To Be King Page 2

  It was Tameas' turn to frown and answer swiftly, "And who kept me from it?"

  The king turned his back on his son, moving away. "I, I, I did that," he said, raising his voice at every I, "because I have no other son, because someone needs to succeed me if hell is not to come again!"

  Tameas' gaze was cool again, "Then be content, Your Grace, I am your creature in every way."

  The king climbed the steps back to his chair and sat down with a groan. "I will not bandy any more words with you. You have too many of them rattling in your head. Let us keep to the reason I called you here: the time has come for you to do what is needed. You must marry."

  There was some satisfaction for Tibold as Tameas finally expressed surprise. "Marry?"

  "I didn't defeat Duke Benedikt, instead we met in the Midlands before I returned," Tibold said. "My intention is still to bring him into the kingdom. He is an honorable and powerful lord, and we need a strong frontier against the savages and some saucy lords still within this kingdom. I see the greed in their faces… I would stretch Benedikt’s lands well beyond Silvermarsh, so that he can keep the peace there. Finally, it must be as clear to you as to me that if the duke is not our ally, sooner or later he will be our foe. He and his people are proud and detest submission, so there was only one thing I could offer him: you."

  Tameas already knew what was coming next.

  "I have asked for the hand of Benedikt's daughter, the Lady Isobel, on your behalf."

  "The cockatrice?" Tameas' voice sounded shrill even to him.

  "What do you mean, the cockatrice?"

  Tameas stood at the foot of the steps. "The cockatrice, the basilisk, the hellcat, the Gorgon: the Lady Isobel of Stonemount!"

  "Where have you heard her called such things?"

  "Do you never listen to the songs of minstrels? She is known as far as Rome for being a shrew!"

  "I have no time for gossip or songs..."

  "I should think gossip might be useful to a king, it is information!"

  "And what am I supposed to do with the information that a lady is strong headed? Should I try to find a sweeter girl for the prince to marry? One to his exquisite taste?" Tibold put a hand on his thigh and leaned forward. "I will tell you the information that is useful to me: she is nineteen and healthy, and her father is powerful. She will give you children that will inherit a united kingdom, from Stonemount to Whitebanks. And there will be peace!"

  "Not in my chamber," Tameas muttered.

  Tameas thought of the old phrase: ladies from Stonemount, don't mount. The women from the north were known not for their loving ways, but for having an anvil between their legs that could break any man's parts, except their own men's.

  "I have heard that the lady is fair," Tibold said, softening a little.

  Tameas was still thinking about the anvil. "Yes, the songs say the fair cockatrice, the fair basilisk, the fair gorgon...The women of the north are fair, but I have been told they spit in the street and wipe their lips on the back of their hand!"

  "I don't expect her to be as cultivated and seductive as your Mistress Alyon, but it's the lady you must marry. And within the next month."

  "Married within a month?"

  "Married, I say, to the Lady Isobel, within a month!" Tibold repeated irritably.

  Tameas glanced at his father and saw that his right hand was shaking. The fingers were already disappearing under the king's sleeve, but Tameas took them, and planted a kiss of obedience on them. "I shall be married to the Lady Isobel, within a month."

  Tibold extended his other hand and touched his son's head for a moment, whispering, "Thank you. Now leave me, Tom. I need to rest."

  "Yes, father. I will send your pages in."

  The prince didn't glance back, because he was afraid of seeing frailty in the king, and of not being able to do anything for him. He flung the door open and found Sir Jochim a few steps away but leaning forward, in the hope of catching a sentence or two of the conversation inside. Lord Jollan leaned backward, as if trying to distance himself from the eavesdropping, while probably not against being told later what had been said.

  Tameas motioned to the pages, who had been resting against the balustrade, and they rushed back in. He moved towards the two counselors.

  "I must be married, as you no doubt know," he said as he walked away from the king's chamber. Sir Jochim and Lord Jollan fell in step with him. "Might a miniature of my betrothed be procured?"

  Sir Jochim growled low in his throat and Lord Jollan sighed.

  "The people up there," Sir Jochim said. "They don't much like any sort of frippery. And it would be insulting..."

  Tameas suddenly stopped, looking before him, and screamed. The two men stopped in fright as well, looking around.

  "My good prince!" Sir Jochim said, his hand over his heart. "What is it?"

  "That might be my reaction, when I finally see her," Tameas explained.

  He kept walking towards his quarters, while the two members of the king’s council watched him uneasily.

  THE COCKATRICE

  The cockatrice, Lady Isobel of Stonemount, did not know her fate as she stared out of the window of her room that bright April morning, any more than Tameas had known his a day before.

  She scanned the horizon for the dust that would signal that her father and his men were returning.

  The castle had received word already that Duke Benedikt had fought a skirmish, rather than a battle; there hadn't even been any deaths. The men under Benedikt would have fought against the vastly superior forces of King Tibold, and they might have all perished, but they would not have turned back.

  However, neither of the two leaders, Tibold or Benedikt, had wanted to be the first to attack. They had long respected each other, and though Tibold's victories and his advance over the landmass they shared was alarming, they had never quarreled, never envied each other's territory, never been boastful or arrogant the one toward the other.

  They had not really fought, they had talked, and now her father and his men were coming back with the conclusion. Isobel was eager to know what had been arranged. Would they get some more lands to the south, some warmer, less wet lands where they could plant grain and more fruit trees, and where animals could graze so they would eat tender meat at Stonemount, instead of the leather they usually chewed on?

  Isobel liked to think about the origin of things, about their destiny and their usefulness, in a practical way. She would make a good, level-headed wife to a man one day, a man who could stand up to her and even get her to retreat a little.

  She only knew one such man, even among the strong willed northerners. The dust told her that her father and his knights were about to enter the city, and that man would be among them.

  "Sir Harry, Sir Harry, Sir Harry," two childish voices chanted behind her.

  She turned around to look at her brothers, Kayetan and Lodewicus, who were marching in circles round the room, and laughing as they sang. Her expression always softened when she saw them, as she had cared for them since their mother had died eight years before; but this time she frowned, her delicate brows lowering over clear blue eyes, and stamped her foot.

  "Be quiet, both of you!"

  Dorthe, her nursemaid, walked in, or rather seemed to glide in under her large headdress. "Stop, children, don't upset your sister today!"

  Kayetan, who was twelve and very mischievous, smiled as he said, "How are we upsetting her, we are just glad that Sir Harry is back!"

  "Sir Harry!" cried Lodewicus, a nine year-old ginger haired boy. "Sir Harry!"

  Kayetan grabbed Lodewicus by the waist, "I love you, Sir Harry, kiss me."

  Isobel could hear the sound of hooves over stone outside, and wanted to look out the window undisturbed, so rather than running after her brothers she took off one of her heavy wooden shoes and threw it at them.

  The boys ducked, used to the exercise, ran towards the shoe, picked it up, then ran outside.

  "Oooh!" Isobel screamed in high
frustration, but the horses were underneath her window and she turned to put her head outside.

  Duke Benedikt, at the head of the procession of men on horseback, looked up and smiled, raising his hand towards her. Isobel smiled back at him without waving. Her people were not immensely expressive, but when Sir Harry, riding past behind his father, also raised his eyes to her, her heart leapt higher than a mountebank at a fair.

  He looked as handsome as always on his black steed, with his black breeches, his black jerkin and the black breastplate with the sigil of his house, the burning eagle, on it. His eyes crinkled as he smiled at her, and when he turned back to the road, he didn't dwell for a second on the maidens that thronged the way, though they hung hopeful crowns of flowers on his saddle as he passed.

  That's my Harry, Isobel thought.

  The men dismounted before the castle, and it would not be long before she heard eager steps coming up the stone stairs. She knew that Harry would find a way of detaching himself from the other men to see her before they proceeded with any other business downstairs.

  "Kayetan, bring me my shoe or I will hang you!" she screamed in her strong contralto.

  There was no response and she was limping towards the door to look for them, knowing they were nearby waiting to tease her and even to get a good smack on the head, but she heard the spurs ringing on the stairs and knew that Harry was on the way to her ─ and Harry was fast. She ushered Dorthe outside and backed into the room again, and had just a moment to look at her reflection before he was at the door.

  "Harry." She said his name in her low voice, without inflection. It was enough that she should say his name.

  "Bell."

  His eyes never left her face as he advanced into the room and took her hand, kissing it. He looked right and left to see if he could wrangle a kiss from her lips, but there were too many people about, and she would have hated it if anyone saw them kissing. Still, she raised her hand and touched the dimple on his chin with the tip of her finger, and they smiled at each other.

  "How did the meeting with Duke Tibold go?" she asked him.

  "King Tibold, I think you mean," he said wryly.

  "I mean what I said," she retorted flatly.

  Harry laughed at her frown. "It's something that your father means to tell us in the council, in one hour. My father was with them during the negotiation, but I haven't been told anything."

  "I can only think that this pretentious duke has offered something tempting, to get you out of the battlefield. He is very clever and we must be careful!"

  "Nothing from his soft land could tempt me," Harry said. "Everything I love is here."

  He clasped her hand to his breastplate. My beautiful Harry, she thought. How she loved his wild eyes, eyes like the early light of deep winter, his handsome face, his unruly chestnut hair. She had known him since she was a small girl, and he eight years older, and she had always loved him. There was no one like him, no one so fierce, so fearless, so true.

  He had fallen in love with her when he returned from a long campaign three years before: she had been a girl of thirteen when he had left, and he had returned to find her a woman of sixteen. Now she was nineteen and he could not take his eyes off her when they were in the same room, or think of anyone else when he was away.

  As ladies did in Stonemount, Isobel kept her long golden hair entirely hidden under elaborate headpieces. Northern women had worn a variety of these for as long as anyone could remember, since their fair hair had been too great an enticement to rape and abduction to the marauders of the east and south.

  This custom had never disappeared because wars had never ceased. Girls would wear their hair to their shoulders until they were twelve, when they would start to cover it, and let it grow long beneath their headwear.

  Tapestries and manuscripts showed a time when the valiant women of Stonemount wore their yellow or red hair loose, but many tales of battles fought by men who coveted them had made them wiser. There had been the Lady Birgitta, who had thrown herself out of the high tower so as not to be outraged by the wily dark prince of the south, Edon. Her fate was told to girls, who all swore to do the same, if it came to that, but who in the meantime avoided enticing men by covering up.

  With customary pragmatism they had thought that men could not covet what they did not see, and most women did not look as beautiful with their hair covered as Isobel.

  Many an older lady, past the age of being abducted, complained about the crick on their necks from their heavy headpieces, which grew somewhat elaborate out of tedium, but the young women balanced the headwear and the bothersome wimple around their faces with strength and grace. No woman would show any of her hair in public; inside, only her father, brothers, children and husband could see her uncovered.

  Harry could not wait for their wedding night, when he would free Isobel's tresses and see her in all her glory. If the wars were truly over, or if there was just an uneasy peace with the self-styled southern king, they could marry.

  "Angel," he whispered to her, but their moment was abruptly cut short by a well aimed shoe that went through the space between them and hit the wall with a thud.

  "You vile pig!" Isobel roared at Kayetan, who was laughing at the door.

  Far from being shocked, Harry threw his head back and laughed too, as she limped out of the room after her brother. She was angel, devil and the most wonderful creature in all the world, and she would be his.

  FATHER AND DAUGHTER

  Soon after wiping the mud from his boots and the dust from his jerkin, Duke Benedikt sent for his daughter.

  The knights and lords of Stonemount were waiting downstairs for him to tell them the outcome of the conversations with Tibold ─ whom many in the north still called duke, or The Pretender.

  Benedikt's news to them would probably be the single most important declaration he had ever made in his twenty-five years of rule. He would do it in his fashion: he would be determined, brief and to the point.

  He would do the same with his daughter, who entered the room smiling at him. He felt a painful tug in his heart to think that he would be wiping that smile off her face, a smile that had probably been put there not just by his return but by Harry, a young man whom he also loved. That joy would be gone for a long time, but he prayed that it would not be gone forever.

  His Bell ought to be happy, though who could ever plan for happiness? One rather spent time trying to avoid the greatest misery, settling for contentment or something like it, if even that were to be had. He hoped that what he was doing would change things, and that people would be able to get more joy out of their lives, as the songs told him they once had.

  Isobel had stopped smiling, because she saw preoccupation in her father's eyes.

  "Father, did the talks not go well? What has that false king demanded?"

  Benedikt took his daughter's hand and made her sit down next to him. The room was cold, with no fire on the hearth and no tapestries on the walls, though outside the weather was unseasonably warm for April, making him feel like they were already part of the south.

  "My dear, Tibold and I spoke as friends, though of course we have seen each other only twice before this. I have always liked him, and I think he likes me. We spoke as old men who found that they had no appetite to fight each other."

  "Does that mean, then, that we will be at peace with them? What does he give us to be able to keep what he took from others, and his false title, and expect us not to snatch it all from him?"

  Benedikt smiled sadly. "He could take everything from us, if he wanted. His army is several times the size of ours. He has weapons we lack, long range catapults, strong siege towers and more."

  "How, father? We are known for our steel and our archers! We are known for the bravery of our knights!"

  He took his daughter's hand. "Times are changing. War is changing. Bold knights on horseback don't make all the difference now. If we had insisted on fighting we would have been massacred. Stonemount would have been tak
en, and God knows what would happen after that."

  "We have always been prepared to die our own way!"

  "There is no point in pointless things, Isobel!” Benedikt said forcefully. “It's a different world now, and if we don't move with it, we will perish. I am the ruler of my people, I don't want its demise. And now, only for a short time, we are still in a position to demand things, because of the respect that Tibold has for me."

  "Respect! He has taken lands from everyone, why should he not do it to us? Does he not want to give us a false sense of security so that he can conquer us more easily? Do we not represent a danger to his ambition?"

  "I don't think he is lying, precisely because I am certain that he could defeat us."

  "Then why would he give us anything at all?" Isobel asked, shaking her head.

  "Because keeping a kingdom safe requires a lot of resources, and he can share that burden with us. He now has too many frontiers to watch, and as staunch allies we would take care of some of them."

  High suspicion against foreigners had been bred in the bone of Isobel’s people, and she could not understand why her father trusted a man who had deposed so many lords and stolen their lands. She still looked rebellious, biting her lip so that she wouldn't put her father out of countenance with harsh words. She could not trust the southern self-styled king.

  "Even the young, with all their boiling blood, want peace, Isobel," the duke went on tenderly. "They may make other noises because it has been the custom for so long, but young men want a life, they want to be married, have families. Young women want the same. The people want prosperity, good crops, warm homes. What is the point in pointless things?"

  "Freedom is not pointless!" she declared. "There can be no true life without it!”

  "It's pointless to insist on certain forms of freedom. We haven't lost our liberty. We haven’t been defeated. But think of your brothers. It took so long for your mother, bless her sweet soul, and I to conceive boys who lived ─ but that's what they are, boys. What should my legacy be to them? What should they inherit? Why shouldn't they inherit a fruitful land, stable power and a place they can rule with help from the south against marauders, invaders and rebels?"