by Peter David
What the hell was I going to do?
Marry the princess? Could I do it? Could I possibly climb back into bed with her, knowing she was my sister?
It was my ever-aggressive, ever-ambitious inner voice that was speaking. She’s only your halfsister. And it’s not as if you’ve been raised side by side all these years. You have no real blood loyalty to her on that score. You’re making more of this than there needs to be. And besides, there are some other parts of the realm that not only do not abominate incest but, in fact, encourage it, to keep the bloodline pure.
And then I thought about the realms where such customs applied. The ones overseen by such inbred monarchs as King Rudolf the Dribbler and King Clyde the Numblingly, Mind-Bogglingly Stupid.
No, that didn’t seem too workable an option. To say nothing of the fact that I kept coming back in my mind to the legends of the mythic king of the Britons, Arthur. He who had lain with his halfsister, Morgana, and had wound up siring his own nemesis, Mordred. The thought that my own little downfall might, at this moment, be brewing in the cauldron of Entipy’s belly was a most unpleasant one.
And, ultimately, what it came down to was the thought of coupling with her again, knowing who she was … knowing that the madness I saw and despised in her was simply a reflection of my own … simply made my skin crawl.
I went to the window and considered leaping out of it. Escape would be impossible; on the other hand, if I killed myself in the fall, that would certainly put an end to my difficulties. I strongly considered it, even put one leg out the window to try and steel myself for it.
What if you’re wrong?
And that stopped me. “Wrong?” I said out loud to no one.
Yes. Wrong. Have you considered the possibility that you’re simply jumping to conclusions? Yes, she has a birthmark like yours, and yes, she bears a resemblance to you in a variety of ways. But that alone does not make you siblings, or even half-siblings. What if she is but a cousin? You cannot know for sure. What if her father, whoever he is, is a brother of yours? As long as you don’t know whether her father was at the inn that night, raping your mother, you can’t say for certain. You may be walking away from the opportunity of a lifetime for no reason. Think! She will be queen! You, her consort, would rule by her side!
“Except she is not the daughter of the king. Queen Beatrice is queen only by marriage; it is from the king himself that the royal bloodline flows. Entipy has no true claim to be the princess; she’s just a royal bastard with no rights. If I ruled by her side, I’d be living a lie!”
And your point is—?
Then came a brisk knock at the door to summon me downstairs. Once again I cursed myself for my lack of nerve and resolve, and—after taking my staff firmly in one hand—I opened the door. The guard looked at me oddly. “Is there … another here?” he inquired. I shook my head. “Odd … I … thought I heard you talking to someone,” he continued.
“I was talking to myself. It’s the only way I’m assured intelligent conversation,” I said, and followed him out.
The queen, a faithless trollop, more base than my mother. The king, an ignorant cuckold. Entipy, an unknowing bastard who had no more claim to the throne than I. This was the royal family that was seated before me in the main hall. Other knights were in attendance as well, which I was personally appalled by. Had the king so utterly lost his mind that he was going to discuss indelicacies in front of the entirety of the court?
As it turned out, that was exactly what he was going to do. He did not, however, say so. Instead it was Justus, standing to the king’s right, who said gravely, “The king is more than aware of the nature of gossip … and knew, since others saw that the princess was in your company this morning, that word of it would quickly spread throughout the castle. He may command hearts and minds, but virtually nothing can stay gossip’s swift hand. A truly wise king knows his limitations.”
Odclay the jester capered about, his bells tinkling merrily, and he chanted,
“The king today, sad to say, is most completely ruing, the snickering amongst the knights about his daughter’s scr—”
“That’s quite enough of that, jester,” the queen said sharply. Odclay promptly lapsed into silence after a final, slightly defiant jingle of his bells.
“That said,” continued Justus, “the king and queen …”
“Mostly the queen,” rumbled Runcible.
” … have decided to be …” Justus stopped and glanced at Runcible, who nodded slightly. “Magnanimous,” he concluded.
“Magnanimous,” I said hollowly.
“Yes. It is clear that you and the princess are—shall we say—a bit overanxious for the union to take place. Rather than focus on what should not have been done, the king and queen … mostly the queen,” he added in anticipation of the clarification, “have decided instead to focus on what will be done. So we are here … to set a wedding date. The sooner the better. We were thinking something along the lines of …”
“Now,” the king said quietly.
“Now?” I whispered.
“Do you have another, more pressing appointment?” asked the queen.
“No … no, I … didn’t have anything else planned today. Well … I was thinking of reshoeing my horse, perhaps, or … or … taking a bath, that was nice, a bath …” I was yammering. I wasn’t making sense to anyone, least of all myself. I rallied and said, “I mean … isn’t this a bit rushed? A royal wedding, after all. There should be, uhm … pomp and circumstance … and … and …”
“Under the circumstances, we can forgo the pomp,” said Justus. “The princess has already consented …”
“Again,” muttered the king.
The queen fired him a scolding look, and there was some quick laughter from the court.
“Apropos,” Entipy spoke up, and she stepped down from the raised platform upon which the thrones rested. She crossed to me and took my hand. It was everything I could do not to pull it away. “Apropos, it’s all right. Really. The ceremony, the trappings … they mean nothing to me anyway. Only you mean anything.”
“And besides,” the queen said, “what need have we to invite nobles and such from other lands? They likewise mean nothing. The people that matter to us,” and she took in the entirety of the court with a sweeping gesture, “are all right here. We are, in a way, all family.”
Oh my gods …
“So, good sir knight,” and Justus clapped his hands together briskly, like a great showman about to proceed with a circus, “the archdeacon is in the next room. I can bring him out and the ceremony can proceed, so that you and the princess can be lawfully husband and—”
“I can’t.” The words fell out of my mouth and splattered to the floor like eggs gone bad. And it was true. I couldn’t. My mind was awhirl, my thoughts conflicted. I had spent my life acting in my best interests, and for the first time, I had no idea what those were. My trusty inner voice was shouting, Shut up! Marry her! So what if she’s your sister? She could be your mother for all you should care! Deal with it and wed the bitch! My lips tightened. I said nothing further.
There was a deathly silence for a long moment.
“Apropos,” Justus said evenly, “it is said that knights do not know the meaning of the word ‘can’t’ …”
“Except when it comes to beggars,” Odclay piped up. “They utter their beggars’ cant. Also, I hear beggars can’t be—”
“Not now,” the king said sharply, and I had never heard that tone of voice from him. He had risen from the throne. “Apropos … I owe you a great deal … but you owe me, as well. Another king would have gutted you for your actions. I am choosing to rise above it. I do not suggest you drag us down, or it will go badly for you.”
“I … have no doubt,” I managed to squeak out. I was looking up at the phoenix tapestry, restored to its normal place. In my imagination, the image of the rider—Tacit, of course—was tossing a rude gesture to me.
Entipy was looking at me with wide, hu
rt eyes. “Apropos … ?” she was saying.
I looked into those eyes, and it was like seeing my soul mirrored back at me. This was no cousin, no distant relation. I became more and more convinced with each passing instant. My voice barely above a whisper, I said again, “I … I can’t …”
“How. Dare. You.” Never before, and very likely never since, had the king engaged in such a public display of fury. He was rooted to the spot, perhaps concerned that, if he approached me, he’d kill me with his bare hands. What a favor he would have been doing me. “How dare you treat the princess this way. Treat us this way.”
Entipy was backing away from me, shaking her head in denial, still unable to believe that I was refusing her. The king took a step down from the throne, still not getting near me, still trembling with barely suppressed fury. “I raised you up! I trusted you! What is the problem here, ‘good sir knight’? Mayhap you think that my daughter is not good enough for you, you peasant bastard? Not as good as the … the whores and what-have-you that you’ve consorted with before coming here?”
The single most stupid thing I could possibly have done at that moment was to lose my temper. Naturally that’s what I started to do. “At least they were honest whores,” I shot back.
The court gasped in unison as if it possessed one throat. The king, royally, purpled. “And to think … to think that the queen pled with me on your behalf! To think that my daughter trusted you! To think that we invited you to join us, to be one of us! We should have known! Known that someone whose roots are from so low in our society could not possibly share that to which we aspire! The nobility of spirit, the purity of soul! Here we thought that you would be able to join us in sharing our scrupulous sense of morality, and here you could not pollute it with the daughter of my loins! As if she was not good enough for you—!”
There may have been more ill timed moments for me to completely lose control of my sense of discretion, but in retrospect, none come to mind. “Scrupulous sense of morality!” I bellowed, appalled. “What a joke!”
“Joke? Joke?! You take advantage of my daughter, and you call it a joke?”
Never had I been less concerned about my long-term health than in that confrontation with the king. Because finally, finally I was going to say that which had been on my mind all that time. Even if he cut me down right there—which he probably would—he would at least hear the truth of it. He would hear about the foundation of sand upon which he had constructed this glorious little fantasy realm which existed—not around him, but instead only within his head. Lowborn bastard I might be, but I would take being a lowborn realist over being royalty trapped in self-delusion any day of the week. And I knew right where I was going to start in the deconstruction of this false world of chivalry and morality. First it would be with his delusion that his queen had been faithful, his daughter his own … and then I would move on to the circumstances of my own creation. At last, at last, I finally understood my true reason for existence. It was for nothing else other than to bring this world of lies and deceit crashing down. “Aye, joke, say I,” I snapped at him. “And that’s the biggest joke of all! Your daughter, you say? Your daughter of your loins? And your wife, her mother? Why, I’ll have you know that your queen—”
And I stopped.
Because I saw Queen Bea’s face go ashen.
She knew what I was about to say. She knew that, somehow, I knew. There was panic in that face, like a trapped animal. And maybe it was a case where she had utilized all of her ability to be deceitful on the sheer act of keeping it secret. That, once it was yanked out into the open, she would not be able to resolutely deny it to her husband’s face.
All of that, though, was secondary, to the fact that her panicked gaze had reflexively shifted. With her secret about to be revealed, she had not looked at her husband, nor at me, nor her daughter.
Which, of course, made sense. In an instant like that, with your duplicity about to be revealed, you would not look to those from whom you kept the secret.
Instead, you would look to him with whom you shared it.
Without even turning my head, I saw where her gaze went. Saw where it went … and saw it returned, from a face as momentarily frightened and desperate as her own. A face that looked like an odd assortment of different parts slapped together. A face topped off by a jaunty fool’s cap.
Well … of course. I mean, of course. I, who had been a joke for the entirety of my life … naturally, I would have a booby for a sire. Any final doubts that Entipy and I shared the same father were washed away in that instant, because of course, of course … it was too perfect. It was too cosmically apt, the answer to my long-standing question right in front of me, irrefutable and poetically just: Who else could possibly produce such a fool as I but a royal fool?
Queen Bea, and her clandestine lover, Odclay the jester, father of the princess, and of the princess’s former intended, looked at each other in the way that only petrified deceivers can when their deceit is about to be made public.
And I knew at that instant that I was right. That she wouldn’t be able to deny it. That I’d caught her too flatfooted … her and Odclay. If I kept the momentum going, they’d be sufficiently disconcerted so that the web of lies would come unwoven, the wall of silence and secrecy would crack.
It was right there, all of it, within my reach. With just a few words, I could bring an entire kingdom crashing down. With just a few words, I could avenge myself on my father. With just a few words, I could destroy the hypocrisy rife within the system that Runcible had created. All I had to do …
… all I had to do …
… was wreck the life of Queen Beatrice. A pathetic, frightened creature who, aside from her indiscretion, had done nothing. Nothing except be the only person in the castle who had treated me with compassion. Who had nursed me back to health, who had intervened on my behalf with the king. Even her “forcing” me to go on the mission to retrieve her daughter had been motivated by concern for her daughter and a sense that I was the right person for the job, that Entipy and I would share a bond. She couldn’t possibly have known.
And Entipy. Gods, the knowledge of what had happened … of who and what she was and wasn’t … of what her mother was and wasn’t … it would drive her mad. Truly mad. She had been a handful the entire time, there was no denying that. But she did not deserve to see her entire world crack apart around her. Did not deserve to be sent spiraling down into the pit of disgrace. My turning away from her and the future she had built around us was bad enough, but to see her own place in that denied, to suffer the scornful looks and contempt hurled upon all those pathetic creatures who had the heartless label slapped on them—“bastard”—how could I? How—?
Do it. Do it. This is what you’ve been waiting for. The king is a cuckold, the queen is faithless, the daughter is a loon, and your father is the only jest in the kingdom bigger than you. If you’re not going to take advantage of marrying her, then at least have your revenge. Do what must be done … .
The king’s voice was icier than the Frozen North. “My queen … is what,” he said. It was not remotely a query. It was a prompting for the words that would, unbeknownst to the king, mean damnation for all.
“—your queen … and your daughter … and you … deserve someone more worthy than a peasant bastard,” I said quietly. “There is nothing more to say than that, Your Highness. And if that will not suffice … then throw me in the dungeon now and be done with it.”
Chapter 31
As dungeons went, it wasn’t that bad. There were hardly any rats, the straw was changed daily, and the king—in a burst of generosity—hadn’t manacled me to the wall.
I sat there, staring into darkness. The one thing I wasn’t wondering was why the king hadn’t simply executed me on the spot. The only thing I could think of was that the gods were not through tormenting me yet.
I knew I would never forget the astonishment that played over Bea’s face, or the choked sob of betrayal and hurt that
came from the throat of the princess. Nor, try as I might, the grinning triumph in the face of Mace Morningstar as the guards hauled me past him and away to the dungeons to await …
… what?
I didn’t know. And at that point, I didn’t care. For someone who had spent the entirety of his life caring first and foremost about himself, it was an odd sensation to have stopped giving it any priority at all.
My guess at that point was that the king was just going to leave me in there to rot. He could have me executed, of course. The volunteers would likely be lining up. But the king was less a believer in martyrdom and more a believer in mercy whenever possible, and in the grand demented scheme of things, he’d probably think that letting me live out the rest of my life in this hole was merciful.
I stared into the darkness and tried to figure out how I could have, should have, handled that final moment in a different manner. But try as I might, I simply could not see myself stripping away the queen’s secret. Perhaps I saw in her, in some measure, some of the same traits that my mother had possessed. A fundamentally good woman who, owing to circumstances, wound up doing some fundamentally bad things. That was not, however, enough to make them fundamentally bad people who deserved the misfortunes that befell them. That was a far more accurate description of me, when you get down to it.
And that was, ultimately, what it boiled down to. I deserved this. I’d had a good run … made some good enemies … held triumph in my hand for a brief time … and now it was done. I was done. Over. All, all over.
I heard a turning of a key in the lock and looked up. For a moment I thought of trying to attack whoever was entering, but then reasoned that I might as well stay put. I had no idea, after all, what the odds would be like outside. There could be twenty men waiting for me in the hallway, and the person entering was the one who was going to give me food. If I jumped him, and then ran straight into the waiting arms of the guards, all I would have accomplished would have been to anger the person on whom I was depending for sustenance. What would be the point of that?