Once and Future Queen: turnberryknkn

turnberryknkn

Once and Future Queen

Jan 24, 2005 07:26

There are stories, and there are legends. Today, a legend.

Legends are interesting things. They have their origins in factual events, but with telling and retelling change shape as a boulder broken off a cliff does as it rolls down the mountainside. Parts that stick out get worn down, bumps and gouges get worn away, and after a long distance the rolling boulder looks dramatically different than when it first began. Yet for the substantial changes and loss of details, it still can hit with great impact.

This story is rooted in real events. A story that a few of my friends actually knew and experienced in person. A story I was told by others around campfires in the Midrealm, and later in Calontir. By the time the same story reached my ears, most of the messy details had long been lost. Any story about real people has all kinds of complications, and I can imagine how many of those I know not. I only know the legend, a abstracted version of the reality from which the story began.

But perhaps that's enough. For a legend's purpose, perhaps, is less to inform than to inspire. And so, retold, in greater depth from more sources I found on the Internet seeking the deeper story, is this legend. A story that happened long before I ever knew it existed, yet has become a story of great personal meaning to me. This is the legend, of she who they called The Once and Future Queen...

From primarily the annals of Mistress Jenna of Southwind, but also other sources, did this setting of the tale first come.

Across the southern Great Plains of the United States -- across a vast land that stretches across Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska and Missouri -- there lies the lands of the Falcon, the Kingdom of Calontir of the Society for Creative Anachronism. There in those lands, under the purple Calon standard, march some of the most feared and skilled fighters in the whole of the Knowne World, the huscarls of the Calontir Shield Wall.

At the great gatherings of the SCA, where thousands of armored competitors clash across field and bridge, castle gate and battle pit, for many years, so I am told, the Army of Calontir was a point upon which opposing lines broke like waves upon rock, or glass before the hammer. In the mighty tournaments of wooden sword and steel armor, when Kingdom competed against Kingdom for mastery of the challenge field, the fighting women and men of Calontir rode always at the crest of the charging lines. Much would any wise supreme commander be to win the alliance and allegiance of the fighting Falcons of Calontir, and so much sought were they in every tourney, the great conflict at Pennsic most of all.

Pennsic -- where the Eastern Tyger and the Midrealm Dragon did compete in a week-long succession of challenges; Pennsic, where the Kings of the East and Middle did strive to gather the most and most fearsome allies under their banners; Pennsic, where all the SCA Knowne World gathered, from every part of the globe. Pacts between Kingdoms are sometimes sealed months in advance, and sometimes closer to the time at hand. But on this particular year, to the very day of the opening of great Pennsic did the Kingdom of Calontir and her people come without yet a decision as to whether to march with the Middle or the East. All the way right up to a hasty last-minute mass meeting of the Kingdom's fighters on the very field at Pennsic, held but two hours before the beginning of the tourney.

Many suggestions were made. Born of the Midrealm was Calontir, but that birth had not been a painless one, so I understand. In later years, the Kingdoms of Northshield and Earldolrmere were childed from the lands of the Dragon with the blessings and best wishes of the Midrealm, but Calontir was first. In that far earlier day, before the precedent was well set, many and much were the things said that perhaps should not have been, and still did the hurt remain. Hurt yes, but loyalty too: for as many Midrealm nobles as did act with anger, there were others who acted with grace. Still also to consider were the approaches of the Kingdom of the East, whose Lord with courtesy and chivalry courted the young independent Kingdom. Knight after knight, commander after commander rose to express this opinion or that, and back and forth, hotly and fiercely, did opinion sway. And then, into this storm of emotional indecision, now Baron Master Charles Stewart O'Connor stood up.

The East Kingdom had made him a Peer. The Middle Kingdom had made him a Baron. To Calontir did now his loyalty lie. These things he first explained. And then he said simple words that burned themselves into legend immortal. Let Calontir not fight for a Kingdom, or for a sovereign, he proposed. Let, instead, the Falcons of Calontir fight for one woman.

Let us take the high road of Chivalry, he said. Let us fight -- for Eislinn.

All of us here surely know, in our lives, one or two special people whose kindness, whose generosity, whose laughter and greatness of heart is an inspiration, is a light, is a joy. Someone that everybody who knows them loves. So goes the legend, such was the fierceness of feeling and loyalty countless had for Queen Eislinn.

There was great excitement throughout the Midrealm that Summer of the Twenty-Second Year of the Society, mortal year of our Lord 1987. Excitement across the baronies and cantons of the Great Lakes the Midrealm covered; across the great expanse of Ontario that would later become Ealdomere but was still then part of the Midrealm; throughout the great plains of Calontir, Ceara's home, then only newly born from the Dragon's lands. Excitement that Queen Eislinn would be joining her Kingdom in it's great War against the Tyger of the East, at Pennsic, the largest gathering and battle in the Knowne World.

Excitement for Eislinn the Patient was much beloved for her kindness and compassion. Excitement, because she had spent so much of the year ill, unable to travel as much in her second reign as she had in her many years of service to the SCA before, so ill she could not even attend Pennsic the year before, when she was Crown Princess. People were genuinely excited and thrilled that, after a year of sickness, she would be able to make the long travel to Cooper's Lake, to the grandest pagent and biggest party the SCA throws all year, to inspire onwards the Midrealm Alliance led by her trueheart, Duke Taylmar gan y Llyn, and their stalwart heir, Count Eliahu ben Itzhak.

Then word got out quietly that the reason she was making the trip was not because she was feeling better. She was making the trip because she was dying.

To the terrible news, blackest grief swept the great lands of the Dragon, blackest grief -- and fiercest resolve. With redoubled effort did the fighters of the Midrealm prepare for tourney, so the legend tells, determined to win one final victory for their beloved Queen. Mercenary units from throughout the Knowne World rallied to Eislinn's banner, pledging their arms to her service for no other price than glimpse of her smile. And the soldiers of Calontir, they who still bore many scars from the oft-bitter division from the Midrealm, the people of Calontir chose not allegiance to the Midrealm, Mistress Jenna writes, chose not even to the Midrealm Queen. William V'tavia Rex Calontir, Lord of the Armies of the Falcon, stood up before the thousands at Opening War Court and pledged Calontir for the honor of Eislinn.

Her Majesty could have ordered the Falcons to return to their tents and do nothing, the chronicler Jenna relates. Eislinn could have asked the Falcons to turn around and go home. They would have done it without hesitation. To the soldiers of Calontir -- and many other lands -- did the kind Queen give tokens of her favor and her appreciation. As Ternon de Caerlon, field commander of Calontir, later related: that day, so inspired, he could have led the Falcon Shieldwall into the heart of Hell.

Many since described those days as some of the most honorable and chivalrous tourney competition ever seen. Without the rancor, the dispute, the sniping that too many other tournaments were marred with, valiantly did the sides strive, and to victory after victory did ride the forces arrayed for Queen Eislinn. And came, so the bard Erasumus tells,a moment of conincidence, perhaps, but which shall not be forgotten while there still remain witnesses to tell...

In the midst of one of the major field tourneys, a "hold", a time-out, was called upon the field. By convention and rule, when such a signal is given, all competitors on the field are required to freeze in place in their armor and go to their knees. At that moment, Queen Eislinn took advantage of the pause to get up from her seat and travel down the sideline to take care of some errand. By some trick of timing, to all the audience watching, by the coincidence of these two things, it looked as if every man-at-arms in the entire Knowne World were, as one giant wave, to a man bending knee before her beloved Majesty. Thousands armored fighters, the assembled armies of the entire Knowne World, Eastern and Midrealm alliances alike, fighters from Australia and Korea to Germany and South Africa and everywhere between; upon the great field lit by sunset a thousand knights from a dozen Kingdoms knelt as one.

And after the tourneys were finished and the banners of the Dragon had rode forth to victory, so recounts a telling by Mistress Alecia, the victorious fighters of the Midrealm Alliance returned to the Midrealm Royal encampment. They brought the War Horn, the symbol of Pennsic, upon which the opening musical blasts are sounded at the beginning of the grand tourney. Gently they draped the horn around Her Majesty's neck, Her Majesty now so weak she could barely lift her arms to accept it. And upon their shoulders the Lords of the Midrealm carried Her Majesty into the twilight, the light of sunset still streaming through the trees, marching the victorious Queen from the Pennsic field with all the Midrealm as her guard of honor, one last time.

Queen Eislinn passed on her crown in October of that year, here in Cynnabar, the heart of the Middle Kingdom, which itself lies in the heart of the SCA Knowne World. Calontir asked for, and recieved, permission to carry Eislinn's honor onto the field at the great far western tourney fields of Estrella, Estrella where years later would be won the legendary stand at Phaedra's Gate. In Feburary of that year, so Mistress Jenna relates, did the Falcon ranks storm the fields in far Atenveldt with Eislinn's favor upon their pennon, "Vivat Eislinn!" their rallying cry, a pennon still preserved among Calontir's royal regalia. One month later, in March of 1998, in the reign of Eliahu ben Itzhak, thirty-seventh Lord of the Midrealm, Eislinn's struggles came finally to an end.

Almost twenty years have passed, and even the greatest of legends fades into history. There are still a few, so I have read, old-timers who still, however, remember those events of long ago. Who still refer to their beloved Eislinn as The Once and Future Queen.

Azure, a sword proper enfiled of a wreath of flowers argent, slipped and leaved Or. In plain english, a sword bared, blade pointed towards the heavens; behind it, a wreath of silver flowers with golden leaves, resting on a field of blue. This is the sigil of the Award of the Doe's Grace, one of the highest grants of honor in the Middle Kingdom of the SCA, granted by the Midrealm Crown itself to those who epitomize the values of courtesy, chivalry, and kindness. Once upon a time, it was called the Award of the Queen's Favor, and it was Eislinn herself who had created it, years before. After her passing, the Order was renamed for her and her personal arms; to honor the Queen who created it, and who in the eyes of so many, embodied its ideals.

For Queen Eislinn was the Order of chivalry and compassion renamed the Award of the Doe's Grace. for Queen Eislinn was renamed the great hill that overlooked the field at Pennsic. For Queen Eislinn the legendary bard Rhiannon wrote the Song of Talymar and Eislinn, whose lyrics appear here. And perhaps in Queen Eislinn's memory, driven by vengence born of grief, there were a few men and women, SCAdian scientists and physicans, who were involved in the creation of Herceptin.

Herceptin, without exaggeration, is a landmark in the history of Hematology/Oncology; herceptin the first clarion call of the future hope to come. As I have written before and so do not expound on now, cancer treatment, through it's history, could be roughly summarized as flooding a house to the rafters with water to drive out the rats --the house does survive, but much within is ruined or destroyed and the house as a whole barely survives. The aim of more than thirty years of intense molecular biology is to find the very specific biochemical mistakes that cause cancer and target them exactly. Herceptin, released after nearly a decade of study and clinical trials, is the very first successful drug to come from this effort.

Scientists discovered Her2, a protein worn specfically by a deadly class of breast cancer, that which claims so many thousands of women a year, like the late Queen Eislinn. Biochemists and biomedical engineers created an antibody --Herceptin-- to lock onto Her2 like a missle and kill the cancer cells that bear Her2 on their surfaces. Physicans labored through trial after trial to make the drug work effectively in humans. The history and science is a tale for another day, collected here for the interested. The story of Herceptin includes my mother, who helped characterize the MCF-7 cell line that was instrumental in Her2's elucidation. And surely the quest to create Herceptin, that streched from the academic medical bastions of the Kingdoms of the East and Atlantia to the laboratories of Genentech in the Kingdom of the West, involved not a few SCAdians who wore white coats by day. Herceptin was a great victory, the very first of what promises to be many from the struggle waged by physicans and scientists against cancer.

For the goal is in sight now, close enough that the end can be seen. Already, some classes of cancer that once killed 90% of the children who had it twenty years ago can be cured today without even a hospital stay. To my generation of scientists and physicans belongs the last hard push to the finish. And when we are done, for the most part will the pain and sorrow caused by cancer be removed from the earth, and as forgotten in our lands as scurvy, plague and polio.

Great as the victory and the promise, it was not soon enough to stop Eislinn's breast cancer. It was not soon enough to stop the breast cancer of Rhiannon of Wye, the bard whose talent and harpist's fingers gave birth to the song around which this entry was created, whose voice is heard in the recording. It was not soon enough to stop the breast cancer of Arielle the Golden, the Atlantian Queen of the Children's Fete. We have made much progress. But not fast enough.

There are SCAdians in every profession imaginable. There are SCAdians aboard aircraft carriers and in corporate boardrooms; who work in libraries and over lathes. And SCAdians in laboratories, on hospital wards, and even a few on the floor of the American Medical Association's House of Delegates. SCAdians who wear chain mail or lab coats with equal aplomb; who wield harp, sword, eppendorf pipettman and stethoscope with the same pair of hands. Among their ranks now, too march I.

It is more than just Queen Eislinn's story, or the song, or the fate of the song's creator, that touches me so deeply. More than the feelings of love and dedication expressed, the highest dreams of mine captured within the lyrics the cynical might dismiss but in which I believe with my whole heart. The timing itself is a conicidence that so startled me it inspired me almost ten years ago to first write this entry. For that summer, the summer of Eislinn's last Pennsic, that summer as a young boy was the summer when I seriously began considering following in my cousin's footsteps in medicine. The summer I began asking them and others about what that life might mean, reading anything I could get that would tell me more. That summer I began a journey that would take me through all the years since -- and leads me on yet.

Almost twenty years have passed, now, since that summer. Twenty years in which medicine has made incredible strides torwards understanding -- and defeating -- cancer, and saved many who might once have died. Twenty years in which we have come to the threshold of ending the threat of cancer altogether. Twenty years of incredible progress against an entire host of diseases which attack and too often take from us those whom we care most about. Twenty years in which I have both had the humble privilege to prepare to join that struggle. Twenty years to prepare to be a healer, a scientist, and an activist. And twenty years to learn for myself, in my own life and heart, what it is about the love of a Lady that is so worth fighting for.

Almost twenty years before, far away on a Pennsylvania field, surely dozens, if not hundreds, of men and women would have given their lives right then and there if it would have saved Queen Eislinn's life, at the same time a little boy growing up near Detroit decided to consider giving his life to the cause that might have saved it. Now, twenty years later, I have finally come myself to the front lines of the war on cancer. To the farthest forward edge of the battle to save those we can, and avenge those we have lost. Only time will tell if I have steel enough within me to be worthy of that battle. But all a man can ask for is the chance to try.

I did not come to the SCA until years upon years after Queen Eislinn's last Pennsic. I have never been there myself. I have never walked upon the slopes of Mount Eislinn, and it may be many, many more years before I ever do. I may never carry a sword and shield or rapier and buckler onto the field for the Dragon Banner.

But like so many who loved her, long ago, I too was a proud son of Cynnabar and the Midrealm. I too was a proud son of Calontir and the Falcon. I too have learned for myself about that which the minstrels sing; about that precious joy that we call close friendship and a special Lady's smile. And in my own way, through that which I am privileged enough to have the chance to try to be, I hope I can too someday say with humble honor: I fought for love and beauty; I fought for the Once and Future Queen.

I shall try, my Lady. I shall try.

I'll win her a kingdom, I'll conquer an empire
I'll throne her with honour and crown her with fame
And if all the world should resolve into nothing
Still the stars in the heavens will echo her name.

- Song of Talymar and Eislinn
Menya Wolfe / Rhiannon of Wye, 1965-2001

legends, love