RedHairedandFriendly
Too much red on Red?
- Joined
- Apr 20, 2005
- Posts
- 112,724
A Royal Sacrifice
RedHairedandFriendly and cgraven
~ A Closed Tale ~
RedHairedandFriendly and cgraven
~ A Closed Tale ~
Evette Adair the Fourth Queen of Vix, eyes glazed over, though no one in the Queen’s Bedchamber noticed. Everyone was focused on the wee babe that had sprung from her loins just seconds ago. When the silence of the room was broken by the squall of the newborn babe, it was only then that the Queen’s most trusted Lady’s Maid and friend turned to smile at the new mother. The words of congratulations never left the young woman’s lips, but a wail of deep sorrow did.
The physician gave the babe to another and rushed to the nineteen-year-old beauty’s side. He hung his head in sorrow, though he knew that if she’d not died birthing the child than she would have died in the garrison. Her child had been a girl and that was not what the King wanted.
The babe was wrapped in a thick blanket, which Evette wove and taken to the King. “Your daughter,” the woman said.
King Richard stared down on the Princess and scowled. He gave her a name, but nothing else; even that he felt was more than she deserved. Evelyn was then place in the care of one of the wet nurses in the village. She was forgotten by her father and he married another and then another. No sons were born and when the King finally was laid to rest, young Evelyn was eighteen and had been raised as a servant.
She had never been treated like the royal she was; when Cedric ran into the woods calling for Eve, it was no surprise that the young woman that greeting him, looked like a simpleton. Her face was covered in dirt and her clothes tattered and torn. A basket was held firmly in one hand and in it rested several large mushrooms. Those mushrooms were tumbling from the basket to land on the forest floor.
“Cedric. You oaf, ” Evelyn of Vix shouted as she bent down to pick up the mushrooms.
“Sorry Eve, but you are wanted at the castle,” Cedric told her. He helped pick up mushrooms and then began picking twigs and leaves out of her long chestnut curls. “The Chancellor calls for you.”
“For me? Whatever for?” she asked. Evelyn knew who she was, but she’d never been acknowledged by anyone from the royal palace. In fact, even the villagers treated her like a wench, though they never touched her in an unwelcomed manner, something Evelyn was both thankful and disappointed with.
“The King . . . your father has passed,” Cedric told her. His blue eyes studied her hazel and he waited for the reality of the situation to set in.
Evelyn stared at her friend and companion to many troubles. Her eyes filled with unshed tears and she fell to the forest floor as the moment she’d been dreading for years suddenly washed over her. She had one thought in her head and that was to flee, but she knew she couldn’t. She’d been watched for years, even though she wasn’t treated like the heir to a Kingdom she was protected like she was. Even now there were archers in the trees, they never spoke to her, but on rare occasions they would make their presence known to her, usually when she was out setting traps for the foods her foster family needed for the winter.
“I was told to fetch you Evie and you know I have to take you back,” Cedric told her. He bent down and pulled her into his arms, helped her up and together they returned to the castle.
Once there, she insisted on delivering the fungus she’d gathered to the cook before presenting herself to the Chancellor.
“Aren’t you going to wash?” Cedric asked. The look she gave him told him that she would not. He knew why, she’d been caste aside and she would go to them the way they had deemed her worthy . . . as nothing.
Evelyn Adair took a deep breath and followed Cedric to the throne room where the Chancellor and the Bishop waited. Within fifteen minutes the wench was crowned Queen of Vix and wore a crown of jewels that would have fed everyone in her village for the next four hundred years.