Horn of the River God: Book I of The Song of Agmar

by Frances Mason

  Chapter 8: Eleanor: Navre

  Eleanor had no time.

  One of her ladies in waiting was pinning her hair in place while two others arranged her skirts, and she could already see the ships sailing toward the port. She would not be on time. It was not every day your son’s bride arrived from halfway across the kingdom.

  Her son was the duke of Navre, so this was a political match. Despite that he had admired the miniature which had been sent him of duke Relyan’s daughter. Another of him had been sent to the princess, and though the dowager duchess was partial she thought the young princess could not but be impressed by her handsome son. Though the couple had never met in person he had written the traditional courtly love letters, and she had replied with traditional coyness. Of course a dynastic marriage had its difficulties. She herself had been married to her son’s father in similar circumstances forty years ago. She knew well the frustrations, though she had found ways around them, and in the end admiration for her husband’s character had developed into a kind of love. But love was a secondary consideration in such matches, whatever the romances might say. She knew the fates of more than two young hearts was at stake. Without strong allies even the greatest cities can fall. Perched on the southern tip of the peninsula – most of which had been absorbed into the kingdom many centuries before – facing across the strait to the ancient civilization of Kemet, now its tributary, Navre was one of the greatest cities of Ropeua, second only to Thedra and, if she had anything to say about it, that would not change, except to Navre’s advantage.

  The busyness of voices murmuring and footsteps hurrying filled the air even up here in the private apartments.

  “Hurry, Bess, I haven’t got all day.” She stood up and swept toward the balcony. Her ladies, panicking as she dragged their work away from their hands, hurried beside her, trying to continue while in motion. Pins tinkled on the tiles.

  Anita pleaded with her, “Your Grace, please!”

  Eleanor placed her hands on the balustrade and looked down, stray strands of her naturally still brown hair floating across her face. The city swept down from the curtain walls around the palace, on the headland, across the port to the river. Straddling the breakwaters that sheltered the port, the Colossus of Navre rose, a giant statue of Sedthra, god of the seas, patron deity of the Navrelese. The city’s red tiles and whitewashed facades, bright in the summer sun, were interrupted by the muddy expanse of the river mouth before wrapping around the bay on its opposite side. Ferries shot across the stream as the tide began to turn, bringing ground wheat from the mills in the industrious eastern suburbs or carrying over Gwendurian wine, Seltic tin and copper, Kemetese gems and the art of its robbed tombs, Sardian dessicated fruit, Pectish wolf pelts and mountain goat wool, and many other goods from the port on the western bank, where even now several merchant galleys were unloading crates and sacks and bales. Another larger river boat was visible plying its way from the north, perhaps bringing giant blocks of ice from the glaciers of the Dividing Range to the cellars of the city, or amphorae of oil from Navralese olive groves or barrels of wine from Navralese vineyards.

  A Navralese naval flotilla nestled in the royal docks. Another escorted the princess’s ship. More galleys were scattered across the bay. The summer sun glittered on the water, and the ships tacked against a northerly wind. That would slow them down, as would the tides, but she should be waiting at the quay when they arrived.

  Anita, Susan and Bess took advantage of the dowager duchess’s momentary stillness and worked quickly to finish pinning her dress and arranging her hair. Bess held a small mirror for her to examine her hair. She patted it and smiled at the girl. “That will do, Bess, that will do.” Bess’s face showed concern. Was the dowager duchess saying she had not done well, though well enough. Eleanor reassured her with a hand to her cheek. “That will do,” meant she was pleased.

  She spun around and swept through her apartments to the hall. A page rushed by, his head hidden beneath the bouquet of varicoloured roses he carried to her son’s quarters. Another carried a gilt tray with a pyramid of confectionary to tempt the tastebuds of the soon to be duchess, while a third was encumbered with elaborately designed cages, two in his hands, two hanging from a pole slung across his shoulders. Songbirds fluttered against the grills of the cages, all harmony lost in their panic, though they would answer each-others’ songs with beauty when settled. Maids crossed to and fro with loads of bedding to be aired or washed, exchanging gossip without halting their progress. From behind a pillar smoke wafted, probably from the pipe of a lounging gentleman of the chamber, while two young maids stood near a doorway, giggling, and pretended to be busy when they saw Eleanor’s glance alight on them. An older maid, undeceived, cuffed one, pointing to the unfinished room and, filling the arms of the other with sheets, ordered her to follow, crossing the hall in the opposite direction.

  Two of the twelve suvarks of Sedthra, princes of the cult, as richly attired as any prince temporal, climbed the stairs, their heads together, no doubt whispering about some plot by which their cult would extend its influence and wealth. They pulled their heads quickly apart and bowed to her, reluctantly, as she passed them. Their arrogance irked her. They thought themselves superior to her because they were princes of the cult, yet were as worldly as any noble. What temples would be built without the treasuries of princes? Would the colossus of Navre, honouring their god, rise above the waves if duke Claudio had not conquered the cities of Kemet three hundred years ago and brought back riches and artisans from that ancient civilization? Better an arrogant peasant than a priest. A peasant’s hatred and hypocrisy had a kind of purity. They envied and knew they envied, and their slyness was born of fear. A priest thought himself humble when he was proud, unworldly when he was avaricious.

  Eleanor’s ladies followed in her train down the elegantly spiralling staircase to the magnificent entrance hall of the palace. Here also servants rushed in all directions, crossing and recrossing the marble flagstones, a scullion with a pile of trenchers dodged dextrously around three maids with table cloths, winking at one as he passed. She rolled her eyes then laughed with the other two as a line of porters rushed past them, this one with the legs of trestle tables, those two at either end of the lengths of stacked table tops, that one with a broom, another with a small keg of beer under each arm, another with a basket of wine bottles, yet another two lugging a cauldron packed with ice. Porters with rolled wall hangings bustled toward the banquet hall. The master chandler yelled at a score of lackeys with amphorae of olive oil and crates of lamps and tapers and honeyed beeswax candles to light the coming feast. And these were only the few details which she noticed of the tumult of servants, whose voices and footfalls echoed throughout the palace.

  Not all was motion here though. Statues of many generations of dukes lined the walls of the entrance hall like a battalion of history arrayed to fight forgetfulness. Whatever the intended result, there were so many that Eleanor remembered none but her father in law and, the most recent addition, her late husband. She stopped in front of his statue for a moment. They had sculpted him with such a serious expression, the same expression he had formally worn when sitting in the great hall, and when berating his second son, Julian, as he so often had; and eventually he would be remembered thus; but she had known many other expressions. He had laughed, though with cautious restraint. He had wept when an earthquake had killed thousands of his subjects. He had looked on their eldest son with pride and her with love, sometimes coloured by an irritation which made his lips twitch. She did not even know how to describe the faces he made when in the heat of passion. He had been so much more than this slab of stone. Perhaps it was better though, that only those closest to him understood how much more he was. A duke must be something less than human to his subjects, in order that he could be something more. He was a symbol, and their belief in that symbol was more important than its truth. From that belief power was fashioned, and without it the common people might change the wor
ld.

  A band of minstrels filed in from the courtyard, greeting Eleanor with lavish obsequiousness and the praise learnt from a lifetime of singing for their dinners. Unlike the priests, musicians gave pleasure. She smiled benignly and expressed her wish to hear that night the songs most fashionable in Thedra. They promised she would not be disappointed, and the eldest of them smiled and said, “but is there not something to be said for the old songs too, Your Grace?” “Indeed. The present always rises from the past.” As they made their way to the hall he played a melody on his lute that sounded so familiar. His voice was as sweet as the memories it evoked. How many years ago had she first heard that song? She had been young then herself, and it had been the fashion in Thedra, as had her own beauty.

  The open carriage was waiting for her in the courtyard, its oak doors freshly varnished and overlaid by the arms of house Navre in grey paint and silver leaf: a dolphin soaring over a sea of stars. The coachman was wiping perspiration off his brow with a handkerchief as the sun rose above the courtyard walls. Footmen waited on either side, holding the doors. When she was seated with her ladies the carriage bumped down over the cobblestones toward the port.

  Banners were strung along the facades, and brightly painted cloths hung from windows where people leaned and yelled at each other, counting down the minutes until the royal procession passed. Below the windows the cobblestones had been strewn with rose petals, and more would be showered down on the couple when they rode past. Florist carts lined the wide avenue, selling aromatic missiles to the crowds, who stopped and stared as she passed or waved enthusiastically. It would be even busier tomorrow. The conduits ran with water today, but tomorrow they would run with wine. It reminded her of her own wedding day, more than thirty years ago. The fountain spurting rich red wine, fermented from the fruit of vineyards that thrived in the rich soil of this duchy. The pavilions of cloth of gold in the town square. The banners and flags and pennants everywhere, so that the whole town was like a magnificent giant palace that would impress even the gods. Nobles and commoners alike dressed in their gaudy best, so that the lowliest prentice seemed a prince for a day. The marketplace cleared of stalls and covered in sand and sawdust for the lists, where knights from across the kingdom, arrayed in armour painted with bright colours, red and green and blue and aqua and azure and silver and gold, had competed for the favour of ladies in the stands, and she had been the lady most men had honoured with chivalric purity. Like a character in a courtly tale, the king himself had taken the field and under the wrist guard of his gauntlet tucked her token, a beautiful embroidered handkerchief, saying that he would fight for her honour and so prove her husband the most fortunate man in the kingdom.

  At the quay a crowd were gathering, desperate for a view of their soon to be duchess. Despite that the older townspeople bowed and curtsied to the duchess they had known for most of their lives. The aldermen and mayor were clustered in front of the others, and right at the water’s edge, looking fine in their grey and silver liveries, were knights and squires and pages in the retinue of the duke, and his younger brothers and sisters. Her eldest surviving son was standing apart from the others, near the end of the quay, staring out to sea, tall, brooding. She left her ladies with her daughters and walked out to him. He did not turn to look at her, but knew she was there.

  “Mother.” Though she was tall for a woman of Sol, or Navre, at five and a half feet, her son, at over six feet, towered above her, as had her husband.

  “Yes, Julian?” She looked up at his troubled face, but still he looked out to sea.

  “She’s come a long way.”

  “Some things are worth a long journey.”

  “I don’t really know anything about her.”

  “You know she’s beautiful. You know she admires your miniature. You know she’s the daughter of the most powerful noble at court.”

  “But anything real.”

  “So what were all those letters for?”

  He smiled. “That was just a game. There was no more truth than would make each of us seem sufficiently witty to the other.”

  “At least you know you won’t be marrying a fool.”

  “But underneath all the ritual of courtly wit, what are we?”

  “Two young lovers, waiting to discover each other?”

  “Shouldn’t the discovery come before the love?”

  “Oh, I hope not. Start with love and find your way to disappointment. You don’t want to do these things the wrong way round.”

  He turned to look at her now, with an eyebrow quizzically raised, but he saw her smile.

  “There will always be disappointments in love, Julian. The greatest loves are built on them.”

  “You always knew how to encourage me,” he said dryly.

  “Well, if you are dissatisfied you can get her pregnant with your heir and dissatisfy the town’s courtesans.”

  “I would never.”

  “So they would tell you.”

  He laughed then, a deep, resonant laugh. “A mother shouldn’t say such things to her son.”

  Her intelligent dark brown eyes appraised her son with a sternness she had rarely bestowed on him. Even as a child she had found it difficult to sermonise with him, seeing with amusement her own free nature in his mischief. But he needed her to steady him now, and she could not ignore that need. Both political duty and maternal love demanded some harshness. “A son knows a mother’s love regardless her words. You’re no longer a child, Julian. You’ve satisfied yourself as young men do, but marriage is not about such things. The alliance will consolidate your power; the power of Navre. And don’t forget, you now are Navre.”

  “I don’t know why, but I always expected Father to rule forever. I wish he was still alive. And Edgar….” His voice trailed off.

  At the mention of Julian’s elder brother her heart fell. It had only been two years since.... She fixed a rigid smile to her face, though she could not hide the sadness in her voice. “I miss them too, but we must look to the future. Your bride is the future. As are you.”

  He was silent at that. He had not been raised to rule. That had been his brother Edgar’s fate. Edgar had been the responsible one. Julian had been allowed to please himself. While Edgar had stood at his father’s side, learning the ways of power, Julian had enriched the town’s courtesans and roamed the forests with his hounds and sailed the island chains in his swift caravel. For a time he had played smuggler and pirate, until his brother had cornered him with a fleet of twenty galleys and brought him back to Navre. He had been unabashed as his father sternly warned him while his brother looked on with his accustomed serious frown, so much like that of his father. Then Julian had proposed searching for a legendary city of gold in the jungles south of Kemet. Perhaps he would have found it, but his father and brother had been lost at sea in a storm. He had been tracked to the heat of the jungle, where his men were at the point of mutiny, and summoned back to Navre, angrily protesting that he knew the location of the city and only needed the gold that he knew his father could spare, and which would be repaid in full, with interest, when he found the legendary city. Now the wealth of the duchy was his, but his adventures were at an end.

  “Ruling is so much…”

  “Politics?”

  “Administration. Boring writing of laws, counting of plough lands, raising of taxes, sending of envoys, arranging of assizes. I spend more time at my desk than on my throne, and my fleets sail without me.”

  “Without these things disorder would prevail.”

  “At least that would be something. I could command the fleet, or an army.”

  “And that’s important too. But the boring stuff is what keeps Navre strong. Without taxes there can be no effective levies, no navy. Without assizes lawlessness would rule the land.”

  “I should make something happen.”

  “For a bit of excitement?”

  He grinned, still the naughty boy, testing how much his mother would allow. “Just a little war, say
with Sard.”

  “And what will be the pretext. We’ve been at peace with Sard for half a century.”

  “There must be something.”

  “Something to take you away from your new wife?”

  “Anything.”

  “Before you’ve even met? This is unlike you. You were always so much like your father, looking forward to new conquests.”

  “Mother!”

  “I’m your mother, Julian, not a fool.”

  “However beautiful she is, I’ve never…”

  “Spent longer than an evening with the one woman?”

  “You’re not making this any easier.”

  “I should hope not. At least wait until you’ve met her before you abandon her. These things have a natural order.”