Homage and Honour (24 page)

“I’ll go and
arrange it,” said the girl and fled.

“She is a
slave,” whispered David to Anne, “she had a slave tattoo on her
wrist. No wonder she was nervous.”

The original
woman brought in a tureen of hot cereal at that point. Placing it
on the table, she informed them that the Duke would attend on them
within the candlemark.

“Perhaps we’ll
get some answers,” replied David, helping himself to the hot maize,
“all this is starting to get on my nerves.”

“Does he wish
to meet the children or just us?” asked Anne.

“All of your
Ladyship’s family,” she answered, curtsied and left.

“Why did that
woman curtsy to you Mummy?” asked Xavier through a mouthful of
mouth-watering, crusty bread.

“Don’t talk
with your mouth full,” she chided.

“We’ll know
soon enough,” decided David, a burgeoning suspicion in his mind. He
knew something of the succession crisis, having read a news
pamphlet not long ago.

“Did your
mother ever say anything to you about a relationship with the
South?” he asked his wife.

Anne shook her
head, “I’m sure Uncle James knew something but he never said more
than a few words to me. I was never much interested you see.”

“Go on.”

“Last leave
from the Vada he talked to Mother for hours. Not the last time we
saw him and Siya, the time before, when he was still with the
Vada.”

“I don’t
remember.”

“You were at
market.”

“What did they
say?”

“I only
overheard a little. He was asking her, no demanding that she tell
you something and she was answering not yet. She said we didn’t
need to know and then she asked him to destroy all her possessions
when she died. He left the next day, he was going west into Lind on
some mission or other.”

“Her
possessions? The ones in the strongbox under her bed?”

“I asked her
what was in it once and she told me it was memories.”

“It was
papers,” said Xavier.

“How do you
know?” asked his mother.

Xavier went
red.

“I peeked,” he
confessed, “I’m sorry.”

“What kind of
papers?” asked David, ignoring this infringement.

“Funny papers,
with names and dates and things. They crackled when I touched
them.”

“Were they old,
these papers?”

Xavier nodded,
“some of them were, they were brown round the edges.”

“Did you read
any of them?”

But Xavier knew
nothing more.

David drew Anne
away from the table, “I believe I know what these papers are.”

“What?”

“Documents
proving your lineage. You know of the story of the Hidden
Princess?”

That’s a tale
for children, there is no truth in it.”

“I’m not so
sure.”

Anne’s face was
filled with alarm.

“But that would
mean …”

“Yes,” he
answered gently, “You are her descendant!”

Anne burst into
tears.

When Duke
William Duchesne and Count Charles Cocteau entered Anne was
standing gazing out of the window embrasure, David by her side. The
three children sitting at the table were wrangling over some toys
the servants had brought to keep them amused; Ruth, still dressed
in her pink flounces, remained mutinous.

David turned a
grave face in their direction.

“We know,”
David’s greeting was quiet, composed. He felt Anne trembling, “at
least we think we know why you have brought us here.”

William bowed
deeply to Anne, a gesture followed by Charles.

“A matter of
inheritance I think you said?” David addressed this question to
Charles.

“What I said
was true,” said Charles.

“Up to a
point.”

“What made you
realise?” asked Charles with interest.

“The bows, the
deference, the secrecy, take your pick. I began to think, put two
and two together, I remembered listening to my mother-in-law’s
wails of anguish when you found her strongbox. I realised then, I
think, that it contained not merely what she called her
memories.”

“No,” admitted
Charles, “it contained the proof we needed.”

“So what
now?”

Duke William
Duchesne spoke up then, “we should discuss this without the
children present.”

“What is there
to discuss?” cried Anne, “you have brought us here, taken us away
from our home and for what?”

“To make you
our Queen,” he answered.

“No,” she
replied in a low hard voice, “I do not want this, you cannot make
me.”

“It will be
either you or your son,” he answered. “It is your choice.”

Anne went
white, all colour draining from her face as she fainted.

A servant was
summoned and the woman sped away to get some sal-volatile.

Anne regained
consciousness to find herself lying on the window settee.

Regarding the
two men she asked, “and if I refuse?”

“We will put
your son on the throne.”

“He is only
eight years old.”

William
Duchesne shrugged. “That is of no moment. It is the bloodline that
is important. The security of the kingdom depends on it.
Absolutely. Our treaty with the Larg states that our country is
ceded to the Murdoch bloodline and none other. We will do this,
must do this, with or without your support.”

He leant
forward.

“My Lady,
accept the throne. You and your family can be happy here, you will
live a life of luxury, untroubled by any worries.”

“A figurehead
you mean,” said David, “who would rule? Who would hold the real
power?”

During the next
few days the family became more or less (mostly less) accustomed to
their new life. They were not permitted to leave the tower rooms
allocated to them. David especially felt the enforced idleness most
strongly.

He was a farmer
born and bred and would, in the normal course of things, have been
up at dawn and busy working until dusk.

Ruth too felt
the difference keenly and to a lesser extent so did Xavier.
Quarrels erupted between the three children.

Simpler
garments had been procured for Ruth but she still hated the skirts
and begged her maid each morning for trousers. Her pleas and
tantrums were ignored.

David and Anne
spent the long hours ensconced with either the Duke of Duchesne or
Count Charles and at last came to accept that they and theirs were
doomed to remain in the South. There was only one alternative
available to his wife taking the throne if the senior Murdoch line
failed and that was to abdicate in favour of Xavier. Even if she
did so and she and David were permitted to return to the North, it
had been made clear that their two daughters would not be permitted
to go with them.

The original
Elliot Murdoch’s treaty with the Larg was explained to them in some
detail.

“So I will have
to accept,” said a bitter Anne, “there is no way out. At least
Jessica has escaped it all.”

“We will have
to make the sacrifice to ensure the safety of the people of
Murdoch,” said David in the relative privacy of their rooms.

“I could become
reconciled to it in time if it was myself only but it is the
children I worry about. What kind of life will they have here?”
fretted Anne, biting her lip.

“A fairly
comfortable one on the whole,” David replied, “food, palatial
surroundings, beautiful clothes, wealth.”

“At the expense
of their freedom. I know life on the farm was hard and I used to
dream of the time when we might be rich but I don’t like it here,
the slaves, the fact that women have little freedom, why, they
hardly even educate the girls. Look at how much of an ignoramus
Jess told us Beth was when she arrived at Vada. She could hardly
count past twenty.”

“She could
read.”

“She could not
write,” flashed Anne.

“Both Anne and
Ruth will receive an education, I promise.”

“How long are
we to be incarcerated in these rooms?”

“We are being
moved,” he answered, “closer to Fort. The fever is gone. I must say
that William Duchesne is a well-educated man, polite and urbane. He
wants us to like it here, I’m sure of that. He does not want civil
war.”

“Civil war?”
Anne paled, “why would there be a civil war?”

“Duchesne is
trying to prevent it; he and another two Dukes, van Buren and
Cocteau, they are the ones who set out to find us. He has Larg
support for your claim to the throne. The other Lords are
scrambling around trying to find a solution for when the King dies,
Princess Susan, it is said, will not long survive him and that is
if she doesn’t die first. We have to make the sacrifice. You see
that, don’t you?”

“Oh I see it
all right but it doesn’t mean I have to like it.”

“The King is
dying. We are going to one of Duke Cocteau’s country estates which
will place us near to the centre of government so that, when the
moment comes, they can move quickly and so avoid bloodshed.”

* * * * *

Rakthed (Fifth Month of Winter) –
AL156

Crisis (7)

In the Conclave
Chamber at the Palace of Fort, three Dukes sat round the otherwise
empty table.

“Elliot is
dying,” Sam Baker announced, “he won’t survive the night.”

“Tomorrow
morning then,” said Tom Brentwood with satisfaction, rubbing his
hands together.

“Yes, by noon
tomorrow the Regency Conclave will rule in fact.”

“No Lord will
disagree,” agreed Tom Brentwood

“Susan is a
slender thread on which to base our future security,” said David
Gardiner, “I would wish she was stronger. The illness took much of
her strength.”

“She will have
the very best of care and the doctors see no reason why she should
not survive.”

“And if she
should not?”

“The King’s
sister, Princess Anne is the next in line.”

“Surely you
don’t intend to declare her the heir presumptive? She is a nun. Is
there no-one else?”

King Elliot was
very thorough in his cleansing policy.”

He looked at
Sam Baker who was sitting back in his chair with the air of ‘one
who knows something you don’t’.

“Out with it
man,” he ordered.

“There was a
rumour, a rumour based on fact,” began Sam Baker in a low voice.
The Dukes of Gardiner and Brentwood leant closer the better to hear
what he was saying.

* * * * *

Dunrhed (First Month of Summer) –
AL157

Crisis (8)

The King was
dead.

He was buried
with due pomp and ceremony in the royal vault. All the nobility who
lived close to Fort were present and, under the Lord Regent’s eagle
eye, all paid homage and fealty to the infant queen.

The Fealtatis
(homage) ceremony, where promises were given and received by Queen
Susan, was surreal. Everyone present in the throne room knew her
days were numbered. She had a pallid skin, large eyes in a thin
face and she was growing weaker with each passing day.

The Queen, who
had celebrated her second birthday not a tenday before, sat on the
overlarge throne, a thin, pale figure wrapped in a superfine
blanket to ward off chills.

As she had been
taught, the tiny mite held out one tiny claw-like and trembling
hand over the head of each vassal in turn and suffered him to take
the hand and kiss it in visual homage watched over by Lord Regent
Brentwood who spoke the traditional words on her behalf.

Duke William
Duchesne could not help but compare her to his own brood. His
granddaughter would not have sat so. Queen Susan did not have the
energy to jump up and down, she didn’t even wriggle, her hand was
raised mechanically and just as mechanically dropped to her lap as
each vassal backed away. He watched, waited and made preparations
for the day they knew was coming, the day when he would march on
Fort and proclaim the new Queen, one with three healthy
children.

He had all the
documentary proof to sustain their claim and the Larg had accepted
that Anne Crawford was the true blood descendant of Murdoch.

The Dukes of
Gardiner, van Buren, Brentwood, Graham and Baker would just have to
accept it.

* * * * *

“He will ask us
for closer ties for his support,” opined Charles Cocteau who was
trying to explain some aspects of the Kingdom of Murdoch to a still
resentful David Crawford, but a David Crawford who was gradually
coming round to an acceptance of the situation. “I think we must be
prepared to make some concessions.”

“Explain.”

“The noble
houses and the royal are all interrelated through marriage. It is
probably the only thing that keeps us from each other’s
throats.”

A suspicion was
forming in David’s mind, “closer ties?” he encouraged.

“Marriage to
one of your children,” said Charles.

“An arranged
marriage?”

“It is
usual.”

“They are
children
.”

“I myself was
betrothed for a number of years and from a young age. If your
oldest girl had remained with you, she would have been offered to
one of the ducal houses in exchange for support. As things stand,
my father will offer Princess Annette. The icing on the cake
however is marriage to Xavier. All the Dukes and some Counts and
Margraves too, would give much to have a daughter betrothed to the
heir. You must be prepared; my father is likely to offer Xavier to
Baker’s granddaughter. Baker would prefer a grandson on the throne
rather than a grandson-in-law but he’ll accept. It is a pity you
don’t have more children, royal children are a valuable commodity
here in Murdoch.”

“I am glad that
we do not,” said David with some heat.

“You must start
thinking as a southerner if you are to survive here,” warned
Charles, “both Annette and Xavier will be betrothed and there is
nothing you can do about it. Get used to the idea. You and your
wife are simple farmers no longer. You are the future Lord Prince
Consort to the Queen, you will hold a ruling seat on the Conclave
as your wife’s representative.”