“How so?”
“I don’t want Katrin involved in the Court in any way,” Menders explained. “Not after what you and Trottenheim have told me about Princess Aidelia.” He quieted, remembering the gruesome stories.
Aidelia hated being cuddled or held. She fought anyone who picked her up. Worse still, she reveled in cruelty, torturing animals, pinching and gouging her nurses. She would claim that no-one could make her cry and then would rake her arm with her fingernails until blood flowed, laughing the entire time. Her most recent hobby had been getting hold of any sort of blade and using it to cut designs in her arms and legs. She sickened any reasonable person who saw her, because of her continually roving eyes with the white showing all round and because of her filthiness, as she fought viciously against being bathed or groomed. All this in a child not much past her fifth birthday – a child who was the Heiress to the Throne of Mordania.
“Tell me,” Menders said carefully. “Is there a chance that Katrin will be like Aidelia?’ Inside he was screaming in agony at the thought.
“Different fathers,” Franz answered immediately. “Aidelia’s father was completely demented, mad as a spoon. Did that eye-rolling Aidelia does. His favorite hobby was killing puppies, loved watching torture, once got out of his carriage and bludgeoned a man to death with a walking stick for no reason anyone could find. He ended up deciding to fly off the Palace roof one night when he’d been drinking more than usual.”
“Oh yes?” Menders murmured. He knew how to help people to ‘fly’. Two people took an arm and a leg apiece, then one… two… three… Very likely Aidelia’s father had been assisted in his flight.
“Who is Katrin’s father, please?” Menders said in the bland, calm way that often tricked people into speaking before they thought.
“That tone is a doctor’s trick too, Menders,” Franz responded, just as blandly. “However, I will tell you. Bernhard, Lord Markha.”
Menders blinked in surprise.
“I know Lord Markha,” he said without thinking. “He was one of my tutors at the Military Academy and at Special Services training.”
“I wondered if you might have known him. He was teaching at the Academy during the time you would have been there.”
“Was teaching there,” Menders repeated softly.
“Yes, he’s dead,” Franz answered “Shortly before Katrin’s birth. It’s presumed the Queen had it arranged.”
Menders was silent. Bernhard Markha had been an intelligent, blond man from an Old Mordanian family. In every way Markha was the foil to Menders; tall, fair, far more outgoing. He was friendly, compassionate and had been protective of the younger cadets. He’d been assigned as Menders’ tutor when it was found that Menders’ education prior to entering the Academy had been lacking. Later, Markha had been one of Menders’ circle of friends.
“For someone like him… with the Queen. How could he?” Menders said with distaste.
“The Queen has her better moments,” Franz answered gently. “And she isn’t mad. She’s a drunkard, yes, and of late she’s a slattern and has gotten worse with time. She had times of being most attractive before her latest pregnancy. She and Markha had a long association. His father was attached to the Court and Markha was around it from the time he was a boy. They were of an age, he and the Queen. Also – you’re very young, Menders.”
“I’m not an innocent, nor am I without experience,” Menders retorted with a bit of heat.
“My apologies. Some men are attracted by dissipation in women. It draws out their protective nature. Markha was one of them. He had great feeling for others and a great desire to help her, and for a time it seemed that his attentions would change the Queen – she was still the Princess then. She improved greatly, had a sense of purpose. Then the old Queen, “Morghenna the Terrible” finally died - and he was no more.”
Menders sat silently for a while, looking at Katrin asleep in her basket, her fist curled under her chin. His relief that she didn’t have the same father as Aidelia was palpable. Then he felt a sudden and startling surge of regret for Markha, the caring and decent man he’d known, who’d decided to swim in strange and violent waters.
“The Court eats people,” Franz sighed, leaning back in his chair and putting his feet on his desk.
“So it seems. More reason to keep Katrin away from it.”
“Menders, if the Queen summons her there, you’ll have no choice,” Franz replied.
Menders looked at him over his glasses, and Franz turned away.
“We’ll see. I’m very resourceful,” Menders told him.
“No doubt, we will. You’re an amazing young man.”
“You talk like you’re an old grandfather,” Menders answered.
“I’m hard on thirty. I was married. I’m widowed and have no desire to remarry. I’ve been a Court Physician and let me tell you, that jades a man rapidly. So forgive me if I sound like a sage,” Franz sighed. He sought out a cigar and offered the box to Menders, who declined.
“You seem to adapt quickly,” Franz continued, lighting the cigar and puffing, opening the window behind him to let out the smoke, while Menders draped a light blanket over Katrin’s bassinet to protect her.
“It’s considered an essential trait for an assassin,” Menders answered.
“Yes, but for an assassin to become a country squire and foster father?” Franz grinned.
Menders shrugged. “Yes. It’s a matter of mental discipline. At this time, I’m the father of a baby girl and managing her estate. So I rise to the challenge.”
Franz shook his head.
“There are men who spend a lifetime learning to adapt that way,” he said.
“I’ve had practice.”
After a few moments of companionable silence, Franz sighed.
“What are we going to do about women way the hells out here?” he said, cocking an eyebrow at Menders.
“In all honesty, after the last two weeks, that is absolutely the last thing on my mind.”
“Springtime will change that,” Franz teased.
Menders grinned. “Springtime will make me even busier, I’m afraid. I’ll have to conserve energy. If you’re feeling amorous, go romance Cook.”
“I might not survive the experience, she’s far too energetic for me,” Franz laughed. Cook was a force of nature, up before any of them every morning, devoting her entire day to the endless preparation of meals, preserving and butchering between times. She was badgering Menders to dig a kitchen garden as well. Menders pointed out that it would have to wait until the ground wasn’t frozen hard as stone. She was a good natured woman, widowed because of a war as so many were, with a nearly grown son in Erdahn who was a journeyman tailor.
“It could be a wonderful match,” Menders jibed.
“You romance her,” Franz snorted.
“Me? She treats me like I’m her son. The other day she rapped my knuckles with a wooden spoon.”
“Brave lady, thrashing the sinister assassin,” Franz laughed. “I’m sure Cook will find her own man given some time and it won’t be you or me. Of course, there’s Mistress Ermina Trottenheim, but that’s more misery than I’m willing to take on. So hire some buxom housemaids, one for you, one for me.”
Menders felt his face go still and hard.
“I’m joking,” the doctor protested. Menders worked to gain control of rising temper.
“Your father was a right bastard, wasn’t he?” Franz asked very quickly, catching Menders off guard. “First rights, and all that nonsense?” Franz hammered on.
“Worse. People were objects to him,” Menders said coldly. “Particularly girls.”
“I apologize, Menders,” Franz replied. “I had an idea, but I wasn’t sure. I have no intention of cutting a swath through the farmer’s daughters, don’t fear. I don’t treat people as objects. I joke a lot. It eases things a great deal when one is a doctor and dealing with life and death all the time. I still miss my wife and she’s been gone for four years
. Any romancing I do will be discreet, as well as lasting, never fear.”
“Thank the Gods I’m too tired to consider it,” Menders grumbled, rattled that this man had gotten so much information out of him.
“Understandable,” Franz grinned. “Your attention is engaged at present by putting this disused place together and loving and caring for that magnificent little baby. Enjoy your new fatherhood, Menders, and don’t worry about the salacious natterings of an old fart like me.”
“Speaking of the baby.” Menders excused himself, rising and lifting Katrin’s bassinet, wanting to take her to his room to settle her in her crib.
“Yes, the day marches on,” Franz answered. “I’m going out on calls.”
Just as Menders was about to go through the door, Franz spoke again.
“You can look at me with your white eyes if you like, but I can’t help wondering – doesn’t an assassin treat people like objects too?”
Menders turned toward him but spared him the eyes.
“Some do. I didn’t. I saw them as people the world would be better off without. People who should be removed, as you would remove a splinter before it goes septic.”
Franz raised his eyebrows.
“I think I’m glad that you’re a country squire now,” he said. “I wouldn’t want to find you creeping up on me in the dark.”
“If I were going to kill you, you would never know I was there. One moment you would be alive, the next moment you would be dead. I would hand your death to you as quietly and intimately as if I had slipped a note into your pocket.”
“That’s a form of mercy, I suppose,” the doctor remarked.
“Very much so. An assassin is a trained professional, as skilled as any craftsman or artisan. We are not sadists who enjoy and relish killing. Any who develop such tendencies are shunned, driven from our ranks and - eliminated.”
Nightmare images flashed across Menders’ inner eye, the story of the great assassin Ranfeld, who had gone mad and begun to kill savagely and indiscriminately. The tales had been whispered in the dormitory of the Military Academy and later in the private rooms of the Special Services department – and Morshall Komroff, Commandant of the Academy, made it a point to tell the grim story to every young assassin.
No-one had been able to stop or eliminate Ranfeld, whose talents as an assassin made him slipperier than ice. Eventually he had been hunted down like an animal by his fellow assassins. Mounted on armored horses, armed with rifles, pikes and lances, they cut him down on a misty plain south of Erdahn. Even so, Ranfeld had managed to kill two of them before they finished him.
Menders would never forget the Commandant’s eyes as he told the story. He had been in the group that had gone after Ranfeld, having been an assassin himself at the time. Because they were shunned by other people, assassins tended to consider one another brothers. It had been a terrible burden for those men to kill one of their own. The Commandant had been more than a brother to Ranfeld – he had been the man’s bonded lover. His eyes were wells of grief when he told the story, again and again, so that young men being sent on their first mission would take heed and remember…
“I have removed many enemies of the state, both within and without Mordania’s borders, and I have helped keep a tenuous peace between Mordania and its neighbors so that others might live,” Menders continued, giving no outward sign of the inward workings of his mind.
“I… hadn’t thought of it like that,” Franz said, somewhat shamefacedly. “You’re a hero. You should have been given a medal.”
“Assassins are never openly commended or acknowledged. We work in the shadows of history. Heroes are loud men who charge the enemy waving a sword. That’s what the public expects and wants. In fact, should I have been killed or captured on a mission in another country, Mordania would disavow any knowledge of me. I would have been erased from all official records, and would never have existed.”
“Hardly seems worth it,” Franz said. “All that risk with no reward?”
“We serve. We do not seek reward,” Menders responded, rising. He went to his room with Katrin. She woke after her short nap and he lifted her out of the bassinet.
He held her, looking into her eyes.
“I think I’m going to have to be all things to you, my little one,” he whispered. “Do you mind? You see, I can be anything. It’s something I learned a long time ago.”
He could swear she smiled. He rocked her gently.
“A man just told me that I love you,” he said, patting her back while her eyes closed. “He’s right, you know.”
(5)
Head of Household
From Menders’ Journal:
Finally received money from The Palace for Katrin’s and the household’s support. Will repay Franz and myself what we’ve forwarded from our own incomes, as there will now be regular payments from the Crown. It seems they haven’t entirely forgotten about us these past months, although I am unsure how I feel about that. Perhaps it would be best if they did.
Purchased a farlin for myself, a primitive horse-type creature, though their resemblance to the common horse is limited to the fact that they have four legs and a long neck. They are used by the Thrun herdsman on the Sea of Grass. He’s largely unbroken and wild, but intelligent and a likely mount, very fast and with a fiery temper. His name, Demon, suits him.
With the roads passable after the thaw, I have made contact with the estate farmers so I can learn how to run this place. They’re the ones who know. I’m sure they expected me to be an arrogant little shit, but I am hoping they will be accommodating when they find I’m ready to learn from them and not tell them what to do. Several have already made use of Franz’s services and Cook’s endlessly simmering pot of stew. They seem wary of all of us, of me in particular. This is to be expected. The Gods only know what stories have circulated about me already. It seems a farmer will ride all the way across a snowy cold landscape to the big house on some pretense or another, just to get a look at an assassin.
Have to cut a lot of wood. Woodlot horribly neglected, much dead wood and many overgrown trees. Thank the gods Lucen knows how to manage a woodlot. He’s good with an axe and I’m skilled with anything with an edge on it. Wood is used for all heating and cooking, even in summer, as it’s always cold enough at night to warrant lighting the fires. We cut wood for hours every day and the stoves and fireplaces eat it in no time. Will see about bringing in some loads of coal or chabron before next winter. Lignus is preferable but expensive; also the Artreyans don’t want to sell much to Mordania. Must look into more efficient heating.
I’m in a quandary regarding running the household. What I know of housekeeping is minimal and I simply do not have the time to devote to such concerns. This spring I must become a farmer, an estate manager, continue being a father for Katrin as well as coping with all problems that arise. I asked Zelia to try the job but from the look of panic in her eyes she is no more anxious to have a position of authority than Lucen is. Cook is working flat out now and keeps the kitchen running admirably, feeding seven people regularly with more from the estate when there is illness or injury on one of the farms. So I am making sad cobbling of the household management and accounts. Where to find a housekeeper out here?
Katrin is growing fast, thriving with Marjana Spaltz as wet nurse and nursemaids giving her bottles at night. So it is high time to tell Mistress Trottenheim to move on. I hope she will be as relieved as I. She has no purpose here and continues to be sulky and disrespectful to all, myself in particular.
Voices filtering through the window from outside distracted Menders from his journal. His well-trained ears discerned a group of the estate farmers, stopping by the kitchen at lunchtime, discussing him.
“Have to say he’s a good one. Shook his hand the other day – like iron. Stronger than mine. He’s no stranger to hard work, even if he is gentry.”
“Seen the little bastard with that axe? It goes around so fast you don’t even see it, then split
s flying everywhere. Swings it from the ground he does.”
“He uses a good old-style saddle on that farlin of his too, not a great cushiony Artreyan saddle. Can ride astride and sidewise too. Saw him jump down and back up yesterday without the farlin stopping. He’s a horseman, I’ll give him that.”
“Watched him walk across the ridgepole of the house the other day to see to those broken roof tiles. Like he was walking across the ground. Never even held his arms out to balance.”
“My girl’s one of the nurserymaids there now and she says he’s a perfect gentleman. Not like some great people can be when there’s a young girl in service at a house. And he loves the little Princess. Always takes her with him. She’s the light of his life. He’s cut out to be a family man.”
“Sound like you’re fixing to get him saddled with your Kata.”
“Be a step up for her, if I could.”
“And you too, no doubt. You old fox.”
The men laughed and walked away.
Menders had to hide a smile. Intrigue was everywhere, even at The Shadows. Kata Brogen was a pleasant young girl and a devoted nurserymaid for Katrin, but lacking in curiosity or native wit – and a mere child as well, of absolutely no interest to him. He had no intention of finding a lady for The Shadows, but if he did, she certainly couldn’t be farther from little Kata.
***
“Where would I go?” Mistress Trottenheim cried, her face crumpled in dismay.
“Back to Erdahn I would imagine,” Menders replied, staying across the room from her. He had not expected her to respond to being relieved of her duties as she had. “Surely you have family, or your late husband’s family…”
She shook her head. “My parents are dead. My husband was older and had no family. I have nowhere to go – and the Queen ordered that I was to come here!” Her voice had risen to a shout.
“Mind your tone,” he said, not wanting everyone else in the house to hear their exchange. “The Queen ordered you here as a wet nurse. You didn’t wish to hold that position. You’ve made it very obvious that you do not like being here, that you have no feelings for the baby, that you are contemptuous of me. You haven’t tried to get along with anyone.”
Weaving Man: Book One of The Prophecy Series Page 5
