But King Kipriyán waved his hand for silence and patience, even when the first few heavy drops peppered Humfried’s document, realizing full well that to leave out even the minor awards might pique some of the new monarch’s instant entourage.
Overhead the thunder kept coming ever closer, and the light kept growing ever dimmer. A sharp wind began whirling through the square, blowing the robes of the clerics this way and that.
“Humfried,” Kipriyán shouted, “perhaps you’d better complete this quickly.”
“Yes, Cousin,” the new king said, rolling up the scroll.
Suddenly, a brilliant white flash illuminated the entire area, as the great elm in the center of the square was struck by lightning. A dozen men were blown into the air, and another score or so knocked completely senseless. A falling limb crushed two of them where they lay.
“The king!” somebody shouted, and Prince Arkády turned to his left to find his father stretched out unconscious upon the ground. The monstrous branch of the tree had missed his head by inches.
“We need a doctor here!” the prince shouted.
When no one responded, he looked wildly around the square, trying to find Fra Jánisar, but the rain then decided to come down in earnest, compounding the mess before him. He could see nothing.
Nikolaí suddenly appeared on the other side of the king.
“Does he live? Where’s the physician?” he shouted above the roar of the storm.
“Yes, he lives. I don’t know where Jánisar is,” Arkády yelled back. “See if you can find him.”
Right behind them a squad of guards were trying to move the heavy branch that had almost caught the king.
“Oh, God,” Nikolaí groaned.
Arkády turned to see a bejeweled hand sticking out from underneath the limb, and shook his head in disbelief.
“Oh, Ján,” he mumbled. “Not you, too!”
“We can help,” someone said from behind Nikolaí.
They turned back towards the king to see Doctor Melanthrix standing before them, his multicolored robes soaked through, his packet of potions grasped firmly in his left hand.
“We can help,” the philosopher said again.
“Then do so!” Arkády ordered.
“Just a moment. What are you doing, Kásha?” Nikolaí asked, but shrank back when he saw his brother’s face.
Melanthrix knelt next to the body of Kipriyán, fumbled in his leather bag, and brought out a small green bottle that seemed twisted around itself. There was no stopper to undo. Instead, the philosopher inserted the end of the phial into the king’s mouth, muttered a few words, and waited. The bottle flashed briefly a brilliant emerald, sparkling like a jewel.
Kipriyán stirred and opened his eyes. “What happened?” he asked.
“Praise God!” Arkády said, crossing himself.
Nikolaí did the same.
“Last night I dreamt I went to Kórynthály again,” Kipriyán whispered.
“What?” Arkády said.
The Princes Kiríll and Zakháry rushed over, and yanked Melanthrix away from their father.
“Charlatan!” Zakháry yelled. “Keep your unclean hands off of him.”
The philosopher shook them off, like a dog shedding the rain, and straightened himself to his full height, trying to arrange his wet, bedraggled robes.
“Do not touch us again,” he hissed, water dripping from his long white nose.
“Zack, Kir,” Arkády said, “he just saved father’s life.”
“I don’t like him,” Zakháry said. “He’s warped father’s mind.”
“My friend,” the king gasped. “He’s my friend. Mine!”
“See what I mean?” Zakháry said. “Quack!” he shouted, while Kiríll led the philosopher away. “Quack, quack, quack!”
“Come, sire, let’s go inside,” Arkády urged, and with Nikolaí’s help got the old king to his feet.
The ceremony was over.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“IT’S JIHAD!”
On this same day, Prince Ezzö and his grandson, Hereditary Prince Pankratz, were preparing to invade Einwegflasche through the Kultúra Pass in western Bolémia. They had gathered their eight thousand soldiers and mercenaries at Castle Körösladány on the east end of the canyon, which was formed by the entrance of the Kultúra River into the Royánna Mountains just south of Mount Töpöl. Also present there in order to give them the stirrup cup and bid them bonne chance were Ezzö’s sisters, the Princesses Arizélla and Ezzölla, his wife, Princess Teréza, Pankratz’s wife, Hereditary Princess Minérva, and King Humfried’s wife and daughter, Queen Pulkhériya and Princess Salentína.
“Pánky, isn’t this just grand!” his stepmother sang out with delight, stretching out her scrawny neck as she gazed about the courtyard at the colorful display of troops gathered there. She was soon joined by her prissy, simpering daughter-in-law, Nérva, who was technically in mourning, and her equally scrawny ten-year-old daughter, Tína.
Pankratz, in the midst of final preparations for this, his cross-cultural adventure, was making a mighty effort to ignore the women’s comments, albeit unsuccessfully.
Off to one side, the Princess Arizélla had cornered her younger brother, and was speaking earnestly with him, punctuating her words with grimaces and gestures. One graying strand of hair strayed fetchingly across her cheek, as she shook her head vigorously.
“Ezzösh, don’t go,” she said. “I know you’re not yourself, and you know as well as I that you can do nothing to help this, this cause of Humfried.”
She reached out and took his gnarled hand tenderly in her own.
“I must go,” he said, his once sparkling eyes now dulled with pain. “Don’t you see, I must go,” he repeated. “It’s jihad! I...Élla, what’s wrong with me?”
“Oh, Ezzösh,” was all she could say, her voice choked with emotion. To see her younger brother reduced to a shadow of his former intellect was a torture even beyond death. She kissed him gently on the forehead.
“What are you two old sourpusses up to now?” came the shout of their younger sister, Ezzölla. “Oh, come see the soldiers, Élla! They look so gay in all their finery.”
The princess was running about like a young girl again, eyes flashing, and her skirts flying dangerously high.
“God’s teeth!” Arizélla muttered to herself, directing her gaze skyward. Was there no end to it? There were times when she could cheerfully strangle her sister.
“Ezzösh?” She turned back to him once more.
“I must go,” was all he would say. “Jihad!”
“Come, Grandpapá,” Prince Pankratz shouted to them from the promenade. “It’s time for us to leave.”
“Pánky,” Pulkhériya said, whining, “please take us with you.”
“What?” The prince sat straight up in his saddle, aghast at the suggestion. “Stepmamá, this is no journey for a woman.”
“But you yourself have said that it’ll all be over in a few weeks,” the queen said, “and Tína and I want to see your great victory over the Walküri.”
“Me, too,” Minérva said. “I want to go, too!”
Her black dress fluttered idly in the wind.
“Now, just a moment,” the prince said, putting up his hands as if to ward off an assault. “This isn’t going to be a walk in the garden, ladies. There’ll be no fine accommodations for anyone, no dainty meals or troubadours or dances or anything else that I know you all enjoy. We’ll be sleeping on the ground in tents, and eating cold salted beef and pork. There’ll be insects, and it’ll be none too clean....”
“I don’t mind in the least little bit,” Pulkhériya said, pouting. “Things have become so incredibly dull at court, I’d really like to have a little adventure. And just think how surprised your father will be to see me.”
“Me, too!” Minérva squeaked her refrain, a little more loudly this time, gaining a withering glance from her disgusted husband for her efforts. She had seemingly forgotten entire
ly about the death several weeks earlier of little Prince Alexander, her firstborn son.
“Enough!” Pankratz said. “Enough! I have other things to worry about. If you want to come so badly, then come, and the Devil be damned. I won’t try to stop you, ladies. But I don’t want to hear any complaints. Once we’ve started, there’ll be no turning back, not for anyone, not for any reason. That’s my final word.”
“Oh!” the queen simpered, now that she’d gotten her way.
Her large, yellowish teeth parted in a self-satisfied grin, as she brayed at her unhappy stepson.
“Complain?” she said. “Why, we never complain.”
She waved her hand at the servants to get her things packed and her carriage ready for departure.
Prince Pankratz just shook his head helplessly. What else could he do? he thought, as he directed the ladies and their carriage to the rear of the train. Calling the captain of his personal guard over, he gave him instructions to keep the women in sight at all times.
“At all times, Libás,” he said. “I want someone watching them at every single moment of the day, even when they go off somewhere to take a piss.”
That’ll fix them! he thought savagely, as the young officer trotted off to do his bidding.
At midmorning the troop went marching out the main gate of Körösladány, heading up the Kultúra Pass, which is called the Krempesgruft in Pommerelia. The Kultúra River penetrated the mountain range almost to its far side, creating a natural byway that facilitated travel between Bolémia and Einwegflasche, and also serving as a traditional invasion route for both sides. The actual border between Kórynthia and Pommerelia was located at the head of the Pass, near the western flank of the Royánna Mountains, which is called the Dreivan Range in the west.
* * * *
Late in the afternoon of the second day, they reached the border post, situated at the top of a long, slow rise. On the north side of the canyon the spray of a waterfall off the side of the cliff announced the arrival of a new Kultúra. A plain stone wall stretched across the narrow divide, bisected by a wooden gate.
“Halt!” came the command from above.
But the column continued to push forward.
“Halt, I say,” came the anonymous call, “or we’ll fire.”
But the Bolémi soldiers marched right up to the wall with a giant log slung between them, and started beating the door down with their makeshift ram.
A desultory shower of arrows peppered the invaders, killing a few, but mostly sticking in the shields they held above their heads. A couple of additional swings of the log broke the latchbolt, and the door banged to the ground with a thump.
A great cloud of dust billowed up around them as they rushed through the opening they had created, and systematically swept away the two dozen men acting as guardians of the old culture. No one escaped. The enemy bodies were stripped and dumped in a pile to one side. Sappers began tearing down the wall to either side of the entrance so they could get their machines through.
The army camped there overnight.
Early the next morning the troops marched straight into Einwegflasche without further opposition, and by the middle of the following day they were investing Lockenlöd Castle, the chief seat of Count Iselin.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“STRANGE WORK OF FATE”
Far to the southwest, the Dowager Queen Brisquayne was thoroughly enjoying her visit with her twin daughters and grandchildren in the Kingdom of Neustria. She was alternating staying at her sons-in-law’s estates at Enghieux, twenty miles east of the city of Lavallière on the north side of the Yèble River, and at the Royal Palace in the capital of Sabbedelle.
Her firstborn daughter, Princess Adeléonore, had married Lord Lancelme Soubize, then the Hereditary Count d’Enghieux, a quarter century earlier. A strapping, buxom lass with rosy red cheeks and flashing dark eyes, she had happily whelped ten healthy surviving children for her handsome husband.
The first girl of the litter, the Countess Brislaine, had been married wisely and well to Prince Léobert, the second son of King Tancrède of Neustria, just the previous year, and their firstborn babe would also be the queen’s first great-grandchild.
On this particular morning, Brisquayne was curled up cozily on a puffy, flowered chintz settee in the sun-dappled morning room at Enghieux. Opposite her sat her two daughters, Countess Adèle and her younger twin, Lady Sinthe. All three ladies were busily knitting miniscule bonnets, sacques, and wrappers for the prince-to-be. They sipped spicy hot herb tea laced with honey as they worked, and reminisced about old times at home and all the people they had known there.
Balls of pale yarn—pastel blues, yellows, and greens—bounced up and down and jiggled back and forth as the women’s needles clicked merrily along. A pair of white, blue-eyed kittens stealthily stalked the yarn, and rolled about on the tiled floor, fighting vicious, pitched battles with each other, their pink tongues flicking, their white teeth clicking, knatch knatch knatch.
Outside the stately, iron-mullioned windows, the queen could see a dozen or so black-and-white spotted cows grazing peacefully on flower-dotted meadows, their bellies heavy with calves-to-be, their teats bloated with milk. Just beyond them wandered a few scattered sheep, their fluffy white lambs gamboling at their sides. Nearby, a bubbling brook wandered through the landscape, running down to the River Yèble a mile or so distant. A pair of fat, gray geese fed happily on the iridescent mayflies and juicy red worms, stretching out their long, slender necks to the sun, honking at everything and nothing in particular.
“So, who’s to midwife?” Brisquayne idly asked her eldest daughter, taking another sip of tea. She held up the piece she was knitting for the others to see.
“That’s lovely, Mamá,” Adèle said, then responded to her question. “Well, you know that Queen Hippolyte has insisted on making all of the birthing arrangements herself. Poor Laine has not been allowed to do anything to help.”
She paused a moment to pull her yarn away from an inquisitive kitten, before continuing.
“They’ve found some strange old woman from the east to assist with the birthing,” she said. “Oh, she comes very highly recommended, they tell me, but Mamá!, she wears le turban, if you can imagine, and all these odd baubles and beads. And she speaks with this oh-so-stilted accent. Très très bizarre! It always leaves me in absolute stitches to listen to her ‘zheses’ and ‘zhoses.’ Just wait until you hear her. You’ll see what I mean.”
“And what about the child’s name? Have they actually decided on anything yet?” the old queen asked.
To Brisquayne’s delighted surprise, her daughter sat back in her comfy, cushioned chair and laughed out loud, rocking back and forth while holding on to her knitting bunched up in her ample lap. Indeed, with her dark hair now streaked with gray, she looked very much like a slightly younger sibling of her own mother, while Sinthe, her real twin, was a paler, more refined version of the maternal mold.
“That depends on who you ask,” Adèle said, wiping the tears of laughter from her rosy cheeks. “They’ve come up with some truly choice possibilities, including Tancarde, Artamène, Blancart, and Néron. Of course, Léobert and Laine have their own preferences: Léothéric, Chilpéric, Silvain, Macarie (which is my choice, of course), and Restif, but I suspect the king and queen will have the final say. They’ve been told it’s a boy.”
“So,” Brisquayne mused, “another little prince for La Maison d’Albéric.” With her teeth she clipped a stray bit of yarn from the lacy blanket she was knitting, and tossed it to the kittens near her slippered foot.
“I wonder what chance he has of ever succeeding to the throne?” she added.
“Not much,” Adèle snorted. “Remember, Mamá, that Bertie has an older brother, Prince Albéric. Alby may not have married yet, but he surely will. His dear mother will see to that.”
Brisquayne arched her eyebrows. She sensed a bit of rivalry between her daughter and her granddaughter’s mother-in-law. But she
knew her place. She would bite her tongue and stay out of it.
“And when will I meet this marvelous midwife?” the dowager queen asked aloud, her needles flying clickety-clack, clickety-clack as they wove back and forth, weaving an intricate pattern of leys into the yarn.
As she drifted, she could picture herself and her two girls working companionably together there in the sunlit room, almost as if she had risen above the tableau and was peering down at it. She felt the love flowing out of their hands and their hearts and into the gifts they were creating for the precious child-to-be, the seed of their combined wombs. To her it seemed as if they were all part of some grand cosmic scheme, a chain of eternal women linking their familial past to the future and beyond.
She was suddenly minded of the old story concerning Les Parques, The Fates of classical legend, whose spinning and cutting supposedly determined the length of a person’s life, and the pain and suffering they would have to experience during their stay on earth.
Ahhh, she thought to herself, Adèle is obviously Clotho the spinner, Sinthe is Atropos the cutter, and I, why I’m Lachésis the dispenser.
She chuckled at the conceit.
“Par quel destin faut-il, par quelle étrange loi,...” she murmured, “Strange work of fate past wondering....”
Brisquayne’s second-born daughter, Lady Abyssinthe, wife of Lancelme’s younger twin brother, Sieur Manassès, had been working away quietly as the other two chatted, glancing from time to time at an ornate old sundial on the lawn outside the window. Now she perked up her pretty, pearl-like ears, and cleared her throat delicately.
“Well, actually,” she said, a secret little smile twitching at her lips, “they’re all coming here to visit this afternoon. The king and queen, I mean. I expect them about midday. I’ve put together a luncheon of sorts,” she added, gesturing towards the windows. “We’ll dine al fresco on the terrace, I think....”
“Sinthe!” Brisquayne said, dropping her stitches as she rose straight up from her seat. “You foolish little girl, why didn’t you tell me earlier? You always did have cheese balls between those ears of yours. Now I’ve got to go change, and you both do, too,” she scolded, glancing about for her work basket.
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