Chapter 58: Truth was somewhere inbetween

The girl was alive. You could see her chest going up and down as she was breathing. But at the same time there was an atmosphere around it all that reminded me of being at a funeral, or at a wake.

I'm thinking of that moment when you're standing over the coffin, or the sarcophagus or next to the funeral pyre. Everyone is standing around in reverence to the very sincere and very real solemnity of the situation. It was like that. She was alive, definitely alive, she was warm to the touch and now that she was warming up in her newly provided clothes and under a blanket, her breath was steaming in the air. But it was as though she was dead.

It was still close enough to my fathers death and funeral that I was starkly reminded of that. But it wasn't me that was grieving. There and at that time, Kerrass had been there to support me. Now it was my turn to support him.

His face was unreadable as he stood there. Some sunlight came through some of the windows, those that weren't completely overgrown, and it caught his face at odd angles. I have recently had the opportunity to go back and read some of my earlier chronicles of my travels with Kerrass and one of the things that I remember saying at the time was about how mythic he looked in certain circumstances. About how you could imagine painters studying his likeness and putting it on canvas, about how stonemasons and carvers would spend hours looking at him and trying to capture the air of danger, of heroism and professionalism. All of those things were still true but now, as he looked down at the face of the woman that he loved, he seemed the most human to me. He looked old, very old and immensely tired.

“Can I...” My breath stuck in my throat. “Can I get you anything?”

Kerrass shook himself.

“No,” He said clapping me on the shoulder. “No you can't.” A slow and sly smile crept across his face. “Not unless you can somehow make it so that it's my kiss that will suddenly wake her up. Or you can wave a magical wand and make it all better again.”

“I think that's a little bit beyond my talents there.”

Kerrass shrunk a little.

“I thought so, I'm sorry.”

“What for?”

“I always forget how hard it is to stand here, looking down on her like this. Every time, I forget and every time it's like, I've had my heart ripped out again.”

I nodded. Several things came to mind in the way that they do when you're trying to console a friend or even a stranger through a loss or through a hard time. I wanted to tell him that I was there for him. I wanted to tell him that I cared and that she would wake up some day. I wanted to help share the load in some way.

I wanted to tell him that I knew how he felt.

But I didn't. How could I possibly have known how he felt.

I decided to go with truth.

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“I want to say something that would help you Kerrass. I'm stood here trying to figure it out. But everything I think of sounds like a cliché at best and bullshit at worst.”

“I know Freddie. I know.” Kerrass sighed and rubbed at his forehead. “And I appreciate the effort. I really do.”

“Do you want me to leave you alone?”

“Would you mind?” Kerrass looked at me sadly. “I've got some things to say, little rituals you know. I need to tell her some things.”

I thought of the way people sometimes visit crypts and graveyards to visit and talk to dead friends and family.

“Of course. Kerrass. I'm going to be exploring and looking for some things.”

Kerrass nodded. “Remember what I said.”

“I know I know, be back in the kitchen by the time night is falling. Bring the stuff I need....and so on.”

“Fair enough. Probably rations tonight but I'll try and go hunting tomorrow. There's normally some boar living near the castle, the Kings old hunting ground.”

“How long do we have?” Thanks for reading on ManaNovel!

“Before we have to leave. The dragon is the thing. The dragon will come by in a couple of days. If it's not already on it's way.”

“A couple of days. Not a lot of time.”

“It will have to be enough. We can always take things back to the village and work on them there.”

His voice sounded absurdly hopeful but I could feel our positions reversing themselves with regards to our optimism. Kerrass had been the one who had said that he wasn't as confident that we were going to get anywhere. That we weren't going to achieve anything, where as I had been the one with the new theories that I thought might mean that I could get things going again. That I could make headway in a puzzle that had been driving much greater minds than mine crazy for over a hundred years.

But now?

Now I was standing in a derelict castle that was being claimed by the elements and by nature. And suddenly it seemed an impossible task. Where was I even to begin?

But right then and there, none of that was important. Kerrass was in front of me and I had promised him that I was going to try.

So try I would.

I agreed that we could always take some stuff back to the village and I set out.

I had the map of the castle and I had some ideas as to where to start looking.

I also needed to be looking in places that no-one else is going to think of, or particularly go for.

I was reassured by the fact that there was one large room that was labelled as a library which suggested that the castle as a whole valued the written word which was important. That also suggested that there would be quite a few cases where the keeping of records would either be mandated or encouraged.

The other thing to think about was where the most information could be gathered in as short a space of time as possible.

Two or three days was not really a long time to be trying to figure out one of the greatest mysteries that this particular corner of the world had ever seen.

Context is King. I wasn't going to figure out anything without knowing what else was going on in the castle.

I also thought that the dairies of important people were not that reliable as sources as Kings and Queens are always very aware of their own status and as such have a tendency to not write anything down for fear that it will fall into the hands of their enemies.

Inconsiderate bastards.

Don't they know that some day a historian is going to come along and wonder why they were declaring war on this person or that person?

The same would be true of higher level courtiers. I had come across various studies and courtly documents in my time as a student, where pages had been torn out and entire sections destroyed to prevent them from being used as a weapons on the political battlefield.

But there is also one other truth that I hoped would be usable in this situation which was that wherever you are in a castle. Especially as royal and wealthy castle as this one. You are never further away than 10ft away from a servant or a guard.

Just try it. Have a look around the next time you find yourself in a working castle. Not so much a manor house but a working castle. There will be a servant or guard in your eyeline. Or a guarded door. Or a servants entrance.

Being in power means that you get used to them being around. Even if you are polite enough to thank them for serving your food or taking away rubbish. There is also, often, a page or squire standing or kneeling nearby so that they can catch any problems that might come up and anticipate anything that might go wrong.

These people have ears to hear and eyes to see. They are also trained to be silent and not heard. You don't see

them, but they can see you, hear you and are trained to remember things that you have said over time in an effort to provide things that you might want.

The other thing is that the entirety of our civilisation is built on the fact that, you don't see them. Out of sight and out of mind is a common saying. For you, but also for your enemies. They think of who they can get to and influence amongst your nearest and dearest. But a gold coin in the hands of the girl who comes to sweep away the ashes in your fireplace? That kind of thing could topple nations.

It has too.

Over and over again I would come across it in the libraries of the university. Small diaries of small servants that historians read and then use that to become aware of what was going on behind closed doors. We look at each other and shake our heads saying things like “imagine if King What's-his-name had known that?”

Servants are the lifeblood of a castle. Servants and guards.

So I strode off to the servants quarters and the barracks. The guard rooms and the back stair cases where men and women waited in case their masters called for them.

I also went to the library for a look around with my lantern in case I was being too clever for my own good.

There was always the possibility that I would spend my day crawling around long deserted footman quarters while in the castle library there would turn out to be a specific shelf labelled “Castle records as kept by the guards captains and chief servants since the founding of the Kingdom.”

Stranger things have happened.

The truth was somewhere between the two.

I got all excited when I walked into the servants quarters, found that bit which was an office that looked astonishingly like my fathers office back at home and there was a book lying there in the open. The page that was open was unreadable but I was expecting that. Imagine my excitement when I turned a couple of pages over to show a thin hand with a lot of ink splatter and tracery which suggested cheap quills and cheaper ink. It also had the rounded lettering which always, and I do mean always, suggests that the writer learned their letters later in life.

The book, although huge, went back a couple of months. That meant that there would be other books.

Here's where it got a little disheartening.

I spent some time exploring and I found the servants records room. That room displayed the butlers records, the cooks records, the guards records and log books. So many books. That there were so many records spoke well of the castle.

But that there were so many was a little bit....

Daunting. I'm gonna say it was daunting.

I took the most recent books down and spent the rest of the afternoon stacking up those volumes that I wanted to examine as well as searching for those volumes that would be relevant to those times that I was interested in. Namely the times when the princess was conceived, born, named and her sixteenth birthday.

Then the early evening was spent carting the volumes down to where our camp was situated. More than one volume fell apart in my hands but I was having to work a lot faster than I was, at first, happy with.

Ideally I wanted a team of people, students working and carrying and cataloguing, carefully carrying the books from one place to another with someone else taking notes of those facts that I thought of as important.

Fortunately I was invested in the project otherwise it would have been a lot harder.

I sat there, cross legged with the books in front of me along with my note-paper, peering from one book to the other, and then back again. Having to force myself to be gentle with the paper and not frantically scrabble from one page to the next in my efforts to get at the correct piece of information. As it often does in these kinds of situations, time seemed to get away from me. I have dim memories of Kerrass passing a plate of food across my face at some point. I don't know what it was but I must have eaten it as the following morning revealed several dirty plates and things near my work area.

I slept a little bit and went off to look at the royal bed-chambers in the morning. Kerrass was off somewhere, I have no idea where but that was probably for the best.

The royal bed-chambers only gave me a little bit of information but that, in and of itself, was significant.

There was only one royal bed-chamber which suggested that the King and Queen slept in the same bed on most evenings. For those people who don't come from noble backgrounds, that is unusual. Markedly so.

I remember once asking my mother why this was the case. Regular readers might be aware of the rather complex nature of the relationship between my Mother and Father but she raised an interesting point. She told me that many people see it as a sign of wealth and status to have separate bedrooms. That villagers and townsfolk often don't have the space or the money to have separate beds and as a result they sleep together, for warmth as much as anything. Nobles have the luxury of space and as a result they sleep separately.

There have since been other social things that mean that people have separate bedrooms. Sometimes it's because the marriage is one of convenience and separate bedrooms are necessary to preserve the image of peace. Sometimes it's necessary as the two people have significantly different habits to the other.

But to see a shared bed chamber was rare.

The bed was ruined, the wood had been hacked apart, presumably by looters, and the bedclothes had obviously been torn to pieces before the dust and the rot had set in. There was also the splintered remains of a woman's dressing table and a man's desk as well as a couple of chairs. I pushed my foot through them to see if there was anything that might have been interesting to me but not to a looter.

No luck.

In the corner was the corpse of a woman. I crouched next to her. Many of the corpses that there still were in the palace looked as though they were still in the position that they had initially fallen asleep in. They were lying in place, often slumped or with their heads pillowed on their hands or whatever nearby flat surface was available. This woman looked as though she had been tossed aside. Her clothing might once have been rich although there were many parts of it that were torn. Again, I am aware that assuming things is a dangerous habit to get into when you are a historian but I was lacking in time so I assumed that people had searched her clothing for jewels or the metallic golden or silver threads that can be taken from a rich persons cloths. Also any jewellery had been taken as well as there were signs that her fingers had been broken to get at rings. I thought of who could have been in this place. I tried to picture a maidservant or a lady in waiting. But there were no other bodies so it seemed that these were probably the remains of Queen Leah.

No way for a Queen to end. No way for anyone to end.

She looked brittle and I didn't want to disturb her in case I did more damage than was necessary.

All cupboards and shelves had been swept clean. Empty potion bottles, broken brushes and other pots and things littered the floor and crunched underfoot as I moved towards the woman's dressing table. There was still that sickly sweet smell that always put me in mind of my sisters dressing area and alchemical shops.

I did find one book in the corner of the room. It had fallen, the spine cracked and so once again I assumed, (My tutor at Oxenfurt is going to be so cross with me when he reads this) That it had been thrown aside by someone. Carefully I checked it to find that it had the symbol of the prophet on the cover. So some kind of holy book then. Again, not to presume anything but I assumed that it was the Queen's. I took out a small knife and poked at it to see if there had been anything in the spine. But I was disappointed.

I moved on.

I found the King's private study. Behind his own private dressing room, which was not small, there was another room that you entered through another door that looked as though it could be locked by key. This was a hundred years ago so now, locks are becoming increasingly affordable thanks to the increased availability of dwarven and Gnomish mechanisms. But back then, a lock would have been a sign of wealth.

The door opened easily enough and I guessed that others had been there before me. It was an odd kind of a lock in that it seemed to automatically fall into place whenever the door was closed. So it needed forcing from outside the room unless you had the key.

The key was easy to find however as it was around the neck of the lone remaining occupant.

The King was at home.

But his office was a mess.

I nearly despaired then.

It was a smallish room. There was a large window that faced out onto what must have once been a garden and what little light there was, shining through the dirty windows, gave the room a feeling of hopelessness. The room was lined with shelves that once must have contained books, scrolls and all kinds of written paraphernalia. There was a large desk, a fireplace and a single chair.

The corpse that was easily recognisable as the King due to the richness of the cloth, dyed purple with fur linings had, I assumed, (there's that word again) been sat in the chair when he had been found. Looters had promptly tipped him out of his chair and onto the floor to make searching his body and desk that much easier.

There was not a single drawer, nor a single shelf that had not been ransacked with the papers and contents having been tipped out and crushed under foot by the many people who had since come here in an effort to try and find hidden valuables. The common curse of the historian. True value, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. I guessed that the luxurious clothing that the King wore would have been worth plenty to the right merchant but it had been left, ignored and trampled into dust while the maps and the papers had been similarly destroyed. Local collectors, indeed the university itself would have paid a fortune for any of these things.

So there's a tip for those people who go into buildings looking for treasure. If you find a room full of scrolls and books that looks as though they haven't been disturbed in ages. Take those instead. I guarantee that you'll find a buyer. I understand that they're heavier and bulkier than jewels or gold but when you're the second or seventieth looter, you take what you can get.

But at the time, I despaired. I was suddenly certain. Absolutely certain that the answer to all of my questions was in the detritus that had gathered on the carpeted floor. But now it was faded and ruined beyond hope of recall.

But I had promised Kerrass that I would try so I went to work.

My predecessors had known their job well though. I carefully went through, lifting and moving things aside carefully. Most of the books were ruined into crumbling messes. Scrolls were torn or unreadable. I did find several bundles of what looked like correspondence that had been tied together tightly with string. Some of them looked as though they had been damaged by flames as well, as though they had been thrown into the fire but at the last second they had been rescued before the damage was irreparable. They were so tightly packed that I hesitated to pry them apart with my fingers. That would be a job for a careful hand and a knife in a properly lit room. There was plenty of stuff here. But it would take me months to sort out this room alone.

I had a couple of days.

I sadly departed the room and went up into the upper parts of the castle, the private servants quarters.

It was plainly obvious from a lot of them that these were just interchangeable beds where people would go to sleep. There were no signs of personalisation and I was forced to assume (and again. I know, I know. But I remind you of the time pressure that I was under) that most servants lived nearby and that these beds were for the servants of visiting dignitaries. There were very few places where there were any signs that someone had a permanent place to stay and those that did, I couldn't find any signs of kept diaries.

The other problem was that the higher rooms were also less stable than the downstairs areas.

I resigned myself and took what prizes I had and returned to our camp-site.

Kerrass was back in the throne room. He looked as though he was tidying the place up a bit. He'd lit a whole bunch of candles that he had dotted around the rooms and was doing things like putting flowers in pots. As I peered in I could hear his voice as he was talking to her.

I decided not to disturb him and got to work back down in the Kitchen.

Kerrass came back some time later.

No I don't know how much later that was.

“How's it going?” He asked.

“Fascinating stuff.” I said without looking up. “Do you know how much it takes to feed the household cavalry?”

“Not a clue.”

“I do. I also know how much that all costs. How much silver polish and boot polish they use. And all of that doesn't count towards the rest of the garrison which are fed out of a different system.”

“Ok?” Kerrass prompted.

“If I had showed Father these ledgers while he was still alive, flame rest his soul, he would have shat himself to death over the amount that they were paying for a particular type of flour. Not general flour because that was being dealt with under a separate account. But special flower to make special bread for the Kind and Queen's private breakfast. That and the fact that they paid money. They actively paid money to bring in manure for the Queen's rose garden.”

“But they had household cavalry.”

“Yes.”

“So wouldn't they have just used horse manure.”

“You might have done. I would have and so would my father. But here it would seem that the Queen had decided that the best kind of manure for her roses came from a sheep farm in the southern part of the kingdom.”

“I didn't know that sheep manure had that much of an effect on the production of roses.”

“Neither did I. Apparently it's not sheep dung though. The farmer has a pair of horses to cart his stuff to market. Those horses produce the best kind of dung.”

“The things you learn.”

“These people had so much money that they were literally throwing it away. I don't know how much Redania's total war chest was during the course of the last war but it can't have been small. But these people spent more money on the preparations for the Princesses sixteenth birthday celebrations than I ever saw while I was working for the Quartermaster general during the war. This is insane.”

“Royalty.” Kerrass said it with a shrug.

“That might be true, but if they'd harnessed that amount of money and turned it into a plan to conquer the continent then we wouldn't be living in a Nilfgaardian empire at the moment and instead it would be in their Empire.”

Kerrass grunted. “Have you found anything else?”

“Not particularly, I'm still building a general picture of the events leading up to the curse being cast and enacted and the events leading up to the birth of the Princess.”

“That sounds like a lot of work.”

“It is, but at the same time I do have one advantage.”

“Which is?”

“That we know when her birthday is. Not her naming day which is when the curse was first cast by the Sorceress but her actual birthday. We know that she, and everyone else, fell asleep on the day of her sixteenth birthday. It's worked into the words of the curse. So then we work backwards from that and we get her birthday.”

Kerrass nodded.

“That means I know, or can figure out where all the major players were on the day of her birth.”

“Is that important?”

“It might be. I think it is though.”

“Why?”

“Because she's the catalyst. You see, I'm struggling to believe that this curse has anything to do with the Princess. I think that the Princess was the spark that lit the fire but I don't think that she's the root cause of the problem.”

“This is because of the “hate” question again isn't it.”

“It is. Yes. Try as I might I just struggle to believe that a person, any person regardless of magical power or race or anything else could summon enough feeling to hate a baby enough to cast a curse powerful enough to all but destroy a Kingdom.”

Kerrass' mouth quirked towards a smile. “I think that might say things about you more than what it says about other people.”

“Good things I hope.”

Kerrass smiled in response.

“But anyway.” I went on. “I can appreciate general prejudice, hating other races or class structures or employment classes or the children of someone else. But that level of hate must have been powerful.”

“You are right. Anything else?”

“Yes. Two questions. In the morning could you take me to see the notary?”

“The what?”

I took out one of the maps I'd found. And unfurled it for him.

“This is a map of all the various “royal” businesses. I found it in library. These are all the places that can call themselves “The royal....”whatever it is they were.”

“The Royal blacksmiths, the royal farrier.”

“Precisely. This place is a residence rather than a working castle like my fathers. All of the trade things were kept outside the walls. More proof that they had no intention of ever being besieged here. But the building I'm curious about is this one.”

I pointed and Kerrass frowned as he saw the labelling.

“The royal Notary?”

“Yes. They would keep all the stuff about royal decrees and things like that. Who owns what land, and which tenancies and so on.”

“I know what a notary is Freddie.”

“Just checking.”

“Why do you want to go there?”

“Because they might have papers there that might tell me more. Most of the books and such things have been destroyed in the castle as looters have gone through the place, tossing books and things aside which means that they're all damaged beyond easy recovery. Maybe they have more.”

“Alright. I'll scout it out and come find you once I'm sure I've got it down right.”

“Done. But I do have another question.”

“Which is?”

“Bear with me. The curse says that on the day of her sixteenth birthday, the Princess would touch the spindle of a spinning wheel and then die right?”

“Correct.”

“So where's the spindle? Or the spinning wheel? I've been looking for one and I can't even find the wreckage of one. According to this ledger....” I pulled a huge tome out from one of the piles that was next to my feet.

“The Kingdom paid another huge amount to import textiles. They did have sheep and exported the raw wool by the bale. But it was UN-spun wool. I expect that I'll find notes at some point that will declare that the King ordered all spinning wheels in the Kingdom destroyed.”

“Nothing wrong with that. It's what I would have done.”

“Me too. So where's the spindle that she pricked her fingers on?”

I rooted around in my pack and found one of the diaries of the knight Mannfred. “It says here that the first expeditions into the country after the curse had been cast found the Princess in the coffin in her bedroom right?”

“Yes.”

“Wouldn't she have lain where she fell?”

“I don't know. But that has been asked before.”

“I thought it might. So somewhere in the Kingdom. Someone was moving around and doing things while the curse was enacted.”

“I always thought it might be the casting Sorceress. Or one of the other seven that tried to mitigate the disaster.”

“That thought did occur to me and one of the things that I've been trying to figure out is where those other seven women went.”

“No luck with that then.”