The Black Prince: Part I

by P. J. Fox

  Armor cost a year’s income, for a knight. A destrier cost twice that. These men had bows if they were lucky, knives if they weren’t. Some had hoes and quarterstaffs. A few had swords. They had the clothes they stood up in, and maybe wallets to carry their food.

  And they all wanted to go home.

  They’d spend their evenings sitting around their fires, crafting arrows to supplement their quivers. There were only so many fletchers and so many arrows those fletchers could produce. Not that it mattered; survival, for high and low, was about self reliance.

  Hart understood these men, because they were what he’d grown up with in Enzie. Simple, decent men. Which was what Rudolph failed to understand: loss might make anger, and anger might make monsters, but it made them of men. Men who, if they were lucky, would return to their villages and take up their lives and never again be what they’d been during the war.

  Hart’s job wasn’t to teach them manners. It was to keep them alive so they could go home. So they could have dreams, at night, of all they’d done and wished they hadn’t. He wasn’t chivalrous; he was efficient. And he was certain that women like Thomasina Hamel would appreciate the difference. Women who’d rather have their men home, and alive, than hear eulogies rhapsodizing about glory.

  He thought again of Lissa.

  “But,” Rudolph asked, “won’t you offend the Gods?”

  Hart turned. “The Gods help those who help themselves.”

  FIFTY-FOUR

  “Are you certain, brother,” Arvid asked, “that you haven’t caught a disease?”

  “Quite certain.”

  They rode along, side by side, at the head of the column. Scouts ranged ahead, but there was no particular reason to fear. Yet. They were still in friendly territory. To the extent that any territory, these days, was friendly. But the border of Beaufort was still a week’s ride hence. And even in Beaufort, there must still be loyal king’s men.

  Hart hoped.

  “That man we killed, he seemed a bit unclean.”

  Hart stared into the trees.

  “And you’re certain it still…functions as it should?”

  “Want to find out?”

  “No.”

  They called a brief halt for lunch. More to rest the horses than the men. Almost immediately, people began milling about, shouting to each other as supplies were unloaded and hooves checked. Those without horses to tend threw themselves down on the ground for a few minutes’ rest. They’d start marching again soon.

  Rudolph came bounding out of the trees. He’d been gone now, Hart realized, for some time. “I did it!” he cried. “I did it!”

  Hart stood up from hobbling Cedric. “Did what?”

  Arvid made a gesture suggesting that Rudolph had discovered his manhood.

  Rudolph held a hare aloft by the ears. A sad, scrawny thing. “This!”

  “Now by did, you mean….”

  “I killed something!”

  “A traitor!” someone shouted.

  “Aye, let’s see his head!” came another voice.

  They were joking, of course. There was nothing else to do but joke. And march, and sleep, and make more arrows.

  And wait.

  “Every Morvish archer carries twenty traitors’ lives!”

  Hart hoped so.

  “I’ve never done it before.” Rudolph was suddenly hesitant. “I mean, all on my own.”

  “Our boy is growing up.” Arvid gave him a pat on the back that almost sent Rudolph sprawling.

  “Well, I’d better show you how to dress it. And then I suppose we can eat it for lunch.”

  “I thought…we could eat it for dinner.”

  There wasn’t enough there for one person’s lunch, let alone one person’s dinner. “No,” Hart said, “I have something else in mind for dinner.” One of the scouts had told him, earlier that morning, that there was an inn up ahead. Some two miles past the point where the road diverged, on the road they weren’t taking. A town, servicing a fairly good sized town.

  Rudolph paled. He probably thought Hart was talking about eating him. But he held his tongue. Maybe Arvid was right, and the boy really was growing up.

  He handed Rudolph a knife and showed him where to cut. Rudolph paled even further. “I…don’t think I can.”

  “Well you killed it, didn’t you?”

  “That was…from a distance.” And then, “how am I ever going to kill anyone in battle if I can’t even gut a rabbit?”

  “Hare.”

  “What?”

  “Look.” Hart took a long pull from his flagon. Just water. He was thirsty. And he needed to piss, but that could wait. They were seated on a small hillock near the side of the road, making the most of the thin sunshine. “It’s different in battle.”

  “I’m probably going to die.” Rudolph sounded discouraged.

  “That’s what you want, isn’t it?” Death was, after all, the only chivalrous means of escaping Rowena.

  “I…no. Not really.” He stared morosely at the dead hare, which now looked more pathetic than ever. “I want to be like you.”

  “No you don’t.”

  “I want to be brave. And for women to like me. No women ever like me.”

  “Probably because you dress like one. Have you thought about, you know, showing them that you’re a man?”

  “How, though?”

  “No more embroidered bugs. No more embroidered anything. And cut your hair, it’s longer than my sister’s.”

  “It’s fashionable.”

  “Well, there you go.”

  He could debate fashion with women, or he could bed them. He couldn’t do both. The average woman, in Hart’s experience, wasn’t looking for a sensitive and warm-hearted soul to coo over gowns but a man who made her blood sing.

  “Rowena doesn’t….” There was silence.

  “Rudolph—”

  The words came out in a rush. “I know, I’m sorry, I know she’s your sister but I don’t—I mean, there’s no one else I can talk about this with.” Meaning, there were just some things a man couldn’t confess to his priest. “You know about women.”

  “I know something,” Hart allowed.

  “She refused. She said it hurt too much.”

  “It does hurt for a woman, the first time. It’s important to help her relax. A cup of wine or two. A massage that slowly becomes more…interesting. Kiss her breasts. Slide your fingers down over her. Use them to make her come. That that will relax her more. Make her eager. And then use your fingers to stretch her. Just a little at first, and then more.

  “But see, that’s the thing. She wouldn’t let me touch her.”

  “At all?”

  “She said it was sinful.”

  “Rudolph, are you…able?”

  Rudolph blushed a fiery shade of red. Mortified, no doubt, at this acknowledgment of his differences from Rowena. The church would have men believe that none of them existed below the waist. That down that dark and gloomy path lay perdition.

  “Ah, yes. We started, and it went in, but then she made me stop.”

  “Was there blood?”

  “Ah, yes. And it—she—felt good. I wanted to keep going but she said we were committing a sin. That I was corrupting her. She left, and spent the night in another room.” Rudolph looked to be on the verge of tears. “She wouldn’t even let me kiss her. She doesn’t like it. Like me. I thought she loved me but she doesn’t even like me.”

  Rowena had, Hart suspected, gotten married to compete with her sister. And too quickly, and to the wrong man. To the first man, really, who’d presented his case. Because, in Rowena’s mind, marrying the first man who came along was what one was supposed to do. It was what all the princesses did, in all the fables: met, fell in love with, and married Prince Charming. All without any bumps in the road, or certainly any detours.

  “You have a husband’s rights,” Hart observed.

  “Yes, but I don’t want her if she doesn’t want me.”

  Most w
ives didn’t want their husbands, in Hart’s experience.

  Rowena might have been frightened by what happened. Very few women of their class were raised with any knowledge of what happened in the marriage bed, aside from the general idea that there might be a man involved. If Rudolph was persistent, and gentle, then she might be persuaded to try again. Or, if he asserted his rights, not persuaded.

  One maiden in the bed was bad enough, but two? This whole sorry situation was proof enough, if any was needed, that the man who went to his marriage bed pure was doing his wife a grave disservice. How could he possibly please her, if he could barely find his cock with both hands? If he’d never experienced true pleasure, himself?

  “I don’t know why she married me.”

  As though he’d had nothing to do with it.

  “There are other women, Rudolph.”

  “No there aren’t.”

  “So you do love her.”

  “No. I mean—what I mean is, she’s my wife. There can’t be any other women.”

  “I see.”

  Rudolph was one of those hardliners who believed that the marriage pact included vows of celibacy. Although why this should surprise Hart, he didn’t know. Rudolph probably also slept with a copy of the scriptures under his pillow. He’d have a lonely life indeed if he confined himself solely to a woman who didn’t love him. Whose horror of him, or of men in general, prevented her from engaging in even the slightest physical act. Or slightest kindness, if Hart knew Rowena. While most men dreamed of a woman skilled with her tongue, her particular skill set, he’d wager, quite what they had in mind.

  Rudolph could end the marriage for refusal, although that might be difficult as he had had her. If briefly. Or he could assert himself. Or he could make other accommodations, with a more willing partner. Or partners. But what he could not do was prance around with his head in the clouds, expecting Hart to solve his problems for him.

  “The church teaches—”

  “The church also teaches that wearing a knotted cord around your waist is supposed to prevent you from committing sin.” Although how, exactly, remained one of its many mysteries. “When are you going to stop listening to the church and start listening to yourself?”

  FIFTY-FIVE

  Asher wished he were a peasant. Then he’d get to learn interesting things. Like how to join wood. And how to mate pigs. Not…logic.

  “Did you memorize any of what I asked you to?”

  Asher favored his tutor with a sullen glare. “No.”

  The older man sighed. “Very well. Then we shall learn it again today.”

  “But I don’t want to.” He wanted to be outside. In the practice yard. Or with his horse. Doing something that was actually useful. That would help him to become a knight. Whereas he was fairly certain that none of this stuff would. Unless he planned on winning wars by boring his enemies to death.

  “Then I suggest you take that up with your father.”

  His tutor was, as always, maddeningly calm. Pale-haired and thin, he had a habit of staring down his equally thin nose at his pupil. He knew perfectly well that Asher wouldn’t take it up with his father. Asher could just imagine the reaction he’d get if he informed the duke that he’d rather spend time with peasants. He’d do that, alright, having been assigned to the most odious task possible, and then he’d still have to learn logic.

  “The Seven Liberal Arts,” his tutor began, for the thousandth time, “are the key to an ordered universe. The Trivium, or the first three roads—which you’d know, if you’d memorized your numbers like I’d asked—are the subjects of grammar, rhetoric, and logic. In these we find the structure of language, and the force to speak. The consummate knight is the master of these things.

  “The Quadrivium, or the other four roads, are arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music.”

  “But arithmetic is so boring.” Asher put his head down on the table.

  “Why do educated men use Eastern-style numbering, rather than the system crafted by the church?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “We discussed this yesterday.”

  “I wasn’t paying attention.” Asher’s tone was just the tiniest bit defensive.

  “As is patently obvious.” There was a pause, during which Asher felt bathed in continued disapproval. “The church teaches that everything is created by the Gods. So since zero represents nothing, zero cannot exist.”

  “Yes, yes, heresy, death, heresy, blah, blah, blah.”

  “Some day you’ll rule, or help to rule, over members of this church.”

  “By the time I’m that old, everyone won’t be so stupid.”

  There was a sigh.

  Asher really didn’t see the point. Let people believe what they wanted. If the idea of nothing was so terrifying, then let them ignore it. The average person didn’t need to figure, anyway. With the zero or without. And while his tutor might claim that nothing was an abstract concept, something that needed to be taught, Asher was fairly certain that anyone who’d gone without a meal understood it just fine.

  “Chess, then.”

  “Draughts,” Asher countered.

  “Draughts is not chess.”

  No kidding.

  “Draughts is a game for children. Chess, meanwhile, should not be considered a game at all but a highly stylized and concentrated form of preparation.”

  “For what? Sleep?”

  “For war.”

  Asher turned his head slightly, his ear pressed against the table.

  “To capture the board, a man must see possibilities in his mind’s eye. To, as he considers each move, consider the possible repercussions of that move. Indeed, to the point where he anticipates the various possible strategies of his enemy simultaneously.

  “He cannot overcome his enemy with raw emotion, or a simple show of strength. Beating his breast and howling, as it were, hoping to use terror in place of thought. He cannot win without calm, and peace, for these things hone the keystone of all victory: observation.”

  “You make war sound so boring.”

  “He who masters chess masters war.”

  “What do you know about war? You’re missing an arm.” Although pointing out people’s disabilities wasn’t nice. Isla said so. Asher began to feel bad as soon as the words had left his lips, although he wouldn’t admit so. He hated the stupid old coot.

  “How do you think I lost it?”

  Asher’s eyes widened.

  His tutor arched an eyebrow.

  “But you never….”

  “Gruesome stories are for good little boys who learn their numbers, and who pay attention when their tutors lecture them on logic.”

  Asher felt more depressed than ever.

  “But, as we’ve near reached the end of our time together, there is perhaps no harm in adjourning.”

  “Really?”

  “If you promise to study your numbers—truly, this time—before tomorrow.”

  Asher leapt from his seat. “Absolutely!”

  And then, before his tutor could change his mind, he ran.

  Every morning, more of the same. Every single morning. He could see, he supposed, the argument for some mornings. Once in awhile. But six mornings out of seven? It was always the same: after breakfast he practiced his reading. Usually by reading aloud something awful. Then they discussed whatever he’d read, which was usually also not much fun. He didn’t have opinions on what anyone’s motivation was, or what a certain line of poetry might really mean. And then after that he got lectured on the movements of the planets. And then…numbers.

  He liked music okay but he usually did that in the evenings before dinner, with Isla. She claimed that women liked men who could sing, and dance, and especially who could play the lute or the lyre. Isla herself was quite talented with the latter, although she disguised that fact and never played for company. Only for Tristan and Asher and, on the rare occasions these days when he was actually around, Hart.

  He thought he might go a
nd see what Isla was doing. He couldn’t go outside and play, because it was raining. Or rather he could, but there’d be no one good to play with. He’d just end up wet, and even more bored, but it’d be worse because he’d be wet.

  John would be outside. John would want to play. At whatever Asher wanted to play at. Asher toyed, on occasion, with the idea of enticing John into doing something really awful. Like playing hide and seek at the bottom of the well. Or letting Asher dangle him head first from one of the parapets. But he knew how disappointed Isla would be.

  And he didn’t even want to think about how his father would react.

  Besides, knights were chivalrous. Or something. They didn’t take advantage of the weak-minded. And Asher was sort of maybe, just a little bit, coming to like John. John told funny stories, and really was willing to go along with almost anything.

  But right now, Asher wanted quiet.

  Maybe he could get Isla to read him a book. One of the good ones, with lots of intrigue. And battles.

  He was upset that Hart was gone, although he understood in general terms that his uncle was on an errand for the king. Fighting men didn’t sit around in one place, doing nothing; they traveled, and had adventures. Asher wished he’d been old enough to go. Hart had cool weapons and armor and people had to do what he said.

  He wasn’t exactly sure what Hart was doing. He’d overheard only that he was on some kind of quest. To rescue some princess from a castle. Or the castle from the princess. Both sounded equally exciting. Maybe he’d marry the princess, just like in the stories. That would be exciting. Except Hart hadn’t seemed too thrilled about the idea.

  Asher knew that he’d be very thrilled. Unless, of course, the princess was ugly. Maybe that’s what his uncle was worried about.

  He was walking down the hall, alone, considering all of this when he heard a noise. He wasn’t in his family’s private wing, yet, but walking through the guest quarters adjacent to them. He’d been meeting with his tutor in the map room off of the second of the keep’s two libraries. He liked the libraries. Both of them. He liked how mysterious they felt, like chambers of secrets. And if he’d stayed in the library, searching for books he wasn’t allowed to read, as he’d also considered doing, he wouldn’t have heard that noise. Or seen what he then saw.