Dubhaine Family/Ciarghuala/Roleplays/1019/August

2nd August

Spring Day -- Wallershire

Rosalind Foxglove

Rosalind was retiring for the night when the news came of letters being delivered. A court official presented the sealed scrolls and envelopes on a silver platter. The Aeon listened as a scribe gave brief descriptions of the contents of the letters, moving down the stack of correspondence. It had clearly been a busy day in the realm. The scribe paused as he reached a soggy looking envelope that had suffered in the heavy rain that fell earlier in the day. He picked it up carefully by a corner with a look of distain on his face. Rosalind smiled in amusement watching him, but her smile faded as she saw that beneath this letter was one bearing the Luria Nova seal. She had that letter handed to her and dismissed the scribe, giving the excuse of feeling too tired to focus on the rest of her correspondence. Left alone, she walked over to her bed and climbed in. She drew a lantern close and eagerly read the contents of the Lurian letter, several sheets long.

She guessed Bennet's letter was written in his own hand. Court scribes tended to have style with lines of writing expertly sized to form a precise column on the page. The words here were much less accurately spaced, but all the more personal for the lack of it. His mind seemed to have wandered from subject to subject, but the tone became increasingly warm and less the formal language used by rulers when communicatining with their counterparts.

She read on to the end, set the letter down on the small table beside her bed, picked it up and put it under her pillow, then took it out again and returned it to the table.

"You're a queen," Rosalind mumbled to herself under her breath, imagining some girl making the bed in the morning and returning to the servant quarters to spread gossip of a letter under the Aeon's pillow. "Behave like a queen."

She picked up a hand mirror and looked at herself in the candlelight. Time had been relatively kind to her. She had not had an easy life, but it was certainly easier than most. She had been a royal for a long time. Worn crowns in realms now lost to the world. Rank had distinct privileges that smoothed away some of the harsher aspects of life. Although she was a highly skilled swordswoman, she had never considered herself much of a battlefield warrior, and so did not carry as many wounds as some who reached her age. Her enemies had called her an ancient crone from time to time, but she knew that was more of a childish insult than an accurate description of her appearance. Men still took the trouble to stare at her when they thought she was not looking.

She considered Bennet's words on the fate of Lurian rulers. They fade away or meet untimely ends. It was not written as starkly as that, but that was the implication. Not more than a day ago, her own nobles had been discussing the subject of curses on the subject of an entirely different matter. But could the throne of Luria be cursed, she wondered now. Those who sat upon it cursed to fade after a time in the sun. She had hoped to find some specific information about the fate of Aldraker. It troubled her that such a once-powerful ruler could effectively fade from the world without a trace. She found that it troubled her to think of Bennet meeting with the same fate.

Ringing the bell at the bedside summoned a servant who she instructed to bring her pen and paper. It was rare for her to write in her own hand. The scribes did their best to discourage it, in a perverse twist of logic telling her that reading and writing was beneath the dignity of nobility. She often imagined gatherings of worried scribes secretly trying to work out ways to keep pens out of the hands of nobles, so to protect their own livelihoods.

Her first letter was written to Bennet. She wrote warm words, focused around the memories they shared of her trip to Luria Nova. He had mentioned in his letter that someone had served him swill described as wine, and he bemoaned the lack of decent eastern wine. Rosalind new that although Westgard was not prime wine producing country, the more skilled farmers had cultivated vines that produced drinkable wines that would not offend. Bennet must have been served wines produced from the wild grapes of the Wilderness or the underdeveloped farms of the Goldorans. She planned to send him a crate of white and one of red. Half jokingly, she assured him that they were not poisoned and dared him to sample them without the services of a food taster.

Sealing that letter, she moved on to write a large number of much shorter letters. These she would have dispatched in many different directions. The message contained in them was simple and to the point. If anyone has any information about the fate of the one time ruler Aldraker write to Rosalind, Aeon of Westgard. She was now determined to find the truth about his disapperance.