Homage and Honour

by Candy Rae

  “Tadei suggested I did,” admitted Rhian.

  “And did he mentally lean on you, even by a little?”

  “He might have,” answered Rhian, “not that I noticed anything especially. Why?”

  “I was wondering,” the Susa answered, “I suppose I’ve known from the first that I’m being manipulated in some subtle way, but it’s never bothered me, in fact I don’t even think about it.”

  “Maybe you’re being encouraged not to think about it,” Rhian countered, “perhaps it’s because I’ve been noticing it happening rather a lot lately, ever since the Larg have been making their presence felt. Perhaps there hasn’t been any need before. I wish I understood more about it.”

  “Forget about it Rhian,” advised Lynsey.

  It wasn’t until late that night that the Susa’s thoughts returned to their conversation. Were they being carefully manipulated by their four-pawed friends? But before Lynsey could think deeper about the conundrum, she suddenly felt so sleepy that she couldn’t be bothered thinking any more. She fell asleep and when she awoke the next morning the discussion between her and the Weaponsmaster didn’t seem all that important and worth more thought.

  * * * * *

  Rakrhed (Fifth Month of Summer) – AL157

  Crisis (13)

  The little white coffin was lowered into the grave. All the Dukes, their wives, their children and representatives of the lesser nobility were present.

  Patriarch Jerome preached a simple message of peace and reconciliation, a message not lost on those present.

  Tradition demanded that the next king be declared at once and homage, fealty and allegiance given and received within seven days.

  Beside Count Charles Cocteau on the fringes of the gathering stood David Crawford, a tall, silent figure dressed in simple grey.

  “Sam Baker is the one to watch out for,” cautioned Charles, “he’s still angry that his grandson is not to be the king, in his eyes the marriage of his granddaughter to Xavier is only a small consolation.”

  “Is that why your father smuggled us in?”

  “He would get rid of both you and your wife if he could. With the betrothal signed and witnessed for Xavier and Michaela he could take control and the other Dukes would have no alternative but to acquiesce. None want another civil war, not with the Larg sniffing around our borders.”

  “What happens now?”

  “We will attend the wake feast in memory of Queen Susan then everybody who is anybody in the kingdom will gather in the great hall to acclaim our new queen. The entire court is anxious to meet her.”

  “Do we attend?”

  “The wake feast? No, my father has told me to take you to the retiring chambers to get ready. The Lord Marshall will announce her to the court, the messenger will be sent to the chambers. The rest you know about.”

  “The children?”

  “Will watch from the musicians’ gallery as arranged.”

  “Your assessment of the danger?”

  “The Lord Marshall has undertaken to protect you. He is very efficient. He has his own reasons for making sure the succession runs as planned.”

  “Who is that seedy-looking boy standing beside Lord Baker?”

  “That is Richard, the grandson. His nose is out of joint; his grandfather has been telling him that he is the secret heir to Murdoch since the plague struck and the late king’s family started dying. The Bakers have always been eager for power, an ambitious family from the earliest days. You will find him and his grandfather both hard men.”

  “Your father does not trust him.”

  “My father hates Sam Baker, always has.”

  “I’ll be careful,” promised David.

  “You will need to be if you want to survive. Father will help you all he can, also William Duchesne and Raoul van Buren. They supported your wife’s claim from the first. Jeremy Graham will too. He is the most pragmatic and sensible man I have ever encountered and the Lord Marshall would support a fly’s claim if it stopped internal strife. That gives you a majority if you need it. My father explained the ratification rules?”

  “In the absence of a ruling king on the Conclave, I need an eight to three majority to get anything through,” intoned David. This lesson had been drummed into him.

  “You’ll manage,” said Charles.

  David wasn’t comforted. He changed the subject, “who is that tall man dressed in midnight blue, close to Sam Baker?”

  “That’s the Brentwood heir, Tom,” answered Charles. “He’s probably the unluckiest man in the room.”

  “Thought that was me,” David half-joked.

  Charles grinned, “unlucky in love. First he asked for the hand in marriage of William Duchesne’s daughter Colette but she preferred Gardiner’s brother James, a love match I heard. Second, he was betrothed to Graham’s younger daughter but she disappeared. Then he asked for the hand of the late Eloise van Buren but her father, quite naturally, preferred the royal match. I have heard that he has tried for his cousin Julie, now it is your Annette’s turn. If he doesn’t marry soon he probably never will.”

  As the wake-feast drew to a close and the eulogies to the late queen were uttered (there were not many of them), tension in the Great Hall mounted. You could have heard a pin drop as the Duke of Brentwood rose to his feet.

  Silence is golden was a saying a nurse had taught Charles as a boy but this silence, Charles realised, wasn’t golden, it was apprehensive.

  What was going to happen now that Queen Susan was dead and the direct line of Murdoch extinct? The Dukes of the kingdom and the Lord Marshall stood ranged on the dais. At the end of the row stood a tight-lipped Sam Baker.

  At the rear of the huge room stood David Crawford, standing in the middle of the Duke of Cocteau’s retainers.

  “Here it comes,” was his resigned aside to Charles Cocteau.

  Duke Tom Brentwood cleared his throat, “Gentlemen,” he began.

  * * * * *

  “How many ladies-in-waiting does it take to make a queen?” asked an exasperated Anne Crawford of Lady Cocteau some three days after she had been proclaimed Queen of Murdoch.

  “There does appear to be rather a lot of applications,” that lady answered, “I suppose their brothers and fathers feel that everyone is starting on an even keel after your accession with no ill-feeling towards one family or another going back decades.”

  “But how do I choose? How many?”

  “Six to eight is normal and please try to be fair.”

  “You choose,” said Anne impulsively, “I don’t know any of them.”

  “You need experienced ladies,” said Lady Cocteau thoughtfully, “also some younger ones with a bit of fun about them. Queen Susan, God rest her soul, was too young to have ladies, but Princess Gemma, she had, let me see, five or six if I remember rightly.”

  * * * * *

  “Are any of them petitioning?”

  “Gemma’s ladies were mostly Brentwoods, natural I suppose since she came from that house. Lucille died in the epidemic but there are her aunts, Celine and Mary. Celine I think has just hit her mid-thirties and Mary a year younger. They might well be ideal. They’re not going to marry now and they’d guide you. They’re a bit serious at times.”

  “If they can stop me from making blunders I can cope with a little seriousness.”

  “It would also be politic to appoint them. Then Gemma had Sheila Ross and Eloise van Buren but they died last year too; they were good fun.”

  “Who else?”

  “There is Duke Brentwood’s little daughter Colette but she’s only small; she might be an idea as a companion for the children. Princess Annette needs some company her own age but let us get your ladies chosen first.”

  “Could you?”

  “Could I what?”

  “Be one of my ladies? I couldn’t think of anyone I’d like more.”

  Lady Cocteau shook her head with regret.

  “I am afraid not, your ladies must either be unmarried
or widowed. I am neither.”

  “Can’t you be anything?” asked Anne, who had come to rely on the calm, resourceful and often witty Lady Cocteau over the last tendays.

  “I could take on the position of Royal Governess,” Lady Cocteau offered. “Any noblewoman can accept the post as long as her husband is agreeable.”

  “Would Duke Cocteau?”

  “I think I can persuade him,” said that Lord’s wife with a mischievous glint, “it would be good to live at Court again. Regarding your ladies, after due consideration, I agree with you; leave the choice to me. I’ll sift through them and pick out the best of the bunch. I take it you’d prefer to have a fair mix?”

  Anne looked blank.

  “Of all noble ranks,” explained Lady Cocteau, “they don’t all need to be contessas or baronesses, do they?”

  “Rank doesn’t mean all that much to me as you know,” smiled Anne.

  “I’ll do my best. Now, to the children. If I do become Governess, Prince Xavier will come under my charge until he reaches the age of twelve. Governors will take over then.”

  “Did you tell me that? I’d forgotten,” confessed Anne.

  “No wonder with the amount of information you’ve had to assimilate, still it’s usual that Princes and Princesses have noble lads and lassies appointed to them during their childhood.”

  “So we have to pick out more names?” complained Anne, “and do it without offending any of the leading families?”

  “We shall manage. May I suggest that for Princesses Annette and Ruth we look for girls their age or a little younger? Our choices for Xavier’s companions must be ratified by Conclave. He is our future King and it is a well-known fact that a king’s boyhood friends will become most influential when he comes to the throne. The Dukes will be vying with each other to get their sons or grandsons placed at Court.”

  * * * * *

  “Some are saying that there are too many Brentwoods in the royal household,” was Charles Cocteau’s comment to the newly created Lord Prince Consort.

  “Then they should father some more children,” answered David with some heat. “If I meet one more noble intent on furthering his influence through his offspring it will be one too many.”

  “Quiet and steady does it,” counselled the Lord Marshall, “we’ve been at peace for so long, they’ve had nothing else to worry about. I prefer this bickering to them being at each other’s throats. You have to keep the peace, the situation stable. We must not show weakness to those watching from outside our borders.”

  “The Larg?”

  Philip Ross nodded, “intelligence reports state that Larg numbers have increased fivefold in the last decade.”

  “How do you know?” asked David, “I’ve never heard that the Larg were overeager to welcome humans into their pack ranges.”

  Philip Ross shrugged. “I have, shall we say, an ‘accommodation’ with my opposite number in the North.”

  “In Argyll?” exclaimed David.

  “Not exactly.”

  “Susa Lynsey?”

  “The very same.”

  David eyed the youngest Lord Marshall ever appointed in the Kingdom of Murdoch with interested respect.

  “How did this come about?”

  “You know my father was Lord Marshall before me and my grandfather before that?”

  “Aye.”

  “My father Alan became Lord Marshall in AL140, around the time a fair number of the Larg were sniffing around our borders. He understood the danger. They weren’t happy when Count Graham Duchesne annexed what is now the Lordship of Graham in AL84 but contented themselves with, shall we say, voicing their displeasure? My father believed that when the Larg grew strong again they might decide to take Graham back and it proved difficult to beat them off. Pure supposition but he worried endlessly about it. He knew of the Avuzdel, the Lind intelligence group and that they might be able to unearth what the Larg were up to. He sent a secret envoy to Vada to ask for their help.”

  “A dangerous move,” noted David.

  “A treasonous move,” Philip corrected him, “formal relations with Argyll were in existence in Elliot Four’s day but Vadath was thought of as the arch-enemy and the Vada worse. Some of the Dukes still think so, Baker, Brentwood and van Buren, Gardiner less so. Anyway, he made contact with the then Susa of the Vada, I can’t remember his name and since then intelligence about Larg plans and movements has made its way to us. Two years ago when Father was forced to retire and I was appointed Lord Marshall, he told me about the accommodation.”

  “Bet you were surprised.”

  “I was flabbergasted but the relationship has come in very useful.”

  “Your father is still alive?”

  “Yes, he lives on one of our manors on the northern tip of Gardiner. Its easy, well relatively so, for Susa Lynsey’s agents to send him the information. Father sends it on to me. Don’t mention a word of this to Conclave. It would cost me my position and the Generals, they’re older men mostly, are set in their ways.”

  “Does your father ever come here to Court?”

  “No, these days his arthritis is too painful for him to withstand the journey.”

  “I had wondered how you got to be Lord Marshall so young.”

  “I was thirty-four and it was the Crown-Prince who forced it through Conclave. We were boys together. I was just two years older than him; I joined the Companions at the palace when I was eight and he six. Anyway, I stayed with Elliot, sharing his education until I joined the Officer Corps. We were great friends.”

  “Were you the only one?”

  “No. There was James, grandson of the then Duke Graham. He went to sea and is a captain of one of our frigates. He wasn’t as close to Elliot as I was. He’s three years older than me and Elliot found him intimidating. The other was Henri Cocteau, older brother of Charles here. I am, was, a baron’s son, the lowest rank of all but Elliot didn’t seem to mind.”

  “So what is Susa Lynsey telling us? I’ve met her. Anne’s Uncle James served with the Vada. He died recently, shortly after …” David stopped mid-sentence, confused.

  “I know,” smiled Philip Ross, “I know, it’s not common knowledge, I know that you have a daughter who is vadeln-paired and who serves in the Vada. None will learn it from me.”

  “I don’t suppose,” David began.

  “That my father could get a message to your daughter?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll see what I can do.”

  * * * * *

  Queen Anne was resting in her solar when two maidservants brought in yet another dress. They hung it up on the rack, curtsied to Anne with shy smiles and left.

  “What is that?”

  “Your coronation gown,” Lady Cocteau rubbed the velvet folds between appreciative fingers, “beautiful is it not? The women have done wonders.”

  “If you like that sort of thing,” Anne said uncharitably, “personally, I would prefer a much simpler garment.”

  “It’s for your Coronation! It is expected that you wear your finest. A queen must not be out-dressed by her courtiers. You can be sure that every noble lady in the land is hard at work making sure that she is at least as finely dressed as those of similar rank.”

  “Will these ‘noble ladies’ be dressed in purple velvet too?”

  “No, this colour is reserved for those of royal birth. Princesses Annette and Ruth may also wear the purple but no other. It is the law.”

  Anne sighed, “there are laws about everything, what to wear, what to say to whom, who I am supposed to address and how.”

  Lady Cocteau laughed, “you’ll soon get used to it.”

  “I don’t think I ever will,” disclaimed Anne as she watched Lady Cocteau examine the beadwork on the bodice.

  “Just remember that you are the Queen,” her mentor advised, “and most will make allowance if you err at first, they know this is all strange and new to you, newer than to anyone else. We’ve been brought up with the protocols from
an early age; it’s in our blood.”

  “Yes … blood,” said a resigned Anne, “that’s what all this is about. I mean, if I wasn’t of the bloodline David, the children and I wouldn’t be here. We’d be back at the farm looking after our stock-herds, worrying about the harvest. We’ll never go back now.”

  “No, you won’t,” answered the older woman, “and your new life does have its compensations.”

  “Does it? What compensations? I’m finding it hard to think of any right now.”

  “Well,” considered Lady Cocteau, “you’ll never have to cook and clean again, that’s one I can think of immediately.”

  “But I like cooking. I enjoyed looking after my family, making sure they had clean garments, mending their clothes. Now I don’t even see the children apart from when you bring them to me.”

  “I can see that you’re finding life difficult,” said Lady Cocteau with sympathy, “after the coronation though, you will be queen in fact. You can always make changes to the running of the household; have the children with you more often. The servants are only running things the way they always have.”

  “You are sure about this?”

  “I wouldn’t say so if I was not. You’ll see. Get through the coronation then we’ll see what can be done. I’ll help.”

  Anne felt a lot better. Perhaps, she thought, things might not be so bad but she knew she would always look back at those more carefree days in the North with wishful regret. Anne was looking forward to the coronation with reluctance, a sentiment shared by David and Annette.

  Ruth was too young to have many worries about the effects of her elevation. She was more concerned about the more mundane upheavals, to whit, the curtailment of her freedom. She hated the skirts she was forced to wear and had twice been caught ransacking her brother’s clothes’ chest for trousers and tunics.