Shadow of a Dark Queen. Raymond E. Feist

need washing.’ Her tone was hoarse, and she spoke softly. Rosalyn moved toward the sink and began working the hand pump her father and Erik had installed only the year before so she and Freida wouldn’t have to carry water from the well behind the inn anymore. As cold water filled the wooden sink, Freida said, ‘And stay the sweet child you are, Rosalyn. There’s too much pain in the world already.’

      The older woman hurried from the kitchen on some imagined errand, and Rosalyn knew she just wished to be alone for a while. The exchange with the new smith had released something Freida had buried and Rosalyn didn’t understand, but in her sixteen years the girl had never seen Erik’s mother cry. As she cleaned the fruit for the evening’s pies, she wondered if this was a good thing or not.

      The evening was quiet, with only a few locals calling in at the Pintail for a quick drink, and only one seeking a meal. Erik finished cleaning the kettle as a favor to Rosalyn, and hauled it back to the hook over the fire, now low-glowing embers.

      He waved good night to Rosalyn, who was carrying four flagons of ale to a table occupied by four of the town’s more eligible young journeymen, all of whom were flirting with the innkeeper’s daughter, more to keep some sort of status with one another than out of any real interest in the young girl.

      Passing through the kitchen, Erik found his mother standing by the door, looking at the night sky, ablaze with stars. All three moons were down this night, a rare occurrence, and the display was always worth a moment to observe.

      ‘Mother,’ said Erik quietly as he started to move away.

      ‘Stay awhile,’ she said softly, a request and not an order. ‘It was a night like this I met your father.’

      Erik had heard the story before but knew his mother was struggling with something that had occurred while she spoke to the smith. He still didn’t fully understand what had happened in his mother, but he knew she needed to speak. He sat down on the steps beside where his mother stood.

      ‘Otto had come to Ravensburg for the first time as Baron, after his father’s death two years before. He had attended the Vintners’ and Growers’ reception for him, and after drinking with the town leaders, he had gone for a walk to clear his head. He was brash and quick to dispense with protocol, and had ordered his servants and guards to leave him alone.’

      She stared into the night, calling up memories. ‘I had come down to the fountain with the other girls, to flirt with the boys.’ Erik recalled his own last visit to the fountain with Roo and realized the practice was long established. ‘The Baron came into the lantern light and suddenly we were a bunch of awkward children.’ Then Erik saw a spark in his mother’s eyes, and heard an echo of the spirit that had captivated men’s hearts before he was born. ‘I was as awed as the rest, but I was too proud to show it,’ she said with a rueful smile, and years dropped away from her. Erik could imagine the impact such a sight after an evening spent drinking must have had on the Baron as he spied the beautiful Freida at the fountain.

      ‘He had court manners, and rank, and riches, and yet there was something honest in him, Erik: a little boy who was as afraid of being sent away as any other boy. He was twenty-five, and young for that age. But he swept me off my feet, with sweet words and a wicked humor in them. Less than an hour later he had bedded me under a tree in an apple orchard.’ She sighed, and again Erik was put in mind of a young girl, not this woman of iron he had known all his life.

      ‘I had a terrible reputation, but I had never known another man. He had known other women, for he was sure, but he was also tender and gentle and loving.’ She glanced at her son. ‘In the dark, under the stars, he spoke of love, but the next day I thought I’d never see him again and counted myself just another foolish girl taken in by a nobleman’s charms.

      ‘But against any hope of mine, he came to me a month later, in the late afternoon, alone, astride a horse flecked with foam from a hard ride from his castle. Hidden by a large cloak, he had slipped into the inn as we were readying for the night’s trade, and there he sought me out and revealed himself. To my astonishment, he professed love and asked for my hand.’ She gave a bittersweet laugh. ‘I called him mad and ran from the inn.

      ‘Later that night, I returned to find him waiting at this very spot, like a common farmhand. He again told of his love for me, and again I told him he was bereft of sense.’ Tears gathered in her eyes. ‘He laughed and said he knew it seemed that way, but after taking my hand and gazing into my eyes, he kissed me once and convinced me. This time I knew why I had gone with him first time – not because of his rank and station, but because I loved him as well.

      ‘He cautioned me that none must know of our love for each other until he had journeyed to Rillanon to petition King Lyam for my hand, for tradition bound him to his liege lord’s pleasure. But to seal our love, and to provide me with a claim, we spoke our vows in a small chapel used during the harvest, with an itinerant monk who had been in town less than a day, conducting the ceremony. The monk made a pledge not to speak of the vows until Otto gave him leave, and left us alone, for the next morning Otto planned to leave to see the King.’

      Freida was silent a moment; then her tone took on a familiar bitterness. ‘Otto never returned. He sent a messenger, your friend Owen Greylock, with news that the King had denied his petition and had instructed him to wed the daughter of the Duke of Ran. “For the good of the Kingdom,” Greylock said. Then he said the King had ordered the Great Temple of Dala in Rillanon to declare the wedding annulled, and had the order placed under Royal Seal, so as not to embarrass Mathilda or any sons she might bear. I was advised to find a good man and forget Otto.’ Tears ran down her cheeks as she said, ‘What a shock good Master Greylock got then when I told him I was with child.’

      She sighed and reached over and gripped her son’s arm. ‘As my time neared, rumors circulated about who was your father, this merchant or that grower. But when you were born, and quickly became the image of your father in his youth, no one denied you were Otto’s boy. Not even your father will deny it publicly.’

      Erik had heard the story a dozen times before, but never told quite this way. Never before had he thought of his mother as a young girl in love or of the bitter rejection she must have felt when news of Otto’s marriage to Mathilda had come. Still, there was no profit in living for yesterday. ‘But he never acknowledged me, either,’ said Erik.

      ‘True,’ agreed his mother. ‘Yet he left you this much: you have a name, von Darkmoor. You may use it with pride, and should any man challenge your right you may look him in the eye and say, “Not even Otto, Baron von Darkmoor, denies me my right to this name.”’

      Erik reached up and awkwardly took his mother’s hand. She glanced at him and smiled her stiff, unforgiving smile, but there was a hint of warmth in it as she squeezed his huge hand, then released it. ‘This Nathan: I think he may be a good man. Learn what you can from him, for you’ll never have your birth-right.’

      Erik said, ‘That was your dream, Mother. I know little of politics, but what I have heard in the taproom leads me to believe that should you have had the High Priest of Dala himself as witness in the chapel that night, it would count for little. The King, for reasons known best to him, wished my father married to the daughter of the Duke of Ran, and thus it was, and thus it would always have been.’

      Erik stood. ‘I will need to spend some extra time with Nathan, letting him know what I can do, and finding out what he wishes me to do. I think you’re right: he’s a good man. He could have sent me packing, but he’s trying to do right by me, I think.’

      Impulsively, Freida threw her arms around her son’s neck, hugging him closely. ‘I love you, my son,’ she whispered.

      Erik stood motionless, uncertain how to respond. She spared him the need by letting go and turning quickly into the kitchen, shutting the door behind her.

      Erik stood a moment, then slowly turned and moved toward the barn.

      As the months passed, things fell into a routine at the Inn of the Pintail. Nathan blended in quickly, and after a while it was hard to recall what the inn had been like with Tyndal as smith. Erik found his new master a fount of information,