“I shall retire, too.” John cast a covetous glance at Rosamund—and Gaheris stepped on his toe. John clamped his jaw shut in a way that spoke of long practice.
“Yes, do retire, brother,” Gaheris said, with a nasty grin. “Leave the life of the night to those who are lively enough for it.”
“Beware, Gaheris,” Drustan said, chuckling. “I’ve been practicing swordplay with the lad. He might have more energy than you think.”
“Then let him spend it by himself.” Gaheris turned away to Brion. “Come, brother! Let us seek a chessboard and turn to gaming!”
Matt didn’t doubt for a second that they would be playing games late into the night, but somehow he suspected that those games wouldn’t involve a chessboard.
CHAPTER 2
The royal couples retired to Alisande’s solar with Mama and Papa to act as buffers. A servant poured the first round of brandywine, then left the decanter and, at a sign from Alisande, departed.
“What a pleasant chamber, Your Majesty!” Petronille looked around at the wainscotted walls hung with tapestries, the Persian carpet that covered the hardwood floor, the huge clerestory window with its draperies closed now against the night. Opposite it was the fireplace and the tall bookcase that stood between it and the heavily carved table that served Alisande as a desk. Six hourglass-shaped chairs stood about in a rough circle.
“I thank you, Your Majesty.” Alisande smiled, sitting in a chair a little taller than the others, with the crown and lilies carved in its back. The rest of the chairs were spaced equally around the room, so there could be no concern about rank in the seating—none would have denied Matt’s right to sit next to his wife, and Papa and Mama were careful to take chairs across from them, to avoid having Merovencians on one side and Bretanglians on the other.
They sat, and Drustan sipped at his brandywine and smiled. “Excellently brewed! But now, Majesty, we must discuss the future.”
“If we must, Majesty,” Alisande sighed. “At times it seems all I can do to cope with the present.”
“Indeed it does,” Drustan said wryly, “but the future will become the present all too soon, and we must plan for it before it comes.”
“Of which matters do you speak, Lord of Bretanglia?”
“Of the inheritance of Pykta and Deintenir, Sovereign of Merovence.” Drustan lost his smile.
Matt braced himself, even though he’d known tins was coming. By a quirk of history, Drustan and Petronille had inherited provinces in Merovence, and Alisande naturally did not want them to become part of Bretanglia. More to the point, she didn’t want to lose any of her people to the rule of a monarch she didn’t trust, or his heir, whom she trusted even less.
“Do you speak as Duke of Deintenir or King of Bretanglia?” she asked.
“As both,” Drustan snapped. “Deintenir must go to my son when I die!”
Alisande’s eyes flared at the word “must,” but she kept her voice level. “I care not, so long as he acknowledges me, or my heir, as his suzerain in those provinces, even as you do, Duke and Duchess.”
“I hold Deintenir from my childless uncle,” Drustan said, “but my son’s claim will be far stronger. He will inherit his provinces from both his parents, and therefore should hold them in his own name as part of his own kingdom.”
“He will hold Deintenir as your son, and Pykta as Petronille’s” Alisande sounded weary. “Therefore he will hold each province from only one parent. Am I to give all my northern coast to your line for no greater cause than half kinship?”
“Give the province to itself, Majesty!” Petronille urged “I have inherited Pykta from my father, and am your vassal, but I have more sons than one. When I die, let Brion hold Pykta in his own right, and let it be a sovereign princedom in itself!”
Drustan rounded on her. “Would you split the domain only so that your favorite need not kneel to his elder brother?”
“Would you deny Brion everything?” Petronille returned. “You have granted all of Wales to his brother already, and refused him Scotland!”
“Scotland and Bretanglia became one kingdom when my Scottish father married my Anglian mother,” Drustan retorted. “They must not be sundered again!”
“Then spare him Pykta as his own princedom!”
“Done!”
“But not by me,” Alisande said, as he had known she would.
Her voice rang with iron. “Pykta is mine, but I shall be proud to name Brian my vassal, if he will take seizin from me.”
Drustan surged to his feet, face red with rage, bellowing, “Do you dare deny my right? If I say my son shall have Pykta, he shall have it, by your leave or no! And when he weds Rosamund, he shall have Toulenge, too!”
“Deintenir, Pykta, and Toulenge?” Matt cried, scandalized “That’s a third of Merovence!”
“The law of inheritance is clear!” Drustan thundered. “If a third of your realm is my son’s birthright and his wife’s dowry, that is your bad fortune!”
Alisande sat unmoving, face stony, eyes gimlets. Matt rose with a feral grin, stepping a little toward Drustan, but before either of them could speak, Petronille declared, “Brion must be his own master!”
“Pykta is a small province, with rocky soil and no mines,” Alisande pointed out “It has little wealth and few soldiers. If it were a separate land, it would be quickly conquered by Merovence or Bretanglia or, worse, by a foreign power, most probably Ibile.”
“Pykta shall triumph and remain free,” Petronille returned, “if mighty Brion defends it.”
“Is he a superhuman warrior, then, this perfect knight of yours?” Drustan demanded.
“Are you jealous of your own son?” Petronille retorted, and they were off again.
Alisande leaned back, unable to hide her weariness.
They all knew that neither side would yield, and that the issue could only be settled by battle. Drustan and Petronille were simply trying to provoke Alisande into giving them grounds to declare war, and she was determined to avoid it Fortunately, the two of them couldn’t agree long enough to force her hand.
Matt sighed; it was going to be a long evening.
The common room at the Inn of the Courier Snail boomed with laughter, ribald verse, and off-key song. Smoke from a wide fireplace curled along the low rafters, darkened with a century and more of poor ventilation. The hearth held a fragrant kettle of stew and a variety of fowls roasting on spits.
Minstrels sang in two different corners with no fear of anyone more than twenty feet away hearing them—and if the streets outside were not the safest nor the neighborhood quite the most refined, well, the kind of amusements the northern soldiers sought could scarcely have been found at a more luxurious hostelry.
Serving wenches threaded their way through the crowds in excellent form. The landlord filled one tankard after another from a huge barrel of table wine. He was rosy-cheeked and sweating with warmth, smiling with great good cheer—the Bretanglian soldiers of the royal bodyguard were good for business. Oh, there had been the predictable quarrels with the locals, about beef and ale being better than frogs’ legs and wine, but they managed to avoid coming to blows, partly because the prostitutes had beguiled the more quarrelsome away upstairs to another kind of conflict, and the Bretanglians were now playing at draughts and at dice with good fellowship and amiable insults. After all, each side could claim not to understand the other because of its barbarous accent.
The scream tore across the common room, and Laetri, the most skillful of the inn’s prostitutes, came tumbling down the stairs against the back wall. Everyone was instantly silent, all eyes turned to the scene of sudden violence, as the Bretanglian nobleman came striding down the stairs, his dagger raised. Oh, he wore the livery of a common soldier, but his bearing marked him as an aristocrat, as did his accent as he snarled, “Little thief! Give back my purse, or I’ll cut out your heart!”