by Ron Miller
Mathias says nothing, but scowls as he is left alone to deal with the mayor’s inane prattling.
After dinner, and the princess would have been hard put to recall what she had eaten, if indeed she had eaten at all, Gyven and Mathias, excusing themselves on the pretext that duty to their comrades required them, went to their own quarters and Bronwyn retired to her bedroom, avoiding the mayor’s fawning and obsequious attentions by pleading a sick headache. From her window, she can see the two tall figures in the moonlight, as they stride as purposefully down the avenue as a pair of machines. She had once thought she loved one of them, and she has a growing certainty that she loves the other. If only, she wonders sadly, she had some idea of what that really meant.
She opens the opposite window, strips off her uniform and collapses on the comfortable bed, the first real bed she has occupied in months. A light breeze, on its way from one window to the other, drifts across her naked body like a gossamer sheet of silk; she is aware of every particular hair, even to the finest down, that covers her body as it is disturbed by the warm, atmospheric breath. She lies with her head propped against a thick, downy pillow, her arms at her sides, her legs straight and parallel. She is distantly surprised that a family composed of such short, squat people as the Dornochs have a bed long enough for her . . . though even at that her heels overhang the foot of the mattress and the crown of her head bumps the headboard.
Moonlight shines in through either window; a cool, bright light from the larger moon to her left and a slightly subdued pinkish light from her right. Bishadowed and bicolored, her body shimmers and iridesces like a mother-of-pearl carving, like a phosphorescent mushroom. She looks at it with some curiosity, as though she had never before given it much thought, which, in reality, is not entirely the truth. Her legs are meandering ridges, like volcanic dikes, one blue, the other pink, the long valley between a bottomless crevasse. Perspective makes her feet seem far away, at the ends of the foreshortened curves of her legs. A long journey, she thinks, from those toe-capped pillars, up the complex curves of shins and thighs, past the bushy mound that looks like a patch of purple lichen in the moonlight, or perhaps a distant copse or oasis beyond the flat, softly undulating meadow of her stomach, which she pauses briefly to watch rise and fall like a soft linen sheet hanging from a line to dry and billowing in a gentle breath of air, to her hemispherical breasts, which are pointing at opposite corners of the ceiling, and, she realizes for the first time, are slightly mismatched in size. She can see that they are covered with a fine sheen of perspiration, like a dewy spider web, like sand dunes sparkling in the moonlight. It is easy to imagine that she is looking across some alien, moonlit landscape with its soft hills and undulations, its valleys and plains, wells and forests, parks and piedmonts.
I wonder what Gyven thinks of my body? her mind asks, a question she would never have considered had she been wholly conscious. It doesn’t even embarrass her now. Does he think of it at all, I wonder. Why would he think of it? There’s certainly nothing particularly special about it. Or is he still above, or beyond, such things? “Innocent of them” might be more appropriate. Has he known any other women since I saw him last? What a terrible thing to think! Why am I asking this? Am I trying to be jealous? But no, I can’t imagine him with someone. He’s too . . . unearthly; he’s like Thud in a lot of ways. Perhaps he only likes me the way that Thud does . . . like a big dog. I don’t want to believe that, though. And it can’t be true. Not the way he acts around me, not the way he looks at me. It’d be nice if he thinks that I have an attractive body. I’d like that. I’d like it because I’d like Gyven to like anything at all about me and I can’t, in all honesty, imagine someone liking me for my personality.
Then what about Gyven’s body? her mind persists, taking advantage of someone who is too tired to govern her own thoughts. Great Musrum, I know what I think of it! He’s all gender. But there has to be more than that, doesn’t there? I thought I loved Mathias, and he certainly is attractive enough physically. But I didn’t realize that until after I’d grown to know him. Well, I mean, she argued with herself, I know he is handsome and all that, but that just seem to be a fact about him, like his name, or his hair color. Gyven, on the other hand, I couldn’t stand from the day I first met him. In fact, on the day that I met him he actually repulsed me, and I gradually grew to like him even less. Yet even then the very sight of him made me go all loose and liquidy inside. He made me feel as though I was some animal in heat, totally out of control of my emotions and desires. I really resented that. I still do. The emotions that I feel with and about Mathias seemed so, so, rational; the emotions that I feel about Gyven . . . I have no control over.
I’ve got to think about something else or I’m never going to get to sleep. Why don’t ducks sink? I’ve often wondered about that . . . She wonders if the humidity would continue through the night. Fine beads of perspiration trickle down the sides of her face, between her breasts, navigated her ribs, tickled her thighs, following glistening trails lightly like tiny insects. It is as though the primeval landscape of her body is evolving its own system of rivers, streams and lakes. The muggy air does nothing to cool her; it is like a heavy, soggy blanket. Musrum! I hate sweating in bed. She rolls to her side, but the sheet beneath her sticks to her back, and she can’t abide the hot, itchy feel of her arms against her body or the heat and sticky weight of her legs pressed together. She rolls back over, mopping her face with a corner of the sheet. Gyven’s rock-bound face, looking as always like a mineral concretion, continues to drift in and out of her vision, as her unattended brain dieseled, its governor wired down so that it ran out of control, ever faster, ever wilder. With a sigh she climbs from the bed and lumbers unsteadily to the ishstand, where she splashes water that is only comparatively cooler onto her face. She lets it run in tepid rivulets down the length of her torso, from which it drips onto the floor, circling her feet in a clinquant faery ring. The salt and stickiness washes from her face but leaves her eyes feeling puffy and itchy with sleep. She glances through the window by her elbow; it overlooks the street and most of the nearby rooftops since she is in an attic room and the mayor’s house is one of the largest in the small town. There are no lights visible, it must be three or four o’clock in the morning. The smaller moon has set, but the larger one is nearly full and is still fairly high in the clear, pewter-colored sky. A light mist has formed in the humid air. It fills the streets with a dim, glaucescent softness and in its midst the slate-roofed buildings make a dark archipelago. She leans on the sill, her thoughts as torpid and heavy as the atmosphere.
Turning away, she pulls the rocking chair that sat near the bed over to the window, tosses some cushions onto it to cover its cane seat and back, and slouches into it, her long legs stretched out to rest on a low chest beneath the window. She can just see the peaks of the nearest roofs, decorated with ornamental wrought iron lightning conductors, with the remaining moon centered in the frame. Holding her head as still as she can, she tries to see if the moon’s slow movement might actually be visible, especially if she watches it in relation to some stationary object. After a few minutes she is certain that it is discernibly closer to the nearest lightning conductor (shaped crudely to represent St. Spodnill riding his traditional codfish). And as it draws closer to the ornament, she is convinced that she can see the moon’s movement, the gap between the bright disk and the black saint and fish is perceptibly narrowing. It is a strange sensation, she thinks, as though she were eavesdropping on some great secret, or perhaps the feeling is that she has slipped into some differently paced perception of time itself. The enormous, blue-white circle slides behind the iron saint and his fish and a brief moment silhouettes the long-forgotten cleric with a gleaming halo that only the contemplative, secret princess sees.
She never notices when she finally falls asleep.
Bronwyn breakfasts with the mayor and his family the following morning. It is still dark outside: dawn is still only a vaguely rosy blush on the
steel-grey horizon. Unlike the previous evening, when she had not been present, the mayor’s wife joins the meal. She is a small, round woman who does not, so far as Bronwyn can tell, move the focus of her gaze from a point precisely fixed in the center of her plate, blushing furiously the whole time. Not only is Mrs. Dornoch there but all of the lesser Dornochs as well, male and female, who range in age from five to twenty, looked exactly like their father and mother, who in turn are indistinguishable, and were arranged by size like the pipes of a calliope. They are all hopelessly in awe of the presence of the Princess Bronwyn and only pretend to eat; to do otherwise would have meant taking their eyes off Bronwyn for an unallowable second. Food is consequently dribbled, unnoticed, everywhere but the vicinity of mouths. This combined with the effect of sixteen unblinking, unwavering eyes is unnerving.
The mayor maintains a monologue, continued, as far as Bronwyn can tell, unbroken from the previous evening. Fortunately, this limited the princess’ conversational responsibility to more or less inarticulate grunts.
Pleading her duty, she escapes as quickly as possible and rejoins her army, which is already regrouped in the enormous market ground. Glancing back only once, she sees the entire Dornoch clan motionlessly watching her from the open doorway. She finds Mathias and his colonels already discussing what the immediate future may hold.
Only fifty miles separate the town from Blavek: only three or four more days. They cannot reasonably expect that their way will remain unimpeded for very much longer. While no one expects that the Guards will be able to provide any serious resistance, they can, by sheer numbers, wear away the princess’ forces. What would be worse, the Guards might provide enough of a delay that the king and his cohorts could make an easy escape. The goal is, after all, not to take Blavek but to capture Payne Roelt. Storming the city is an undesirable but necessary nuisance.
Ideally, the city would be approached from the south, where the palace is relatively exposed. That means that somewhere the army would have to cross the Moltus River, which south of the city is broad and deep. It is unfordable, nor are there any bridges south of the capital. The alternative is to attack the city from the north. In this case, however, the palace would be separated from the army by the Moltus River, which is spanned by only two bridges, and the bulk of the city itself, whose unfamiliar labyrinthine streets would provide an almost impassable barrier to five thousand three hundred men. The princess’ invasion would be reduced to guerrilla warfare. It is agreed that if the Moltus can be crossed, the south approach will by all accounts be preferable. The plan, such as it is, that is arrived at is to get as close as possible to Blavek and see what happens. Once they reach the near bank of the river it can be decided whether to follow it to the north bridges or to try to cross it and attack the palace from the south.
Before the hour is out, the army has left the town’s limits and, cheered by a few dozen sleepy-looking citizens, is on its way to Blavek.
CHAPTER TWELVE
COMPLICATIONS, ALWAYS COMPLICATIONS
Payne Roelt’s flight to the castle at Strabane is being frustrated, as is Payne Roelt himself. He has only himself to blame, however. The amount of wealth he has plundered from Tamlaght, virtually the entire liquid assets of the country, as represented by cash, gold, silver, jewels and jewelry, fine and decorative artworks and so forth, in the agglomerate amounted to a sizable physical mass. There was, he discovered, scarcely enough available large wagons in the city and its environs capable of carrying his vast fortune. Already there is a congested mass of wagons, horses and drivers blocking the central plaza of Palace Island, overflowing into the open lots on the south shore. It nearly drives him mad to see his hard-won fortune being so cavalierly handled. Incalculable wealth is there for almost anyone’s taking (though who there is to take it is beside the point). That even one of the drivers might help himself to a handful of coins or a silver goblet or picture frame is a possibility that drives Roelt almost to distraction. And the dungeons, which he had converted to makeshift vaults for his treasures, are still only half emptied.
Over a period of months he has managed to secretly transfer an enormous portion of his loot to the distant castle, in relatively small increments, a wagonload here and a wagonload there, with guards upon the guards, ineffectively disguised as itinerant merchants. Perhaps as much as half of his fortune is already secreted at Strabane. Now, with an army almost within sight, he feels compelled to finish the job overnight if possible.
“You can send these wagons to Strabane,” suggests Praxx, “and reload them when they come back.”
“What?” shrieks Payne, looking at his general as though the man has suddenly lost every one of his senses. The ridiculousness of the idea seems hardly to require refutation . . . he would have suspected the general of making a joke if he hadn’t known the man is totally humorless. How could he possibly trust anyone to take his wealth to Strabane unattended? Who can he entrust it to while he is in Blavek? At the moment, Strabane is occupied only by an elderly caretaker and his wife. That the old couple would scarcely be capable of carrying away even a small bag of paper money, let alone thirty or forty wagons-full, is a question that is not at the moment capable of entering the charnberlain’s mind. And if he accompanies the treasure shipment to the castle, who would guard what remained in Blavek? Praxx? The king? The latter he discounts, as does everyone else these days, but now he looks at the general in the revealing glare of a whole new light. Would Praxx really be capable of absconding with half of the cumulative wealth of Tamlaght? Who wouldn’t? concluded Payne, predictably.
The original problem not only remains but is getting worse. The news of the approaching army is disturbing, made even more so by the reports . . . more than half discounted . . . that the long-missing Princess Bronwyn rides at its head. If that proves to be indeed true, Payne thinks, he believes that he’ll go mad.
“How much money do you have on you?” he asks the general.
“Pardon?”
“How much money do you have on you? In your pockets.”
“I have no idea. Why?”
“Would you mind looking?”
Puzzled, the general turns his pockets out, laying upon a tabletop a small pile of bills and coins. Payne counts them, sorting them meanwhile into neat piles, organized by denomination.
“Two hundred and seventy-seven crowns and sixty-six poenigs,” he announces. He is quiet for a long moment, then asks, “Where did you get this money?”
“Get it?”
“Yes. Where did you get it from?”
“Why . . . why, I really can’t say, exactly. I always carry a few hundred crowns around with me. In fact, I’d thought that I had more than that.”
“Then why didn’t you say so?”
“I don’t understand.”
“When I asked you how much money you had, you said that you didn’t know. Now you say that you thought that you had more than two hundred crowns. Did you think that you might have had three hundred?”
“It’s possible.”
“Four hundred?”
“Well, yes, I have carried that much.”
“Five?”
“Perhaps not on a regular basis . . .”
“Do I pay you this much money?”
“Pardon?”
“How much do I pay you?”
“Well, I don’t really get paid. That is, I don’t receive any sort of regular salary, if that’s what you’re getting at.”
“Then where does your money come from?”
Praxx is beginning to dislike and distrust the tone the conversation is taking. Payne’s last words were spoken through nearly clenched teeth, and the chamberlain’s normally pale features had become as glossily white as a good quality gruyere.
“It’s from a kind of petty cash fund, I suppose,” says Praxx, carefully. “I help myself to what I feel I need; I fill out vouchers; for my everyday expenses, you understand. As a military officer, everything I need is otherwise provided for me.”
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br /> Without another word, Payne scoops the money off the table and drops it into a cloth bag he produced from somewhere. He turns to the king, who has given up a paint-by-numbers project . . . more or less thwarted by missing his cups of burnt sienna and ultramarine blue, and has returned to one of the crossword puzzles that Praxx had given him. “Ferenc!”
“Eh?” the king replies, distracted from his crossword book. He has been laboriously transcribing a lengthy word from the answer pages, “overcrafty” as it happens, and unknowingly has been chewing on the wrong end of his pen. His lips are stained and when he speaks his teeth are outlined in black as though they had been cut from a woodblock print. The effect is a little ghoulish.
“Give me your money,” demands Payne.
“What money?”
“Look in your pockets.”
The king searches his smoking jacket, vest and trousers but can only produce a five-poenig piece. Payne takes it from him.
“I was saving that,” protests Ferenc.
“Five poenigs? What for?” says Payne, dropping the coin into his bag, where it clinks with its fellows.
“It’s new. It has my picture on it.”
“So what?” replies the chamberlain. “Praxx, take this bag down to the wagons. And while you’re there, see if there can’t be more wagons to be found in this city.”
“Yes, my lord,” answers the general, bowing before he backed from the door, something he has been neglecting to do for many months. Once in the corridor beyond, and on his way to the plaza, he finds himself in an uncommonly good mood. Both the king and his chamberlain are as mad as . . . as . . . he can think of no appropriate similes, having no imagination. It didn’t matter; they are mad all the same.
What wonderful possibilities, he thinks, mentally rubbing his hands together (one is occupied with the bag of money . . . and thinking of this, he removes a handful of bills and transfers them to his pockets). The national economy has collapsed, people are literally starving in the streets, what of the government that has not fallen prey to Payne’s pogrom is either ineffectual or insane, an invading arrny of mercenaries is already within a few days’ rnarch of the capital, without having met even a token resistance and, what seems like a miracle, the infamous Princess Bronwyn is apparently alive and well.