Read The Princess of Cortova Online
Authors: Diane Stanley
The Princess of Cortova (17 page)
Critical move
—a move that should be played carefully and slowly.
Critical moves often include complicated decisions, trading pieces, or inflexible plans that cannot be changed.
Draw
—a game that ends in a tie.
Promotion
—when a pawn reaches the final rank, it can be turned into another piece, usually a queen. Also known as “queening.”
THE FURNISHINGS HAD BEEN
removed from the king’s reception room—the chair in which Gonzalo had sat over his breakfast, only a few weeks before, and informed his daughter that two suitors would soon be arriving, and the table where, not long thereafter, he’d written out the change of succession. Now it was empty except for the throne, which had been rescued from the ruin of the council chamber.
There Elizabetta now sat, dressed in a simple chiton of cream-colored linen. It had been hastily made—all her clothes having been destroyed in the fire—according to her precise stipulations: that the fabric was to be plain and that the sleeves should be long enough to cover the bandages on her arms. She had compromised on the gold fibulae. Estella had reminded her that she was
the queen now and she really ought to look like one, and Elizabetta had granted her the point. But they were the only ornaments she wore. There was not even a crown to be had, except her father’s, and that she’d refused to touch.
She looked out at the assembly before her. Alaric stood on one side of the room with his remaining knights and his ladies. This included Molly, who looked more like an invalid than Elizabetta did. On the other side stood Reynard and his son with an equal number of knights to those that Alaric had brought. With the addition of the queen’s own men, the room was very crowded.
“I thank you all,” she began, “for remaining here till I was well enough to meet with you. And I apologize—though no apology could possibly suffice—for what you have borne at my father’s hand. If you now wish to leave this place where you have known such terrible loss and suffered such indignities, I will certainly understand. But I hope, instead, you will stay and help me build something new and hopeful out of the wreckage of my palace, and my kingdom, and these negotiations.”
There was the soft hum of assent. Acknowledgment and apology wouldn’t bring back the dead; but the words still needed to be spoken, and no one doubted she’d meant them sincerely.
“My lord king Reynard and my lord king Alaric, I will be honest with you, as my father never was. Cortova is under attack by enemies who threaten our trade in the Southern Sea. These past few years we have emptied our treasury building ships and manning them, hoping to pull the prize back out of the fire. The luxury you saw here was just a brave show meant to lure you in, to trick you into an alliance in which you would pay far more than you would gain.”
The soft hum had grown to whispers and growls, but there remained a willingness to hear her out, if only because at last someone was telling them the truth. She had counted on that and was glad she’d been right.
“But I have a very different proposal to make.”
She waited. The room grew still.
“Our true wealth is the same as it ever was: our coastline, ports, and shipyards; our expert seamen, fine roads, and system of banking. And we have far more ships now, many of them new, than we ever had before. We are like the farmer whose fields are rich and well tilled, in a land where the sun is bright and the rain dependable; all he lacks is the money to buy seed.”
She had their attention now. She folded her hands, doing her best to look regal, and succeeding at it quite well.
“What if we bond together, our three kingdoms? Think of us as partners in a business. You help Cortova fight the Frasians, and in return you will each take a portion of all we earn in trade.”
The room burst into sudden conversation. She let it go on just long enough, then continued to speak without raising her voice. The people grew quiet again so they could hear.
“I am perfectly aware that you two cousin-kings have been enemies these last two years. My father was aware of it too, and used it against you. I personally think it’s a pointless waste. Why not combine our forces and build peace and prosperity instead of sowing hate and distrust?”
“A triple alliance, then?” Alaric asked. “Is that what you propose?”
“Yes. And while I’m being frank and truthful, there is one more thing I must tell you. The document that makes me queen of Cortova bears a stipulation. The change of succession is ‘conditional to the signing of a satisfactory treaty of alliance with either the king of Westria or the king of Austlind.’ I don’t see that a triple alliance is in any way contrary to that requirement. If anything, it’s an improvement upon it, and my legal advisers agree that this is so. But to be plain, if there is no alliance, my brother becomes king.”
She’d expected an outburst and was rather surprised by the silence that met this confession. Perhaps they were considering Castor on the throne. It was a sobering thought indeed.
“So,” she went on, “if you are willing to consider it, we can begin discussing the terms. I will hear your thoughts and needs, and suggest some of my own. We can all prosper if we work together.”
“And the marriage?” This from Reynard.
“I am not prepared to discuss the marriage at present. Is that a difficulty?”
“It was meant to seal the bargain.”
“Yes. But I cannot marry Rupert and Alaric both. How if I show my sincerity to you, and bind our two kingdoms together in another way?”
“I don’t understand what you mean.”
“How if I send my brother to be fostered in Austlind, Reynard? He is next in line for the throne after me. Such an offer is generally considered to be a great honor, a mark of special trust. I believe your knights and your master of arms might do wonders for Castor, teach him to be a man of honor—as they did so very nicely with your cousin Alaric.”
Reynard flushed with discomfort, but he answered straight. “I will accept that as a mark of special favor,” he said. “I am willing to discuss the matter.”
“That’s all I ask. Now, gentlemen, my physician is most insistent that I rest during the heat of the day. Shall we meet again in the cool of the late afternoon and begin our talks? We can dine here tonight and continue our discussions over the meal. I wish to make a good beginning and follow with all speed, for we have robbed you of enough time already. Is that acceptable to you?”
Both kings nodded assent.
“Thank you,” she said. “I will send for you this afternoon.”
The room hummed with conversation as the crowd moved toward the door. But her voice floated over the din.
“Excuse me, my lord king Alaric,” she said, “but will you stay a moment more?”
Reynard turned on his heel, angry. “What is this? More trickery?”
“Not at all, my lord king of Austlind. I’ve promised to be fair and openhanded in our dealings and so I intend to be. This has nothing at all to do with the alliance. It’s a personal matter, just something I need to say.”
MOLLY WAITED IN ALARIC’S
villa, as he’d asked her to do. Different knights were staying there now, Lord Brochton and the others having died along with Tobias. And while these new men treated her kindly, they kept their distance. Molly found this a relief. For more than anything, she wanted to be alone just now, unwatched and uninterrupted, in the world of her own private reverie.
It had been almost exactly a year since Alaric had called her back to court and asked her to go to Austlind to find a Loving Cup. It had been early summer, still a little cold and wet in the mornings. They’d walked in the garden, and he’d explained it all to her: his desperate need for an alliance to protect Westria against Reynard and the importance of gaining a proper wife to provide him with an heir. All of this had led to Cortova and the princess, the answer to everything.
So Molly had gone to Austlind and brought back the cup. By then it was late summer or early autumn. After that had come all the planning, the choosing and training of men, the long correspondence with Gonzalo, and the ruse of her betrothal to Tobias. That had taken them through the winter and spring and into another summer, till a year had passed and they were ready to set out—with nothing unconsidered, every preparation made, and perhaps a little too much confidence in their ultimate success.
Looking back on that now—if she waved away all they had suffered and all they had lost, which was a very hard thing to do—Molly saw that indeed they had gotten what they’d come for. Elizabetta was, even now, declaring her love to Alaric, a love so deep it could never be altered, a love he shared, a love Molly herself had brought into being. And truly, it would be hard to find him a better queen, for Betta was wise and kind as well as beautiful. As for the alliance, they now stood to gain something much better than a treaty against Reynard: true peace and amity on the continent, with prosperity thrown in.
If only it hadn’t come at such a terrible price.
She studied her hand and played with the ring, thinking about Tobias. She remembered him as a boy, so long ago, darting in to catch the priceless goblet she had dropped, the first of many times he’d saved her skin.
Oh, by all that was sacred,
why did the fates have to choose Tobias
? Was there no justice in the world? He’d never done a mean or a cowardly thing in his life. Not one. He had the soul of a saint and the heart of a lion.
Tears were streaming down her face now; she couldn’t help it. She felt emptied out, incomplete, because he would never come ambling into her sight again with that sweet smile of his and that graceful way he moved, his thoughts of nothing but what
she
needed or wanted and how he could help her. She would never again catch him watching her or see him blush and turn away. They’d never laugh again at their own private jokes that no one else understood.
How many times had she said of Tobias that he was always there when she needed him? Well, he wouldn’t be there anymore, and she felt strangely angry that he should desert her now, though she knew perfectly well he would have lived if he could. But oh, she couldn’t bear it. She couldn’t; she couldn’t!
She couldn’t.
She touched the ring again—as she would many times, every day that followed, for the rest of her life—and mourned Tobias, wholly and properly. She blessed him and sent her love to him as she never had while he still lived—because she just figured he understood and didn’t need to be told—and promised to remember everything he’d taught her and everything they’d done together, for as long as she lived, and to be worthy of having had such a friend.
It Was Really Quite Convenient
THAT’S HOW HE FOUND
her, red-faced and weeping, alone in the sitting room. His men had been standing discreetly at a distance, and that had been the right thing to do. All the same, it broke his heart that she should have been so very alone with such a mountain of grief.
“You’re back,” she said, wiping her face.
“As you see.” He offered his hand and helped her up. “Come,” he said, “I have news for you.”
“Good news, I hope.”
“Very good. We’ll go to my room. There are far too many eyes here, and we must talk in earnest.” He led her to his chamber and asked that they not be disturbed. “Now sit, and I shall tell you.”
He seemed almost feverish with excitement. She’d seen him this way a few times before, and it had dazzled her then. But since he’d become king and the weight of the world had fallen on his shoulders, he’d become more solemn and walked with a heavier gait.
“The princess?” she said, helping him along. “What had she to say?”
“That she thinks very highly of you, considers you a friend, and is painfully aware of the terrible pain and loss her family has caused you. She wishes to do something, however small, in recompense. She asked what I thought might please you, that is within her power to give.”
“You talked about
me
?”
“Among other things. Now listen. I told her that there’s a part of Austlind that is your ancestral home and that you have a very deep attachment to it.”
“You didn’t mention Harrowsgode?”
“Of course not. I just said that the region was to the north, and it was a wasteland, really, hardly populated at all.”
She blinked, not following him exactly but trying.
“She suggested that Reynard might be willing to exchange this worthless territory for an equal amount of land on the northeast corner of Cortova, which would not only be fit for growing crops but would offer him access to the sea. It’s a generous proposal. He’s sure to agree.”
“And then?”
“Well, obviously Betta will give it to me, I will give it to you, and you will give it to the king of Harrowsgode. Your people will finally have their own kingdom. And as it is not their custom to keep an army, out of reverence for human life, I’ll provide troops to patrol the border—for even if everything goes as planned and we are to live in a time of peace, I regret to say there will always be thieves. So what do you say? A pretty neat solution, is it not?”
“It’s astonishing, Alaric. Truly. Please tell her that I thank her with all my heart.”
“You can do it yourself. I suspect that before these negotiations are over, she’ll drag you in for at least one more game of chess.”
Molly smiled. “I hope so. I like her very much. She’s worthy of you, Alaric, and that’s saying a lot. She’ll make a splendid queen.”
“So she will.”
“And Reynard? Do you think he’ll agree to this triple alliance? It doesn’t seem altogether fair, even to me, that you should get the princess while he gets Castor!”
He laughed. “Reynard will get everything he needs, and more. And he can find his son another bride.”
He got up and went over to the big leather chest in the corner and opened the lid. Then he took out a box and stood with his back to her, holding it in his hands, doing his best to control his breathing. Finally he came and sat beside her again.
“What is that?” she said. She recognized the box, of course, but she couldn’t make out what it was doing there and why he was handing it to her.
“You know what it is.”
“Really, Alaric, I’m confused.”
“Just open it. Don’t make a fuss.”
She gave him a look, then took off the lid.
“Unwrap it,” he said.
“But, Alaric—”
“Please, Molly. Humor me.”
“All right.” She lifted the bundle out of the box and began to peel off layers of silk—first emerald green, then scarlet, then saffron, then robin’s-egg blue, and then the final layer, white as a cloud. And then it was in her hands, the Loving Cup.
“But you gave this to the princess. I saw it in her room. Then I saw what was left of it in a vision, lying in the ruins of the fire.”
“That was a copy. I had it made in Westria before we left.”
“I don’t understand. You were determined to marry the princess; you believed the fate of Westria depended upon it.”
“That’s true. And I would have done it too, for all the pain it would have cost me, because I’m the king and my first duty is to my people.”
“Then why didn’t you use the cup? Why, even before we left for Cortova, did you have a copy made?”
“Because the more I thought about it, the surer I became that it would be wrong to cause her to love me by magic if she couldn’t love me for myself—or through that same magic to forget the love I felt for another.”
“But I thought, just now . . . the princess . . . I mean, the queen—”
“She loves elsewhere, as do I. It was really quite convenient.” His voice grew softer and more solemn. “So, Molly,” he said, “will you accept my gift?”
“No,” she said, sharp, as if stung. “Indeed, I wonder that you dared to offer it after what you just said. For I, too, am unwilling to love—and be loved—through the powers of enchantment. And I, too, would never,
ever
allow myself to forget the love I already feel, and have felt, and will always feel. . . .”
She put the cup back in its case without even bothering to wrap it. Now she gathered from her lap the many-colored layers of silk and wadded them into the empty space around the stem. “Here,” she said, handing the box to the king. “I don’t want it.”
He took it from her with a face like stone, rose, and went to the trunk in the corner to put it away. Then he returned to his seat like a man on his way to the gallows who is determined to keep his dignity to the end.
“Molly,” he said. “I have blundered most terribly. But, you see, I was so overcome with joy at my sudden change of circumstance—that I have been relieved of any obligations to the queen, with no harm to the future of my kingdom, and am now amazingly, unexpectedly, unthinkably free to choose for myself—well, I rather lost my wits, I’m afraid, and didn’t think it through.
“Please know that I never meant to compel you to love me through magic: I thought you already did. Giving you the cup was just the impulse of a moment, a grand gesture, my way of acknowledging and celebrating our mutual love, showing you the depth of my commitment. That I failed to consider Tobias in all of this is a mystery, even to me. For a blind man could have seen how much you loved each other. And the fact that—
Oh, God!
”
He buried his face in his hands, and he was trembling.
“The fact that he cannot be here now, asking for your hand, because
he gave his life for mine
, makes my callous assumptions even worse. So I am mortified by what I have done, and I beg you as a friend to forgive me and accept that I meant nothing ill. And if you possibly can, please forget this ever happened.”
She reached out and took his hand.
“It’s true that I loved—that I still love—Tobias. He was like an essential part of myself: the sweet part, the kind part, the steadfast and brave part. Without him I am incomplete. I will wear his ring for always and think of him every day. He was the best person I ever knew; and though I didn’t deserve his devotion, he gave it all the same.
“But the ways of the heart are complicated and not always wise. And I have loved you deeply and for so long that I thought sometimes I might die of it. I’ve always known that whatever you might feel for me—and yes, I knew you loved me; I just didn’t know how much—you would still have to marry someone else. So I’ve lived with that, and accepted it, and mourned over it since . . . I’m not sure when. I think it was the night Tobias and I came to you in that little village, remember? You were on your way to Dethemere Castle with your makeshift army of common folk armed with nothing but pitchforks and homemade lances. And you were so
alive
with impossible hopes for a moral victory, so bloody eager to lay down your life in your effort to achieve it. And my heart just
ached
with love for you, and admiration, and this terrible fear that you might really die a hero’s death.
“I never considered what you might think of me—aside from my being your good-luck charm. But then when we’d finished what we had to say and were about to leave, you sent Tobias out of the cottage so you could speak with me alone. He took that very ill, by the way, though he needn’t have since it turned out all you wanted—”
“—was to ask if you had one of your grandfather’s Loving Cups, because I needed one to help me win the princess.”
“Yes.”
“You have such amazing recall for my most unfortunate moments.”
“Well, there were so many. I can just take my pick.”
Tears sprung into his eyes then. “Shall I tell you when I first began to love you? It will come as a surprise.”
“Please. I can hardly wait.”
“It was much earlier. We were on the river, with poor Tobias rowing upstream and me half out of my mind with fever, and loss of blood, and that foul elixir Winifred’s mother had given me to drink. And you’d hidden me under a canvas or something.”
“It was a blanket.”
“A blanket, yes, and I was supposed to lie still and impersonate—”
“A cask of herring.”
“Exactly. So there I was in the bottom of the skiff, and it was raining, and it was cold, and water was sloshing around; and you peeked under the blanket to check on me. Then you felt my cheek and announced that I was as cold as death.”
“You
heard
that?”
“So you sat me up and shook me around like a rag doll. But that didn’t seem to have much effect, so Tobias suggested you wrap your arms around me and lay your cheek against mine—to warm me up, you see, and sort of bring me back to life. And you said, ‘What if he should wake and find me draped all over him in such a familiar manner?’ Then Tobias made a joke about it, and you called him a warty toad.”
“Well, it was very ungentlemanly of you to pretend to be asleep all that time.”
“I did moan a little. And truly, I was out of my head. But I remember thinking as I lay in your arms that I would gladly stay there forever. And I knew so little about you then, except that you were brave, and smart, and funny, and surprising—and somehow you made every girl I’d ever known seem insipid and bland. You still do.”
She looked down at her hands, smiling. “I’m glad you told me that,” she said. “And with your permission, I shall remember it always. But it changes nothing. Alaric, a king does not wed his scullery maid, however high he’s raised her and however free he is to choose. He must have a suitable consort. I am not, nor could I ever be, that person.
“And thus we have arrived back to where we first began: an unfortunate conversation, best forgotten—apart from the bit I asked permission to remember, of course.”
He grinned. “Not really. The princess Elizabetta, soon to be queen of Cortova, has quite captured my imagination. She sets out to rule Cortova, at a particularly difficult time, as the first woman ever to sit upon the Lion Throne. And yet she has chosen—remember that rather handsome, broad-shouldered fellow who stood beside her this morning?”
“I do.”
“He’s a knight. Wellborn but hardly a prince. Yet she has chosen him to be her consort—because, I would imagine, she trusts him, and loves him, and believes he will help her be a great queen. Imagine that.”
Molly tried. It seemed very original.
“Whereas you, Molly, are already far above that knight. You are of noble blood—a direct descendant of King Magnus—and are, moreover, on your own merits, a Magus Mästare, a member of the council, and the Great Seer of Harrowsgode. You have risked your life in the service of Westria and have saved mine on several occasions. I cannot think of a more worthy consort.”
“Alaric, you are drawing to a conclusion. Now I beg you to get there with all speed. And speak plain, if you will, so I can understand.”
“Very well. I hereby, formally and officially, offer you my hand, my kingdom, and my love. I want you as my queen and the mother of my children. I want you to be the first face I gaze upon in the morning, and I want you by my side as I grow old. Without you I am incomplete.
“So speak plain, Molly: will you have me?”
“Of course I will.”