Holy City: Chapter Twenty-Two - Part Two

V was alone again, so he looked up to the ceiling again. He noticed some of the men on horseback were archers. They shot arrows over the vast expanse of the ceiling. V was following the arc of one of those frozen arrows when he heard another voice call out in the darkness.

“I see my husband has left you alone.”

V turned from the arrows above to the voice in the room.

“He is not always the best host. Especially when he drinks.”

The Queen of Lyonesse was looking for the King. She found V instead. She walked over to V and the coffee table and looked at the two bottles of wine.

“Especially when he drinks enough wine for a garrison of men.”

“Does he do that often?”

“Not often…only every night.”

She noticed V’s wine glass.

“I see your glass is still full”.

“Yes, it is.”

“Do you not drink wine?”

V did not answer. He looked up to the mosaic again and then down to the Queen. She waited for his answer, he still did not say anything

“Is it for religious reasons? You do consider yourself a religious man, don’t you?”

V’s eyes scanned back and forth. “That can be a very dangerous question.”

“Yes, it can.”

Isabel still wanted to hear his answer, still waited for his answer.

“I prefer to keep a clear mind when I am with company.” V said.

The Queen took one of the bottles of wine and filled the King’s former glass.

“And when you are alone?”

V laughed a little, “that is an entirely different matter.”

“I also need to keep a clear mind when I am with others… so if I want a drink, I must drink alone, and I am rarely alone.”

Isabel held up her full glass of wine.

“But, alas, I cannot drink tonight.”

Slowly, the Queen’s wrist turned and the wine poured out. It fell evenly to the coffee table. The dark red of the wine pooling on the table until the pool ran as a stream towards the edge. It reached the edge of the table and stopped without falling to the floor. The Queen’s glass was empty now. The coffee table contained a shallow lake of red.

V looked at her realizing there was something he was missing.

“My doctors say a pregnant woman should not drink alcohol.”

“I did not know.”

V studied the Queen. Isabel stood sideways showing the slight protuberance of her belly. Her pregnancy was visible.

“I guess your magical powers don’t extend to observation.”

“In this case, I suppose that is true.”

“Six months. I show more by the day. Harold does not have an heir. This child will be that heir.”

“Congratulations.”

“Yes, I suppose so.”

“Are you not happy to be pregnant?”

Isabel paused. “For the child, yes. For the heir..” The Queen shrugged.

“I see.”

“Harold thinks women are only for having babies. That’s what most men think. I’m sure that’s what you think, too, magician. In Damasia I’ve heard they let us have positions of authority, but here, we are put in our place.”

“Perhaps you should move to Damasia?”

“I heard you tried.”

“They weren’t very hospitable, maybe they would be kinder to a queen.”

“I am under no illusions about what would be done to me if I moved there. Only a fool would try to do something like that.”

“I’ve tried.”

The Queen smiled, didn’t say anything. V nodded. “I’ve been called worse.”

“Really, and what was that.”

“Too many things to recount. I would rather not remember.”

“Memory is important. Even the painful memories. They tell us who we are.”

“I’ve tried to get rid of my memories.”

“Then you don’t know who you are.”

V looked up at the ceiling, at the mosaic he had been studying earlier. The entire palace was built with beautiful mosaics in the ceilings. He now realized it was of an ancient battle between two warring armies on horseback. The arrows were being shot at each other. The pleasing orange colors were flames of burning villages, the bright red, the blood of so many dead and wounded, the greens trampled under the hooves of attacking cavalry and the feet of marching soldiers.

V wondered what century that battle had taken place. He wondered what century this palace and its mosaiced ceilings had been built. How many kings and queens had lived in this place, how many different nations had controlled it. What V did not know was this palace was built by King Harold’s father a half century ago and was built on top an ancient cathedral that had been erected one thousand years before that. Hatusha was a city in a fortunate place with rivers and exits onto plains that allowed it to be both safe and to expand. This territory Harold now controlled had been valuable to a great many people over all of time for practical reasons and for less practical reasons and had allowed many different peoples in many different times to use it as a stronghold of power in the region.

After several seconds of studying the mosaic, lost in thought, V’s eyes fell back to floor level and the Queen. He had forgotten what they were talking about. Isabel noticed this and picked up the conversation.

“I wasn’t always a queen.”

“I assumed that was so.”

“My family wasn’t of royal lineage, we had to make do in other ways. To Harold this is all so normal, it’s not to me.”

“Nor I.”

“I was told you took a vow of poverty in Vitesia.”

“I did not take a vow of poverty. I was poor.”

“So you seek riches like other men?”

“Riches? Yes. Like other men? Perhaps not.”

“Oh. You seek riches of a different kind.” Isabel teased. “Why? Because you are better than other men?”

V looked back up to the mosaic, despite now knowing what the images represented he still liked the colors. After studying them for several more seconds, he returned his gaze to Isabel. “That is quite an accusation coming from a queen. That I put myself above others.”

“Harold thinks you’re a prophet sent from his god, for his religion. Wouldn’t a prophet be above a queen?”

“You said his god, his religion, do you not believe in the same things?”

“When you grow up as I did, God either becomes everything or nothing.”

“How did you grow up?”

Isabel gave an enigmatic smile. It reminded V of a famous painting he had once seen in a book.

“I went out one morning with my mother. I was nineteen. Probably naïve. Maybe as naïve as you. We went out to watch a parade. No, that isn’t true, it wasn’t a parade, it was a procession.”

Isabel blushed. She surprised herself that this memory still made her blush. She tried to hide the color from her cheeks but one cannot hide blushing skin.

“Harold was walking down our street. I didn’t know him as Harold then. I would have been sent to prison for calling him Harold instead of your royal highness or whatever the hell he insists they call him. My mother and I found ourselves in the front of the crowd. My mother was holding a bundle of dirty laundry. I was standing next to her in my typical morning dress looking… I don’t know how I looked. But Harold saw me. He must have liked me. I must have looked good enough, at least to a certain type of man. To a certain type of middle-aged man. After the procession passed and the crowd started to disperse one of Harold’s men found us, he had obviously sent him to find us.”

Isabel laughed. “I don’t know why I say ‘us’. He did talk to my mother first, to get her approval or something ridiculous like that, like she was going to say no to one of the King’s men. We were invited to a feast that week. Much like the one you were at last night. We went of course and that was the beginning of a more boring, more familiar story of a three year long courtship.”

Isabel lowered her voice a little. The enigmatic smile came back. “I could pretend I was more virtuous than I was, that I made Harold wait longer than I did.”

“And there was the unfortunate complication of his wife. The one before me.” The smile went away. “I didn’t cause her head to be chopped off. I can see that’s what you’re thinking, but Harold had made that decision before he met me. That’s why he picked me out of the crowd. He was looking for a replacement. It was probably good politics for him. To pick a common girl. And that’s what I was, a common girl, not a woman, a girl.”

“That’s how I became queen. Because I was at the front of the crowd one day seven years ago. If I wasn’t at the front of that crowd I wouldn’t be queen now. I would be…” Isabel’s voice trailed off.

“I don’t think I can convey to you, magician, what it is like to have my entire worth based solely on my appearance. That’s it. That’s what I am to Harold. To this country. I’m queen because he liked the way I looked and wanted to sleep with me. I would like to think I’m more than that. That I have a brain, too. Then I remember why I’m queen and the importance of this baby I’m carrying. The importance this baby is male. It puts things in perspective.”

V sat back down in his chair. Isabel sat in the sofa chair across from him. The coffee table with a couple of bottles a couple of glasses and a lake of wine between them.

“I’m surrounded by women most all of the time now. Sometimes there are holy men as well because Harold thinks they are safer. I don’t know if you’re a holy man, but if you had slept with one of those women he sent to your room on the first night I doubt we would have been sitting next to each other at dinner.”

“So it was a test?”

“No, it’s still a custom. Harold just likes the men around me to be impotent.”

“I am not impotent.”

“Haven’t you taken a vow of chastity?”

“No.”

“Don’t tell Harold.”

“I had a wife once.”

“It’s rumored you told one of the women that. I didn’t think it was true.”

“Who knows what is true. Some would say the truth is it was fate you were in the crowd that day and that is why you are queen.”

“Actually, that is what most people say.”

“Fate.” V scoffed. “If the wind moves a bomb from here to here,” he moved his cup two inches to the left, “suddenly it is fate that these men and women were to die and these other men and women were to live. There is no fate. There is luck. I had luck. I survived the first week of bombing. My wife did not have the same luck. She didn’t die because she was weaker than I was. I didn’t live because I was more motivated to live than she was. It was because of luck, only luck, that is all.”

“I am sorry.” Isabel said. She seemed sincere.

V searched for words to respond to that sympathy. But what words could he possibly find. He took a drink from his full cup. The wine tasted bitter. It was the first time he had ever drunk wine. He wasn’t sure if he liked the taste. He kept drinking anyway and finished the glass as Isabel watched.

“I do not feel anything. I need more.” V said.

He poured himself a second glass from the bottle. He raised his glass to Isabel and then drank the glass in one motion. He set the empty glass back down on the table with the red lake. Once more, he poured from the bottle into the glass, until the bottle was empty.

“Perhaps you should slow down,” Isabel said.

Once the glass was full, V repeated his actions and drank the glass of wine in one motion. Once again, he placed the empty glass on the table.

“That is enough.” V said.

“Yes, it is.”

There was a silence between them.

V bit the fingernail of his left thumb as he looked at Isabel. It was late in the evening. The wine that had put Harold out of commission now was affecting V like a cold passed through the air.

“I think it is time for me to retire for the night.”

“The conversation was just getting interesting.” Isabel tried to light then mood. “You were beginning to be tempted to show me your powers.”

“I have no powers.”

“So you say.” She said this with a smile but V did not notice.

He stood up. He was a little unsteady. V was surprised by this.

“Magician?”

“Yes”

“You need to be careful. Harold believes you have powers and if you refuse to help him this will not end well for you.”

“It will end. When one of the three nations is victorious, whichever one it is, they will sack the city of Alexandria, they will burn the libraries, shut the institutions of higher learning, allow only their own religious or political symbols to be shown. Thousands will be imprisoned or killed, men, women, children will be slaughtered. All in the name of one type of god or another. If that is God’s will, then I am no prophet.”

“I think we are too serious.”

“What?” V was surprised by Isabel’s response.

“I learned the value of humor during the Great Terror. It infected Lyonesse as well. I was very young then, but I could always recognize a person who was not a Citizen by the way they smiled. A person with the ability to joke and to laugh could be trusted. A person without that ability was to be feared. A world without a sense of humor is a truly frightening place.”

“Then I will try to remember to smile,” V said

“And it is such a nice smile.”

This caught V by surprise and he couldn’t help but to show a genuine smile to the Queen.

“I think it is time for me to take this smile back to my room for the night.”

“Magician.” Isabel stopped him after a few steps. V turned back.

“Yes, your highness.” V responded playfully.

“I’m still waiting for that trick.”

“Then I will make sure to practice tonight so it is ready for you when the sun rises.”

“Oh, so you do have something?”

“For you, I will make sure that I do.”

V turned to leave again.

“Magician?” Isabel stopped him again. She was playing with him. V laughed and turned back to her.

“Yes.”

She stopped playing and turned serious. “I want you to make me a promise.”

“That is interesting.”

“No, not really. I just want you to promise me something.”

“Okay.”

“Do you promise?”

“How can I promise if I don’t know what you are asking?”

“I want you to promise not to use your magic powers on me.”

“What?”

“If you have any. I know you don’t. I’m not a fool like Harold. But in case you have some abilities I’m not aware of, please don’t use them on me or my baby.”

V studied the queen. He tried to use those powers of observation she said he did not have. Why would she make this request. Whatever her motives, she was sincere, as sincere as she was with her sympathy for V earlier. He could see that. He nodded in agreement and then smiled a sad smile.

“Good night.” He said and made a dramatic bow before the Queen. Isabel laughed. V left the room.

Next Chapter: Chapter Twenty-Three
Previous Chapter: Chapter Twenty-Two - Part One