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 . . . Aaaaiiiiieeeeel”
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 seized 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 blissfully 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 thg 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 Gor- gorian superstitions, means that I must have been with more than one man."
She did not need to say what that meant. Adultery had always been 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 Hydran- gean 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.
"Very well, then," she went on. "Ludmilla is careless, but not stupid. She will have to feed and change the babies soon enough, and then she’ll discover her mistake. She'll turn right around and come back here to swap one of the princes for Princess Avena before long and everything will be the way we originally planned it. Good. Fine. So if Gudge comes bulling his way up here before Ludmilla can return, all I've got to do is present the princess to him as the prince! All babies look alike above the belly-band, and unless Gudge offers to change the infant's diapers there is no way he'll ever know that his son is really his daughter."
Queen Artemisia smiled. There was more chance of the sun rising in the west, plaid, with purple fringe trim and shaped like a bullfrog, than of Gudge ever getting near a dirty diaper. Or a clean one, for that matter.
"There, that's all taken care of," she told the sleeping infant. "It wasn't as bad as I thought. Everything will be fine, Aven—I mean Arbol. Yes, that's a good name for a prince, Arbol is." The baby whimpered in its sleep. "Oh, don't fuss, my love, you won’t have to put up with the name for long. Just until your Nana Ludmilla gets back. We can wait, can't we? Yes, we can. We can wait ..."
Fortunately for Artemisia’s current peace of mind, she had no idea just how long they would have to wait.
Chapter Three
Ludmilla sat by the side of the road, resting her weary legs, and looked back the way she'd come. The pearly pink towers of the Palace of Tranquil Thoughts, rising above the city walls, were gloriously backlit by the declining sun. Doves swooped and soared among the battlements. Golden pennons fluttered and snapped from the topmost pinnacles. These banners were all freshly embroidered with the new badge of the kingdom: On a field of gold, the sallet (an Old Hydrangean heraldic beast one-third deer, one-fourth dormouse, one-eighth capon, and anything left over equally split between rabbit and poodle) was being used in a most painful and humiliating fashion by the Great Sacred Ox of the Gorgorians. Taken all in all, it was a heartlifting spectacle.
“Hmph!” said Ludmilla to the royal babies. “We're not clear of that hogwallow a moment too soon, my precious pixikins, and no mistake! Oh, I can't help but pity your poor brother, stuck back there to be raised amid the nasty temptations of palace life while the pair of you will have all the advantages of a fine upcountry education. Why, I came from the Fraxinella Mountains myself when I was a mere slip of a girl just—ah—neveryoumind how long ago.''
She reached into the huge basket resting on the grass beside her and lavished a fond smile on the two sleeping infants within as she adjusted their blankets.
A cold, black shadow fell across the babies. Ludmilla raised her head and looked up into a haphazard arrangement of yellow-brown eyes, greenish snaggle teeth, matted black hair, and a nose like a dumpling that had been dropped on the outhouse floor. A charitable person might call it a face.
“Here, now, what’ve you got in there, Granny, eh?" demanded the Gorgorian man-at-arms. Squat and bandylegged from a lifetime in the saddle, he had obviously been demoted to footsoldiering as part of King Gudge's mountain patrols, and just as obviously he wasn't at all happy about it. Gorgorians were very good about sharing things with their newly conquered fellow countrymen, the Old Hydrangeans—things like vermin, infections, bruises, and bad moods. This squint-eyed chap looked like no exception, and he was backed up by four more equally unhorsed and unhappy comrades. They gathered around old Ludmilla and the babies like sharks around a hunk of bloody beef.
Ludmilla straightened her shoulders. “And who is it wants to know, you rude creature?" she demanded. Although she had abandoned her gorgeous court dress of dragon-scale silk and phoenix-point lace for the simple brown homespun tunic and apron of a Hydrangean countrywoman, she refused to put aside her spirit.
Backbone and backtalk usually had no place among a real peasant's possessions—they didn't help
the crops a lick and they tended to cause unforeseen things like sudden death when exercised in the presence of the upper classes. Since absolutely everyone alive—and quite a few dead— outranked the typical Old Hydrangean peasant, Ludmilla’s show of courage startled the Gorgorian badly.
“Hoi! Never mind who wants"to know," he replied, getting a little red above the gills. Then, grabbing hold of his aplomb with both hands, he blustered on, “It’s me as wants to know, Granny, and that'll have to do you. Else we’ll do you, eh, me hearties?" He winked companionably at his men, although given the number of old scars and new swordcuts hashing his face, it looked more like he was suffering some sort of spasm.
“Uhhrr . . . oughtta chief."
“If you says so."
“I 'sposes."
“We'll do her what?"
The patrol leader scowled, which looked measurably worse than his smile. He drew a short-handled cat-o'-ninetails from his belt and laid about his unenthusiastic followers with the butt end. “Look, when I say we’ll do her, the least you blunderation of misbom nanny goats can do is back me up! What's wrong with you lot these days? Back when we was roving the plains or riding the wild wastes of the Litchi Plateau and I said ‘There's a helpless villager; let's do him good and proper for the honor of all Gorgorians,’ did you stand about with your thumbs up your arses asking ‘Do him what?' and acting like you never seen a length of your enemy's guts steaming at the end of your lances on a bright, fresh, frosty morning?"
The patrol, to a man, looked at the ground and made stupid noises in their throats. This enraged their leader even more, a bad idea.
“You did not!" he roared. “You sailed right in and you did the bugger, that's all! Whatever happened to that old team spirit, hey?"
“S’norses," said the youngest of the men.
His leader's bristly hand darted out, closed around the young Gorgorian's windpipe, and reeled him in. "What?"
“I said, sir—" his hapless captive gasped as a fine bluish patina crept over his stubbled cheeks, “—I said that it's not the same without the horses."
“Think I don't know that?" the leader bellowed in his face, then batted him into one of his comrades with the whip handle. “ ’Course it ain't the same without the horses! It’s lonelier of a cold night, for one. But these mountains is sheep country. If we bring horses too much farther upcoun- try hereabouts, the land's so steep and rocky and the paths is so narrer that we'd spend more’n half our time walkin' the poor beasts 'stead of ridin' 'em like civilized men. And even so, every time we'd turn 'round there’d be another sorry nag with his leg broke and no hope but a quick death at sword's point. So what's the use of draggin’ horses along?"
"Wull . . . we'd eat better, cap’n."
The Gorgorian officer let fly with the business portion of the cat, deftly removing half the outspoken gourmet's beard with one flick of the wrist. "My salty rump we would!" he shouted. "You ever tasted the ruination what these Hydrangean fibbity-fobs does to a good, honest slab of horsemeat? 'Senough to make a grown man cry."
While this discussion was going on, Ludmilla pulled herself creakily to her feet, smoothed down her skirt, and picked up the basket with the babies. "Excuse me, young man," she said, pushing past the Gorgorian soldier who had been so summarily shaved. "This has all been quite charming, but I have business to attend to. However, if you should ever find yourselves in the capital, do stop by the Duck and Crusty Things Inn. I have strong reason to believe that the cook there knows just what to do with a good slab of horse- meat. He calls it beef and sells it at veal prices, that's what. Good day."
"Now wait just a minute!" The Gorgorian captain lunged after Ludmilla and seized her by the elbow, making the basket swing wildly. "You ain't goin' nowhere, Granny."
Ludmilla regarded him coldly. "Obviously not. You are a very rude person and I shall complain about you to King Gudge as soon as practicable."
"Haw! You complain 'bout me to His Majesty? There's a laugh! Why, an old bit o' leatherwork like you wouldn't get into the city gates, let alone the" palace. 'Course—" his eyes got smaller and nastier, "—there's good chance as you might get into the palace after all, on my say-so. The palace dungeons!’
His threats cut no ice with Ludmilla. She merely sniffed once, delicately: a mannerism intended to express her disdain for him and all his ilk. Unfortunately it was likewise a mannerism that compelled her to smell him and all his ilk.
The aged handmaid turned pale and sat down with a thud. The sudden jolt woke both the babies, who began to cry.
“Hoi! What've we got here?” the Gorgorian captain inquired jovially. He grabbed the basket away from Ludmilla and peered inside. The infants bawled lustily, squirming in their swaddlings.
“Cheeses,” said Ludmilla shortly, and yanked the basket back.
The captain did not let go of his grip on the handle. Ludmilla was old, but she was wiry, and her unexpected recovery came so strongly that when she jerked the basket handle down to her level, she brought the captain down with it. He hit the ground on his stomach, driving the full weight of his thick leather belt and ponderous ornate gilded buckle sharply into his solar plexus.
“Gar!” exclaimed one of the patrol, observing his captain's subsequent bout of roadside retching. “Woss brought that on?”
“Think as it must've been that brunch what we ate,” opined the second.
The third man disagreed. “Naaah. Onliest time it's dangerous to eat a brunch is when they hasn’t been proper cleaned and cooked. ‘Sonly the subcutaneous membrane what's poison, and once that’s removed ...”
His fourth comrade looked at him suspiciously. “Subcuwhat? Here! What kind of language is that for a soldiering man? Got too pissing many syllabubble . . . sillybib . . . sullabull. . . 'Sgot words what's too damn long, 'swhat! You been having it on with that Old Hydrangean hedge-trollop up to Stinkberry village again?”
The patrolman so accused blushed. “She's the onliest one as gives a military discount hereabouts. And it’s part o' the Old Hydrie tradition for the jolly-girls to have a little, y'know, mutually enriching conversation and instruction with their esteemed clientele as a, what-d'you-call-’em, intellectual prelude to subsequent physical interaction.”
The captain rose from his knees just in time to deal his glib underling a sound buffet to the skull just below the rear brim of his short-helm with the cat. His victim was knocked from his feet and sat rubbing the back of his head in an aggrieved manner.
"There'll be none o’ that sort o’ talk in my patrol!’’ the captain thundered. "And from now on you’ll keep clear of the Stinkberry slut. Good fighting men catches things that way, y'know."
"Like an education,’’ old Ludmilla put in, unasked. "You wouldn’t want that to happen.’’ She was on her feet again and strolling calmly away up the mountain path for a little ways before the Gorgorian patrol overtook her a second time.
"Now you hold it right there, my fine old toad!’’ the captain commanded, laying a hand on her shoulder. "The penalty for lying to your natural overlords is death by eatin’ a badly cleaned brunch! What’s all this pigflop about what you’ve got in that basket, hey?”
"I told you,’’ Ludmilla said, keeping her voice unruffled. "They’re cheeses."
"That explains as why our chief was took so bad, then," one patrolman whispered to his fellow. "Cheese gives him the heave-ho something desperate."
The captain reached for the basket handle, thought better of it, and settled for yanking aside the blanket covering the infants. They were still crying. "Cheeses, eh?" he sneered.
Still cool as a duck’s bottom, old Ludmilla replied, "I take it, then, that for all your talk of being familiar with King Gudge’s palace, you have never seen an authentic Old Hy- drangean Weeping Cheese?" She said this so sweetly, with such easy confidence and condescension, that the captain was taken aback. Ludmilla had never received any formal combat training, but she was experienced enough in the ways of the world to know when to follow up
an advantage on a stunned opponent.
"But of course you wouldn't," she went on. "The Weeping Cheese is a delicacy reserved for only the highest of the highborn, and then served solely on occasions of the utmost sanctity. The'custom dates back to the time when child sacrifice was just beginning to be thought in rather bad taste, particularly since it was the practice for the reigning monarch to eat whatever portions of the victims the gods rejected as not lean enough. Queen Jargoon the Dyspeptic is credited with substituting a specially made cheese for the babies previously offered, although it remained for her great-grandson, King Scandium the Decorous, to perfect the rite by the inclusion of crackers and a dry white wine."
By this time the Gorgorian captain was blinking like an owl at a firefly convention. His tiny eyes went from Ludmilla to the babies and back, desperately seeking some inspiration for a counterargument. "Uh ... if they's cheeses, what's this, eh?" He passed a horny finger over one infant's cheek and showed the glimmer of wetness.
"Whey," the old retainer replied.
"But—but they looks just like babies! Look, all them tufts of fuzz and a nose, and eyes, and—"
"Beautiful, aren't they?" Ludmilla beamed proudly at her two young charges. "A triumph of the cheesemaker's art in every detail. We haven't had a single complaint from the gods from the first day we substituted the Weeping Cheeses for the real infants." She lowered her voice and added confidentially, "Between you and me, sometimes the gods aren't too bright."
The horrified Gorgorian made the sign of the sacred oxhorns at the old woman's blasphemy. His voice cracked just a bit when he said, "Yerrrr, but . . . but . . . but they're noisyl What kinda cheese, never mind how pretty it's made, makes a sound like that?"
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