<more>

"Look," I said finally, "come do bath and lunch with me. But if you thank me one more time, I'm going to have Daddy  forbid you the palace."

"Ok. I'll do bath, and lunch, and I will stop talking about how wonderful you are."

We had just gotten in the bath when she hit on a subject that I wasn't sure was any better.

"I heard about your betrothal, my lady. I was so excited. Gregorr of Rhestenn... the heir apparent! Not rich, of course, none of the Rhestenn are rich. But I hear he is very strong, and intelligent."

What did he look like? Did I want to know? Did it matter?

"We had his mother and his sister over to dinner,” my cousine continued, “you remember, that one time they came down? My mother had them over, and of course the girl wanted to spend time with me. That girl could talk. Do you remember?"

"Oh, yes. But I don’t remember much of what she said."

I hoped that would be enough to get her going.

"Well, it was a while ago. I'm not sure how much I remember. I remember that she said that she had nine siblings, and that most of them are girls. She talked a lot about the other girls, not so much about the boys. Gregorr is the oldest, I remember that. And of course everyone knows that now."

"Yes. Everybody knows that."

My voice must have sounded a bit bitter. She stopped talking for a second and got busy with the soap.

"I'm sorry Jaffia,” I said, after a couple of minutes, “it is a hard time for me, and my life is on view for everyone."

"Well, I suppose it must be hard. I know it was hard for me, and I only come from the southern region. Of course, your cousin is nowhere as important as you are, or your husband, and so not as many people were paying attention to my marriage."

"How, how did you feel about getting married?"

"Oh, I was so excited. I have always wanted to be a wife, and a mother. And to get to come to the capital city. And I knew you, of course[MKO2] . You remember you had come to visit us.”

“I can’t believe you are getting to go live at the Rhestenn capital,” she said, excitedly. “You have to promise to invite me. I hear it is the most beautiful place in the entire world.”

I looked at her, surprised.

“You didn’t know? You haven’t heard about it? Oh, darling, let me tell you.”

<show don’t tell>

And so she did tell me. She told me about the Rhestenn capital, a city high in the mountains, overlooking an entire river valley. A capital city that had only been captured by treachery, never by force of arms; Of the castle, whose every window had a magnificent view; Of the snow (I had only seen snow a few times in my life) that constantly covered the tops of the mountains, and frequently blanketed the road down to the docks.

She told me of the herds and farmhouses that covered the slopes as high as man could live.

At first I heard only the cold, the discomfort, the cramped conditions. But as she talked I began to hear of the beauty, the pristine, austere beauty, of my husband’s land. I began to wonder what it would be like to stand at one of those windows and look out for miles.

“My lady,” she asked, “which oil are you going to use?” She stood being dried by her maid and Stephanie, and the girl with the oil basket stood in front of her, offering choices.

“The lavender, I think.” I said.

“Oh, good,” she said, “then I will take the rose. I love rose.”

I plunged into the water once more; the young maid struggling to keep my hair out of the water, and then I got out of the bath. I had just been dried and oiled when David announced, “My lady, your cousin begs to tell you that he has finished his business in town.”

The girls quickly brought me my robe, as I said, “Have him come in, and tell the cooks that he will be lunching here, with us.”

<transition>

 “My lady,” he began, as we knelt at table, “I have to…”

His wife threw herself at his knees, “My husband I have made a vow, two vows which you must hear!” she said.

He stopped, startled. He saw my grin, and, formally, raised his wife back up and said, “And what are these vows that you have made, my wife?”

We were all grinning furiously as the waiters brought the lunch pots and she continued, “My husband, my vows were these. Firstly, my lady made me vow that we would not continue to express our gratitude for her magnificent gift. It seems that, in the practice hall, I wearied her with my speeches of praise and thanksgiving for her beneficent actions; and she forced the vow upon me.”

“I see,” he said, grinning. “This makes it awkward then, to not be able to express out full thanks for the marvelous thing she has done for us. But what is this other vow that you have made?”

“My husband, in my initial praise of her actions, I vowed a name upon our child.”

He looked more serious at this. “Oh, and what name have you given it?”

“My husband, if a girl, I have vowed that we would name it after the princess herself, in recognition of all that she has done for us.”

(I had to laugh. Under the guise of telling her husband that she couldn’t thank me, she was laying the thanks on awfully thick. I might have gotten thanked less had I allowed them to thank me.)

He looked relieved. To have named her after me would, ordinarily, have possibly been thought presumptive. But in the circumstances it would be seen as an acceptable, and even praiseworthy, gesture. And it didn’t hurt to have a child named after one of the daughters of the king, if you could manage it.) But he was still worried,

“And if it is not a girl?” he asked, superstitiously not naming his desire.

She bowed again, for this vow was more tricky; (for a wife to have pledged a name to a man child, and in particular this name).  But she continued bravely, “I have vowed that we would name it David.”

I had my eyes downcast, as was only proper, during this exchange between husband and wife. Not so downcast that I couldn’t see my cousin. Nor so downcast that I couldn’t see David’s feet, where he stood behind my cousin, guarding the door and behind the rooms most potent ‘threat’.  And I saw him shift. Just slightly, but his feet shifted. He was surprised, perhaps even shocked. I hoped he was also pleased.

My cousin’s breath sucked in, and I could see him furiously calculating. But he held himself very still, and then, to the relief of everyone in the room, said, “My wife, you have done well. We are forbidden, by your first vow, from announcing our gratitude to the world. But the name of our child will do that for us, and will bring us honor, whether a son or a daughter.”

He had seized the poker by the red hot end, declaring, in front of servants (the story would be all over the castle in minutes, I was sure, especially because Stephanie was listening) that he considered it an honor for his first born male child to be named after a eunuch. One of the king’s eunuchs, and one who had gained for him a treasure worth a small estate, or a trading vessel with cargo. Other than repudiating the name, this was his best path. Declare the name an honor, and then make it so.

I looked into my pot. The wheat had been boiling in the broth all morning, chicken if my nose was accurate today, and the metal pot held the heat; but perhaps it was cool enough to eat now. I dipped my hand in carefully, grabbing a small ball with my fingers, and bouncing it around quickly to keep it from burning my fingers. I always loved my lunch boule… our cook was excellent. I put it in my mouth. Yes, chicken… and some duck too. I loved duck.

“So,” I said, when I had swallowed my first bite, how did it go collecting your debt?” I asked, “Did you get all of it?”

“No, my lady, not yet. We went first to his ship, where the arms master went over the books and stripped the ship of anything that might possibly have been said to belong to the debtor.”

I caught the strange wording, and looked up; as up as I was allowed to look into the eyes of a man. Which, as he was my cousin, meant I could focus on about his nose or mouth. His wife caught my movement, but not its reason, looking at each of us alternately in confusion. I wasn’t a king’s daughter for nothing.

“But that only came to three thousand ducats, so we went to the slave market.”

“The slave market, my husband?” She came from the north, a smaller lordship, and was missing the implications.

“Oh, the debtor objected,” her husband said, ignoring his wife’s naiveté. “Swore that all would be repaid, that it would just have to send back to family. But of course the arms master, even if he hadn’t been furious over the insult done to my lady and her Eunuch, would have none of that. A debt of honor, especially one from the king’s own training ground, must be paid back immediately to the extent possible.”

“So, as I say, we took the debtor to the slave market. There was quite some discussion about what the price would be, what work could be done. But eventually it was decided that, since the debtor’s skill with a sword was actually quite good, the most profit would be gained as a bodyguard, to a small estate, one far from the capital.”

“You should have heard the squeal, my lady.” His wife still looked confused, so I explained.

“They cut him,” I said.

“Pardon me, my lady,” my cousin said, “but they burnt him, not cut him. Slave masters for the smaller estates don’t have money to spend on fine surgeons.”

“Ah, well then, you see, my cousine,” I said, using the family term to which she was due only by courtesy, “a bodyguard, as you know, must be a eunuch, or they cannot come into the family quarters. The man… the debtor,” I corrected, since the term ‘man’ was not to be used in this circumstance, “ could not pay all the debt immediately, so he, it was sold as a slave, as a eunuch. But it wasn’t a eunuch, so they had to fix that.”

(It was awkward talking of a eunuch. One would normally use ‘he’ except when speaking of some issue of privacy, or, as now, when telling a story that involved a true man being made into a eunuch. I could never get it right. Our language needed a whole set of new pronouns.)

My cousine looked appalled, and her husband chuckled at her discomfiture. “My wife. The man was a fool. Had the insult he offered to David come to the king’s ears, castration by a hot iron would have been the least of his worries.”

“So,” I asked, “how much did he bring?”

“Fifteen hundred, my lady. Assuming he survives the loss, and trains well; he is young and would be expected to serve long and well. The slave master will probably sell him for double that. So that only leaves 500 for his family to provide.”

Which they would do; no one would want to offend my father’s master of arms, and thus my father.

“What was he doing here, anyway, Achaz?” Jaffia asked.

“His poor friend told us all about that!” my cousin said. “He came with us, most upset about the whole thing. He tried to talk his friend out of the wager, you know,” he said, and I nodded. “But the fool would have none of it.”

“Of course, he had reason enough, I suppose. This was literally what he was doing, going around and wagering on his fighting skills. He was a good fighter, for formal duels. Not of David’s class, of course, but he hadn’t done his homework. He was going around on the ship with his friend and winning formal duels, on which he would wager. He was looking to gain enough wealth to earn an estate, back on the islands. He had done OK for himself, already gathering three thousand Ducats.”

“But gambling is a dangerous sport, as he found out. It would have been wiser of him to work for a living instead.”

“Why did he insult David, my husband?”

“Apparently slaves, particularly Eunuchs, are considered less than human on the Islands were he comes from. His friend assured us that his actions, in their homeland, wouldn’t even have been considered particularly insulting. The friend knew better, but the debtor was rather proud, and wouldn’t listen. Perhaps he will change his mind on the humanity of slave… and of eunuchs.”

There was a pause in the conversation while my guests busied themselves with lunch, and I stared out of the window at the river. “Cousine,” I said, “just think, even in Rhestenn I will be able to look at the same river.”

“My husband,” she said, “before you came we were speaking of my lady’s betrothal to the prince of the Rhestenn, and I was telling her about the castle there…”

My cousine droned on and I looked at the river. Under my window, and across the river at the estate there, the same scenes played out, with only minor differences. Naked children played in the shallow water, watched over by nurses and Eunuchs. Slaves ran in place in the enormous water wheel pumps, and maids and others stood on the docks waiting for, or dealing with, the perpetual trading barges which plied their trade on the banks of the river.

In the center of the river the great barges moved. Grain barges from our farms poled laboriously upriver to the Rhestenn. Cattle barges (which carried a variety of different animals but all went under the name of ‘cattle barge’) and manure barges coming down from them.

“… and so I told her she must invite me there, as I was dying to see it,” my cousine concluded.

I glanced up to see my cousin’s reaction to that. He loved his wife, I was sure, but she wasn’t always ‘proper’.

He saw my glance and shrugged his shoulders. But then he smiled and said, “Well, my wife, if you are going to force your company on our lady the princess then you really must invite her to our house, sometime before she goes.”

My cousine lit up. I am not sure she even caught his subtle rebuke, “Oh, that would be wonderful! We would just love to have you come!”