“Yes indeed, my cherub.” Ludmilla smiled at the memory—not so much because it was a particularly pleasant one, but merely because it was there at all; many of her memories weren’t, these days. “We had young Pringus Cattlecart run up to the mountains with it. Such a pretty laddie, Pringus!”
“Looks aren’t everything,” Artemisia muttered. “He forgot to ask for the Black Weasel properly, and he was still wandering from one mountain village to another when Gudge’s patrol caught him. Lucky for me, the message was unsigned and in code. Unlucky for Pringus, Gudge got so annoyed when no one could translate the note that he gave the poor boy over to his Gorgorian bodyguards as their regimental…mascot.”
“Oh.” Ludmilla blanched. “Now that you mention it, the last time I saw the young man he didn’t look half so cheerful as he used to. Well, never you mind, my waddle-duckums, your Ludmilla will do everything right.”
“Ummmm,” Artemisia murmured drowsily.
“Now first off, let’s see…” Ludmilla began to gather herself together. “Where are those portraits? Whoopsadaisy, here they be, right where I left them. Dearie, rouse yourself a bit, there’s a good girl. You’ve got to name these sweet dollykits before I go, you know. Now here’s the miniature of Prince Helenium the Wise. Which one will you name for him?”
“My firstborn son,” the queen replied, her voice muzzy.
“Well, and which one’s that?”
“Oh, Ludmilla, the one that’s not a girl!”
“Hmph! There’s two of ’em as aren’t girls, and as like as two straws in a haystack they are. Or haven’t you been paying attention?”
Artemisia opened one cold, blue eye. “I shall pay the closest attention to your execution if you don’t stop dithering. Didn’t you tie the sacred red cord around the wrist of my firstborn?”
“Lawks! Well, I never—I am such a goose; of course I did. Let me just unwrap the babes a wee bit and…ah, there it is, red as red can be. So! I’ll just untie it a moment so’s I can thread this charm on the cord and we’re all—oh, it is a striking resemblance to Prince Helenium, isn’t it?”
Prince Helenium had died two centuries ago, but considering how old Ludmilla looked, it was entirely possible that they had been acquainted. She babbled on about the many virtues of the old Hydrangean prince until her royal mistress rather peevishly instructed her to get on with it. “We’ll never get these babies officially named and off to safety at the rate you’re going.”
“Oh! Now see what you’ve made me do, you willful girl! I’ve gone and dropped the naming tokens in the cradle. All righty, my little dovey-byes, let’s just get you all named spang-spang-spang, jig time, like you was no better than a litter of puppies.”
Ludmilla was in a full-blown snit. Artemisia fought to open both eyes in time to watch her handmaid fussing about in the ceremonial cradle, muttering darkly as she worked. “You are Prince Helenium, and you can just be called after Lord Helianthus the Lawgiver, and never you mind about the proper naming rituals! No, we’re in a hurry, we are! Now where did I put the cord for tying your token ’round your little wristy—? Ah, here it is. I’ll be forgetting where I put my own head next, we’re so desperate quick about things! And you, you can be named for Queen Avena the Well-Beloved—oh, bother these slipknots, I never could tie a decent…there! Fine. Done. All tagged with their proper tokens and with no more observance of the decencies than was they three sacks full of grain for the market. Will there be anything else, Your Majesty?”
Icicles hung from Ludmilla’s last words, but Artemisia was too tired to mind. “Just change into your disguise and take Avena and Helianthus to my brother. And let me get some rest before I strangle you,” said the queen as she drifted off into a well-deserved sleep.
Chapter Two
Queen Artemisia could not recall when she last had enjoyed such a refreshing rest. It was the first decent sleep she’d had since the Gorgorian invasion. (It stood to reason that you didn’t catch too many catnaps while hiding down in the palace cellars from the barbarian hordes, she reflected, and witnessing your noble father’s beheading gave you such upsetting dreams for months afterward that you didn’t really want to sleep all that much.)
And then she had married Gudge.
The Gorgorian chief kept her up until all hours of the night, insisting that his new wife join him for all royal council sessions. He said it was to show the Old Hydrangeans that there were no hard feelings and that they would still have a voice in the government. That would have been a flattering command, coming from a sane man—but this was Gudge.
Artemisia soon learned that the real business of running the kingdom was transacted during the day. For the Gorgorian, nighttime council session meant long, sloppy drinking bouts with his cronies and any of the Old Hydrangean nobility stupid or unlucky enough to attend. Few of the native aristocracy survived some of Gudge’s more imaginative “Fun With Beer” games, especially the ones involving reptiles, squash, and holding your breath.
After the invasion was finalized, the late King Fumitory’s former prime minister, Lord Desmodium, tried to make the best of a bad deal. He suggested that there might be something valid or interesting about Gorgorian culture; it only wanted to be studied. He then spent several months visiting the tents of those Gorgorians who had flatly refused to live within city walls, asking them to tell him all the old legends.
There wasn’t one of them that didn’t include the gods getting disgustingly drunk just before perpetrating some unspeakably obscene and revolting “miracle” upon helpless humanity. About the time the seventy-third Gorgorian crone began the nasal chant, “The world came to be when Skufa, the Great Mother, needed a new place to void her blessed bowels and sacred stomach and holy bladder after drinking with her husband-son, Pog, Lord of Fermented Grain Products…” Lord Desmodium got the idea and retired to his country villa to raise goldfinches.
So it appeared that Gudge was a man true to his gods. To do him justice, he was willing to accept new ones. The Old Hydrangeans had long ago perfected the fine art of brewery, and Gudge’s first pious act had been to commission one of the court poets to write an epic in which the Gorgorian god Pog, Lord of Fermented Grain Products, fell madly in love when he first beheld the beautiful Hydrangean virgin goddess Prunella, Lady of the Five Hundred Local Beers. Then he raped her.
Gudge showed his religious nature by refusing to do anything at the nighttime council meetings until he had paid proper homage to Prunella. This he did by attempting to sample all five hundred of the Lady’s sacrosanct local brews. He made his council members do the same, and it wasn’t long before the moment of unparalleled horror came when the goddess’s influence convinced Gudge he had the best singing voice in all Hydrangea and yes he could so too sing the entire “Epic of Pog and Prunella” with a pitcher of beer balanced on his head.
Artemisia begged off the nocturnal council sessions as soon as possible, but still she was cheated of sleep when her lord returned to the royal bedchamber and…
Well, if it wasn’t Pog and Prunella all over again, it was a close blood relative.
It didn’t bear thinking about. She had greeted her pregnancy as a rescue from Gudge’s rough affection, but pregnancy turned out to be just as big a sleep-cheat as Gudge, especially after the first three months.
How wonderful it is to be able to lie on my stomach again! Artemisia mused between dreams. They were very pleasant dreams, mostly centering on the several futures of her children.
First her imagination painted an idyllic picture of her tiny daughter Avena, being raised in the merry greenwood. The Black Weasel would of course have a Hydrangean court-in-exile, with all the old rites and refinements that poor, dear, decapitated da had enjoyed. The only difference would be that the Black Weasel’s living palace of stately forest giants would have a leakier roof, a lot more fresh air, and a woodpecker problem. Surely there would be at least one lady of gentle birth among the resistance fighters, a proud, high-spirited woman who defied the i
nvaders of her homeland, unafraid to face the hardships of exile. Yet this same woman would still be a model of Hydrangean culture and femininity, and to her tender care would the Black Weasel commend his infant niece.
Artemisia sighed with contentment as she dreamed of sweet Avena, wild roses in her hair, weaving daisy chains for the little bunny rabbits and reciting the immortal “Ode to a Nightingale’s Kiss” to kindly old Mister Bear. Then the child would dance off, singing, to finish embroidering collars for all the pretty wolfies. Dwarfs might also be involved.
And standing guard over his sister’s embroidery, tall and strong, would be young Helianthus. Browned by the sun, hardened by good, plain food and wholesome exercise, a dead shot with the bow, a hunter of keenest eye and sagest cunning, he would become a legend among the Bold Bush-dwellers. While he was still a mere stripling, the Black Weasel himself would recognize the lad’s qualities and voluntarily resign the leadership of the resistance to him. There would be a short, moving ceremony, then Helianthus would leap gracefully atop a treestump to deliver his first speech to the troops. Inflamed by the boy’s spirit, the Bold Bush-dwellers would march down out of the mountains, gathering support wherever they went. At last a vast army—an Old Hydrangean army!—would stand arrayed before the gates of the city to destroy the Gorgorians and place the true king on the throne!
But they would be just a bit too late.
Artemisia squirmed deeper under the sheets and purred, dreaming of the fate of her other dear son, Prince Helenium. As firstborn, he was the only one of the three left to her. She would raise him well, as a true Hydrangean royal prince. No expense would be spared, especially not when it came to his military training. Wise in statecraft, Prince Helenium must also be powerful at arms. And then, when the time was ripe, his adored and adoring mama would tell him the whole nasty truth about Dad. Artemisia’s dream of her children’s reunion ended when Helianthus and his army of Bold Bush-dwellers arrived at the gates just in time to see his twin brother Prince Helenium chucking Gudge’s head over the parapet, to the cheers of the crowd.
And then the twin princes embraced joyfully and got down to the serious business of finding a husband for Avena.
Artemisia’s perfectly planned future was shattered into jagged fragments by the strident sound of a hungry infant’s cry. Smiling like a henhouse dog, she got out of bed and reached into the cradle. While she was back in bed nursing the baby, a thunderous pounding shook the door.
It couldn’t possibly be Ludmilla. The journey to the eastern mountains took days. “Probably one of Gudge’s trained apes, come to see if I died or not,” Artemisia muttered to the infant snuffling at her breast. She tossed her silky blond hair back as well as she could, sat up straighter against the pillows, and commanded, “Enter at Our pleasure!”
The door opened to a Gorgorian guardsman. Gudge had insisted on integrating the palace guard as a gesture of goodwill to his newly conquered people. The qualifications for a Hydrangean entering that service were that he bear no other arms but an ornamental lance tipped with a limp silk peony and that he be handsome. For a Gorgorian looking to be a guard, the man must be able to carry forty pounds of steely death in assorted shapes and sizes and agree to shave his back.
The guard dipped his head to the queen and said, “King Gudge’s compliments and how are you feeling?”
“Why doesn’t my lord come and see for himself if he wants to know?” Artemisia teased. She enjoyed baiting the Gorgorians; they never caught on. Their idea of subtle wit always involved large quantities of well-ripened pig droppings.
“His Majesty’s gone huntin’. Sorry,” the guardsman added as an afterthought.
“Isn’t that kind of him? No doubt he was afraid that if he had to listen to my cries of pain any longer, he might be so overcome with remorse, knowing that his love was the author of my woe, that he might heedlessly throw himself from the ramparts. This would of course result in a bloody war of succession, and being the wise monarch he is, King Gudge decided it would be best to get as far from the sounds of childbirth as a good horse could carry him.”
“Oh,” said the guard. “Yeh. Tha’s it in a nutshell. What he said. His ’zact words. So…” He looked around the tower room. “You all right?”
“Never better.”
“And, uh…” He nodded towards the suckling child.
“Go down the stairs,” Queen Artemisia directed, pronouncing each word with elaborate care. “Go fast. Try to slip and break your neck on the way down. If you can’t manage that, go to the stables, get a horse, and ride after His Majesty. See if you can fall off it in a painful, preferably fatal way before you find him. If you botch that, then do find him and tell him that he is the father of a prince.”
“A prince?” the guard echoed. “It’s a boy, then?”
“Princes generally are.”
“Right. Right, thanks, I’ll just be on my way, in that case. Uh—you want anything before I go, Y’r Highness?”
“No, no, seeing the back of you is all I’ll ever ask of life.”
The guard gave her another one of those shallow, meaningless bows. “Anything t’ ’blige.” Then he was gone. Shortly afterward the sound of galloping hooves wafted up to the tower room, fading away in the direction of the royal hunting preserve.
After nursing the baby, Artemisia was about to put it back in the huge, gilded cradle when an unmistakable odor hit her straight up the nostrils.
“My,” she remarked, shifting the swaddled bundle to her left arm and studying her damp right hand. “This is definitely not what my seven governesses trained me to do, but I suppose I can learn on the spot.” She carried the baby over to the big black walnut chest by the window. Here Ludmilla had thoughtfully laid out all the infant-care supplies that might be useful. There was even a soft blanket covering half the chest.
Artemisia placed the baby on the blanket and removed the green satin swaddlings. The child made an ugly face at her, all its limbs trembling. “There, there, I’ll do this as quickly as I can,” the queen soothed. “Soon we’ll have you out of that wet napkin and into a—goodness, these pins are hard to undo—into a dry and wrapped up snug and—this other pin is not coming out!—warm and—ah! There it comes—and…and…and…Aaaiiiiieeeeeee!”
This time the queen’s scream did for the other seven stained-glass windows in the banqueting hall.
“No,” said Artemisia, staring down at what the unfastened diaper revealed. “There must be a mistake. A horrible mistake.” The infant seemed to agree, for it set up a piercing wail. The queen gently siezed the baby’s wrist and gazed intently at the miniature portrait hanging there from its red cord. “But this is Prince Helenium’s face! You have to be Prince Helenium; you’re wearing his naming token,” she told the baby.
The baby told her in the only way it knew how that it didn’t have to be anything but warm, fed, and dry, and being only one out of three was grounds for screaming the roof down.
Queen Artemisia hastily tugged the soiled diaper from under the tiny banshee and wrapped her child up in the blanket. Appeased, the infant made comfortable I’ll-just-go-to-sleep-now-see-that-I’m-not-disturbed-thanks-awfully sounds into the queen’s shoulder. It remained unaware of its mother’s rising agitation.
“How could this have happened?” Artemisia demanded of the air. “How? Oh, that incompetent fool Ludmilla! So busy with her own petty tantrums, and half-blind into the bargain, it’s a wonder she didn’t tie one of the tokens around my wrist! She dropped all three of them into the cradle and then attached them just any old way. I’m surprised she didn’t tie two on one baby. But you’d think she’d at least have had the foresight to fetch different colored cords! Red, the tokens were tied on with red, every one, and the sacred red cord is supposed to be reserved for the firstborn. What am I going to do?”
She paced the tower room like a caged panther. All the weakness of a long and arduous childbirth had fallen away from her in the adrenal surge brought on by the discovery that
either Ludmilla had screwed up beyond anyone’s wildest expectations and taken both the twin princes to the Black Weasel’s mountain stronghold, leaving their sister behind, or else there was a very odd sort of invisible thief on the premises.
“Oh dear, oh dear,” she muttered. “The messenger’s already gone to tell Gudge he has a son. If he comes back and finds he’s got a daughter, heads will roll! And not just heads. He’s a moron, but he’s no fool: If I said it’s a boy and I show him a girl, he’ll know that there must be a boy baby around somewhere. And that means there is more than one baby. And that means that I was the mother of twins, at least. And that, O ye gods, according to his benighted Gorgorian superstitions means that I must have slept with more than one man.”
She did not need to say what that meant. Adultery was a serious crime in Hydrangea, even before the Gorgorian invasion. A queen’s adultery was High Treason, with a suitably creative punishment to fit the crime. Badgers played a significant role. It was one of the few Old Hydrangean customs that Gudge had kept on entire and unaltered, for entertainment value.
Artemisia paced faster, growing more frantic. Every so often the queen would lay the baby down and unwrap it, just to check on whether anything missing had been replaced. She even said a prayer to Uttocari, Goddess of Objects Lost, Purloined, or “Borrowed” by the Neighbors. Nothing worked. The baby in her arms remained as was.
At last Artemisia sat down heavily on a delicately carved chair, the armrests shaped like mermaids with inset sapphire eyes and white enameled breasts, coral tipped. On one arm she cradled her daughter, the fingers of the other hand gouging deep, thoughtful holes in one mermaid’s head.
“Think, Artemisia,” the queen directed herself. “Don’t panic; think! Ludmilla bollixed things, but it’s nothing that can’t be undone. Gudge has been told that he is the father of a boy. This is obviously not a boy.” She looked at her daughter’s peacefully sleeping face and murmured an automatic “kitchie-koo” for no sensible reason.
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