Tale of Elske (34 page)

A knocking at the great doors echoed through the hall. The company fell silent and all turned towards the sound. A steward stood before the now-opened doors to call out that the delegation of Priests awaited Beriel's pleasure. At the far end of the hall, she rose up from her throne, to stand tall and pale. “Give them entry,” she commanded.

Three men in dark robes preceded one who wore a robe embroidered with colored threads, and the company parted to let them come before the young Queen. The last, most important man had a mouth turned sternly downwards at the ends. He knelt before Beriel and his voice sounded like a bell, or a drum, reverberating through the room. “My Queen, we are prepared to give judgement.”

“Rise, High Priest Ellard,” Beriel commanded, and “Bring forward the prisoner,” she called. Win was led in, his hands bound before him and his leather soldier's shirt stained dark. He wore the dirt of imprisonment, but his face lighted up to see Beriel, and he bowed to her before his guard escorted him up to stand before her.

Elske waited beside the dais, her hands clasped together, fingers wound around fingers. In the whole room, only Win seemed at ease, as if to face the hangman was a matter of little importance, or a joke, as if he had stood so a hundred times before. She still could not see Dugald, not among the courtiers, not among the soldiers, nor at the back of the hall or beneath the windows. She moved closer to Win, close enough to see how he watched his Queen.

Elske had moved close enough to attack the soldiers who stood beside Win, and take one of their knives in their first surprise at being so assaulted, and by a woman. With a knife, Elske could cut the rope that bound Win's hands, and also give a weapon into his hands. If Win were named traitor, then that was what she would do.

That no one might guess her intentions, she hid her hands behind her back. Something was placed into them, something with a handle, and Dugald's voice was soft in her ear. “So we are both armed. But I do not think that she will let him hang,” the soft voice said. Elske grasped the knife behind her, and waited.

For a moment, Beriel lingered in front of her throne, her gown cloth-of-gold, her face as stern as the face in a painting, her bandages shining white. When she sat again, the High Priest drew his breath to speak.

All waited to hear.

The Priest's face was masked as a falcon's.

Elske wrapped her fingers tight around the knife she held, and considered Win's guard. The soldiers were young, and paid little attention to their prisoner, being caught up with the great events unfolding before them. Then Elske considered the rest of the company. These Lords were not even carrying swords. Elske guessed that their response to danger would be to protect their Ladies, amid shrieks and curses and rushings to safety. The captains were few, and many from the northern army; those would never attack her, nor Dugald. And Beriel, the only worthy enemy in the room, had but one good arm—besides needing a stick to walk on, for she had but one good leg. Beriel was no danger to her.

“Will you have our judgement?” the Priest asked Beriel.

“We will,” she answered.

“Prisoner”—he turned to Win—“you have put yourself under the shelter of the law for your life or for your death. Do you understand this?” he asked.

“I do,” Win answered, boldly.

“Then I give the law's judgement upon you.” Now the Priest kept his eyes on Win, as if they were alone. Win listened to the Priest's words, but watched his Queen. “As to the accusation of treason, the law finds you not guilty, for the reason that the man—Guerric, Prince of this royal house—had usurped his sister's rightful place, and set out false rumor of her, and moreover for the reason that he had himself plotted the death of a royal Princess. Thus the man was a traitor and death his just punishment. These things are proven and determined,” the Priest said.

The court sighed and clapped its palms together to signify approval. Neither Beriel nor Win responded, however. They remembered the second charge.

“As to the accusation of murder,” the Priest said now. “You slew the man before many witnesses, and never sought to conceal the deed, nor deny it; however, the law finds you not guilty of murder. A soldier may not murder his enemy, or we must hang every man returned living from battle. A soldier kills but does not murder. This is the law.”

Then Win did smile, and so did the Queen. He smiled for her and she smiled to fill up the room with the light of her pleasure.

Elske felt the knife being taken out of her hands so that she might clap, and be no different from her neighbors.

Beriel rose again, then. Clothed in gold she announced to all, “I will be crowned before I sleep again, for my land must not be left without its anointed ruler. I will be crowned this afternoon,” she announced, and the room cheered her.

She allowed them this, then raised her hand for silence again. “There are two,” she said, “and they have served me in my greatest need, at risk of all the little they had. To these two I would offer a Queen's reward. Elske,” Beriel called. “Where are you, my servant Elske?”

“I am here, my Queen.” Elske stepped forward to kneel down again before Beriel.

“Elske, I will ask my cousin and my Earl that will be, Lord Dugald, heir to Northgate, to husband you, and give to you the protection of his name and his lands,” Beriel announced. “Dugald, this I ask of you, to take Elske for wife.”

People murmured, and Elske felt their eyes on her bent neck. She thought she knew Beriel's purposes, and she hoped this would be the Queen's only revenge. And why should Beriel ask for more than that revenge?

“For all that the girl is Wolfer born, and Wolfer raised,” Beriel continued, and at that the courtiers gasped softly, “I am in her debt. I ask you to pay that debt for me. Will you obey me in this, Lord Dugald?”

Dugald answered without hesitation, “My Queen, I will.” This taught Elske the words to use, so when Beriel asked for her obedience also in this matter Elske said in a voice that rang as clear as his, “My Queen, I will.”

Satisfied, Beriel turned to the second matter at hand. “Win,” she called out, though he stood right before her. “Win, son of the innkeeper at the Ram's Head, who have been true in my service when I did not even know you served me, of you I ask more than you have already given, which has been even the offer of your life. Of you I ask also a marriage. I ask you to take the hand of your Queen,” Beriel called out. “Yes, in marriage, to be her consort and her guard, advisor, husband, Prince. Will you obey me in this, Win?”

His cheeks flamed as red as his hair, almost, but Win could not, without shaming her, refuse; and so he must give his will over to hers. “My Queen, I will.”

Then Beriel called for wine. Waiting, standing before her carved throne, she announced to the hall, “There remains yet one third matter of loyalty that must be settled.”

“She will throw her glove down before them all,” Dugald said into Elske's ear.

“And how could she do otherwise?” Elske asked softly.

Beriel accepted a golden goblet from her servant and held it out that he might pour red wine into it. The courtiers murmured uneasily, waiting for her next words. When she raised the goblet high, they fell silent.

“Today,” Beriel announced in a voice that rang into every corner of the great hall, “on this day of my crowning, I offer to all of my Lords an amnesty.”

Many voices breathed out sighs of relief and gratitude.

“After this day,” Beriel announced, “this day of my crowning, if you serve me well I will never seek to know what you might have said or done before this day. To this I give you the word of your rightful Queen. But hear me now,” she warned them. “In exchange I require your perfect obedience.”

Beriel turned then, the goblet still raised, to the right, to the left, back to the front, so that she might look down on the whole assemblage and every man and woman in it. The goblet glinted in the light. She said, more solemnly but no less ringingly, “Too many have paid too great a price that I might be your Queen for any to offer me less than that perfect obedience. And I, too, have paid dearly for my throne and crown,” she said. Her blue eyes looked briefly at Elske, and then Beriel made the toast herself. “May this Kingdom flourish under my rule, in all the years I am Queen.”

They all echoed and answered her, “Long life to the Queen.”

Elske's voice was one among many, in that well-wishing which was also a long farewell. When she could raise her voice to call “Long life to Queen Beriel,” Elske must part from her mistress and companion, since Dugald was her choice. So Elske would make her own gladness after the sorrow of this farewell.

I
N THE HISTORY OF THE
Kingdom, these things are told:

—How Beriel, called the Warrior Queen, extended the borders of the Kingdom eastwards to the sea at Pericol, and as far south as Selby. How her armies also conquered the barren lands of the west, obliterating the primitive tribe of the Volkaric. In two major military campaigns, the first against Pericol and then into the west, the second—with an army more seasoned by warfare and experienced in success—into the south, Beriel led her forces to victory after victory. Part of the reason for this was her weaponry, since Beriel almost from the first possessed gunpowder. Another factor that contributed to her military success was her soldiers' loyalty to her. Beriel was as well a gifted strategist and fearless general; she rode into battle at the head of her own troops; she asked no hardship of them she did not herself endure.

—How for five years after her first double victory, over the Volkaric war bands that were preying on the Kingdom and over a rebellious brother, Beriel's forces went undefeated. That first, most famous, military victory was achieved without a single wound being received by a single soldier of the Kingdom.

—How for the opening years of her brief reign Beriel conquered, but at the end lost much of the territory she had taken. Nonetheless, enough remained in her control to add substantially to the increasing power and wealth of the Kingdom.

—How through Beriel, the Kingdom gained a port on the sea. Although her last years as Queen were devoted to defensive warfare, as the cities of the south fought free of her domination, she held Pericol, and built up its defenses as well as its docks. Pericol remained the basis of the Kingdom's maritime power. The Queen was among those killed in the great explosion of the magazines there, which destroyed a third of that city; she left a male heir who ascended to the throne when he had attained his twelfth year.

—How the shift from an agricultural to a mercantile economy was begun during Beriel's reign, not only as a result of the military victories and the growth of Pericol as a center for shipping and shipbuilding, but also with the discovery of copper and iron ores in the northern Kingdom. The development of these resources was the work of the Earl Northgate, and made him the most powerful man of the Kingdom, whose personal fortune exceeded even that of the royal house. At the same time, the Earl established around himself a court dedicated to learning and to civilized graces, into which any man of integrity and ability was welcomed. There were those who maintained that the merchants who flocked to trade with the Kingdom did so not so much for the profits as for the honor of being received at Northgate's court, and the pleasures of time spent there. In the annals of the time, it is sometimes referred to as the Court of Light and sometimes as the Court of Elske [
sic
]. During the long rule of this distinguished Earl, Northgate was the premier city of the Kingdom.

—How Gwyniver the Great, granddaughter of both Queen Beriel and the Earl Northgate—whose daughter had married the young King thus joining together the two great families of the Kingdom—ascended to her throne at the age of fourteen. The year of her crowning marks the beginning of the Thirty-Seven Year Peace, which extended into the sixth year after her death. Scholar, linguist, diplomat and gifted economist, Gwyniver forged a series of alliances—through marriages, through trade monopolies, through the threat of arms—among the great cities of the south as well as the emerging cities of the north, as far away as Trastad. Gwyniver is also known as the founder of the University, and as a patron of artists, musicians, minstrels, mediciners and craftsmen of all callings. During her reign the laws of the Kingdom were codified and the seasonal sitting of justices in trial instituted, as well as the profession of Speaker for the Accused. She established Pericol as the royal seat, and welcomed Ambassadors from all over the known world, thus continuing the anti-isolationist movement begun in her grandparents' day. She absorbed customs from other lands into her own government—such as guilds of craftsmen as in Celindon and the local governing Council as in Trastad. She had a reputation for wild courage, and tireless curiosity. Her citizens, from the greatest to the least, all lived without fear of want or of tyranny. In the reign of Gwyniver the Great, the Kingdom's Ambassadors were welcome wherever they journeyed, received with honor even at the court of the Emperor of the East. Under the rule of this Queen, the Kingdom enjoyed its golden age.