The Pretender's Crown

JAVIER, KING OF GALLIN

1 April 1588 † Aria Magli, in Parna

Javier, king of all Gallin, heir to the Essandian throne, child of the last Lanyarchan queen, and pretender to the Aulunian crown, leaned across a gondola seat, arms crossed to support himself, and, in utmost confidence, murmured, “I am looking for a woman,” to the gondola boy.

The boy, who was perhaps twelve and more probably ten, leaned on his pole, edging the boat along its busy canal, and offered a heartfelt sigh of sympathy “Si, signor, so are we all. A beautiful woman, no? A woman with eyes like diamonds and hair like spun gold, with skin softer than silk and arms warm as the fire. Her touch may burn,” he said mournfully, “but for such a woman the pain is worth everything.”

Javier blinked, first at the boy, then over his shoulder at Tomas and Marius, neither of whom made even an attempt to control their laughter. Javier cleared his throat and turned back to the boy whose expression had been wiped entirely clear of theatrics in the moment Javier'd looked away, and who now looked cheerful and expectant. “This is the woman you seek, no? I will bring you to her. I know many fine ladies, and you are a man of wealth, I can see that in your clothes. You will be pleased with me, and I shall bring home a fat chicken to my father and my brothers and sisters with the payment you give me.”

“Ah,” Javier said, still half outwitted. “I'm looking for a specific woman, I'm afraid.”

“And you start by asking me because I am the finest gondola boy on the canals,” the boy said without hesitation, “which is wise, for I know many people, but there are many more people I do not know. But perhaps my people will know people who know your lady. She is a courtesan, si?” he added in a tone that suggested they were the only women worth seeking out.

“Si,” Marius said from behind them, though Javier'd shaken his head in disagreement. He looked back a second time to find the laughter gone from Marius's face. “A courtesan, a foreign woman, from Gallin, with black hair and brown eyes, and she wears an alabaster ring on this finger.” He lifted his left hand, touched his middle finger. “She would wear dresses of her own fashion, not the usual that you would see.”

“A courtesan, Marius?” Javier asked through his teeth, and in Gallic.

The look Marius turned on him was almost pitying. “That or a widow, Jav She's got some money, but she'll need more, and in Aria Magli the easiest way to be a woman of means is to be one of them.” He jerked his head toward a high window, where a woman much like the one the gondola boy had described leaned out, breasts on display as she waved and blew kisses at the passersby “Eliza has the beauty, the wit, and, thanks to you, the education for it. Why not?”

“I thought you thought her better than the prince's whore.”

“Here, she would be her own whore, and I would mark that higher, aye, my lord.”

“What kind of dresses does she wear, signor?” The gondola boy's voice broke over their argument in a clarion call, pure and utterly without awareness of growing tension. Javier, irritated, looked back at the child and found determination in his eyes, much older than his years. He wasn't unaware after all, but deliberately pulling them away from feuds, no doubt in concern over his payment. Anger faded beneath an appreciation for the boy's business sense, and Javier traced the shape of one of Eliza's flowing, high-waisted gowns in the air.

“Like this, with a band beneath the breasts that makes a false high waist, and the necks are scooped low.”

“Like her,” the boy said with a nod up the canal. Javier twisted to see a woman in just such a gown, who wore extravagantly coiffed black curls tumbling around her shoulders, accept a gypsy man's hand in helping her into a gondola, and leapt to his feet.

“Eliza! Eliza!”

The gondola boy squawked “Signor!” in alarm, while Tomas and Marius both grabbed for Javier's hips, trying to pull him back to sitting. Men and women-women, particularly-passing on bridges and looking out windows paused to look first at Javier, then for the woman he called for, titters of romance and teasing floating over the brackish waters. The woman herself didn't look back, and Marius, tilting to examine her once Javier was seated again, said, “Not unless she's put on two stone since we saw her last. You're not going to endear yourself to her if she hears you're mistaking a barge for a sailing ship.”

“Catch up to them,” Javier snapped. “I need to know where she got the gown.”

“Oh, but it is dangerous, signor, to push and shove on the canals. If my boat capsizes my father will beat me-” His complaints stopped as he snatched the coin Javier threw to him. There was almost no break in his poling as he secreted the money away, and then his voice rang out in a song of emergency, unrequited love, and thwarted passion. That the details clashed and muddled, making no sense at all, bothered no one, and laughing gondoliers made way for the boy and his boatful of hopeful young men.

“You,” the child said to Javier as they approached the woman's gondola, “you hold your tongue, signor. I will talk.”

“He's got no faith in your romancing talents, Jav.” Marius, grinning, reached out to thump Javier's shoulder. “Perhaps he knows you better than we think.”

Javier scowled and the boy aimed a kick at him, unknowing and uncaring of his passenger's rank. “Look winsome, signor, or the lady will not care about your tale of woe.”

“My tale of what?” It was too late: the boy had leapt from his own boat to the neighbouring, causing a shriek of dismay and then of laughter as he knelt beseechingly at the woman's feet. Javier, hoping to look lovelorn, unwisely thought of Beatrice, and felt his expression turn to rage. He dropped his face into his hands, and listened to the story of how he was a cloth merchant's son, wealthy enough to dress well but beggared when his father's silk shipment had been drowned in the Primorismare. Now all his hopes of love and happiness rested on wooing a beautiful girl who did not yet know of his misfortunes.

He had, according to the boy, promised her a gown of extraordinary beauty, of rare and subtle cut, and his heart was inspired by this woman's dress, though in truth even his beloved could never fill it so generously or well as this woman herself did. It was his fate to be unable to look so high as to this woman herself, but perhaps she might share the name of her dressmaker, and where to find her, so that the poor cloth merchant's son might take the last bolt of good fabric he had to his name and have a wedding gown made to change his destiny.

Through all of this Marius and Tomas held fast to the other boat's side, so the boy could return, and through all of it they kept straight faces while Javier's flush of anger faded into amazement. The woman gave a name and an address, and the boy leapt back with an air of unmistakable triumph. “You will pay me very well,” he told Javier, and then, thoughtfully, said, “and perhaps introduce me to your lady friend, for I am a better talker than you, and you might need help.”

Too astounded to be offended, Javier asked, “How can you tell? You haven't given me a chance to say anything.”

The boy sniffed and leaned his weight into poling. “A man who talks as good as me would have put his words in.”