Robena, while not the most accomplished knight in the courtly arts, thought that she could sense that something here was amiss.

Should she deflect? Should she explain herself? Everyone had left - did that mean that she had failed some test already? [i]Constance[/i]. Was the castle enchanted? Had the soup been poisoned? Was this a ghost or angel sent to judge her at this anointed hour? Had she fucked up the math and miscounted the days, or was this evidence that Pope Gregory's calendar was false? Would it be inappropriate to flirt with Saint Peter's delegate if she was as fair as this? Was she jumping to theories of the supernatural too quickly? Well, she could hardly be blamed for that, considering where failing to take magic into account had landed her.

Perhaps the only thing that her brief flood of increasingly absurd questions told her was that she should not dissemble here, if only because she was unclear who or what she was lying to. And while she didn't know that she was not, even now, under the spell of some powerful demon, perhaps the only strategy she could coherently commit to was pretending that she was not. So she took a breath, touched the sign of the chalice upon her throat, and answered as best she was able.

"Honestly, no," said Robena. "Three times I thought I had the little bastard. Three times it dodged me. The fourth time we were both exhausted and miserable and the hour was late for us both. I might have trembled, he might have bolted, and it is as much providence as my skill that killed the fox."

She looked at the soup again. Xristos, she knew that it'd be inappropriate to start eating soup right now - something even she knew to be inherently unglamourous - but she was really hungry.

"If you want to see helplessness in death, though," she said, "you should have seen the inside of Friar Southy's chicken coop after one of these got in. I'll shed no tears for a fox after seeing that."

Oh Constance. Would that she had that fox's wit, that she might have been able to twist the words into a tale of how she'd grown and changed and repented and still needed to apologize. To find a way to express silent ache and silent tears rather than grunting out some hunting anecdote like the brute she appeared to be, had proven to be. Would that she wore not the ogre's aspect, even now!