Vjačeslava Vasilevna nearly passed out from the agony and exhaustion of childbirth. Gasping and heaving for breath, the Queen Mother lay back upon the bed in a pool of her own sweat. Though she’d lightened herself of yet another child, the pain and tiring still lingered over her. She felt far away. She hardly noticed when the midwife handed her up a baby girl, a delicate fringe of auburn upon her crown.
‘A pity her father can’t be here to see her,’ the midwife told her sympathetically.
‘Not for the first, either,’ Vjačeslava murmured weakly, a tear rolling down one of her already-wet cheeks. ‘Of course he wouldn’t come for the second.’
‘Milady… this is your fourth,’ the midwife reminded her gently. ‘The new king—he’s your first.’
There was a tense silence after that. Both the Queen Mother and the midwife knew what she meant, but neither could or dared say it aloud.
Vjačeslava had now given birth to two girls by her brother-in-law. And this one, the one she was now nursing… was triply unfortunate. For Vratislav had sworn a vow of celibacy before God, every bit as binding as that upon a rasophore monk. And for her he had broken it—even in a thicket just behind his wayhouse in Kroměříž. This girl who was now at her breast was a child conceived in fornication, conceived in incest, and conceived of a broken monastic vow.
‘She needs a name, milady.’
Praskovia had been the name she’d given Vratislav’s elder daughter—a rather obvious choice, as she had been born on a Friday. This one, though…
Vjačeslava was feeling a tad ironic.
‘She will be Pribislava.’
The midwife raised both eyebrows at that, but did not say a word. The little girl, who was freshly cleaned and swaddled and who was now busily guzzling down her first meal under the sun, was none the wiser, she whose name would mean ‘first in glory’—that she would be the last of her mother’s children, and that no glory at all was expected of her. For a moment, Vjačeslava looked down at her infant child with love, and a trace of pity. Marking this, the midwife said:
‘You can’t keep her, milady. Any more than you could have kept Praskovia.’
‘I know I can’t.’
‘Are you sure you found no traces at all?’ asked Radomír worriedly. The crown with which he had been invested—his grandfather’s crown—still felt much too heavy for his dark-haired head. Lucia sat at his side, her round face, framed with an updo of bronze-coloured hair, radiating heartfelt concern. ‘Still not even… not even a
hint of where he might have gone?’
‘None,’ answered
Kancelár Miloboj. He was calm, even rock-steady as he said it, but there was a heaviness in his voice that all of his formidable composure couldn’t disguise. ‘None of your grandfather’s fellow pilgrims can tell us where he went. All the trails go cold east of Revúca. We haven’t discovered anything further, and it’s not for want of effort,
môj Kráľ…’
‘I told you
not to call me that,’ Radomír hissed in mortification. ‘Kaloján—my grandfather—is your king!’
‘And yet he has given us no sign, left us no message, made us no assurance that he is indeed alive,’ Miloboj answered his liege, with as much considerate grace as he could—but still firmly. ‘Milord… it is high time for you to accept the full burden of the charge with which you have been entrusted. You are now the third King of Moravia of the name Radomír.’
Kráľ Radomír 3. opened his mouth to protest further, thought better of it, and gave a stiff nod. Lucia reached over and touched his hand in a gesture of sympathy. Radomír felt a warm rush of gratitude toward her. He still felt rather undeserving of her at times, because Lucia had come from a family of dispossessed Polish-Prussian landowners in Grodno, to marry a boy who had been (Radomír had to admit it) quite rude to her when they first met. And yet she had settled into her role, long before any hint that she might become queen, with grace and equanimity. Good thing for him, his wife was competent at most things which she put her mind to—especially now, when Radomír’s mother Vjačeslava had been away from home for months on account of her health.
If Radomír was grateful for being well-married, it was nothing to his gratitude for being well-advised. His grandfather’s most trusted men (and woman) all retained their old positions. Of course
Knieža Miloboj of Nitra had continued on as
kancelár—there was no one better for the job. Miloboj’s poise, his willingness to see all sides of an issue, and his knack for making his way among people even of entirely different tongues and customs made him eminently suited for the post. But more than that: Miloboj had always been gentle and well-guided in his rede, and Radomír found himself grateful for his assistance in social settings.
Radomír looked to his cousin Tichomil, who gave him a grim but understanding nod in response. The elderly
družinnik, white of hair and beard now but still possessed of chiselled sinew and iron nerve, was as familiar to Radomír as an old leather boot… or as his childhood nursery. Whenever his grandfather had taken him out on rides, Tichomil was right there alongside them or not very far behind. His men called him ‘
Hlúpy’—‘the Foolish’—but with a heavy dose of irony. Truthfully the man was a reasonable, cautious, painstaking leader of men, and a master both of grand strategy and of personal combat.
His other two close advisors were Vlasta Bijelahrvatskića, his steward, and Mírko of Bohemia, who served as his privy ear among the nobles. Vlasta, whose seat of honour was in Užhorod, was a rather prim, fastidious, stuffy elderly lady—as such, she was naturally an able overseer of the royal household and a redoubtable keeper of the books. She had definite entrepreneurial drive and determination, but she also had a basic sense of honesty and decency that Radomír couldn’t help but admire. As such, nitpicky old Vlasta had kept her position with ease. And Mírko, well—like Tichomil, Mírko was family. He was a Rychnovský-Vyšehrad, a descendant of Prince Daniel. Radomír couldn’t say he was fond of Mírko, but there was no denying the man was good at his job.
‘Now, the first matter of business. Your grandfather never made any arrangements upon your younger sister, Svetluša. You would be well-advised to have her married well when she comes of age. Several suitors have given me to know they would be willing to woo her—with your say-so as her nearest living male relative, of course. I would particularly recommend to your attention the Despot Lucio of Italy.’
Radomír flicked a glance across to his wife and bearer of the distaff version of the same name, who gave him a pert little raise of the eyebrows. The new
Kráľ turned back to his
kancelár.
‘
Despot of
Italy?’ Radomír fought to keep the scorn out of his voice, but couldn’t quite hide the full measure of his scepticism. ‘Precisely whence comes this fellow by that title?’
‘Astute of you, O
Kráľ,’ Miloboj chuckled. ‘He styles himself by the grandiose Byzantine Imperial court moniker of “
despotēs”, a token of favour bestowed upon his di Morro ancestors by Constantinople nine generations back. But his material honour consists solely in the rule over a handful of scattered cities across the Alpine stretch of that country—Aquileia, Trento, Nizza—and Modena in the Apennines as well. Clinging to such a lofty title while vested with holdings honourable and wealthy but by no means
vast, I fear that Despot Lucio is rather a vain man. But having observed him personally, I can tell you that his habits of life are not vicious, and that he treats his servitors with kindness.’
‘I suppose Svetluša could do quite a bit worse,’ Radomír answered Miloboj. ‘Very well. Let me look over the details of Despot Lucio’s suit and talk with my sister in private on the matter, and I’ll get a decision back to you on the morrow.’
‘Very good, milord.’
Radomír exchanged some further news and items of business with each of his courtiers in turn, and then retired from his audience chambers with Lucia on his arm.
‘It’s really you I should thank, Lucia,’ Radomír told his wife.
‘Whatever for?’
‘For supporting me in there,’ Radomír told her.
‘Why, what else should I have done?’ asked his wife with a little smile, which turned sad even as Radomír watched. ‘No… I’m sorry. You were being serious; I shouldn’t be flippant. It’s just that I—I know what it feels like, to be cut adrift of a sudden. Your grandfather gone and your mother out of reach. I spent most of my childhood on the lam from the Jatvingians… drifting from court to court, dependent on the kindness of the White Rus’ to help me weather the winters.’
‘Ah. Well… I’m sorry you had to go through all that.’
‘Spilt milk,’ said the former Grodno landowner’s daughter, giving Radomír’s elbow a little squeeze. ‘No, I have a place here and now. I’m trying my best to use it well and wisely.’
Queen Lucia conceived late in the summer which followed, with the signs becoming visible and noticeable after the Church New Year began.
Kráľ Radomír quickly learned precisely what Lucia meant by ‘trying her best’ to use her position ‘well and wisely’. During the confinement of her pregnancy, Lucia had taken to an intensive study of medicine, in particular drawing upon the prior knowledge of the queens of Moravia who had taken up the art going back to
Dolz de Touraine and the
Animadversiones de occasu ossium. Unfortunately for the king and his
libido, between the pregnancy and Lucia’s studies there was no further need to ‘try her best’ in certain other duties.
‘If you’re willing, I might have a solution for… you know,
that,’
Kňažná Slavena—the wife of his
kancelár Miloboj—spoke aside to the king during a feast in the Great Hall. The glint in her hungry eyes could not be misinterpreted.
But it was a suggestion that went nowhere. Radomír was neither the sort of king to dishonour himself in adultery, nor was he the sort of man to shame Slavena for having spoken too brashly and stepped outside the bounds of modesty. He held his tongue and said nothing of it, and instead just let the proposition slide by, unmarked and unacted-on.
Lucia gave birth after the ides of April, to a red-headed baby girl.
At once on her husband’s beholding her, Lucia spoke up:
‘Husband, let us name her Gaudimantė! I knew a certain Gaudimantė, a noblewoman back from where I come from. I stayed with her over one winter; she was kind to me. And I always thought the name had a nice ring to it.’
‘Gaudimantė? I don’t like it,’ Radomír said flatly.
‘Then what is your suggestion,
husband?’ asked Lucia. There was a chill tone in her voice, but Radomír ignored it and made his counterproposal:
‘Why don’t we name her Vjačeslava instead, after my mother? She’s a nearer relation.’
Lucia gave her husband a wry, critical look, but made no demurral. The girl was, after all, their daughter together, and Queen Mother Vjačeslava was indeed a relation. And the queen was not the type to make a fuss over such a small thing. She was young. There would be other opportunities yet.
Unfortunately, little Vjačeslava did not pass her first few months of life outside the womb in frith. She was a feeble, fitful, frail little thing, and she didn’t drink of her mother’s milk as she ought. Radomír sat at her crib and fretted, but Queen Lucia at once set to work with hob, mortar, pestle, retort, cucurbit and ambix preparing various material powders and distillations of herbal essence both fragrant- and foul-smelling, such that the royal bedroom resembled nothing so much as an alchemist’s laboratory or a witch’s haven. These things the queen herself ingested in several attempts to get her own daughter to drink of her milk.
‘You oughtn’t!’ protested the king when he saw this. ‘What if
you should fall ill as well?’
‘I shan’t,’ Lucia assured him. ‘Your forebears have been careful. I am ingesting nothing directly harmful to myself, only preparations meant to alter my humours to better match our baby’s. With any luck, her hunger should allow her to respond.’
It was several days before little Vjačeslava would tentatively take nourishment, and Lucia attached herself to one particular alchemical preparation consisting of ground fennel, ginger root and fish oils, which she smeared into a bowl of hot water and drank as a brew. After several such treatments of this, Radomír was happy to see, Vjačeslava ate—not happily or much, but at least she ate.
‘It works!’
‘Of course it works,’ Lucia answered him tolerantly.
‘Thank you, Lucia.’
‘Oh, really! You ought to thank your wise ancestor Bohodar
slovoľubec,’ Lucia answered him modestly—though from where he stood, Radomír could definitely make out a dimple on her cheek. ‘And your ancestress Dolz de Touraine. I’ve only followed the path they led.’
But as it turned out, the
Kráľ had even more cause to be thankful to his wife. There was a training accident among the garrison, as occasionally does happen, and the young king was the nearest one to witness it. He ran to help the fallen and injured, whom he recognised as a middle-aged soldier named Zvonimír Blatnohradský, but the wounds were far too severe for him to help alone.
Radomír called out for help, but as the accident had happened in a ditch, no one else appeared to have taken notice, and the king’s voice didn’t rise above the orders of the quartermaster. Lucia of Kráľovec, however, was approaching from the other side of the courtyard.
‘Husband?’ she asked. She was about to inquire further when she saw the man lying broken underneath him. ‘Oh, God in heaven—!’
‘Help me,’ Radomír asked her. ‘Please—he’s bleeding, and I think his ribs are broken!’
Lucia needed no second reminder, but bustled down the slope to where her husband and the unfortunate watchman were. Firmly she bade Radomír hold the fallen man at a certain angle while she probed, then prop him upright at another while she went to fetch some shears, dry wood and clean linen for splints. Radomír’s arms burned and strained with the dead-weight of the (thankfully) still-living man, but eventually Lucia returned with what she wanted to bring. Biddably, Radomír followed every ‘turn’ and ‘lift’ and ‘cinch’ and ‘snip’ that his wife asked him to, and soon they had the man’s bleeding staunched and his bones righted to set as best they could.
‘Not bad,’ Lucia breathed, wiping the blood off of her hands upon another clean strip of linen.
‘Thanks again,’ Radomír said weakly. ‘You were there just in time. How comes it that you’re always there when I need you?’
‘Occupational hazard of being a queen, I suppose,’ Lucia dimpled.
Radomír felt a strong surge of warmth and affection toward his queen. The two of them had been flung together in the same yoke—certainly not of his own design, but of his (late?) grandfather’s. And at first he’d rather resented her. Sure, she was sort of pretty in a doughy, round-faced, milkmaid fashion. It seemed he had almost nothing in common with his wife at first. She’d been a rough-and-tumble tomboy, a vagrant daughter of fallen nobility who’d needed early on to fend for herself, who spoke a barbaric mishmash of Masurian, White Ruthenian and Baltic dialects. And Radomír had been—he hated to own it, but it was true—a spoiled, sheltered princeling brat whose experience had never ventured far beyond the royal nursery.
But now that the two of them had actual matters to talk about, it didn’t matter that their dialects were different. Each could make their meaning understood to the other with enough effort. Radomír wasn’t out of his depth when speaking of alchemy and medicine, and he was usually able to follow his wife’s conversation as far as she would care to take him in it. And the two of them were both of a similar agreeable and patient nature, such that conversing with her never became tiresome despite their differences in dialect. Before he knew it, the two of them were taking long, amiable walks together in the countryside across the east bridge outside the castle walls.
Their newfound amiability naturally accompanied them into the bedroom. Radomír had always found their coupling… adequate, even satisfying when the animal urge was on him. But now Lucia was his companion and friend. Now being together in bed was a chance for verbal sparring and ribald humour, and he found that bantering with her during the act enhanced the pleasure. Evidently she felt the same way, if the high colour and lingering dimples that accompanied her afterglow were anything to go by. It was no grand romance. But Lucia trusted and liked him well enough, and Radomír was not the sort to ask for more when he could be grateful for what he had.
At the tail end of September, in the year 1271, Lucia again gave birth. This time, their child, dark of hair and fair of complexion, was a boy. It had become a tradition in the family by this time for a Radomír in the family to name his eldest son after
Slovoľubec and
Letopisár—and Lucia readily agreed, ‘if, next time we have a girl, I get to name her Gaudimantė.’ It couldn’t really be said of Radomír’s resistance to this request, that it was anything more than half-hearted. He was fond enough of Lucia, and delighted enough with his new-born heir, that he ultimately agreed to her condition in spite of himself.