Nesta, strong of mind and wishing then to feed her understanding of
the thing they were to undertake, revisited the man who’d made her crest. For
this next enquiry, she thought his craftknine would be best.
A boy of maybe ten lead her to quarters of the vexilographer,[1] a man named Charles de Picardie,
about which one could only say his chief defining feature was his great
fastidiousness in all enterprises he betook. His hair was short and neat and
straight, as well his moustache too. He bore some wax, perhaps, to keep his
moustache and his ear hair very tidy. His doublet cut about him fine in yellow
and in red, and clasped it all about his wrists with bands of linen bathed in
blue. His pumphose and his hose and shoes looked new and bore no holes, nor
signs of wear. They were of pleasant colors dyed as well. Upon his leather
belt, he tied his hood of red and gloves of white. Even in his carriage, he
remained compact and used efficient ambulation all about his tidy little room.
They boy announced the lady knight and well presented her to him
(as when two people meet, the customary thing to do was to present the younger
one unto the older one, just as we do today.) Dame Nesta was impressed at
Charles’ library. It must have had as many as eight books, and mayhap twice as
many scrolls. This quite the treasure to a bookhound like herself! He bade her
sit with him across the little table which he had. He lifted up the chessboard
with great care and placed it down upon the top of his great book-shelf, then
sat down again in one wee, graceful spinabout.
He looked expectantly to Ness.
“M’sieur, might ere you know about the several notable great
personages here in pretty Normandy, and mayhap in some other places, too, like
my dear England?”
“Me oui, mademoiselle. It is my lot to know
these things.” He then dismissed the boy with but a single moustache-twitch.
“And do you know how they are blooded up to one another?”
“Oui.”
“And what of William and the old, dead king of all the Saxons?
Edward the Confessor?”
“Oui,” again. His eyes were calm and never did they leave
hers, even for a speck. His calm demeanor bordered on the menacing, somehow.
“If it pleases you, m’sieur,” asked Nesta, eagerly.
He smiled and looked down, perhaps to blush.
The gentleman brought out a mighty slate of gray and placed it on
the table there before them. ‘Twas wide enough that Nesta would have difficulty
in its carriage.
“On the left and near the middle, we begin by writing ‘you.’ That’s
meant to mean onesself, my dam. In this case, it is you.”
“Whacht means this, ‘it is me?’”
“This is a writ of generational depiction. Of relatives of one, and
how they do relate, and how they come before or after one. The one in this
example can be you: you Nesta Mortimer.”
“I see,” she said.
“You did not just appear from out of no-where. You were born
through union of man and woman, whom you call your parents. Tis true whether,
hm, ahem, one knows his father, or be ‘stranged from him. There was a man and
woman, and their union issued forth a babe. Is this quite so?”
“Aye, for every man except for Jesus, and for Adam and for Eve,”
the dam agreed.
The man then marked, above and to the right of Nesta’s ‘you,’
another word: ‘parents.’ He marked down then a line between the two. The line
stretched up from ‘you’ and to the right, diagonally.
“This single line means it is a direct relation. It means you have
the blood within you from your parents quite exclusively: half from mother and
half from your father. You are half of each of them; one part in two from each
of them. Dost you know ‘one part in two?’
“Aye,” she said, with some annoyance in her voice. “I’ve had both
numbers and geometry.”
“Bully,” said the man to her, and turned he back down to his slate.
He said then, “Someday, you may have some children. Each of them would made up
from your blood, and blood giv’n by their pa. That makes each one to take one
part in two from you, the same as you are one in two from each your
parents, m’amoiselle.
“I shall draw a row beneath your own directly, and upon that row
write ‘children.’ Down a row, to show they are descendent. I shall draw a
straight line down between ‘you’ and your ‘children’ here, to show they are
your blood direct.
Those same children of yours may have some children. I shall write
a word upon a line just under ‘children.’ This word that I shall write will be
‘grand-children.’ And again, I’ll draw a line descending. That’s two lines
between y’self and your own children’s children. Each your children’s children
are one part in four your blood. Two lines, four parts.
“And their children, on another row writ down, another line
connecting, and so these ‘great-grandchildren’ appeareth as one part in eight.
Three lines, eight parts. And so it will go on as long as men shall tread the
Firmament.”
“What’s all this? These twos and fours and eights?” She asked. “The
lines make halves as well as you or I can see. Why use the lines at all? What
needs this? Seems it all quite plain what generations be.”
“Allow me beg indulgence from you, little dam. It ennobles one to
offer goodly patience to her humble tutor now. These twigs will help illuminate
the tree when branches start to bloom anon across this slate of ancestry.”
“If it is as you say, then do go on,” she well agreed.
“Likewise, each your parents have two parents. One calls these
one’s ‘grandparents.’ As parents grant their blood by half to thee, so has each
set of grandparents give’d half their blood unto your ma and pa. I shall write
this word, ‘grandparents,’ up and to the right again of ‘parents’ and again
connect these words up with a line, up and to the right. That’s two lines now
betwixt you and your grandparents doth shew. That means you share one part in
four your precious blood with each of these grandparents. And for their
parents, called they ‘great-grandparents,’ there’s another line, up and to the
right again. Three lines now separate ‘you’ from these ‘great-grandparents,’
dam, so you share one part in eight your blood with each of these as well. And
so on it hast gone throughout all history to Adam.” He pointed out the lines
and counted off these little stems with greatest care, to well direct dame
Nesta’s eyes to wacht he spoke of there.
“Allow me, clever tutor, to recite what you have shewn,” she asked
of him. “Twos, fours, eights, and so. Each line direct of lineage, up and
toward the past; or down into the murk of that which hast not been revealed,
the future’s show, shows both relation, and a halving of the blood along the
lines. One line sheweth one in two; two lines sheweth one in four; and three
lines sheweth one in eight. Surely there are diagrams like this devised which
show to us more generations still. This is but a sample of what’s possible to
show.”
“There are, you know,” he did agree. “You’ve got it, by-the-way.
You’ve mastered how we show our lineage direct from man and wife to child, and
again down through the generations here.”
“That’s all there is to this?” She asked.
The man could not suppress a laugh. “No, mademoiselle,
not all by half!”
He did continue then with other words and other lines.
“Your ma is not your cousin, but you mother may have cousins. If
this so, her cousins are your cousins… once removed.”
“What does that mean, to be removed? And what means it to be a
cousin of the first? Or cousin of the second ordinal?”
“Do you wish to know it?”
“Aye.”
“Then harken and be still. Your grandparents may have had children
who are not your parents. What woulds’t thou call these children?”
Nesta thought she knew. “Aunts and uncles!” She exclaimed. “Just
like my Uncle Robert and Aunt Alice!”
Charles de Picardie put forth a line, directly down from
‘grandparents’ to the line where ‘parents’ lay, and wrote ‘aunt and uncle’ to
the right of ‘parents.’
“What, m’sieur, about one’s great-grandparents’ other
children? Those aside from one’s own grandparents, I mean to say?” She thought
she’d seen a pattern as it lay. “Would one call these, the extant children of one’s
great-grandparents by the name of ‘grand-uncle’ and ‘grand-aunt’?”
“Oui.” And dreweth he the line directly down from
‘gr.-grandparents’ and then wrote, aside of ‘grandparents’ the words ‘gr. aunt
& uncle.’
“But what of cousins, tutor?”
“I shall explain. Your uncle, for example, hath the same degree of
blood as does your father. But you, as you can see, have one line here,” he
pointed to the line from ‘you’ to ‘parents’, “one line here,” he pointed to the
second line, from ‘parents’ to ‘grandparents’, “and a third line here, down to
your uncle,” pointing then to the degree between ‘grandparents’ and the ‘aunt
and uncle’ mark. “That’s three degrees of blood. Whilst you are half your
father, you are but a part in eight your uncle.”
“Yes, I see,” she said.
“And then, imagine that your uncle had a daughter quite like you.”
“That’s four degrees,” she said.
“That girl would be your cousin. She the cousin closest to you,
though. Her ordinal be one, and she called ‘first cousin’ to you, dame.” He
drew a line directly down from ‘aunt and uncle’ and below that wrote ‘1°
cousin.’ This cousin would have four lines intervening, and so therefore be one
part in just sixteen from you; but still a relative by blood, and close by ways
we count these things for heraldry.”
Nesta was delighted! She could have a cousin! Though, she’d
have to wait for Robert Mortimer and Alice to make issue for this joy to come
about.
De Picardie continued, “And if this cousin-daughter had a daughter
too, that girl would be first cousin to you too, but then we called her ‘once
removed,’ for she would be another half of blood away: just one in thirty-two.”
He marked a line directly down from ‘1° cousin’ and below it wrote ‘1° cousin,
/’ to shew it once removed. And then, to show a greater part complete, he drew
another line straight down from that, and wrote beneath it ‘‘1° cousin, //’ to
shew a cousin twice removed.
“That doesn’t seem like much at all,” said Nesta, with
consideration of the fact. She stroked her chin and nodded as she’d seen old
wise men do. “The one in thirty-two of blood we’d share. What about…” she
thought with some alacrity, “What about a second cousin? What be this relation
on your chart?”
“Aha. We go to ‘grandparent’ and then descend again to find your
cousin of the first. Therefore, in order to devise your second cousin, we
ascend to ‘gr.-grandparent’ and then down through ‘gr. aunt & uncle,’ and
only then we reach the rank of second cousin. This would be your father’s
father’s brother’s son, to show degree.” He did not bother writing this.
Nesta counted off the lines in silence in her head. “Five lines.”
And then she worked the halves. “One in thirty-two, the same degree as a first
cousin, once removed. The same amount of blood.”
“Or as we say in heraldry, degree cosanguinuity.”
Nesta nodded, eyebrows raised. She well impressed by all these
things de Picardie could shew.
“Here. Is’t that you wished to know? Or is there some particular
you wish for me to show you?”
Nesta had lineage exact in mind, which when she started out, she’d
mentioned to de Picardie. But it weren’t her own. Some day, she would know her
mother’s line, as well her brother’s mother’s line. But there was something
else she wished to know. She phrased it carefully.
“M’sieur de Picardie,” she started, “Harold sits… upon
Duke William’s rightful throne in Anglestead.”
“He does.”
“How hast Harold claimed the thing? By what degree of blood?”
De Picardie looked down, and half his mouth pulled up into a smirk.
He met her gaze again and touched his finger to his upper lip. “Ah. You wish to
know for whom you fight. Let’s show you then.”
He reached up on his bookshelf and pulled down a scroll, tied off
with bright red woolen yarn. He gathered up four chess men,[2] and placed each upon a corner of the
unfurled thing to keep it flat. It was an ancient document, and well
illuminated up with crests and lots of illustrations in the borders. “This is
William’s family tree. I made it for him twenty years ago, when he was just a
boy.”
“It’s very gay,” she said. She liked the colors and the symbols,
though aside from some the heraldry, she knew them not.
He pointed to the symbol for Duke William: lions rampant Or upon a
field of red. “This is the Duke. His father was the Duke as well. His name was
Robert, like your uncle’s is. We call him Robert the Magnificent.”
Nesta nodded, demonstrating understanding.
“His father was Richard II. His father was Richard I.”
“That’s three lines: William to Robert, Robert to Richard, and
Richard to his father, Richard,” Nesta counted off.
“Correct. Richard I had a daughter, very clever girl. He named her
Emma. Emma was the mother of the old king of the English, Edward the Confessor.
Edward spent his youth at old Rouen. Has’t seen the place?”
“I have!”
“Can thou tells’t me, by our lessons, Nesta, what degree doth
separate King Edward from Duke William now?”
She thought. “Richard on to Emma, Emma on to Edward. Two more
lines. That’s five. A cousin, primal ordinal, with once removed? William is the
cousin to the king!”
“Me oui.”
“William is five parts removed from Edward, the old king. What
about this Harold then? Is he some number greater then than five?”
“Harold has no royal blood,” de Picardie replied.
Nesta take’d aback. “No royal blood?”
“No, none at all. He is a nobleman, ‘tis true. He is an Earl, which
is to say an equal rank to Duke, and he descends down from the House of Wessex.
They made kings of Englishmen in times long past. But he has no royal blood to
claim the English throne. No. He married Edward’s sister. So he’s kin, and any
of his sons might have within them royal blood, but he himself hath none.”
“Scandal!” Nesta then exclaimed.
Charles de Picardie, just looked to her with knowing eyes, and
rolled the scroll back up again. He took a tidy minute to re-tie the yarn into
a tidy bow, and tidily emplaced the scroll back in its tidy place upon the tidy
bookshelf shewn.
“This pleases me to hear about, monsieur de
Picardie,” she said to him, in way of thanks. “Some day, when I can find my
mother’s lineage, I hope to bring it back to you to write it up so pleasingly
as well you’ve done it here for our great Duke.”
“Do you not know your mother’s line?” He asked.
“My ma and pa were married more Danico,[3] and she a proper lady, but from
Scone in Scotland set. They’re not so good at writing down their lineages
there.”
De Picardie smiled knowingly again. “Men such as myself may aid
those in your situation too,” he said. He stood, and walked dame Nesta to the
door. He opened it, and gave a gentle nod to her. She left.
Presently, she found an old decrepit servant maid to show her to
her quartering: she was to sleep with some the other soldiers, in an
out-building, within an ear-shot of the coursers in the stabling a-bye. Not
quite the prize she’d once imagined for a new knight to the Duke!
Tiens!
[1] The chief herald. Literally: Flag-drafter.
[2] Chess was known throughout Western Europe as early as the 9th century.
[3] More Danico – “in the Danish manner.” A Germanic
or Scandinavian civil marriage, unrecognized by the church.
