Between Wolves & Doves

Chapter 3 Hunger

When the coach door enclosed him in darkness and silence at the end of the evening, he tosses his head back to the scarlet velvet wall behind him and sighs out a deep releasing exhale. One of gladness.

It felt like the most cleansing breath he'd taken all damned evening.

Polite society hereabouts was exhausting- he rather preferred the one of years past.

The coach lurches away. Hooves clip on the icy midnight road, splashed in watery silver moonlight and mushed grey snow.

He listens to the glorious sound of his driver steering the horses to take him away from that stuffy ballroom and all its conceited occupants.

His body rattles and shifts on the softness of the upholstered bench with the rickety rumbling and turning of the carriage wheels. He lets it ground his restless temper.

He tries to recall the differences of when he last stepped foot on this island. What he'd said to Miss Ashton was no incorrect lie. He hadn't been on these shores in an age. Not in 600 years atleast-

The last time he was here was during the crusades.

Everything was truly different in comparison. Back then he'd donned a hauberk chain-mail coat, with a conical helmet and a kite shield. He'd come here armed with only a horse, a long bow, a lance and his mail armour.

He'd been a Knight back then. In the third crusade of 1189. Fighting under the blood soaked banner of an Christian king to reclaim the Holy Land from a Sultan. He forgets the kings name, theres been so many he's served. The lionhearted one perhaps? Faces and names of mere humans fade back into his mind like fog.

He's seen so many lives begin and end. Even kings fade eventually. Too many mortals to list.

He remembers how hospitality and society was vastly different then. It was peasants and lords. Not all these lords, and dukes and earls and titles.

He recalls the wide unpolluted pure of cobalt sky and meadows of yellow daffodil flowers stretching on for miles. The kiss of their innocent nectar in the air. Exotic new spices, cloves and saffron and salt, animal sweat, dung, and musky furs and hides.

Salt of the earth humble houses were squat little wood straw huts. Dominated by the reaching slanted cold shadows, that came from the immensity of the rich grey-stoned castles.

People revered one God and their masters. Kylo was a knight. He was as good as both.

He has memories of great fine feasts with roast suckling pigs or boars turning on the great hall spit over the fire. The glaze of flame crackled pork skin and the dirt of ash. He recalls to this very day the sweet honey spice of mead on his tongue.

He remembers gorging himself on that honey-wine and devouring still bleeding slices of roast venison. That juicy ichor dripped down his chin. He ate meat off the bone like a starved dog. Drank flagon after flagon of barley ale to celebrate war and shedding the blood of the infidels.

He'd greedily dined with the Lords at their courts, scarfed down their hospitality like a beast. Then he'd gone and ripped apart a peasant or two in the forest afterwards.

Blood pulsing with matter and protein, and stomach groaning full with wine and blood. The next day when they found the decimated bodies they blamed the innocent deaths on the wolves. How appropriate-

He can remember this country in the spark of its infancy. He was there to see it born.

He was in Runnymede in Surrey in 1215, outside the fringes of the very room, watching, as the band of feuding Baron's made the unruly King sign the Magna Carta. The cornerstone of British law. The first time a higher power was held accountable.