Sanctuary for a Stray--Pawns and Queens Spin-Off Story #2

[Evie]

Sanctuary for a Stray

Rhemuth Castle
A warm summer's day, 1462
A year and a half before King Uthyr's death

It was a gloriously warm day, and Alixa felt surprisingly free and relaxed for once. The Queen had retired to her private chamber with a headache, giving her ladies in waiting leave to follow their own pursuits and giving stern instructions that she was not to be disturbed until it was time to get ready for the evening meal. Alixa had returned to the apartment that she shared with her husband, only to discover Cinhil was fast asleep. Blessed with the gift of time to herself, Alixa was unsure of what to do next, but the day was far too lovely for her to spend it shut away indoors, so she decided to go for a stroll in the castle gardens.

The sound of giggling in the conservatory alerted Alixa to the presence of the two youngest Haldane princesses within. She liked Richeldis and Elisa. They had been very warm and welcoming to her ever since her arrival to this foreign land, and were filled with curiosity and questions about her native Joux, some of which Alixa felt ill equipped to answer except on the most theoretical level, since she had led such a cloistered life in some ways before marrying Cinhil that much of what she knew of her own homeland was derived from books she had found in the Royal Library after arriving in Rhemuth. But she had stumbled through a few descriptions of Jouvian food, culture and architecture (what she had noted about it from the palace windows) and the Haldane girls had seemed satisfied.

She opened the door and peeked in curiously. The princesses were seated on the stone pavings (their Maman would be livid if she knew, but Alixa wasn't about to inform her), trying to coax something out from underneath a potting bench.

Richeldis looked up when the door opened, spotting Alixa. "Quick, close the door!" she whispered. Alixa slipped inside and made certain the door was latched behind her.

"What have you found under there?" she asked.

"It's a kitten!" Elisa told her. "We're trying to coax it out with some food."

"Oh!" Alixa dropped to the ground beside them, trying to peer under the bench. "What is a kitten doing in here? Are there no others?"

"Not that we've spotted yet," Richeldis told her. "It's possible that the mother got scared off by the gardener. Or maybe this one somehow got separated from the rest of the litter. At any rate, we haven't seen or heard any other kittens in here, much less a mother cat."

"Strange." Alixa spotted two huge amber eyes in the shadows under the bench, surrounded by what appeared to be black fluff. "Come out, petit chat, we won't hurt you!" She tapped her fingertips on the stone paver beneath her hand, hoping the motion would lure the tiny little predator. She felt a strange kinship with the frightened beast. It reminded her of how she had felt when she had been peremptorily informed she was to be married to a stranger and must represent Joux's interests well, and was shipped off almost immediately to Gwynedd with little fanfare, much less a fond farewell.

The door opened again, and Prince Camber slipped inside quickly, giving the ladies a sheepish grin as soon as he noticed their presence. "Let me guess, you found the kitten."

"She's so cute!" Elisa squealed, lowering her voice as her older sister quickly shushed her, pointing to the shadows under the bench as a reminder not to scare the poor creature any more than she was already. "Do you think Maman will let us keep her?" she continued in a loud whisper.

"Certainly not!" Camber replied. "Which is why I plan to smuggle her into my apartment. Maman rarely ever visits there, though you may visit her any time you wish, if you like." He gave them a swift conspiratorial smile that reminded Alixa a great deal of Cinhil's, at least if Cinhil had been a few years younger, not to mention more vital than Alixa had seen him in years. She felt a wave of sadness wash over her at the thought of how long it had been since her husband had been able to enjoy the delights of his own garden, or engage in silly little sibling conspiracies like the one she found herself swept up in at the moment.

Richeldis opened her mouth to protest her older brother's sudden claim of the kitten, but then stopped to think of the merits of his plan. "I suppose you're right. I doubt we'd be able to hide a pet successfully in the Queen's Tower anyway, at least not while living right next to Maman, and it's not like you're heading back to Grecotha and taking her with you." She looked up at him suspiciously. "You're not going back to University, are you?"

"No, my studies are completed there." He sat down on the ground next to Alixa, flashing her a quick smile before peering under the bench. "Come here, Titivillus," he said, extending his fingertips. After a few long moments, the kitten timidly emerged from the shadows, giving his hand a cautious sniff.  Camber reached behind the kitten with his free hand, gently grabbing it by the scruff of its neck and swaddling it carefully in an old burlap sack he had brought with him before giving it a calming stroke on the forehead with his fingertip. The kitten purred.

"How did you manage that?" Elisa asked, her eyes wide.

Camber leaned towards her. "This may come as a major shock and surprise to you, sister," he said in a mock whisper, "but we are Deryni."

Richeldis pretended to recoil.  "Quelle surprise!" she exclaimed, drawing a laugh from Alixa.

"Why do you call her 'Titivillus'?" Alixa asked.

"Ah." Camber placed a sleep spell on the kitten and gently deposited her inside his cassock. "I happened to stop by the Cathedral of Saint George this morning and discovered that a cat had given birth in the scriptorium there a couple of months ago. The monks were happy enough to have more resident cats around the place to keep the mice at bay–a surfeit of mice can ruin all their hard work, you see–but they hadn't quite counted on how very active and underfoot young kittens can be. When I found this little one," he said, patting the lump inside his cassock, "it was by following the string of blistering curses from the scribe who discovered him walking across his newly inked page." He grinned. "Quite unseemly epithets for a man of the cloth, I must say. I've stored a few of the more creative ones away for future use."

Richeldis rolled her eyes at him. "You didn't quite answer Alixa's question," she reminded him.

"Did I not? Oh, my apologies!  Titivillus is allegedly the demon who is responsible for scribal errors, so it seemed a fitting name for this inky little imp."

"I think it suits the kitten well, at least if it's a boy cat," Alixa replied shyly. "Have you checked?"

The question caught Cam off guard. "In all honesty, I forgot to look. Though even if it turns out to be female, I've grown used to the idea of naming it that, so I guess it shall just have to remain Lady Titivillus if that's the case."

"I suppose even a demon needs a wife," Elisa observed.

"Well, I guess that's one way to look at–Bloody Hell!" Camber scrambled to his feet, barely remembering to keep one arm secured around the sleeping kitten so the sudden movement wouldn't send her slipping beneath his cincture and falling onto the floor.

"Why would we want to look at Hell?" Richeldis teased. "And that surely wasn't one of those 'creative curses' you had stored away for future use, was it? You have a far less expansive definition of 'creative' than I have, if it was!"

Elisa started giggling as she noticed the cause for her brother's alarm. Pointing out the large spider emerging from the darkness underneath the potting bench, she asked him, "Cam, surely you're not still afraid of spiders after all this time? If you can't handle a little creepy-crawly, how are you ever going to manage getting sent to the front lines in a war?"

Cam gave a self-deprecating laugh, his cheeks turning slightly rosy. "I don't foresee a problem with that, just so long as the Nördmarckers refrain from growing an additional six legs. That would creep anyone out, you know it would!"

Alixa couldn't help but giggle at the notion of an invasion of eight-legged warriors from the neighboring kingdom, even though she suspected an invasion by Nördmarcke was far from an idle threat. She adjusted her skirts to free one dainty foot and trod on the offending arachnid so it wouldn't threaten her brother-by-marriage's composure further.

Camber gave her a gallant bow of acknowledgement. "Many thanks, my lady. Your heroic effort on my behalf has earned my deepest gratitude." Beside Alixa, Elisa burst into laughter.

"Do you know why Cam can't abide spiders?" she asked her sister-in-law.

Cam's rosy blush spread. "Alixa doesn't need to know that, I'm sure."

"Oh, but she does!" Richeldis crowed with glee. "Your odd ways can't remain a mystery to our dear sister forever! She'll just end up hearing your sad tale of woe sometime anyway, no matter how much you might try to run from the memory."

"And from spiders with little sense of propriety," Elisa added before dissolving in more giggles.

"You needn't tell me if it discomfits him, truly!" Alixa attempted to protest, but was swiftly overridden by Cam, who had apparently decided that the best way to control the telling of the story was to tell it himself.

"There's truly not much to tell. When I was a young lad, around ten years of age, as I recall, I happened to wake up one morning to a strange, tickling sensation. When I looked to see what it was, it chanced to be a very large spider crawling around on me." He made a circle with his thumb and index finger. "About that size, as I recall, though at that moment it seemed more the size of a large pony!" He chuckled. "I don't highly recommend that method of awakening."

"What our darling Camber has neglected to mention," teased Richeldis, "is that the aforementioned pony-sized spider was making its leisurely way up his inner thigh, heading towards–shall we say–portions of his anatomy that are of greater interest to matters of State than just his bare leg. Though it's just as well it never reached its intended destination, since when he leaped out of bed as if his sheets were on fire, tearing off his nightshirt and streaking down the corridor wearing nothing more than what God Himself clad him in at birth, that poor frightened creature took a nasty bite. Cam's leg was swollen for weeks."

Elisa was nearly incontinent with laughter by this point in the story, while Alixa was quietly mortified on poor Camber's behalf, not to mention her own, since the very last thing she needed planted in her mind was an image of her husband's handsome brother in any state of unseemly undress, no matter his tender age at the time. Camber, still a vibrant color resembling some of the roses in his mother's garden, laughed and decided to make the best of things. "Yes, that was awful. Though I'm a third son, Richeldis. What's under my nightshirt is hardly a matter of State interest, or in the interests of anyone but myself, for that matter."

"Well, that's comforting to know, especially since you're a presumably chaste priest," Richeldis joked. "Unless, like Colin, you've also got a lady love stashed away somewhere?"

"I do not, and I'm perplexed that a conversation about something as seemingly innocuous as a kitten or even vicious spiders has suddenly deteriorated into unseemly inquiries about my personal life, Your Impertinence!" Camber attempted to sound stern, but his laughing eyes undermined his efforts.

Alixa stared in wonder at the bantering siblings. Had she and her sisters dared to tease their brother so, they would have been beaten severely by their father, locked up in their tower room, and barely fed for days. As for her brother's reaction...well, Rémy had his own ways of exacting vengeance without leaving visible scars. Some of the horrific images he'd planted in her mind had left her too terrified to sleep properly for weeks! She shuddered.

Her nearly imperceptible reaction caught Camber's eye, and he sobered quickly, crouching before her and meeting her eyes with an inquiring look. "Are you all right, Alixa? I hope I haven't given you a mistrust of spiders also. We have some large ones, but rarely are they poisonous. I just had the misfortune of waking up to one with a nastier than usual bite, but that species is rare and you are unlikely to encounter one. Especially since Maman took precautions after that morning to set up special wards around the bedchambers to keep such creatures out."

A church bell rang nearby. Camber counted out the hours and sighed. "It's almost time for the evening meal. I suppose I'd better get my furry little miscreant stashed away before it's time to head to the hall." Reaching for an old rag on the lower shelf of the potting bench, he gingerly shook it out, ensuring there were no spiders or other such crawling things in its folds before gesturing towards Alixa's shoe with it. "If you will permit me, my lady?" He used the rag to gently wipe the bottom of her shoe with a grin. "Maman will hardly thank me if I let you return to the Queen's Tower with a flattened spider stuck to your shoe to grind into her fine Torenthi carpet."

He sprang to his feet, offering Alixa a hand to assist her in rising, then turning to assist Elisa and Richeldis. The grin grew even wider as he reconsidered and stepped back. "No, I don't think so. You two can manage on your own." He swiftly exited the conservatory before his pestersome sisters could dream up more novel ways to mortify him.

[DerynifanK]

What a delightful story. I love the banter among the siblings and the kitten's name. It's a shame Alixa never had a similar experience with her siblings. Uthyr and Soraya obviously gave their children a mostly happy childhood.

[revanne]

I'm glad that the young princesses are so kind to Alixa. In some ways she reminds me of the little kitten, peering around her nervously wondering which way any safety lies. The glimpse we are given of her childhood suggested that she was not so much sheltered as incarcerated. Rémy sounds truly horrific and the sort of person who gets Deryni a bad name.

I love this story for the informal glimpse it gives into the lives of the younger generation of Haldanes and their easy relationship with each other suggests that Soraya was a much more relaxed mother than the understandably stressed-out version we are seeing in the main story. Though I suspect that Camber would have preferred a little more restraint from his sisters.

[revanne]

As a point of interest I wonder whether a) a demon would claim sanctuary and b) whether it is permissible to grant such to a demon.

[JudithR]

Lovely story.  Many thanks

[Evie]

What a delightful story. I love the banter among the siblings and the kitten's name. It's a shame Alixa never had a similar experience with her siblings. Uthyr and Soraya obviously gave their children a mostly happy childhood.

Yes, the kids had a mostly happy and secure childhood. Cinhil's illness didn't really become apparent until his late teen years, and even after Colin and Melisande started their relationship, Colin was still mostly at Rhemuth in the first year or two before the mean gossip became too much for Mellie and he moved his little family ten miles away to the lodge. Before all that, though, they were a pretty close family and very welcoming of Alixa into their fold. Mom and Dad could be pretty strict and had very high standards for them, as might be imagined of any parents having to raise kids in the public spotlight and expecting them to be on their best behavior, but the kids grew up knowing they were loved even if they sometimes pushed the boundaries a bit, being normal kids wanting to see what they could get away with.

I also have a spin-off story about Alixa's first two months in Rhemuth that I will either post much later between chapters of the main story or maybe right after the main story ends, because that one is a little longer than a short story (five chapters, I think?), so I'm trying to figure out the best way to fit it in.

I'm glad that the young princesses are so kind to Alixa. In some ways she reminds me of the little kitten, peering around her nervously wondering which way any safety lies. The glimpse we are given of her childhood suggested that she was not so much sheltered as incarcerated. Rémy sounds truly horrific and the sort of person who gets Deryni a bad name.

I love this story for the informal glimpse it gives into the lives of the younger generation of Haldanes and their easy relationship with each other suggests that Soraya was a much more relaxed mother than the understandably stressed-out version we are seeing in the main story. Though I suspect that Camber would have preferred a little more restraint from his sisters.

I'm glad you mentioned that about Alixa, because I definitely had her in mind as well as the kitten when I chose that title. I suspect as the middle child, Camber gets a fair bit of teasing from both ends of the family spectrum and has learned to take it in stride. I think in the next chapter of the main story is where we see a scene of his older siblings pranking him. If it's not in that chapter, it's coming up soon. I'm certain he has also learned to give back as much as he gets. 😄

I thought this might be a good time in the main story to catch a glimpse of Alixa when she's a lot less stressed and anxious than we've seen her more recently in the early aftermath of Uthyr's death and her suddenly trying to learn how to be Queen unexpectedly early while also trying to care for a dying husband. But between her arrival from Joux as a timid young bride scared to death and not knowing anything about her new husband and family, up until now, she has had several years of relative normalcy despite Cinhil's worsening condition. He was a fair bit healthier when she first married him, able to get around without assistance, and she had more time to be fairly carefree and learn the many things that had been denied to her in Joux, including what a loving family looks like. So I wanted to show her under more normal circumstances rather than give the impression she has spent the entire seven years of her married life feeling stressed, uncertain and insecure, although of course suddenly being thrust into the spotlight as Gwynedd's new Queen is bringing some of those old insecurities back up for her at the moment.

As a point of interest I wonder whether a) a demon would claim sanctuary and b) whether it is permissible to grant such to a demon.

The usual rules are suspended if the demon happens to be kitten-shaped. So saith Camber.

Lovely story.  Many thanks

Many thanks for reading!

[DerynifanK]

Do we have any idea what sort of illness is killing Cinhil? Is there truly nothing that can be done for him? Do very sad.

[Evie]

Do we have any idea what sort of illness is killing Cinhil? Is there truly nothing that can be done for him? Do very sad.

I envision it being something like congestive heart failure, though I hesitate to pin an exact diagnosis on it in case the symptoms and progression of the disease aren't strictly 100% accurate in the story to what they would be in real life. However, congestive heart failure was treated with a remedy containing foxglove in the Middle Ages, just as Cinhil's illness is being treated, and the modern form of that medicine (digitalis) is still in use today. Even in the more primitive form used back then, it was known to be an effective treatment that could buy the patient a few extra years but wasn't a cure. Any differences in how the disease presents in modern patients and how it presents in Cinhil could just be chalked up to him being Deryni and in a Deryni Healer's care. 

[JudithR]

I'd imagined it something congenital which didn't get really bad until a growth spurt.  A friend of my brother's had open-heart surgery at 19 because of a hole in the heart which hadn't affected him until he started growing a lot in his late teens.  He wasn't a "blue baby". 

[Evie]

I'd imagined it something congenital which didn't get really bad until a growth spurt.  A friend of my brother's had open-heart surgery at 19 because of a hole in the heart which hadn't affected him until he started growing a lot in his late teens.  He wasn't a "blue baby". 

I had considered something similar, but if it was some physical defect that a modern surgeon could fix surgically, then a Healer might have been able to detect it early and magically stimulate the heart muscle tissue around the hole to close back up. And some important future events in the story would be greatly impacted if he has a sudden magical cure.

But I promise, he will have a chance to have his heroic moment in the plotline despite everything. 🥰 (Confession time here...by the end of writing this story, I was more than just a little bit in love with Cinhil Haldane. See, they don't always have to be wearing a cassock for me to lose my heart to them!  )

[DerynifanK]

I'm investing in Kleenex or another tissue maker as I feel I am going to need a Lot of Tissues before this is over.

[Evie]

I'm investing in Kleenex or another tissue maker as I feel I am going to need a Lot of Tissues before this is over.

That's probably a good idea. I think I cried more over certain scenes in "Pawns and Queens" than over anything else I've ever written, so hopefully that's not just me. 😅

[revanne]

That's probably a good idea. I think I cried more over certain scenes in "Pawns and Queens" than over anything else I've ever written, so hopefully that's not just me. 😅

Nope! As one of your beta readers you definitely gave my emotions a work out and I don't think I am giving away any spoilers to say there are plenty of tears to come.

( But you didn't blow up Rhemuth Castle so who am I to complain.)

[Evie]

That's probably a good idea. I think I cried more over certain scenes in "Pawns and Queens" than over anything else I've ever written, so hopefully that's not just me. 😅

Nope! As one of your beta readers you definitely gave my emotions a work out and I don't think I am giving away any spoilers to say there are plenty of tears to come.

( But you didn't blow up Rhemuth Castle so who am I to complain.)

Now, that's not fair! I left a lot of the castle standing! And what's left is going to be restored to its appearance in the days of Kelson the Great, so are we really complaining about that? Sure, there might have been just a little bit of collateral damage.... 😅

[revanne]

Sure. Regicide is only collateral damage. What's a royal family or two less. :-)