by J. S. Crews
He continued, "I know each of you understands that it will one day be your responsibility to give your people peace and justice in the name of our lord the King. That is part of every lord’s duty. Perhaps, if you seek a lesson from what you have seen today, let it be that many over whom you will sit in judgment are not monsters. They are not necessarily the acts they have committed, no matter how despicable those may be. They are simply people."
"But why not at least try to explain the reasons for what he had done to make you understand?"
Again, the Duke shrugged. "Perhaps he had no reason or does not even remember himself what it was. Perhaps all that remained was his own guilt and self-loathing. Something you must understand, my young charges, is that each of us carries a beast within. Every person, great and small, man and woman has one, and it is how much or how little we tamp down the flames of that beast that dictates what sort of person we are. With some, for whatever reason, their beast takes them over, and they suddenly find themselves lost. They have committed acts for which there is neither the possibility of forgiveness or even understanding. How could those who once loved them possibly still feel the same, knowing what they have done? Will the law demand their life? These questions carry them deeper and deeper away from who they once were as they become broken things. A man in such a state becomes not unlike a true beast, completely overtaken by that which he once kept hidden inside, as he finds victims to sate his hungers and desires. Whatever, whoever he once was, is gone."
"You seem like you feel sorry for him," was the surprised rejoinder.
Again, the Duke seemed to consider before answering, "In my heart, I am most sorry for him."
"But he was a murderer," interjected Jonas, nonplussed.
"Yes," Valdimir agreed, "he was that. But I would wager, were I the wagering sort, that Aelfrid Plowmanson was more than just a murderer. Before starting down the dark road that led ultimately to my judgment, he might have been a husband or a father or someone’s brother. Certainly, he was someone’s son, once no more than a babe on their knee. He was not always an outlaw. Perhaps he worked a farm as his name tells us his father or grandfather did. You will recall that I said I felt sorry for the man in my heart, but did that feeling change the outcome of my judgment?"
Both boys nodded in the negative, though truly the question had been rhetorical. Continuing, the Duke said, "You need not hate in order to condemn. In fact, you must not. Only a decision based on reason and tempered by mercy can be truly just. Reason comes from the rational mind that decides what must be done; and mercy comes from the heart, whether that mercy means sparing the condemned or simply seeing that the sentence is carried out swiftly and without spectacle. That is what you witnessed here: justice with mercy. Do you understand?"
The two boys nodded and exited behind their liege-lord, visibly shaken, not only from the experience of watching a man die but also from witnessing something very odd—and disturbing—in the dark eyes of the executioner.
* * * * *
The gloaming sun set the heavens ablaze in a riot of violet and orange as Duke Valdimir stood silently. An observer would have seen only a lord surveying his lands that stretched as far as the eye could reach and further to the west, first upon the jumble of tile-roofed buildings crisscrossed by the narrow streets of his city, then into the lush fields beyond. What was not easily discernable, however, was that he was actually seeing very little. Rather, he was lost in a reverie of his own making, images of events and people from the past playing out in his mind. The real-world scene before his eyes only served as a backdrop, the painted canvas hung at the rear of a mummer’s stage to provided the illusion of scenery.
This was the Lord’s Chamber, the bedroom suite that served as the private apartment he shared with the Duchess. These lush quarters sat atop the main keep of Newport Castle, nothing higher except for the small observation tower on the roof. Twin balconies flanked the huge canopied featherbed and sitting area in the center of the chamber, one facing east toward the Endless Sea and the other west toward the Duke’s inland holdings. It was the western balcony the Lord now haunted, an ornate glass of amber-colored spirits in his hand and a great deal on his mind. West, so that he could stare into the dying sunlight and think.
"Will you speak of what is troubling you, or are you content to simply brood silently like a stubborn storm cloud?"
"Do not trouble me, woman." His answer was gruff, but the words had been spoken with a wolfish smile, because he enjoyed goading the Duchess. He was not to be disappointed, it seemed, as he heard her make a derisive sound. She was to his rear, upon a divan in the small sitting area, worrying her fingers tirelessly at some sort of needlework and burning a whole in his back with her annoyed glare.
The Duchess Aleese was his wife of more than three decades. She had given him his first child in his twentieth year, before even he had inherited his father’s lands and titles. Two more who lived to adulthood had followed over the years, among them a strong son and heir who now had a son of his own. She had been a good wife, if a bit maddening at times. The younger sister of the Duke of Danford, she had been raised to womanhood in that southron court—a viper spawned from a pit of vipers.
Still, she was his own viper, and they had long ago learned to understand the limits each could endure. In the end, it made sense. It was a union that brought two of the most powerful houses in the kingdom into an alliance, one in the south and the other a northern cadet branch of the royal house, and she had proven adept at the sort of political gamesmanship from which northerners instinctively shied away.
"Are you troubled by the execution?" she asked. Never taking her eyes from her craft work, she continued loftily, "Executions always leave you in a foul temper. By the gods, Valdimir, you behave as though their crimes are somehow your fault."
This was an old contention between them that did manage to rankle his nerves. "Taking a life in the King’s name is a solemn duty that is not to be taken lightly, my lady." He paused, consciously softening his tone, then went on, "But there is more. I am a lord, responsible for much and many, in case you had not noticed."
He was goading her again and again it worked. She made a sound something like a laugh but mocking, rather than from mirth. "Being a lord is the province of fat old men with voices loud enough to order others about."
"In the south, perhaps."
She ignored that barb. "Why the fools obey when you issue your commands will forever be lost on me, but I will admit to being rather relieved that they do." She continued with a slight smile, "I do not think I would much enjoy kitchen work. Or hunger."
"We might all know hunger if you were cooking, my lady."
She pursed her lips and stopped her needlework at that. "Careful, my lord," she warned.
"I yield, my lady. Can you ever forgive me?"
"I will attempt to forgive you," she answered, her hands already moving again. "Bigger issues then?"
"My lady?"
"On your mind. Troubling you. Bigger issues? Anything your wife should know?"
Duke Valdimir sighed. "It is nothing new, my lady."
Both were quiet for a time, then the Duchess offered, "So, loftier issues it is. Your cousin, His Highness, our sovereign king has but one heir, who is sickly and has been his whole life. Your other cousin, His Grace Duke Joran has but one heir, who is now in your charge as a squire." She paused then, before eventually continuing, "And I have given you but a single living son."
He sighed at that, thinking about the two additional sons of theirs who had been stillborn early in their marriage. "You know I do not blame you for that."
They were both quiet again for a few moments, allowing rising emotions to settle, then she continued, "There is no one to blame, Your Grace. But facts are facts, and those facts dictate that a House which cannot strengthen itself through strong heirs must do so by other means."
"Why must you always speak for dramatic effect? Say what you mean, wife."
"What I mean
is alliances. I gave you one perfect son, Your Grace. Don’t be greedy." She sighed in seeming exasperation. "You always were sentimental. You would like for men to think otherwise, but you are and you always have been."
"You say it as though it were a vice."
"It is a vice or can be one, at least." Her voice was rising now, the needlework forgotten again. "Look at you: fretting yourself into wrinkles over the future of your House, yet your one trueborn heir was shuffled-off and married to what? A nobody. Not even an earl’s daughter; his niece, she was. Who was her father, pray tell me? A household knight was he?"
In the same way Jonas and Alastar were now being fostered in Newport, Prince Valdic had been sent to the court of the Earl of Windom as a youth. Such arrangements were commonplace between noble Houses with the hope of eventual knighthoods when the time was right. Most often, fostering would be done in the household of an immediate overlord, but sometimes a familial or longstanding relationship would override this custom. This was why Valdic had been sent to the Earl of Windom instead of the Royal Court in the capital. The boy had gone there to foster and fallen in love with the Earl’s niece, marrying her after returning from his tour at the border. This was another old argument. To say Aleese had not approved was a gross understatement.
"You are trying to goad me now. You know full well who her father was and that he was a great friend to me."
"Aha! Sentimental. I have proven my point."
He ignored her. "Furthermore, I say you wrong our daughter-by-law. Has she ever been less than dutiful as a wife to our son or a mother to our grandson?"
"No," she pursed her lips and admitted. "I rather like her, in truth. But don’t you dare tell her. That is fully beside the point, however. I dare say I might have grown to like a pretty little peasant girl just as well. And mightn’t she have been just as dutiful and smile just as prettily?"
She was on a roll now, in her war glory, but with her barbed tongue in place of a sword. He had no fitting answer that would quell her. "Our daughters you gave to great lords in their own right, which is proper, though you might have thought to strengthen our ties to Houses that did not already owe you fealty. Instead, you strengthen alliances that needed no strengthening; and your heir you marry to a woman that brings him and our family nothing."
"I seem to recall a dowry and an inheritance," he put in, lazily.
"A pathetic dowry paid by a lord for his brother’s daughter and an inheritance of minor estates. How much gold do those estates produce that one might use to purchase influence? How many men-at-arms in the muster?" She continued, “If you are struggling for the correct answers, the ones you seek are ‘too little’ and ‘too few’, my lord.”
"Is that it then? There is no way to increase Celeste’s inheritance, but would it satisfy you if I should approach her lordly cousin the Earl of Windom and ask him to correct his father’s mistake by fattening her dowry? Would a few thousand head of cattle suffice, you think, or shall we demand a year’s tax revenue from his earldom?"
The Duchess was not amused. "Very droll," she replied. "No, Your Grace; what’s done is done, but our princely son could have had any maiden in the known world. A duke’s daughter. A Lyrounni or Madaran princess. Whosoever he, or we, wished for him."
"Well, as you said; what’s done is done. Valdic got who he got, and I, for one, will not be heard to complain."
She guffawed. "Oh, I will forever complain, my lord husband, for all the good it will do. But what is will ever be." Returning to her craft work, she sighed into the deafening quiet, then added, "I pray to the gods that the day never comes when we have need of gold and influence and many and more men to kill or die on your command."
There followed stillness for an uncomfortably long moment, before Duke Valdimir answered, "I pray likewise, my lady."
Chapter Four
“The Common Man”
The Eborhum market was awash with activity.
That was nothing new. Eborhum Manor might represent just one tiny corner of a large kingdom, but its borders were home to multiple villages, and even self-reliant people had need of trade at times. All throughout the kingdom, Fifthday was designated as Market Day for this very purpose; citizens traveled to nearby towns for needed items or to profit from their own excess produce or goods.
The market in Eborhum was a small one, in truth. It served as a resource for locals needing to pick up basic foodstuffs or have a horse reshoed. It was, however, the nearest such gathering to the surrounding villages, often crowded by simple folk unlikely to travel more than a few miles from their birthplace. A far greater selection was offered at the larger markets in the Baron’s seat at Durleston and in the Earl’s city of Sarton, but such travel was only undertaken when necessary.
Today the smaller market would do just fine for Ansel’s purposes. Lord Wendel, like most lords, was patron to the only blacksmith for miles. Any man wealthy enough to own horses and swords in abundance surely understood the value of playing host to such a skilled craftsman, and Wendel was no different. Whatever else he was, a fool he was not.
The blacksmith received free rent in shop space as well as a small salary; and any of his time not busy working for Lord Wendel, he was free to earn extra coin working for the people of the town and visitors passing through. It was a profitable arrangement for both parties, especially taking into account the fact that His Lordship also received a tax on all that outside work. Further, simply having the availability of a blacksmith’s services attracted business to the market.
Truly, Ansel would have just as soon stayed home this Fifthday. He was still stewing about his recent meeting with Lord Wendel and his uppity little scroll scratcher. He was worrying, if truth be known. Poor Kaeti, though, was normally so caught up in the work of homemaking that Fifth- and Sixthdays, market and temple days respectively, were a chance for her to get out from beneath their leaky thatched roof and be part of the wider world, even if it was just a stroll to Eborhum.
Market Day represented community, and the social aspect was something she needed. For every moment spent haggling the price of a warm meat pie from a vendor, two were spent conversing with a friend or trading gossip. In truth, he adored the smile it brought to her face, and so he rarely denied her the trip, even though his mind was tortured and he prayed he would not come face to face with Lord Wendel.
Not skipping the market was probably for the best anyway, especially in his current predicament. Over the past several months, he had been collecting pieces of scrap metal with a mind toward selling it for whatever the smith saw fit to pay, a notion which seemed wise to cash in on now that coin was desperately needed. Just then, the craftsman was examining a rusty nailhead to gauge its usefulness for melting the metal down and fashioning something of value.
Then Ansel heard the scream.
In that instant, he flashed back to another time in what sometimes felt like another life. The last time he had heard a scream like that was in a cold forest in the far north. Bright, warm blood staining his soldier’s tabard. The smell of fear and dying men’s shit so strong in his nose that he could have sworn it was here and now.
You’re in the market, fool. It’s sheep shit ya smell, he mentally chided himself, attempting to shake free of the memory and catch sight of his family at the same time. It took him only a moment to find them in the crowd and then he was moving, taking Kaeti by the arm and pulling her and the child she carried in the sling across her chest to the side of the street and out of the path of whatever was approaching.
Everyone was gawking, and what he saw when he looked for himself caused him to grimace involuntarily. The market crowd was parting to make room for a squat man dressed in forest greens and riding a mule. It might actually have passed for comical were he not pulling another man along behind the animal, his hands bound and tied to the saddle. The prisoner had obviously been the source of the scream, since it was repeated when he stumbled to be dragged across the dusty path.
Stepping forward
to look past the Wood family to see for himself what was happening, the blacksmith grunted, "Looks like ol’ Tink caught ‘im one, eh?"
Ansel’s lack of understanding must have been obvious by his expression, because the other man supplied further, "He’s one o’ Lord Wendel’s verderers, he is. Musta caught ‘isself a poacher."
At that, Kaeti turned to Ansel with a frightened expression: one he understood but hoped the blacksmith had not noticed. Verderers were responsible for enforcing forest law, paid in coin and the use of sufficient land within protected reserves to allow them to grow a garden and perhaps keep a few small livestock. They were legally empowered to levy fines and make arrests for offenses like poaching.
The reason for Kaeti’s fear was understandable. Poaching was a serious offense and one which Ansel had committed himself from time to time. As a franklin, he was not restricted in his ownership of a longbow like others with lands bordering the protected forests. Hunting on his own or common public lands was also his right under forest law.
When a wounded animal escaped onto protected wilderness, however, Ansel could not—in good conscience—simply stop tracking the animal and leave it to die a hard death from the wound. All animals were creatures of the earth, just like mankind, and precious to his goddess. Never mind that it was increasingly difficult to keep his head above water financially with the debt he had inherited. Being reared with proper ethics as a hunter and having mouths to feed at home had made him a lawbreaker more than once, despite knowing he would have no way of proving he had wounded the animal before entering the protected woods if ever caught.
That uncertainty was a wager he accepted, feeling he had no other choice. Morality was at odds with the law at such times, and he had learned long ago that it was one’s own conscience that either allowed them to sleep soundly or kept them awake. Besides, he already had plenty on his conscience, much and more from his time soldiering for king and country. The law would simply have to stand aside this time. He placed his faith instead in his goddess and did what he felt was right, laws be damned. So far that, at least, had never kept him from a sound rest. They both knew, though, that him being caught poaching would be disastrous for their little family.
