by Ron Miller
CHAPTER III
THE JACKAL, THE FOX & THE HOUND
Meanwhile, back at the palace, Prince Ferenc is in a frenzy of despair. Lord Roelt will be returning to Blavek in a matter of days, he is probably on the road now, yet Bronwyn is still missing, and the damning letters with her. Why hadn’t I listened to Payne? he worries. Why hadn’t I destroyed them? Payne is always right in matters like these: if I need proof of that, this affair is certainly sufficient. I expect that Payne will be furious when he discovers how badly I’ve botched something so simple.
And Prince Ferenc hates making Payne angry.
The prince and his sister had grown up all in a golden afternoon; the handsome boy and the handsome girl. They knew only parks and green forests, broad lawns and small, clear lakes with fountains and beautifully carved and paints boats. They each had stables full of lean, muscular horses, with steaming breath and rolling eyes. There were carriages, carts, and buggies for whatever degree of comfort or occasion of state might be required. When they were taken on afternoon drives, it was in a carriage with a coachman, two footmen and a groom. A vanguard of household militia made certain that the way is without hazard. Every day, at exactly the same time, on a lawn during the brief summer or indoors when the weather turned frosty, the children gathered for tea, accompanied by their governesses and tutors. At small tables covered with embroidered linens and set with silver and translucent china, they drank their spicy tea from crystal glasses in silver holders. Their birthdays were as lavish as coronations. For toys, they had real armies and real houses full of living dolls that would do whatever they were asked. The children’s companions were chosen from the highest-ranking families and were intelligent, active and obedient. Neither the boy nor the girl wanted for anything. There was one great inequality, however: one was a prince and the other a princess.
Their father, the king, had left the rearing and education of his children to professionals. There was always a proper method for doing something was his philosophy and the best way to approach a problem was to find the people who are expert at solving it and let them do their jobs unimpeded. As applied to the rule of his nation, it was on the whole an admirable philosophy . So perhaps he had no reason to imagine it would be any different with his children.
Bronwyn discovered that even a king is entitled to his mistakes.
By right and precedent, the boy, as both the elder and, only incidentally, the male child, was heir to the throne. Had the girl been the elder, the king would perhaps have treated her more as the boy had been treated, the children were elements of tradition, not the fruit of his loins, flesh of his flesh, his son, his daughter. If Fate had chosen one to be the elder, rather than the other, so be it. Tradition dictated that it would be the elder child who would eventually be the monarch. So be it. Suitability for the role was a consideration that never entered into the matter.
The children’s lives were in the hands of a succession of nurses, nannies, governesses and tutors. Loving hands, no question about that; caring and capable ones, there was never any doubt. But they were still hands controlled by the Great Puppeteer of tradition. The prince was destined to be the king someday and all of his education and all of his training had to prepare him for that career. Long days were spent in lessons on military matters: strategies of historic victories, the lives of the great generals and admirals, the rudiments of weapon construction and the theories of ballistics, those aspects of chemistry and metallurgy that could be applied to warfare; he was taught sailing, naval architecture and navigation. Nor did his education neglect the intellectual and artistic, for a king needs to be wise and cultured, or at least be able to maintain the appearance of being such, if he were not to be considered a bumpkin by his fellow heads of state. The prince was instructed in philosophy, the classics, languages ancient and modern, astronomy and geography, music and art. For a child of even modest intelligence, curiosity and ambition, this education would have been a joy, since its teachers were all expert, enthusiastic and sympathetic, an ideal composition, and would have, even at the worst, turned out a passably usable product. Unfortunately, the prince was sullen, lazy, unambitious and if not even remotely intelligent, had made up the difference with craftiness. He had taken everything his privileged life had allowed him and considered it as nothing less than what he was due. He was spoiled. His attitude toward his training was that it was an unnecessary and nearly unbearable burden he was forced to tolerate if only to avoid his father’s wrath; there was a preconceived image of the future king that his father was adamant that the prince be made to fit. He escaped it as often as possible, having also measured his father’s indulgence to a fineness.
The life of the younger of the two children was very different, though she did all she could to improve it according to her own ambition and contrariness. Her official education was limited to those subjects that were thought would best suit her for making intelligent conversation, as a suitable ornament for the court of her brother the king, and toward developing her into a respectable and desirable bride who would contribute her part toward making the international ruling class even more interrelated and inbred than it already is. This did not place any great demands on her time. It was supposed that she would devote her free periods to riding, playing croquet or tennis, painting or drawing, being taken sailing or for carriage trips through the city parks, or whatever other gentle pursuits are appropriate for a young royal princess. Her free time was her own, however, and she quickly discovered that nothing prevented her from accompanying her brother in his lessons. The prince’s tutors just as quickly discovered that while they were ostensibly instructing a patently dull-witted boy, they were in fact educating another child, one who was officially invisible to them, but whose intelligence was as brightly keen as a kitten’s.
She loved to run and climb and fight with the children of the servants. She had to be more circumspect then. Her father could never be allowed to see her in a tree or wrestling in the dirty furrows of the kitchen herb gardens. More than once, a sniveling servant child was sent to its room by angered and frightened parents after they had caught him or her pounding the royal princess’ face with a pulped tomato. The fact that the princess had already given their child a black eye was of no possible account in the matter. Still, it must be admitted that the punishments were only token.
The princess never seemed aware of differences in rank, at least she seldom made an issue of it, and the servants loved her like one of their own. Perhaps she benefitted, in their affection, from a kind of rebound, since her brother enjoyed a perverse pleasure in creating situations where he would be able to bring grief and distress to the defenseless palace staff.
Thus the two children each became the opposite of what the king intended to create, though he was to his dying day unaware of this. The prince is unpleasant, condescending, physically weak, vain, dull, supercilious, sarcastic and lazy. The princess is intelligent, though not particularly intellectual ‘she enjoys learning but has not yet learned to enjoy thinking), curious, too pragmatic to be romantic, a little too ambitious, a little too serious, reckless, selfish, physically strong; quick-tempered; self-important, perhaps, and much more naive than she believes, but not altogether an unpleasant person. If there was any error in the princess’ education, perhaps “miscalculation” is a better word, even if it implies that what is done is done consciously, which it is not, it is that of artificiality. If her playmates and their parents treated her as an equal, it is not because they actually believed that to be so. Certainly not, and neither did Bronwyn, at heart. The children were always aware that the princess was of another, and superior, species than they. She had dozens of fond playmates, but not a single friend. The parents were all too aware of the power that lay behind the girl. While they were not obsequious, neither were they stupid: they still pulled their punches. If the children’s play was rough-and-tumble, the princess was never hurt beyond a bruise or a scuff. If she occasionally lost at the games they played, she ne
ver lost very badly, and never as often as she won. If she thinks she has grown tough and self-assured, it is in large measure because her opposition had been resilient; she earnestly believes that her world is an accurate replica of the larger world beyond the palace. It is not: it is a fictional simulacrum. A Romantic utopia. Within the palace, it made a difference that she was Bronwyn Tedeschiiy, no matter how much it is pretends it didn’t; no one told her that the world outside doesn’t care. There is more than the obvious differences in the manners with which the two treated their inferiors. It is difficult to truly tell which is the worst: that the prince considers people of common birth with contempt, or the princess never considers them at all.
As part of the prince’s training, his friends were carefully chosen from among the leaders of the ruling class. Sons of the most powerful barons, dukes and earls were selected for his companions. He was expects to play, exercise and study with those who would eventually support his throne. These boys would come and go, as circumstances, politics and personalities dictated. One only was a constant. He arrived at the palace when the prince was seven years old. The newcomer was an elfin child, preternaturally thin, with black eyes sunken deep within their sockets and hair as black and glossy as oil against his pale, dry skin. He had hands like spiders, but they were not fragile: the princess once saw him break walnuts in his fists. He had not been in the prince’s company for more than a few days before it was clear who possessed the dominant personality. While always obsequious and demonstrably aware of his rank in relation to his royal companion, Payne Roelt was no toady like the others. Instead, the princess saw the other boys treating Payne with the same fawning respect they dealt her brother.
Eventually, in games and conversation, Payne became the acknowledged leader. It was he who suggested the sports, the day’s activities, the rules by which they played, the topics they discussed. It was his opinion that settled any debate, his ruling that squared any dispute on the field. The prince seemed relieved to be able to delegate his authority to his friend, who in turn merely acted in the prince’s name. Ferenc was pleased at how accurately his lieutenant was able to translate the prince’s desires into such intelligent commands, and was amazed at how often his thoughts are anticipated. His friend was able to come up with the most impressive ideas bare minutes before the prince himself was about to think them. And did the new boy ever for a moment consider taking credit away from the prince? Not at all! What honesty! What loyalty!
Ferenc was convinced, and admittedly not without some justification, that his teachers took pleasure in making him feel stupid and that his sister treated him like a simpleton. In the person of Payne Roelt was at last was someone who appreciated his intelligence.
Less than a year after his arrival, the father of the new boy died. It was easy, then, for Payne to become a permanent fixture of the royal household. The princess and the lieutenant quickly developed a loathing and fear for one another. He recognized in her an intelligence as vital as his own, if of a different variety. She saw in him a power that her brother lacked and that he was exercising this power in the prince’s name and with the prince’s authority but not always with the prince’s knowledge.
The tall, lean girl and the slight, reptilian boy were, in fact, more equally matched than either would have cared to admit, even had they realized it. Both were dedicated individualists, powerful both physically and intellectually, imaginative, ambitious, heedless and with great courage, single-mindedness and boldness. But the energies they possessed were of very different sorts and manifested themselves in very different ways. To compare them is as futile as comparing a wildcat and an electric current. The princess knew what the boy was doing to her brother within weeks of his arrival and the boy just as quickly was aware of her knowledge. Even though he recognized the girl as an enemy, he never treated her with anything other than his usual faultlessly polite respect, a smirking unflappability that invariably drove the girl into a helpless rage.
There was little or nothing that the princess could do about him, or to him, and he knew this. But he also knew that she was an implacable foe, and possessed of a mind so alien to his own that to attempt to predict what she could or could not, or would or would not, do would be impossible for him. So he was polite to her, always watched her and tried never to underestimate her.
The process was already well under way when the princess found herself being gradually forced out of the palace. More and more often she had discovered rooms locked where they had once stood open; unfamiliar faces among the servants: faces surly, evil and sneering; strangers coming and going on business of which she had no knowledge; banquets, balls and receptions held from which she was excluded by never being told of them. The number of occasions where her official presence might be employed, christenings, openings, concerts, operas and that sort of thing, declined. These, which her brother had once shunned like the plague, were now attended by him, always with his amanuensis at his side to provide the witty remark, the pithy epigram that would soon be quoted throughout the city as having been spoken by the prince himself.
Occasionally, the intriguing pale young man who always accompanied the prince, someone of undoubted importance, everyone was certain, would appear in the prince’s place, if the heir to the throne was indisposed or demanded elsewhere. Fewer people all the time asked themselves where the princess was; eventually few people even missed her.
* * * * *
The tall young man in the tight-fitting, dove-grey and entirely honorary uniform of a major in the Royal Slottenen Fusiliers paces the ornately parqueted floor of his apartment. The potentially handsome, babyish face is twisted into a pink knot with the effort of puzzling out a dilemma.
It is, of course, Prince Ferenc, Bronwyn’s brother.
Ferenc’s features are a kind of boneless version of his sister’s: where her hair is copper, his is rust; where her eyes are like jade, his are like lime gelatin; where her full lips are sensuous, his are sensual. Since his discovery that the letters were missing, and can it only be a day?, he has spent most of the subsequent time worrying about the consequences. He hasn’t yet thought much beyond the immediate wrath of Lord Roelt, but it is gradually coming to him what exposure of the letters to the barons would mean. As soon as he had realized that his secretary has been rifled and the incriminating packets stolen, he knew with a certainty who must have taken them. He had immediately stormed Bronwyn’s apartment, but she had not been there. Reluctant to raise an alarm if there was yet a chance to regain his property quietly, he searched the palace. There had been no sign of his sister in any of her usual haunts. There had been no point in trying to look any further: the palace is labyrinthine, having grown like a variety of coral reef with, he has no doubt, literally thousands of rooms and passages. He would not be surprised to learn that in his lifetime he had not visited more than a very small fraction of them, which is true. In the time he would waste searching for Bronwyn, she could be at the doors of the Privy Council. And before that happened, he would certainly rather see his sister dead. So, acting with atypical astuteness, he had called for the Commandant of the Guards, Major-General Jaeger Praxx. It is something he loathed doing and it is only because he fears the general slightly less than the wrath of the Privy Council, who can, after all, deprive him of the throne, that he was able to bring himself to summon the man. And now that he has done so, he awaits the general’s coming by curling into one of the luxuriously upholstered chairs that decorate the chamber, tucking the heels of his patent-leather boots under his soft hams, and if he is not actually sucking his thumb, he gives every impression of doing so.
In his fear of the major-general, Ferenc has some reasonable justification. The man wields power exceeded only by that of Lord Roelt and, ideally and supposedly, the prince himself. Although Praxx is mightily ambitious, an emotion that drives him as a hundred atmospheres of live steam drives a locomotive, that ambition concerns Lord Roelt very little. Praxx is no rival. Unlike most mortals, Praxx is on
e of those exceedingly rare individuals who has been fortunate enough to have early in life realized their fondest ambition; in Praxx’s case, this required serving the one and only man in the world he admired: Payne Roelt. He intelligently recognized that his only opportunity to acquire the power he craved was through his association with the young man. Indeed, Praxx and Roelt are as well matched as the couple in the children’s rhyme of the husband who can eat no fat and the wife who can eat no lean. Praxx craves power with the same singlemindedness with which Roelt craves gold. Wealth and property do not interest Praxx in the slightest; domination of human beings do. He desires only power and the opportunity to exercise it on his fellow creatures. The fact that out of the billion or so inhabitants of the planet there would always remain one undominated human bothers him not one whit; he is a realist and there is no need to be selfish. He is honest enough to admit to himself that while he has the genius to devise schemes of diabolical complexity, his Guards have infiltrated the body of Society like the invisible tendrils of a cancer and the survival of even the smallest organ depends upon his lightest word, he simply hasn’t the sort of personality that inspires loyalty, confidence or trust. It is no good having the ability to create great events without the means to carry them out and have them remain carried. Lord Roelt provides that instrumentality. There is at least one consolation for falling one short of the potential of dominating the entire human race: if that last human is not exactly under Praxx’s thumb, he is at least being used, and that is the next best thing.
