Tuesday Night Pendragon

Monroe laments

Home at last! Back to the world of men and steel and deeds of derring-do...and divorce.

After my lord Arthur's feast, where I was finally able to leave the retinue of the Faerie King for my own people, my father told me of all that had passed in the ten long years I was gone...though to me it seemed not quite a fortnight since I went from here to there...

Father finished the castle at Portchester and started on another at the King's request...during a campaign where our Lord Arthur became Emperor of Rome, Arthur had the good sense to promote Father to the Round Table...Leodigrance the Lesser, stalwart of Salisbury (and now its Marshall), killed two of the three sons of Ulfius, praise be!...the Count of Winchester's long-standing debt to Father was also settled when King Arthur made Father Count of Silchester; Father has been working prodigously to get the Silchester knights up to speed, as they were a sorry lot when he took over...I have three new nieces and nephews, my Aunt Linnabel wed, my cousins Clarian and Caius both wed fine noblewomen...my grandmother died of the grippe...cousin Alinor prospers in Amesbury...and I have three new sisters and a brother: Oriana, Ersilla, Prudence, and Darinel whom I am sure will make a fine knight when his day comes. Lancrius and Clarian, who call Mortimer Father, were knighted by Arthur and have left Durnford for a life adventurous; may they find it outside Salisbury!

The last bit of news Father imparted to me I took sore hard: my lady Elaine, the mother of my lovely daughter Rosemeade, had me declared dead by Arthur's Justicier and took her manors to marry another knight! Sir Pergamore is a decent-enough fellow, and I hold no grudge against him, but Elaine, well! Constancy certainly is not her strong suit if she could not wait even ten years for my return. I rode post-haste to Upavon, lately my home, and collected Rosemeade and Zenobia back to Durnford and prepared to settle in as a household knight in service to my father, as my lord Arthur had reassigned his gift to me to another worthy knight. No grudge there, either, though it will be sore difficult to raise two tender daughters in the hubbub of a manor as a household knight...but Arthur, seeing that his judgement regarding my fate had been premature, told me to ride north and take over the management of a manor in Lonazep, a charming little place by name of Werrington. After a few weeks of visiting our family in Salisbury, we rode north and settled in.