Sunday, December 20, 2009

2. The Six Embassies

Queen Sophie was in her pains, and King Bruno was holding her hand, when a quaking messenger arrived at the door of the chamber with a word from the palace gate. The king's steward, or personal assistant, received it with consternation. Waving the messenger off, he sat down behind the king's chair and whispered in His Majesty's ear.

"A what?" said the king. "Fetch that fellow back in here and let me hear it from him."

The steward passed the word, and the messenger returned to deliver the word directly to Himself. Shortly thereafter he retreated again, more alarmed than ever. The king's irritability could not be helped. Her Majesty was writhing, sweating, and groaning, in spite of her faithful attendant's constant care. As soon as the bout passed, the king arose and said to his steward, "Come, Baldwin. We shall see what this is about."

They went and saw. A window on the fourth floor overlooked the palace's main portico, the front gates, and the open square beyond. There were actually two gates at this end of the palace. The outer gate admitted visitors to the wider royal complex, including parks, barracks, administrative buildings, and guest houses. Lord Thorn's selectmen kept this gate and challenged all who approached to be searched for weapons and to present their credentials. The inner gate, which surrounded the king's house and its garden merely, stood seventy yards within and was kept by a ceremonial doorwarden who had been in office since Bruno was a runny-nosed boy. Today, in the center of the wide vestibule between the two gates, a small but striking party of visitors had made camp.

"Strike me blue," the King said, gaping at his guests. His weren't the only staring eyes about. The courtyard between the gates was lined by a still but wary contingent of guards. The old doorwarden, Tynan by name, stood outside his gatehouse and gesticulated helplessly. He seemed to be trying to make the intransigent visitors understand what they ought to do. But they weren't doing it.

"Tell Tynan to shut up," said the king. Baldwin passed the word quickly. Both men watched as the messenger trotted up to the old man and took his elbow. Before the message had been read, Tynan threw up his hands in disgust, plunged into the gatehouse, and slammed the door.

The king clucked his tongue. Then he returned his eyes to the embassy that waited in the vestibule. Four men stood in a semicircle, cloaked in livery of a rich, dusky-orange hue. Their forms were tall, graceful, and alert. Their heads were covered with soft felt hats shaped like a sailing ship, keel up; the pointed bow-ends extended well beyond their foreheads, shading their faces from view. King Bruno did not need to see their all-black eyes or their long, back-swept ears to know what they were. Besides, seated in front of them was unmistakably a faerie lord: young, strong, straight and finely made, with an uncovered head of reddish-orange hair and a tunic of white linen belted over a knee-length robe of blue-and-gray brocaded silk. He sat on a one-legged stool, essentially two sections of a stout tree limb fitted together in a T shape, and showed no trouble balancing himself. They never do, the king thought ruefully. He was a magnificent specimen, right down to his turquoise hose and his soft leather, ankle-high riding boots. He was the first emissary from Faerie to come to Bruno's court. The king began to consider whether he should be afraid.

"What message, my lord?"

His Highness looked at Baldwin in amazement.

The royal steward squirmed slightly, then asked a clarifying question. "Would His Highness desire to send a message..."

"No message," said the King. "They will stand there, or sit as the fancy takes them, until this time tomorrow."

Baldwin blinked. "My lord?"

"It is their way," King Bruno added patiently. "Faerie court etiquette. One always waits in the vestibule for a night and a day, neither eating nor drinking nor saying a word. It's the Faerie way of saying they mean neither to impose on our hospitality, nor to insinuate themselves into our confidence. Clear?"

"Understood, my lord."

"Good. Send for Conon now. I'll have a word with him."

Conon was the king's chief of staff. His duties differed from Baldwin's in that the latter hardly left the king's side, serving as Bruno's eyes, ears, and mouthpiece in relation to the palace staff. Conon, on the other hand, ran the palace itself. Everyone on the king's personal payroll answered to him. He kept things organized, planned formal events, and saw that everything went according to protocol.

"A feast at this hour tomorrow," the king told him. "Our guests appear to be a young lord from Faerie and his entourage. Prepare one of the guesthouses. Be sure to remove anything made of iron. See to it that no one approaches them, speaks to them, or offers them food or drink until they complete their... er, greeting ritual."

"Anything else, my lord?"

"Fresh game, Conon. The Faerie are not fond of farm-raised meat."

"Very good, my lord."

The king returned to the queen's bedside. Her Majesty was having another contraction.

"Was it this bad before?" asked the king as Sophie crushed his hand in hers.

"Ah, your majesty!" cried the queen's attendant. "That were many years ago."

"Well, it ought to be over before our guests expect to be entertained," the king opined.

But the waiting woman shook her head. "This could go on for days," she said. "I've seen it happen."

Another messenger came. Baldwin, more shaken and bewildered than before, approached the king and whispered in his ear again.

"Befuddle," Bruno cursed, "beguile and bemuse them!" After a moment of panting fury, however, he relented and said: "Let's go and see."

The second embassy had set up its watch a few yards behind and to the left of the first. This one had only four men: three standing, one sitting. Those standing wore dark green livery and the same type of boat-shaped hats. The second seated man looked strikingly similar to the first, except that his tunic, robe, and hose were all different shades of green, and his hair was such a deep black that even its glossiness gave back little light. While the first faerie lord sat stoically, looking neither right nor left, the second envoy gazed around himself with interest.

"I like this not," breathed the king. "Send to Conon, saying we'll need another guesthouse and another chair at the feast. I do hope Sophie will pull through by tomorrow. I should not like to leave her for an evening while she still labors."

"Who is come?" Sophie asked her husband when he sat down by her bedside again.

"Two embassies from Faerie," he reported.

Her countenance darkened at this news. Before the king could ask her what this might mean, another message came.

"Don't say it," Bruno growled. "Let's see them."

The third embassy had encamped still farther to the left and rear of the first two. The three attendants stood in light green uniforms around a beautiful young man who could have been a twin to either of the other two, apart from his dirty blond hair and the attention he devoted to tuning a ten-stringed lyre.

The king was about to send word to Conon to add a third guesthouse and seat of honor when the guard at the outer gate came to attention for the arrival of another guest.

"Oy vay," the king groaned.

The fourth faerie lord and his two attendants handed the reins of their horses to the men at the gate and walked forward. Tynan came out to challenge them, then made a dismissive gesture and went back into his house. This party took up station behind and to the right of the first comer: two men in dark brown livery, flanking a brown-haired gentleman garbed in shades from cream to fawn-colored. Unlike the other three young lords, this one sat directly on the ground, crossed his arms and legs, and to all appearances went directly to sleep.

"Most peculiar," Baldwin murmured.

"What say you?" the king demanded, trying to control a new twitch in his right eye.

"Beg pardon, my lord."

The king paced up and down. "They're coming faster and faster. Next they'll be arriving one on top of the other. Where will it end?"

It ended, ten minutes later, with six embassies from faerie encamped in the vestibule before the palace gate. The fifth and sixth faerie lords arrived, indeed, at the same time, and camped together just within the outer gate with one liveried servant to each of them. The attendant clad in deep red guarded the flank of a lovely youth with flowing, red-brown hair and clothes of earthen shades. The guard in light blue attended a white-blond boy, who seemed scarcely to have grown to his full stature, and whose gangly limbs were clad in snug garments of pure black. While their boat-hatted men stared through the front of the palace as though it wasn't there, these two young lords began a game of ro-sham-bo with which they seemed prepared to amuse themselves all night.

"They could all be brothers," Baldwin breathed, risking another familiarity with his king.

"You haven't seen many faerie," Bruno snapped. "They probably all look the same to you." But secretly, the king agreed. And he had seen many faerie indeed.

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