The Black Prince: Part II (45 page)

Read The Black Prince: Part II Online

Authors: P. J. Fox

Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Genre Fiction, #Horror, #Dark Fantasy, #Science Fiction & Fantasy, #Fantasy, #Historical, #Sword & Sorcery

BOOK: The Black Prince: Part II
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“She hates being married to your uncle.” Aveline started chewing on her own piece of hay. “I am never getting married.”

“But you have to. You’re a girl.”

“Not true. I can take orders, at a convent.”

“Why would you do that?”

“So I wouldn’t have to get married.” She rolled her eyes.

“It’s not that bad. My parents seem to really like it.”

“Your mother didn’t seem that happy, earlier.”

Which was true. She’d been right about one thing, though: his father really did hate Rowena. Everyone hated Rowena. Which made Asher wonder if he should, in fact, tell someone what he’d seen. Before. Except his mother seemed to know already that Rowena was a—he wasn’t supposed to say whore, that was rude. That Rowena had—not been a whore with nearly every guard in the castle. And probably all the grooms and John’s father as well.

“It’s not so bad, here.” He tried to give Aveline what he hoped was an encouraging smile but which probably looked like a cat baring its teeth. He didn’t smile easily, or naturally. He was, as John liked to say, as dour as dung and as cold as a witch’s teat.

“Even when I was a hostage, I was never beaten. Or starved.” Both things that had happened to him before, when he wasn’t a hostage. “I had my own room, and everyone bought me lots of clothes and toys and things. Although, of course, now I’m too old for toys. But you might not be.”

“I don’t know.”

“They made me take lessons, though. They still do.”

“In?”

“Reading. Writing. Things a gentleman is supposed to know.”

“I can read and write.”

“You can?”

“Our priest taught me. Before he died.”

“What happened to him?”

“My brother got angry and cut off his head.”

And she complained about Hart? There were some people Asher wished Hart would kill, but he hadn’t. Then again, Aveline had said she didn’t miss her brother. So maybe her brother had been more like Maeve. That was something he could see her doing.

“You might be a little homesick at first,” he said, “even if you don’t know why. It’s hard, getting used to new people. And new customs. When I first came here, I thought the food was really strange. But I discovered I liked it. You know, later on.”

“You’re sure that…no one was ever mean to you?”

He shook his head. “And I won’t let them be mean to you, either.”

FORTY-SEVEN

“I
f a man is having trouble conceiving an heir,” the aged physician droned, “he should have his left testicle cut off.”

Isla choked on her wine. “I see.”

They were having lunch with a delegation from the medical college in Eamont, the capital. All of whom were devout children of the Mediator and all of whom appeared to have at least a hundred winters. They’d come to advocate against the practice of dissection, which was allowed under civil law. But not by the church.

“No,” said his companion. Who had a habit of compulsively stroking his beard. Which was revolting. “The Gods blight a man’s testicles for sin.”

“And don’t the scriptures teach us,” the third offered, “that castration is a sin?”

“I believe that was actually a bishop.”

“The point remains the same. That if the Gods wish a man to be ill, then he should be ill.”

“A strange position,” Tristan mused, “for a medical man to take.”

And hadn’t they just been discussing cures?

“Well,” Quentin interrupted, manfully wading in to what Isla was sure had to be the stupidest discussion ever held, “I’ve treated a number of patients who’ve lost a testicle. And I haven’t observed any change in their siring habits.”

“No,” the third replied to his companion, ignoring Quentin entirely, “I am quite certain that it is the scriptures.”

“It is
not
the scriptures.” The first threw down his eating knife. “The scriptures, you toad, advise that
he who is able to receive it, let him receive it.
For these men are eunuchs for heaven’s sake.”

“Then why are they so anxious to sire children?”

All eyes turned toward Quentin, who was calmly buttering his bread.

“They’re not.”

“Then I don’t understand this discussion.”

“Of course you don’t. You were trained in the East.” A chorus of sniffs. Quentin, having managed to avoid what the church considered learning, was barely considered a physician. At least in the South. He’d spent his time tracking the movement of blood through the body, and other such useless pursuits. He knew nothing about astrology, or humors, or the seven deadly sins at all.

“But if a man is born under the beaver moon, one should avoid cutting his testicles. This is well known.”

“What about veins in the belly?”

“Wait,” Isla said. She knew it was rude to interrupt, especially Southerners and she a woman, but she had to know. “How would removing his testicle—whether or not the church allows the practice—aid a man in producing an heir?”

“A true physician would never go against the church.”

But it was the first of the aged trio who answered her. The one who’d quoted scripture. “It is also well known that the left testicle produces female sperm. While the right produces male. If the left is cut off, then the right can no longer be contaminated.”

Isla fought, quite hard, to keep a straight face. “I see.”

“Your husband must have a strong right testicle.”

Isla put her hand over her mouth.

“Indeed, to have produced such a fine heir. And without the benefit of marriage.”

Another course was served. Cheese with candied figs. The delegation was now debating, amongst itself, whether there should be an examination of Tristan’s testicle. Without consulting him. Although he was sitting right there. For why was his opinion relevant?

His face, too, was a study.

They’d been listening to these men drone on, now, for an hour. About beaver moons and stag moons and star signs and humors. And, yes, testicles. Which seemed to be of great interest to all three. Hadn’t they, Isla wondered, ever had cause to examine their own?

However many testicles remained among them?

Her night had been, to put it mildly, an unpleasant one. Her morning had been no better. Tristan had told her what he’d done. And why. And although she’d understood, she couldn’t help but weep.

He’d wanted to humiliate Rowena, whom he viewed as an enemy. As their enemy. And, far more upsetting, an enemy to Asher. Rowena was, indeed, all those things. She was also a woman who, as Tristan had observed on more than one occasion, used sex as tool. As more than a tool. As a weapon. Her superficial guise was one of an innocent flower, plucked too soon by a one-eyed ogre. Tristan had shown her both that he knew her for the whore she truly as, and that her preferred weapon didn’t work.

There was likely no greater victory he could have won. She had no power over him and nor could she claim any, by any means. And now she knew it.

But although Isla might have understood, that didn’t mean she wasn’t upset.

Oh, Tristan had promised her that it wouldn’t happen again. And she believed him. He’d made a conscious choice, relying on her temperance in doing so. He wasn’t the same sort of weak-willed fool that her sister thought all men, captive to the vagaries of the flesh. Tristan had meant his vows and, from his perspective, he’d kept him. Certainly hadn’t turned to Rowena for love, but nor had he sought even momentary comfort. He’d conquered her the way the tribes sometimes did their enemies, in war.

Still, she hated the thought of his hands on another woman. Especially when that woman was her sister. Which, logically, made no sense. Tristan had hardly been a virgin before they’d met. He’d had lovers; he’d been married. Many women had experienced what she had.

While, at the same time, none had.

So while she sat, a fixed expression on her face, listening to discourses on magic disguised as medicine, her mind warred with itself. The old Isla would rightfully have banished him from her bedchamber. Or banished herself to a different one, and gossip be damned. Because a man wasn’t supposed to be unfaithful, even if most men were, and if Tristan truly cared about her then he wouldn’t do such a thing.

While the woman she’d become argued back that sex did not, in and of itself, mean a thing. It was a physical act. Like drinking wine. Or committing murder.

Still, she wanted to sob for a week and then sleep for a week.

And no matter which voice in her head ended up winning, being so close to Tristan was still hard.

He served her candied figs, as though nothing was wrong.

She might not always feel like being his wife, but she could never escape being his duchess. Nor could he escape his duties as—not merely the leader of a powerful province but the right arm of the king. So they’d suffer through this lunch, both of them, however little they felt like doing so, and deal with their problems later.

At least, in this, they were wholly united.

After Tristan’s revelation had come Rowena’s. Tristan’s had been a shock; Rowena’s was meant to have been a shock. Because Rowena, if not truly evil, was the next thing to.

The only bright spot so far had been the secondary revelation that Rowena was leaving.

By one route or another.

Tristan had, apparently, given her a deadline by which to vacate the premises. Which she’d taken like a notice that her own house had been seized. Her plan to remain at Caer Addanc was based on, variously, claiming that Tristan had violated her against her wishes and thus somehow securing a spot or, if that failed, claiming that she was pregnant with his child.

Which would be a neat trick. Moreover, Rowena had apparently forgotten that under every law applicable, any child of her loins would be presumed Rudolph’s. And forgotten too that rape was a property crime. A woman could not bring an action in her own right, in Morvish courts. Only among the tribes. When Rowena married Rudolph, she ceased to be her father’s property and become his. Rudolph would have to agree, therefore, that Rowena been acted upon rather than acted.

Sometimes, Isla thought darkly, there was justice in their terrible system.

Ironically, it was sex that their guests were now discussing. A natural enough progression from testicles, she supposed. She nibbled on a fig and sipped her wine and wondered if even one of the three had ever had any. If only with himself.

“The heat of female desire,” the one with the appalling beard intoned, “resembles wet wood.” Here, he referred to the ever-popular theory of humors. Which had been discredited in the East, she’d learned, since coming North. And never known by the tribes at all.

She couldn’t remember his name. Couldn’t remember any of their names. They were the excessively bearded one, the moderately bearded one, and the fat one. The moderately bearded one thought the church permitted castration and the fat one didn’t. As conversant as they were on those scriptural considerations relevant to sex, she wondered if they’d ever bothered to study the other sins. Specifically gluttony.

“Wet wood catches fire less readily, but burns longer and more strongly.”

“Indeed. The composition of the female uterus—”

“As opposed to the male uterus?” Quentin cut in.

There was a sniff. “Is, as I was just saying, more like iron. Which warms slowly but holds its heat longer. Female desire is thus like burning coals covered with ashes.”

“I see.” This from her husband.

“Don’t you agree, Your Grace?”

“I’d imagine that the duration and intensity of a woman’s passions would depend largely on the stimulus provided.”

“And on the size of a man’s testicles,” Isla added.

“That,” said the fat one, the one who’d spoken first, “is an interesting point.”

Isla had grown up hearing this: that a woman’s supposedly hotter nature was yet another manifestation of her inherent urge to sin. Women always craved sex, or so the church claimed; they only needed provocation. Which was why, unless she was a maiden and her family very rich, she was nearly always considered an accessory to her own rape. The brothels of the South were filled with women who, although they might have survived the ordeal, had no means of surviving after it.

“Yes, how does one ignite a woman’s passions?”

“I hear,” said Tristan, “that they’re rather fond of beards.”

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