A Hunk of Burning Love
Flash fiction, 800 words. For IAM's Feb. 4 prompt. Been taking a hiatus to work on other projects, but I always have time for a knight and his fair lady!
“Sir Anthony, when you mentioned in your letter that you were afire with ardent love, I … well …”
Lady Katherine stared at the figure across the glade. His once shining armor was blackened and warped by the flames that encased him.
“I rather thought it was a metaphor,” she finished lamely.
She noticed a patch of grass alighting near her gown’s hem. She stamped it out nervously with one slippered foot.
He didn’t respond for a moment. Bred as she was to be polite, she had no recourse but to wait.
Finally, he spoke from somewhere deep within the garniture.
“My lady, the village of Beaston burns by the hands of bandits. Bandits armed with pitch, oil, and an onager, which, I confess, I was not expecting. As passionate as is my affection for you, my current predicament is a result of having run into the woods, screaming.”
“Ah.” She hemmed tactfully. “Do you, perhaps, need help removing your armaments?”
“Should you figure out a way to do so without burning your perfect, delicate fingers, I would not say no.”
He was remarkably calm, given the circumstances. She had always admired that about Sir Anthony. Some called him slow, others careless, but she’d always thought that he merely had an admirable, if perhaps unrealistic, confidence in God’s providential mercy.
“What if you were to lay upon the grass and roll around?”
“I fear devastating the king’s woods.”
She stamped out another smoldering bunch of moss. She feared what would happen if he didn’t try.
“I shall stand over you and prevent that.”
He obediently knelt and collapsed upon the earth. Though covered in a glorified, flaming bucket, he was surprisingly graceful in the deed.
“Roll,” she commanded.
“But won’t the pitch just fall upon the goodly flora?”
“Roll!”
He had a point. Where he rolled, thick gobs of pitch sloughed from his armor and cloak onto the flammable, if fortunately recently rained-upon, moss.
She was conscious of her own oath, and dutifully beat out the flames with a thick stick.
When he was no longer actively aflame, she wrapped her hands in her gossamer tippets and pulled off his helm.
“Oh, thank the Lord!”
The normally handsome man was drenched in sweat, bright red, and wheezing. The tips of his ears and nose were blistering where the hot metal had touched skin, though his cap had protected his pate.
With difficulty, she helped him remove the rest of it.
“I don’t think the best smith in the realm can salvage this,” he sighed while examining his warped, pitch-sticky breastplate. “A shame, ‘twas my father’s before it was mine.”
“What of Beaston?” she asked. “Should we go for help?”
“Lord Mince and his retainers were arriving just as I was … hurriedly seeking relief.” Sir Anthony stood up and examined himself. His padded jacket and trousers had spared the rest of him. “If he didn’t succeed, then there is now no Beaston to help.”
“I’m glad I happened to arrive at our rendezvous early,” Lady Katherine replied frankly. “What would you have done if I were not here?”
“My lady, such is the purity of my heart that I believe the rabbits and fawns themselves would have come to my aid. But hark! Here is a creature more gracious than any woodland beast!”
She tried not to squirm when he took her full in his arms and planted a grateful kiss upon her lips. He smelled like sweat, iron, and burned flesh.
When they broke apart, he looked upon her dress ruefully.
“I’ve caused calamity to befall you, my love.”
She looked at her burned, oily tippets. She took the shears tied to a string from her girdle, severed them, and handed the ruined cloth to him.
“Quite the token of my esteem,” she laughed.
“I shall hang them from my lance. No other knight shall have such visible proof of their lady’s love and courage.”
She blushed that he could turn her jest into something noble.
“Let us go to Beaston and see if we may offer what charity our hands and little else can provide,” she suggested.
He situated the armor in such a way as to find it later. Then they walked, perfect hand in somewhat singed hand, though the woods, their hearts the only thing afire.