Chapter Text
Liege
A Romance Between Sir Jannik Sinner & His Highness Don Carlos Alcaraz Garfia, Prince of Murcia, Heir to the Crown of Spain
Chapter Sixteen: Los esponsales
It rained on the day of the betrothal ceremony.
Which -- everyone agreed, and the chronicler had put down later -- was a great blessing.
Carlos rode out before matins. He told no one, going down to the stables to tack up Lolo himself: pad, then saddle, then girth, then bridle. Mud sticking to his boots, damp seeping into his gloves. Cloak heavy with the drizzle.
The summer rain did not usually bring about cold weather, but the snap of the hills of Granada, where he lived as a child, came down to visit on this particular day -- as if to remind him of those mornings.
The rain made the chalk path slippery, and Lolo trudged. The patience of his bay suited Carlos’ sensibilities this morning.
There was no haste. Perhaps he could go for an hour or two before he needed to head back and do his final confession before the betrothal.
Perhaps he could wake Jannik and abscond with his knight to el Puerto de Mazarrón before daylight. Perhaps they could be on a ship to the edge of the world and fall into the cosmos, become two stars, twinkling and eternal.
Perhaps the rain would continue, and the clouds would not part, and there would be no daylight between matins and compline, and Carlos could forever ride in the cover of darkness.
Lolo knew to avoid the spots where the limestone had gone treacherous; she had better judgment than her master. Carlos steered her to the lookout and paused just there, at the place where he had last fought with Holger.
He wiped his face and thought about Jannik.
It had been a sad day when Sir Johann left the court. He had been a good knight, one of the many stand-in fathers the prince had been surrounded by in his youth. But he was not as strong as he used to be, and the king’s plans were in motion to begin the following year, so it was judged as good a time as any to temper the next Sinner blade.
Up ‘til this day, Jannik and Carlos didn’t cross paths much except for the occasional spar in the yard and the saints’ feasts where Jannik was obligated to greet the royal family.
Besides those times, Jannik was busy with squire duties and preparation for knighthood. Carlos was occupied with the affairs of being a crown prince. Still, it was hard to miss the copper burnish that would sometimes appear in the corners of Carlos’ vision. The flash of a red kestrel wing in the woods. He was trained to turn his head and mark it for the chase.
Then, when Jannik was seventeen and Carlos fifteen, the year before the Aragonese campaign, Jannik knelt, laid his right hand on the Cross of Caravaca, and swore fidelity to the prince.
Carlos noted that Jannik’s voice remained steady and his eyes did not waver, but it was an otherwise unremarkable day.
In fact, the whole of their relationship was nothing significant at all for many months. Sir Jannik was diligent in his duty, but was a quiet fellow whose exchanges with the prince mostly consisted of stiff bows and ready agreement.
For his part, Carlos spent most of his days preparing for the Aragonese campaign, under the keen tutelage of Novak, learning the sword under Samu, and by the feet of his father in the estudio learning the portolan inside out until he could recite the whole of the conquering of Spain should the tragic end of el rey Don Carlos Alcaraz González come about earlier than expected.
And then, one day, Carlos was summoned to Riaño to hunt down a bear that had been killing livestock.
He had taken Sir Jannik, who, at the remarkable age of eighteen, was already showing his prowess with the blade. The successor to Captain Novak, everyone in court whispered. El lobo rojo.
Which Carlos thought amusing as the knight reminded him more of an aloof cat than any wolf.
Still, the young man’s talent was unmistakable, and Holger, whom Carlos normally would have taken for the little adventure, had been summoned by his father Count Nødskov to the Aguilar de Campoo for matters of the estate.
So Sir Jannik it was.
They took three weeks to track the beast.
Friendships between men were made in these times. Unremarkable conversations over crackling campfires, the hare fat soaking into bread and into intestines, ale making their tongues thick as they drawled about swordfighting.
"Samu is too much a traditionalist," Carlos complained. He tore the bread, dragged it through the hare grease, and stuffed it into his mouth. Jannik was watching the way his teeth bit into the white softness even then.
Carlos noticed it, and swallowed up the watching.
"I tell him the whole world is not the yard at Almenara. There is a man in Seville who has put the art of the sword into a book. Every guard. Every cut.”
Jannik turned back to the fire. "A book doesn’t bleed, Your Highness.”
“If you put it in your breastplate and you were stabbed there, it would prevent you from bleeding.”
Jannik could not help but laugh. Carlos thought he liked the sound of it.
He ate a piece of hare, then sucked the grease off his fingers.
Jannik stopped laughing.
“De la Torre, the Sevillano,” Carlos continued. “He fights with the cloak wrapped on the arm. And with two swords, one in each hand. Imagine Samu with two swords."
Jannik scoffed. “Ridiculous. Why two, when he could beat you with one?”
“He would.” Carlos conceded it without grief and lay back on his elbows on the mossy forest floor. “Anyway, other nations have their uses. The Italians. The Germans --”
He stopped. Something had occurred to him.
“I have heard you speak German,” he said to Jannik. “You learned at home?”
Jannik fed a stick to the fire. “Yes. My great-grandfather passed it down. And my mother, she is also from Bolzano.” He hesitated, then said, “And the way of the sword. This too, is passed down in the Sinner family.”
Carlos sat up, eyes wide. “Show me.”
Jannik did not move right away. The fire had gone down to a red heart, and the cold pressed in at their backs.
Then he stood. He found a branch at the edge of the light -- straight and the right width -- and stripped the twigs from it with two passes of his knife.
“There are five strikes,” he said. “My father made me learn them by their names in German.”
“Five.” Carlos did not get up. He lay back on his elbows and looked up at the knight standing over him in the firelight, and found he did not mind looking up, which was a thing he minded almost always.
“The first is the Zornhau.” Jannik brought the branch down from above his shoulder, slow, so Carlos could follow the line of it -- a long diagonal, ear to the far hip. “The wrath-cut. Simplest and strongest. A furious man throws it without being taught. The art is using it when you are not furious.”
“Zornhau.” Carlos butchered the word.
Jannik’s shoulders shook with laughter. “No, Your Highness.”
Carlos repeated it, still off.
“No. The front of the mouth.” Jannik said it again, and the word sat easy in him the way Castilian never quite did. “Zornhau.”
Carlos said it a third time and got near enough that Jannik did not correct him, which Carlos felt a small triumph over.
“Sir Johann is truly a master of the blade. I regret not asking him to instruct me when he was my knight.”
Jannik tossed the stick to him, and Carlos caught it.
“Get up then, Your Highness. I am not my father, but I can show you a few things.”
Carlos leapt to his feet and dusted the dirt off his zamarra. “It is my privilege, Sir Jannik.”
The prince copied the strike -- the ear to the hip.
Jannik nodded, approving. He cut himself a second branch and faced the prince.
“Again,” he said. Carlos threw it again -- lower, faster, and Jannik turned it aside with a flick. He stepped inside, and laid the end of his branch against Carlos' throat.
"Dead," Jannik said.
Carlos laughed. “Show me another.”
Jannik reset his stance and lifted the branch across his body, low on the left. "The Krumphau. The crooked cut. You do not meet his strength -- you break its line."
He sent the branch out sideways and down in a short arc, and Carlos watched the strange geometry of it.
“It is how you ruin a wrath-cut,” Jannik explained. “Here -- let me show you, Sire. Come at me.”
Carlos went again with the Zornhau, lifting the branch behind his shoulder, his weight forward on the right leg. He brought it down hard -- ear to hip, just as he had been shown.
The cut never arrived. Jannik's branch had gone out crosswise to meet it, low and early, and it was not Carlos' stick it struck, but his hand. Wood cracked over his knuckles.
The wrath-cut died in his fist half-thrown, and Carlos hissed and near dropped the stick.
"There," Jannik said, unbothered. "I did not answer your fury. I went under it, to the hands. That is the crooked cut."
He lowered the branch. "An angry man leads with fire, so one must put it out quickly at the source.”
Carlos shook out his stinging hand. Then he grinned, reset his feet, and said, "Again."
The rain put out the fire now.
Carlos felt his lungs fill with smoke. Lolo shifted underneath him and whinnied. It was time to go.
So Carlos went back.
Back to his soon-to-be crown and throne.
Back to his princess.
Back to his knight.
Who was waiting at the east gate to greet him, wearing a heavy hooded wool cloak and greased boots.
“Sir Sinner,” Carlos said at the sight of him. “I did not know this was your post this morning.”
Jannik took Lolo’s lead and guided her through the gate. “My post is where you are.”
Carlos sat up straight and surveyed the path ahead. He let Jannik pull Lolo forward, and saw how the soil had turned to mud. The cisterns would be filled, the people would not go thirsty, the orange groves would drink.
The rain was a good thing.
“Where did you go, Your Highness?” Jannik asked as they went towards the stable yard.
“Just to the lookout yonder,” Carlos said. “I was thinking perhaps I could run away with you to el Puerto de Mazarrón.”
“A Sinner does not flee,” Jannik said simply.
They were silent the rest of the way.
There was the shuffle of removing tack and Lolo’s snorts and huffs, but otherwise, the prince and his knight did not exchange a single word as they returned Lolo to her stall.
They were silent -- well, nearly -- as they went into the empty stall, the one before, where they were almost caught. They barred the door, and the only sound was a light thump when Jannik pinned the prince against the wooden slats, and laid a kiss against his damp throat.
There were the gentlest sounds of skin and lips, hands rough against wet cloth, but otherwise the two said nothing.
They kissed. And touched. And the steady beat of the rain on the roof dampened the sound of their quickening breaths.
Carlos said nothing when he pushed past Jannik’s coat, past his tabard, past his linen shirt, and pressed a chilly palm on Jannik’s hot belly.
Jannik kept silent even at the startling coldness of it. His prince was usually warm, but the rain had put out Carlos’ fire.
There was a slick of tongues, beseeching, then frenzied, then miserable.
Carlos slid his hand into Jannik’s hose, began to stroke Jannik into hardness. His hand was trapped in the cloth, and he could not see Jannik’s flesh.
Carlos bit the irritation into the side of Jannik’s neck.
Jannik closed his eyes and said nothing.
He braced himself on Carlos’ shoulders, and knocked their foreheads together. He breathed in Carlos’ air, breathed it back out again.
Carlos felt his hand thaw as he pleasured Jannik. The wiry hair against the curve of his little finger every time his hand went down the whole length of Jannik’s prick. The drag of skin, the way he had learned to tug -- just so -- over the head, and then slow again, his thumb becoming sticky.
He breathed in Jannik’s air, breathed it back out again.
And it was in this silent space between one breath and another that Don Carlos, Prince of Murcia and heir to the throne of Spain, felt the last of his wit and wisdom leave him.
He began to weep.
Molina found Carlos in his room, where the servants were dressing him with the utmost care for the day’s proceedings. A page held a silver plate to show the prince his reflection.
If the chamberlain noticed the pink-edged swollenness of the prince’s eyes, he made no comment.
Instead, Molina watched as Carlos was layered in silk and brocade. The undershirt, shown tastefully as fashion dictated, the hose joined to it with lace, then the jubón, then around his waist the espada ropera gilded gold and silver, and lastly, the velvet overgown of kermes crimson, the color a result of extinguishing hundreds of thousands of the scale insects that plagued their oaks.
Carlos ran his thumb across the gown. It came away clean.
“Albert,” he said as he looked at his thumb. “You are married, are you not?”
A maid held up a pillow upon which the chain of estate lay. Molina inspected the gold, ripe seed grown from the earth herself. The land where Carlos will be sovereign.
“Yes, Your Highness,” he answered.
“And two children,” Carlos continued. “In Yecla.”
Molina nodded to the maid, who returned to Carlos. She carefully lifted up the chain and unclasped it.
“Your Highness is kind to remember,” Molina said. The maid stretched up to place the chain around Carlos’ neck. He smiled at her, then knelt.
Molina watched the maid -- merely a young girl of fifteen -- step back with flushed cheeks. The other two servants helping glanced at each other sideways and smiled.
“Your Highness,” the maid mumbled. “I -- there is no need for --”
“Paola,” Carlos said. “We must dignify this collar with proper reverence. I kneel before the one who will place it upon me.”
He tilted his head up and spoke as the goatherd’s son.
“You must not shy away from your duty,” he said. “When your prince offers his neck, bind it.”
Paola looked down at the chain in her hands. She was a strong girl, muscled from the backbreaking work the palace demanded. The gold she held was heavy, but now she recognized she could lift it with ease.
She stepped forward and laid the chain down, reverent, as her prince had bade.
Carlos whispered, “Thank you.” He kept his eyes on the floor for a brief moment, feeling the weight of his name.
A verse of scripture came to Molina’s mind just then.
If thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done.
“Your Highness,” he said. “I have sacrificed much to be here. My son and daughter grow old without me. My name day falls on the Feast of Santiago and I often celebrate it alone. This is the yoke of my position.”
Molina went to the prince and placed a hand on his shoulder. “But for the sake of my children I bear it.”
Carlos opened his eyes.
He rose.
He let Paola make her last adjustment to the collar, the settling of the gold flat against the brocade, and he thanked her again. Then he turned, and the boy who had knelt on the floor was gone, and the prince stood in his place.
“I commend you, Señor Molina, for your zeal. It is a difficult thing to serve the crown. I could never understand such a burden as I have no wife. No children. There is no need for me to choose between my position or my heart.”
His tone was pleasant.
Carlos adjusted his cuff and the sunrise through the window caught the gold around him.
“Perhaps, it would be good,” he pondered. “For you to return home. We could employ an unmarried chamberlain. And you, without your yoke, happy and free.”
“Your Highness, I did not mean --”
“How fortunate for you that is a position you can refuse,” Carlos said. “A letter of resignation would do.”
Then, he waved a hand. “You have been remiss this morning, Señor. I see you are without my coronet.”
“Sire,” Molina replied. “If you would give me a moment, I will fetch it now.”
“You have all the time in the world,” Carlos said. “If you so choose.”
Molina bowed. He should have known the prince was every bit his mother’s son. He went to fetch the coronet.
Despite his overgown, Carlos felt the chapel chill seep through.
Rain came down on the clay tiles of the roof, a steady thock-thock that was almost peaceful.
Carlos knelt on the stone. The kermes crimson pooled around him, blood spilled. The gold chain swung with the bowing of his head.
The coronet did not budge.
It had been laid on his head by a contrite Molina, affixed with pins to the velvet cap underneath. It was made to fit him and him alone.
Padre Simone sat beside him on his stool, hands folded into his sleeves, eyes forward.
They went through the form. The Latin of the Psalm, Miserere mei, Deus, secundum magnam misericordiam tuam, which Carlos used to mangle when he was young and his tongue unsure.
These days he asked for mercy without stumbling.
“Padre,” Carlos said. “I have committed the great sin of loving a man.”
Padre Simone said nothing.
“Although one of Christ’s ordinances before his ascension was to love, as the Father loves us. So how could it be a sin? That I love him so.”
The padre sighed. “Your love is not a sin, figliolo.”
“Padre, I am nothing but a lowly goatherd’s son. How could I think to marry a princess?”
Padre Simone smiled. “Christ was merely a carpenter’s son.”
“Are we not all equal in the eyes of God? Why doth it matter if I marry him or her? Their blood runneth the same crimson.”
“Figliolo, I will remind you of Peter’s exhortation. ‘Submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake: whether it be to the king, as supreme.’ You, above all, are bound to the laws of man while you wear the crown. But --”
The padre shifted in his seat and gazed at Carlos thoughtfully.
“Luke in his Gospel reminds us, ‘Render therefore unto Caesar the things which be Caesar's, and unto God the things which be God's.’”
He took his hand out of his sleeve and tapped his knee.
“There are things the flesh asketh of us, and there are things the Lord requireth. He hath given us the wisdom and liberty to discern what we will surrender to the king of earth and what we will give the king of heaven.”
Carlos met his stare.
“The law you disobey is written by men,” Padre Simone said. “Men such as yourself, conferring in rooms and deciding the fate of nations.”
Carlos gritted his teeth. “I had no hand in the matter.”
“No, but you will. If you are wise enough to become king.”
Carlos blinked. His mouth parted in a half-answer, but the padre added, “Or you could die a martyr. As Saint Stephen did.”
Carlos shut his mouth. Stephen, who preached of Christ in the synagogue, and was stoned to death by those who could not accept his testimony. And as he was killed, Stephen stood true in his faith and pled to God, “Lord, lay not this sin to their charge.”
“I would die,” Carlos burst out. “Padre, if it were only my life on the altar, I would gladly lay my head.”
The padre chuckled. “Figliolo, your knight has as much freedom to choose as thou dost. Although you are the prince and the heir to the kingdom, you only carry your own soul in your hands.”
“Three days ago, I killed a man. A traitor to the crown. But I myself betray it.”
Padre Simone nodded with understanding.
“The man disobeyed the laws of the land and was punished accordingly. Perhaps the same will happen to thee, Your Highness. But it is not my place to mete out judgment. Only to hear your confession.”
Padre Simone laid a hand on Carlos’ shoulder, the opposite of where Molina had put his comfort earlier.
“Go in peace, figliolo. Let your heart be free of burden this day.”
He squeezed, the gown and the linen wrinkling in his hand.
“And if it is not,” the padre continued, “I exhort you to get on your knees and pray. Absolvo te.”
The Latin came down on him with the rain, and Carlos crossed himself, and rose. His knees ached from the stone, and he noticed a faint dinginess on his hose.
Fair enough, for an impure prince.
“Thank you, Padre,” he said. “May his will be done.”
Carlos went out.
It was not yet time to go to the great hall, so he went down the wet colonnade, took the stair into the vault, where the air was dry and still, where the ghost of civet and rosewater still hung.
He sat by his grandmother’s tomb and laid his hand flat on the stone.
Then, Carlos bowed his head and prayed.
An hour before the ceremony, Carlos bade Sir Jannik Sinner to meet him at the sala del oso.
Jannik went without hesitation, the saltwater from Carlos’ eyes still clinging to his neck. They had dried and left a white film, like the spend in his hose that Carlos had coaxed out of him.
On a day when they were to have nothing to do with each other, the prince had already marked him twice.
He had rinsed all traces of Carlos away in his little washbasin, patted Nieve twice on the head, then dressed himself.
The linen camisa, the calzas, the tabard, the sword.
The gleam of steel at the collar -- just the light harness for the day.
It was only to be a battle, not a war.
He left his head bare.
Before he entered the sala, he looked down at himself and resolved not to let Carlos stain his livery.
He did not have a chance to knock.
The door opened and the prince was there. “I heard your footsteps. Come in.”
Jannik went in and tried not to think about how Carlos knew him by his walk. He took a few steps into the room and looked at the teeth of the oso. He remembered the prince riding him, and felt the prickle of fur on his back.
Carlos shut the door behind them and barred it.
They looked at each other.
It all suited him, Jannik thought. The coronet, and the chain, and the crimson overgown, and the ornate handle of the espada, and the Cordobán zapatos. A proper prince.
“Your Highness,” Jannik said. “You called for me?”
Carlos fell to his knees and reached for Jannik.
Jannik stumbled forward and grasped Carlos’ hands. “Sire --”
“I have prayed to God and asked for his guidance,” Carlos said. “I do not know if it is his voice or mine or the devil’s, but I have resolved to choose thee.”
Jannik’s throat tightened at the sight of his prince, clear-eyed and entreating. Carlos’ words surged within him.
“I love thee, Sir Jannik Sinner. As a man loves a woman.”
Jannik shook his head, fought the urge to shove the prince over.
“And if thou sayest it, I would give up my crown, my name, my life -- if thou choosest me --”
“Carlos,” Jannik interrupted. He let the prince’s hands go. “I did not take you for a coward.”
Carlos’ hands fell limply to his sides. His eyes began to fog.
Jannik took a deep breath and put his hand on the pommel of his sword.
“I have indeed chosen thee,” he declared. “Before God himself. Thou art the crown prince and I am thy knight, and were I truly to love thee, I would remain by thy side as such. Thou art not destined for the fire.”
Jannik spoke, soft and sweet and tender. “Thou art destined to rule this land, my liege.”
Carlos’ hand came up and gripped his chain. He looked at Jannik with a final plea.
“And dost thou truly love me?”
Jannik sank to his knees and faced Carlos. He put both hands on Carlos’ shoulders.
“It is the only true thing.”
Then, he lifted his hands to cradle Carlos’ face, and pulled him forward. Jannik kissed him on one cheek, then the other.
“Carlos,” he whispered. “You must bear it, as you have borne everything else.”
Carlos shut his eyes. His coronet did not budge. He was still gripping the chain of estate.
“But I will bear it with you,” Jannik said. “Do you understand, Sire? I will carry the weight, as a steed for his master. And the two of us must journey on the path ordained for you.”
Carlos opened his eyes. Jannik felt the point of Carlos’ sword from all those weeks ago, when the prince had made him yield.
“Mamá says I cannot take a road and not know where it ends,” he said. “I will take the sure path as to keep your vow intact. Sir Sinner, you may rise. Leave this room as you came. A knight of honor.”
Jannik looked at the glimmer of gold and green of Carlos’ eyes, the hard black in their center. His jaw was set, his shoulders straight.
Before he stood, Jannik hesitated.
But he remembered his prince’s admonishment from all those weeks ago.
Do not hesitate.
He stood.
“I will see you at the hall, Your Highness.”
Jannik gave Carlos one last glance and saw red. He blinked away the defiance.
“You are beautiful in all your finery,” Jannik said. Then he glanced at the bear’s glass eyes. “But -- I prefer you in hunting clothes, grimy from days of tracking down a beast, and wielding a branch as a sword.”
He bowed, then left without looking back.
They had hung the great hall with every tapestry the house owned, gold thread and silk, the conquests of dead kings looming over the living.
The storm had taken all daylight, so they lit the hall with hundreds of flickering candles in silver candlesticks, the standing candelabra on the dais. The slow drip of wax marking time. The great candle-wheel hanging from the ceiling a crown of flames in its center.
Under the canopy of crimson damask sat the queen in her throne. Beside her, the king's chair stood empty. His blessing had come by courier and lay sealed on the cushion of his seat to be read aloud.
At the center of the estrado, the Bishop of Cartagena waited in white and gold, Padre Simone at his elbow.
The court filled the hall to the walls. The ambassadors sweated in their furs. At a table to the side, the notary waited with the capitulaciones spread before him.
Carlos stood on the estrado and looked over the guests. They looked back, glad and expectant.
Viscount Draper waited alongside Carlos, authorized by the King of Buda to stand in his place.
His knights held their posts. Pablo and Matteo at the great doors. Rafa at the east wall, trying not to fidget. Holger at the west door. Novak by the prince’s shoulder, watching the hall with keen eyes.
Jannik stood at the foot of the dais, the same crimson Carlos wore across his chest.
Behind the queen's shoulder, the captain of her guard stood. Carlos caught his eye.
The queen’s captain was a man of great skill and loyalty, credited with countless victories in battle.
Sir Rafael Nadal of Mallorca.
El Toro.
When Carlos was eleven, Doña Virginia had charged him to shadow the captain for six months on the training yard. Carlos learned the way of Sir Nadal’s blade. Zurdo, heavy and bruising, an endless tenacity to counter every parry.
With Sir Nadal’s help, Carlos mastered his left hand and learned how to balance the two tenets of a knight -- cortesía and fiereza.
Sir Nadal looked at him now, kindness and ferocity all at once.
Lightning flashed white in the high windows.
Then the thunder cracked. The glass rattled. The candles shivered.
Half the hall crossed themselves, and a murmur ran along the walls.
God was filling the cisterns for the marriage. There was no louder blessing than the boon from the heavens. This was to be a fruitful union.
Sir Nadal's eyes went from the prince to the windows, then back to their watch. Carlos resolved to speak with him later.
The doors opened, and Emma came up the hall.
Like Carlos, she came in crimson and gold. The verdugado swung her skirts in a great bell, and her sleeves hung open to show the blackwork beneath. Her thick, chestnut hair came down in waves, as befitted a maiden. At her throat, the collar of rubies that had come south with the treaty.
She was beautiful.
Her ladies followed in the colors of Buda, deep blue and gold, and her confessor behind them.
Emma knelt to the queen, rose, and took her place at Carlos' left hand.
Carlos smiled at her with affection; it was pleasing to have such a perfect bride. The whole of it arranged without flaws.
The hall was dark enough to hide the stain on his knees.
The bishop began in Latin. The hall knelt and got up again. The rain drummed on.
Then the king's letter was broken open and read. It was brief, and it was warm, and in the undercurrent of his enthusiastic blessing was the directive that only Carlos could hear.
I regret my absence from the betrothal ceremony. God willing, the end of the war will come before the wedding so that I may be there to share in your joy. Let this letter be my blessing and prayer over the prince and his princess.
I entrust the guardianship of the palace and the kingdom to your wise and capable hands. The steel of Buda and the fire of Castile shall come together to forge a blade stronger than any of our enemies. Let the grace of God lead you to victory.
With triumph,
Yo el Rey
A murmur of approval spread through the hall. Doña Virginia gave a wry smile.
Carlos and Emma would both obey -- as they have done since birth and as they’ll do ‘til death.
The bishop turned to Carlos.
"Don Carlos," he said. "Do you promise, before God and this company, that you will take the Princess Emma to be your wife, when Holy Church shall call you to it -- that you will honor her, and keep faith with her, and cleave to her all the days of your life?"
The hall went still. Carlos’ eyes went to Jannik, who looked back.
Just the briefest flicker. The snap of a candle you think might go out.
Carlos turned to Emma and gave her the flame in his gaze.
"I promise it," Carlos said.
Then the bishop turned to the princess.
"Doña Emma," he said. "Do you promise, before God and this company, that you will take Don Carlos to be your husband, when Holy Church shall call you to it -- that you will honor him, and keep faith with him, and cleave to him all the days of your life?"
Emma’s eyes flitted to Jannik. So quick that only Carlos could have possibly seen it.
She looked back at Carlos and smiled, kind and cruel, and with the same affection he gave her.
"I promise it," she said, in her clear Castilian.
The bishop joined their right hands. Her fingers were cold. Carlos felt the urge to ride into the forest and kill a marten to make her the finest gloves.
The ring went on easily, made to fit her and her alone.
The notary wrote.
The hall roared its joy, and the bells began. The patter of the rain died. Carlos reached up and put his palm against Emma’s cheek.
“Eres perfecta,” he told her.
Emma put her own hand up to cover his.
“Me bastas,” she replied.
Amidst the bustle, Carlos saw Jannik Sinner, his knight of seven years who had vowed to journey with him to the end of this road, turn his head and stare at the princess.
And only Carlos, after years of devoted observation, would know the tic in his knight’s jaw was one of fury.
They turned the hall while the court took wine in the gallery.
When the doors opened again, the estrado held the high board under the canopy, dressed in white linen, and two long tables ran the length of the hall below it.
The great cupboard stood against the wall with the house plate climbing it in ranks -- gold above silver above gilt, stacked too high to use.
The storm had left the palace washed and clean.
The candles burned straight now, and the shadows were not quite as frightening. It smelled of wax and fresh rain and the perfumed bodies of nobles.
At the high board the queen sat centered under the canopy with the empty chair at her right.
Carlos and Emma sat together at her left, their crimson melding until they could not be separated by the eye.
Draper had the place past Emma, telling a story.
Trumpets brought in the first course. The maestresala walked in the dishes and tasted them in front of the queen and the prince.
Below the dais the court worked through the courses by rank, and the wine went round, and Novak walked the length of the hall twice an hour.
Jannik stood his post and watched his prince eat almost nothing.
The trumpets announced the second course. Somewhere between the heron and the sweet rice, the queen turned her head.
“Lady Laila.” Her voice carried without rising. “You sit too far for conversation, and I find I am not finished with you. Come up. You have earned the queen's favor this week -- it would be a waste not to spend it.”
Laila rose from the middle table, curtsied, and came up to the dais. She was in a dress of deep wine, her fair hair braided round her head.
A page brought a chair. The queen set her at the end of the high board, at its left horn, and then -- without hurry -- looked across the hall to the wall where Jannik stood.
“Sir Sinner.”
Jannik watched Laila stiffen. Carlos did not break from his conversation with Emma.
“You have been occupied with your post since before matins,” the queen said. “I bid you sit and eat with us.”
She tilted her chin towards the one empty chair set beside Laila.
Jannik crossed the hall. He bowed to the queen, to the prince, to the princess. Carlos did not look at him.
He sat where he was put.
Doña Virginia returned to her plate, satisfied.
“Sir Sinner.” Laila broke bread and gave him half without asking. “Eat. If we are to be arranged at each other, we may as well do it with our stomachs full.”
Jannik felt something ease in him. She was kind, and therefore deserved his kindness in turn. He took the bread and ate.
“You look lovely,” he said. She smiled. “Is it customary for the women of Danmark to wear their hair up on special occasions?”
“Yes, sir,” she replied. “I see here in Castile the unmarried women wear their hair down.”
Jannik nodded. He watched her hair, nearly orange in the candlelight.
“You could do the same while you are here.”
He glanced up at the prince, who was in a lively conversation with his promised bride.
Jannik turned to Laila and said, “I would prefer it. The gold of your hair more than any gilt of this palace.”
Laila laughed. Her cheeks flushed as pink as her lips.
“Said by a man not wanting for gold.” She took a sip of her wine, and it darkened her mouth.
Down the board Carlos was leaning toward his betrothed, and their voices came through the music in pieces.
“-- my mistake is I have been playing a patient man,” Emma was saying. “I thought you would be more decisive.”
“Why, Princess. Each quarry has its peculiarities. I would not do you the disservice of laying a trap for a hare when you play like a wolf.”
“You play like a villain!”
Carlos laughed, and there was no trace of the beggar in the sala. He still did not look at Jannik.
“Do you play, Sir?” Laila asked him. He turned back to her.
“Sometimes,” he said. “Though I rarely have time.”
“I have heard of the prince’s prowess at the board. Holger complains of his many losses. Do you fare better against His Highness?”
Jannik shook his head. “I have never played Don Carlos. And for the sake of my pride it will remain as such.”
Laila giggled. “You are that certain of your defeat?”
Jannik looked at Carlos again, and this time, Carlos lifted his head and met his eyes.
“I am that certain of his victory,” Jannik said.
Then, Jannik watched as Carlos took a deep draught from his goblet. Carlos did not look away as he slid his tongue along the lingering wetness of his bottom lip.
The prince’s mouth was darker than Laila’s.
Jannik blinked and looked down at his plate. It had, in the course of the meal, acquired a piece of roasted venison, pink in the middle, still clinging to traces of life. He pierced it with his knife.
“Will you tell me more about your travels, my lady?” he asked. “Are there strange foods you have encountered?”
Laila put her knife down and thought about the question.
“Well, in Bolzano they eat the bread twice," she said. "Once as bread. Then, they let it go hard as a rock, and they wet it, and work it with an egg, and boil it, and eat it again.”
“Knödel,” Jannik said. “Though I find it not so strange, but a rather more sensible way to use up old bread.”
The corner of Laila’s mouth lifted. “They have the chickens for that.”
The trumpets went again. Two men came the length of the hall with a board between them and the peacock standing on it -- cooked, and then sewn back into its own skin, the tail spread, the head held up on a little wire, the beak gilded.
The court gasped in wonder.
The bird looked out over all of them with beads for eyes.
“That,” Laila said. “That is the strangest thing I have eaten.”
“A peacock?”
“A bird that has been killed, and cooked, and then made to stand up and pretend it is not dead.” She reached for her wine. “In Danmark we let a dead creature have the dignity of being dead.”
Jannik looked at the peacock a moment. Then, he cut into his venison and ate.
The hall was applauding the bird. The prince was laughing at something the viscount had said.
“And you, Sir Sinner? Do you enjoy such a spectacle?”
Jannik remembered the quick, clean sound of the prince’s blade as it had sliced through Nicolás Kurios’ ear.
He remembered the bear, and the stags, and the many partridges, and the enemy soldiers coming up over the hill at Sax during the campaign in Aragon, and every other time the prince had shed blood.
The princess was wrong about him.
Carlos was decisive.
But one did not realize it until he was subjected to the decision. Made limbless, lifeless, and as decoration on the floor.
“I do not mind it,” he finally answered Laila. “But it is not what captures my attention.”
“Oh?” Laila leaned back in her chair and smiled at him, eyes shining with challenge. “Then what does, sir?”
Jannik did not look at the prince.
“I have not had occasion to find out,” he said. “I am sworn. My attention is held solely by His Highness.”
“But even knights have their --”
“Lady Laila.” Carlos had turned in his chair. He had his goblet in his hand and his other arm along the back of Emma's, and he leaned out past Emma and the viscount to see the left horn of the table, which meant everyone between had to sit back to let him look. “Your books. We have read them.”
Laila’s eyes widened. Jannik saw her grip the edge of the table.
“The princess and I have been…” he said. “During the last few days.” He looked down at Emma with a fond smile. “It is soothing to listen to her read. Her voice is full of song.”
Emma smiled back, fondness in equal measure. “It is more that the stories are written so well, is it not, Carlitos?”
Carlos put down his goblet and reached for the princess’ hand. She obliged, and Carlos gave it a kiss.
“So it is, princesa.” He turned back to Laila. “It is about this matter that I wish to meet with you. Would you come to my estudio on Thursday? The third bell.”
Laila glanced at Jannik, who softened his eyes and smiled. She let go of the table and said, “I would be honored, Your Highness.”
“He means to ask everything about Bolzano,” Emma said with a laugh. “He made me read the passage about their narrow houses four times.”
The queen, who had been quietly listening, turned to look at the prince. So did Draper.
“Only twice,” Carlos argued.
“Four,” Emma said. “I could not believe you were so fascinated by a description of houses, Carlitos.”
“But is it not strange?” Carlos protested. “Narrow at the front. Running back deep. And from the street you see a door and one window and nothing else at all. How is a stout man supposed to live in comfort?”
The table laughed. Down the hall the carver had reached the peacock and was working the wire out of its neck.
Carlos then looked at Jannik. It was nothing at all like the way he looked at the princess.
“I would like to know more,” Carlos said. “About the place where Sir Sinner’s family is from. Since he is the man sworn to me.”
And if Jannik did not have the frost of the mountains of Tyrol running in his veins, he would have gasped at the prince’s brazenness.
But he was a Sinner, so his face stayed still.
Doña Virginia was not so stoic. She lifted an eyebrow and said, “An admirable venture, Carlos. Though it may have to wait until you have read more about the houses in Granada.”
“Your counsel is noted, Your Majesty,” Carlos replied, his voice as pleasant as it had been the morning of Kurios’ execution.
The queen heard the lilt in her son’s voice that meant he would take a life. She sat back in her chair and did not press the matter.
“Thursday then,” Carlos said to Laila, who bowed her head.
Then, he looked at Jannik. “You should read the lady’s books, Sinner. Perhaps they will bring you comfort.”
Jannik laid down his knife and smiled at the prince. “Her presence alone is enough, Your Highness.”
On the table, Carlos’ fingers twitched. Jannik felt the phantom pressure of them around his neck.
“But I will gladly read the lady’s words if she were to allow it,” Jannik added. He turned to Laila, who nodded, bright and eager.
“Come by any time then,” Carlos said with a dismissive wave. “They are being kept in my rooms until the scribes finish copying them.”
Again, not a muscle on Jannik’s face twitched. Not even when the Doña gave him an appraising glance.
“Yes, Your Highness,” he simply replied.
Carlos, deeming the matter finished, turned back to Emma and asked her a question about the houses in Buda. Jannik went back to his venison.
Laila leaned in close and said, “You do not have to read them out of a sense of duty.”
“It would not be out of duty,” Jannik said. “It would be my pleasure.”
The maestresala came to the queen and tasted the peacock in front of her. Doña Virginia nodded. Then he came down to the prince and did it again.
When death did not seem imminent, Carlos nodded, and the pages brought up the plates of fowl.
Jannik abstained.
But he watched the prince eat a small piece.
As the rest of the feast was served, Jannik conversed pleasantly with Laila.
But his attention was held solely by His Highness.
The prince laughed and drank, and gave the princess his every charm. But throughout the evening, he tasted only a thing or two, and ate almost nothing.
At the end of the night, everyone went to bed in a torpor of food and revelry. Jannik stood once again at his post as the guests milled out of the great hall.
The prince went to escort the princess back to her quarters.
As he walked past, Jannik noted that the prince had the face of a man who had not been satisfied.
Jannik came to the prince's rooms at the eleventh bell.
Two knocks. The latch turned before he had finished the second.
Carlos was still in all of it. The coronet, the chain, the crimson, the sword at his hip. He had put out every candle but one. He stood in the middle of the room.
“Sinner.”
Jannik shut the door. He set the bar.
“I came for the books,” he said.
Carlos crossed the room so fast the candle guttered.
He got a fist in the front of Jannik's tabard and put him into the wall. The wolf rampant crumpled in Carlos' hand, and Jannik let it happen.
“Take them.” Carlos' breath was on his mouth. “They are on the table. Take them and go read them by your own candle and hear her voice while you do it.”
“I will.”
“The gold of her hair,” Carlos spat, “more than any gilt of this palace.”
So he had heard it. Of course he had heard it.
“You were listening to my conversation instead of the beautiful woman next to you?”
“Yes,” Carlos said, and kissed him.
It was not so much a kiss as a wrath-cut with a mouth. Jannik's head went back into the wall and he took it and gave it back and got a hand in the crimson.
“Eres perfecta,” Jannik said into Carlos’ mouth.
“Is she not?” Carlos bit his lip. Vicious.
Jannik hissed and took a fistful of his hair, coronet and all, and dragged his head back to see him. “You promised me in front of the bishop. In front of your mother and the notary and God. But it was her hand you kissed at the table.”
Jannik got his mouth on the exposed throat and Carlos' whole body spasmed, and his hands scrabbled at Jannik's belt for something to hold. “In front of me, you kissed her hand.”
“Her presence alone is enough,” Carlos snarled. “You said that. With my colors on your chest.”
“Because you told me to read her books.” Jannik shoved off the wall and Carlos gave a step. Then another. He watched, wary, as Jannik approached with rage.
“You told me not to look at her. Your mother sat me beside her. You told me to read her writing. Choose, Carlos. Tell me which one and I will do it, I have only ever done what you said --”
“Do not --”
“-- sag mir, was du willst, und ich tue es. Befiehl mir, mit dir zu fliehen, und ich tue es, Carlos, ich tue es --”
Carlos went white.
“What did you say.”
Jannik shut his mouth.
Carlos took him by the collar of his own livery and shook him once, hard, and the light harness clacked at his throat.
“What did you say to me, Sinner!”
“That you are a fool.”
And Carlos' hand came up over his shoulder -- high, furious, ear to hip -- and Jannik went under it low and early and took him by both wrists.
The cut died in his fists half-thrown.
Neither of them moved.
Carlos' chest heaved. He looked down at his trapped hands.
“Yield,” he said.
Jannik obeyed at once. He let go and stepped back the distance a knight stands from his prince.
“No,” Carlos said. “No -- not that -- I did not mean --”
He pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes and the gold chain swung.
The prince meant it in the way they had agreed upon, on the night Jannik had asked the prince to command him.
“Carlos,” Jannik said. He reached out and pulled at Carlos’ hands until they were once again looking at each other.
“Carlos,” he said again. Jannik placed a hand on the back of Carlos’ head and pulled him into a kiss.
Carlos opened under it and made the sound from the hidden warm place that belonged only to his knight.
They stood in the middle of the room a long while and did nothing but that.
Carlos' hands were in Jannik’s hair. Jannik's were flat on his back, on the crimson, on the hundred thousand small deaths it took to make the color.
Jannik kissed the corner of Carlos’ mouth. His jaw. The place under his ear where the pulse was.
He came back to the mouth and stayed there. There was no hurry in it. The prince's hands went slack in his hair. The candle burned while they did this.
He kissed the bow of the upper lip. He kissed the lower one, and held it a moment, and let it go.
Carlos followed his mouth when it left.
Jannik smiled and let him have it. Then he pulled back an inch, just to look, and Carlos chased that inch too, and got it.
“You did not eat,” Jannik said, against his mouth.
“I ate.”
“Three small bites.” He whispered it against Carlos’ throat. "At the heron. At the peacock. When your mother turned her head.”
“Your eyes were on me instead of the beautiful woman next to you?”
“Yes.”
Carlos gave him a sly smile.
Jannik rolled his eyes, then reached inside his tabard. He took out the bread and put it in Carlos' hand.
It had been in there since the second course. It had gone hard at one edge and it had taken the shape of him.
“Eat.”
“Jannik --”
“Eat.”
Carlos ate it. All of it, standing up, in his coronet, over the shoulder of his knight, while Jannik held him and looked at the wall.
Then Carlos wiped his mouth and sighed. “I have been sitting here since the ninth bell.”
Jannik pulled back and looked at the entirety of him.
“In that?”
“I sent all the servants away,” Carlos said. “I did not want them undressing me. Not when I have gotten used to you doing it.”
Carlos blinked up at Jannik, and Jannik thought that no lady could hold a candle to the coyness of his prince.
“Very well, Sire,” he said.
Jannik took Carlos to the chest and sat him down on it. He began with the coronet, working the pins out one at a time.
Each pin came away from the velvet with a soft sigh, and he laid each one on the wood. By the fourth one Carlos had put his forehead against Jannik's belly and left it there.
The coronet came off. Jannik set it beside the pins. It was much lighter than he had thought it would be.
Then the cap. Then the hair underneath, flattened, and Jannik put his fingers through it. Carlos shivered. Jannik bent and kissed him where the gold had sat all day.
Then the chain.
Jannik got the clasp with his thumbnail and lifted it off the prince’s neck. He laid it beside the crown. Jannik leaned down and put his mouth where it had pressed.
“Jannik --”
“Be quiet, Carlos.”
The prince was quiet.
The gown. The sword, which Jannik took by the belt and hung on the peg. The jubón.
The laces at the waist, which came loose one after another under Jannik’s clever fingers.
As Jannik worked on the laces of his shirt, Carlos said, “Kiss me again, Sir Sinner.”
“Yes, Sire.”
Jannik took Carlos’ face in both hands and did it properly. Lips as slow as the drip of honey. He had all night and no post and the door was barred.
Carlos tasted of the wine. Jannik had watched him drink it, and had watched him drag his tongue along his own lip afterward.
Jannik slid his tongue into the prince’s mouth, licked him as he wished he could have done at dinner.
Carlos made a startled sound, almost a whimper.
Jannik pulled back an inch.
“Again,” he said.
Carlos' ears reddened, but he was not a man cowed into silence. So then he made the sound again -- deliberately, in Jannik's mouth, with his eyes open, watching to see what it would do.
It did a great deal.
The shirt came off his shoulders and hung at his elbows.
Carlos was still sitting on the chest, looking up at Jannik, which he minded as little as the first time. He had his knees apart and his knight standing between them and his hands hooked in the back of Jannik's belt to keep him where he was.
Jannik put his mouth on the shoulder. The collarbone. The hollow under it, where the chain had been.
“You are warm,” Jannik said. “Warmer than this morning.”
“The rain stopped,” Carlos said.
Then he tugged, and Jannik came down, and there was no more talking for a while.
It was not like the stall. In the stall they had been afraid, and rushed, and drowned by the downpour.
Carlos had wept without a sound.
Here, Carlos could say his name out loud. Once, and then not once.
Jannik.
Into his hair, against his jaw, into the seam of his mouth, over and over.
The prince’s voice was full of song.
Jannik put his hands under the prince's thighs and dragged him forward off the chest.
Carlos laughed -- delighted and loud -- and Jannik kissed it out of his mouth and took it for himself.
Carlos got a hand in Jannik’s shirt and pulled it over his head and then stopped, and sat back, and looked at him.
“What.”
“Nothing.” Carlos put two fingers on his sternum. Moved them an inch. “Hold still.”
“Carlos --”
“Hold still.”
So Jannik held still.
Carlos counted.
He did it with his mouth moving and no sound coming out, one finger going from freckle to freckle across the chest and up the shoulder and out along the arm, giving Jannik the same attention he gave the portolan.
He got somewhere past forty and lost it.
He sighed. He put his finger back at the sternum.
“Again,” he said.
Jannik stood still and let him count.
After some time, Carlos pulled Jannik next to him on the bed and murmured, “I wish I had not been born a prince.”
But he had been born one, and Jannik could do nothing to change it.
So instead, Jannik took Carlos by the back of the neck and kissed him until Carlos forgot he was one.
The candle burned out and the room became dark, and the two of them drifted into silence.
Carlos put his back against Jannik's chest, and Jannik put an arm over him and his mouth on the knob of bone at the top of his spine and held on.
Jannik was asleep inside a hundred breaths.
Carlos lay in the dark and listened to him. The bells marked the hours.
Sometime after the second, the rain came back.
Carlos listened to it come down on the tiles. Jannik did not wake.
The cisterns would be filled. And the orange groves would drink. And Carlos was betrothed to the princess of Buda.
It was a great blessing.
He slept a little before matins.