Few Die Well That Die in Battle
“Your Majesty, ’tis excellent news!”
“Excellent?! Thousands of dead in the fields behind us and you pronounce that excellent?”
“Majesty, we come away victorious. Surely, you rejoice.”
Victorious. She wanted to spit the word back, to scream, scoff, curse this damned war! Curse her advisors whom she wanted to blame though she knew the blame lay squarely with her.
Instead she breathed in deeply.
“Leave me Exeter. I shall join you all shortly.”
She watched him leave, eyes burning with unshed tears, and sank to her knees in the dirt to pray, but words eluded her. The nightjars’ out-of-tune warbling sounded like the moans of dying men, the wind a whisper that accused her. Once more unto the breach dear friends, she muttered. And I led them to their deaths.
“Strange place to celebrate.”
The voice had her spinning to standing in one smooth move, the tip of her sword at the man’s throat before his next breath. Foolish, foolish queen alone in the forest at night.
“I mean you no harm, Majesty.” The Frenchman raised his hands in a placating gesture.
“You know me?”
“’Tis not so difficult to recognize the victorious redheaded English queen.”
That word again.
“Victorious.” Her voice broke. “I carried a dead child off the battlefield today,” she continued tonelessly. “The weight of his unlived life is forever on my shoulders. Of all these lives.”
She lowered her sword, and sat on the ground, somehow certain the stranger wouldn’t harm her. Or perhaps she didn’t care right now. He sat gracefully beside her.
“Tomorrow, I marry the likely hideous French prince to unite our nations and celebrate this victory.” Exhaustion and darkness made her careless with her words.
“Maybe the prince can help you carry the weight. And maybe, he’s not entirely hideous.”
She laughed bitterly. “I think it’s custom to pawn off your useless and hideous princes in these circumstances.”
“Nice customs curtsy to great rulers, Queen Ginevra.” His eyes twinkled at her in the darkness.
He rose to leave. She hesitated, then called after him, “Your name, stranger?”
“The hideous Prince Blaise at your service, Majesty.” His smile was warm. “I shall see you for our wedding on the morrow.”
Once more unto the breach, she repeated to herself, but this time, for a moment, she felt something like a flicker of hope lifting just a little weight off her shoulders.