Maresi Red Mantle

by Maria Turtschaninoff

“Why are you so incredibly keen to fell these silverwoods, dear Kendmen?”

  “Why, for Your Majesty’s sake, of course,” replied the nádor. He pulled out a silk handkerchief and wiped his brow. “I do not wish to burden these people with high taxes, so in order to meet Your Majesty’s stipulated taxation I must find other forms of income from the province. This type of wood has no equal in all of Urundien. It is hard-wearing and white as snow, never darkens or yellows, and is very difficult to burn. It could even be used in the palace. An eternally snow-white pavilion by the palace pond, perhaps?”

  Uvas and I exchanged glances when the nádor claimed that his taxes were not a heavy burden. The Queen looked at me, her eyes shining in the lamplight. Then she gave the nádor a brilliant smile.

  “I hold your loyalty and hard work for the Crown in high esteem, my good Kendmen. And you are quite right, these sorts of negotiations do bore me. It is better to leave them to the men.” She yawned and stretched. “Eara, Talrana, come, let us return to my tent.” The men bowed deeply as the Queen swept away.

  The two ladies, beautifully dressed in grey and blue respectively, followed. Just as the Queen reached the tent opening, I heard the nádor mutter: “See how fickle she is. I maintain that the realm cannot be ruled by a woman.” I do not believe that the Queen heard him. Then a loud and commanding voice came from the tent door.

  “Maresi Enresdaughter, do you hesitate in following the orders of your Queen? We ought to leave the negotiations to the men. Come.”

  I glanced quickly at Uvas, who gestured to me to go. I turned around and hurried after the Sovereign of Urundien and Rovas, the nádor’s gaze burning into my back.

  Now my eyelids are too heavy, dear Sister O. I can write no more, not now. I must sleep awhile. My candle is burning down, and I dare not ask for another. I will continue tomorrow, if the Queen allows it.

  It is morning, but two days have passed since I last wrote. I am completely overcome by fatigue. They barely let me sleep here. I was in no way prepared for everything expected of me.

  I will continue where I left off.

  When I emerged from the tent, the Queen was watching the dogs.

  “Do they only obey you now?” she asked.

  “I do not know, Your Majesty,” I said carefully. “I have never done anything like this before. My powers are not my own. They come to me from the Crone, from the land, from the people of Rovas. There is nothing remarkable about me personally.”

  “You are the first of my Rovasian subjects I have come across who is able to read,” said the Queen with a sour smile. “That is remarkable enough in itself. I believe what the soldier said is true.”

  “Yes, Your Majesty. And I can write and count.”

  “Hmm. I would appreciate it if you could pass your authority over the dogs to my houndmasters so that they might take them away. They are in the way here.”

  I crouched down and looked at the dogs. Fifty pairs of dark eyes looked up at me. “Go free,” I said quietly.

  One by one they got up, shook themselves and padded away in different directions. Men in brown leather jackets ran over, whistled at their dogs and herded them away across the glade. The Queen was not watching the dogs; she was watching me. Then she turned and walked to the second large tent, followed by her ladies-in-waiting.

  This tent was a little smaller but more homely, with carpets on the ground, a travel cot by the far wall, a table with folding chairs and a stove similar to the one in the other tent. The ladies-in-waiting quickly lit the lamps. I stood just inside the tent door and looked on. The Queen muttered something to the lady in grey, who fetched a pitcher and poured a red drink into a vessel of real glass. The Queen raised it to me.

  “What is it you say here in Rovas? Blessings on your journey?”

  She took a sip from the glass and then offered it to me. I, Maresi Enresdaughter, received a greeting cup from the hand of a queen.

  “Blessings on your hearth,” I whispered. The wine tasted different from the one we drink at Moon Dance at the Abbey. Much sweeter. It tasted good.

  The Queen came over to the table and sat down.

  “So, Maresi, banisher of frost. Come and sit. We have much to discuss and not much time to do it.”

  “Was it a pretext then? Was Your Majesty only pretending to be bored?” I heard the question leave my lips before I had time to think it through, and I cursed my impulsiveness. I still have not learnt to control it! But to my great relief the Queen only laughed dryly.

  “Naturally. I had to find a way to confer with you in peace and quiet without interference from the nádor. The man is an idiot. And I believe that you have much to tell me that he would go to great lengths to prevent me from hearing. Come and sit now. Queens are not used to having to repeat themselves.”

  I hastened to sit down at the table, on a stool one of the ladies-in-waiting had provided for me.

  “I should make one thing clear from the start,” the Queen said seriously, waving to the woman in blue to pour a second glass of wine. “I am the Sovereign of Urundien. The nádor and my male advisers do all they can to deny my authority and encourage me to spend my time on more feminine tasks than ruling the realm. They want me to marry, preferably one of them, and let my husband rule. But this I shall never do. So, you can read, Maresi Enresdaughter. Where did you learn this?”

  “Have the songs and tales of the Red Abbey reached the palace of Irindibul?”

  She looked at me thoughtfully. “Yes, I had a nurse who told me some such stories when I was a little girl.”

  “They are not only stories,” I said. “I have been there. The Abbey is a real place, on an island in the far south. It is a home of knowledge and learning, sisterhood and work. My father and mother sent me there to save me from hunger and starvation ten years ago.”

  “Has there been much hunger in Rovas?”

  “Yes, Your Majesty. Three years of true famine within my lifetime.”

  “That explains the pittance that reaches the royal coffers from Rovasian taxes,” said the Queen. She noticed my expression. “Or does it?”

  “Your Majesty, I should sooner say that the high taxes are the reason for these famines,” I answered, as courteously as I could.

  “Really? I have had my suspicions that the nádor is not always entirely… forthright in his accounting. I should like to know more about this province, its people, and its ability to pay taxes. You and I shall have long conversations about this anon. But now we have more pressing matters to attend to. What is happening in the valley?”

  I explained everything to the Queen as well as I could. I told her briefly about our Rovasian beliefs, and our view of the earth and the realm of the dead. I mentioned my own beliefs, and the Crone, and how I can hear and feel her, and sometimes see the door to her realm as well. I told her the story of how we came to discover that the forest was being ravaged, and about the Rovasian woodcutters joining our fight. I told her about the avalanche, and the departure of the soldiers and the arrival of the Rovasian people. I mentioned the school I had held for the children too, at which the Queen raised her eyebrows. She did not interrupt me once, but I had clearly given her much to think about. Yet she held her tongue and sipped her wine and let me continue. When I had finished she slammed her cup angrily down on the table.

  “Kendmen can plead ignorance to all of this, which I am certain he would if I confronted him. But by my father’s beard, as nádor it is his duty to know his province, its customs and traditions! As soon as you resisted he must have realized that he was trying to lay waste to your sacred ground, yet he simply does not care. He is out to fill his own pockets. I have long suspected it but lacked sufficient proof. He let me set the dogs on you all, in the belief that you were a handful of insubordinates out to disrupt the orders of the Crown.”

  She rose and I leapt from my stool. Even I understand that one must not remain sitting when a queen is standing. She began pacing up and down the tent.

  “Now he has for
ced me into an impossible situation. If I yield now, after personally ordering the dogs be set loose, I shall appear weak. I lose face and my reputation is compromised, but what is worse, I lose the respect of those damned old men I have to keep on good terms with all the time. You cannot imagine the ways in which they try to manipulate me, trick me, steal the crown from me. They think it is easy now that the crown sits on a woman’s head. I have to be constantly vigilant against people whose job it is to advise and support me in my duties as the newly crowned Sovereign.”

  She turned to me abruptly. “I wish your people no harm. Your people are my people, and the duty of a sovereign is to take care of their people, not slaughter them. But the nádor wants to set an example. He is clearly terrified of losing his hold on the province, which he would if he surrendered completely. And I cannot lose face, neither before my people nor before my advisers.” She collapsed back into her seat. “Of course, I have no trusted advisers to consult. No one is on my side.” She angrily tore down one of her braids and began to fiddle with it.

  “Your Majesty,” I said, and fell to my knees beside her. “Will you not permit me to advise you? I am no shrewd Urundian adviser, I know that.” The Queen looked at me from under a furrowed brow. I swallowed. “It is in my interest that this conflict be resolved without you losing face or respect among your own, whilst also allowing my people to return home unharmed, and preserving our burial grove, now and for ever.”

  The Queen looked at me bitterly. “Have I any choice?” She sighed and shook her head. “Oh, what do I have to lose?”

  She ordered more wine for us both, and invited me to sit back down on the stool. I was so nervous that my mouth was dry. I tried to remember everything I had read about the history of Urundien. There was a potential solution. Just one. I wrung my hands, searching for the right words.

  The Queen took out a spindle from a basket by her chair and began spinning. The thread was of the finest, softest lamb’s wool and the Queen’s hands were nimble and certain. My nerves were immediately somewhat soothed. I pulled the stool a little closer to her.

  “I wonder, Your Majesty, if there is anything that stands above the Crown in Urundien. Something that even the Sovereign must bow to?”

  She wrinkled her forehead, still holding the spindle. “I had a shrewd father, Maresi of Rovas. He was never destined to be king, for he was the youngest of three. He felt no duty to have sons, and I grew up on his estate in the hills outside Irindibul, far from the intrigues of the palace. My grandfather lived to a very old age and had the great misfortune of seeing both his eldest sons die, one from disease and the other from a most unnecessary hunting accident.” She tutted. “And suddenly my father became king in middle age. But he did not live long. And now mine is the head that bears the crown.”

  While she was speaking her two ladies-in-waiting produced sweet cakes, boiled water on the stove for tea, and served it all beautifully on the table between me and the Sovereign of Urundien. The Queen’s hands were moving all the while and the thread she span became even and very thin. I noticed that she held the wool a little differently from the way I was taught, more angled. I wonder whether all women spin that way in Urundien, or whether it is a quirk of hers.

  “As soon as my father’s two brothers were dead and he realized I would have to wear the crown one day, he started to train me for my eventual responsibilities. But he was taken from us too soon, so my training was cut short—something that my opponents take every possible opportunity to point out. But even as a child I learnt that there is one thing that stands above the Sovereign of Urundien, and that is the law.”

  I sighed with relief, so loudly that the Queen gave me a rather amused glance.

  “I know a little of Urundien’s most ancient laws,” I said slowly, searching for the right words and names in my memory. “Unless I am mistaken there was a king by the name of Bendiro who lived long ago. He married Venna, daughter to a governor of Rovas, to seal the alliance between our little province and your powerful realm.” I am afraid that I went on to lose myself in dreamy musings of what I had read and perhaps forgot whom I was speaking to. “Rovas was a very poor province in those times and received a great deal of help from Urundien, especially during the ten years when Bendiro’s daughter Evendilana reigned. I have wondered why Rovas even interested Urundien, for we have no great resources to offer her. Might it have been for wood?”

  The Queen twisted the spindle against the outside of her thigh. “It may well have been for the sake of wood. Bendiro was an expansionist king and before his death he tried to conquer Lavora, the coastal realm, to gain access to the great trade routes to the east. He might have planned to build a fleet, and in that case Rovasian wood would have come in useful. But it is more likely that Rovas quite simply functioned as a shield against the Akkade plains in the north. They have not always been as peaceful as they are now, the good Akkade nomads.”

  “It would be interesting to know more about that time in Rovasian history,” I said, and then remembered the true focus of our discussion. “This Venna of Rovas must have been a most remarkable woman, for when the pact between the province and Urundien was made, three laws were written. The first concerned taxes: Rovas shall pay one-tenth of its production in tax, to be collected annually. The second concerned the forest: it was established that most of the southern and eastern forests are royal territory, and preserved for the hunting and timber needs of the Crown, while the remaining woodland is free for the Rovasians to use. But the third law is like no other in the Urundian law book and was written through Venna’s initiative. It stipulates that the Rovasians are free to practise their beliefs and traditions without interference from Urundien.”

  The Queen laid down her spindle. Her eyes were shining.

  “I have heard about this! It was not Father who taught me, it was…” She slapped her hands together. “It was Kendmen! He was lecturing me while we were out hunting. He spoke of the forest and hunting rights, and he mentioned that part about ‘beliefs and traditions’. Disdainfully, of course. Oh!” She rose. “I came here because I suspected that he was withholding income from the Crown. Never has Rovas brought in so little taxes as now. But this!” She smiled, without warmth or benevolence. “He has dug his own grave. He has acted unlawfully, and knowingly so.” I too was on my feet, and the Queen laid a hand on my shoulder. “Maresi Enresdaughter of Rovas, you have shown me how this conflict can be resolved without bloodshed and without losing face. I…”

  She stopped. There was a commotion outside the tent. In hindsight the noise had been going on for a while, but we were too engrossed in our conversation to notice. It was the clatter of weapons, horses snorting, men calling, but all somewhat muffled. Now it was hooves beating against the hard-frozen ground.

  The lady in blue stuck her head out of the tent and then quickly withdrew it, her face ashen.

  “They are riding out!” she whispered. “All the soldiers!”

  Maresi, whispered the Crone among the hoofbeats. Hurry, my daughter.

  The Queen swore more filthily than I would have ever thought possible from a lady. She ran to the tent opening but turned back at once.

  “They have already gone! Only a handful remain, presumably to guard me.” She quickly straightened her mantle. “The maniac. The traitor! He is riding to the valley without consulting his Queen, without my permission! He will probably say that he believed he had free rein to handle the situation as he saw fit. Talrana, my gloves. Eara, fetch my horse. At once!” She rushed out, gloves in hand, with Eara close behind. I followed.

  Uvas was waiting outside the tent with my sword. “I didn’t dare interrupt you,” he said. He was pale and tense. “They drove me out of the tent as soon as you left. I don’t know what they intend to do.”

  “Attack,” I said shortly, and attached the sword to my back. “I am going with the Queen. If you can get hold of a horse, ride after us. Otherwise you will have to ski.”

  Soon the Queen sat astride her
horse. She reached down and helped me up behind her, and without speaking we rode unescorted out of the camp. Towards my valley, my people, my dead.

  Apologies, I fell asleep at my table. I am glad that they have given me a table and chair. I also got firewood for the little fireplace in the northern corner of my room. It must be midnight by now. I can hear the wind whine around the thick stone walls outside. Not the slightest draught can reach me inside, though. I awoke with my head resting on my right arm, so if my handwriting is illegible it is because my hand has been as deeply asleep as I was. I just have to put more wood on the fire, so I can see enough to write. My little candle has nearly burnt out. I regret letting it burn down while I slept.

  I will continue from where I got to before falling asleep. What now follows is of great significance. For it demonstrates the many faces of the Crone, Sister O. She is so much greater than I ever understood.

  We galloped through the forest. The Queen was leaning forward and steering the horse while I clung on, my arms wrapped around her waist and my thighs tight against the horse. I have never travelled so fast. I could see nothing but the Queen’s black-robed back, so I could not anticipate the horse’s lurches or jumps over snow blocks and other obstacles. The Queen’s horse must be one of the fastest in Urundien, but the snow and ice were still a hindrance. The soldiers had a significant head start, and they too were going at full speed. The nádor must have ordered them to, for he knew that the Queen would try to stop him.

  I gritted my teeth and prayed to the Crone.

  When we reached the ravine down in the valley I heard the screams. My people were screaming and a formless terror took possession of me. The pass was still filled with snow, and the tracks from the soldiers’ horses led along the western hillside down into the valley. The snow must be less deep there. They had not even tried to force our barricade. Perhaps they had taken my people by surprise. Dread paralysed my limbs and I lost the ability to hold firm in the saddle. I slipped off the horse before we got there. The Queen continued, and perhaps did not even notice me fall. Once I had scrambled to my knees in the deep snow I saw her reach the barricade, where a soldier leapt forward and grabbed her horse’s bridle. The Queen shouted furiously, but her shouts could hardly be heard amid the din from the valley beyond the barricade.