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October 357-May 358 M.E.
By the time Molly and her brother finally reached the throne room, her feet were killing her. The little red shoes with their pointed toes had looked so darling at the shop, but they hadn’t been made for standing in line.
The lord chamberlain called out their names: “Sir Quincy Coburn of Montgomery, Keneshire, and his sister, Miss Miriam Coburn.”
The queen, cold and serene on her high throne, looked down and nodded as they bowed and curtsied. It didn’t seem as if she remembered either of them at all. She motioned for them to stand up straight again, then said, “You’re rather pretty.”
“Thank you, your majesty,” said Molly, who assumed this compliment was aimed at her, rather than Quincy.
“I like those shoes. You are welcome to court.”
For a second, Molly was afraid the queen would actually ask for the shoes, but then one of the chamberlain’s men appeared at her side, and she understood they were supposed to leave now.
“We didn’t even get a chance to talk to her,” grumbled Quincy, as they found themselves back in the Palm Court. “Maybe we did something wrong. Wait here. I’ll go see if there’s someone we can ask.”
Molly thought they might have better luck if they both tried to find someone to ask, so she wandered over to a group of women who were laughing and talking by one of the big waterfalls. They nodded and smiled to her, but when she tried to speak, they cut her off and walked away. She tried again, and the same thing happened. The third time, someone finally spoke to her. A rather pinch-faced young lady asked, “Who in the Void are you?” Then, as Molly told her, the woman said, “I didn’t ask because I wanted to know.”
Quincy had slightly more luck. People were rude to him, too, but one fellow suggested Quincy and Molly might speak to someone at the lord high treasurer’s office, since their question concerned a royal pension.
“I’ll stay here and keep asking around,” said Quincy. “You go see if you can talk to the treasurer.”
So, Molly had to go over to the treasury and wait in line again, only to be told she needed to make an appointment. She did so, even though the earliest the clerk said he could fit her on his schedule was in a week and a half.
When she got back to the main palace of Wealdan Castle, her feet were throbbing with pain. She found Quincy seated with three other men near a bank of orchids and ferns, drinking wine and playing cards. Fortunately, she was able to extricate him by complaining about her feet and demanding he drive her back to their inn.
“I thought we weren’t going to gamble anymore,” said Molly on the ride back down the castle hill.
“It’s just a bit of harmless fun,” grumbled Quincy. “You’re not going to let me forget about that, are you?”
“Just be careful, dear.”
The next day, Molly put on more comfortable shoes and took a walk around the neighborhood of their inn. Entirely by accident, her path took her through the great cloth market of Formacaster. There were silks and satins and velvets in every possible color, and lace so fine it might have been spider webs, and embroidery with gold and silver thread, set with real rubies and diamonds. All in all, Molly thought she was remarkably frugal, only buying two new dresses, a single pair of shoes, and a feather hat that struck her fancy.
“I thought you were going to stop buying so many dresses,” said Quincy, when he saw the boxes.
“We have to dress fashionably if we want anyone to take us seriously,” she retorted.
But the truth was, for all the attention the people of court paid to Molly and Quincy, they might as well have been wearing burlap sacks. From time to time, Molly caught gentlemen staring at her, but she didn’t like the way they looked. Her mother, who had died when Molly was 9, had once said something about how boys were “only looking for one thing.” Whatever that thing was, it certainly wasn’t an opportunity to help a young pair of orphaned siblings from the countryside.
The day of their appointment with the treasurer arrived, and Quincy was feeling ill from too much wine the night before. So, Molly had to go by herself. She explained the situation to a young clerk in the outer office, and she was certain he would solve all their problems right then and there.
But the clerk frowned and said, “Let me get this straight. Your father was killed serving the king in Pinshire last year, yes?”
“Yes.”
“And you were still a minor at the time, so the king granted you a pension, even though your brother was of age and a sworn knight.”
“Um...yes.”
“And then your brother gambled away that pension, so the two of you had to sell one of your father’s estates. Do I have that right?”
“Exactly.” Molly put on her most winning smile—she had been told it was very effective. “So, I was wondering, could the king possibly consider giving us another pension? Or maybe make the fellow who took it from Quincy give it back?”
The clerk shut his ledger with a sudden and alarming thud. “Miss Coburn, the king and queen have done all for you that they can. Indeed, they have given you more than you are entitled to. If you and your brother have foolishly squandered that gift, then that is your concern, not their majesties’.”
“But...but what do we do?” cried Molly, her lip quivering.
“You are at court, Miss Coburn.” The clerk waved a hand in the direction of the palace. “I would suggest you try to find a rich husband. Or your brother could try to find a rich wife. That is, I understand, the customary solution in these cases. Good day, now.”
She left the treasury hating the clerk and cursing his name. By the time she reached the inn, however, she had convinced herself his advice was the only sensible course of action. And, indeed, she began to believe the idea had been hers from the very beginning.
“The court is full of rich young ladies and rich young gentlemen,” she told Quincy. “All we need to do is attract one or the other. Or both, if we’re very lucky.”
The trouble was that most of the ladies at court still didn’t want to talk to her. And the men at court generally avoided Quincy, except when they could entice him into a game of cards so they could take his money.
They received invitations to all the larger court events, like the lord mayor’s ball and the big Solstice night bonfire. And they had seats at the theater when traveling troupes of actors put on plays in the festival pavilion. But Molly didn’t really enjoy the theater; it made her feel stupid when she couldn’t understand what the actors were saying. She wanted to have a group of friends who laughed and gossiped with her about other people, rather than pointing at her from a distance and laughing behind their hands.
Early in the new year, Quincy came up with a new plan. “Look here,” he said. “Great noblemen are always looking for fellows to serve in their retinues, yes? So, instead of trying to find some rich girl who wants to marry me, I should enter some sword competitions and try to get a nobleman to take me on as one of his knights.”
That might have been a good idea. Unfortunately, while Quincy had been very, very good with a sword by the standards of their home in western Keneshire, he was nowhere near the best of all the young men at court. He made a few friends through the sword competitions, but they were sadly all penniless young knights like himself. None of them had positions to offer in their retinues. A couple of them tried to ingratiate themselves with Molly, but knowing they didn’t have any money, she did her best to discourage them.
And then, in the dreary cold days of late January, it seemed a miracle occurred. A young Annenstruker baron fell in with Quincy’s little group of friends. He was handsome, amiable, and charming. He was clearly very rich, because he bought drinks and dinner for everyone all the time. When he asked her to go riding with him one Sunday morning, she immediately said, “Yes.”
He was so personable that she poured out her heart to him and explained the financial difficulties that she and Quincy had found themselves in.
“Did you know I’m related to the queen on her majesty’s mother’s side?” the baron asked.
“No, I didn’t know that,” said Molly. “Are you really?” Like everyone, she knew the queen’s mother had been born an Annenstruker princess. So it stood to reason an Annenstruker baron could be related to her.
“Indeed. I see her majesty all the time. I know she happens to be looking for new ladies-in-waiting. Would you like me to put in a good word for you?”
“Oh, yes! Please do,” cried Molly. “I would be ever so grateful. I don’t know what I could ever do to repay you, though.”
“You could give me a kiss,” said the baron, winking.
That was the sort of thing Molly knew a good girl wasn’t supposed to do. But the baron seemed very kind and entirely harmless. And he was offering to do her a very great favor. So she gave him a little peck on the cheek. And when he said, “That’s not a kiss,” and he pulled her close and stuck his tongue in her mouth, she told herself it was only harmless fun.
He saw her twice a week after that, and while their outings remained fun, they were no longer quite so harmless. It became obvious to Molly that he expected her to sleep with him. She made it clear she was not prepared to go so far, but he suggested other things they might do together. Some of those things she had heard rumors of; others were quite new. He praised her skill, which made her feel a little better about the whole business.
“You won’t tell anyone about this,” she said one afternoon, when she had finished pleasuring him. “I would hate to get a reputation at court. Especially since you’re trying to get me a position as a lady-in-waiting.”
The baron laughed heartily. “My dear girl, you have no idea what goes on at the upper levels of court life. The queen lives a life of shocking depravity, in case you didn’t know. She changes lovers three or four times a year.”
That made her feel much better. Perhaps she wasn’t the perfect girl her parents had expected her to be. But by the standards of court, she was still relatively good.
By the end of February, however, she was starting to feel uneasy again. In the first place, she hadn’t been named a lady-in-waiting yet, in spite of the baron’s assurances that her appointment was, “just around the corner.” In the second place, despite his promises that he was keeping their romantic dalliances secret, it was becoming clear that he had told quite a number of people.
She heard women gossiping about her now. They weren’t just pointing at her and laughing because she was an outsider from the middle of nowhere. They were definitely sharing stories about her “proclivities.”
She was also attracting a lot more attention from the “wrong” sort of gentleman at court. Some of them even approached her, hinting they were friends with the baron. She angrily rebuffed them until one wintry day, when the court went up the Trahern a few miles to the Summer Palace for a feast, and she had no one to take her. One of these disreputable men suggested she might ride in his boat if she would gratify him as she did the baron. So, she did.
The week after that, a different disreputable gentleman helped her and Quincy get invitations to a party at the Duke of Leornian’s house in return for that same service.
“Perhaps it’s not entirely pleasant,” she told herself. “But it’s not entirely unpleasant, either. And it is nice to feel needed, for once.”
Then everything started to go wrong. The baron heard about her encounters with other men, and to her shock, he was angry with her. He invited her to his house in town, and when she got there, he told her that since she had “shared” this particular kind of intimacy with several other fellows, she now owed him “something more.” When she pretended not to know what he was talking about, he grew explicit and vulgar.
“I was very clear,” she said. “I will not give up my maidenhood to you. And in any case, you still haven’t managed to get the queen to make me a lady-in-waiting.”
“And now I never will. Goodbye.” He rang for the footmen and told them to show “Miss Coburn” out through the servants’ entrance.
A couple days afterward, another disaster fell on Molly and Quincy, as a veritable avalanche of bills descended on them. There were bills for Molly’s hats and dresses and shoes. There were bills for Quincy’s new sword and fencing gear. There were bills for food and wine and lodging. Some of the bills came marked, “Second Notice,” or “Past Due,” even though Molly didn’t remember ever seeing them before. Or maybe she had, but she hadn’t thought them important at the time, considering she had believed herself on the verge of becoming a lady-in-waiting.
They paid as many of the bills as they could, but they simply didn’t have enough money to settle all of them. One of the fellows Quincy practiced fencing with recommended a “highly discreet” attorney, who looked over the pile of unpaid bills, smiled broadly, and then made them sign a lot of very densely-written documents. At the end of it, they were a lot poorer, and another of their father’s old estates had been sold.
The lawyer gave them the name of a different fellow—a slippery-looking character of uncertain trade who came to their inn and gave them gold and silver for Molly’s new dresses and their carriage and the horses. When he offered Molly three pennies for the beautiful (if uncomfortable) shoes she had worn to their royal audience, she objected that this was barely a quarter of what they had cost.
“If you know anyone who will give you more for them, then by all means, be my guest,” said the man.
That night, Molly and Quincy did something they hadn’t done since they had first learned their father was dead. They sat down and tried to make a complete accounting of their finances. It was almost impossible, and it made both their heads hurt, and they had to order up a bottle of good Rodvin to make the business tolerable.
Try as they might, they couldn’t make the figures add up the same way twice, but whatever the exact answer might be, it was still far, far too little to keep them at court in Formacaster any longer.
“Blast it all,” sighed Quincy. “Coming here was a stupid idea. We’ll have to go home and...you know...run a farm.”
Molly made a face. Then a marvelous thought struck her. “No, wait! Maybe we had the wrong idea in coming here to the royal court. But that doesn’t mean we were completely wrong. Maybe we’d have more success if we went somewhere a bit smaller, like Keneburg or Severn.”
“One of the fellows I fence with mentioned something about that. He said that here in Formacaster he was a small fish in a big pond, whereas at home, he was a big fish in a small pond.”
She wasn’t sure what that was supposed to mean, but she leaned over and ruffled her brother’s hair affectionately. “That’s exactly it,” she said. “We just need to put our fish in the right pond, and we’ll be fine.”