The Summer's King

by Wilder, Cherry;

  “Oh Goddess,” whispers Hazard, “it was no dream . . .”

  There she sits by his bedside in a dark red robe, older now and sad, with a proud tilt to her head.

  “Rob, my dearest . . .”

  He begins to laugh and to cry. Their hot tears mingle as she leans across the bed and lays her cheek against his, kissing his face.

  “Draw the curtain,” says Hazard, “draw the curtain, my darling, the light hurts my eyes. Have you got me on some sort of a boat?”

  “A caravel. A tall ship.”

  As Taranelda moves to the cabin window, Hazard gives a cry of pain.

  “Nell . . . Nelda, little love, you’re hurt, still hurt from the fall, that damned balcony in The Masque of Fair Ishbéla!”

  “Hush,” she says, “that was years ago, four years. I do very well, though my ribs have mended somewhat askew. Oh, Hazard, you know nothing and so much has passed!”

  “Tell me all!” he says eagerly. “Where is that bacon cooking? Whose ship is this? Did Buckrill get me out of the Wells?”

  He struggles to sit up and falls back upon his pillows. Taranelda fetches a tray with wine, bread, a few scraps of the bacon and a strange black drink from the lands below the world, which is said to have restorative powers.

  “Buckrill brought you out. He will come soon,” she says. “He has an important commission from the Denwicks.”

  “I might have known it!”

  “He has remained true!”

  “Who has not?”

  Taranelda is silent.

  Hazard says, “Where is he then? Where is our golden lad? Where is King Sharn?”

  “On his throne, where else?” she answers bitterly. “And with Queen Aidris Am Firn at his side. The Daindru rules as it has done for a thousand years.”

  Her face has a stiff, dreaming look; she speaks in an altered voice: “It is the time of the Dainmut in Achamar. The queen is roused early with a milk posset. Her chambers have windows to the south, with golden hangings; they can be reached by the grand staircase from the north hall, by circling the galleries from the east, or by two sets of stairs from the kitchens and the servants hall. First, the chamber maid comes in, then the mistress of the robes with her attendants, and the queen may receive the chancellor or other officers while still in her bedgown, before she has bathed. A member of the house of Gilyan holds the jewels for her to choose. With green she may wear emerald, yellow beryl, jade or rubies, but the rubies are usually worn alone, without other jewels . . .”

  “Where have you learned all this?” asks the poet. “Sweetheart, what became of you? You were healing, so they said, when I visited you in the Broad Street Infirmary. But when I returned from a four-day progress with the prince, with Sharn, you were gone. Released in the care of a man and a woman.”

  “So I was,” sighs Taranelda. “I went with them willingly. They were part of the plan. I came into the power of a magician.”

  “Not the old scorpion himself!”

  “There is more than one magician,” she replies. “This one is a healer, too. He saw me on a chance visit to the infirmary, saw me too late to mend my ribs better. I was the answer to his prayer. Either my injury suggested the scheme to him, or he had it in his mind and chanced upon a girl of the right shape and coloring. She is older than I am . . . her hair grows curled from her head . . .”

  “What magician? Whose hair?”

  “I was in the power of a man called Jalmar Raiz,” says Taranelda. “The woman and the man who took me away were a gardener and his wife. The woman had been a nursemaid once to a princess of the Chameln, Aidris Am Firn. This royal heiress had not been seen in her native country for several years, since she fled from the warriors of Mel’Nir.”

  “There were wild tales about,” says Hazard. “I collected them for Sharn.”

  “Jalmar Raiz put a sleeping spell upon me; I was half in a dream. He taught me to be the Queen of the Chameln, Aidris Am Firn.”

  “You were ever a quick study,” says Hazard.

  “Hazard, I became the queen. I became another person. I remembered an endless torrent of sights and words, always at one remove from my true self. I even dreamed the queen’s dreams. I forgot all my past life! I forgot Lien and Balufir and the players. Only a few true memories were spared to me. I dreamed of the balcony falling. I knew you, my love; I heard you cry out. I remembered your work when I saw the books. Yet I was the queen . . .”

  “Where?” asks Hazard. “Where was all this done?”

  “At Nesbath, I think. Do you know this Master Raiz?”

  “Indeed I do!” says Hazard. “He had to do with the Chameln royals and with the palace set here in Balufir. Something of the showman about him. Yes, surely, he had a son, a tall yellow-haired player with some promise. He was never more than a walking gentleman here in town but might have done better.”

  “He played the king,” says Taranelda.

  “The king? Our king? Sharn Am Zor?”

  “He played the king and I the queen,” she says softly. “I was brought into an old keep, full of Moon Sisters in Dechar in the Chameln land. The good women knew me for their queen. They treated me according to my estate, and when the time was right, I was brought forth. I called upon the folk to throw off the power of Mel’Nir. I put in some part of your Queen Negartha . . .”

  “Very suitable!”

  “Oh Hazard, I played well! I was not playing at all. I was the queen. Yet there were those who knew that I was not, that I was a puppet. I remember one old soldier who lectured me very sternly for my imposture. I thought he must be mad or a traitor.”

  “This is madness,” says Hazard. “How did it serve Raiz? Who were his masters? What profit did he have?”

  “The Daindru were restored,” she says. “The king, the player king, Raff Raiz, came to the loyal city. I knew him at once for my cousin and co-ruler Sharn Am Zor . . .”

  “Pah, he was nothing like . . .”

  “He played well,” says Taranelda. “He has a talent. He was acting the king, not under a spell as I was. What a precious pair we were. There was fighting. I had no fear; it was like a pageant. We were proclaimed as the Daindru, and the south rose up against Mel’Nir. Dechar held firm; we saved the city and drove the Melniros out.”

  “I see it more or less,” grumbles Hazard. “I was half-mad searching for you. I fell out with Sharn-me-lad over this search. I heard something of this tale when I was returning from a wild goose chase to some hospital in Hodd. Pretenders. Yes, pretenders. A blow at the king’s right, the dearest thing he had in the world.”

  “As you say,” whispers Taranelda. “Dearer to him than any loyal servant. Why Rob, this was the whole reason: to rouse the Chameln and to summon the true king. So we ruled in Dechar till he came, landing at Winnstrand with his toadies: Seyl, Seyl’s wife, young Denwick . . .”

  “Nay, come,” says Hazard, “they were not bad fellows . . .”

  “The king came into his own,” says Taranelda. “Jalmar Raiz should have brought us out, his two pretenders, but the plan went wrong. Sharn, the true king, sent kedran into the city and had us brought out. The play was done.”

  She begins to weep now, wringing her hands.

  “I could not be anything but the queen. I knew nothing else. Oh what a figure I made them, what a foolish, lost creature. Oh unkind to leave me so, this Master Raiz, to be tormented, insulted, questioned, injured, with folk coming to stare at me in my cell and make me play the queen. I had only one friend, and it was the False Sharn, Raff Raiz. He did his best for me. He knew I was innocent.”

  “Sweet love,” says the poet, “I pray you, do not weep . . .”

  “I must; I cannot help but weep for that foolish false queen . . .”

  “Heaven help me, I was already in the Wells,” says Hazard. “I was jumped by the watch for old debts, else I might have gone with the king and found you. I thought Rosmer was behind it, that he sank me in the Wells. I still think so. It was pure malice. I had led a rackett
y life: never enough gold, trouble with the scripts, insulting the court. Rosmer struck at me just at this time to embarrass the king, because I was his friend. I sent to Sharn at the last . . .”

  “Sent to him?”

  “A ring he had given me. A last appeal from the Wells. He knew what it meant to come into the Blackwater, that I was a drowned man. Perhaps the ring never came to him. He sailed off upriver to the Dannermere to reclaim his kingdom from the men of Mel’Nir and from the pretenders.”

  “It is a tangled web.” She sighs. “Sharn had some notion of who I was. We spoke together of you, of the masques and songs. You are a most renowned poet, my dear. Even Aidris Am Firn, the true queen, had a book of yours. Can you guess which one? Hazard’s Harvest!”

  “There was magic in it,” smiles Hazard, “for those who were interested. Did you see the Queen of the Chameln?”

  “We were held in an old keep, Radroch, upon the plains,” says Taranelda. “We were kept in the menagerie, the False Aidris and the False Sharn. We feared for our lives. There was an old, fat jailer there, Hazard, and I went to his bed to get extra food and to try to find a way out of the keep. He was not a bad man. I went up a little privy stair and came to his room and to the king’s room when he visited.”

  “The king?”

  “Have no fear. He had no wish to make love to me. He could not bear my crookedness. He teased me, saying I was an imposter. He showed me your books; we spoke of you. The king swore he was your friend. Perhaps he hoped that I would confide in him at last, tell him who had raised up the pretenders. But I could not shake off my enchantment. I believe he had your ring and knew that you were in prison.”

  “Hush, I never expected the lad to remain true. His kingdom was more important to him. This is how it must be with princes. For a handsome fellow, a rich and lively sovereign, Sharn is in some ways a shadow man. He suffered too much as a young boy. His mother is mad. His Uncle Kelen is a fool. Rosmer is his enemy. If there is one person the old Scorpion, the Night Flyer, should fear, it is Sharn Am Zor, King of the Chameln. But what of the true queen?”

  “There was a mighty victory,” says Taranelda. “The Great Ambush. The Red hundreds of Mel’Nir were overwhelmed by the Chameln at the Adderneck Pass. The queen led this ambush, and my stern old soldier Zabrandor. So Queen Aidris came to Radroch, the old tower upon the plain . . .”

  “I have missed a good deal of excitement . . .”

  “I came to the queen’s chamber late one night, by the secret stair,” says Taranelda. “I can see her now, sitting by the fire, mourning for some horse that was killed, or so the kedran said. I was very haughty. I queened it over her. But the sight of her sent a ray of light through my darkness. So many people—Zabrandor, the kedran, the jailer Sansom, the king, the false king—had told me my life was treason, my memories a pack of lies. I could hardly believe them until I saw this straight, pale woman seated by the fire. I knew she must be the true queen. I had a strange thought concerning Raff Raiz, my friend, the False Sharn. I believe those two, Aidris the Queen and Raff Raiz, were known to each other, friends or even lovers during the queen’s exile. I do not know how this could be, and I have never questioned him about it. At any rate the queen saved us both. Sharn Am Zor might still have had us killed.”

  “No!” cries Hazard. “No, surely not! Could he be so cruel?”

  “We were pretenders, and you have said that his right was very dear to him. The queen had us brought out secretly by her kedran, her Athron kedran from the time of her exile. It was deep winter upon the plain, and I rode behind Raff Raiz upon a great horse of Mel’Nir, so broad I could hardly straddle it. We came to the Dannermere, and there was Jalmar Raiz in a boat with his elder son Pinga, a greddle-dwarf. We came to Nesbath again, to the Raiz mansion there, and at last I was healed of my royal disease. Jalmar Raiz removed his spell. He made me sleep, and when I woke, my mind was healed. I was plain Nella Down of Denwicktown, stage name Taranelda, from your songs. Oh, Hazard, Jalmar Raiz gave me gold, he knelt before me and humbly begged my forgiveness for what he had done and for the way things had gone wrong. I forgave him; I could not do otherwise. But I still recalled all that I had done as the False Queen. I felt, I still feel . . . dishonored.”

  “We have been ill used!” says the poet fiercely.

  He struggles from his bed this time, covers his bones with a woollen bedgown and stands embracing the slight, crooked figure. Presently he manages to cross the cabin to the small washroom and to blink from the two portholes at the docks and the sunlit surface of the river Bal. The ship is not tied up to the wharf but moored out in the stream. The sight of so much water makes Hazard lower his eyes.

  “There were comforts sent to me in prison,” he says. “Floorboards, most necessary at the second level, and a settle. If the water comes up past the third mark you can crouch on the settle. Blankets were sent; in good weather they dry out completely. You need oil for the skin, goose grease is best but it is dear. Someone sent me a whole pot of goose grease. I wore it on my hands and feet and ate a few dabs of it every day for a year. I was dried out three times and brought up to a room with a brazier where I did some writing for Buckrill.”

  “I sent some of those things,” says Taranelda. “I gave all the money I could spare to Buckrill and trusted him to spend it for your good. I had come back to the Tumblers’ Yard, of course, and rejoined the company. I play the leading ladies. Goffroy is still the manager. We meant to give you a benefit, but it was not permitted. We petitioned the High Justiciar for your release and managed to wring from the courts a limit of sentence . . . five years.”

  “Now I am out in three years,” ponders Hazard. “I begin to wonder why. Am I safe here, dearest? Will I bring you into danger?”

  “You are safe on this ship,” says Taranelda. “We will stay aboard while you do this work for Buckrill, then my season will be done as well. I thought we might go into Athron. This ship will travel there. Remember old Polken, who played clowns and went to be an innkeeper in Varda? We might live quite well and cheap with him. You need rest.”

  “Athron . . . the magic kingdom,” says Hazard dreamily. “Yes, we would be welcome with old Polly, I am sure. I would not take you from the stage, my dear.. . .”

  “You must be cared for!”

  Taranelda sighs and begins to weep again, clasping the poet about the waist.

  “You are so thin . . . Oh Rob, what will become of us?”

  As he comforts her, smoothing her hair with a bony hand, there is a discreet knock upon the cabin door.

  “Who’s there?” asks Hazard with a trace of fear.

  “Mazura!” comes the firm reply.

  “The captain,” says Taranelda, smiling, in answer to the poet’s questioning look.

  “Come in, Captain Mazura!” she calls.

  Mazura is a young man, still under thirty, well built and colorfully dressed as befits a merchant adventurer. He wears a long seaman’s doublet of crimson broadcloth and a draped cloak of royal blue with a gold border. He has flowing locks of blond hair and blond moustaches. His pleasant face is tanned by the sun; his eyes are slate blue.

  “Greetings, Master Hazard,” he says. “You honor my ship!”

  “Greetings, captain . . .” begins Hazard.

  He breaks off and gives a laugh.

  “It must be!” he cries. “Or else my wits are washed away . . .”

  “No, Master Hazard,” says the captain, “you know me as Raff Raiz. I have taken my mother’s name. This ship is also named for her, the Caria Rose.”

  “A loss to the stage,” says Hazard. “I saw you as a player of royal promise. But tell me, where is your father, Jalmar Raiz?”

  “In Achamar, in the service of the queen, Aidris Am Firn,” says Mazura. “He is her healer.”

  “He serves the Daindru?”

  “No, as I said, he serves only the queen. She values his art enough to overlook all his intrigues. I do not believe that the king, Sharn Am Zor, will have any deal
ings with him.”

  “The king is unforgiving,” say Hazard. “But you, Captain, you have done well. Your merchant enterprise has prospered!”

  He indicates the spacious cabin with its gleaming dark wood and polished brass. The effort of his grand gesture is too much; Taranelda and the captain assist him back to the bunk.

  “I sailed to the lands below the world,” says Raff Mazura, pouring wine, “and in a distant harbor I learned the culture of the Kaffee plant. You drank kaffee, a potion made from its roasted beans, for your breakfast, Master Hazard, and so does half of Lien for the past two years. We are in the midst of a kaffee boom. I have done well. I own a share of a plantation, and I own two ships.”

  There is bumping against the side of the Caria Rose.

  “That reminds me,” says the Captain. “I came to say that Master Buckrill, the printer, is coming aboard.”

  The poet has not heard. He has fallen sound asleep on his pillows.

  “Buckrill will have to wait,” says Taranelda softly.

  “Do you know what day it is?” asks Mazura, his voice just as low.

  “The day of the Dainmut.”

  “The Chameln lands and their rulers are at peace,” says Mazura sadly. “In Mel’Nir, on the other hand, the civil war is growing hotter. Val’Nur of the Westmark strives to hold the free zone and the High Plateau.”

  “I have had battles enough!” says the actress, still with a touch of royal authority. “Come and let us speak to Buckrill.”

  Hazard remains asleep in the darkened cabin, and presently Buckrill comes in bearing a heavy satchel. He sets it down beside the bunk and slumps into a chair screwed to the floor, watching the sleeping poet. At last he can wait no longer; he shakes Hazard, and the poet wakes with a cry.

  “Hush, Rob . . .”

  Hazard swings upright, blinking, and shakes his shaggy head like a dog coming out of water.

  “Thanks,” he says. “I am in your debt, old friend.”

  Buckrill waves away the poet’s thanks.

  “How do you fare?” he asks. “Have you eaten?”

  “I am stronger,” says Hazard, “and I will not be put off. I will thank you most heartily for bringing me out and for providing me with all those necessaries while I was sunken in the Wells. You remained true.”