England's Pyre Part-II
In some other world...
Dôn would look at them, the lords and ladies of England, Mercia...all gathered up in a strange meeting somewhere in Essex. It made repeating echo in her head:
”Son of a toad!”
It ringed and ringed at Dôn ears, the shouting of vulgar London mob when King Richard, rode back to the Capital to take the throne of poor old Asclettin, A king of bad times and bad counseling, but still beloved in the minds of the people. It was the evil Queen Ide, they blamed, the She-frog herself, and what was Richard son of his mother or his father, that traitorous opportunist who ruled his land – given by Asclettin from pure generosity and blind love of a parent - under the Liege of French king, and can there be more vicious insult to Englishmen than letting France to tax their work?
“Son of a Toad!” Dôn tasted it between her teeth as she silently moved cross the Kings hall, not the king of the Middle-world she had just left. No, this was some other world between the otherworld and heaven. Asclettin, Richard… No children of Dôn. But still they carried the same weight as did Eudes, and still if they would look from the window, they would see fire and smoke, and what was apparently to be arrival of French rule to England under the thread of the Vikings.
Different but still the same. Dôn had ventured into this world to seek escape from the war her children were waging, the deaths they had brought upon them in their quest for power and glory. Did she have warned Foulgues and then Eudes? For the dangers that laid in the road. But they had listen her, and nodded in compliment, but inside probably felt pity for her. What did she knew about the urge of mortal men? About ruling their own land and master their own fates?
Dôn, the Queen of Elf land, thought she knew enough about fate to tell how little say mortal man had upon it. In the end. As it was, end always came, for those who were dead-bound. For immortals, nothing ever ended. It only changed.
And again, England changed for the little play Dôn had come to witness:
They had finally managed to held a King council meeting...or at least made Richard and that strange old man sit in the same room without trying to challenge each other to a duel for life...something that many would have liked to see, with both options of winning being better than anything the present offered.
Especially after the meeting was over... Only thing that was decided was the faith of England. It would end as a circus, and its two grand jesters would be the King himself, depressed and tormented soul with vicious wife speaking ill behind every possible back – did we see the phantom of Ide looming in the dark passages of the castle? - and that old man...
He had allegedly rejected the meeting in the grounds that he and King lacked mutual language, and by then, at least someone still believed that the old man’s odd speech would be difficult to such delicate Frenchman to understand, but the reality was something else...
In the meeting, the old man sat on dressed as a big toad and croaking like simpleton whenever he had something to say to the King. To others, he whined and mingled how his old self was forced to seek the language of beast and horrid animals in order to attend to such a noble meeting...
Some had laughed. They were the ones that had all the luxury to infuriate the King, and knowing that the Asclettin's old witch-doctor was something forth of befriended with. Others sat silently with grim expressions and red blush on their faces...and others...they just looked all the madness with determination, determination to leave.
Dôn had seen from the looks of the old man that he knew perfectly that one of the fair folk was present in the meeting. He had accepted her lack of invitation and – probably because Dôn didn’t intervene into it by any means – had let her presence to remain secret to the rest.
But when Dôn looked from the window, she only saw her own world…or the world of her children. It didn’t invite her to return. These strange memories of never-where world, despite as deep in their own funeral pyre, kept haunting her. She felt almost like she could remain here, someone else’s memories, in someone else’s dreams. Dôn was probably right when guessing that old man in frog suite had similar anticipations from this little English kingdom that Dôn had from her own.
Or at least what she had from her children…
Or her children had for Dôn’s great misery….
“Oh, Children of Dôn, why keep you seeking end to your days?” Dôn wanted to learn to love them again, feel the warmth of her own children burst against her chest in embrace.
Foulgues, Eudes, and his young sons would only feel the coldest embrace and no one would learn to love them as they all lived for the sword before it was time to come back home from the ventures of glory.
As the meeting inside the castle hall dried out, so did the Gwydion’s realm behind the window. Danish flag rose into the towers of every castle and the French King claimed the land as no castle remained in the Dôn’s house control. They all were pushed into a corner like frantic badgers in the end of the hunt.
The old man remained. He walked to the window Dôn was gazing and remained in chaste distance. He looked out, either his own world in flames or the World of Dôn’s children. In the end the picture was the same, the foe had raised their banners and was approaching.
Without any formal introduction, the man said:
“Our worlds collapse in the same synch. Who was it who wrote; history won’t repeat itself, it rhymes?”
“Will the immortal learn the mortality when death arrives?” Dôn replied and to her horror; she found out how she couldn’t hide her fear anymore. Her voice wouldn’t have betrayed her for any living man, but this old man was something more different.
“It seems indeed that they are coming for us. Coming to get us.”
“To judge us? With the moral we taught them? Should we stand still and wait? Hide? Should we run?”
“Where can we run anymore?”
But the old man did not look grim or defeated. No sorrow passed in his face when he just replied with big grin.
