“My words come from all that is here. A village has a life and it consists of the souls who live in it, who give their lives to the village to make it a home. All of these feed into the healing you feel. Your healing comes from many sources that become one source.”
She and I sat there, not talking a lot, but enjoying each other’s company. We got so drunk we could hardly sit in our chairs. I kissed her and stumbled to my sleeping chamber, found it a formidable task to take off my garments, but finally crawled into bed between Melanie and Lynette who, knowing my preferences, were at the sides of the mattress and had left the middle open for me to lie down.
Chapter 8
I will bring my story, which is becoming tedious, to an end. Breandan arrived in town. When I saw him, the fences I had built around my heart collapsed and my love and passion for him claimed me. I threw my arms around him in a public embrace that would have been scandalous if the people of our town had not known the circumstances and all we had been through. Breandan had grown taller, stronger, a man and no longer a youth, his soul matured by his experience as a soldier and, I saw, by suffering. That our love had survived the crucible of pain demonstrated to me that I could marry him and that if I had not found complete healing I would find it in the shelter of a union with him and his family. He visited my father that very day and they arranged a date, though my father, being a kind man and rather doting toward his oldest daughter, asked me my will on the matter. I suggested a date earlier than the one they had decided on.
I settled into village life once more. Vanorra asked me to be an attending maiden at her wedding.
“If I start to look gloomy,” she whispered to me just before the ceremony, “punch me. This is supposed to be a wedding, not a funeral. I don’t want to be an unhappy bride.”
She managed to look fairly cheerful. When she and her husband rang the bell in their bridal chamber to signal consummation, a custom among our people, everyone rejoiced. She would go on to bear five children, four boys and, at last, a girl she named Elizet.
I planned and got things ready, received advice on what to do when it came time to consummate the marriage, and endured yet another examination by a midwife. Janessa stood as my matron of honor. Suelta came to my wedding and blessed us. Notos assured us of timely rains for our fields and the fields of the whole province. My first night with Breandan marked the beginning of a fruitful and joyous life for us. The King of Ottava eventually appointed him governor of our province. With some of the wealth we accrued I built a shrine dedicated to the memory of the Maidens of the Court. It was a simple structure that bore their names—only that. I will leave the judgment of their days to time, though I cannot imagine how anyone could fault them for their pure and simple lives of service and obedience, whatever their association with the court.
At night sometimes I dream of the place Suelta took me. It must have been Paradise. Paradise is the reward of virtue, both here and in the life to come.
The End
Publisher’s Note
Please help this author's career by posting an honest review wherever you purchased this book.
About David Landrum
David W. Landrum lives and writes in West Michigan. His published works include Strange Brew, The Gallery, ShadowCity, The Last Minstrel, The Prophetess, Le Café de la Mort, The Sorceress of Time, and Sinfonia: The First Notes on the Lute, A Vampire Chronicle.
The Court of the Sovereign King Page 6
