Chapter Text
Clarine doesn't remember her mother much, just her brushing her hair every morning and a soft lullaby sung to her at night, but other than that nothing, she passed away when she was five and her father wouldn't tell her why. After that things changed, from the moment after her funeral her father got a tutor in etiquette. She learnt the so-called ways of the lady from what to dress to what to say day in and day out.
When she was around ten and would walk from the tutor to her estate home she would pass a field, and on the field a lot of the young stable hands would mess around with swords and axes, she would stop and watch them until finally they invited her over one day and they began to show her some moves. It became a daily thing for the next three years as she learnt more and more defence, mostly with an axe.
On the eve of her thirteenth birthday her father sat her down and told her she needed to start courting.
"When? Most girls don't start until they are in their eighteenth year," she asked.
"Now, you are my only child, I need you to marry and have children to bring more wealth to the family," he tells her.
"What if I don't want to?" she questions.
"You don't get that choice," he tells her.
It was from then on she became aware of the hardships of being a woman. It was her duty to marry for her family, marry someone of power just for wealth and fame, she would have no choice in it.
From there onwards she would meet with suitors who would offer her father money. The youngest suitor was fifteen, the oldest was forty. With each and every man she met she found a way to scare them off, whether it was with mindless chatter or putting bugs in their beds. It was her duty to marry. But she did not listen to that duty, she listened to her heart, and that was her tragic flaw.
When Clarine was fifteen she took a liking to horse-riding, she spent days just riding through the meadows but also spent a lot of time in the stables. There she met Lionel.
Lionel was her first love. Her true love as she says. He had sandy brown hair and green eyes and a joyful laugh. He was quick to compliment her every day and then he began to bring flowers and from flowers came him riding off with her and then that to picnics, then sneaking off at night to laugh and sing in the meadow. Their meadow. The same place he first kissed her underneath the stars they felt so safe under, where it was just them.
One night they had been in the meadow one night, stargazing, talking about plans to run away together and it was just beautiful, that moment.
"We could go south, to Esceter, there's a town on the border, Ealdor," Lionel suggests.
"It's too close, how about Camelot, it's to the west," Clarine responds.
"Camelot is a beautiful place I've been told but the Kings are supposedly a tyrant and they say the prince likes to bully the lower town people," Lionel tells her.
"Maybe lower down then to Kent or Nemeth," she tells him.
"You won't be going anywhere," a voice says and they both shoot up.
There is her father. Her heart drops.
He comes over, wearing a face of fury. "Is this what's been stopping you from courting a stupid stable boy," he hisses.
"I love him father, please can you not see that, I don't want to marry a man twice my age, I want to love, this is love," she pleads with him, taking hold of Lionel's hand who holds hers in a fierce grip.
Her father does not respond, he pulls out his sword and in seconds it's gone through Lionel and then is out of him and he falls, Clarine lets out a scream and falls to the ground with him, holding him close.
"I expect you back within the hour," her father tells her and leaves.
Clarine pulls him closer and looks at the wound, she doesn't know much about wounds but it doesn't look good.
"You're not going to die," she cries out as tears stream down her face and blood coats her nightdress. She's scared, she does not know what to do but Lionel just takes her hand into his and gives it a squeeze.
"It doesn't hurt Clarine, I'm not going in pain, I'm here with you and that's all I want," he tells her.
She shakes her head with tears filling her eyes that she blinks away quickly, she needs to see him.
"I'll love you in this world and the next," he says and he brings her hand to his lips and kisses it and he gives one last wry smile and then he falls limp.
She's not sure how long she sat there but she did not move until the sun began to rise. When it did she began to pick flowers and laid them over him and finally gave him one last kiss on his forehead and left the meadow. She never went back then and from then onwards Clarine vowed to never love again.
It was not her duty.
At the age of nineteen Clarine had passed many suitors and returned to usually habits of acting out, one of the ways she did this was climbing high trees so that her maids could not bring her down and make her go to tutor lessons but after she had been up there for quite a while one day her father had had enough and decided to take away one of her most precious features her hair.
"You are a noble, act like it," he had hissed at her as her hair was cut as punishment above her shoulders. It was not that she loved her hair being so long in general but she had been told that her mother had had long hair so she liked to have it long to make her feel like she had a part of her mother with her.
Her father soon found this punishment ill timed because not even a week later he received a letter from King Uther of Camelot that he had agreed to try and set Clarine and Prince Arthur up for courting.
This was the first time she had been made to try to court a prince and it was rather unusual. She had many dress fittings before leaving Lot's kingdom and many new rules to follow and then finally they set off to Camelot.
Prince Arthur was not as bad as she had heard him to be. He did seem a bit arrogant but also seemed to be caring and considerate and for some reason was rather nice to his manservant.
She realised quickly how he treated servants kinder than most nobles, even after she had purposely spilled wine on him and his manservant and a woman had laughed at it he didn't look over at them angrily but laughed it off. It was even more clear when she overheard the manservant call him a made up word which was clotpole and he did nothing about it, the word had caused her to laugh so much that she ended up falling to the floor and then Uther had come in. That was the end of that courting.
When she was twenty four, still living in her estate home with her father, Clarine had grown sad. She would not love another but would not marry, she was stuck in a self-made box with no escape and no plan to do so. She really knew she had to do something after the night in which she was almost killed.
An assassin had been ordered to kill the Lord's and there families of Lot's kingdom and so the man had broken into her room and as she was being strangled to death she gave up, she let it continue until a maid came in and hit the man around the head with a metal tray and he was knocked out.
After that she knew she had to get out, she had tried to escape but it had gone wrong and that's how she ended up accidentally helping Camelot's enemy. Morgana.
She hadn't recognised her from her visit at first, she had just escaped and ran into her. Morgana had seen that she was scared and offered her a place to stay and she took it gratefully. Morgana had only told her that she used to live in Camelot and that was all it took for Clarine to spill her guts about all she knew about the recent reports on Camelot on the army they had, she hadn't noticed how it had lightened Morgana's eyes.
It was whilst Clarine was trying to sleep that she remembered Morgana and after that she ran, she ran like hell knowing her to be an evil sorcerer who made many suffer, and as she ran she ended up towards her home and there she was found by guards and was back where this all started.
Now, after thirteen years of escaping marriage Clarine did not expect it to get this far but at the age of twenty-six she was going to be married. The man was twice her age and from Mercia. Her father was given a good price and there it was she was going to marry him. No matter how much she tried to make him hate her he refused to do so, sight set on marrying her and so she was stuck, the wedding was in Mercia.
Her father was with her the whole time, making sure she didn't do anything stupid, up until she had the dress on and that is when she made her escape. She was out of a window with an axe in hand running towards the forest and not looking back.
She made it to a clearing and she looked around, she was scared but free with no plan to return and there she saw them, the bandits.