by G A Dazio
The tenth of these prideful, gluttonous kings, Jehoiakim Rex, was distinguished in his tenure only by his method for ensuring the propagation of his name. Jehoiakim saw to it that, of the hundreds of sons he fathered through his harem of wives, only but a handful—those who met his stringent criteria—were allowed to leave the palace and situate themselves in this evil aristocracy of vanity. Whereas, Jehoiakim’s predecessors had inserted a catalog of sons into their crumbling and cursed society, the tenth and most vile of the evil kings allowed only a small margin of sons to pass out.
All of his sons, however, were first to be put through the scrutiny of his outlandish tests. Those who failed were slain. And of the first ninety-four sons bore to him, only twelve passed through the trials into manhood.
But of his abundant sons, only Prince Didacus, son of Jehoiakim’s first and most important wife, Franciska, the rightful Queen of Fioriono, had the birth-given right to be reared as the heir to his father’s throne. It was Prince Didacus who was raised in the fashion of a soon-to-be king, tutored and labored over by the highest minds in the monarchy, much as Jehoiakim had been as a child, ever being readied for his father’s eventual death.
All this was met with utter contempt from King Jehoiakim.
Jehoiakim, in the diseased state of mind he held upon entering his forty-second year, decided he would not tolerate the offense that this young boy imposed upon him, his son or no.
“To think of it,” he moaned, “that this boy should be treated like a king, that these fools about me who bathe him in their loving affections will ensure themselves security when I am gone. I will not stand for it!”
Indeed, the king felt it outrageous that anyone should be treated with even half the measure of respect he demanded for himself, for this king truly felt himself to be immortal. The concept that all his possessions were but temporary was a foreign idea, which he would never recognize. And so, he set about his swift calculations to have Prince Didacus done away with.
By the week’s end, Didacus had been scheduled to compete in a private sword match for His Majesty’s court. The boy would go against his own instructor and the fight was to be carried out to the death by Jehoiakim’s own insistence.
“Will you have a weakling for a king!?” the monarch shouted at his court.
But his advisors were in a private uproar, at a loss to do anything that might counteract the king’s demands. Their only hope of appeal came from the distraught Queen Franciska, who was in agony.
The court begged the queen to somehow intercede, but she made it clear that there was nothing at all that could be done.
“The King is a force onto himself. If I were to but improperly bat an eyelash, it would mean my end. You all know this to be true. Why do you ask me?”
The truth was that the Queen had already done all that she could on her son’s behalf. Her pleadings to the King had amounted to little more than Jehoiakim’s affectionate jests and then stern admonishments. She understood that her only hope was to somehow scheme in time. She would see her son live past this ordeal or suffer her own fate as a result.
And so, she approached Genco, Didacus’s sword master and loving mentor, who had threatened to take his own life rather than fight the boy. Queen Franciska knew well enough that were he to refuse the King’s decree, he would be slaughtered, as would his family. And it was out of love and a profound admiration that she made her promise to Genco: if he were to fall in battle for her son, she would see to it his family was rewarded with riches beyond imagination.
“I will write their names into the kingdom’s golden book of ancient families. They will be honored as members of the aristocracy in life and death. And my son will one day honor your sons as beloved cousins. I swear this all to you, my friend,” she promised.
And at the week’s end, Genco fell in death to a terrified prince and stunned court, not to mention an outraged king. But it was Queen Franciska who was horrified above all to hear Jehoiakim call for Didacus’s death.
“He has slaughtered one of my most beloved subjects!” the King bellowed.
The King’s feeble court stood by miserably. To utter so much as a word against His Majesty’s wishes would mean their death and replacement, the very destruction of their families.
The Queen threw herself into the lap of the King and begged as she never had before. “My only child, Your Majesty, my only child! He has done as you commanded, he has triumphed over his victor in battle. If he must be punished, send him to a life of imprisonment, but do not kill him, Your Grace, not my only child!” She wept in his lap with great seizures of grief.
And with great carelessness, the King allowed for the boy’s life to be spared, that Prince Didacus be permanently imprisoned in a tower, a prison needle that rose above the royal castle to touch the very clouds. And the great nation wept as the years passed.
Didacus grew to manhood, a prisoner, his only luxury a devoted mother who eased his suffering with the little comforts she imposed upon the jailers for her son. She saw to it that he continued his education in private, for she insisted to him that one day he would be free to take his rightful place as ruler of Fioriono.
In the years of imprisonment, Didacus suffered a minor form of madness as he watched the world go on without him from his prison chamber in the needle. And with this madness came an utter hatred of the vile, selfish, gluttonous king, his father. He would one day have revenge against his father, indeed. One day the King would die by his own hand, he thought.
And in the tenth year of his imprisonment, the Queen, his mother, came to Didacus in his prison chamber and announced that the time had come to take vengeance for his stolen youth. She produced a mandate document attesting to the King’s decision to release his son from bondage. This document bore the false signature of Jehoiakim, forged undoubtedly at the Queen’s command, but without flaw.
The jailer did not question the document, which was presented to him briefly by the Queen, and Didacus left in the arms of his mother as they descended down the needle and out into the world.
Those who saw the aged Prince did not recognized him at the Queen’s side, thinking him one of her many slaves, newly acquired at auction and being brought to the Queen’s private wing. Her plan had worked as she had envisioned it, and she knew that even if the jailer thought to gossip too loudly about the Prince’s release, word could not get to the King as fast as she planned for Didacus to murder Jehoiakim.
Within the hour, the Queen sought a private audience with her king, insisting they be left alone to attend private matters that his bodyguards need not witness. Of course, the men searched the Queen’s chamber, securing the rooms for their master, permitting only three of her chamber maids to remain in a side room to attend her if necessary.
The men were to wait outside the single entrance to the Queen’s bed chamber for hours as Queen Franciska made passionate love to Jehoiakim, feeding him absurd amounts of wine and bringing him to a delirious state of intoxication.
And when she was through with him, she turned to her servant girls, who by then had entered the room and made their preparations to escort the Queen away. But to their surprise, the Queen dismissed two of them. And when the Queen was alone with her oldest girl, they set about their plans. The servant girl unsheathed the King’s dagger, a small jewel-encrusted sword of fine steel concealed in her garments. With a quick slit of the dagger, the maid opened the unconscious king’s wrists, sending the hateful man into a blessedly peaceful rest.
From her private closet the Queen produced another mandate, which she slipped into her gown. The two women exited out of the apartment, passing the guards, who were told that the King wished to sleep now.
Rushing back to the needle, the Queen helped her maid remove the girl’s clothing and wig to reveal the disguised Prince Didacus. Wiping off the layers of makeup and powder, the Prince readied himself to face the Grand Council.
The Council’s uproar was only quieted when Queen Franciska produced the tw
o mandates, each signed by the King. The first addressed the release of the imprisoned Prince, which had already successfully fooled the jailer. The second was an abdication of the throne in which the King expressed his wish that Prince Didacus succeed him.
In face of the court’s fury, the Queen described how she had just left the King who, after having spent his final moments in her arms, took his own life. “He was not well, my friends, and it was his time to go,” she said.
And the rest of this tale unfolded as you might imagine. The guards attested to the King having been undisturbed the entire night. The Grand Council found themselves more than happy to have the younger and more intelligent prince take the throne. And the Queen remained a flower in her son’s kingdom.
The Kingdom of Fioriono, nestled in the ancient continent of Catafierno, prospered under the good King Didacus for a century.
The End
Marcelina responded with an uncontrollable burst of laughter before Veronica could do anything. She had done all that she could to keep from laughing as the girl recited the absurd story, and now it poured out of her in a flood.
“Oh, but it’s too adorable! God, to think that his father should ever come across that story written in the boy’s own hand.” The continued thought of it sent her into a fit of laughter and she had to raise her hand to her mouth to control herself. It was too much.
“He was so restrained in my presence as his father berated him on and on. Oh, this is too rich! Now, I approve of this child. I was going to reserve my judgment of him until you had spoken, but now there will be no controlling my love.” She continued with relentless giggles.
Veronica still could not respond. She seemed caught up in the story and would not even raise her head to look at Marcelina.
“I suppose I am to take this to mean he does not appreciate his father?” she said seriously, sending Marcelina into even more fits of giggles.
“No, it’s safe to say he is not his father’s greatest admirer, and I don’t blame him! His father has always presented himself as a bit of a fool when it came to the raising of children. I’m just so glad that at least one of his sons doesn’t resemble him. I will equate that fortune to his mother, who, I must say, shocked me with her sharp understanding of her son’s situation. I had sorely misjudged her. But really, it was the first time I have ever spoken to the woman privately. I am always accepting lunch and dinner engagements with her that include other women, and at such gatherings, she goes out of her way to appear the common fool. I almost laughed at her when she began to speak about her son’s eviction of his father from their library.”
“But do you really think that it is all right for me to reply?” Veronica begged.
“If he has agreed to this enterprise only to better know you in the coming weeks, then I cannot imagine any reason why you should not reply. I have a suspicion his mother wouldn’t be concerned if she ever came across the correspondence; she will not even bother to read them, knowing with all probability that I will read both sides to ensure their propriety. It seems young women’s mothers are always doing such intrusive things. And, of course, so I will,” she smiled mischievously.
Veronica heaved the first true sigh of relief in hours and sat back in the carriage seat as it drove them away through the cool night air.
Chapter Fifteen
In the weeks that followed, the two lovers saw each other only now and then, at parties or at church. The Marquesa had made a concerted effort to share what moments she could with his mother. Those few jewels offered to Veronica and Dídac, which provided a reasonable measure of privacy, were to transpire during dinner at either family’s home, yet proved to be insufficient for either of the two. But for any longing they may have had to see each other, or even steal a kiss, which the young man would never do, they were more than gratified by their correspondence and remained vigilantly faithful to it.
Veronica wrote like a madwoman at all hours, constructing other worlds filled with enchanted forests, secret caves by the sea, or voyages to the stars on the backs of winged horses. In all of these fictions, in all these fantastic places, there were lovers. Lovers of all sorts. Lovers of all predicaments. Lovers of all passions.
The girl would stop every now and again to catch her breath and find herself fretting over just how ridiculous and stupid all these stories were, wanting to stop instantly and never see Dídac again out of sheer embarrassment and shame. But with blessed relief would come Dídac’s writings full of the same simple and stupid worlds that were inhabited by nothing but lovers and those who would dare to tear them apart, as well.
She didn’t see why his stories always had to feature antagonists tearing lovers apart; as of yet, there had not been a single villain present in their lives. Dídac’s parents and siblings had shouted from the rafters with support, or so it seemed in the very short messages he sent her that were non-fictional. Even Veronica’s mother had somehow shown herself to be hardly the villain at all, writing directly to the girl as to how proud she was of Veronica’s sound decisions. The girl now wondered who her mother truly was, what the woman was like in everyone else’s eyes, how she affected their lives. Was the effect as unbelievably pleasant as it had proved itself to be among those who had never met her? It all seemed so long ago that the woman was a part of her life.
But as for her relationship with Marcelina, Veronica felt that she hadn’t been closer to any person as she was with her aunt. Marcelina continued the girl’s education on womanhood to no end, and it was with a magnificent sense of pride that she read all of the correspondence between the two lovers. She was saddened that Dídac’s mother couldn’t be in on the whole charade; the boy confirmed Veronica’s inquiry as to whether his mother had ever read any of her letters. Veronica told him the same of her aunt, upon the Marquesa’s insistence, of course.
As for the progress Marcelina strove for in the young lovers’ public relationship, there was little she could do but draw Dídac’s parents into the conversation whenever possible. She would smile and sigh when they would tell her in so many words that the children should have a large amount of time by which to know each other. And wasn’t that proper, they would ask, and wasn’t that necessary? Marcelina thought it a hilarious notion on the part of the Ferreros, as if they were giving the two any real time at all.
One might have thought they would have grown to be more flexible with the passing of three sons into the world, but the Ferreros held fast to their family ways, and it was all Marcelina could do to keep planning private family dinners to accommodate Veronica and Dídac’s need to see each other. She figured that, sooner or later, something would have to give. The structure of all this slow and laborious propriety wasn’t nearly as solid as everyone believed. Marcelina found little ways to get beyond it so the two could have every possible moment between them before the girl’s mother would insist a suitor be chosen. Lucía would not wait forever on Doña de Ferrero to realize that there should be a marriage proposal being made to her daughter presently. The time for the child’s future to be settled was at hand. It would not wait upon the hopeful patience of parents who were sitting back to witness the maturing of an indecisive boy, wealthy or not.
Marcelina decided that she would find it easier to construct a fissure in the impregnable culture of the Ferreros by focusing on Dídac’s father. As much influence as Francesca held in the household, influence which Marcelina now admired and respected more than ever, it seemed that the final word rested with Joaquim, though he was sweet enough to make this truth undetectable to most. Marcelina would try her very best to appeal to his sense of fatherhood and manipulate the impatience he had already exhibited in the past over the boy’s future.
It was only right that she did everything possible to ensure this happiness for her household and theirs.
* * *
Marcelina made her first move to press upon Joaquim her point of view on the matter of marriage in the Ferrero’s house. After dinner, Marcelina didn’t allow Joaquim
apart from her under any circumstance. No matter what disturbances arose, the Marquesa saw to it that her conversation imprisoned his company.
“And your son,” she smiled, “how is he dealing with you these days? Is he able to fend you off, still?”
Don de Ferrero had a charming face, constructed according to the most basic principles of male beauty. His warm eyes were only betrayed by a stern powerful jaw, which appeared more than capable of carrying the weight of his wide smile. Somehow, fragments of this beauty had intermingled with Francesca’s fair, exquisite bones to produce the indescribable radiance of their youngest son.
“Ah, my philosopher, my scholar? He is a certain cause of grief to me still, more than ever these past few weeks. It was my intention to impose upon him my own personal education of law, to see to it that some semblance of an interest might be lit in him before next year when he must choose between the university and begging in the street!”
Marcelina laughed at his humor, though not because she found his conversation humorous. She had found him to be all the more insufferable during the last few hours. It seemed the man’s impatience with Dídac was finding itself better managed, though his frustration still crept into the conversation now and then.
“It is a most arduous task, indeed,” he continued, “and I am even more at my wit’s end. I notice he spends more and more time locked away in my office writing nonsense, though he has no knowledge of my spying on him, and I’ll thank you to keep that secret between us. But what am I supposed to do?” he sighed. “His tutors all agree with me that he is enormously gifted, intelligent like only few are when he focuses his attentions on his assignments. I really haven’t the first clue how to act on his behalf. I haven’t faced this problem to the slightest degree with his brothers and I fear it will be disastrous to allow my anger and frustration to act in a manner that might distance him further from my influence.”