CHAPTER 13: Trailing a Duke
IN
SILENCE, THEY SAT FOR AWHILE IN THOUGHT.
What sort of fish had their fishing now caught?
For they each knew that Pembroke had no interest in maids.
He was seen as a rake, but behind his closed shades
a different love was what he sought.
“He trusts you, my queen,” Falco finally said.
Lilly turned from the window, she lifted her head.
“I know it,” she said. “And I’ve trusted him.”
Yet now the queen’s face looked drawn and grim.
The crime of high treason would leave her friend dead.
But what was she thinking? She’d ask him, point blank.
Their discussions had always been open and frank.
The Duke of the Thatchers was a man of high station.
His skulking around had some explanation,
befitting a man of such honor and rank.
Falco raced to catch up with his queen.
In decades of service, there was much he had seen, yet
Snatchgrin had turned all they knew inside out.
The Coastlands had changed -- all because of one snout!
The world seemed much smaller and a far sight more mean.
Lilly rolled up to the end of a lane, intent on requiring
the Duke to explain. Falco strode after, panting for breath.
Sotto voce, he said: “She’ll be the cause of my death…”
Then, he felt a quite noteworthy pain.
A blade was pressed against his neck,
but another sensation had put him in check:
a knee upon his most private parts. It shot him through
with a hundred darts and turned him into
a quivering wreck.
“You’re a fool of a Fool for following me,”
Duke Pembroke whispered, confidentially.
Then, Falco felt the Duke’s knee fall,
as if commanded by the following call:
“Stop it, Ian! You’re to set him free!”
The Duke turned then and saw the queen,
as Falco stopped looking quite so green.
“Care to explain why you’re on my trail?”
Lilly noted how her old friend looked quite pale,
as if from a ghost or horror he’d seen.
“I’d ask
a question back at you:
What’s your game, in the stables? With who?”
Lilly knew, of course, whom he’d gone to see.
She wondered why, and: “Will he lie to me?”
For ages ago, they’d vowed to be true...
CHAPTER 14: A Lost Time Ago
SHE
IN HER CHAIR, THE YOUNGEST OF ROYALS.
He, red-haired, fragrant with oils.
She could barely stand, but her beauty stood tall.
They traversed the city, beloved by all.
If joy was a hunt, then they were it spoils.
Then, a day came when she leaned from her chair.
As he sat in the sun, she tugged his bright hair.
She knew in an instant from one single kiss
they were boats in the night that were fated to miss.
Naught would they vow at the Scarborough Faire…
“I’ve known since a lad,” he confessed after tears.
Soon, they were laughing over two Frankish beers.
She, pointing: “Him? Him?!” The young duke, shaking, “Nay!”
Then, came a barkeep with hair just like hay.
Ian grew quiet, stared into his drink, as if he might
drown there the thoughts he would think.
“Ah-hah,” Lilly smiled. There was no more to say….
“I fibbed to my mother to save her from grief.
And surely I’d not tell the truth to a thief."
The Duke sheathed his knife, he cocked her an eye.
"But,
Lilly, you well know to you I won’t lie.”
He sat on a stone bench, to deliver his brief.
“The fact of the matter is something’s
awry.
That boy Nam’s a bounder, his story’s a lie.
That’s what he boasted for the price of a kiss
from the girl in the stable,” the Duke said with a hiss.
“He’ll never knock Snatchgrin out of the sky!
He just wants the limelight -- and a little of gold.
And surely he’s got no shortage of bold.
But he’ll die like the rest. And that little girl, too!
And a thousand more soldiers, gone like the dew!"
And then the duke’s face turned miserably cold.
“He flew from the past right into our day.
Death came to live with us, death came to stay.
You never can know when Snatchgrin appears.
He lives in your dreams, he feeds on our fears!
We can’t move on -- he’s in our way!
home | chapters | characters | hundredmountain | contact |