To the Captain.
From Clare.
To HRH Valdmar Hesse-Kassel IV, By the Grace of God Crown Prince of the Danmarches, Lord o'er the Wends, Count Palantine of the Rhine, and Privy to the Sea.
From Andersen Sanders, by the grace of God his friend.
Greetings to you, and heart-felt condolences that your nuptials must be postponed due to a decline on the part of the bride. This I think is the problem with convent-bred girls: they are cloistered away from all the world including its diseases and so fall prey to ill-spirits as soon as they are let out. Which leaves you in a bind – to marry a fragile flower or your own cousin? Better you than me to make such a decision, my lord, and may God save your soul.
An hour past, we crossed the border of the Danmarches into Tyksland. My charge seems happier the further inland we travel and so for the time being I shall plot our course to be obliging. The rumours that reached us in Kobenhaven were correct though exaggerated. A few opportunists have set themselves up at the border claiming to be collecting crossing taxes for the Crown from all those defenceless and desperate enough to believe them. They are villains but petty ones – not the battery of mercenaries we heard tell of. Dealing with it I leave to your discretion, though a whole regiment of uniforms would put the fear of God in them most splendidly.
I should not really be so flippant about convents, we are in fact cloistered ourselves for the night. I didn't feel my usual style of haunt would be quite the place for my charge. A monastery too wouldn't be quite the place for a young woman, but the brothers became astonishingly overcome with charity when they were told it was a wealthy young lady who had undertaken a pilgrimage of silence. I am maligning the poor brothers inexcusably of course, and they gave me such a wonderful pint of their own brew too. I'm going to have to insist that you conquer just a little bit more of Tyksland when you come to the throne so that the brewery of Bier Abbey may become a national treasure of the Danmarches.
And I am filling up this page with nonsense and horsefeathers because I am trying to find something to say other than this is a fool's errand and I cannot serve you while babysitting a dumb mute. You know my thoughts on this matter, I retire.
.o.
A post-script for you, my lord, from your very own childminder extraordinaire (by luck if not skill). It happened, early this morning, that I was awake and looking out my window when who did I spy but our young female friend wandering about the abbey yard. So what, I ask you, could I do but follow her, self-proclaimed extraordinaire that I am?
The girl traipsed about in her usual fashion, peering at flowers and brushing her fingertips over the grass to test its softness. A bird piped up in a nearby tree and she ran to it, bobbing her head back and forth as though a bird herself, trying to catch a glimpse of it between the branches. She held out a hand behind her (in my direction though I had made certain she hadn't seen me) and after a few suspended moments, looked over her shoulder at me and blinked slowly.
The girl is more trouble than she's worth and what happened next was sheer dumb luck. I took her hand and hauled her back to the room she had been given – all the while praying that a brother would not come upon us and assume we had been trysting in the early dawn or something equally absurd – and as we were passing the kitchen, she stumbled. Yes, stumbled, did the girl who walks as a feather on the air, as light as only angels dare, something something where she chooses and I forget the rest. And what she stumbled upon was a skylark's nest.
It was well-disguised but somehow Angel Feet's said appendages found it. Upon the ground around it were worms meant to feed the babies inside but which had fallen short of their goal. In the nest also were a fortune of pretties that had caught the lark's eye, white gold and red rubies. At least that is what I thought at first, but such tricks the eyes and mind will play in dim light, they were only white leaves and red berries. Astonishing, for I never supposed skylarks nested so far south.
I shall end this missive here and hand it over to the brothers' most trusted courier. My best thoughts to you and your bride-to-be.
^Anders