Stuck in a Corner

Renard returns to his little house in Sebilles.

The cupboards are bare and water-pots are empty. Out in the small yard, under his horse’s lean-to, Renard checks beneath a brick to find a small cache of lucras. It’s his stipend from the Queen. In addition to keeping the house rented, she has ensured him a baseline of money, despite the extreme chilliness that has developed between him and her over these past years.

He would like to be grateful, but it is a gesture borne of politics, not of liking for Renard, since he has thoroughly trashed his relationship with the Queen over this past decade. As it stands, even this charity carries a bitter sting that reminds him of failure.

Evening is seeping into the sky. It’s late, and the markets will be closing. As Renard silently counts the lucras, his hungry horse nudges him with her snout. Renard winces with guilt as he pats her and assures he will go shopping tomorrow.

It’s a necessary reassurance, since he had been seriously thinking of withdrawing into his house, curling into a ball, and hiding here from the whole universe.

Renard stares over the street. Neighbours are going about their lives — though relieved that none have come to talk, some have noticed Renard. He clenches his fist around the lucras. With his horse hitched in the yard, there’s nothing he could have done to stop his presence from leaking out. This one isn’t his fault.

But he has to say — he really, truly, does not want to go out to town, among the everyday bustle of people, and know that they are staring at him with awe or expectation, for being in the presence of that fabled Renard Cox.

Hoho! Indeed, it is I, that faultless peerless monster slayer upon whom you may all depend! No, he’d sooner puke than put on that bravado, knowing how this persona has failed to glorify Isobel. But he also hasn’t the will to snap and be churlish, with that suicidal lust to throw himself into the maw of some fanged monster. If he has to be in conversation with anyone, he is presently clueless as to how present himself.

Grunting a sigh, Renard fetches his pail and goes to the well for water. It is late and quiet enough that the task is not too difficult and not too observed, and Renard soon returns home to cuddle his horse, kiss her cheek, and let her have a bucket of water before retiring to bed for the night.

Renard wakes the next morning and goes to the market.

The gazes he feared aren’t as oppressive as he thought, but still assuredly present. For every person whose eyes meet and slide off him with passing curiosity, there is another who pauses to whisper to their companions: I think that was Sir Renard…

He has learned to shrug off whispers during his time as the Iron King’s cavalier. It still is not comforting to know that, for all he has done, his position has not shifted hugely since then, and he still feels so awkward in his own home.

Shaking off his thoughts, Renard arrives at the market. The mundane routine of picking out carrots, tomatoes, cabbage, radish, and bread unfolds, when, as he goes to purchase meat, the sight of a certain figure working at a certain stall makes him pause and stare.

It’s a young woman in gloves and a headscarf, working away selling eggs and live poultry, who would be likely attractive if she weren’t wrangling dusty chickens and wearing a dowdy work-frock. Pedestrians bump and shuffle past Renard. Indeed, there is a subtle grace in her harried movements as she serves her patrons that is slightly reminiscent of Isobel.

Renard shakes his head clear, when the woman registers him and startles.

“No fear, my good lass. I mistook you for a woman I know," Renard assures.

She stares at him uncomfortably, then spreads her hands welcomingly over a tray of eggs.

“Rather an enchanting one, too," Renard continues to himself.

She sighs, glances aside at the stall’s other clerk, an old man preoccupied bartering with a customer, and sweeps off the headscarf just enough to show the line of her scalp and the flow of her hair. It is in properly seeing the full frame of her face that Renard recognises—

“—Isobel!?" he squawks.

“What brought you here?" she hisses.

“Only my stomach? I ask that of you!" Renard pushes forward to the front of the stall, brow scrunched in confusion. He questions if she has been blackmailed to become some kind of egg-servant.

“No, this is my job," she insists, a crowd of impatient customers accumulating behind Renard.

But what does Isobel need a job for! The money Renard gives her should—

The older man at the stall interrupts the conversation, snapping that Isobel stop chatting and get back to serving the customers. Renard in turn snaps at him — Silence! I have my business with her. The man, recognising Renard, backs off, intimidated.

Isobel will not leave on her shift. She promises to rendezvous afterward, which Renard can only agree to, despite his frustration.

Renard returns home, feeds his horse, and marches to the rendezvous point.

It is in a small park just outside the market, at a bench under a gazebo on a gentle hill. Renard sits and crosses his arms as he scowls down at the wood of the bench.

What else has she been hiding from him. Though largely unoccupied on a weekday, some families do wander about the park green below. Renard shifts uncomfortably in his seat.

Footsteps crunch on the gravel path leading to the gazebo — Renard glances behind him, and is stricken with immeasurable relief to see Isobel, no longer in that dowdy scarf or frock, but carrying two yoghurt pastries. He had been braced for her to ditch him. She offers one to Renard.

“What is this," he says flatly.

Isobel shrugs.

Renard’s flat stare shifts from the pastry to her.

“I can’t have both," she insists.

Renard rolls his eyes, slaps his arm, and accepts the pastry. An awkward moment stretches as she sits down opposite him, neither of them certain of where to begin.

“So, you have been lying to me," starts Renard.

Isobel slumps with exhaustion, then sweeps her bangs off her face. “Renard, what did you think I was doing?"

The intensity of her stare makes Renard flinch with guilt. He has done something wrong, though he cannot tell where.

“I just do not understand," Renard admits, letting that guilt show through. “An arrangement it may have been, but surely… what became of the money?"

Renard gestures to her outfit. She is wearing a simple dress that is pleasant and flattering, but not eyecatching, and in no way comparable to the dress of nobles or even decently-off businessmen.

Receptive, Isobel tells that she has been saving the money. She then presents from a satchel a notebook full of papers, covered in impressively accurate diagrams of, and impressively realistic drawings of, animals from the local region. Thorough observations are noted on such things as how they move or what they like to eat — the sheer detail of it, beyond professional, leaves Renard dumbfounded.

Dumbfounded, and hurt. If she has such incredible skill to catalogue creatures like this, and can even write this articulately, or draw this proficiently, what has she been doing all this time as a prostitute?

“Have you struggled with your tutors?" he asks.

“I’m self-taught."

It’s the realisation that he never knew anything of this person that stings that most. As far as it matters to her life, Renard is astoundingly expendable.

Isobel quietly pages through the notebook, then closes it to pack it away.

“With talent as that, you would excel in a guild. In any practice of pen that you wish," Renard notes. “The Queen, too, I know, yet seeks surveyors for buffalo."

Isobel’s lip quirks awkwardly as she pauses to stare at the book’s cover.

Slowly, she shakes her head and explains that to a real guild, these are all scribbles. She probably could apply her talents in other ways that would garner her more stability and more of a position in society, but she also doesn’t see the point in that. The thought of being constrained in her work, and never sure if she was doing something because she wanted to do it, or because she believed in it, or because she thought others wanted it or told her to do it, sickens her deeply. Further, other people are already doing what she would do, but more proficiently, so it’s not as if society needs her.

It’s been far more peaceful, to quietly do what I do, Isobel says, than to compete against others whose ways are alien to her anyway.

What a waste of potential! Renard thinks, though parts of what she says do resonate. What she may be saying is that, similarly to how it overwhelms him to try and be a nobleman or other figure of high public standing, she is most comfortable being a nobody.

That being said, fame and reputation are an inevitable result of significant action. There’s nothing inherently negative or frightening to being someone who commands positive influence that others look up to or rely on. Renard just wishes he could feel he deserved such a position, and was filling it correctly.

Isobel packs away her notebook.

She truly could excel with her talent. Even if she doubts her worth, some refinement under a guild would turn these ‘scribbles’ into an encyclopedia kept in royal libraries. But she would simply rather be an inconsequential prostitute.

Renard chuckles dimly. An inconsequential prostitute who works for perhaps an hour a week and makes thousands of lucras a month, free in coin, time, and responsibility to do whatever she wishes, because she worked the right person! Though not as glamorous as his woman in gold, perhaps Renard truly has enabled substantial luxuries for Isobel — not that the idea makes him especially proud, knowing the coward she is beneath that profession.

“You play that grocer as a fiddle, to find fun in his daily toil."

She grins a shy, cheeky grin. Renard chomps at his pastry.

“What an ugly spirit you are," he concludes.

Still as if it were a game, Isobel’s eyes brighten. She smiles a captivating smile, leans forward on the bench, and lays her arms to frame her breasts, which are pressed together. The face of the woman staring at him from across the table may have dipped down from out of the heavens and filled the whole sky, for how it dominates his attention. This is exactly the muse he dreamed about, and wrote about, and adored enough in his body and thoughts to live for, many times over.

Disgust strikes Renard at this move. He rises from the bench, marches over the gravel, and throws the last of his pastry in the wastebin as part of his departure.

A voice behind him calls, divorced from any angelic visual, laughing but playfully confused, “Renard, I love you! See you whenever!"