Authors: R.A. Salvatore
Jilseponie held those images of confusion and terror close to her as she made her way through the castle to the private quarters she shared with Danube.
And there she found her husband, looking miserable. She sat down opposite him, though he was looking down and not at her, and patiently waited for him to guide the conversation.
“What I would give to share a child with you,” Danube finally said, not looking up.
Jilseponie started to respond but paused. Was Danube speaking about a child to better share their love, or one for other, political reasons? His tone gave her the distinct impression that it was the latter.
“Would that make things easier at court, do you believe?” Jilseponie asked.
Danube shrugged, still staring at the floor. This uncharacteristic posture told Jilseponie that something was terribly wrong, that perhaps the rumor of her and the chef had come to his ears.
“Or would it merely complicate the issues?” she asked, pressing on.
“It would make my choices now more clear,” the King explained, and that unexpected answer gave Jilseponie pause. She looked at her husband curiously.
“I fear that I must bring Merwick and Torrence back to court,” Danube explained, “for part of the year, at least, that they might properly learn their responsibility as my heirs.”
“Of course,” Jilseponie answered, purposely filling her voice with eagerness. She had never held anything against Merwick and Torrence, after all, and while she didn’t know them very well and couldn’t measure their fitness for the throne, she had seen nothing from either of them to discourage the notion.
Surprisingly, her enthusiastic agreement didn’t seem to brighten Danube at all.
“Would it be better, do you suppose, if I name you as successor?” he asked unexpectedly. “Behind Midalis, perhaps, but ahead of Merwick and Torrence?”
Jilseponie’s face screwed up and she worked hard and fast to get through the multitude of refusals that tried to rush out of her mouth. “Why would you even think such a thing?” she asked.
“You are the queen,” Danube answered simply, and he finally did look up at his wife.
“No,” she answered flatly. “I have no desire to be further immersed in the politics of Ursal. Nor do I desire, nor would I accept, any appointment to the line of succession. My life is complicated enough—”
“Troubled enough, you mean,” Danube interjected.
Jilseponie didn’t even try to disagree. “My possible ascension was never a part of our agreement, not before I came to Palmaris and not since. I see no reason to change the standing arrangement—a solemn vow that you gave to your brother and to the other nobles that goes in direct opposition to such a course. If you alter things now, if you change your mind and the formal line of succession, you will be openly betraying the trust and confidence of many of your court, including many who already consider me an enemy.”
“Perhaps those courtiers do not deserve my trust and confidence,” Danube offered.
Again, Jilseponie had to pause and fully digest the surprising words. “I’ll not lie to you,” she said at length. “If at our next grand celebration, a huge crack split the grand ballroom and dropped more than half of your courtiers into a bottomless pit, I would not lament their loss. But I did not come here to shake the court of Castle Ursal apart, nor do I wish to be put into such a position. Nor do I wish to
be a ruling queen.”
“Yet all of the former is a consequence of your simply being here at my side!” Danube yelled at her suddenly. “Split the court?” he echoed incredulously. “Have you not? Have I not by bringing you here? Where is Constance, then? And where Kalas?”
“Kalas?” Jilseponie asked, for she had not heard of the King’s falling out with the Duke nor of Kalas’ plan to leave Ursal. Danube seemed not to even hear her, though.
“Perhaps I erred in bringing you here, for measured against you and your ways of the northland, life at court seems pale indeed, wretched even to me, who grew up in this world,” Danube rolled on. “All your ideals, your quaint notions of friendship … they cannot stand against the realities of this life.”
“
My
ideals?” asked Jilseponie. “These are not shared by you? What of the times we spent together in Palmaris? What of your proposal—your choice—in marrying me? Do you believe that to be an error?”
“I did not foresee the depth—”
“Of the shallowness of your court,” Jilseponie interrupted. “Quite an irony, and not one that you, or I, must assume responsibility for.”
King Danube stared at her. “There is a rumor circulating that you have been taking herbs, the same ones used by the courtesans to prevent pregnancy,” he said.
How Jilseponie wanted to lay it all out to him then and there, to tell Danube about Constance and her conspiracy. Perhaps she had erred in simply sending Constance away without explanation. Perhaps she should have brought it all out in the open and let an honest trial judge the woman. Perhaps she should do so now.
Jilseponie had to take a deep breath to even get through the mere thought of it, for she understood the implications of such a course: a complete destruction of the present court, and some long-festering bad feelings from very powerful landowners and noblemen that could well haunt her husband for the rest of his days.
“I am taking no such herbs,” she answered honestly, phrasing her words in the present tense. “Nor have I ever knowingly consumed any substance that would prevent pregnancy—nor did I ever even hear of such things until very recently.”
Danube stared at her for a long while, and she did not blink, secure in the truth of her words.
“Do you love me?” Danube asked suddenly.
“I came to Ursal, gave up all of my life before this, because I do,” Jilseponie answered. “That has not changed.”
Danube narrowed his eyes and stared at her even more intently. “Do you love me as you loved Elbryan?”
Jilseponie winced and shrank back, her breath coming out in one long and desperate sigh. How could he ask her such a thing? How could she compare the two when she was at such a different place in her own life. “I have never lied to you about that,” she answered after a long and uncomfortable pause. “From the beginning, I explained to you the differences between—”
“Spare me,” Danube begged, holding up one hand.
If he had stood and slapped her across the face, he would not have wounded Jilseponie more.
D
uke Kalas wore his most threadbare outfit this evening, and had purposely neither shaved nor washed very thoroughly after an afternoon spent riding. He needed to get away, from Danube and all the trappings of court. For Kalas, that meant a journey to the slums of Ursal, to the taverns where the peasants gathered to gossip and to drink away the realities of their miserable existence. This was one of his secret pleasures, unknown to King Danube and to any of the other nobles—except for Constance, who had accompanied him on such expeditions in the past.
He entered the tavern with an air of superiority, feeling above the many peasants and yet trying to blend in with them enough so as not to arouse any suspicion that he might be connected to the ruling class. Head down, listening and not talking, he sidled up to the bar and ordered a mug of ale, then found a quiet corner and settled in to hear the latest rumors.
Predictably, they were all about Queen Jilseponie, some whispering that she was having an affair with the cook at Castle Ursal or with some other man—the name of Roger Lockless came up more than once, as well as a lewd reference to Abbot Braumin Herde of Palmaris. And it was all done, of course, with a good deal of laughter and derision.
Kalas knew where all of this had started. Constance and her many friends had begun a quiet campaign to discredit Jilseponie from the moment she had moved to Ursal, and even before, during all of those summers King Danube spent in Palmaris—an act that many of the common folk of Ursal had taken as an insult to their fair city.
Still, for all of the seeding done in the past and all the current damning rumors filtering down to this crowd from Constance’s cronies, all of whom were not pleased that Constance had apparently been “chased” out of the castle and Ursal by the “queen witch” Jilseponie, Kalas could hardly believe the relish the common folk took in fostering and elaborating upon those rumors.
They positively reveled in it, expressing their outrage and their derision with open glee, mocking and mimicking Jilseponie viciously.
Kalas could not deny his mixed feelings at hearing their talk. On the one hand, he hated their fickleness—had this woman not been their revered and cherished hero, not once, but twice? Had she not won a glorious victory, at great personal cost, against the corrupt Father Abbot Markwart? And even more important, had Jilseponie not shown the world the way to salvation during the horrible years of the rosy plague? Or at least, was that not what the peasants had wholeheartedly believed? Yet here they were, their love affair with Jilseponie Wyndon Ursal obviously ended and, Kalas had to admit silently, through no fault of Jilseponie’s. Or perhaps there was fault to be leveled at her: the fault of hubris, of unwarranted pride. The errant belief that she could somehow rise above her lowly station to mingle with
those born of greatness. Jilseponie was not noble born, and she knew it; so why, then, had she agreed to come to Danube’s court as queen? How dare she pretend to be something that she obviously was not?
Duke Kalas took a deep pull of his ale, then slid the glass across the table to a barmaid, bidding her to get him another. As he had mixed feelings about the source of the peasants’ banter, so he had mixed feelings about its possible result. As a nobleman of Danube’s court, he wanted to draw his sword and cut down any peasant insolent enough to speak ill of any nobleman or noblewoman, and indeed, he could not separate their chides from insults aimed at King Danube.
And yet, Duke Kalas wasn’t sorry to see Jilseponie being made the butt of their jokes, to see them embracing every nugget of every rumor, though there might be no evidence at all. Let this woman, who had so wounded his dear friend Constance, be dragged through the mud of peasant gossip; let them pay her back for all the pain she had brought to Danube’s courtiers by her mere presence! And as for Danube’s failing image, had he not brought it upon himself by ignoring the advice of Kalas and many others and marrying a peasant?
His second ale arrived, and he downed it in one gulp, then took a third from the barmaid’s tray as she started away and swallowed that, motioning for her to go and fetch another.
He needed the drink. For there was one other thing behind all the justifications Kalas might make, though the Duke would never admit it to himself or to anyone else: Jilseponie had refused his advances years ago in Palmaris, before she had begun her love affair with King Danube.
Danube had chosen wrongly, and so had Jilseponie, and all the court was in tumult because of it. “Swill to satisfy the lowly tastes of peasants,” the Duke muttered under his breath, his voice full of sarcasm and anger. “How fitting for a Queen.”
S
he sat in a curtained room staring at the opaque veil that blocked her view of the outside world. Earlier, she had heard Torrence and Merwick out there, sparring and arguing, but they were long gone now, no doubt off to find some of the new friends they had made since moving to Yorkeytown.
Constance had made no new friends; and, in truth, the mere thought of it sent shivers along her spine. She looked horrible and she knew it—how, then, could she go out among the social elite of Yorkeytown?
It was midday out beyond that window. Yet Constance was still wearing her simple nightdress; and while it was not obviously dirty, she had not changed out of it for three days. How had she sunk so low, so fast? She had aspired to be queen of Honce-the-Bear, and then had attained a position that would likely place her as queen mother. And yet here she was, banished from Ursal by her hated rival, Jilseponie holding the proof of her crime over her head like the demon of death’s own scythe!
“She has conspired against me,” Constance muttered, “from the beginning. She has watched my every move and baited me, waiting, waiting, waiting. Ah, yes, the
witch! Waiting, waiting, waiting for poor Constance to give in to her endless taunts and try to defend herself. And when I did—yes, when Constance tried to defend her position, to protect her children!—there you were, cursed witch, ready to go sobbing to your husband, the King. Oh, but aren’t you the pretty one and the clever one, Queen Jilseponie?”
She wept then, dropping her face into her hands, her shoulders shaking. She believed that she could actually feel the bags under her eyes, so bedraggled was she, for she had not slept for any stretch of time since she had come to Yorkeytown, since Jilseponie had chased her away from Ursal and away from Danube. Constance needed sleep, and she knew it; but she could not, did not, dare. For they found her in her dreams, Danube and Jilseponie, entwined as lovers.
She lifted her head and stared again at the curtain. She could hardly remember the days before the great changes in Ursal, before Jilseponie had come. The days when she rode out beside Danube and Kalas, when she often found Danube’s bedroom door open for her.
How far she had fallen! And all of it, Constance knew in her heart, was because of one reason alone, because of one woman alone.
M
ore than a thousand miles to the east, the eighteen-year-old Aydrian stood at the prow of
Rontlemore’s Dream
, one of the largest sailing ships in all the world, a huge three master. Back in Honce-the-Bear, the people were preparing the celebration for the turn of God’s Year 844, or just battening down their houses to survive another winter.
But out here on the bright waves of the Southern Mirianic, there seemed no seasons, no sense of time at all. Just a sense of timelessness, of eternity, the endless rise and fall of the perpetual swells, the continuing cycle of life played out below the azure surface. Aydrian, so attuned to nature from his time with the Touel’alfar, could not deny the sense of peace and serenity; this was perhaps the first time in his life he had ever truly existed in the present, not considering the past or the future, or the implications of any action. Not taking any action at all. Simply
being
. He felt as if he was one big receptacle, allowing the spray and the sun and the smells to permeate his body and soul.