Chapter 6 #2
Yusuf announced that the competitors would be paired up.
Francis glanced over to his right at Montferrat, currently engaged in some over eager flirting with the Count of Bellamarre.
“Please not Montferrat, please not Montferrat,” Francis uttered under his breath.
“Marquis de Montferrat, and Prince Hiro!” Yusuf called out.
Francis exhaled in quiet relief.
Thank goodness.
The relief was short lived, as Yusuf then called out Francis’s name paired with Wittensbach.
Francis groaned to himself. This was much worse. He would’ve preferred Montferrat to Wittensbach.
He wondered if anyone watching by telescope from the royal balcony could tell how miserable he felt.
Francis obediently went to the palace attendants offering fencing armour—far fancier than Francis had ever worn in Stormburg—a fencing sword, and cage front mask for his face. Francis accepted their help to put these on, then went to his spot on the lawn to face his opponent.
Wittensbach was there, mask not on yet, smiling in a smug fashion. “Fancy the two of us being paired up,” he taunted. “One might call it fate.”
“Or simply bad luck,” Francis replied.
Wittensbach’s smirk fell away. He said not another word, shoving the mask onto his face.
Francis assumed a side on stance, sword pointed out, and one hand behind his back.
They had to wait for the signal, as each pair of fencers lined up on the lawn. Yusuf called out to begin, and the duels began with clicks and clashes of steel upon steel.
Francis waited for Wittensbach to make the first move, knowing he would grow impatient and strike out. When he did, Francis blocked him and made a jab at his open side, rounded tip of his sword connecting with the armour in a scrape of metal.
The clerk watching them made an impressed noise.
Wittensbach was most certainly not impressed. He huffed in annoyance and made to thrust at Francis’s chest but Francis blocked it and jabbed the man’s exposed flanked.
Wittensbach grunted at the jab, and pulled back. “You are snob of the worst kind, Stormburg.”
It was such an absurd remark that Francis almost laughed.
Francis didn’t respond, intending to continue with their duel, but Wittensbach wanted to talk.
“Did you hear me?” he taunted.
“Yes, I heard you,” Francis replied. “Are we duelling or not?”
“You think you are better than everyone,” Wittensbach accused.
“Do I?” Francis made to thrust, tired of waiting. They parried, and Wittensbach was letting his emotions get the better of him, losing his cool in the duel.
“Yes, you do!” Wittensbach bit out. “I’m not the only one who thinks so.” He made to jab, missed, and Francis gained another point by jabbing him. Wittensbach growled in annoyance. “You refuse to treat with me.”
Oh, there it is, Francis thought. The root of the matter. Because he kept to himself and didn’t tolerate fools, this meant he was the one at fault, according to fools like Wittensbach.
“I have been cordial with you at all times,” Francis reminded his opponent.
“And yet you refuse to treat with me.”
“Because what we had, brief as it was, had run its course,” Francis said firmly.
This conversation was absurd, and Francis hated having it within earshot of the other fencers.
He dearly wished he’d never fooled around with Wittensbach, nor anyone else for that matter, in the year following Philippe’s death.
Francis had been grief stricken, turning to drink and bad company to try and fill the void. But a few months of trying made it all the more clear that he was going about it all wrong, that he needed to grieve Philippe’s loss fully before he could ever move on.
And he hadn’t seen fit to entertain another man since.
He thrust his sword out and nicked Wittensbach’s thigh, steel scraping armour, but Wittensbach managed to land a blow at the same time, sword tip glancing off of Francis’s headgear.
A poor move.
“You didn’t even give me a chance,” Wittensbach complained.
Francis had had just about enough of this.
“It was a fling! We were hardly courting.”
“Because you were still hung up on that penniless captain,” Wittensbach shot back.
Francis saw red. He advanced aggressively, driving Wittensbach back. “And he was.” Thrust. “Twice the man!” Thrust. “You will ever be!” Thrust. Francis landed a point dead centre in his chest with enough force to have Wittensbach stumbling backwards, landing on the grass.
Francis removed his mask and stood over him, sword pointed down. “Don’t ever speak of him again, Wittensbach,” he warned. “And don’t speak to me, either. We are done.”
Wittensbach said nothing but glared up at him.
Duel over, at least as far as Francis was concerned, he turned around and walked off.
He grew weary of these games.
* * * *
On the royal balcony, Queen Fatima squinted through the telescope as she observed the red-haired Stormburg prince leave the field after besting just one opponent at fencing.
Annoying, she thought. After that splendid archery tournament earlier, she’d hoped for a rousing fencing match between the two most skilled swordsmen, and Stormburg was cutting out early.
“Some limonana, your majesty?” Roxana, her lady-in-waiting, suggested.
“Only if you can fashion a way for me to drink it without my eye leaving this scope,” she answered.
“I’m quite sure we can manage,” Roxana replied. “Fetch the glass straws at once,” she told their servants.
Fatima smirked and did not remove her eye from the scope. She used the handle below to ever so gentle focus in on the fencing matches that were still going on.
A long moment passed in silence before Roxana asked, “Will your husband be joining us today?”
Fatima exhaled through her nose. “Doubtful. He is hiding in the back garden.”
“Mm.” Roxana hummed. “And for supper tonight? Could he be persuaded?”
“I’m sure I will think of something,” Fatima replied. It had been her, after all, dressed as King Omar, hidden behind a screen last night. If the king could not be enticed to dine, she would have to do it again.
Her drink arrived with a long straw, and the servants arranged themselves before her like skilled acrobats to balance the drink and hold the straw for her to sip lemonade without taking her discerning eye off the tournament that she had painstakingly organised.
When the lemonade was finished and the servants gone, Roxana piped up again.
“Forgive me, your majesty…?”
“What?” Fatima said. She was busy watching Prince Hiro thrash the living daylights out of the Marquis de Montferrat.
She rather fancied Prince Hiro.
“Forgive me,” Roxana said. “Is his majesty the king not interested in who will win?”
Fatima sighed and peeled herself away from the telescope to look her lady in the eye.
“Roxy, it does not matter who wins,” Fatima said slowly, so she could keep up. “What matters is finding a nice man to distract him with. To stir his passions. To make him feel alive again.”
“Oh, yes.” Roxana nodded nervously. “Yes, your majesty is quite right.”
“Of course I am right,” Fatima said, and turned away before Roxana saw her smirk. “I am rarely wrong.”
“Any favourites so far?” Roxana asked.
“Yes, one or two seem interesting,” Fatima said. “Let’s see how they fare tomorrow with what I have planned.”