“Then put aside your fears of these clodhopping peasants!” The “druid” overlooked the fact that all of his followers were plowmen themselves. “Put aside fear, and let your spirits rise in hope! Our day will come! The old gods will waken! We will win the protection of a prince! He is swayed by my promises of power and glory, already half won to our cause! He shall come to the throne, and we shall rise to dominion with him!”
The men stared; the “druid” had mentioned the princely patron before, but never so clearly. It had to be the heir to the throne, it had to be Prince Gaheris!
“We shall have the protection of a prince,” the leader promised, his eyes glowing. “We shall have the protection of a king! Then shall we worship in the open with king’s soldiers to guard us from these ignorant peasants, then shall we gather in the old stone rings to enact our sacrifices openly and for all to see—and without interruption!”
He stood, arms upraised, eyes searching the sky, and his followers rose with him, caught up in his excitement, in the visions of beautiful naked virgins that his words conjured. They held their arms up, eyes lifted to the cold, cloud-covered moon, and chanted with their leader, though softly, begging, “Toutatis, come!”
A month later Queen Alisande sat at table, not in the Great Hall, but in a smaller chamber, richly furnished, walls hung with bright new tapestries, carpets covering the stone floor, table and chairs of oak polished to glowing. Her husband and royal wizard, Lord Matthew Mantrell, had recommended such a chamber as an aid to negotiation at state dinners—and also a place for the family to gather by themselves. She sat with him and his parents—and with some very unwelcome guests from the neighboring kingdom to the north. The latter had virtually invited themselves, by the stratagem of inviting her when they knew she would be tied up with the bishops’ council, convened because of the heresy that had cropped up in the south. Since Alisande was too busy to go to them, she’d had to invite them to come to her—for they were the King and Queen of Bretanglia, with their poisonous brood of three wrangling sons, and Rosamund, fiancée to Gaheris, the heir apparent.
Of course, in their quarreling and backbiting, the boys were only demonstrating that blood runs true, and it was shaping up to be one of the most unpleasant state dinners Alisande had ever experienced. In this universe there was no English Channel, but Matt was beginning to wish it existed, and that their unwelcome guests were safely on the other side of it.
Maybe they did, too. “It was a rough ride,” Queen Petronille told Alisande. She was a tall, stately woman, still beautiful in middle age. Her auburn hair showed no trace of gray, though that was probably due more to dye than to youth. She wore a gown of maroon brocade with long, bell-shaped sleeves, and a golden tiara set with diamonds. “The old imperial highway from Dunlimon was smooth enough, though here and there a paving-stone is tilted. Still, our armies keep it free of weeds and trees. But from Laiscal southward it is so overgrown as to be scarcely a trackway.”
Laiscal was the first major town on Alisande’s side of the border—but she let the sally pass with a gracious smile. “How trying for you! Perhaps a palanquin would have been more comfortable than riding.”
Petronille eyed her narrowly, trying to decide whether that had been a dig at her age. “Perhaps, my dear—though I have found that the bearers jounce one about in a palanquin even more than does a proud stallion.”
Typical of the woman, Matt thought—emphasizing that she was so fine a rider that she didn’t need a palfrey or even a spirited mare, but could handle a stallion of fettle and mettle. There was also the little matter of calling a reigning monarch “my dear” instead of “Your Majesty”—a very obvious breach of protocol.
Alisande took it in stride, though. Smiling sweetly, she said, “Still, a saddle makes one ache so, when one is in it all day. At least, mine does, whenever I must ride on campaign or progress. Do you not find it so, Your Grace?”
Matt tried to hide a smile. His gentle wife had administered a very mild rebuke for Petronille’s breach of manners— and had reminded her that she might be a queen in Bretanglia, but was only Duchess of Pykta here in Merovence, and Alisande’s vassal to boot. Further, Alisande, riding on military campaigns whenever her country was threatened, was a sovereign, not merely the consort of one. Of course, she had also reminded Petronille of her own abilities as a rider.
Petronille only smiled sweetly. “Of course, my dear. How very boring for you.” Then, unable to counter her role as a king’s consort, she turned to score on Alisande’s consort “Do you not find it tedious to accompany your wife on such processions, Lord Wizard?”
“Why, no,” Matt said, smiling. “I enjoy travel. Of course, I do wish more of it could be peaceful, but I’ll take what I can find.”
“As did your royal wife, no doubt,” Petronille said, with a poisonous smile. She turned to Mart’s parents. “You were not born of the nobility, were you, lord and lady?”
“Not in Merovence, no,” Papa said, which was strictly true, but left the impression that he had been a nobleman in his homeland.
Before Petronille could pin him down, Mama said “Of course, one must abdicate all aristocratic titles when one decides to devote oneself to scholarship, Your Majesty”
Papa nodded, picking up on her lead. “When one commits one’s life to being a professor, ‘Doctor’ should be title enough.”
Matt smiled, once again elated to see how well they worked together.
“Indeed,” Petronille said archly. “And what title would you have claimed in your homeland, if you had not chosen to leave the wider world for the cloisters of the university?”
Mama shrugged, careful of her phrasing. “I would not have chosen to be a countess, Majesty, but with that I should have been content.”
Again, strictly true, but creating one hell of a false impression. Matt caught his breath in admiration of his mother’s skill with words. No wonder she had turned out to be a top-ranked wizard once she arrived in a universe in which magic worked by poetry.
“Ah yes, you are of Ibile, are you not?” Petronille wouldn’t give up. “What province would you have held there?”
Papa smiled. “My father was of Ibile, yes, and his city was Castile—but I grew up in my mother’s land, far to the west.”
King Drustan frowned. He was tall, well into middle age, but still broad-shouldered, and the bulk that had come on him in his fifties was only slightly flab. His hair was chestnut streaked with gray, and he wore it to his shoulders. His beard was grizzled, full and square-cut, his nose long and straight, his lips full and sensuous, his gray eyes bright and alert for any opening. “I have heard the rumors. Can there truly be a great land so far over the sea?”
“There is,” Papa told him, “and my wife and I are both its natives.”
“And what would have been your province, my lady, if you had not wed the doctor?” Petronille asked Mama sweetly.
Give it a rest, Matt thought, exasperated.
But Petronille wasn’t about to change topics until she’d pinned Mama and Papa down to admitting they weren’t of the nobility.
“Havana, if Castro had not stolen it from us,” Mama said, allowing the old bitterness to show.
“A robber baron, then?” Petronille gave her a smile that oozed sympathy. “How fortunate for you that you met the good doctor!”
“Then you have come to Merovence to seek asylum?” Drustan asked.
Matt bit back the urge to say that an asylum was where Drustan and Petronille belonged.
“Why, no,” Papa said. “We are here because of our son.”
“Indeed!” Drustan said, with genuine surprise. “I had heard that you were of great assistance in purging Ibile of the Moors, but I thought you had returned to your homeland for that purpose.”