675-08-08 - Roots and Branches
Roots and Branches | |||||||
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Summary: Duke and Duchess Istivean converse about the nature of the King's gardens and their family trees. | |||||||
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Heavy footfalls rupture soft grass, as the Duke of Granville offers his arm to his lady and takes her awalking among their liege's pleasure gardens. "A king's garden is the least private kind in the world, howe'ersoever it be grown," Solinus is already complaining, "but it will have to suffice. Look how the blooms still flourish here, my wife, and think of bondsmen on our borders, raking nothing but ash, salt, and blood spilt in anger."
This homily takes the ducal pair as far as the dancing stream, which Solinus views with weary annoyance, evidently touched, despite himself. "The very waters coax at my mood like flute-playing damosels. Pshah. But I must admit...there is something to it all. Your brother would like it here, would he not? Such a delicate young man." He smiles, not entirely unwarmly.
A pleasure stroll. Duchess Ortensia has had many of them, few of them pleasant enough to pay honour to that name. After all the air is fresh, her cheeks rosy and the rustling in the bushes an oddly comforting sound, echoing from more idyllic days.
Lightly her hand finds its place on her husbands arm, quickly her face slips into the serenity with which she learned to face his gloom.
"This place is but an illusion, I know well you have enough wit to look past it, but there are always the young ones who badly need the air of flowery air secrecy, the stolen kisses and hushed words they can find here. You've been young too. Those days are not the most gentle cradle for the eager youth - I envy my delicate brother, somehow he has managed to preserve his youth in spirit, but don't underestimate the boy. There is some stubborn strenght in him, if he had managed to preserve this oddest of all traits in him," the wife answers. Nevertheless she twists her mouth in strong disapproval, as she spots a young maid stopping to smell at a flower. "I envy him," she affirms.
"He is one who would pay sincerer tribute to the flower than the maid," Solinus remarks, the smile not leaving his visage completely - considering Alajos seems to keep it quivering there, to some degree. "Marriage will be a strange voyage for him indeed, the discovery that the greatest beauty comes with an unbiddable will of its own. Or her own, as the case may be..."
The Duke gestures to an inviting looking bank, soft but not too mossy, where his lady can settle; if she so desires, he will let her sit first, then join her in a moment. "Was I that...young?" he murmurs now. "Perhaps you remember, if anyone does, though I am hardly too sure of it myself. Anyway, my cantankerous age today warns me that though we have small privacy here - consider what serving-men rigged up that pavilion - we have still less of it within the castle. Shall we speak of our daughter's position, then, my lady? It seems to me our king understood well whereof we spoke."
An affectionate glance answers little gesture of courtesy, that is still offered to her and a musing smile of her own, as the speech lingers on young marriages. "I will have to look at young Avaline, I may have to offer her a few pieces of advice, if she is willing to take it. Alajos on the other hand - he has been growing up with his flock of sisters, he knows well enough how to handle a girl, his preference of flowers may even help... in some occasions. Yet I agree, he still has a lot to learn."
Straightening her skirts she lifts her head to listen a bit more closely to nearest rustling, before she continues "You are well acquainted with the secret of youth, I don't have to remind you quite a few hours you've been riding through the fields when our lands still have been as flourishing as these gardens. It lies in Rishones smile, even if it is more rarely seen than I would like to have it. An heiress... I wish there was less burden on her shoulders, but if there is one to carry it, it would be her. Your brothers on the other hand..."
Then, almost hushed, something is added "And maybe it is not to late for me to give you a son. A hint of youth even remains for me."
"We were mostly brothers, the seven of us. My sister and the better of my brothers were taken, reaped with the three quarters of our folk and leaving only the dross behind," Solinus declares, his beetling frown anvil-heavy. "My mother was a proud woman, a fine lady from Atheryne, but girlishness was almost foreign to me, till I learnt to speak with you...and to listen. Sometimes." That smile intensifies, and then passes as if it had never been.
"My brothers have made fine careers at court, and by the...by all that's...anyway, they ought to rest content with that," he growls, his face seeming to ache from so many swallowed oaths. "As for...the matter you raise...that relies on luck, or fortune, or faith. The King would have us resist any of those. And I...I would say that luck is a cruel jade, and faith...faith is about law. Not payment."
His cryptic credo thus pronounced, he seemed to soften. "If youth were as fair as you are, my lady, none would deny you more than a hint of it. In truth, youth and beauty flow in two rivers, like our realm, and if you have left the banks of one to some degree, I would swear to...to anything you are closer yet to the source and the... ...plenitude of the other." And at that, the Duke of Granville even //blushes// behind his beard...making him look, for all his weary mien...just a little youthful.
The glimpse of rosiness in the gloom of his beard, the silkiness of his words manage to chase away the shadow to darken her own. In quiet warmth Ortensia's hand touches his and her eyes linger a while on the line of his jaw bone, in the dark of his gaze. "After all these years," she murmurs.
"Luck and faith are volatile allies, as our lands have had to learn. To rely on one, on either of them, is a great foolishness nowadays, we know better than that, for countless reasons. If we have to lay the future of Granville into hands of our choice, let them be Rishones. The King seems willing enough to consider your... statement, as firm as it has been pronounced already. A talk to young Luanda could help and a piece of advice to his Majesty, in case he should reconsider marrying again. For now luck has granted us this empty-headed Princess injuring his pride."
"The King is an old man," Duke Solinus acknowledges bluntly, as if hurring quickly past that brief surrender to sentiment. "Older even than I feel. Had things been otherwise, you and your husband might have been poised, breath baited, to succeed him." It is meant as a light tease at Ortensia's matrimonial possibilities, but it emerges ungraciously, tinted with hints of fear and jealousy. But the Duke perceives his own shortcomings and cuts that subject short.
"But never mind any of that. As I rode here ahead of you from Woruscant, I found this Sir Argon, the one who is to wed some painterly ninny of the Atheryne bastard line, busying himself diligently about the borders. Some say he, too, has an eye for the throne in these times. A plague on hungry cousins," the man the commoners call the 'Plaguey Duke' gloomily exclaims.
"Had things been otherwise my brother would have to worry about a lot more, than the fair maid he has to face in marriage," Ortensia conters, not being able to completely hide the fact, that tease had indeed been tickling an inner, unspoken thought of hers.
"Maple trees get stronger with every year, and his Majesty's roots grow deep. Deeper than those of any aspiring branch, if we have to we will remind him of that. About this Argon... I'll watch out for him. His wife is a pretty thing dedicating her hours to ...art, you say? Maybe I start there." Noticing one of the valet-promenaders has passed the couple on his round for the third time Ortensia raises a brow. "But, ah, the sun is fierce today and I think I've glimpsed one of those reeking ferrets in the bushes," she speaks, loud enough to be overheard. "Would you accompany me to our chambers?"