The Book of the Blessed

The Great West Road

Late the next morning, the party of White Monks and Nuns moved slowly across the plains toward the juncture of the Southern with the Essel Road. They had crossed the river the night before into Westrial and now, as they approached the crossroads, the monks and nuns could already see a great wainhouse traveling toward them from the east, and the monk at the lead of the caravan noted the banners of Essail. He rode back to the white cloaked litter and rapped along the rail. The curtain opened slowly, and the old Abbess looked out.

“We have company.”

“Well, give way,” said the young Prioress who sat beside the old woman. “It is the way of God to be low and humble.”

The bald monk nodded, but looked frustrated.

“Mothers, it is particular company.”

“Well?” the Prioress Hilda said.

“It is the Queen of Essail.”

“Oh, damn!” Hilda swore, losing all composure.

“Take that look off your face,” she said to the old Abbess, who was trying to not laugh

“How long do we have before we meet?’

“Essail’s heralds are already waving.”

“I will open up the litter myself when we approach,” Hilda said. “Let me know so I can greet my sister and her husband.”

Hilda, the second daughter of the dying King Anthal, had asked her father at the age of thirteen to enter into the Abbey of Saint Clew, the mightiest Abbey in the Young Kingdoms. As a princess there was no mystery if she would rise high in the ranks of the White Order, and as the years went by, and certain princesses and peeresses left or were found unsuitable to rule, it was nearly guaranteed that she would be declared Abbess when Abbess Gertrude either retired or died.

The Abbey of Clew was often simply called Durham, for this was the city over which it stood, the second city of Inglad, not far from Ambridge, Inglad’s capital. Hale and North Hale had lost their royal families and their titles were replaced with earls. Inglad was the native territory of King Edmund Lord of all the Hales, and Gertrude was his chief councilor alongside Ulfin Baldwin, who was also his greatest foe.

“I am nearly ready to retire,” Gertrude had said earlier that year, “to find myself some quiet retreat.”

Often a queen or royal lady, after a long time of ruling and sometimes treachery, would declare that she needed to retire to a monastery for a life of quiet and prayer, but the Abbots and Abbesses, especially the great ones, knew little of either quiet or prayer in their great, fortresslike monasteries from which they wielded almost royal power, and when they dreamed of retiring it was to the quiet retreats far from the great stone kingdoms where they had reigned

“When I have found that place,” Gertrude had told Hilda that summer, “then you will learn what it is to be Abbess of the greatest house in the Young Lands.”

The litter pulled up beside the wainhouse of the Queen, and Hilda decided it was best to beat her sister to the greeting.

“Hail, Sister!”

“Well,” Morgellyn looked down from the gilded door of the wainhouse, “aren’t you looking splendid, Little Sister.’

“Not as fair as you,” Hilda said and wondered, if this was true, why did it sound like a lie?

“Shall we stop for a picnic?” Morgellyn asked.

“Let us press on till evening,” Hilda suggested, “and camp outside of Amesbury.”

“That will be wonderful!” Morgellyn called, and Hilda wished there had been some way to avoid conversation with her older, golden haired sister. Morgellyn added, “We will have so much to talk about.”

“I can hardly wait.”

Hilda, aged twenty-four, wished for Imogen and Anson, In her white robe and wimple, cloaked and veiled by a great black mantle, Hilda smiled regally, like the Mother in the White Order that she was.

As the curtain closed, Abbess Gertrude and Sister Ursula chuckled beside her.

“What are you laughing at?”

“We have so much to talk about! I can hardly wait,’ Ursula drawled, giggling.

“You would rather die!”

The Kingsboro

“Allow me to introduce you to an old friend—”

“Pol,” Ash said. “You know, I do believe I’ve seen you, and I could not forget so fair a face.”

“He says that to everyone,” Anson said, and Ash said, “Don’t be ungracious.”

“Oh, I’ll take it,” Pol laughed. “Certainly.”

Anson looked from one to the other and said, “Unbelievable.”

“Be not unbelieving,” Ash quoted from the Book of Names, “but believe.”

“Always believe,” Pol repeated.

“Well said,” Ash said. “And the business goes?”

Pol looked to Anson and Anson, shrugging, said, “Of course he knows.”

Pol nodded, smiled to himself, and said, “The business comes and goes.” He shrugged. “But mostly it comes.”

“You’ve a sharp wit about you,” Ash clapped his hands.

“Ash,” Anson said, “I was returning to the Hall of Justice, then attending the King. Do you wish to stay here and entertain Pol, or come on your own later?”

“I would attend your father,” Ash said.

Anson nodded and Pol said, “Well, then, I will stay behind here, if it please you both, for I feel I’ve risen as high as a man of my station can go.”

“Nonsense,” Ash pulled his mantle about him. “You wouldn’t be the first of your profession to come to a king’s bed. But if you would like to see your drinking friend behave like a prince, follow him to the Hall of Justice.”

So saying, Ash led them out of his rooms and said, as they entered the corridor. “Anson, do you think perhaps you should walk before me?”

“Not really,” Anson, heedless of his rank, replied.

Kingsboro was now the name of the city, but it was initially the name of the palace, for the palace was a boro, something more than a castle, a great fortress meant not to shield the king from the people, but all people from the enemy. A great ring of rose and earth colored stone surrounded the castle and was divided into about three outer courts, one of them called the People’s Court by which people entered for city councils, to receive the royal justice and, it seemed, simply to socialize. There was some line where it was not fitting for most people to pass, but what that line was had never been formally delineated. The central palace was divided into the Lower Bailey, four high, thick, administrative and residential towers in a square overlooking the People’s Court west of it, and the part of the palace where people went freely, and then, to the north of that, the Higher Bailey which was reached only by a zigzagging high and ancient stair, leading to the highest towers of the palace that surrounded a court big as a park with a long pool the size of a pond. Pol looked down and now he saw that if he went to the north, he would leave Long Hall and enter the collection of towers that were somewhere between fifteen and twenty stories high where only the most secret of things occurred and only high lords and ladies resided.

They walked the long hall, Pol marveling at the stone vaulted ceilings, the suits of silver armor lined against the walls, wondering how he had come to know a prince.

“What in the world is going through your mind?” Anson turned to him.

Pol could not voice it without feeling embarrassed. He said, “It is no matter.”

Ash said, “This boro is enough to put anyone off balance.”

At that moment, Pol heard footsteps approaching from the south and turned, more surprised than he had ever been in his professional life.

The man stopped, bowing low, his shocked looking hair hiding his face, the scarf around his neck and his cloak, touching the ground. And then he was gone in the other direction. He must have known Anson, but his eyes flashed in shock for a moment before passing Pol.

“That’s him,” Pol said. “The boy from this morning.”

“Oh, really!” Ash laughed.

“What of it?” Anson shrugged.

“That is Lord Buwa,” Ash said.

Pol nodded, but now he said, “Lord Buwa? I thought he was Austin.”

Ash said nothing because he could tell Anson would have rather Pol never known. But Anson explained.

“Austin Buwa, son of Carmaine Buwa of Osteraven. Can we go now?”

Pol cleared his throat and said, “I feel foolish for not knowing who you are.”

“You do know who I am,” Anson said, irritated. “I’m your friend. And you know the king is my father. And you’ve still been a friend to me. You’ve never been strange. Until now.”

“He has never been in the palace until now,” Ash said.

Pol nodded and Anson, frowning, said, “Fair.”

He stuck out his large, rough hand.

“I am Anson, second Prince of Westrial. My father is the Anthal Fourth of that Name, King of Westrial.”

Pol looked as if he wasn’t sure how he felt, and then he took Anson’s friend and said, “I’m Pol Kurusagan. I’m a whore, and my father was Robert, a right drunk in a long line of drunks. Pleased to meet you.”

Anson smiled from the side of his mouth, still shaking his friend’s hand.

“Great,” he said. “Looks like we both come from old families.”