Homage and Honour

by Candy Rae

  “When did she join the Thibaltine Order?”

  “Let me see, it must have been in AL120 or was it AL121? No wait, it was in AL122, the year before your brother was born. Your grandfather always believed atonement was part of it all. Princess Anne adored her cousin Marta. So did I for that matter. I was in the Palace at the time of the murders; did you know that? I was also engaged to Marta. She was twelve. I watched her being dragged away. Her screams haunted my dreams for years.”

  He was writing furiously as he spoke, “If you can persuade her to read this, Anne will take steps. She never liked Sam Baker. He was a nasty vindictive little boy and is not much better now. Funny, but none of the Bakers has ever been liked or trusted.”

  * * * * *

  The Thibaltine Convent was a dreary looking building situated at the edge of the desert in the Duchy of Smith. Its stark walls were backed up with sand and rose up beyond head height.

  Charles dismounted at the gate and rang the bell.

  Stiff from little use, it rang reluctantly; visitors were not encouraged here. He eyed the door; it did not look as if it had been opened for tendays, months even. He wondered how they got supplies in. Charles was not to know that there was a tradesman’s entrance to the rear.

  It seemed an eternity before he heard movement from within. There was a grating noise as the grille was opened. He discerned a woman’s face coiffed in charcoal grey with a white band covering her forehead.

  “Yes?” she asked in a rusty voice.

  “I have an urgent message for the Reverend Mother,” he said into the grille.

  The head shook.

  “Reverend Mother does not receive messages unless they come from Father Abbot. This is from him?”

  “No Sister,” Charles answered, “it is a message from the Duke of Cocteau. I am his son.” His voice took on the persuasive tones that had never failed him before. “It is most urgent, otherwise my Father would not have sent me. Please give this to her.”

  He raised the missive up to the grille so that she could see it.

  She looked at him, a level gaze that held neither hostility nor acceptance.

  “All messages must come from Father Abbot,“ she uttered with a note of finality, “this is an Enclosed Order. Go to him.”

  “And where is he, this Father Abbot?”

  “Relton.”

  “That’s fifty leagues away,” protested Charles, “there is no time for me to get there and back. This is an urgent matter. I must speak to the Reverend Mother.”

  “Wait here,” ordered the nun.

  The grille slammed shut.

  At the same time that Charles Cocteau was standing outside the doors of the Thibaltine Convent, his father Henri had invited Duke Jeremy Graham to his rooms.

  The Duke of Graham had arrived at Fort a scant few candlemarks earlier. Henri wanted to speak to him before Sam Baker got the chance.

  “After Queen Susan, her Great-aunt Anne is the next heir and after her, Susan’s fifth cousin Alexa. Unfortunately both are Thibaltine nuns and past childbearing age, Anne is fifty-three and Alexa older, sixty-four this year.”

  “What saved her?” asked Jeremy Graham with interest.

  “From Elliot Three’s murderous campaign?

  “Of course.”

  “Alexa was born in ninety-two, she began her novitiate at the beginning of AL108, not long before the deaths. He must have felt she was no threat, after all, when a woman enters the Thibaltine doors she renounces her previous life completely.”

  “So why is Lord Sam Baker looking so unbearably smug? I saw him as we arrived, though we only exchanged a few pleasantries. The King is dead, our present Queen a sickly infant of two. When I expressed my concerns about her health, he shrugged it off, Brentwood too.”

  “Give Brentwood his due, he doesn’t wish the child any harm. She is his niece,” said Henri Cocteau, pouring his guest some mulled wine, “but he is tasting power, he does not wish to give it up.”

  “He is planning something?”

  “It is not him,” answered Henri Cocteau, “it is Sam Baker who is the greatest danger.”

  “Indeed? Danger to what?”

  “You, me, the kingdom. He has a candidate for the throne, one that would place him in pole position. I need your support when Susan dies, for she will, the doctors are in no doubt about it now.”

  “I cannot be disloyal to Queen Susan, but if she does die and Sam Baker attempts to put an impostor in her place, that is a different matter entirely. What are you planning?”

  “Jeremy, I have an heir of the bloodline.”

  “You’re not serious?”

  “We must persuade the Lord Marshall that we have a legal alternative to Sam Baker’s candidate. We have already received the reluctant approval of the Largan. It was not hard to accomplish; we have definite proof. Even the Larg found nothing with which they could dispute the claim. They will hold to the Treaty.”

  * * * * *

  Anne and Annette were sitting in the solar while Susan, Duchess of Cocteau tried to explain how they must behave at Court. Annette was finding the lesson boring and wriggled in her chair, lending only half an ear to what she was saying.

  Anne was listening hard, making careful note of the ‘does’ and the ‘do nots’, having realised that this was an important aspect of her new life here in Murdoch and that she might, in the not too distant future, be judged on how well she behaved in this protocol obsessed society.

  “Introductions are very important,” continued Susan Cocteau, “Annette, pay attention! What have I just said?”

  With a blank expression on her face, Annette looked up. “I-I don’t know Duchess,” she confessed, “was it about not sitting down on a chair before the warmth of a gentleman’s posterior has left it?” She giggled and her mother hid her own laugh behind the pretence of a cough.

  “I was discussing seating protocols over a half-candlemark-ago,” chided the Duchess in exasperation, “what I am about to tell you now concerns something else entirely – introductions. This is important child. Do you want to be labelled as a country bumpkin?”

  “I am as you call it, a country bumpkin,” protested Annette with a rare show of petulance.

  “No longer,” her instructress insisted, “you are a Princess of the Royal Bloodline. Now pay attention.”

  A mutinous Annette subsided and tried to summon up at least a modicum of interest in what Susan Cocteau was about to say, not for the first time wishing she was as young as little Ruth who was, as she knew, playing in the nursery with her toys.

  “Now,” began the Duchess, “the First Rule concerning introductions is that the gentleman is always introduced to the lady. There must never be an exception to this rule, no matter how much higher in rank the gentleman is unless of course the gentleman should be a Royal Prince.”

  Does she always have to say the royal ranks with a capital letter? thought the bored Annette, I hate this.

  “That means that, if you are introducing either your father or your brother to a lady, that – you tell me Annette.”

  “That the lady should be introduced to them and not the other way around.”

  “Good, see how easy it is when you try.”

  That’s what she thinks. “I suppose so,” she answered.

  “There is more. The second is that an unmarried lady is always introduced to a married lady and an unmarried gentleman is always introduced to a married gentleman. When both are married or both are unmarried, the younger is always introduced to the elder.”

  “How do I know who is older?” asked Anne. “I can’t go around asking people their ages all the time.”

  “Study and learn the genealogical charts as we all have to. Even now, if I know I will be attending Court I return to them to refresh my memory. It comes with practice. Now, concerning rule two, rank can make a difference. If one of the two is of much higher rank, say a Duke or a Duchess, or a princess, then the other should be introduced to him or her. Age can also m
odify the second rule because if the unmarried person is much older than the other then it is permissible and often more gracious to introduce the younger.”

  “This is getting complicated,” complained Annette. A lot of toofling nonsense.

  Susan Cocteau smiled sympathetically “nevertheless, it must be so. Good manners and behaviour in society is what every young noblewoman should strive for, so the lessons must be learned. We will practice and it will soon be second nature to you. I know it is hard, most royal children learn it in the nursery, as Ruth will.”

  Annette giggled. She didn’t think her headstrong and tomboyish sister would be able to sit still long enough to learn any such thing but at a frown from her mother she assumed an attentive mien.

  “We’ll go over it again on the morrow,” promised the Duchess of Cocteau, “I think that’s enough for this day. Is there anything you would like to do now? There’s still a candlemark before luncheon.”

  Annette asked if she could go for a walk in the gardens. Susan Cocteau agreed and summoned an attendant to accompany her.

  “She’ll come to terms with it all eventually,” said Anne once the two ladies were alone. “She’s been used to far more freedom at home, not that she was ever as adventurous as Xavier or Ruth. I think it is that she can’t, even if she wants to, that is getting to her. I must confess that it gets to me too. In my old life there never seemed to be enough bells in the day to do everything that needed to be done. Now time lies heavily on my hands.” She sighed and gazed down at the said hands. The calluses and rough skin of a busy farm-wife were disappearing. Susan Cocteau felt sorry for her.

  “Perhaps you might like to help me in the still-room?” she suggested, this being the first idea that came into her head. “I am mistress of this house and it is my prerogative, no my duty, to keep the herbs, spices and remedies fresh and on the shelves. I also find the time I spend there very pleasing and comforting in its own way.”

  “I would like to help you very much,” said Anne, leaping at the chance to do something, anything. “Is it allowed?”

  “I am Mistress here,” declared Susan Cocteau with an arch look, “even my husband would not dare interfere. Come on, we’ve just got time if we hurry.”

  * * * * *

  As Henri Cocteau tried to persuade Jeremy Graham to support him and his co-conspirators Raoul van Buren and William Duchesne, Sam Baker was doing the same with the Lord Marshall of the Kingdom, the only non-ducal representative in Conclave with full voting rights.

  “After Susan, the only other legal heirs are a pair of nuns and they are both too old to bear children. You know the terms of the treaty as well as I. An heir of the blood it must be. The Larg will insist.”

  “And their numbers are growing,” was Philip Ross’s ominous comment. “So what do you suggest?”

  “Elliot Three had a profusion of mistresses. We know that his only legitimate heirs are Susan and the two nuns but what of the illegitimate?” smiled Sam Baker.

  “He spared none,” protested Philip Ross, “but you think a child escaped?”

  “None born before the murders survived but what of the mistress who was pregnant?” thus Sam Baker spoke up in a voice filled with triumph, “the then Thane Louis Senot’s daughter Louise?”

  “I remember her vaguely. Didn’t she marry?”

  “She married Ian Karovitz shortly after the murders and their first child was born some months later.”

  “You are saying?”

  “Yes, it was Elliot’s child and the boy was of the Murdoch bloodline.”

  “The other Dukes will accept an illegitimate heir,” ventured David Gardiner, “as there is no-one else.”

  “It would appease the Larg and avoid bloodshed,” said a pious Sam Baker. “As Lord Marshall, do you agree?”

  “The Larg threat is very real and I will do anything, anything at all to avoid internal strife.”

  * * * * *

  Vadrhed (Second Month of Summer) – AL157

  Crisis (10)

  The closed carriage trundled through the gates of the moated manor house of the Duke of Cocteau, its wheels echoing eerily on the cobbles. It drew to a stop in front of the main door.

  The coachman made haste to dismount from his driver’s box and open the door. There were rustles from within as the occupants prepared to disembark.

  “Ladies,” he said, “we have arrived.”

  “Thank the Lord for that,” said the smallest of the black and grey clad women inside. “My old bones have been protesting these last ten miles or more.”

  “And we have realised,” added the larger and younger of the two, “that the state of the roads has not improved overmuch during our years in the convent. I must have words to My Lord of Cocteau about it.”

  “They are bad,” admitted the man, “Now, will ye not alight?”

  At that moment the great decorated hardwood doors of the manor opened and the light from inside beckoned the weary travellers as the coachman’s words had not.

  Out from the door spilled a number of liveried servants come to aid their Duke’s guests into the warmth.

  “Well Dame Luke, shall we exit our conveyance and take advantage of the Duke of Cocteau’s hospitality?” Her eyes were gleaming. It was many years since Dame Matthew, once Princess Anne of Murdoch had enjoyed the comforts of secular life, not since that day when she had entered the convent to begin her postulancy.

  Dame Luke, eleven years older, emitted a rusty laugh. “The prospect is most alluring,” she answered, “but can you imagine the number of penances Mother Reverend would see fit to donate to us if we admitted to our desire?”

  “For the good of our souls,” answered Dame Matthew with commendable piousness. “The House Chaplain will shrive us I’m sure, then she need never know.”

  Dame Luke frowned as she permitted the servants to help her out of the carriage. Indeed, she might not have managed it without a stumble or a bad fall if they had not been there to lend aid. The last candlemarks of travel had been torture to her as the carriage had lurched over the potholes and bumps.

  “I have to express a great eagerness to meet our estranged cousins from the North,” added Dame Matthew as she waited her turn. “I wonder what they are like.”

  “We shall learn that in our Lord’s own time,” commented Dame Luke, once Kellessa Alexa Karovitz, as she backed down the steps, hindered to a dangerous extent by the voluminous folds of her black habit.

  The two nuns were met in the warm, comfortable manor acceptance room by the Duke of Cocteau himself.

  “Princesses Anne and Alexa,” he greeted them with a courtly bow. “Your journey was a comfortable one?”

  Dame Luke snorted. “More than marginally unpleasant,” she retorted, walking over to the fire where she stood warming her hands. “I confess that I am not looking forward to the return journey.”

  “There are other Thibaltine Houses closer by,” offered Henri Cocteau.

  “That thought had occurred to me,” she said in a dry voice. “I accept that mortification of the flesh is good for the soul but there are limits, especially at my age.”

  “Quite so, quite so,” said Henri, not quite knowing how to react to this, not realising that by saying this, he was insinuating that she was old. He had expected two calm and collected Thibaltine nuns and the elder one at least was not matching his expectations. He coughed and caught the eye of the younger and taller figure.

  “We are here,” she said to him in an effort to put him at his ease. “Mother Reverend was not pleased by the necessity that brought us here but your messenger was most persuasive and insistent, so she gave way. Like Dame Luke I do not wish our country to be plunged into the darkness that is civil war. Word came to us of the plague and our nation’s plight. We have prayed for the souls of the departed. My great-niece, the Queen, Count Charles said that she is sick unto death?”

  “She is not expected to live many months more.”

  Dame Luke turned round. “You have the
replacements here? You also have proof of the veracity of their lineage?”

  “I do.”

  “Then I do not understand. Why did we have to come here?”

  “Yes why?” asked Dame Matthew. “Mother Reverend told us that we would have to relinquish our claim to the throne in public. Why is this? We could have signed the abdications from the Convent. Indeed, when we professed our final vows we, by law, removed our persons from the succession.”

  “It’s not as simple as that,” said Henri Cocteau, “and at the root of the problem, there is the Duke of Baker.

  “Nasty family,” opined Dame Luke, “always have been. I presume he’s got a claimant of his own?”

  * * * * *

  Dame Luke rose from her prayers with a creaking of knees.

  “I liked Anne Crawford and her husband,” she said to Dame Matthew. “I think they will do well.”

  “The children are adorable.”

  “Healthy too.”

  “Do you think we can go to bed now?” asked Dame Matthew, “it looks wonderfully warm and comfortable.”

  “Too comfortable. I wish I was back in my cell.”

  “Perhaps you should sleep on the floor?” her fellow nun suggested as an imp of mischief reasserted itself from her childhood.

  “What cannot be cured must be endured,” answered Dame Luke as she glided towards her side of the bed. “I do not wish to appear discourteous to our lady host after she has gone to so much trouble on our behalf. That would not be the religious thing to do.”