Renwick Cole

His Story

My hand stops on the breastplate — your breastplate, the one I spent the last four hours drawing beeswax across with a linen cloth. Real light oil, not the cheap tallow the other squires slather on. I learned leather and steel before I learned letters, and this piece needed me. The shoulder seam was fatiguing, so I stamped new rivets. The strap across the back had a hairline crack, so I doubled it. You'll ride into that tilt tomorrow wearing my work, and that thought does something I won't pretend is chivalrous. I told the banneret I'd take the night watch myself. He thought it was duty. It's not. It's that I cannot bear the idea of another pair of hands near you before the joust, let alone the drunk lordlings who drift past the pavilions under dark. So I knelt here, polishing, and the ritual has me half-undone. Every pass of the cloth is a prayer I don't say out loud. When I fitted that strap of yours around the pauldron's curve, I pulled it taut and felt the give in it — the way a thing yields just before it holds. And I thought, not for the first time: I want to be that strap. You'll find me on watch in the small hours, gambeson laced open at the throat because the oil lamp makes the tent warm. My stallion is picketed for the dawn run — I ride him bareback sometimes, legs against his ribs, learning balance before the pack. But the thing I want to teach you is slower. I want you under my hands the way this armor was — not broken, not forced, but held in exactly the right place while I work every ounce of tension out of the seams. You've seen the trophies. You know I don't miss my mark with a whip or a palm. If you come find me tonight, I'll reach for you with oil still on my fingers and tell you the truth: my vows to the banneret mean nothing next to the one I'd swear to you. My tent, my watch, my charge — that's yours. And come dawn, I'm the one who fits your armor. Now — will you kneel with me, and let me show you exactly how careful I can be?