Morning sunlight slanted through the broad, south-facing window, back-lighting three persons eating breakfast. Eldred Youngblood speared another chop and cut it into large, but for him bite-size chunks. Wide of frame and wide of mouth, he weighed considerably more than his seventeen-year-old daughters combined.
Elvi tucked a small fragment of poached duck egg into her mouth and chewed daintily. Though she'd made herself daddy's girl, it was her late mother from whom she'd learned table manners. Her father wolfed down duck eggs in two bites.
"I've been examining the tax accounts of the duchies," she said, "and do not like what I've found."
His Majesty turned his eyes to her. She'd long tried to be manly. When she'd been younger, she'd wanted to be a man-at-arms, so he'd had a helmet and hauberk made for her, a small saber forged, child-sized spear and bow crafted, and arranged for her instruction in military horsemanship and weapons. For a while she'd trained diligently, but in time had outgrown both her armor and her interest, and taken up government instead. "Mary doesn't want to rule," she'd told him, "and someone will have to when you've grown old and die."
Eldred's eyebrows had raised. "I'm not yet forty, you know. You may have a long wait."
She'd neither blushed nor laughed. "That's all right, father," she'd replied. "While I wait, I'll be your deputy, and help you do your work."
Actually he'd found it endearing.
She'd been fifteen then. So he'd let her sit with him at his work table in the afternoon, reading reports, and drafting what her response would be if she were king. At first he'd critiqued them, but after a bit stopped, for it was time-consuming, and she seldom understood what he was getting at.
She seemed bright enough, in her way, but her invariable assumption was that if something appeared wrong, evil was at work, or at least criminality. As occasionally it was, but usually not. He'd never been able to coach her through that, so he'd stopped trying. Actually he sometimes reacted much as she did, without recognizing it.
He'd assumed she'd tire of the deputy game, but she was still at it. He had boxes of documents she'd written: analyses, "orders," policy proposals . . . always thanking her, telling her she was learning. And in fact she'd learned the system well, but generally her evaluations were at least skewed. Soon he'd learned to ignore her written reports, but when she brought something up orally, certainly with someone else present, he felt compelled to reply.
"Don't like what you found? Tell me about that."
"You have ordered the dukes to reduce the number of their armsmen, and they say they have. Yet their defense expenditures are as high as before. They're withholding something from you! There is cheating going on!"
"My dear, there is always cheating going on. It's why I send inspectors out. Meanwhile, the armsmen they let go must eat, so they receive severance payments, depending on their length of service, and whether they have wives and children. And these payments are charged to Defense, because that's where the obligations were incurred."
"But that's not right! If they are no longer armsmen, then their time is free. Let them work for their living, like honest men!"
"They do work, my dear. Each has either been given a grant of land for a farm, or is authorized to partake in some trade. But they must build a dwelling, and outbuildings, and clear and break the soil if they are to farm it. Or learn their new trade if they are to practice it. And meanwhile they must eat. Would you have the dukes reward loyal service with hunger and need?"
"They drink their money up!"
"Some do I'm sure, what money they receive. But much of their severence pay is in suitable land, tools, livestock . . . or the payment of a training fee, for they come to their new trade late in life."
None of it really registered on Elvi; her eyes were bright with exasperation. "It's not right!" she insisted. "They were already paid for their services!"
He reached a chubby paw and patted her much smaller hand. "My dear, I suggest you take it up with Archbishop Clonarty. Our Lord Jesus explained long ago the responsibilities of wealth. Besides, loyalty works both ways, and it was I who cost those men their positions. Soon their period of eligibility will run out, and then you will see an improvement in the royal income."
He looked again at his plate; he'd been forgetting to eat! "But enough of that! I can't sit here all morning. I must finish my breakfast and get to my audiences. People will be waiting for my attention: tradesmen, artisans, farmers . . . They depend on me. It's the burden of being king!"
Elvi bit back a retort. "Yes father," she said pouting.
He returned his attention to his food then, but his daughters finished ahead of him, and with his leave, wandered out to the palace gardens.
"I don't trust the dukes," Elvi said, "not even the ones father installed last fall. Nor the barons. Those so-called 'discharged' armsmen are still serving. They haven't even heard of the reduction. Nothing's changed except on paper."
"Father's inspectors would know," Mary said reasonably. "They arrive in their own times, unannounced, can inspect the armsmen's lodgings, watch them at drill . . . they can even visit the new domiciles of the men discharged, if they want to."
Elvi sniffed. "I trust the inspectors no more than I trust the nobles."
Mary nodded. Elvi was chronically suspicious—an unhappy way to be—and to argue with her was useless. Though Mary sometimes pointed out that counter arguments at least existed, without making an issue of them. She's my twin, after all, and has no other friend. Father is patient, but too often condescending. She needs someone to speak freely to, without feeling depreciated.
Eldred often lunched in his office with some important person, the minister of the royal treasury perhaps, or a baron or merchant, or one of his spies come to report. Rather often it was the archbishop. On this day it was a cousin, Captain Carnes, commander of the palace guard.
Lunch was the king's lighter meal, a gesture toward controlling his weight. He raised a small spoonful of strawberry custard to his full lips, mouthed it with appreciation, then swallowed. "Tell me, Wesley, whatever became of my Dinneh throne guard? His name was Stephen. He seemed a nice young man, a backwoods peasant through and through of course, but with an innate sense of manners. He stood at my right shoulder. Then one day he wasn't there, and I haven't seen him since. I trust he didn't get into trouble. Or was it homesickness?"
"I wondered the same thing, Your Majesty, when he didn't show up at muster one morning. Not even his squadmates knew where he was. But he has relatives in Hasty, an uncle and his family, whatever 'uncle' means to those people, so I had the man brought in, and questioned him. It seems Stephen was afflicted by religiosity: he'd joined the Higuchians."
Eldred jerked as if slapped, and thoughts came helter-skelter. The Higuchians were preying on his guardsmen! Had the Dinneh been their spy? Who did I give an audience to while he attended me? Clonarty among others. What might the spy have overheard? The Higuchians' farm had been bought months ago. They must have had an agent here to see that their building was properly built, and Stephen had been his spy. He must have been!
He'd been victimized!