Work Text:
Avice was quite young still when she saw the duckling. It made odd, whistling honks as it waddled after a large hen and her six chicks; at first Avice feared that the hen would turn on the little intruder, but the bird did not seem to mind, and indeed appeared to wait patiently if the duckling strayed too far behind. They made their way around the yard, the hen and chicks pecking on the ground as they went. This the duckling could not do, and it complained piteously; but, as they by chance approached a small pond behind the house of Avice's uncle, the little duck grew excited and leapt into the water. Now the hen in turn was distressed, and ran to and fro along the edge of the pond, but there was little enough she could do now that the duckling was in its element. Perplexed, Avice tugged on Uncle Wystan's sleeve and pointed the birds out to him.
"That little one's lost its mother, so we put it with a broody hen," explained her uncle. "Mayhap it will live! But it is always hard with them. The hen cares for it, but they are not of the same clay."
On a later visit to Uncle Wystan's home, Avice kept an eye out for the little orphaned duck but did not find it, though she thought she glimpsed its foster mother in the yard once or twice. Ulger said that it must have died - carried off by a fox, perhaps. Avice preferred to think that it left of its own volition, and found a place where it could be a duck rather than try and force itself to change its clay. She refused to ask Uncle Wystan about it. Her own idea suited her well enough.
Of all the childhood memories that dimmed and waned with the passage of the years, Avice would always remember this one the most.
***
She was not a pretty child, and she knew it - and if she hadn't, other village children were all too eager to tell her. Poor Ulger took it upon himself to fight anyone who gave his sister a hard time about it, and he frequently came home with bruises which he tried to conceal and which she always noticed.
Avice did not understand what was supposedly so ugly about her face. She had never seen it in a mirror, because mirrors were an unbelievable luxury to a simple wheelwright's daughter. She tried to catch glimpses of it in mill ponds and water barrels but all it earned her was a scolding about vanity from her mother. From the little that she saw, she did not think herself very different from everyone else. But then, she had to be wrong, because even the adults tended to think poorly of her looks. "Best put aside a large dowry, else she will never find a husband," her aunt once said, not knowing that Avice could hear her. Worse still, Avice's mother looked sour but did not disagree.
Long before she was of marriageable age, then, Avice was certain she would never marry. Over time it stopped being a hurt and instead became just a fact of life. She knew it like she knew that the sky outside was blue. What she didn't know so well was how else she could live, if not as a wife. Her father was a wheelwright, but that trade was for Ulger to learn, not for her, though she asked. Her mother taught her to keep house, which was an excellent skill, but Avice had never heard of a woman keeping house for just herself. They either married, became nuns, or else lived with their families and were looked at as burdens.
Was that her lot in life, then? To be her parents' unmarried daughter, and then Ulger's unmarried sister, until such a time as death claimed her? No, no! Better be a nun, though young Avice was sure she did not want to be a nun, either. Nuns devoted their life to holy unworldliness, and even as a child, Avice was quite sure she was entirely worldly. She felt it beat and pulse throughout her body whenever the wind blew in strange airs from outside their little village, whenever she thought about all the weird and magnificent places that might lie beyond the woods that surrounded Thornbury, and especially whenever passing travellers stopped at her father's workshop to get something of theirs repaired. She always found an excuse to sneak in and look, and listen. The strangers' manner of dress, their speech, the cities they talked of visiting... it made her heart race and her stomach clench with longing.
"It isn't fair that we must stay here and they go where they please," she once complained to her father. He was quiet for a moment, then suddenly he nodded and patted her head, which he did not do very often.
"Aye, my smart girl. Norman thieves! But do not let them hear you say that."
Avice understood then that her father quietly hated many of their better-dressed and farther-travelled visitors. Of course, she had heard about Normans and Saxons, and knew that she was a Saxon herself. But, she thought (but did not say), she had not meant what her father thought she had. No, she had not meant it that way in the slightest.
***
It was a traveller that first helped her see that she was changing. An old lady on her way to Shrewsbury or perhaps to Ludlow, who must have been a Saxon herself, because Avice's father smiled at her and asked Avice to bring the guest and her nephew something to eat as he worked to repair their wagon. As Avice handed her a bowl and smiled brightly, the lady smiled back and said, "My, what a beautiful daughter you have, Master Wheelwright!"
Avice was struck dumb with disbelief. It was the first time someone had called her beautiful, and at first she told herself that it was merely polite flattery, for even at the young age of seventeen she prided herself on seeing the world as it was rather than as she might wish it to be. But there had been so much sincerity in the old lady's voice that the words stayed with Avice, and made her notice other things, which had previously escaped her.
She remembered that no one had said she was ugly in quite a while, and that some of the village lads who had been her tormentors when she was a child were still hanging around, but not to mock her. She recalled how her neighbour's son Ranulf had blushed when he asked her if she needed help carrying water from the river, and she suddenly understood why. She let her fingers run across her face, and discovered that it had filled out, grown softer along with the rest of her body as she had moved from girlhood to the cusp of womanhood. When she smiled, her cheek dimpled.
She said nothing to her family about it - she was by then well used to keeping her innermost thoughts private, and only sharing the ones that could be shared safely - but inside, she was giddy. Only a short time ago she had had nothing but her wits and bravery to carry her in life, and now to discover that she had a kind of beauty to help her along - well. After thinking of herself as ugly for so long, she had no vanity - rather, she rejoiced in her good looks like a craftsman might rejoice in the improvement of his tools. She would not be trapped in little Thornbury, not her, never. Love her family though she might, she knew she was not like them. If she was unhappy with her lot in life, she would not accept it, but rather she would use all she had at her disposal to carve her world into a shape that fit.
***
"I have noticed you."
Huon de Domville had sharp, sly eyes, like a wolf or a fox. But Avice herself was no helpless duckling.
"And I have noticed you, my lord."
She looked him in the eye with all the boldness in her heart, and smiled, taking care to let her dimple show.