South Carolina Squires Ride Again to the Reeve's Second Tourney

Hear me now, for I have this day witnessed a marvel most confusing, and I set it down true as I am able, though God knows I have not the learning for it.

Word came down from the manor gate — nay, from the great glowing tapestry itself, the one that flickers with numbers and faces though no monk illuminates it — that the good folk of South Carolina had gathered to choose their champion, and that the choosing had not finished the choosing, if you take my meaning. Two squires of the same house, sworn to the same banner (a red one, though I could not make out the sigil upon it, some manner of elephant I am told, which strikes me as passing strange livestock for a lord to keep), stood forth from the field of contenders, and neither could claim the tourney outright. So it is to be a runoff, they say, which I take to mean they shall run it all off again, like the mud after a spring rain, and whoever is left standing in the muck shall be declared true champion and go on to face the rival house in the autumn meet.

Now I do not fully grasp this business of "primaries," but I am given to understand it works something like the trial by combat we hold at Michaelmas to settle who has right to the fallow strip behind the mill, save that instead of quarterstaves the combatants use — and here I confess my learning fails me entirely — small folded papers, which the freeholders mark with a stick of graphite and drop into a locked box, as though feeding grain to some iron beast that later belches forth a verdict. I watched a great long while for the box to open and show its workings and it never did. A sorcery kept modest, I suppose, as sorceries go.

The senior of the two squires, one Darline Graham, is said to have held her ground handily in the first bout, though not so handily as to end the matter outright, and so must ride again against the younger man, Ralph Norman, in this second tourney. I confess I know nothing of either combatant's prowess with lance or blade, for the tapestry showed me no jousting whatsoever — only men in dark garments of a curious cut standing before podiums, speaking gravely of "turnout" and "the base," which I took at first for agricultural matters, a discussion of soil and root vegetables, and settled in most contentedly to hear a good honest debate on crop rotation. I was disappointed on this count. Not one word was spoken of turnips the entire evening, which I confess left me somewhat adrift, as turnips are very nearly the only subject on which I hold firm opinions.

What I *can* report, and report faithfully, is the pageantry surrounding the contest, for that I understood better than the contest itself. There was a man near the edge of my vision — forgive me, near the edge of the great tapestry — selling what I can only describe as meat bound tight in a casing and laid upon a soft trencher of bread, dressed with a yellow humour I did not recognize and a green herb chopped fine. I watched this transaction with far greater attention than I gave the squires themselves, I confess it freely, for I have not eaten since terce and the meat-tube looked well charred and honest. A great crowd purchased these from his little wheeled stall, and none of them seemed troubled that no priest had blessed the meal, which in my village would occasion no small comment.

There was also a device — I have turned it over in my mind and I believe it must be some manner of familiar spirit bound to service, for it repeated numbers back at the standing men without any visible hand to move it, tallying how many freeholders had marked their papers thus far, as a reeve tallies sheaves at harvest, save this reeve is invisible and never sleeps and apparently works for no wage at all, which if true I should very much like to speak with his lord about employment terms for myself.

At one point the whole tapestry itself seemed to convulse and repeat a moment already passed — a man's mouth moving the same words twice, his hand lifting the same paper twice — and no one in the hall so much as flinched at this plain and unmistakable witchcraft, time folding back upon itself before their very eyes, which tells me either that such magics are commonplace here and beneath comment, or that the whole company has been bewitched into blindness regarding it, and I know not which prospect unsettles me more.

I am told — and I set this down only because I was told it with such great confidence by the men at the podiums, who wore the bearing of men who know their business — that this Senate seat, once filled, entitles its holder to sit in a hall in a distant capital and vote upon matters of the whole realm, much as our own lord sits at the shire moot and votes on whether the common land shall be enclosed this Michaelmas. I do not know if South Carolina is a shire or a whole kingdom unto itself. The tapestry did not say, and I did not think it my place to ask the meat-tube vendor, who seemed a busy man and disinclined toward conversation on matters of governance.

The runoff itself, they say, shall not be run for some weeks yet, which puzzles me most of all — for what manner of tourney is called and then not held for a full season's turning? In my village if the quarterstaff match is called for Sunday it is fought on Sunday, win or lose, rain or shine, reeve willing or no. But I am given to understand these things move on their own slow calendar here, like the assizes, and a man must simply wait upon it, as we wait upon the wheat.

I confess also that I do not know which squire I ought to favor, having seen neither wield anything sharper than a rhetorical point, and having no stake myself in the outcome, being as I am a stranger to this realm entirely and like as not to wake back in my own field by morning with mud on my knees and no memory of any of this at all. But I wish them both fair contest and an honest count, and I wish the meat-tube vendor continued good custom, for he alone among the whole spectacle seemed to be doing an honest day's labor for an honest day's coin, same as any man ought.

The light is going now and I hear the beast-that-grooms-the-frozen-field lowing somewhere off in its pen, though there was no ice here that I could find, only carpet, and I must away before the reeve marks me idle. God keep the both of them, and God keep South Carolina, wherever it may lie.

— Hodge o' the Field, faithfully set down, this day and no other