Week 12 Storytelling: What the Heart Desires

(Britomart, by Walter Crane, via Wikimedia Commons)

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Author's note: This story is a backstory to the events that occur in the section of Spenser's The Faerie Queene that describes the trials of Britomart. Britomart is an awesome, awesome princess who, one day, sneaks a look in Merlin's mirror and sees an image of the man she is destined to wed. Falling instantly in love, she vows to go in search of him, and in the process gain fame and glory--which she does! Her companion on her adventures is an old lady named Glauce, who was her nurse when she was young.

I chose to tell the story of how Glauce came to be Britomart's nurse because I really wondered what events in Glauce's life had led her to be a) the nurse to the princess, b) loyal enough to the princess to help her in all her wishes, and c) competent enough to dress both Britomart and herself in full suits of armor and know how to wield a sword. None of Glauce's back story is really explained in the source story, so I decided that she had been a knight, and had fought with Britomart's grandmother in the wars (nothing about Britomart's grandmother is mentioned in the source story, either, so I made all of this up), who had died protecting Glauce on the battlefield, and that's why an old nurse was willing and able to dress up in a suit of armor and take up a sword and go traveling across the whole world with a headstrong princess.

Anyway, without further ado, here is the story...

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The King and Queen hired me to raise Britomart because I was the only living woman in memory who had picked up a sword and shield and fought for my kingdom, and Britomart was the only one-year-old in living memory who had ever been as stubborn as she was. Maybe they had thought at the time it was my battle training that would give me the upper hand in raising their child, but really it was my firm promise, given to her the first time we met—her in fine swaddling clothes, sucking on her fingers, eyes wide and brow determined, and me in the clothes I wore to haul sacks of grain from the barns to the kitchen—that I would aid her in any area she chose to pursue.

The King and Queen smiled at me, gave me a room in Britomart’s quarters and a closet full of clothing it would be hard to walk down the hall in, much less to the barn, and left me with the baby. The moment they left the room, Britomart started to cry.

She cried for hours that night. I tried everything—holding her (she flailed until I put her down), changing her swaddling cloth (it was dry), singing a soft song (my voice was terrible, and she cried harder)—but the watchman cried one and then he cried two and finally, long past his cry of three, Britomart wailed herself to sleep.

I sat on a chair beside her crib for a while after, watching her little chest rise and fall with each breath she took. My legs ached from pacing and my ears rang from her piercing cries. Exhaustion pulled at my eyelids.

“I fought with your grandmother, child,” I murmured to her, my voice scarcely louder than the ivy rustling outside the window. “She could fight a battle all night and fall asleep not five minutes after victory was declared. She would be proud.”

Then I fell into the deepest, most dreamless sleep I’d had since the wars.

The reprieve was short-lived, of course. Britomart was up again at five, and as soon as she had opened her eyes she was crying again.

I called for a doctor, who said there was nothing wrong with the child except perhaps a bit of colic, and maybe I should try putting some hot pebbles wrapped in a blanket on her belly. Britomart screamed harder. The maid who came in while I was hurriedly pulling the blanket off said her sister had raised two colicky babies and the only thing that had worked for her was rocking them a certain way for as long as it took to calm them: she demonstrated. For a hopeful second Britomart fell quiet in amazed surprise, and then started crying harder than ever. After a while, the maid, apologetically, gave her back to me and left to do the rest of her chores.

Standing there, attempting to match the rocking motion the maid had been showing me, my head pounding and my jaw aching from clenching it so hard, I realized it was strange that I hadn’t yet seen the King or Queen this morning. It also occurred to me that Britomart’s crying was only as loud as it was because of the stone walls of the room. Outside, it would be much quieter. So I dressed her in the least ornate swaddling cloth I could find and, still in my barn clothes—there hadn’t been time to change since the previous afternoon—I set out to the gardens.

As suspected, her misery was much less amplified outside. She even calmed a bit when she saw the flowers, although after we'd passed it seemed she had been most interested in the gardener, who was trimming the bushes into fearsome shapes with a pair of arm-length clipping blades. He started when he heard us, nearly slicing his arm open, and Britomart quieted again.

This gave me another idea, and we ambled our way toward the barns, Britomart’s incredible lungs turning heads all the way. We entered and I took a breath of musty hay and friendly horse. I went to the back wall.

She went silent when she saw the armor.

It hung on the back wall: countless suits and faded blades of swords and spears, glinting as far as the eye could see. At the center hung a suit of women’s armor, lovingly oiled, a simple but well-wrought sword and sheath on one side and a long, strong spear on the other.

“Child,” I murmured, “That’s your grandmother’s armor. She died defending my life, as I would die defending yours.”

It was three weeks before she cried again, and that was only because her swaddling clothes were wet.

We still had disagreements, of course, but those were ameliorated over time. It took Britomart three years to discern that my lack of orders was not at all an invitation for her to give me any, and six to stop falling out of every tree and into every available fight. As she got older and better at recognizing that when I asked things in a certain way it was better if she listened, things became easier.

Years later, when she gazed into Merlin’s mirror and fell in love with the image of the man destined to become her husband, I took a breath and led her to the barns again. There I dressed her in her grandmother’s mail and put her grandmother’s spear in her hand. Then I dressed in my old mail, and took up my sword, and followed her out into the world.

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Source: Stories from the Faerie Queene by Mary Macleod, with drawings by A. G. Walker (1916). Untextbook.