The One-Armed Queen

by Yolen, Jane;

  “Who loves a king when the taxes have been collected?” Skada asked.

  Petra glared at her across the long table but could not silence her.

  “And don’t we say: Easier to love a dead hero than a live king?”

  Jenna looked down at her hands, now clasping and unclasping in her lap, as if they were being guided by some mind other than her own. “Oh,” she sighed, “my poor people. My poor land.” Then she stood, gathered up her papers, and walked out of the room where it was too dark for Skada to follow.

  “Oh, my poor Jenna,” whispered Petra, “you do not understand how well indeed you are loved.”

  “Or how you will be remembered in years to come,” Jareth added, putting his head in his hands and trying hard not to weep.

  “I need to get away for a bit, my love,” Jenna said to Carum in the dark of their room. Only the embers of the hearthfire still glowed, rosy and comforting but shedding no great light. “I cannot think here in the close surround of the stone walls.”

  Carum was sitting up in the bed, one blanket around his shoulders and another over his legs. “You need the woods, Jenna. I do not begrudge you that. Have I ever?”

  “But you are ill and Scillia …”

  “Scillia has a solid head and the advice of Jareth and Petra and Piet. She will counsel well. Go. Go quickly. But do not be too long in your return.”

  She did not like the forced gaiety in his voice nor the look of terror she supposed she saw behind his eyes. Or is it my own terror I see there? she wondered. If she had hoped he would beg her to stay, he did not. And so to please him, to make him believe she was not worried, she left.

  Corrie was reading a books of essays by the philosopher B’kana, when his brother entered the room. Jemson did not knock, but took the room as if he had some sort of siege machine.

  “You’re welcome,” Corrie said, saving his place in the book with a tasseled silk marker. “Do you want some tea?”

  “No. Yes. Damn.”

  “Is this the most recent Garunian mode of conversation? Or are you just not pleased to see me?”

  “She’s off again.”

  Corrie stood and began his tea-making ritual which gave him a moment before he had to answer. “Do you mean mother?”

  “Yes. Of course I mean mother. Though she is a sorry excuse for one.”

  Corrie swished the hot water through the pot. “I did not hear that.”

  “I said …”

  “I am not deaf, Jem. And you are not stupid. At least not as stupid as you have been acting.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.” Jemson sat down on his brother’s bed. His face took on the kind of pout one might expect on a ten-year-old.

  “No one could be as stupid as you have been acting,” Corrie said. He was suddenly angry enough so that when he shook the leaves from the caddy a few floated down to the floor. “Damn. That’s the last of the vervain mix.”

  Jemson stood, flushing. “I won’t take that kind of accusation from anyone, not even one of royal blood.” His hand went to his belt and fumbled there, as if expecting to find a knife that was suddenly not available.

  “I am accusing you of nothing but acting stupid, dear brother,” Corrie said, forcing himself to become calm. He poured the tea water into the pot. “You are not in the Garunian court now, but here in the Dales. You need to curb your natural tendency toward asininity and try to be one of us again.”

  “I am not one of you,” Jemson said, “if it means bending the knee to that one-armed slut.”

  “Then you should probably book passage tomorrow for the Continent,” Corrie said handing him the cup. “For it is my guess that mother will not outlive father by much.”

  “She is healthy as a horse. As two horses.”

  Corrie smiled at his brother sadly. “You never were able to see past your nose, Jem.”

  Jemson wrinkled his nose, took a sip of the tea, spat it out loudly. “What is this? Some sort of poison?”

  “An herbal posset. For temper.”

  “I have no temper.”

  “You are all temper, brother. As I am all temperament. Scillia will make a fine queen. She has been studying for it since you left. Tutors galore!” He waved his hand about as if the tutors were all crowding in the room with them.

  Jemson stood. He put down the cup carefully on the little table, though it was clear from his face that he wanted to fling it into the fire. “I came here to sound you out, brother, thinking that you could not possibly wish to live beneath a woman’s hand. As I saved you once, so I wish to save you again.”

  “Save me? From what?”

  “From cats, dear brother. From the feline race.”

  “Oh, by Alta’s crown!” Corrie said, stopping himself from laughing just in time. His hand went to his neck and fingered the scars there. “The Cat Story as Jemson remembers it. Ah well, heroes are made by those who tell the stories, not by those who lived the life. Mother always said that and now I see it is true.”

  “What do you mean?” Jemson asked, squinting his eyes. “What exactly do you mean?”

  “Just this—Scillia will eventually be queen, Jem. Bend the knee or board the ship.”

  “My All-Father has often enough said that where there are two answers, there are three.”

  “What on earth does that mean?” Now it was Corrie’s turn to be puzzled.

  “Use your temperament and figure it out.” Jemson went out of Corrie’s room the same way he had entered, leaving a large silence behind.

  “Oh, sweet Alta!” Corrie said after a minute into the silence. “He plans to fight. The bloody fool plans to fight her for the crown.” He put down his own cup and went at once to speak to his father.

  THE FABLE:

  The mice in the stable wanted a king and they asked one of their own to lead them.

  King Mouse proved a good king. He found them warm places in the winter and cool burrows for the summer. He managed the grain supplies well. Still the mice were not happy, for they had to hide from hawks and owls. They had to run from weasels and wolves.

  “We need a king who is not just like us: long tail, quivering disposition, and a passion for cheese,” they said.… “We need someone bigger and stronger to lead us into the light.”

  So they held a great assembly and threw down King Mouse.

  “Now who shall we get to lead us?” they cried.

  “Why not Cat from the big home?” called out one young mouse in a loud voice. Loud, that is, for a mouse. “Cat is big and rough. No one troubles him. He will keep us safe.”

  “Safe from what?” asked one old mouse. “Safe for what?” But he had been King Mouse’s chief advisor and besides his voice was weak with his age. Even those who heard him did not listen.

  So the mice sent an emissary to ask Cat to be their king.

  And a second.

  And a third.

  When the fourth emissary escaped Cat’s claws by just a whisker, the mice understood at last what the old one had been trying to tell them. They rallied once again behind King Mouse, too late for some, but in time for most.

  THE STORY:

  Jenna was half a day down the eastern road before she had fully thought out which direction she meant to take. The white mare plodded dutifully along, unmindful of the familiar burden on her back, until Jenna reined her in sharply at a crossroads.

  “I think,” Jenna said to the horse as if expecting a conversation, “that we should go where we are not expected. By ourselves least of all. What do you think?”

  The mare shook her head, an answer that had more to do with the sudden reining-in than Jenna’s question.

  “Everyone knows how I love the woods and the mountains,” Jenna said. “But my son has brought with him a contagion from across the sea. Let us go to some lonely shingle and camp there on the sand. Perhaps if I stare across the water long enough, Alta will send me a sign and I will at last understand what it is I must do.”

  She urged the horse southward a
nd the mare once again shook her head. But Jenna did not notice, or at least did not take it as any kind of message, for she was already contemplating some interior notions of tides. And so it was in silence that the horse and Jenna continued down the grassy road that led, eventually, to the sea.

  The first evening they camped off the path, close enough for access but far enough away to be hidden from prying eyes. Jenna was neither particularly hungry or tired, but she knew how quickly both could come upon the unprepared traveler so she forced herself to eat a creditable meal of journeycake and spring greens boiled in water from a nearby stream to which she added a touch of dried herbs and salt from her waist pouches. She was long past the days when she felt she had to be pure in her approach to camping, eating only what the fields or an evening’s hunt provided. And she always carried tea leaves in a small separate pouch—hawthorn mixed with sage and balm for her traveling, and a smaller pouch of boneset sweetened with wild mint in case of the damp.

  Skada ate with her while the fire was great enough to shed some light. They were both quite mellow with the evening and the hot tea, and Skada even recited one of Petra’s old praises to the evening’s drink:

  When one’s hands are idle,

  And night sneaks in like an old friend,

  Welcome him with a cup of agrimony,

  Make him welcome with a cup of sweet balm tea.

  “Unfortunately not only night might sneak in,” Jenna said after a bit. “Our fire could signal to footpads and other night men. Good-bye, sweet sister.”

  Skada made no protest and disappeared as soon as Jenna damped the fire, for there was no moon to keep her in the camp.

  Using a small log as a back rest, Jenna gazed up at the scattering of stars through the bare overhang of branches. It had been years since she had thought much about the priestess who had run Selden Hame, and how the women there had spoken of Great Alta hiding her glory in a single leaf. But that particular phrase came to her now.

  “Hiding in a tea leaf as easily,” Jenna murmured. She sipped the now cold tea, savoring its homey taste. The priestess had said something else as well. What was it? Jenna closed her eyes, trying to remember, tracking back to the day that she and Pynt and the other girls—how young they were then!—had been praying. For someone. For something. And the priestess had said …

  “What?” Jenna whispered. “What had she said?”

  And then suddenly it came to her: Sometimes Great Alta; she who runs across the surface of the rivers, who hides her glory in a single leaf, sometimes she tests us and we are too small to see the pattern. All we feel is the pain. But there is a pattern, and that you must believe.

  Did she believe? Could she believe?

  She burst into loud, hot tears, surprising herself and disturbing the mare who stamped her feet and houghed sharply through her nose. But Jenna could not stop herself from crying. She continued to weep until she thought her chest would burst with aching and her eyes would never see again. She was not someone used to tears.

  It took a long time before she was cried out and lay, head on the log, squinting up through swollen eyes. The stars seemed to swim about in a blurry sea of sky.

  Thank Alta no one saw that! she thought. Not even Skada. She threw out the remains of the cold tea with a wide sweep of her hand. Then she stood and stretched her cramped legs. At last she spread out her blanket and lay down to sleep. If she had dreams, she did not remember anything about them.

  It took another full day of riding before they got to the sea. Jenna did not expect to cry again, thinking that in that one night she had cried enough for a lifetime. But as she sat on the silent beach gazing out across the lapping waves with dusk gathering its skirts around her, she began to weep once more. This time her sobs were loud enough that grey-coated seals rose up from the skerries to stare at her. Two even dove into the water to swim within a few feet of shore, their heads and shoulders high out of the sea, watching warily, curiously.

  She did not see them through her clouded eyes, but her horse did and trembled while grazing on beach grass. When the mare whuffled at the seals, Jenna turned and looked at the horse. When she turned back to see what had so frightened her mare, the seals were gone.

  But Duty’s alarm recalled Jenna to herself. She felt she was a danger to both of them, giving in to such strong emotion. As beautiful as the shingle was in the growing dark, with the glow along the horizon line that separated sky from sea, it was not a safe place, and Jenna was a woman alone. A warrior—true. But she recalled Scillia’s words spoken thirteen years earlier, a warrior no longer young. She needed to remain alert, to be ready, not to be disarmed by her own tears.

  She wondered briefly if she dared light any kind of fire on the wide swath of beach, or even higher up on the peaty cliffs that sheered off into the sea. That way Skada could company her, and she would have a blanket companion, a partner in any fight. But she decided at last that the fire itself was more danger than it was worth. She fell asleep sitting up, the cliff at her back and her sword on her lap, lulled into dreams by the sound of the ebbing sea.

  Morning showed her the long shallow paths of the low tide, a greater beach than any she had ever seen, even in Berick Harbor. She wandered out between the tidal pools, picking up fluted shells and creatures whorled into shell mazes. Berick never had such a great tide. The water lowered, of course, but it did not uncover such swatches of land. Why—she could almost walk the flats straight across to the land of the Garuns.

  “And what would I say to King Kras when I got there?” she wondered aloud. “That he has changed my boy beyond all recognition?” She knew in her heart of hearts that was not true. In some awful way, Jemmie’s years with the Garuns had only made him more of what he had been from the first. It was true. She had sent them a little boy. They had returned him a littler man. It was not Jem’s fault. Or the Garuns. “Or even ours,” she whispered. “He is what he is.” But still, she knew he had to be stopped before he hurt himself, before he hurt the Dales. “Piet is right about that,” Jenna told herself. “And who but I can stop him?”

  She turned and, with the sun at her back, stared up at the peaty cliffs. There were ten horsemen ranged along the top gazing down at her.

  I should have spoken to him before I left, she thought wearily. I expect it is too late now.

  THE HISTORY:

  Editor

  Pasden University Press

  Sir:

  Pasden University Press has issued many monographs by the late and hardly lamented Dr. Magic Magon, most of them abusing Dalian historical subjects. I am sure you are aware that much of Dr. Magon’s work has been seriously discredited in the last few years. His scholarly star is on the wane; my father’s star is once more on the rise.

  I have in my possession several articles of my father’s, never published, that might well be expanded into monographs by myself. I have followed in his footsteps, becoming a scholar in the field of archeohistography, studying Dalian history and iconography under Drs. Doyle and Macdonald at Colebrook College, and musicology under Dr. Eldridge. I received my doctorate at the University of Berike-on-Sea. A selected bibliography of my articles and my father’s follows.

  The piece I am most interested in enlarging into a monograph is the enclosed study of folk songs after the fall of the so-called Anna of the Dales. My father calls this time the Interregnum and explains that while this term usually refers to “the period between kings, in the case of the Dales it was more like a semicolon.” (He was ever the aphorist.)

  My one area of disagreement with my father—which I shall carefully limn in the monograph with complete documentation—is that I feel there really was an historical Anna (or Jenna or Janna or Jo-Hanna, all simple cognates) though I am certain she was but a minor tribal figure who fought alongside the others during the disastrous Gender Wars. A hazy shadow wraps about this real figure; bards remake history to please their own masters. Later tellers borrow what they need to craft a better story. This is not new to an
y folklorist or archeohistographer. But I plan to show in this monograph how history and story—a word which grows out of it like a child following a parent—can prove the heretofore unprovable: In the fall of a hero is the rise of a nation.

  And I will be the child building upon the father’s shoulders, thus lifting us both (and the monograph) to a higher plane.

  I look forward to hearing from you and working with you—I hope—in the very near future.

  THE STORY:

  After a moment of fear Jenna recognized the horsemen, soldiers who patrolled the coast roads. She waved and one of them—the obvious leader—hailed her in return, urging his horse down the grassy cliffside slope.

  “We do not wish to disturb you,” he said, when he realized who it was, “but we check out all strangers on the shore.”

  “As you should, captain,” Jenna replied. “Though the disturbances have been few.”

  “Even a few is too many,” the captain replied. “I will leave you, my queen, to finish your …”

  “My mood is over,” Jenna replied easily. “And there is much troubling me at home. I would ride back quickly, and not alone. Can you spare me two of your soldiers?”

  “I can spare all for you, Anna,” he replied. “We are done with the patrol and are about to be relieved.”

  “Two will be plenty,” Jenna said. “I need to move quickly and safely back to Berick. Three together will be an unassailable force on the road against which footpads and highwaymen will stand down.”

  “Especially if those three are armed and riding fast,” the captain agreed.

  “Especially then.”

  She saddled her horse speedily and rode easily up the slope after him to the spot where the soldiers were waiting. The captain chose two immediately: a well-muscled woman about thirty years old with corn-colored hair cropped short as an old man’s, and a scarred veteran closer to fifty who sat his horse as if he no longer knew where his own legs ended and the horse’s barreled body began.

  “Sarana and Voss will make a fine escort, Anna,” the captain told her.