love-poems, but a whole ream of scurrilious verses as well? He'd wanted to impress Kate, not infuriate her.
Unfortunately, like every other time he's tried something which most people take for granted
(and he's never going anywhere near flowers again)
it's gone horribly wrong, and just like all those other times, Kate's decided to let him know where everyone can hear exactly how he's cocked it up.
It doesn't help that everyone, including the King, is having a good laugh at his expense - even if in Richard's case he's at least trying to conceal his amusement, Harry can still tell he finds it all incredibly funny, and it just adds to the humiliation that someone's even trying to be nice enough not to laugh out loud, and what with it being the King on top of that, life has just gone from miserable to unbearable.
It's a hot evening, and embarrassment has made him hotter, and if there's ever been a time in his life when he felt more uncomfortable and out-of-place than now, watching Kate leave the hall, he's damned if he can think of it. Stranded in a sea of people, all of whom now know most of his inborn deficiencies
(and quite a few that he'd have sworn blind until now he didn't have in the first place)
he's as unhappy as he's ever been in his life, and even thoughts of just what kind of violence he's going to wreak on Aumerle aren't doing much to cheer him up.
When he catches sight of Chaucer at one of the lower tables, it's almost a relief.
At least here's someone who'll be able to understand why poetry is so incomprehensible and annoying. And if he doesn't, well -
He should bloody well be told.
Besides, there's a faint chance he might be able to help Harry out - and at least he can be pretty sure it won't involve Latin. It might even involve things that rhyme and make sense, and even if they don't, he'll at least be able to say he tried to ask for something good.
Even if he might still have problems understanding why any of it matters in the first place.
**
"And poetry is useless but she seems to want me to do things like other people do things so you need to write me some, even if I think it's pointless, because she'll probably like it."
"Merciful God," mutters Chaucer, wondering exactly when everything got so thoroughly out of his control, and how he missed it happening.
"Because you could. And it wouldn't matter that it wasn't me. Because I'd have 'made the effort'." From the sharpened little edge to the last words, Chaucer guesses it's an accusation that's been made very recently indeed as to something which wasn't being done.
And Christ, he's starting to think in convoluted sentences that are just like the poor tortured instances being pushed at him, like the nose of a balky horse, by this would-be critic of all things excellent in language. It's quite simply utterly unfair.
"I don't write to command," he comes up with, uselessly, because all that gets him is a disbelieving look from the young Percy and a very pointed nod in the King's direction. "Yes, that's different."
He feels rather strongly that this is something he really shouldn't be forced to explain.
"Not commanding," Percy mutters. He looks about six, and that is so very very wrong, considering what he's just asked Chaucer for, that the poet feels his brain make a determined effort to escape into the drunken stupor he's been aiming for all evening and now, when it's here, really does not want or need. "Asking."
Fantastic.
"You're asking me -" oh God, why him, why is this his life, why? "to write you a love poem."
The eager nodding is in fact the precise opposite of encouragement.
"Can't you just -" go away and pretend we never had this terrible conversation and leave me to keep drinking - "use something already written?"
"I tried that." Percy looks a lot less like an earnest six-year-old and a lot more like someone who spends his days thinking about cutting people up with swords. It's actually an improvement, and God, isn't that a frightening prospect?
"It didn't go well?" Being as Chaucer just heard how well it went, it's a fairly redundant question, but it's also an irresistible one - if nothing else, just so he can watch the impressive shade of scarlet embarrassment someone's skin can go under the force of immediate memory.
Percy mutters something about Catullus being a tit. Chaucer feels a vague twinge of something like sympathy, and a strong and far less vague wish to never, ever be forced to consider or think about or, please God, hear just what exactly the bloody boy got his hands on in the first place. The hints he's now putting together from the snatches of diatribe he overheard are more than enough.
"Her Latin's much better than mine," Percy says eventually. Chaucer winces, because the myriad of horrors suddenly opened by that little admission is just painful.
"Ah."
"Might've called her a slut. Or Catullus did. Not sure."
"Oh."
"And I found that romance poem you wrote about that flower but it's - well. Honestly? It's depressing. Better than arse-licking, or whatever it was I ended up sending her, but still depressing."
"Er. Thanks. I think." Chaucer tries very, very hard not to laugh.
"I tried to find a happy bit in it, but they weren't about love when they were happy. The bits. I mean, sorry, the words. Not the people. The poetry bits that are words. So I can't use it."
"I see." He doesn't, really, but since it won't help him or this horrible conversation if he says so out loud, he's not going to try and ask for any kind of elucidation. He's terrified he might get it.
"And I don't think, anyway," Percy says, warming to his theme, "that she's going to like being compared to someone dead. Or think I'm ever going to go around being mournful."
Since the last is quite blatantly untrue, Chaucer abandons monosyllables for another drink. It's not a poetic kind of mournful, to be sure, but mournful Percy most certainly is.
"So can you?"
Chaucer gives up. It's easier.
"Yes," he says in defeat.
**
An hour later, he wonders when he went insane, because he must be completely mad to have even thought for one second about seriously trying to do this, and madder still to keep trying in the face of all opposition to metaphor or indeed nouns, let alone any further attempt at description which might, in fact, lead someone to consider that what is being produced merits the name of poetry.
Half an hour after that, he wonders why no-one has ever noticed Percy is insane, and unhealthily obsessed with swords and horses with it.
Five minutes after that not terribly startling instance of unwanted enlightenment, his evening gets unimaginably worse, because it turns out that he's not the first person Percy asked for help, and the last person he didask for help is the man responsible for introducing Percy to Catullus.
It's a fairly understandable grudge to hold, Chaucer has to admit, especially considering the things the Lady Katherine had been saying very loudly about illiterate idiots.
It's just unfortunate that the object of said grudge is the Duke of Aumerle.
**
Of all the things Aumerle has been forced to consider in his life, just how unbearable the advent of summer would make Richard has not, until now, been among them.
He supposes he should have expected it. He's not unfamiliar with the pain that even anniversaries of past joy can cause - that a vivid, unavoidable reminder of ever-present sorrow could be far worse should never have been from his mind.
And yet somehow it was, and somehow every display of it still is, and he was terribly, horrendously unprepared for the savagery with which Richard, so careful in public, met and is meeting it in private.
He cannot find a single way of ameliorating or assuaging Richard's grief.
He is finding it almost impossible to disguise his own misery.
The unexpected, highly vocal attack from Harry Percy comes as the first relief he has had in weeks - because here, finally, he can let something of his pent emotion escape.
Responsive anger may be a pale reflection of all that he feels.
It is infinitely preferable to his careful, self-imposed silence.
**
It's not that Aumerle is a particularly unpleasant or unkind man, Chaucer thinks. He just - doesn't respond well to being shouted at and accused of things it's almost certain he never intended in his life.
Not that he can think of anyone who does - after all, most of his long-ago rows with Philippa tended to start in much the same way - but Aumerle leads a life which is reasonably fraught at the best of times, and an exercise in a bolted mouth and chained tongue when things are normal, and absolutely unimaginably awful when they are at their worst, so it is not exactly surprising when he starts giving Percy more than as good a mouthful of abuse as he's getting.
Considering Percy's command of any language at all, Chaucer thinks rather uncharitably, this isn't very hard - but on the other hand, it might be something he wants to try and head off, because an open brawl in front of the King is probably not the best way for either of them to be seen.
He might, just possibly, have left it a little late.
"I don't like being made a fool of on purpose -"
"What makes you think I'd waste my time on that when you do it so perfectly well all on your own -"
"Anyone would think you wanted Kate for yourself -"
"And what makes you think I couldn't have her if I -"
"I think you both need to shut up right now," Chaucer cuts in a little desperately, because several people are looking over in their direction with a worrying amount of interest. Needless to say, it has no effect at all.
"She'd no more look at you than she'd -"
"Since she's certainly not interested in looking at you -"
"Listen, you jumped up little cata - m - mmf!" Percy's diatribe is cut off by a hand being clamped hard across his mouth. Chaucer's more than a bit surprised to find out the hand is, in fact, attached to his own arm.
"Seriously," he hisses, trying not to think of the way Percy's mouth is opening under his palm, because he's almost certain it's a prelude to his getting bitten, "everyone is looking at you."
It's going to be seconds, he just knows it, before that everyone includes a so far deliberately, implausibly oblivious King Richard. And since there is only so long that obliviousness can possibly be maintained even with effort (especially considering the volume at which something has just almost been said), time is running out for them all incredibly fast.
Percy mutters something very muffled that is more than likely the fact he doesn't care, and almost certainly has something about Chaucer's parentage thrown in for good measure, but at least it's better than teeth and biting and possible future infection and hand-amputation. Aumerle's whole face closes down into a sort of self-contained fury, which at least is quiet, thank God, and he lets out a slow, stuttering breath while he gets control of himself.
There is peaceful, blessed silence. Aumerle sits down. Everyone else loses interest - slowly, because Chaucer still has his hand over Percy's unstoppable mouth (mostly in absolute terror of what might come out of it once he lets go) - and they all go back to whatever the hell they were doing before, which quite honestly Chaucer couldn't care less about one way or the other as long as they get on with it and look somewhere else.
Richard continues to take an enormous interest in the middle distance.
Eventually, Percy taps Chaucer on the back of the wrist.
"Mmnn-nna sss-nnnfnn."
Chaucer charitably translates that as 'thank you so much for saving me from public mockery and an extreme instance of a display of royal wrath, and I promise to behave from now on', and lowers his hand.
"Sorry," Percy mutters as soon as he can talk again. Judging from the way he's now the one getting glared at, Chaucer's fairly sure the apology isn't aimed at him.
Aumerle shrugs. "Well. I've heard worse." He looks almost serene, before he smirks a little. "Only because you didn't quite get to say it, of course..."
Percy snorts. "Could say it again..."
"Yes, I think we'll go with a unanimous round of no you bloody well won't," Chaucer interjects as pleasantly as he can manage.
Aumerle laughs outright. "So what are you really up to, the pair of you?" he asks genially, and for some reason that is what reduces Percy to a stuttering incoherency that would have been a great deal more welcome several minutes ago, and Chaucer is left to explain.
He's not entirely certain he does a much better job of it than Percy's halting, half-finished syllables, but at least he manages to get part of the message across, because Aumerle's eyes widen in comprehension, and he nods with what seems, unbelievably, like sympathetic understanding.
"I really didn't know about your Latin," he says to Percy at last, and it's amazing how he can deliver apology and insult all in one little sentence.
Percy goes red, but stays quiet. There is, apparently, a God. Or possibly he's just realised how lucky he was to escape Richard's notice the first time, and has cottoned on to the fact that he's not going to be as fortunate the second time around. There's a distinct element of 'uncomfortably close to disaster no-one can ignore' in the air, and apparently even Percy can't ignore it completely.
Aumerle, probably from longer exposure to getting away with things, is evidently absolutely aware of his good fortune, and trying to compensate for what almost-happened by staying around and attempting pleasantries.
"Right," he says after a bit (far, far too cheerfully for Chaucer's peace of mind), "how can I help, then?"
Percy groans. Chaucer wants to join him, and restrains himself only by an enormous effort and the aid of swallowing most of another cup of wine.
"Please," he says fervently, "don't."
**
Aumerle's not that bad, Percy thinks, or at least he isn't once you get about half a gallon of wine into him. He's still superior and too-quick with words, and he still acts like he's got a thick glass wall between him and the world
(and Harry's really not going to think about that properly, or the why of it, because some things aren't up for discussion, and he knows if he thinks something he tends to say it pretty soon afterwards, so he's not thinking quite determinedly, and thank God for Chaucer earlier, because that was pretty close to it all, even if it wasn't exactly what he's not thinking about)
but he's all right as long as things stay superficial.
He's also brilliantly, amazingly unhelpful at romantic lyrics, but he's got a whole list of really filthy rhymes, and altogether it's a lot more fun than watching Chaucer try not to scream while he comes up with yet another poncey sentence that's not appropriate to Kate in the slightest.
Less inky, too, on the whole.
He doesn't notice when Chaucer excuses himself
(or at least only notices when there's no-one sitting next to him any more)
and he definitely doesn't pay any attention to the slightly sad pat to Aumerle's shoulder that the poet gives as he leaves.
It doesn't make any sense, anyway, so he doesn't see why he should worry about it.
No more than he's concerned with how very diligently Aumerle isn't looking anywhere near the dais.
It occurs to him that maybe he's getting a bit better at the whole glass wall thing himself, but then Aumerle comes up with a whole new list of words you can completely wreck, getting them to rhyme with Kate, and he's too busy laughing and being not-miserable or defeated or confused about how he's going wrong, and focusing on not spilling any more wine on either of them, to let his mind drift back to that again.
The hall's almost empty, but it's too hot to be tired even if Harry were capable of sleep with this much wine in his system, and it only makes sense to agree to carry the evening on in Aumerle's chambers.
He tries to tell himself, as they leave the hall, that he's not being as careful as Aumerle not to look over to where Richard remains alone on the dais, like a glittering effigy of who he should be, his blank, hard eyes always searching these days, and more than ever tonight
(Harry knows, though he refuses with all the sobriety left to him to acknowledge the fact)
for something none of them can see
(none of them have ever seen it or ever will, since Richard's bleak vista is his and his alone, and Harry thanks God for that whenever his thoughts even brush against that concept)
or will ever be able to give him.
He tells himself that it's only for support that he wraps an arm over Aumerle's broad shoulders in the corridor. He tells himself Aumerle only leans into him that little bit because of what was probably more than just half a gallon of wine.
He tells himself it's got nothing to do with him who breaks whose heart, because it's not his and so it's not important.
He tells himself that whatever happens next
(and he knows it's going to)
will have nothing to do with comfort or care, and all to do with the last vestiges of anger, and getting rid of them. They'd probably be practising sparring if it was actually light and they were a bit (a lot, if he's honest, a lot) more sober, and there's no difference.
He thinks.
He's good at telling himself what to think, after all. Just in case he ever says any of it aloud.
**
If Aumerle wishes that the hands on his body belonged to someone else, he never says.
If Harry suspects that wish, he never lets it show. He knows all too well how to make himself into something that can be enough for a moment.
The morning will be time enough for dislike to be resumed, and for words to take the place of knowing fingers and bitten skin; for those words to take the place of bruises that will fade long before memory quite manages the task of relinquishing; it will be time enough for amusement and affection and foul half-endearments to become threats.
It is easy, in the half-light of drunkenness and burgeoning lust, to dismiss that knowledge as mere imagining. It is easy to ignore what they know they are doing.
But even with all their deliberate, wilful, ignorance, they know that the gage has been thrown down between them long before it crashes into devastating reality.
**
Chaucer, sharing a chamber with three other people and determinedly grateful for the fact he's been given somewhere to sleep, thinks that it is one of life's greatest ironies that when he sees something which deserves to be given words, he cannot do so and hope to stay alive.
He thinks of a grief to which he once put an entire garden of adjectives to work
(I have of sorwe so gret won
That joye gete I never non... )
and how much it pales beside what he has just witnessed.
He thinks that he might have seen disaster where it waits.
He knows he will never be able to utter even a breathed hint of it.
He falls asleep with Richard's gilded, unmoving, impassive figure before his eyes.
He dreams of weeping, but when he wakes to a chill morning and the lowering promise of rain, he is dry-eyed, though his throat aches with something he has no desire to name.
He never speaks to Harry Percy or the duke who will become a traitor again.
And he mourns for Richard years before his death becomes a fact.
**
Harry wins his Kate.
It is his own particular irony that this is when he allows himself to begin to think.
It is only when he finally gains what he longs for, that he recognises his part in what was to come. It is only then that he lets himself consider what he might have lost
(integrity, honesty, all the things he prides himself on possessing in abundance)
in the very moment of accepting Aumerle's unspoken offer.
He simply never finds the words to explain it. He only finds his way back to all-consuming, familiar rage, and a means to express it that even he cannot fault in himself.
He has always been better with a sword, after all.
I seyde 'Mercy!' and no more.
Hyt nas no game; hyt sat me sore.