Volume 3 - CH 2.5

The past.

In remembering do I relive pain.

From my heart: all the hurt. Springing, sprouting, stinging.

Even amidst the mirth of many other memories, fair and fond. Even as enthroned in me was a childhood spent blissfully with Brother and Emilie both.

Beside it all sat the hurt. Ever in my heart, unwaning, unwithering.

‘…Mingle not with that thing… You are our hope now, Felicia… Our next-in-line… Do choose your company—wisely…’

Such was Father’s bidding.

‘Twas that dark day.

The day Brother was received at the Roun of Orisons. A day that changed all that was and all yet to come.

Why? I thought to myself. Again and again. Over and over.

Brother…

Ever was he the apple of everyone’s eyes. Everyone, save our Deiva.

How?

How did such travesty chance upon us? Upon Brother?

A mistake.

That’s all. Just a simple mistake. ‘Twas what I wished it to be. Dearly, and more dearly still.

Yet Yoná yields no mistakes.

As She is not wont to err, so She is our Deiva, one and only. A truth plain to every eye. And if the fault lies not in Her, then so it must in Brother. Thus was he branded the black sheep of Her herd. A stigma in our midst.

‘…Consort with traitors to the Deiva and you are like to share in their filth…’

Mother’s words.

A warning to keep away from my own brother, conveyed most clearly to my ears. Even though ‘twas clearer still that, up to the day of the rites, Brother was, to her, a son most beloved.

…Even though “my pride and joy” was oft what she said of him.

On the day of his departure to the Order, I could not send him off as I would’ve liked.

Rather, I wasn’t allowed. And so I made due from a distance. Through my chamber window, I watched Brother far below as he prepared to depart.

The carriage was parked in waiting. Waiting by the manor gates. Waiting to whisk him away to the Order headquarters.

Emilie was present, as well.

Standing amidst a crowd, all gathered to celebrate the first step on her new journey. Amongst them were her parents, her servants—even little Maria, youthful handmaiden that she was. To Emilie went their warmth, their praise, their pride… their pain in parting from her so.

Whilst nearby was my brother.

…Standing amidst company as cold as ‘twas empty. Mother and Father were present, but had nary a mind to see him off. They instead meant to make certain he would be gone for good. And just like that, with not a soul to bid him farewell, Brother began to board the carriage.

But as he did, he paused… and turned my way.

“…ah!”

I lurched closer and leant on the window, as though hurried by my heart. That I might be full-found by his eyes. That he might know—

—away his look went.

Mother had struck him across the face.

‘…Don’t you dare even look at Felicia…! Our dear heir needn’t suffer your profane gaze…! Have you no shame…!?’

Even from my chamber, high and far, were those words most audible. Such was Mother’s indignance.

Yet I heard also a tremble in her treble.

The sound of a sobbing voice. The voice of a mother believing herself betrayed by her child. The child she had nurtured with so much of her own love.

After a brief apology, Brother then boarded the carriage. On and on I watched as it set off, shrinking further and further into the horizon.

From then on, just as Brother’s life was upheaved, so, too, was mine.

The education, the esteem, the expectation he had long endured… all were now mine to suffer.

‘…This is Felicia… Our daughter… and our dear heir…’

‘…My…! Fairest Felicia… an honour and pleasure both…!’

There was yet a year left till my own enlistment in the Order. A year filled with aristocratic functions, of meeting with the Buckmann barony’s myriad personages of power. Of stiff and shallow association with many-masked eminences.

Will I be as them one day…?

Nonetheless, more and more was I wearied by those wasting days.

The conveyances, the courtesies, the protocols, the etiquettes; trivialities I’d only ever learnt in passing—all of them now required my mastership down to the tiniest minutia. There was little time for leisure. The Buckmann brand was all-consuming; a terrible weight full-borne upon just my two shoulders.

Beyond mastering manners, there were also studies of many subjects. Any waking minute spent at the manor was a minute of education, of discipline, of review. My chamber seemed no longer my own. Faceless tutors came and went with the turning of the hour. Such were my days.

‘…Sharply, now…’ one of them had said. ‘…Lag here… and it shall be the wastrel’s lot awaiting you…’

That “wastrel” being none other than Brother, for certain. And just like Mother, more certain again was this tutor’s former praise for Brother. Frequent and glowing praise—now but insults, snide and shaded.

‘Twas a matter beyond my mould to mend. Yet never did it cease to gnaw at me, the nonsense of it all.

The other tutors, too, doled out like disregard. But of them, the theologian fumed most with hate for Brother. By his words, he’d always felt Brother to be rather pale of respect for our Deiva.

By my own measure, Brother had ever and always mastered his studies, no matter the subject, for he hated none of them—not even theology. But to think, that lurking in the lack of hate was the absence of respect…

…this, I couldn’t understand.

We lambs of Yoná must needs always pay our respects to our Deiva, whether through awe or adoration or aught else. Such has ever been our way. How, then, did Brother go astray?

Be that as it may, I very soon lost all luxury to worry for him so. Each and every day found me breathless and bewildered with business of myriad sorts. Boulders of duty as Buckmann’s only heir, pressing me with a weight once borne by Brother like a feather upon a finger. A weight I shouldn’t have suffered had he not been disinherited. Though hardly a weight that begat in me a grudge of any sort.

But somewhere, deep down inside, below all waking thought, a sense was sown in me. A sense that he’d betrayed me. A sense that soon sprouted without my attendance.

‘…Betray the Deiva… and one betrays the World itself… Disavowal was his deed, of aught and all… And so was he disavowed in turn…’

So said the same theologian. In his tone, his mien, trickled a gleam of triumph.

But such words I could neither challenge nor distrust. I was too busied. Too fraught for the mere effort. In those dire days, the tutors all told me thus in stark concert:

‘…Even he found this easy enough…’

Reminders that I ought achieve all my brother once did. How crushed I was by the weight of it all. And yet to have whispered in my ears that such weight only ever half-bothered a “baser being” like my brother, that such difficulty was but a “deception”, despite how desperately I strived…

…certainly.

Most certainly had Brother borne the weight of like days and still found freedom enough to ply the sword, to indulge in his love of literature… to spend time with Emilie and me.

…I wonder.

What sort of look had he on his face, again? On such days? On the daily, even? I tried to remember. But a grating noise, and all memory faded at once. Looking over my shoulder: yet another tutor, clearing his throat.

And so back to the book in hand my thoughts turned.

One of many forced upon me.

♰

“Blessed” was befitting a brand for that land.

Blessed with sumptuous soils, flourishing flora, and many mountains and rivers to enrich its enviable reaches. The very portrait of a pastoral idyll. And soundly secure besides, far from the affrighting frontiers and unwounded by the wilder whims of mother nature.

Threading through its spans were myriad crossroads, as betwixt the bustling heart and bucolic hinterlands of Londosius it laid. Indeed, its position was prime, a treasure trove of exchange and opportunity. Such bounties begat also a sense of solace within its citizenry, for a more peaceable pall has it sustained thus far, even whilst walled-in by the war-like convictions of the Crown.

Many years of management, however, noted little from the present lord of this land. He was benignly banal, an average man of average ambition, his measured maintenance of this fief of his forebears being the sole star to his legacy. But that was enough. None could gainsay that he was, at the very least, capable in carrying out what was expected of him.

So it was that such a land, presided by such a prince, held such hospitality which no visitor of eminence should find lacking.

This day was no different. Many persons of prestige were come, for today found this land host to a meeting on military munitions and the expected output thereof. Chief amongst them: the Dame Mareschal to the 1st Chivalric Order. A hailed hero of the realm, truly was she an eminence amongst eminences.

Upon conclusion of the meeting, the vaunted visitors were all ushered into the great hall for a resplendent reception. Sheeted tables were all about, each bedight with brilliant bouquets and platters filled with the finest foods of the land. Servants wove through the maze of standing guests, pouring wine and dispensing starters. But there was one press they could not penetrate, and that was the one surrounding the hero-dame herself.

What grace, what beauty the guests beheld in her as they all partook of pleasantries and mild merriment. But soon, this crowd parted left and right, for walking in now was the lord of the land himself.

“Your Mightiness the Lady Estelle,” he began. “A pleasure unparalleled to meet you on this fair day. As lord, I welcome you to my barony of Buckmann.”