Charlie and the Chancellor’s Plot
By J. Dumas
(1)
It was year four hundred and sixteen of the Renascence Era, a full forty one years since the Great Darkness War, and thirty five years into the reign of King Altobar the First, Wise Ruler and Hero of the War. The land had been at peace for much of that time, the king having dispatched the last persisting remnants of Darkness from the realm with an alacrity that had bordered on earnestness. But rumors of a new peril had started to seep the kingdom, a peril more pernicious than invading armies of soulless undead.
And so it was that the Royal Guard—valiant knights having reached the pinnacle of valor and nobility, and granted the privilege of serving the person of the king—was on high alert, had been for the past several months, acting as shields and enforcers in an attempt to protect the king against the rumored plot to eliminate him and his family and take control of the crown and thus the kingdom. King Altobar the First was unconcerned, as threats against his person were not infrequent, and ordered that the castle maintain its joyous and festive atmosphere, if only because it pleased his sole daughter, Princess Helena.
The king, while nonchalant about his own safety, took threats—even mild, vague, indirect threats—against his daughter seriously, and had ordered four of the most valiant knights of the Royal Guard to investigate the rumor of the plot and bring the perpetrators, if they existed, to face Royal Justice. And so Count Oliver of Athia, the Baroness of Porthia, and Sir Rene of Aramia had left the castle weeks earlier, after nightfall, to scour the region and follow up on every hint of the plot, no matter how irrelevant it might have appeared to anyone else’s eyes. The king believed, and rightly so we might add, that if there was a plot afoot, then those three knights would uncover it and extinguish it.
Charlotte of Artagnia, Charlie to her friends, the fourth valiant knight of the Royal Guard chosen by the king for this mission, the youngest and newest member of the elite troop, had been chosen to remain behind to investigate the plot within the castle, and had watched her friends leave on their quest with two feelings in battle beneath her breast. The first was a feeling of envy that was shared with every other knight in the Royal Guard, the envy of warriors wanting nothing less than prove themselves worthy of their leader’s love and respect and eager to lay their lives at the foot of the king. The second feeling was more personal, as she watched her lover, Oliver of Athia, gallop away in the night. Death was a constant in a knight’s life, even in peaceful times , and while she had accepted the risks for herself, as every knight of the Royal Guard had, she had found herself having more difficulty acquiescing those same risks for her lover.
And on this night, as the moon sat high in the sky heralding the coming of the darkest hours, walking in the burg of Parria that lay mostly sleeping at the foot of the King’s Castle, Charlie was keenly aware of those risks. She clutched the folded note that had been slipped under the door of her quarters earlier in the evening. In it, an unknown correspondent claiming to have information about “a plot certain to shake the foundations of this good kingdom to its deepest roots” was offering to sell her said information. Folly, she had thought, just a deluded individual that had gotten ear of the rumor and was probably desiring a recompense for some invented scenario. Of course, she owed it to her king to follow through, so she was on her way to meet that secret informant. If that individual was not on the up and up, however, she always had her trusty sword to teach a cutting lesson in integrity.
She stopped before the public house where the note had given her rendezvous. The Spitting Rooster was a rowdy establishment that during the day clothed itself in the respectable veil of an inn into which anyone could duck to guzzle down a drink or snarf down a quick meal and maybe catch a nap to replenish one’s strength, but at night became an ill-favored destination for men seeking solace from their dreary lives, solace to be found at the bottom of a jug or in the desperate frenzy of games and sex.
Charlie crossed the threshold of the tavern, all of her senses on alert. Inside, she felt more than saw the usual schizophrenic division between the darkened half of the room populated with lonely souls attended by their tankards of ale, and the more effusive but equally desolate half filled with loud boasts, insincere laughter, and the odd squeals from the pleasure girls that hunted their quarries in such a place.
A hush settled across the patrons as she walked through the tavern. She was used to such a reaction when she entered a premise as a representative of the King’s elite guard, and The Spitting Rooster was no exception—it was one of Oliver’s favorite den, where he said one could find the best pickled pig in the kingdom, as if anyone could stomach such a disgusting fare—but tonight she was not in official uniform, in an attempt to maintain an even modest amount of discretion for her mission.
Even out of her official uniform, Charlie cut an impressive figure. She was as tall as many of the knights in the Royal Guard, which gave her a good head over the average height of labor-stooped peasants that circulated in the burg. Her build was solid, without being broad—anyone that knew her was well aware of how toned and strong her body was, and the few that had seen her perform her calisthenics early in the morning in the castle’s courtyard could attest to the effect such tone had on her body. And yet, despite this aura of power and sturdiness, she still maintain those feminine qualities that turned a man’s head in the street—her curves were pleasant to the eye, her legs long and slender, her waist thin, her breasts generous and sitting high on her chest. Her hair, when she did not keep it tied up the way she preferred, cascaded long and brown over her shoulders, a sight that Oliver loved beyond anything else about her.
And so it was that what all those men in The Spitting Rooster were seeing on this late evening was not a royal guard entering a tavern to perform her duties, but a beautiful young woman with a powerful bearing and a long sword at her belt. She lambasted herself for attracting so much undue attention, hoping that it would not frighten her potential informant away, at least until she had ascertained the veracity of his or her tale.
Charlie forced herself to relax, noticing for the first time how tense she was, and dropped her hand from the pommel of her sword before softening her stance. She nodded to the innkeeper, who nodded back upon recognizing her, and she made her way to where he stood behind the long counter from which he poured drinks.
She was aware of the gaze of inebriated men following her every movement, glued to her legs and to her backside, knowing that they stood no chance in bedding such a prime specimen of womanhood yet unable to resist the urge to fantasize about it. Charlie had long stopped caring about such looks, confident in the strength of her fists and the sharpness of her sword to convince any overly entrepreneurial lecher that she was not a prey but a hunter. That did not keep them from buzzing like flies around her face. At least they kept their distance, something she could not say about the thorn on her side, one Count of Rochefort, lieutenant in the Dragoons of the Imperial Kingdom, who had been trying to woo her for several months in a most dogged fashion, at last earning himself a hook to the jaw that sent him sprawling the last time he put his hand on her behind during a training exercise.
“My Lady of Artagnia,” said the innkeeper, rolling his tongue over the name as he filled a jug with ale destined for a serving maid who was waiting by the end of the counter. Said maid was wearing the typical garb of the establishment once the dinner crowd had dissipated and the night patrons invested the place, a short tunic that exposed a generous expanse of breast flesh through its plunging neckline and an equally bountiful amount of leg. Serving maids at The Spitting Rooster were well known for tolerating a startling amount of attention from customers. Charlie caught herself feeling sorry for them at times—how miserable must one’s life be to resort to working in this place? At least, the maids were not pleasure girls. And Theodorus, for all his faults, treated them as well as they could hope for.
“Theodorus,” hailed Charlie. “Always the galant, aren’t you?”
“That’s how I keep my customers,” he replied, eyeing the rabble surrounding him. He passed the jug of ale to the waiting maid. “Here you go, love.” He turned to Charlie. “To what do I owe the honor of receiving a—”
Charlie stopped him with a look before he finished his sentence, not wanting to bring more attention to herself than she already had. Already, a group of men that had been playing a knife game in a corner of the tavern were eyeing her, and she wanted to at least get a chance to speak to her informant before she had to sever a few limbs tonight in order to fend off unwanted challenges.
“Just meeting someone for a chat, Theodorus.”
Theodorus nodded. “The Count of Athia is not back, then, I take it?” His grin suggested more than his words did.
Charlie played along. “When the cat’s away...” It was an old joke between Charlie and Theodorus, that she was always on the prowl to seduce men.
Theodorus laughed. “Well, I believe the fellow you are looking for is sitting there in that corner. He told me he was waiting for a Guard. That’d be you, I wager. He’s a rum fellow, that one.”
Charlie threw a glance in the corner Theodorus had indicated, saw a shape hiding in the shadows at a table with a large jug of wine before him, and thanked the innkeeper.
She was intercepted on her way to the table by a a drunken lout, overweight, overbearing, who leaned into her lecherously and blocked her way, standing too close.
“I like you,” he said, slurring his words. “You’re sweet.”
“Step away from me,” she said, her voice a low growl, her hand on the hilt of her weapon, “unless you want a taste of my sword.”
“I’ve got a sword for you to taste right here, girlie,” he said, grabbing his crotch, “and I bet you have a scabbard where it’ll fit just fine!” He reached for her crotch.
He never made it. Charlie grabbed his proffered hand and twisted it without putting any effort into it, and the man collapsed on the ground, writhing in pain, trying to hit her hand that was still keeping his wrist in an unnatural position.
“I’d force you to apologize,” she said, her voice even, “but I’d rather not hear your whiny voice. So listen to me well. If you ever try to touch me again, you lose your hand. If you ever try to talk to me again, you lose your tongue. In fact, if you ever try to look at me again, you lose your eyes. Nod if you understand.”
She waited patiently for her words to make it through the haze of pain enveloping the man, and when he nodded with an eagerness that almost made her smile, she let him go. She resumed her walk without looking back.
The man at the table wore a dark robe with the hood pulled down over his face, keeping to the shadows and away from prying eyes. He did not look up when Charlie reached the table, merely nodded towards the unoccupied chair before him. A serving maid stopped by and slid an empty mug in front of Charlie.
The hooded man reached for the tankard and filled both of their mugs.
“I’m not here to drink,” said Charlie, keeping her voice low, although there was no one around that could hear them over the din of the tavern.
“You will once you hear my tale,” replied the hooded man in a raspy voice before taking a large swallow of ale.
“You sent me the note.”
The man nodded.
“Well, I am here. Now speak.” There was an unspoken threat in her voice. She was Royal Guard, not to be trifled with, toyed with, or made the fool.
“I know of the plot against the King,” said the man. “The plot to seize the throne and bring about a new era of Darkness.”
“And how would you know about such a plot?”
“Because I was present when the Chancellor discussed it.”
Charlie fought to conceal her shiver. The Prime Chancellor—main advisor and minister to the King, an ambitious man with a ruthless streak that even the King thought needed reining in. And yet King Altobar still sought the Chancellor’s counsel, for when tempered by common decency it was good counsel, and the King was unabashed in giving credit to the Chancellor for many of the successes of his reign.
In their many sessions discussing and imagining and theorizing over the possible forms that the plot against the kingdom might take, Charlie and her fellow Royal Guard knights had often found themselves drawn back to the Prime Chancellor as likely to be at the heart of the plot, only to fail to see how the Chancellor could pull it off.
“And how does the Prime Chancellor intend to effect the overthrow of the King?” asked Charlie. “Where he to kill King Altobar, the throne would go to Princess Helena. And were the Princess to be eliminated, the court would revolt if the Prime Chancellor sought to take power, and the cousins to the King would step in to claim the throne themselves. There would be war, and the Prime Chancellor would be hard pressed to come out the victor.” Charlie paused, thinking out loud. “Unless the Prime Chancellor allied himself with one of the factions in line for the throne. But I have difficulty imagining that those factions would seek him out. He has not much to offer, and he would be the prime suspect in any assassination attempt. No, too risky. The Prime Chancellor is too careful a man to entrust his fate to such uncertain odds.”
The hooded man shook his head slightly. “Indeed, and his plan is not so complicated. He aims to eliminate the King, and allow Princess Helena to take the throne as legitimate heir to the kingdom. He will simply make sure that she is his puppet, there to do his bidding, so that through her he commands the will of the army and the allegiance of the governed. The Prime Chancellor will be quite literally the power behind the throne.”
Charlie scoffed, though she felt cold dread course down her body. “Nonsense. Princess Helena would never go for that. She is too strong willed to allow herself to be manipulated. She loves her father, and would seek high and low the perpetrators of his death and have them disemboweled in the public square. And that is before even mentioning that she reviles the Prime Chancellor, and would probably cast her accusing eyes in his direction the moment she received the crown.”
It was no secret to anyone in the court, least of all to Princess Helena herself, that the Prime Chancellor fancied the Princess. Which in and of itself was no surprise, as everyone in the kingdom fancied the Princess—she was smart, beautiful, and with a sweetness and a purity of heart to make a prioress blush. But the Princess would not give the Chancellor the time of day, making her feelings about the King’s minister exceedingly clear.
“I have but one word for you, Lady of Artagnia. Sorcery.”
Charlie was listening.
“I was privy to an exchange between the Prime Chancellor and a Dark Mage, a minion of the Dark Lords who owes a debt of blood to the Chancellor. The Chancellor asked him for a philter that could be used to control the Princess, to make her submit to his will, to make her docile and obedient, and the Dark Mage produced such a fiendish elixir, telling the Chancellor that the Princess, upon drinking this liquid into which the seed of a man had been mingled, would forever be in the thrall of the man who was the source of the seed. And so the plan is for the Chancellor to contrive for the Princess to drink the draught before killing the King, leaving him in control of the new Queen when she takes the throne.”
Charlie completed the thought even though the hooded man did not—the Prime Chancellor would also use his power over the Princess to share her bed. She shuddered. Sorcery. From a Dark Mage. She could see it. It could work. Would work. She was shocked, her mind whirring trying to find a way to stop the nefarious plot from coming to fruition.
She needed a drink. She chugged her ale, trying to clear her thoughts. “When is this meant to occur?” she asked, slamming the mug down, getting ready to act.
“As you know, the Princess is away in the Northern Domain until two days hence, but I expect the exchange to occur then.”
“Unless the Chancellor dispatches someone to give the Princess the drink in the Northern Domain.” Charlie was thinking out loud.
The hooded man shook his head. “As you said yourself, the Chancellor is a careful man. He would not leave such an important part of the plan to an underling. He will want to direct the action himself. He will want to pour the potion into a drink offered to the Princess himself. He will want to be on hand to ensure that she is the one drinking it, not anyone else.” He paused, letting his words sink in. Then he added, in a voice so low Charlie had to strain to hear. “At least, that would be the plan, if not for a little detail...”
“What’s that?” asked Charlie, leaning over.
“Well,” continued the hooded man, his voice still low, his head bent down, “our dear Chancellor’s plan will suffer a slight setback when he notices that his potion is missing.”
Charlie frowned, as a wave of nausea swamped over her. The whole room seemed to be swimming around her eyes, and she had to grip the table to keep herself from falling over.
“You know,” said the hooded man, straightening up slightly, “you should probably thank me for that. The Chancellor might still be able to obtain a new philter, but this will give you and your friends time to deal with him.”
“What... what...” Charlie was still gripping the table, which was the only reason why she was not reaching for her sword to run it through the man before her. “What... what did you do to me?”
“Fed you the potion, of course, my Lady of Artagnia. I am curious—how do you feel?”
“I’m going to—”
“You will do nothing.” The hooded man’s voice was now sharp, while he still kept his voice low. “You will sit at this table and listen to me, without moving, without trying to escape, without trying to bring undue attention to ourselves. Say ‘Yes, Master’ if you understand these instructions.”
Charlie, whose nausea had subsided almost as quickly as it had arrived, wanted to scoff at the man’s remarks but found herself unable to do anything but look at him and say, her voice clear, “Yes, Master.”
The hooded man laughed softly. “Oh, sweet, sweet words! How lovely to hear them from your lips, my lovely doll.” He looked at her square in the eyes for the first time since she had arrived, and she finally could see his face in full, and had she been able to gasp she would have done so with the shock of recognition. Rochefort!
She could not move. She wanted to, wanted to twist her sword out of her scabbard and run it through the vile man sitting before her with a self-satisfied grin across his features, wanted to crush his skull with the jug of ale by her left wrist, wanted to choke the life out of him by grasping his neck and squeezing until his eyes popped out of his skull. But her body did not obey her will. She remained motionless, sitting straight, listening to this man whom she had sworn she would kill.
The Count of Rochefort, knight in the Prime Chancellor’s personal troops, the Dragoons of the Imperial Kingdom, who had been a thorn in the flanks of the Royal Guard for years now, always up for mischief, and quite unrepentant in his abuse of authority, enjoying a near-immunity conferred by his association with his powerful overlord—The Count of Rochefort, who had had his eye on Charlie ever since she joined the rank of the Royal Guard, was sitting before her, grinning, milking his triumph for all it was worth.
He stared at her for a long time, not saying a word, drinking his ale, while she sat there, unable to move, unable to hide from his piercing gaze, unable to wipe the smirk from his face.
“You have no concept of how pleased I am that this potion worked as the Chancellor had hoped,” he said, finally deigning to speak. “It truly warms my heart. You have been playing hard to get for too long, my lovely doll. You have resisted my advances, persistently, stubbornly, and gave your affections to that dolt of Athia. But no more. Tomorrow, you shall be mine.”
Rochefort finished his ale and stood, much to Charlie’s surprise. Even though she could not say a word or make a movement, he could read her surprise as if she had gasped.
“Oh yes,” he said. “Tomorrow. I want to spend the day tomorrow basking in the knowledge that you will be mine, savoring the anticipation for the release will be but that much sweeter.” He leaned down so that his face was inches from hers. “For, you see, tomorrow night, you shall join me in my chambers after the evening meal. You will make yourself beautiful—you will wear something pleasing to the eye. You will come to my chambers and seduce me, do your best to make me take you, own you, possess you.”
His breath was hot on her face, and she could not move her head to avoid it. Again, it was as if he could read her thoughts in her eyes. He pressed his face closer. “You should count yourself lucky—tomorrow, you will be the concubine of the Count of Rochefort. Lady Charlotte of Artagnia, royal knight to King Altobar the First, and pleasure girl to the Count of Rochefort. It has a nice ring to it, do you not think? Personal pleasure girl.” He laughs. “You will never speak of this, or of our new relationship, to anyone. To everyone but me, you shall continue being the Lady Charlotte of Artagnia that they have always known. You will not try to hurt me or escape from me. In fact, you will try to protect me at all costs. And you will terminate your relationship with that fool Athia. You are mine, now. All mine.”
As he leaned over to whisper in her ear, he could not resist the temptation and grabbed her breast through her tunic, squeezing hard. “In five minutes, you will be able to move again. And before you leave, make sure you go see that nice man to whom you were exceedingly rude before you came to me, and give him a nice kiss so that he can forgive your rudeness. And take that as a prelude to your new life, in which you will be a lot more agreeable to your admirers.”
He kissed her on the lips, surprisingly softly, before straightening up and heading towards the exit, the noise of the tavern wrapping around him like a blanket. Charlie was left alone, her mind churning, unable to comprehend what had just happened to her.