by Candy Rae
Robain sighed as he listened to Elliot’s altruism. “We’re about to embark on the biggest war that the planet has ever seen Elliot and even I have to admit that the war comes first and the finding of my sister and mother second. I don’t even know if they’re still alive.”
“I was brought up with slavery,” said Elliot, “but it doesn’t mean that I think it is right. When I visited your country Robain, there weren’t any slaves and no one, not even the rich thought there was a need nor felt the lack. I liked it there. My Father, he hates it too. When I am King I am going to end it.”
“You’re going to emancipate the slaves? That’ll not do much for your popularity amongst certain numbers of your people.”
“I think I can live with that, I certainly can’t live with the knowledge that I knew slavery was wrong and did nothing to try to end it.”
* * * * *
Isobel
Duchess Anne Cocteau handed out the letters. There were three. One was to Baroness Tamsin Dubois, who was visiting the manor for the summer with her husband and children from her nun sister, Sister Cynwise. It was an invitation to visit the convent with her husband and children.
The second letter was also from Cynwise, to another of the Duchesses nieces, Isobel.
The third was to Countess Katia, married to Isobel’s brother James.
Letter from Sister Cynwise, a novice with the Order of Grey Nuns, to her cousin Isobel:
‘My Dearest Cousin Isobel,
Mother Breguswið has given me leave to write to you as well as my sister Tamsin to tell you all the news from our House because she knows well how interested you are in our day to day lives. As you know, now that I have professed my initial vows and donned the habit I cannot write as often as I might like but it is a small price to pay for the happiness now within me now that I am a one of the novitiate.
First, I am going to say that both Coenberg (remember, that is the name in religion Annette has taken) and I enjoyed your last visit very much and we hope that you will be able to visit us again soon and before your wedding to Prince Elliot. Who would have thought when we arrived here with your sister Estelle all these years ago to join the schoolroom that you would become our future Queen? I am happy for you and pray that the joy you expressed when you were here regarding your impending nuptials will continue during the years ahead. As you know, I never really wanted the type of marriage that will soon be yours. I think, even at twelve I intended to be a ‘Bride of the Church’ and knew that for me, it was the route to my greatest joy and happiness.
I was not wrong. Life here as part of the Sisterhood is more wonderful than I could ever have imagined.
Are you keeping up with your studies? I only ask because you used to enjoy them so much. We spend at least a candle-mark each day studying, trying to increase our understanding of God’s place in our life and in the world. As well as the Scriptures and Theology we also study more earthly and mundane subjects, to better prepare us for the other part of our vocation, that of teaching the young. I have already presided over three classes in the schoolroom and I enjoyed it very much.
Young Jill, your sister-in-law’s little sister was a member of the class to which I was assigned. She is a bright little thing, eager to please and to learn and I hope that I will be teaching her and her form-mates more in the future. You can tell, Katia, isn’t it that she is doing well and appears to have settled in with us fine.
Sister Earcongota is still in charge of the school annex. Remember how we all used to love her when we were younger? She is as kind and as gentle as ever though she admitted to me the other day that she is beginning to feel her years and complains of the joint-ache when the weather is cold and wet. Sister Hereswald has prescribed a mild painkiller for when the aches are very bad which seems to help.
Your friend Mary is in retreat at the moment, preparing to make her initial vows. She talks about you often during our recreational time. Although she will not ask you herself, I think she would as I do, like to see you before she dons the habit so there is another reason for you to visit before your marriage and future position make travel difficult.
Think about it Isobel, we would all love it if you could persuade Aunt Anne to let you come and I’m sure Katia would like to come to see Jill. If you make it soon, perhaps Tamsin would be able to come with you, she lives so very far away, but I am asking her myself. I am very much aware, who isn’t, about what a royal marriage entails and no doubt you will be expected to provide an heir before long. After that event, visits to your old friends will be impossible. Please ask Aunt Anne and Uncle Pierre if you can come.
Now I’d better end this now, it’s nearly time for Sext and then I have duties to attend to in the library. You and Estelle are always in my thoughts and my prayers, now and always.
Cynwise.’
Letter from Jill, a schoolgirl who is attending to her education whilst in the care of the Sisters of the Order of Grey Nuns, to her sister Katia.
‘Dear Katia,
I hope this finds you well and in good health. Sister Earcongota says that we must always begin our letters like this. I am well and happy.
I am writing this in the school room, we are all writing our letters home, this is the candle-mark for it. There is a candle-mark for everything here and I quite like it, although some of the candle-marks are nicer than others.
Arithmetic is not so nice. Sister Earcongota says it is to teach us how to reason but I do not see it. I don’t like learning about numbers and my answers are rarely the same as what Sister Earcongota says they must be. Reading and writing are much more fun and history, I love history although the names and dates of the kings and the other ducal families are sometimes confusing. No, not sometimes, always, if I say sometimes I’d be telling a lie and Sister Earcongota says that telling a lie, however small and well-intentioned, is a sin. I wish people wouldn’t keep calling their children after themselves and their aunts and uncles. We are at the moment studying what Sister Earcongota calls the Great Civil War, which is exciting but difficult to understand. Did you know that Queen Petra the First was educated here at the convent? It was a very long time ago of course and none of the sisters here knew her.
Our day begins with prayers then we have breakfast. After a walk we begin lessons which continue until Sext. Then we partake of luncheon (to partake is an interesting word is it not? We have just learned it). After luncheon we do sewing and embroidery. I am doing the smocking on the pinafore I had started last time I wrote. The older girls are doing gorgeous embroidery on an altar cloth. Sister Eanfled says that when I am older I will be able to help make one too but I’m not nearly good enough yet. At Noce we stop doing embroidery.
Then we have our recreation time. When the weather is nice we play in the gardens and when it is not we have to spend the time in the common room, reading, playing board games and talking. Then we have more prayers, then supper then bed.
I was so happy when Mother Breguswið told me that Duchess Anne Cocteau has invited me to stay at the manor for the summer vacation. I have written to her accepting. Sister Earcongota checked all my spelling. It was most kind of her to think of me. Most of us here stay all the year round and do not go home and it was a wonderful surprise to hear that I would be visiting you for three whole tendays! Sister Earcongota is helping me prepare suitable clothes for my visit as I have grown out of all the ones I brought with me and we wear uniform here. Quite indecent she cried when I tried on that red dress, you know the one and it was one of my favourites too. Even with the hem taken down to its fullest extent it barely covered my ankles!
Please send my love to Mother and Father when you next write (I am writing to you this time) and to our brother. Is the baby born yet? Father’s last letter by the way, apart from telling me to be a good and obedient daughter and to apply myself to my studies, asked me to begin thinking about my future. I’m beginning to wonder if he intends that I remain here and join the Sisterhood. I don’t think I do. I’d like to mar
ry and get a nice handsome husband like you’ve got. Can we talk about it when I am visiting? Some of the other girls in the schoolroom are going to become nuns, they say that’s why they have been sent here but I pray that Father does not intend it for me. I don’t think I’d like it though I know that it is Father’s decision in the end.
You are always in my thoughts and my prayers, now and always.
Your devoted sister, Jill
xxx’
“That’s it then,” said Isobel to Katia once she had read the letter. “There’ll be no going to the convent for a visit now that Aunt Anne has invited Jill here. It’s a pity, not that I’m not pleased for you both but I’d have liked to go and see them one last time before the wedding.”
“Perhaps there will be time later in the summer,” comforted Katia.
“Perhaps,” said Isobel.
* * * * *
The Prince-Duke
Xavier, Prince-Duke of the Duchy of South Baker knew changes were in the air. He would have to tread carefully but there had to be some way that he could take advantage of the situation.
It was so unfair; his previous plots had come to nothing. Three assassination attempts had failed. Luckily for Xavier, assassination was not the only weapon in his arsenal and it had never been his preferred choice of method. There would always have been suspicion amongst the dukes and other nobility that Xavier had had a part to play in the deaths of his older brother and his family.
The abdication of the senior royal line had always been his preferred goal and if that was impossible then Xavier had a back-up plan which would at least give him part of what he wanted and in the long term, perhaps more.
* * * * *
The Convent
With a sigh Mother Breguswið took a letter out of her desk drawer and looked at it again. She began to read, trying to read between the lines to ascertain what the words meant rather than what they said.
It looked as if there was trouble afoot. This letter was from Baron Martin Taviston, a distant relative of hers and who at present held the position of Head of Protocols at Court.
She read the carefully worded letter a third time but she still couldn’t understand what he was trying to tell her.
It’s almost time for Vespers, she thought with a perplexed frown, placing the letter back in its drawer. I’ll read it again when I’m not so tired.
She glided out of her office and made her way to chapel.
As she led evening prayers, for once Mother Breguswið’s mind was not concentrating on the words of the liturgy. She was uneasy.
As the days passed and no further word came from the palace, her sense of unease grew.
* * * * *
Julia and Niaill
Julia, Susa of the Vada and Susyc of the Armies of the North held Gsendei’s gaze with a firm stare of her own.
“Now,” she began, “you will tell me of the full extent of the telepathic abilities of you and your kind. When Niaill here told me what you have being doing, how you have been manipulating us over the last six hundred years I was shocked. Don’t hold anything back. If we are to have any chance at all against the Dglai we have to use every means at our disposal. Niaill told me that you have been using your abilities to, shall we say, discourage any signs of human inventiveness that you, the Lai and the Avuzdel considered might threaten the status quo. Is that right?”
“True,” admitted Gsendei, “with the best intentions. The Lai believed that if you humans were permitted to learn of the technology that would let you make weapons of power and that you would use them. At that time Murdoch was a place full of dangerous men who were in alliance with the Larg. They would have used weapons such as the Lai envisaged to destroy Lind and colonists. They, we, could not permit that to happen.”
“That has not been the case for years yet you still continued to manipulate us without our knowledge and consent.”
“Murdoch is still what you might describe a tad unstable even now wouldn’t you say?” Niaill entered into the conversation.
“And I’d be interested to know,” added Julia, “just why the Lai, who you are telling us are committed to peace allowed the Lind and the Larg to fight each other for so long. Surely they could have done something to stop it?”
“It is not the Lai way,” Niaill answered. “They wanted to all right but their primary objective has always been the protection of the planet as a whole. They have long pursued a policy of non-interference in internal matters.”
“Non-interference,” scoffed Julia, “is that what you call it? I’d say that there has been quite a considerable amount of most definite interference!”
Niaill had had the advantage of recent, profound and long talks about this very subject with Haru and Chizu, two of the three Lai who had revealed themselves at the domta of the Gtrathlin and he felt he understood better than anyone else present just why the Lai had insisted on this over the centuries.
Julia turned an angry face in his and Taraya’s direction.
Niaill took a deep breath. “ I know that it’s been a shock to learn what they’ve been doing all these years, but don’t just feel but I know we should put it behind us.”
“A breach of trust,” insisted Julia.
“But, as Gsendei says, with the best of intentions. From day one, in Murdoch, the Dukes have been fighting amongst each other. If they had had access to weaponry like the Lai are talking about they would have used it.”
“In Murdoch,” said a stubborn Julia.
“It wouldn’t have stayed there,” Niaill continued as if she hadn’t interrupted, “the knowledge would have spread. If the Dukes of Murdoch had had such weapons then the Garda would have insisted they have them too. No Julia, I’ve had longer than you to think about this and I have to agree that what the Lai and the Avuzdel did was right and that it should probably continue, with certain safeguards once all this is over. I certainly cannot condone all of their methods. I think I must be at the wrong meeting. I appear to be attending one whose aim is settling old scores and sowing discord.”
Julia looked taken aback and had the grace to acknowledge Niaill’s admonishment.
“I am sorry,” she said to Gsendei.
“Susyc, there is no need.”
“Thank you. I am interested to learn just how far the telepathic abilities of your kind can be extended to help us. Can you for instance influence the minds of the soldiers in our army, to make them less afraid perhaps? Can you influence the Larg kohorts?
Gsendei shook his shaggy brown head with regret.
“No we cannot. Some of us can influence, even control an individual’s mind but this is only on a one to one basis and even this requires much concentration and effort. In war it is impossible; it makes those of us who can do this vulnerable to physical attack if concentrating on mind issues. We will do what we can, perhaps some few individual Larg could be influenced but it is of limited use in battle.”
“So we have to fall back on the old, tried methods. Well, at least we know where we stand. What of the Dglai?”
“They, like the Lai, have no telepathic abilities whatsoever,” answered Niaill.
“We should be grateful for that small mercy,” said Weaponsmaster Jilmis, entering the tent. “Now, we shall be at Settlement tomorrow. Your plans?”
She frowned, thinking, “neap tide is in eleven days.”
“Aye, it is,” agreed Ryzcka Davin, the Vada second in command who had entered the tent with Jilmis.
“I want as many as can begin to cross over the Island Chain in nine. The First and the Fourteenth Ryzck can lead the way and then you Davin, you and Razdya can lead the first of the Lindars across with the cadets.”
“Have you heard from Duke William Duchesne?” asked Niaill.
“Not yet, but I’m expecting word any day now. Prince Elliot and Captain Hallam must already be explaining the situation if the Duke doesn’t know already. I sent word via Ryzcka Brion to that Lord Marshall of theirs.”
“He’ll b
e stirred up to a froth,” noted Jilmis.
“Duchesne and Graham,” added Julia, “Graham is right in the path of the kohorts as much as Duchesne.”
“The Regiments?” asked Davin.
“Brion reported that the Lord Marshall, he’s a relative of the Duke of Duchesne by the way, would do what he could but remember that he’s got all the borders of Murdoch to protect and we still don’t know if the Larg are going to confine their activities to punching their way through Duchesne and Graham. The Largan has a great many warriors at his disposal, he could attack in two, even three places at once. Our task is clear. One, we have to stop the Larg from reaching the northern continent, us. Apart from the killings and destruction that would follow, they cannot be permitted to reach Stewarton where Guildmaster Annert is trying to decipher the print-outs. Two, the Lai’s presence on the planet. The success of our plan to destroy the mother ship of the Dglai depends on them. They cannot reveal themselves until the last possible moment and we have to ensure that they stay hidden. Three, we have to draw attention away from the desert where Danal, Asya and the others hunt for the power-core. We cannot help the Lord Marshall in his defence of any other parts of Murdoch that may come under attack. Unfortunate but true.”
“How are we going to keep the Lai a secret?” asked Davin. “Most of the Lind know.”
“We will say nothing,” said Alshya, the Lind of Weaponsmaster Jilmis.
“What of the Lord Marshall? Did Brion tell him?”
“Peter Duchesne is telling nobody about the Dglai and the Lai yet,” Julia answered. “His Generals believe, as do the dukes that it is the Larg they will face, no more. The Larg have been and can be, defeated. He will not wish to start a panic.”