By circumstances of birth, Ailil de Broughton was sideswiped by fate. Denied inheritance as the firstborn son of the secondborn brother, Geraint, his role as a knight was nearly set in stone. For a fleeting two years he was the direct heir to Broughton until Caerdin's arrival — the pride of a small and growing family. He was too young to know the slight disappointment in reshuffled futures, but grew up close with his extended Broughton kin in a spirit of camaraderie and joy that childhood brings.
By some dint of fate, Ailil's family at least paid lip service to the British Christian beliefs brought by Aunt Enid. He went along to services as often as harvest celebrations, the latter with increasing secrecy to avoid ruffling feathers. The boy's impressionable mind accepted the dichotomy of faith with great fervour, and he began to fashion an inexplicably detailed code of personal conduct terribly young as a result. He was the last to leave the field, the one with the cleanest sword and the fair parlay upon the field. His tempers and fisticuffs came over perceived injustices done against the weak, particularly serfs and elderfolk, and when bullying for position offended his personal sensibilities. In that respect, the adults around him wondered at his sense of self but also forever sighed over the scrapes or torn tunics he threw into the mending pile. He could never leave well enough alone.
In 500, an arrangement struck by Geraint and Aeddan de Cholderton to repay a personal debt placed Ailil in fosterage to the house, where he joined a gaggle of healthy children around Cholderton Manor. There he turned his focus almost totally upon pursuits in the forest, vanishing for hours at a time on great romps and adventures with the nobleborn household and others in fosterage. Fast friendships made from exposure to distant kin and nearby manors shaped his growing fondness for wilderness. Unfortunately, in 506 during his squiring, he stumbled upon a rather nasty hole under a half-wrecked hovel in the downlands. The place was infested by all manor of crawling insects and he was trapped within for nearly 28 hours before someone found the envenomed youth, delirious and panicked.
He would recover and in the recovery, turn some of his attention upon mastering the very substances that nearly sapped his life. Ailil was circumspect about his studies, never letting on the arts he mastered, but huntsmen and woodsmen supplied a growing knowledge of toxins and their uses for woe and weal. It would pass that his squiring shifted from Aeddan de Cholderton to another knight, Sir Owain, one better placed to take on a youth of Ailil's stature and growing talents. However, their path increasingly took them out of Britain and over the narrow sea. For the better part of seven years, Ailil fought in the tournies and battles in a host of foreign places under Sir Owain's instruction. Conflict with Saxons and Franks convulsed the area, and Ailil time and again engaged in a series of nameless conflicts across fields, woods, and villages. Owain gained great glory and he basked in its afterglow, though he became astitute at turning his composition and oratory skills to wheedle patronage and financial support for their expensive lifestyle. Owain required constant funds for new equipment and supporting his retinue, and farmed his squire out to do it.
Seven years came and went fighting over the sea with very few return trips home, for braving the ocean was no easy thing. Ailil became something of an accomplished stalker and hunter, assigned out by Owain to help parties bring down deer or boars, and other less than illustrious trophies between the conquests of war and tourney. He gained his freedom in 511 but carried on until 513, trying to make an income under straitened circumstances. It made a much more worldly man of him than living in Salisbury might, hardening his resolve and filling his eyes with the sights of ancient places and new ideas. Their endless roaming had to come to an end, though: Ailil was old enough to serve as his own man and, frankly, he yearned for his own glory in the Pendragon's kingdom back home. Another gaggle of young squires behind him hardly drove any interests. He was eclipsed by the fame and fortune Owain constantly sought, and yearned to be his own man.
Besides, he'd seen enough of the continent to document its wonders for a lifetime. If only he had nights to himself to capture them down, he might have a calling as a poet. As he returned to Broughton, he presented himself to his rather startled family and spoke to his intentions to make a name for himself as worthy as his illustrious forebears. For him the green fields are refreshing and Arthur a sort of king out of story, and he means to chart his way into the Pendragon's very good graces.
