The Book of the Broken

The Abbey Of

Saint Clew

“I do not remember you,” Hilda said.

Myrne looked to Wolf and then to Odo before she said, “I was in hiding, with your brother Anson, and until now we have been in the company of Anson and Ohean. My name is Myrne, daughter of Ceoldane of Herreboro, twice born of the royal line of Wulfstan.”

“Then I will declare as well,” Wolf said.

“Whatever for?” said Myrne.

His sword rang as he pulled it from its scabbard.

“I am Osric Wulfstan, son of Eoga, grandson of Edward and heir to the thrones of Hale, Inglad and North Hale, and if by my breath and body I can aid you, then I shall.”

Myrne looked up at him until she was conscious that everyone was looking up at Wolf. She did not want to be counted as one of those who was shocked. No one spoke for some time.

“You are in good hands,” Wolf continued. “I was battle trained by Idris of Rheged himself, and by his very steward, Ralph Curakin, and every morning as we traveled north I trained with the Prince Anson and, as we all know, there are few lords mightier in warcraft.”

But it was Hilda who said, “I appreciate your aid, your aids, Graces.” There was a question mark at the end of her voice, and she inclined her head quickly and, lord like, not like a servant boy this time, Wolf did the same.

“Hilary,” Hilda said, “have rooms made for our guests, closest to the chapel. Have towels, water and refreshment made for them. If you wish,” she turned to Wolf and Myrne, “you may join us for evening prayer. Or other wise rest yourselves until the second bell when we will all dine in the main hall.”

Myrne was amazed by Hilda’s poise, by how no one questioned Wolf at all, and she knew that, for at least the next few moments, she had to master that poise as well. While the other travelers, monks and nuns, were being led to their chambers, Myrne walked behind Wolf who walked behind Hilary and a nun, entering a door that led to a long cloister walk before turning away from the main body of the monastery, and entering a larger house.

“Traditionally the men stay below and the women above,” the nun said. “We have few guest here now.”

“Well by all means,” Myrne said, “let us observe tradition, but I must speak to the Lord Osric first.”

Wolf blinked down at her and Hilary, turning her face away said to Myrne, “I will go to your rooms and prepare them for you.”

Myrne inclined her head regally, and Wolf, not quite as regal, did the same, and then went up the steps, sword clinking at his side while Myrne, lifting her skirts, followed.

Once the nun had shown Wolf his room, clasped her hands, bowed and turned around, Myrne walked into the room, shutting the door.

“I am not sure if we’re supposed to do that—” Wolf began, but Myrne said, “I need you to start talking. Now.”

“Myrne,” Wolf said in the voice that reminded her of men trying to placate her, “I’m not entirely sure what you want me to say.”

“Even you’re not that great of a fool!” Myrne said, suddenly slapping him.

“You don’t know what to say? You don’t know what to say! Howabout you say how in all the nine hells you are the heir to the Thrones of Hale and Inglad? Howabout why none of this has come up in any of our conversations? Howabout why you would shout it out in the courtyard of the Abbey of Saint Clew?”

Wolf looked surprisingly calm and Myrne marveled at her rage.

“I have never told anyone,” Wolf said, “and I was not sure I ever would. But when you endangered yourself, telling our guest who you were, I knew I had to speak as well.”

Myrne folded her arms over her chest.

“Edward Ironside was the King of the Three Kingdoms before Edmund.”

“Yes,” Myrne said.

“Edmund was his last born son and the only one who ruled all three of the kingdoms,” Wolf continued, and Myrne opened her mouth to say she knew this, but Wolf held up a hand.

“Edmund fell out with Svig the Boneless, King of Dayne. This we know, and for years the two of them raged across the North and in time Svig died. Then Edmund ruled for a time, then he was exiled when Svig’s son Sweyn came to rule and ruled for many years before being put aside by Edmund.

“But Edmund had two brothers, Edward and Edred,” Wolf continued. “Their mother was not Emma, the treacherous Dauman queen, but Queen Maude. Ironside, and then in succession, his two sons, ruled over Inglad when they were banished from Hale and North Hale. They ruled both for a short time, Edward before dying—”

“Or being poisoned,” Myrne said.

“Being killed,” Wolf said, “and then Edred—”

“Who was also killed.”

“Though I have heard it said,” Wolf continued, “that Edmund attempted to find all of his nephews and nieces and could not reach the White Tower before Sweyn did his acts of murder, and though I have also heard it said that the Baldwin family had a hand in the infamy, my mother told me plainly that it was Edmund himself who found my grandfather Edred in prison and slashed his throat. My father Eoga was there, and he sought to establish some life for himself near the border countries, but with the aid of the Baldwin’s, Edmund’s men found him one night. My mother was a common born woman, but his legal wife, and she fled, still pregnant, to Rheged, which is where I was born, and where my master found me.”

“Ohean,” Myrne said quietly.

“Aye.”

“But he said you would never call him master again,” Myrne said. “He said everything would change. He must have known something.”

“He said he was raising me to be a prince,” Wolf said, “and that the best way to rule was to serve.”

“Edward’s younger brother was Edred,” Myrne said.

Wolf nodded and Myrne said, “He ruled after his brother. He would have taken the kingdoms back, or he would have tried. But it was Edmund who snatched his sons and his nephews from him. He went to Herreboro. He would have united with the Earls of Herreboro, themselves of the line of Wulfstan. He had a secret marriage with Lysanne Lady of Herreboro, and it was to be published in the open when the wars were over. But when it was made known that Edmund and the Baldwins had killed him, then the marriage was kept a secret. And so Linalla bore my father. No one ever inquired into his birth. Many northern lords lost their fathers.”

“Then we are kin.”

“But you already knew this.”

“I did not know how close.”

“Cousins in the second degree, both you and myself the nephew and neice to Edmund who is a traitor.”

Wolf did not speak for a time and then he said, “What do we do?”

“Our duty here,” said Myrne. “And then, at last, the two of us will go to the North, to meet my father in Herreboro, and now that the King has returned, we will take action from there.”

They took tea together that evening, Hilda and Odo. Hilary served, then left the room while the two of them sat, legs folded under themselves, before the low table. Odo poured the tea and Hilda spoke at last.

“Father was going to marry me off to a prince, and he was displeased that I could not marry a king the way Morgellyn did. I told him I did not care, I wanted to come here. I believe Father sent me here because he thought that I would have more power as abbess than the wife to any of the minor princes that were around and ready to wed. Also, he thought to make some sort of bargain with God.

“But I wanted peace. There was such turmoil in me, such anger and fear in my soul. I felt so unhappy, always wanting something, always this or that and I thought maybe here, in this house, I could finally gain some measure of peace. And after all these years my mind is still, like Saint Iyo in the poem. I blow out the candle, my mind, all over the place, always leaping, is stilled. And then tonight I am told that in my own home the Queen of Inglad has made designs on my life.”

Odo had always loathed men who spoke to fill the space, and so he never spoke until he actually had something of use to say. Tonight everything that came to his mind seemed useless.

“In the very place where I come to peace, this woman seeks my life. Or to ruin me.”

“To rape you,” Odo said.

“What?”

“It comes clear,” Odo said. “She said she did not wish you dead but ruined. She plans to have you raped, thus making you unable to become Abbess so she might put another in your place.”

“One of her damnable Baldwin cousins,” Hilda swore.

Hilda sat back and lifted her tea cup to her lips.

“Edith and Edmund. Three kingdoms and they want more. Do they not have enough?”

“You know,” Odo said, “that scoundrels and puppy dogs never know the meaning of the word enough.”

Cair Daronwy

“This is the very safest place we could have come to escape Cedd.” Pol said.

“Or to start our own life,” Anson said.

“Agreed,” his sister agreed.

The River Syann had a long mouth, and at the end of its mouth rested the great city of Cair Daronwy. One saw it well before they were in it.

Above them, the ancient palace of Pennllywn rose high over the city on a granite cliff, a fortree built in and about the Rock, and sometimes the whole castle was called the Stone. The main keep was high and peaked with a forest green roof, surrounded by towers the color of sea foam. The Stone was followed by two baileys the last slower than the first as the first was lower than the stone and both large enough to contain a village. But surrounding the stone and these baileys could be seen, as they approached, Ohean said, “Those are the Wyllgwrd, the Green Walls, they encompass the whole of Pennllywnn, and even in the time of the Remulans.

“I have never seen anything as fair as this city, Anson marveled, and as they rode closer to the Rock, it appeared mightier still and, overhead, the birds at the port screamed in the triumph of life as they passed over the wide mouth of the river into the city.

“Ash,” Anson whispered at they approached the first of many gates into the palace and the guards, came to attention, noticing the small party, “What does Pennllywnn mean?”

“It means the Place of Kings.”

They were greeted by the King before they had made their way to the gate and Ohean declared, “You saw us!”

“I saw you and your banner and that handsome prince of yours a soon as you came into the city and,” Idris bowed, taking Imogen’s hand, “this fair maiden.”

She was not sure if he was mocking her or not, but Idris was so tall and handsome in his silver armor, a wicked twinkle in his eyes under his high planed mahoghany face and went he bent to kiss her she swooned.

“Such lovely dark skin against such milky white fairness,” Pol commented. “Lovely children you would make.”

“Shush,” Imogen returned, sounding a little drunken, and Idris’s eye was already upon her.

“Come, my friends, be welcome in the palace of Penllwyn.”

It took as long to make their way through the outer bailey and through the first into the Stone as it had to travel through a great deal of the city, and now they stood amazed at a long and shining hall, higher and more grand than the hall of Kingsboro. The whole time Anson stood beside Ohean, trying to keep his composure, trying not to stare like a complete fool. He needed to stop being an ass. Pol nudged Anson and Anson cleared his throat.

“I said, the people of Rheged really know how to clean up.”

“Oh, yes,” Anson cleared his throat. “Yes.”

“We came almost in secret,” Ohean said, walking about the hall, stomping the butt of his staff. “It will have to be made known that the Prince of Westrial is here.”

“Cousin,” the dark slim King of Reghed said, playfully, “But of course. You all will sit with us at the high table, and you, Cuz, sit in the place of king’s council. Or,” he added, “just put a circlet on your head. You are a prince after all.”

“The Prince of Reghed!” Pol called. “Indeed.”

Austin Buwa put one foot before the other and made an elegant bow.

“You’re idiots,” Ohean said, and then he said, “King’s Council is more than enough.”

As he moved through the high hall, past the hanging banners and by the magnificent guests, Ohean, unlike the rest of the company, paid them no mind, and was amazed not a wit when the servants pulled his chair back for him and sat him there.

The night was spent in what seemed idle chatter, and for Anson, sitting two seats from Ohean on the other side of Idris, Imogen beside him, it was everything he could do to simply remain in his skin. Even at home he had not been used to palace evening life, preferring taverns, pubs, stables or the privacy of his own chambers. Now, he had been felt up, chatted up and found by every powerful lord and lady in the city. And how glittering they were, women with hair piled up in elaborate snaking braids, or completely bald but beautiful, radiant in gowns of rainbow colored silk that changed colors when they swished about. And there were men in fine robes or great silver suits of decorative armor, in pants so snug they revealed every curve of the body, caramel skinned, chocolate skinned, desert dark, lemon light and yes, his own dark ivory color and at last, seeing all the many types of folk here he knew what he had always known but never quite understood in this way:

“I am Royan. This… this is my heritage.”

He turned to his white who, far from being seduced by King Idris, was smiling at him like a serpent while he had burst out into laugher over a thing she had said. Yes, what made the Ayl different from the Hale up north was that they did have Royan blood. All of them did, all of them mixed, even his pale, half Hale sister. And what of Myrne, schooled in the south, surely even in Herreboro was the ancient Royan blood and now such a feeling rose in him that he could not describe. A tingling, a surge of something. He looked to Imogen again. Her children, he suspected, would be Royan.

He remembered that first time he had met Idris. It had been when Ohean had come back into his life, the day after the night when they had first become lovers. Idris had come because the cavalry horses the king of Rheged had inquired upon were the descendants of a gift from Rheged one hundred fifty years ago, when a high princess of that land had married Anthal the Great, his father’s namesake. That evening they had discussed Edmund King of Inglad who now ruled Hale and North Hale. Twenty year he had been wed to his Halic wife, Edith, but sired no children on her.

“It is not that she cannot bear them,” Imogen said, “rather it is said that he will not bear them with her.”

“Daughter, such gossip.”

“Not gossip, but truth,” Imogen said, “and more than truth, the reason we should all worry a little.”

“The princess is right,” Ohean said, “Edmund’s heir is the king of Daumany.”

“The king of Daumany lies on his deathbed,” Cedd had said.

But Imogen’s words, far from being a girl’s gossip were the shrewd knowledge of a princess fit to be a queen. As he looked to Idris who was whispering into his sister’s ear, he wondered, “His Queen?”

“He could do worse,” Ohean whispered to him.

Anson blinked.

“Did I speak?”

Ohean shook his head, “You did not have to.”

Ohean had his winning wizard’s smile, but because Anson loved him, he saw when the smile faded, when he was caught off guard. It happened when he had turned and looked away from Anson and across the hall was what Anson admitted had to be one of the fairest men he’d ever seen. He had just entered the hall and was standing between two great pillars. The man was a soldier, certainly, caramel skinned, lantern jawwed, his head clean shaven, and he had a bit of a wolfish… or maybe dragonish smile, and lambent green eyes. A fine, silver sheathed sword hung as his side, and he was tall, taller than Anson. A grey cloak hung from his strong shoulders, and he was smiling at Ohean.

“That’s Ralph, isn’t it?”

“It is,” Ohean tried to say, but his throat was dry.

“Go to him,” Anson told the enchanter. He added, “After all, this is why we came.”

Ohean nodded, and removed himself from the table moving among the guest. Anson watched as he approached the man Ralph, and saw Ralph, one foot before the other, bow.