The image of a swashbuckling Scarlet Pimpernel is very appealing to Neal Caffrey. The canon writers took advantage of the concept during the Season 2 episode "Point Blank" when Neal slashed a banner with a sword to swing off a balcony in an Errol Flynn maneuver. For someone who dreams of being a swashbuckler, fencing is the ideal sport, and the writers knew it. In the Season 3 episode "On Guard," Neal showed off his expertise with a foil when he fenced under his alias of Gary Rydell. We've maintained his skill in our series.
Warning for minor spoilers for the Caffrey Conversation AU.
Shortly after joining the FBI, Neal became a member of the fictitious Chelsea Fencing Club. His alias Gary Rydell is a known fencer, and Neal used that alias for his membership. When he started classes at Columbia, a fellow art student, Aidan Phillips, encouraged him to try out for the university's fencing club. Once Aidan heard Neal had fenced with a French master in Europe, he dubbed him d'Artagnan. Fencing spotlights Neal's shapeshifting ability. At Columbia, he fences as Neal Caffrey. In the world of thieves, Gary Rydell not only fences stolen goods but also fences with a blade.
In Neal's shapeshifting world, keeping secrets is essential. He builds walls separating his various aliases. When he began classes at Columbia, he wanted to shield his friends from the criminal element he needed to associate with because of his job, and he also hoped to keep his past a secret. But his dual fencing worlds intersect in The Queen's Jewels when French fencing master and thief André Renard helps the man he knows as Gary Rydell con a hoodlum who is trying to frame Neal. During that story, Neal's two best friends at Columbia, Richard and Aidan, offer their assistance in beating the frame. They call themselves the Three Musketeers where Richard is Porthos and Aidan dubs himself Aramis. Mozzie meets Neal's friends under the alias of Athos. They invent an acronym for their crew: AFO, which stands for All For One. Fencing has now become a metaphor for Neal slashing through the walls that separate him from his friends and colleagues. In The Queen's Jewels, his colleagues welcome him back to White Collar by having him use a sword to slash through a paper chain-link fence.
Penna and I have been gradually filling in incidents from Neal's childhood, and swordsmanship is part of the narrative. Penna started it off with Written in the Stars, where Neal divulges his childhood enthusiasm for Star Wars lightsabers. Jedi Knights have much in common with medieval knights, and I pictured Neal picking up from his mother Meredith a love for the knights of the Round Table. In An Evening with Genji, we learn that Neal became friends with a Japanese father and daughter when he was a child recovering from an incident of child abuse. The father taught Neal how to fence in exchange for English lessons.
Neal's swordsmanship is also used for lighthearted moments. Penna put his ability on display in Caffrey Aloha. At Noelle and Joe's wedding, Neal uses a bravura technique called sabrage to slice off the cork and collar of a champagne bottle with a special wedding sabre.
In Raphael's Dragon, Neal's Columbia fencing club has its final competition of the season. The musketeers are called upon—first when Mozzie goes missing and once more when Neal is in trouble. Fencing will continue to be an element in the future. In Echoes of a Violin, my next Caffrey Conversation story, Neal travels to Paris where he will have a reunion with his former fencing master, André Renard. In the Crossed Lines series, Dean and Sam Winchester use swords to decapitate vampires. They don't know about Neal's fencing ability yet, but that won't last.
On a personal note, it's been particularly satisfying for me to write about fencing for Caffrey Conversation. I fenced at college—alas, with none of the skill and grace of Neal—but my friends and I had our moments of glory pretending to be swashbucklers in the passageways of our college dorm.
Raphael's Dragon on Archive of Our Own
Raphael's Dragon on FanFiction
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