The Beggar Princess

[Koodini 854]

A  HOLY  ACRE  IN  PRONCE,  THE  YEAR  TWO THOUSAND  AND  SIXTY-THREE.    Agathor's skies fell victim to a drear befit only of sorrow. The sickliness which ensnared a youth’s heart pressed beyond mortal confines, made manifest in leaden clouds where serenity once dwelt. Thunder broke as the heavens shuddered, and within dim catacombs a lone flame thrashed, unyielding and untamed, casting its light upon the features of a girl crestfallen, whose gaze fought to remain forward. From the bier to the sarcophagus they set a man motionless, whilst his daughter could do nothing except look on as the fossors’ weary hands labored to secure the seal of his tomb. Its stone make was cold and pale, etched with the story of a life undone: bannermen astride their steeds, a tower crowned by a singular draconic beast — heraldry that spoke of an existence seized by service and bloodshed. And that it had. For this death had not come by mere ailment, nor had it arrived by the grace of age. No, the man within had been rendered still by the very undertaking which had sustained him and his forebears of old: war.

Steel had torn through the frail sanctum of flesh. Life's fragile claim was tested, then surrendered. In that sole act of violence, a father, partner, son, and soldier were borne home, bound to stone evermore.

 

And though his lungs were rid of breath, he was all but wholly lost. Perhaps in flesh, but not in memory. For the halls of his daughter’s mind echoed with hazed remembrances of a man both stern and attentive, whose mere presence exchanged the quiet of their home with a bracing, deliberate warmth. A warmth that was rare, perhaps even forlorn hereafter. His affection held no stay within these halls, for it had left alongside him. And try as the widow who remained might, she could not restore what they'd lost. After all, rancor was harder to conquer than men, and she bolstered no semblance of the father gone. Not his tenderness nor his sympathy, a thing long distant to the spirit within. Instead, the husk of a woman remained, scorned to the last breath and of an exhaustion which had no measure.

It was her lofted tongue, glacial as the rain-soaked cobbles and hampered with an authority almost untoward of a woman in her circumstance, which liberated their servants of those slackened spines. “That will suffice for now,” crept a symphony of vexation and ire. Another breath hadn't the chance to draw before footfalls echoed out, leaving all but two mourners fitted in sable garbs and heavy veils to their lonesome.

 

Just as it had shaken their servants, that utterance brought her own daughter’s fingertips strain. Clasping, as if to ease the grip about her cross was to forsake the very prayers which resided within the hoarse of her throat. Prayers which found themselves stayed. Not offered nor murmured, for the presence looming beside her proved both suffocating and deafening.

 

Against that cacophony in her mind, the sentiments her mother came to offer devolved into an insistent, throbbing hum. Even if her pale eyes fixed upon the woman, she doubted those words would ever resolve into meaning. They drifted just beyond reach, stripped by grief their form and torn asunder by lament. It remained a doubt she wished untested, nor was it a veracity she wished proven. What she already knew she knew well; some silences were better left intact.

Within, wonder trounced all else that arose; Is this all that accompanied loss? Vicious mockeries of silence, a toll which found no lull, and thoughts which stung? Where were the tears she expected to shed? And where resided the cries of that widow beside her? Had she been too enfeebled by misfortune to even wail, to even speak her own ache aloud? And in wake of those thoughts, so too were ponderings of the brother elsewhere birthed; for did he grieve alone? Was the charge now thrust upon him so great that he hadn’t the time to mourn? Or perhaps he did not mourn at all. Perhaps she alone was too naive to the truth of their father’s exploits, fashioned the sole sorrower who held hope of his return.

Cautiously, through a fog of misery she swore might claim her, a mustering was found. The might she required to speak, to allow that silence no sojourn.

 

“I cannot believe it true.” Found its way out from her throat, ample in disbelief. Her eyes stung with an aridness yet nothing fell from their reddened lids. Alas, the full of her gaze cast sideward, upon a relict whose own features budged not.

“It is a cruel truth, my girl, but truth all the same. Horrid as it is.. painful as it be, it is done and we have no say.” There, hesitation laid evident, profuse. As if the heart within her chest still coursed with condolence. The kindness rarely afforded, the kindness ever coveted, emerged from bitter depths, “And now we must endure, so his death is in all but vain. So you shall. For you breathe, and thus you must.” One, singular breath was yielded. Its release made clear a plethora of emotion, from grief to numbness, even guilt and exasperation. But beyond all, it bled verity unto the soul within; care remained, even if seldom brandished. And narrowly so, that provided an inkling of solace to that girl upon the brink.

 

“Return home once you’ve spoken what you need to. The sisters at the hearth may manage without you for the night.”

 

No utterance erupted in reply. A veil shifted, her chin bobbed, and that mother of hers parted.

Only there, unattended, the daughter who lingered was at liberty to let loose all which set against her in endless anguish. The composure of her features made forfeit, she was found too incapable to resist those shedded tears and that steady fixing of a hand to one’s throat. Wails spilt from her lips like a stream of sorrow, plagued with the remnants of a breaking, aching heart.

It proved too much for her to stomach. And should she remain in those catacombs any longer, she might go mad with grief. Lay herself unto the stones and await the day’s turn, praying the night’s inhospitality reunited her with the father slain. Only there could the gray of her gaze be witness to his own again, and perhaps that would be simpler. Of more ease than grief, of greater allay than the rout against her being.
 

But that was hardly the fate she would find. The ground which she sat upon felt colder than the woe she fought off, and though her body trembled with surrender, no solace would be found there. The heavens would not part and return him, nor would the night be taken by miracle. That remainder of hope within her chest had flickered out, its flame snuffed to naught but a bellowing pillar of smoke, and yet she summoned the strength to rise.

It was a burden she scarcely desired the weight of. To live on and endure, even in spite of the hollow within her chest. But such a grace, of acceptance or refusal, was no longer afforded. Against the crowding of emotion, there stood no room for choice. Those catacombs stood as silent witnesses to the most vital act of fervor that had remained inside her: continuance. Even as the world about her seemed at risk of collapse, she pressed on. It was not hope that urged her, but something far more ancient. An impulse that tethered soldiers to their wars and priests to their altars. Duty. A ceremonious summon, final and without rebuff.

With shoulders doused in resolve, one last prayer crossed her lips' threshold, a final goodbye bid to those ancestors laid to rest 'fore she emerged from those catacombs. The taste of salt still clung to her breath as a scent most raw swelled before her senses. Clouds stirred into fashionings of peace and petrichor came to sting, dancing atop tender stimuli in tease. Her mind echoed with a reminder of the place she sought out, home.

 

Thus, amongst the vibrant crowds that filled the streets of Pronce, she moved with dire intent, each step a relentless reminder of her struggle against unraveling. The cheers of tavern-goers, once lively and pleasant, now seemed insensible, made mere pleasantries, as fleeting and mundane as doves in flight come dawn. The murmurs of foreign envoys, preoccupied with their political concerns, faded into mere ambience as the blood within her surged, taut and burning.

Those quieted halls of their dwelling would find her in their accompaniment that eve, downcast yet enduring. Just as her mother wished of her, just as she might prove to.

 

THE HEARTH OF SEVEN FLAMES, PRONCE Harren’s Folly, the year 2063

The heat of an eternal hearth, tended and preserved by a convent of the faithful, raged softly alongside the uniform shuffle of feet. Within the sanctum burned seven flames, each a living extension of God’s will, entrusted to a different horde of sisters all of blemished hands and devout spirit. Yet one flame stood untended, left in lonesome, quiet vigilance as two souls parted. A pair who found themselves fitted into the narrow bounds of a chamber designed for the most vulnerable of admissions, now lowered to their knees.
 

“Bless me, Mother, for I have sinned.”
 

“How long has it been since your last confession, daughter?”
 

“No longer than a week.”
 

There was no answer which crept out from the other side of the screen. The girl, still a mourner within, felt herself shudder beneath the weight of that quiet. She had found her way here often as of late, more frequently than any of her sisters in faith. She wondered if her very spirit had began wearing thin beneath the repetition. Or possibly the Mother’s ears, too, had grown weary of this incessant caper.
 

“What manner of sin have you indulged in?”
 

The word was loosed from her lips as though it unburdened her very chest, a softened surrender which rid her sternum of its tension, “Doubt.”
 

“In what, my child?”
 

“In His design.” Her shoulders languished, the carefully rehearsed, faux poise she possessed slipping out from under her. “I cannot reconcile my belief with the sorrow of my soul. I cannot fathom why God would allow my father to be felled. He was steadfast.. He was just as devoted as I, and yet he was taken from us.”
 

Whatever vehemence held in her throat faltered. Pallid hands fled to clutch at alabaster cottons, the garbs which attested to an unbroken purity, now ensnaring a girl convinced she bore a blemish none could cleanse her of. Uncertainty had rooted itself where faith was meant to remain, and she feared it would prove her undoing.
 

She continued on, the rustle of that benign, heeding Mother’s breath her only supplement. "I am all but lost to my pain, Mother, but the silence He keeps has proven impossible to bear. Before His altar, before the flames of His very resolve have I prayed and have I wept, yet still I find myself without answer. My doubt finds no relief, nor does it wane with the days passed. All which remains is a singular question..” Her voice dwindled to a hurt, shallow echo of its former self, “Is He by my side amidst my sorrow, or does He linger elsewhere? Has my grief been shaped a test?"
 

The confessional grew eerily still, save for the exasperated gasp carried from that girl forlorn. A tribute left afloat in the quiet, unsettled.

 

ONE HUMBLE MANOR, PRONCE Horen’s Calling, the year 2064

 

Even abated, that rot within was not a thing so easily put to rest. Two years having seen through a fog she’d only just stumbled out from. Still, the cries within rang out, like fractured remembrances reminiscent of a mirror made shattered. The image of what she’d known before had become distorted beneath the onslaught of emotion endured, its shape riddled with grooves placed there by change alone. Devastation and despondency, it had all worked to mold her into a girl able, at last, to brook that which she needed. That which she knew awaited her come his final day; dabblings of ink which contained the last words intended for a fallen man’s lone daughter. Words destined to lay before her, the last daughter of Beaufort. A legacy and titleage long stripped of its splendour and influence, now rendered lowly and bereft. No living force could change the tides of their misfortune, that much she, a girl forced into a life of service before God, knew well enough. Generations of princes astray and decades of indigence were not things so easily remedied. But there was one inheritance she could lay claim to, and it rested within the quarters of a father which none were allowed entrance to. None except the one who had bid her home that eve.

One Lady Aliénor, mother to both wayward son whose petitions now branded him “The Beggar Prince” and a daughter whose oath tied her to the eternal flames in Pronce’s holy hearth. She whose unfounded authority relinquished her youngest from a night of prayer and study, out from the grasp of a Mother in faith and before the modest bower she had grown in.

Yet that widow who wished her there had found herself sent for. For a reason her daughter knew not, she was to be received in the inner city, a summoning echoed out in the name marriage had bestowed upon her. And if the dusk which settled upon their home took any other shape, perhaps the circumstance would have proved different. Just possibly, the daughter who always remained, even in the worst stirrings of settled dust, would be of an opposed curiosity. But that night, a courage seldom flourished bound her very being.

 

It carried her forward, through halls decorated in portraits of men once grand, cross floors unwaxed and untided, with such purpose one might swear God himself ordained the movements so. Only upon reaching her place of intent, a chamber undisturbed, belonging to the father who had been, did she finally halt. Eyes flickered, and the chamberstick within her grasp was set upon the ground. Then, the fidget of a doorknob fixed in a refusal to twist. Gentle whispers meant for the woman elsewhere found themselves atop her tongue, “Forgive me, mother.”

 

The knob before her found itself claimed by fingertips firm. Rear did the forefoot of a girl wrought by determination, naught beyond a quivered breath given in reprise. Into the wooden shaping of the door did it collide, the lone attempt backed by enough force to loosen the lock from its frame. Wood splintered, dirtying the ground beneath her, but she hadn’t the time to fret. Repose was hardly a luxury afforded. For all she knew, there was but a few minutes separating her from a confrontation with the mother who, no doubt, presently sat within a carriage bound for home.

Cobwebs and air long stilled, thick with a stain of stale, dried odor, greeted her upon entry. It was as if time itself had entered stasis as she crossed into the room’s threshold, chimes of a weight-driven pendulum serving as lone accompaniment to drawn curtains and dimmed fixtures. Still, no pause held her motions. Forth, pass stacks atop stacks of parchment, her weight fell, halted upon reach of the cedar desk she’d oft sat across from.

Amongst a horde of reports and correspondences laid letters sealed, stamped with the sigil of a house she bore the name of. There rested the succor required, an epistle whose exterior was torn to bits within a mere half-minute. Betwixt the clasp of digits, so read ink. . .

 

 

MY DAUGHTER MOST DEAR, KEPT IN THE LORD’S GRACE,   Should this letter lay before your eyes, then GOD hath seen my days weighed, and found their sum. I write not to soothe the truth of what is, but to set your heart right. To belabor the path our Lord hath intended you walk. The one you must, as one final ask of mine, do all but stray from. Know, my girl, though I have fallen, my faith never had. He alone remains the one whom I raised my blade in name of,  not the lieges of Pronce nor the petty squabblers of Walden. From beginning to dire end, He fueled my resolve and allowed me the strength to march on.  But I let you know this one sacred truth few men are of the confidence to admit, Not all wars are holy. Not the campaign which keeps me from home, nor the ones prior. Many bear righteousness as their chosen banner, whilst forfeiting the very honor our Lord allows us.    A war may only be deemed holy should it preserve what is and spare all that is innocent.   Make no shrine in wake of my death. Burn no incense and place no blooms. Pray, if you must, but above all else, persevere. Let your vow ring ever-true, and wear your faith without ornamentation. Waste not the hours on what is past. With the strength you have, make on. Keep your cross beared, and remain of purity in a world riddled with filth. Honor me with more than mere tears.   SIGNED, Carolus of Beaufort

 

There was no complexity in that which he’d written. Not a convoluted, unending runnel of sentiments which thrashed against her heart. But as if there had been, that girl, in an act which allowed her grief to wholly loose, found weakening. Just as she had years before, those knees of hers buckled and those eyes grew heavy with tears. Noiseless cries dragged her toward floors soiled with dust, into convulsions which only catharsis could birth.

Grief, once overwhelming, had settled into a quiet resignation. Whatever polish possessed its edge had dissipated into a worn smoothness, its luster trampled beneath the march of time. That which remained was not peace. Rather, sufferance; a weight the body mastered, no longer questioned in its existence.

 

Then, through a distance which rapidly closed, a voice stained in familiarity took the air, “Diane.”

Hurried, as if distress was thick upon the psyche. Those soles’ clicks finally arrived, yet did not find pause upon the sight of wooden chips. Pass the litter and into that chamber, eyes steady and wide fixed atop the daughter who shuddered. Quiet regard, strung with befuddlement of her own, found stay in the air, “Mother?”

“Come.” A singular word which led Diane to stand. Redness still crowded against her features, but the storm she traipsed was not soon to surrender. Out from the confines of her father’s dwelling, through the halls she’d been so careful to cross, and atop the ingress of their meek accommodations.

“My lords,” Aliénor spoke aloud, gathering the attention of three men donned in gouns of velvet. About the girl's shoulders set an intensity she hadn’t been seized by in many some years. And in its wake, a presentation aloud. . .

“The last daughter of House Tiber and sole bearer of her name, Lady Diane Fausta.”

 

 

[MunaZaldrizoti 8037]

The Lady Mayor of Saint Godwinsburg awaited news from the Archduke's delegation amidst all of her duties, a momentary word upon if they had discovered a young lady worthy of her cousin William's hand. He was still young, but kind - albeit greatly in need of friendship and others his age to confide in.

 

She herself was no outwardly warm lady, so often inclined to be away with her books and ledgers in seclusion from the world. But if she had learned anything thus far in her life, it was that even the loneliest of souls desire for the comforts of a caring word. As a gentle hand fell upon the evident swell of her abdomen, the Baroness of Owynsburg uttered a quiet prayer.

"Just as I pray for the Duke of Furnestock...I pray for thee too, my child," She concluded that blessing upon her future heir, before seeing herself off to sleep.

[ncarr 2806]

 

Many years prior, a similar lone scion of the fractured House Horen stood upon the shores of Pronce. An erstwhile companion had beckoned her to the recently populated Aevos in hopes of rekindling a long-lost friendship. Caesonia Helane set out by ship with small quarters afforded to her. Upon her arrival she was welcomed by the Prince of Beaufort, whom she would later wed. 

 

 

As Princess, she bolstered her husband’s House with her stewardship of an atelier in Whitespire while the Prince served as the King’s premier knight. Together they sired five children, and the House Tiber had returned to prominence, if only for a short while. 

 

So soon as it’d risen, a shroud of darkness began to shadow the House Tiber, for God had chosen Alessia - the final of the Prince and Princess’ children - in Caesonia’s stead. The Kingdom of Aaun saw its ruin and so too did the House of Tiber return to insignificance, with all but two of the Princess’ children returning to the place from which she’d come - Pronce. 

 

So many years later did the weight of this storied house rest upon the shoulders of the Beggar Princess, Diane Tiber, and still among her possessions was a miniature portrait of her long-dead ancestress. Though insignificant among the scions of that Horenic House, she mirrored Diane whether such was known to her or not.