Eden Legacy

by Scott Toney

  Temperance and Gluttony

  A week had passed since they had helped cut the grain crop for the local farm, and since then Lilya had seen little of the healer, Dora. She had only seen glimpses of her out of the corner of her eyes as the old woman stalked the castle’s halls, but those glimpses were enough to keep her distrustful. She felt the hag at her back, watching her, even when she knew she wasn’t there.

  Thomas had not changed with time. He was so jealous of Alexander that he would question her constantly about her friendship with the dragon and would mope around whenever she was going to see him. The king had become depressed in his envy and Lilya found it hard to get him out of his emotions in order to convince him to banish Dora from his realm.

  This morning, she had been invited along with her maids to breakfast with him and his guards in the keep. As she walked through the hallways toward the keep, with her maids close behind her, Lilya watched the ruby floor beneath her flowing with shimmering light, reflecting from the windows in the outer walls.

  She walked softly in slippers on its surface. Why did the original builders of Ah choose a ruby floor? she wondered. How egotistical do you have to be to use a gem as your floor when men and women, at the time that this place was built, in other lands were starving and would have loved those jewels so that they could purchase food for their families?

  As they walked behind her the three maids she had brought with her from Cush were giggling and gushing over a knight that had recently come into Thomas’s service.

  They are so immature, Lilya thought as Clare came up and joined her side.

  “Princess,” the beautiful girl said. “Amari came to me yesterday and told me of a family that lives along the Pishon’s banks. They are a poor family and the fruits and vegetables that they were farming were destroyed by a flood from the river’s banks earlier this season. Amari says that their youngest son has also fallen ill.”

  Lilya smiled. She could always count on Clare for a companion with substance. When she had first come to Havilah she had definitely not expected one of Thomas’s other possible choices for his bride to become her closest human friend and confidante.

  They were rounding the hall opening into the main room now. “It seems like an answer to their problem is on your mind,” Lilya said.

  “Yes,” Clare replied. “Amari and I were wondering if we could take some of the castle’s food stores to these people, some healing herbs and possibly some gold after breakfast this morning.”

  Lilya turned to her and smiled as they entered the main room with its vast ruby floor. “I’m sure that I can convince Thomas to give you those things and possibly a contingent of knights to help deliver them. If you don’t mind I think I’ll come along too.”

  “We would be honored to have your company, princess,” the girl said and fell back in line behind Lilya.

  As Lilya looked around her she was shocked. Before her stretched a dining table covered in lavish foods, some things that she hardly would have ever considered eating for breakfast. There was roast hen, pork, deer, mounds of berries and apples, pots of soup with gaudy golden ladles rising from their insides, trays of sweet candies and multiple loaves of bread. There was enough food to feed all of the people who were under the castle’s employ, but only seven chairs surrounded the table.

  “Welcome to the feast! Please take a seat!” Thomas spoke cheerily as he looked at them over a half eaten partridge carcass that he held in his hands.

  Lilya walked slowly to the opposite side of the table from Thomas, pulled out a chair and sat. Crystal plates, mugs and silverware shimmered before her. What has gotten into him now? she pondered. The head of a boar whose mouth was stuffed with an apple eyed her on the tabletop. A small part of her wondered if Dora had positioned it that way.

  The maids took their seats at the table and Amari shortly joined them.

  “Isn’t this a little much for breakfast?” Lilya asked Thomas over the mounds of food. “I would have been pleased with toast, jam and a side of eggs.”

  Tessera, one of Lilya’s maids, let out a giggle. “I love it.” She turned to Thomas. “We are royalty and we should feast at every meal.”

  “So we shall from now on,” Thomas said as he looked at Lilya’s eyes only. “You deserve that, princess. I want to give you the entire world. The least that I can do is to make sure that you never lack for what you desire to eat.”

  “You are hardly royalty, Tessera.” Lilya rolled her eyes at her flighty maid. “All people in our kingdom should share what we have equally. We shouldn’t feast within these walls if every person in this kingdom or even in the world does not feast this morning.” Suddenly she noticed Dora come quickly toward Thomas from a hidden corridor. As she reached him he handed her a small bowl.

  “Do not fear, Lilya, my people are well fed,” Thomas said and as Dora left them she stumbled, dropping the bowl to the floor and it shattered with a sharp clash of noise, sending a sheen of red juice flying through the air.

  He has eaten a fig before our arrival this morning. Lilya shuddered. He knows I do not approve and did not want me to know. She noticed Dora looking to her with eyes that seemed like a mischievous cat’s before the healer motioned for a young boy with a broom to come over and clean the mess.

  Lilya turned back to Thomas. There was nothing she could do about Dora right now. “You may think that your people are all well-nourished but I have learned of at least one family that lives not far from here who would greatly appreciate this food. Instead of feasting like this you should look for people who desperately need this food and give it to them.”

  Just then the keep’s main doors began to open and Lilya turned to see who would come through them.

  “Ah, the entertainment has arrived,” Thomas said from across the table and smiled, leaning back in his chair.

  Soon the entrance was open wide and dozens of colorful costumed performers flooded into the room. Some immediately began twirling flaming batons, swallowing swords or juggling large gems. Others charmed snakes and did magic tricks. Belly dancers spread sporadically throughout the hall and eight large groups of musicians set up their instruments in the four corners and along the four walls in preparation of a mass production.

  As the musicians began to play Lilya prepared a plate with some eggs and toast and ate them quickly. What has gotten into Thomas? she thought but said nothing. She knew if she showed anger to him he would not change his manner. He had been so different lately, but it was in odd ways. He would do different strange things but each would be totally unlike the last.

  “I have an idea.” Lilya turned to Clare after finishing her last piece on toast. “Along with the stores of food we should bring some of this fresh meal for the family you were telling me of earlier. That would give them something to nourish their bodies now and also something for later.”

  Down at the other end of the table Thomas was chewing on pork while shoveling heaps of mashed potatoes into his mouth. He looked transfixed on his food. The performers and musicians were a jumbled mess throughout the hall.

  “Will Thomas grant us the food?” Clare asked, wiping her mouth with a cloth napkin. “He’ll need to keep a lot of it here if he plans to eat like this every day.”

  Amari piped in then from Lilya’s other side. “Don’t worry. If he doesn’t give us the food then we’ll find it somewhere else. I’ll purchase it if I have to, to help them out.”

  Lilya saw Clare blushing a little as Amari spoke to her. Was her maid falling in love? She thought it beautiful to see her maid looking at the boy like she was now. She also knew that she, herself, would never feel the same way for any boy or man.

  “Thomas!” she raised her voice over the musicians in an attempt to take his attention away from the mound of food before him. “I was just speaking with Amari and Clare about that family I told you of. We were wondering if it would be alright if we took a good sum of this food and some of the castle’s stores to them and other poor villagers along wi
th a basket of jewels to give them some wealth so that they can purchase other things they need.”

  The boy-king looked up with a blank stare, then took a hefty bite out of a chicken leg and began to speak. “Why?” he spoke through his chewed food. “I tell you my people are healthy and well taken care of.”

  Lilya stood now and walked away from her chair, causing the entertainers to look at her as she went. “Look at all of this!” she exclaimed, holding her hands out toward the feast. “There is no reason why we need all of this food to eat. You are being selfish.”

  “I am the king. I deserve to have whatever pleases me,” he replied.

  “And I am the girl that you wish to marry, or at least you did. I would think that if you are still trying to court me then maybe you would listen to my requests. And the fact that you are the King of Havilah does not mean that your wants are any more important than the needs of your subjects.”

  This silenced him. “Fine,” he said. “You may take half of the food on my table once you three are done eating and you may take a cart of the castle’s provisions and as for gems, there is a pile of ruby shards left over from renovations that were done on the castle’s floors. You may take those.” Thomas turned to Pine and asked him to retrieve the rubies before looking to Lilya once more. “But this will not happen daily, princess,” he said. “We are the richest kingdom in the world, but that does not mean we can afford to give it all away just because someone complains about not having enough. These things you ask for are mine. And I want more, not less.” He took another hefty mouthful out of the greasy chicken leg and turned to watch a fire juggler beside him.

  Lilya walked back to Amari and Clare. “He sickens me,” she said as they looked to her. “I could never be his queen. I don’t think that I can stay in his presence any longer this morning.”

  Lilya, Amari and Clare left the table quickly, asking Thomas’s guards if they would gather whatever food from the table they would be allowed to take and meet them in the stables where they would load the gifts into a cart for their journey.

  Thomas would stay in his keep all morning long, gorging himself on everything in front of him and then passing out on his plate from the sheer girth of all he had eaten, mashed potatoes smashed into his forehead. The jugglers juggled, the dancers danced and the minstrels and musicians played lively tunes until the evening came and Thomas’s unconscious self would be carried from the keep to his chamber. His maids gently lifted his sheets over him as he lay comatose in bed.

  ҉

  The sun shone high above Havilah as Lilya left Castle Ah’s stable yard, guiding an old oak cart filled with food and rubies. Clare sat with her on a warm, rickety bench at the wagon’s head as two black horses pulled them along. Amari and a castle medic named Barl rode steeds behind the cart.

  They rode slowly through the city streets, waving at venders and shoppers as they passed and at one point Lilya stopped the cart and went into one of the trays from the morning meal to get chicken and biscuits to give to a poor boy that she saw hunched over in an alleyway. She also slipped a few rubies into his bag of possessions for him to find when he went through it later. She kissed him on his forehead before going on her way. “If you ever are hungry,” she had told him, “come to the castle doors, ask for me, and I will see that you are fed.”

  They traveled along the bank of the river on a dirt road for hours before coming to the small structure that served as the home of the people they were bringing food to. As the company rode, the heat of the rising sun made them sweat. They swatted gnats and other bugs from their faces and bodies.

  Midday had arrived and Lilya held her hand over her eyes, peering through streaming sunlight to see the small house. Its boards bent with weathered age and the roof turned in at one place to form a hole.

  A man in worn clothes stumbled slowly from the house and an anorexically thin girl burst from the house’s crooked door toward the company. “Hello,” the weathered-looking man said. “What can I do for you?”

  Lilya stopped the cart, gave Clare the horses’ reins and stepped out onto muddy earth below. The river rushed and hissed next to the road close by. “We are here to help you.” She held out her hand to shake the man’s as he met her. “I am Lilya and this is Clare, Amari and Barl.”

  “You are here to help us?” he asked, baffled. “Pardon me. Where are my manners? I am Ban Var and this,” he reached down and held his little girl’s hand, “is my daughter Mae. Why is it that you have come?”

  “King Thomas heard that you lost your crop in the floods and that your son is ill so we have brought both fresh and storable food for you. And Barl has come along as our medic to take a look at your son.”

  “Thank you! Thank you!” Ban fell to his knees and tears began to flow down his face. “I didn’t know what to do. It has been so hard. It has been so hard to find food for my family since the waters rose.”

  “Papa?” Mae wrapped her arms around her frail father. Then her sunken eyes turned to Lilya.

  Lilya helped Ban to rise. “I’ll be right back,” she said and retrieved a loaf of bread from the back of the cart. When she returned she broke it and gave a piece to Mae and the rest of the loaf to him. “Go back to your home and share this with your family. I will send Barl in soon to look at your son and we will set a feast for you, to replenish your bodies and spirits.”

  “I cannot thank you enough,” Ban Var said and limped slowly back to his hut with his hand on Mae’s shoulder as he went.

  Once he had gone inside Lilya and the others unloaded their goods into a broken down shack behind the home, tied their horses to trees and took the sides off of the cart so that they could turn it into a table.

  Barl then went inside with a leather satchel of medical tools to look at the boy and the three others set to work collecting fallen branches to build a fire with, so that they could re-heat the morning’s meal.

  An hour later they stood around the bed of their cart, which now vaguely resembled a table, and looked upon the food from this morning’s feast they had prepared for Ban Var’s family. There would be enough for them all to eat a decent meal, and Lilya hoped that this food and the stores they had brought with them would heal Ban’s son and help his family back on their feet.

  “I will let them know that the food is ready,” Lilya said and walked across the muddy earth to the family’s shack. As she reached it Barl moved aside a tattered cloth door and came to greet her. “How is the boy?” she asked.

  Barl wiped sweat from his forehead. “I have done all that I can. He is fevered and has a wound on his leg that is infected, but I have cleansed and wrapped the wound. I’ll leave herbs to help him heal and hopefully the food we’ve brought will help him.”

  “We do what we can.” Lilya placed her hand on his shoulder. “Is the boy well enough to eat?”

  “He will have to be. He needs nourishment.” Barl looked back to the shack and then up to the sky, the sunlight radiating down on him. “If I can move him then he should eat out here, with us. The sunlight would do him good.”

  “Then tell them the meal we’ve prepared is ready. And Barl…”

  Barl’s weary eyes looked to her. “What, princess?”

  “Thank you for coming with us.”

  “I do what I can, milady,” Barl spoke and walked back into the hut.

  Minutes later the frail Ban Var, Mae and Ban’s wife Fiol came through the cloth door. Tears streamed down Fiol’s face.

  “Thank you so much for what you are doing for my family,” Ban Var said. “You are truly blessings sent to our lives.”

  “Sit.” Lilya pulled out oak stools they had brought with them from the castle. There weren’t enough for the whole group to sit but Lilya and the others could stand. “You don’t need to thank us. Someone should have been here before now to help you.”

  “We appreciate all that you have done for us,” Ban said before helping his son to sit and then taking his seat beside the ill boy. He led them in saying
thanks to the one God whom he said they worshiped.

  They ate together, talking and sharing stories of their lives, and Lilya promised she would be back to check up on them and bring more food and healing herbs. As they were loading their cart back up to leave Lilya saw Amari smiling to Clare and Clare smiling back. Lilya’s heart lifted. They had helped these people. They had left the red ruby shards in boxes for Ban Var to sell for money for his family and they had also left stores of food from the castle’s keep.

  As Lilya stepped up into their cart it creaked and she looked back at the family’s hut and the sun setting on the horizon. Lightning bugs were lifting from the grasses by the river and speckling the world with their tiny lights. The air was dense with moisture. This was no place, she knew, to raise a family. Disease would easily find this family again and again here.

  We have to do more, Lilya thought and stepped back out of the cart onto the moist earth. She went to Ban Var, who was waiting to wave goodbye to them. “I want you to come with us,” she said.

  “Princess?” Barl called from the cart and Ban Var instantly dropped to his knees.

  “I didn’t know that you were the princess,” Ban said. “You honor us so greatly. How could I possibly accept?”

  “Please rise,” Lilya said, and as he did so she kneeled before him, feeling the moisture in the ground seeping through her garments. “Do you see how silly this is,” she asked, “that one person should kneel before another?” She stood once more. “I know that your whole family cannot come with us now, because of your son’s health, but we have room in Castle Ah for you. I want you to come there at least until we can find a better place for you to live.”

  “I am honored,” Ban said. “My daughter and wife will go with you tonight and I will come with my son later, when he is good to travel.”

  Lilya looked in his weary eyes. “I will stay with you tonight also, so that you can rest. I will look after your son.”

  “Are you sure, Lilya?” Clare called from the cart. “Would you like me to stay with you so that you won’t be alone?”

  “I would love to have you by my side.”

  “Wait,” Amari said and took Clare’s hand, kissing it gently. “I will miss you until your return.”

  Clare blushed and stepped from the cart.

  Soon Fiol and Mae gathered a few of their belongings and some of the ruby shards and settled in the cart.

  Lilya stood with Clare, waving in the setting sunlight at the small party as they departed down the dirt road along the riverbank.

  ҉

  That night Lilya sat on the floor of the family’s hut, trembling in the cold, as the light of a single candle lit the room and the sickly boy’s face as he slept in the only bed.

  Clare looked up to her, lifting her head from a feed bag on the ground. “You did the right thing by coming here.”

  “We have so much,” the princess said. “We should be doing so much more.”

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