In The Name of Love

Sunlight streams through a gap in the shutters of the bedchamber window, waking Minna from a sound sleep. She starts to roll over and stretch, but a warm weight on her midsection stops her. Adalberto, she remembers with a smile as his beard tickles the back of her neck and then his lips press against her skin.

“Good morning,” he murmurs.

“Good morning,” she replies, turning over to face him. “Did you sleep well?”

“Better than I expected. Considering….” His voice trails off as he looks at the light coming through the shutters. “We should get up. How did you sleep?”

“Well, thank you.”

Adalberto pulls away from her, leaving her cold, and pulls on a rope by the bed. A bell rings somewhere near by. Moments later, one of Adalberto’s manservants enters the room. Minna pulls the bedcovers up to her chin and sinks into the mattress, suddenly self-conscious.

“Your Highnesses,” the servant greets the royal couple with a bow. “I hope Chuezoh has given you good rest.”

“Yes, thank you, Miguel,” Adalberto replies. “What news of the king?”

“He fares much better, Your Highness. He is resting in his chambers now.”

“Chuezoh be praised!” Minna breathes, a sentiment her husband echoes.

“We should have been told the moment he started to show improvement—” Adalberto continues.

“Begging Your pardon, Your Highness, but Her Majesty the Queen insisted that you not be disturbed on your wedding night, unless the king were to pass on. Which, praise Chuezoh, he has not.”

“Of course she did.” Adalberto looks less than pleased, although Minna cannot fathom why. The king is alive and doing better! We will have time to get to know each other without the pressure of ruling, she rejoices internally. What could possibly be bothering him? “I should like to see both her and my father at their earliest convenience. Please send word as such, Miguel, and also call for our attendants so that we might get dressed and face the day.”

Miguel bows. “The Queen has requested an audience with both of you in her solar once you have gotten dressed and have breakfast. I will send others to attend you straightaway, Your Highnesses.”

With that, Miguel takes his leave, and Adalberto turns to Minna.

“They should not have let us sleep so long,” he says by way of explanation, gesturing to the windows. “By the light, it’s at least midmorning.”

“We had a late night, and I’m sure Her Majesty only meant to let us rest,” Minna excuses the queen. She can’t imagine her sweet, frail mother-in-law having any ill intentions towards anyone, except perhaps the Barhestans who would have assassinated her husband.

“We might have rested better, knowing that the king was out of peril.” Adalberto gets out of bed and stretches, then sighs and shakes his head. “Or perhaps not. For now there will almost certainly be war with Barhesta.”

“Adalberto….” Minna doesn’t know how to voice her thoughts. He’s your father! Shouldn’t his survival and recovery be worth celebrating?! she protests internally. If her own father were in such dire straits as King Celestino was in last night, she wouldn’t have been able to eat or sleep or anything until she’d known he was all right. But her new husband doesn’t have the same kind of relationship with his father, that much is plain from looking at his conflicted expression.

“I am grateful that he is alive, and that we will have time….” His voice trails off as Greta and some other servants come into their room without knocking. “I will explain more later. There is much to consider.”

Minna nods and lets Greta lead her away into an adjoining dressing room. She smiles and blushes and deflects her maids’ questions about her wedding night, feeling that such things are between her and Adalberto and no one else. Instead, she urges them to help her get ready quickly.

“The Queen is waiting,” she reminds them. “We must not tarry.” And so they hurry to lace her into a jade green gown, dress her hair in a fashionable braided updo, and apply a few cosmetics to her face. Then Minna rejoins Adalberto in their antechamber, where a selection of fruit and pastries are waiting for them. Minna’s stomach turns with nerves, but she follows her husband’s lead and picks up a sweet bun and some grapes and nibbles on them while he leads her through several corridors.

She’s just swallowed the last of her breakfast when he knocks on an ornate wooden door. A servant admits them and leads them through an elegant antechamber overflowing with gilded vases of cut flowers, then into another room studded with many windows and a wide variety of blooming live plants. Queen Casilda sits in this room, fiddling with a climbing vine of some sort. Fifi might know what it’s called, Minna reflects, but she has no idea.

“How are you feeling, Mother?” Adalberto greets her as the servant departs. Queen Casilda looks up with surprise, then smiles.

“Good morning, son. And Princess Wilhelmina. Such a pleasure to see you. Please, have a seat.” She gestures to two plain wooden chairs near her seat. “I am well enough, thank you. More importantly, so is your father.”

“Yes, Chuezoh be praised. His wound seemed most grievous, when I saw it. To what or to whom do we owe his miraculous recovery?”

“Our official story is that our prayers and the work of our healers brought His Majesty back from the brink of death and restored him to full health and wholeness.”

Minna looks at the queen in surprise, seeing her for the first time as having the capacities of a shrewd ruler.

“So everyone will be told. But what is the truth?”

Queen Casilda glances at the door to her solar, verifying that it is closed, before continuing in a low voice. “In truth, I very much doubt that your father would be alive without the remarkable intervention of your new bride’s heretical sister.”

“I beg your pardon?!” Minna bursts out, then covers her mouth and averts her eyes to the floor. “Forgive me, Your Majesty, for speaking out of turn, but I—”

“Look at me, Wilhelmina.” The queen’s voice is gentle but firm, and Minna complies. “Do you believe in Chuezoh?”

“Yes, wholeheartedly.” Minna’s brow furrows in confusion. Her hands pick at the ornamentation on her skirts with feverish energy. What does that have to do with—

“As do I. And your family all believe the same?”

“Yes, as far as I know, but you said….”

“I am trying to find a reasonable explanation for what I witnessed.” Queen Casilda goes on to tell Minna and Adalberto in hushed tones about what her maid had testified about the flowers Minna brought from Aethyrozia and how, after much praying and agitation with no change in the king’s condition, she decided that she might as well seek a miracle.

“But Fifi isn’t a witch!” Minna protests, lurching as if to get out of her chair before restraining herself and taking a deep breath. “She went to all the same ceremonies and prayers in the zoche that I did. She would have told me if….”

The queen’s earnest expression stills Minna’s tongue. “But, my dear, she admitted it. And then she gave us the miracle I asked for. I watched her with my own eyes,” the queen says before describing the ritual Fifi performed. “There isn’t even a scar left on Celestino’s side where the knife went in. He is resting now, at my insistence, but our healers and priests can find nothing amiss with him.”

Adalberto shakes his head and looks at Minna, who returns his look helplessly. Fifi can’t be a witch. She would have said something, or I would have noticed…. But then Minna remembers how much time Fifi has spent outside of their rooms since her Quest for Favor, and the new tricks she’s taught Algot. Is that raven her familiar? Has she been practicing witchcraft while I’ve been preparing for my wedding?! How could she ever—

“If anyone else were telling me this, I would hesitate to believe them,” Adalberto remarks. “But I know how devout you are, and how desperate you must have been to treat hearsay from a young, foolish maid so seriously.”

“And I am glad I did it. We have your father’s life to show for it.”

“And what of my sister?” Minna asks. A bead pops off of her skirt and bounces across the floor because of her relentless nervous plucking. Adalberto takes both of her hands in one of his, providing both comfort and restraint. “I need to talk to her. I can’t believe she never told me….”

“She is resting now, as well. The ritual took all her strength, and ruined quite a lot of jewelry. My healers are seeing to her.”

“The priests are not insisting that she be prosecuted as a witch?” Adalberto inquires.

“Some of them would like to, but that is no way to repay anyone who has saved the life of the king.”

“She ought to face some consequences, for keeping such a secret and for straying from Chuezohm so egregiously,” Minna argues. This is a far worse betrayal than all the business with Prince Didier. She should have told me. Why didn’t she tell me? she wonders. Pressure builds behind her eyes.

“It is my opinion that she ought to be rewarded, rather than punished. And I have every intention of seeing that she is well repaid.”

“What do you have in mind, Mother?” Adalberto questions with a sigh. “I doubt her father will be any more pleased than Minna to know that she is a heretic.”

“She does not want to return home.”

“We can hardly keep her here! The priests and any others who witnessed her miracle will not stand to keep her in our midst.”

“She does not want to stay here, either. She has requested a horse and safe passage to escape into the wilderness, and that we will give some excuse to her father and her staff for her disappearance.”

“Exile is reasonable. Her life in exchange for the king’s. But how do you propose to fulfill that latter end of the bargain?”

“What can she possibly be thinking?!?” Minna hisses through her teeth. Fifi has had as pampered and privileged an upbringing as she has. She’s not cut out for life in the wilderness. “She’ll never survive in exile—”

“Who’s to say that the Barhestans would not have kidnapped Princess Josefina, in an attempt to have a bargaining chip for negotiations with the newly allied Aethyrozia and Syazonia?” Queen Casilda suggests. “I know you believe you’ve captured all of them, but everything was chaos and confusion once they attacked the king. Perhaps some evaded capture and waited until most of Zosya was asleep to take the princess, or perhaps they had help outside of those present at the ball. The servants must all be questioned and a scapegoat or two found, but it’s not unreasonable—”

“It will guarantee war with Barhesta. Many of our people and theirs will suffer and die,” Adalberto counters, his face ashen. “I had hoped to avoid a war with them yet.”

“Since your father has recovered, you and I both know that war with Barhesta is inevitable. We might as well use it to give the young woman who saved his life what she wants.”

“What she wants is insanity!” Minna cuts in, pulling her hands out of Adalberto’s grip and leaping up from her chair to pace the floor. “She can’t possibly think to live as a commoner in the wilderness somewhere. She’s always had servants and lived in a castle, never wanting for anything material.”

“Perhaps we should let Minna speak with Fifi. I cannot condone this plan,” Adalberto suggests, watching his new wife with concern. “You said the ritual took all her strength. Perhaps when you spoke with her about a reward she was not in her right mind.”

Queen Casilda shrugs. “I will allow you to see her, as long as you are gentle with her. She is still quite weak. And she has performed an invaluable service for all of us. She has not only saved your father’s life, but she has saved both of you from becoming sovereigns in the first days of your marriage.”

Adalberto and Minna exchange glances. Guilt joins the anger and betrayal and hurt swirling in Minna’s chest. She still shouldn’t have kept this a secret from me. But she might have healed him for me, for us, Minna realizes as she thinks back to her conversation with Fifi in the drawing room after the dancing devolved into bloodshed. I should at least listen to her. And it will give us a chance to say goodbye….

“I will be gentle with her. I promise,” Minna agrees. “Just let me see her.”

“Come with me.”