Authors: R.A. Salvatore
“I cannot dismiss your complicity as I have Angeline’s,” Jilseponie stated definitively, referring to the handmaiden.
“I—I did not know, my Queen,” the chef stammered.
“You knew,” Jilseponie countered. “It was in your eyes from the moment I asked the rest of the staff to leave. You knew.”
“Mercy, my Queen!” the man wailed, thinking himself doomed. He fell to the floor and prostrated himself pitifully. “I could not refuse him! I am but a poor cook, a man of no influence, a man—”
“Get up,” Jilseponie commanded, and she waited for him to stand before continuing, using those moments to sort through her anger. A part of her wanted to lash out at him, and she wondered if it was her duty to turn him over to the King’s Guard for trial and punishment. But another part of Jilseponie could truly sympathize with the awkward position this man had found himself in, obviously caught between two opposing powers that could easily obliterate him. And his choice, against Jilseponie and toward the unknown perpetrator, was also understandable, given Jilseponie’s standing among the courtiers and, by association, among the staff.
“You would kill me?” she asked the chef; and the way he blanched, the look of true horror that came over him, revealed to her his honest shock.
“You put poison in my food,” Jilseponie said plainly, almost mocking that expression.
“Poison?” the man gasped. “But all the ladies … I mean …”
Now it was Jilseponie wearing the surprised expression. She took him aside, asked him to sit, and helped him to calm down. Then she bade him to explain everything to her.
He went on to tell her the truth of her poison, that it was a herb commonly used by the courtesans to prevent pregnancy. Then he told her where the courtesans got the herb—from the man who had come to him some time ago, explaining that he should put the herb in the Queen’s food, as he did in the food delivered to the courtesans who lived in the castle.
Courtesans that numbered only a couple, including Constance Pemblebury.
Jilseponie found herself in quite a quandary, then. “How will I ever trust you?” she asked him. “And you, above all, must be in my trust.”
“Please do not kill me,” the man said quietly, trembling and fighting to hold back his sobs, his gaze lowered. “I will run away, far away. You will never see—”
“No,” Jilseponie interrupted; and the man looked up at her, deathly afraid. “No, you will not resign nor will anyone learn of this error.” She stared at him hard but with compassion. “This error in judgment that you will not repeat.”
The chef’s expression shifted to one of surprise and skepticism, as if he did not understand or believe what he was hearing.
“You are, in many ways, the protector of the King and Queen of Honce-the-Bear,”
she said, her tone regal and commanding. “As great a guardian of the health of Danube and Jilseponie as is Duke Kalas, who leads the Allheart Brigade. You must view your position in this light. You must understand and accept the responsibilities of our trust. Our food passes through your hands. You prepare, you sample, you defend the Crown.”
“And I failed.”
“You did, as has every man and every woman in all the world at one time or another,” Jilseponie replied, and she took the man’s chin in her hand and forced him to look her in the eye. “You have heard of my heroics in the northland,” she said with a self-deprecating chuckle.
“Against the demon and against the plague, yes, m’lady,” the chef replied.
“One day I must tell you of my many failures,” Jilseponie said, and she chuckled again.
The man could not have appeared more stunned, and it took him a long time to muster the courage to ask, “What are you to do with me?”
“I will watch over you carefully in the days ahead,” she replied without hesitation. “I will, for the sake of the safety of my husband, confirm that which I believe to be the truth of your heart. I trust you’ll not fail again.”
The chef’s jaw drooped open and he sat there, staring at her for many minutes. “No, m’lady,” he at last answered. “I’ll not fail you, and not forget what you have offered to me this day.”
Jilseponie smiled at him warmly, then took her leave. She wasn’t sure if she had done the right thing; she had played a hunch, a feeling, though she would follow through with her claim that she would carefully watch over the food, both hers and her husband’s.
What she knew for certain, though, was that she felt good about the way she had handled the chef. She felt as if she had acted in the best spirit of Avelyn. How many criminals, after all—thieves and murderers even—had gone to the plateau at the Barbacan and entered the covenant that had saved them from the rosy plague?
And this man, Jilseponie knew in her heart, was in many ways akin to her handmaiden, used and abused by the man truly holding the power.
She would not be as generous with him.
S
he felt strangely comfortable as she made her way through St. Honce, heading for the room of Abbot Ohwan. That surprised Jilseponie, until she took the time to pause and consider that, in this situation, she held all the power. Jilseponie had found many adversarial situations with powerful men of the Abellican Church, often on a desperate precipice, but this time …
This time she knew that Abbot Ohwan had no defense, that he could not and would not oppose her demands.
She gave a slight knock at his door and pushed right in before he could even respond. He was sitting at his desk, staring up at her incredulously. He started to say something when Jilseponie forcefully slammed the door behind her and turned an
imposing glare upon him. “You have been poisoning my food,” she stated bluntly.
Abbot Ohwan stammered over a few words and started to rise, but he fell back to his seat and seemed as if he would simply topple to the floor.
“Deny it not,” Jilseponie went on. “For I have found the substance and have spoken with the man who actually sprinkled the herbs upon my food, following your own explicit orders.”
“Not poison!” Abbot Ohwan remarked, shakily climbing to his feet. “Not poison.”
“Poison,” said Jilseponie.
“Herbs to prevent you from becoming with child, nothing more,” the abbot tried to explain. “You must understand that I had little choice.”
Jilseponie’s expression showed that she was far from understanding.
“You … you … you came here and upset everything!” Abbot Ohwan said boldly, going on the offensive as he quickly came around the side of his desk. “There is, or was, an established order here in Ursal, one that you do not comprehend.”
“I came to Ursal at the invitation of the only person who can rightfully make such a claim that I have somehow confounded the court,” Jilseponie was quick to respond, and forcefully. “Since the court is his to confound! And if my presence at Castle Ursal court somehow upsets this secluded little world that the nobles of court and the hierarchy of Church have created for themselves, then perhaps that is a good thing!”
Abbot Ohwan started patting his hands in the air, his bluster expiring in the face of the powerful woman. “Not poison,” he said again.
“I know nothing of the herbs, except that the amount I was being given would have killed me soon enough,” Jilseponie retorted.
“Not so!” the abbot protested. “Only enough to keep you from becoming with child. And can you blame me? Do you not understand the trauma to Church and to State if that were to happen?”
That ridiculous last statement was lost on Jilseponie as she considered his first claim. She knew it to be a lie, knew that she had been given far too much of the potent herb, but she could not deny the sincerity in the man’s expression and in his tone. She figured it out pretty quickly. “And do you also give the herbs to Constance, that she might remain sterile?” Jilseponie asked.
“Of course,” Abbot Ohwan answered. “Such has been the duty of the abbot of St. Honce for hundreds of years—to supply all the courtesans.”
“And the queens?” asked Jilseponie. “Without their permission?”
Abbot Ohwan shook his head and stammered again. “N-never before has a queen also been within the province of St. Honce, serving as sovereign sister,” he suddenly remarked.
“Nor am I within your province, Abbot Ohwan,” Jilseponie said calmly and in a low and threatening tone.
“And tell me,” she went on, “to whom do you deliver these herbs? To each individually?”
“They are separated into proper portions for each kitchen and all given to a courier,” the abbot explained innocently. It wasn’t until he heard his own words that his expression soured and he apparently caught on to Jilseponie’s reasoning, that Constance and the other courtesans could easily divert some of their supply to Jilseponie’s food.
Jilseponie shook her head at the man’s stupidity.
“You are a liar or a fool,” she said.
“Please, sovereign sister,” Abbot Ohwan stammered. “My Queen.”
“Resign your position,” Jilseponie demanded. “Go and serve as a parson in a minor chapel far removed from Ursal and the court.”
“I am the abbot of St. Honce!” Ohwan protested.
“No more!” Jilseponie shot back. “Go now, this day, else I will publicly reveal your treachery to King Danube, discrediting you and bringing upon you the shame you deserve.”
“You will bring about a war between Church and State!” insisted the desperate abbot.
“The Church will abandon you,” Jilseponie assured him. “You know that it will. I offer you the chance to continue your vocation and to find again the heart you have apparently lost, but it is a tentative offer, I assure you. Accept it at once and without condition, or I walk out of here to the King with a tale that will boil his blood.”
Abbot Ohwan’s expression shifted through many emotions, from fear to denial to anger. Finally, like an animal that has been backed into an inescapable corner, he squared his shoulders and stood tall. “Thus you play God,” he said, his voice full of contempt, his face locked in a defiant glare.
Jilseponie didn’t blink. “If I played human, you would now be lying in a pool of your own blood,” she said calmly, and then Abbot Ohwan did shrink back and blanch.
Jilseponie was no less sure of her actions as she headed back to Castle Ursal, armed with the information she had subsequently pried from the defeated abbot. This was not a fight that she had ever wanted, and it saddened her profoundly. But neither was it a fight that she could avoid, and certainly not one that she intended to lose.
She knocked on the door of Constance Pemblebury’s rooms and this time, waited for a response.
A sleepy-eyed Constance answered the door, opening it just a bit and peeking around it. A flash of anger accompanied the flash of recognition when she saw who had come calling, but she held her composure well.
“I must speak with you,” Jilseponie remarked.
“Then speak.”
“In private.”
“Say what you must here and now or go away,” said Constance, squaring her shoulders. “I’ve no time—”
Before she could finish, Jilseponie dropped her shoulder and shoved through the door, crossing into the room and slamming the door closed behind her.
“Queen or not,” Constance yelled defiantly, “you have no right to invade my private quarters!”
“A minor transgression, I would say, when measured beside your own perceived right to invade my body,” Jilseponie answered.
Constance started to respond but stopped short, caught by surprise—and caught by the stunning and true accusation. “W-what?” she stammered. “You speak nonsense.”
“I have just come from Abbot Ohwan,” Jilseponie said calmly. “And from the kitchens of Castle Ursal before that. I know about the herbs to prevent pregnancy, Constance, and I know as well about the exceptionally high dose you chose to add to my food.”
“What evidence?” Constance started to ask, trying to stand bold and defiant.
“Was it not enough for you to keep me barren?” Jilseponie asked. “Did you have to go after my very life in addition?”
“You do not know—”
“I know,” Jilseponie growled so forcefully that Constance backed away a step. “And so will King Danube unless—”
“Unless?” the woman interrupted, more eagerly than she wanted to reveal.
“Unless Constance Pemblebury takes her leave of Castle Ursal, and of Ursal altogether,” Jilseponie explained. “Go away, Constance. Go far away. To Yorkey County or to Entel or all the way to Behren, if that is what best suits you. But far away.”
“Impossible!” Constance shrieked.
“Your only option,” Jilseponie calmly answered. “I know what you did and can prove it openly, if you force me to. I can reveal your treason to the King and the court and, worse for you, to all the folk of Ursal if need be. Is that the path you will force me to take? To destroy you utterly?”
“I cannot leave!”
“You cannot stay,” Jilseponie was quick to reply. “This is no debate. I came to offer you this one chance to be gone from Ursal and from my life. I’ll not suffer an assassin to live in my own house.”
“Your house?” Constance roared indignantly, and she came forward, poking a finger Jilseponie’s way. “Your house? You do not even belong here, peasant! Your house is in the Timberlands, in the forest with the other vulgar creatures—”
Jilseponie slapped her across the face, and she fell back, stunned.
“Be sensible and do not force my hand,” Jilseponie said quietly, calmly, and powerfully. “You have betrayed me, and thus, whatever your feelings, you have committed treason against the Crown. A simple and undeniable fact. If you force me to reveal your treachery, I shall, and woe to Constance Pemblebury, and woe to her children, who would be kings.”
The mention of the children seemed to steal the ire from the woman, though
she stood very still, trembling, her eyes darting all about, as if looking for some escape.
“Be gone,” said Jilseponie. “Be long gone from the castle and the city.”
Constance trembled so violently that Jilseponie feared that she would simply fall over. “My children,” Constance said, her voice barely above a whisper.
“They may remain at Castle Ursal, if that is what you desire,” Jilseponie replied, “or take them with you. The choice is yours to make—have you never understood that I am no threat to Merwick and Torrence or their ascension to the throne, if that is how the fates play out?” Jilseponie shook her head and chuckled helplessly. Nor was she ever a threat to Constance, she thought. A part of her wanted to tell that to the beleaguered woman then, to try to reason with Constance and salvage …