Faerie Knight 177 - Final Chapter

177 - The Feast of Saint Veischax

Like most Narvonnians of my generation, I find it difficult to imagine a time when our kingdom and the Caliphate were at war.

• Evaine du Camaret-à-Arden, Baroness of the Arden 

 ☀ 

14th Day of the Harvest Moon, AC 298

“Get that out of your mouth!” Yaél exclaimed in frustration.  Trist was amused to observe that, though his squire had been terrified to hold an infant, she now hooked a finger into his daughter’s mouth and scooped an acorn out without a second thought.  “By the Angelus,” she continued, picking Evaine up and settling the child on her hip, “it’s like you’re trying to kill yourself.”

“Here, I’ll take her,” Clarisant said, reaching out her arms.  Evaine, still mostly bald save for a few wisps of incredibly fine hair, gurgled and reached out for her mother.  Once Yaél’s hands were free, she threw the acorn off to the side, keeping the toss low to the ground so that the nut skittered across the packed earth of the courtyard.

It had been a long, hard winter and spring, but now the harvest had come, and all of Narvonne seemed a lighter place.  The bonefires were burning all around Lutetia, but here in the courtyard of Cheverny castle, braziers had been lit against the chill of autumn.  Once again, the open space had been filled with trestle tables.

“I am thankful they chose to hold the ceremony outside,” Trist remarked to Claire, wrapping an arm around her waist.  He nodded his head to Baron Florent, who was deep in conversation with the Baron du Rive Ouest, the grizzled knight’s former liege lord.  Of all the other Barons, Trist was least familiar with Everard, who rarely left his castle.  Now that Trist saw the man, he understood why: Everard sat on a litter which had been carried into the courtyard by his servants.  Travelling all the way from the coast of the Outer Sea to the capital must have been a long and trying journey.

Baroness Arnive and Baron Urien, on the other hand, Trist had worked with extensively over the past year, with hardly a moon going by without pigeons flying between them.  Now, they approached with Baroness Blasine and Sir Divdan trailing just a step behind.  Upon seeing his granddaughter, Urien broke off a conversation - which sounded like it was centered on maintenance of the Sea Road - and instead spread his arms as wide as his smile.

“Come and see your grandfather, little girl!” he roared, and the giggling toddler found herself, as always, the center of attention.  Trist took a step back to give Claire room to visit with her parents, and inclined his head to Arnive before clasping arms with Divdan.  He tried to ignore how their gazes lingered on the white linen he still wore wrapped over his eyes.   

“It is good to see you both in person again,” Trist said, with a smile.

“And you, Baron Trist,” Arnive replied.  “For one thing, it means I can congratulate you in person.  For a second, I fully intend to hold that baby.  And finally, I can get word of precisely what my son has been doing.  I do not think he’s sent more than two letters, and one of them was simply to tell me that the war was over and he’d survived.”

Trist winced.  “I do not know that I can be of much help,” he admitted.  Why would she think the king’s squire would write to him?

“You aren’t the one I intend to question,” Arnive said, turning to Yaél with sharp eyes.  “How many times has he written you?”

Yaél squirmed.  She was wearing a riding doublet with divided skirts that had become her standing compromise with Clarisant when it came to formal events, and the sword she’d been given by the king hung at her belt.  Her hair was long enough now to tie back out of her face.  

“Six times,” Trist’s squire admitted, finally.

“Since the end of the war?” Arnive pressed.

“Since the new year,” Yaél squeaked.  “Um, ten since we left Cheverny.”

“I thought so,” the baroness proclaimed, with a satisfied grin.  “Sit next to me, child, and tell me everything Isdern doesn’t want me to know.”  She took Yaél by the arm and dragged her over to a seat at the barons’ table in the front row, just before the high table.  The girl looked back at Trist, wide-eyed as if pleading for help, but he simply shrugged.  If she wasn’t going to tell the boy no, she was going to have to learn to deal with his mother.

“And how have you been?”  Trist asked Divdan.  “Falais is recovering well from the war?”

“Well, we got through with a lot less damage than Lutetia or Rocher de la Garde,” the older knight admitted.  “And now that we have peace with the Caliphate, there has been a lot more trade moving through the pass.  The baroness has found a lot of uses for the increased money from tolls and taxes.”

Trist watched Divdan’s eyes flick over to his liege, and understood something that had not been clear to him during those harried days defending the pass.  Perhaps Claire had managed to teach him a bit about politics, and about people, after all.  “She is a good woman,” was all he said out loud.

“Aye, that she is,” Sir Divdan agreed.

Trumpets sounded from the gate to the castle, and the assembled crowd turned.  Claire scooted away from her parents to bring Evaine back over to his side.  Together, they watched the seven Exarchs escort King Lionel out into the courtyard, up the center aisle, and to the place that had been prepared in front of the high table, where the Priest of the Cathedral of Saint Camiel awaited him.

Trist didn’t know the new Exarchs, but he thought they looked very young, even wearing their plate armor.  Margaret and Bors threw glances in his direction once they’d turned to stand behind the king at attention, the Exarch of Rahab giving him a smile.  Bors didn’t move, but Trist could already tell they would be speaking during the feast, after a cup or two of wine.

The king himself was dressed in a fine black doublet, worked with threads of gold.  The rampant lion of his family was embroidered on the breast, and then again much larger on the back, and he wore his father’s crown.  When Trist had last been in Cheverny, just after the battle, they hadn’t yet managed the thing, but it must have turned up.  At Lionel’s side, Isdern took the position of his squire, and also carried a coronet on a pillow, which he was careful to hold even.  Trist did not fail to notice the glances the boy kept shooting in Yaél’s direction, but decided to ignore it since the two had not seen each other in well over a year.

The bride did not come from the castle; instead, she came in a procession through the city and over the bridge to King’s Island.  Ismet had an honor guard of her family’s soldiers, all dressed in the armor of the south, with curved swords at their sides and their heads wrapped in cloth.  She was escorted by her uncle, who Trist had seen once before, and by an older woman he could only assume was her mother.

Ismet wore a dress unlike anything Trist had ever seen before.  It must have been a custom of the south, for it looked nothing like what any bride would wear in Narvonne.  The fabric looked to be a white silk, with hundreds of sea shells, beads, and colored tassels sewn into it.  Her face was covered, as every other time he had seen her, in a red veil, but this one had also been adorned with more beads, and what looked like coins.  When her procession reached the place where the king stood, they peeled off to the right, while she proceeded with her uncle to stand next to Lionel.

The priest began with prayers to Theliel and Lailahel, and Claire moved closer, pressed up against Trist’s side, where she could murmur to him.  “What were you thinking when we married?” she asked him.  Trist tried to cast his mind back; so much had happened since then, it almost seemed as if the man who had stood in the chapel that day had been a stranger.

“It was hard to think of much of anything,” Trist admitted to her.  “I felt hollow.  At first, I knew I had to avenge my brother, and that let me keep moving.  But when that didn’t work, and everyone treated me like a hero - I didn’t know what to do.  But I remember feeling your hand in mine,” he said, and couldn’t help but smile.  “I remember how soft your skin was, and that I could feel your pulse.  And I knew that I never wanted to see you hurt again.”

“I was terrified that you would resent me,” Claire confessed.  “Especially if we had a child right away.  A lot of men would have refused to believe me, or even sent the child away.”

“You have never lied to me,” Trist said.  “And even if-” he stopped, and did not speak the thought out loud.  “It would be the least of what I owe to my brother.”

Claire settled Evaine on her right shoulder, and reached out with her left hand to find his.  “You haven’t seen him again?” she asked.

Trist shook his head.  “No.  Not since letting Acrasia free.  Nor my father, either.  No more ghosts.  It’s long past time they were able to rest.”

At the front of the courtyard, before the high table, the priest had lifted up the cloth with which Lionel and Ismet’s hands would be bound together.  “I want you to know,” Claire said.  “Though I don’t think I’ve ever said it.  You’re a good husband, Trist.  I don’t compare you to him, and I wouldn’t choose him over you.”

Trist swallowed, his throat suddenly dry.  “He was a good man,” he said.  “A good brother.”

“He was,” Claire agreed.  “But I love you.  I didn’t expect to, but I do.  Don’t ever doubt that.” 

A cheer rang out from the crowd at the handfasting, and Trist and Claire added their voices.  But when the priest lifted the coronet from where Isdern had kept it balanced on the pillow, the cheers died away again.  

“For generations,” the priest began, holding the coronet up where everyone could see it, “we have seen our kings and princes wed to the noblewoman of Narvonne.  The daughters of barons, and occasionally even brides from Raetia and Skandia.  Never, before today, has a monarch of Narvonne wed a bride from the Caliphate of Maʿīn.”

“Instead, we have fought generation after generation through the mountains of the Hauteurs Massif, at the walls of Falais, and in the Passe de Mûre,” the old man continued.  “And yet, I think we too often forget that our first king, Aurelius, wed not a woman of Etalus, but Elantia, the daughter of the Narvonii tribe.”

“As our first king and queen represented a new beginning, and a new people, after the Great Cataclysm, so now do these two carry all our hopes for a future where Narvonne and Maʿīn can exist in peace,” the priest concluded.  “Ismet ibnah Salah, Exarch of Epinoia, kneel.”

With a rustle of silk, the southern woman dropped to her knees before the priest.  Carefully, the old man settled the coronet on her head.  “By the grace of the Angelus, I give you Ismet, Queen of Narvonne,” he announced, then stepped back.  Lionel reached out a hand, and Ismet took it, then rose to her feet to stand beside her husband.

“I am happy for them,” Trist told Clarisant, when the cheers and applause finally died down.

“It is a blessing to live in a time when our King and Queen are also good people,” Claire agreed.  “I do not think that most people in the world are so fortunate.”

Trist shrugged.  “How soon can we leave?”

Claire laughed.  “Not until a few days after the feast, I should think, or we’ll have been rude,” she told him.  “Are you that eager to get back to the Ardenwood?”

“It is quiet there,” Trist told her, motioning to the cacophony of the tables around them.  “I’ve roamed those woods since I was old enough to walk.  That’s where I feel at home.”

“And we’ll get you back to them soon, Husband,” Clarisant assured him.  “Now spend at least a little time with our friends.  We will have the rest of our lives to spend at home.”