CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
“WE’VE HAD ENOUGH KILLING FOR ONE YEAR”
An hour later Prince Arkády met secretly with his sister, Princess Arrhiána, in Kórynthály. Each of them had transited there separately, and then walked slowly to the back of the tomb of King Makáry, their grandsire, checking carefully to make certain that no one had followed them.
“I can’t believe what I just heard,” Arrhiána said. “I don’t understand what Papá is doing, or why.”
“Nor can I, sister,” Arkády replied. “But he did it nonetheless, and I’m very worried about his frame of mind. Where do we go from here? I don’t think the country can survive a second war this year. We lost so many soldiers in Pommerelia that we don’t have enough men even to bring in the crops.
“I don’t think father understands the level of unrest out there. Either that, or he just doesn’t care. I don’t know which is worse. But I can’t sit idly by while we rush headlong into another conflict. I do hope you’ll attend the next council meeting on Saturday, sister.”
“Oh, I’ll be there, Kásha,” she indicated. “We’ve had enough killing for one year. I’m already tired of celebrating memorial masses for the people I love.”
“I don’t know what we’re going to do,” the prince said. “We can’t continue in this direction for very long: we’ll have insurrection in the streets, possibly even civil war. What’s happened to the strong, fair, gracious leader we once knew? Father seems to have lost all of the finer virtues. All he has left now is his naked authority.”
Arkády glanced up at the massive structure of the tomb of their grandsire looming over them.
“Do you remember, sister, when we found Papá wandering here last March?” the prince asked.
“How could I forget,” Arrhiána responded. “All that nonsense about the Dark-Haired Man.”
“I’m more interested,” he continued, “in what father was saying about the two regents, Dowager Princess Zubayda and Prince-Bishop Víktor, and about King Makáry. Something untoward obviously happened during the Great War, something out of the ordinary, something that was later hidden away.”
Princess Arrhiána clasped her hands together for a moment, and then looked down at the interlocking fingers, one laid over another.
“According to Brisquayne,” she said, “Mösza may have been involved in a scandal at court during the year 1164, an incident so abhorrent to the regents that they packed her off somewhere out of the country, never allowing her to return. Papá might have known about it in general, without being aware of any of the particulars.”
“What kind of scandal?” her brother inquired.
“An affaire d’amour, perhaps,” the princess replied, “or maybe something more. Brisquayne overheard a conversation during that period that would indicate the possibility of Mösza having borne a natural child. But Brisquayne also said that Mösza was essentially an innocent, even at the ripe age of twenty-four, and that she couldn’t have instigated such a liaison.”
“But what difference would it have made?” Arkády mused. “There have been plenty of illegitimate members of our family sired over the years, and nobody has ever paid much attention to any of them.”
“Well, Víktor was a churchman and Zubayda originally derived from Tôrtous,” Arrhiána noted. “Perhaps the idea of a supposedly virginal princess bearing a child out of wedlock was anathema to them.”
“I still think there has to be more to it than that,” Arkády speculated. “I sense that we’re missing something vital here. I repeat my earlier question: however scandalous the situation might have seemed to the old regents, what difference would the child have made to any of them? Why not just pack the infant off to the local monastery, and marry the girl to some foreign monarch? Why would Kipriyán have been told by his guardians to be so very careful about this particular situation?”
“Hmmm,” the princess pondered. “If we look at the history of the time, at the end of 1164 Papá was the last surviving male descendant of King Makáry. Had he died before producing an heir to the throne, his uncle, Patriarch Markos, Makáry’s next youngest brother, would have succeeded, except that as a high-ranking churchman, he might have ruled himself ineligible.
“Grandpapá had no other surviving brothers at the time of his death, and they themselves had all died young without producing male issue. However, several elderly great-uncles, the Princes Ysídor, Siegfried, and Víktor, were still living then. Two of them had sired both children and grandchildren by that time, but the law of succession allows the throne to pass through female lines when more than two generations have intervened. Thus, a strong claim to the crown might have been made under such circumstances for the sons of Papá’s eldest surviving sister.”
“The Forellës!” Arkády exclaimed.
“Yes,” his sister agreed, “Teréza’s future children were potentially the next heirs to the throne, followed by the Arrhéni offspring of Princess Genthia, unless another, relatively unfettered, senior male heir could have been produced, from offstage, so to speak.”
“Mösza’s child,” the prince stated.
“Possibly,” she affirmed. “Of course, this is all speculation, but the child, if he were a boy, would have had an equal right under law to the throne after the deaths without children of Kipriyán and Patriarch Markos, and a better right by age and seniority to any sons of Teréza and Genthia, who weren’t born in any case until somewhat later. Or so I believe.
“I think that they prudently arranged to have the child sequestered away somewhere, under very tight control, just in case they eventually needed him. Then, when Kipriyán began producing heirs of his own, they quietly disposed of the lad.”
“That would explain some of it,” her brother acknowledged, “but I still think there’s something missing from our little drama.”
She cocked her head, and smiled her sly, slanting smile.
“Have you never considered, brother, that maybe they just didn’t get along very well?”
He grimaced, and gave her a mock blow across the back of her head.
“Just like you and I, huh?” Arkády intimated.
“I knew you’d understand,” she laughed in return.