Chapter 3: Cuthbart and Broder

In which the Galman princes return to Galma to face the music and encounter a person they did not expect to see.

Year 1017

But that first Galman trip to Narnia in over a hundred years had all been sixteen years ago.

Since then, there had been much coming and going between the larger land and the smaller island in the bight. And Aslan had still not deigned to pay Duke Magnis a visit, nor his sons. Not a tame Lion, Aslan clearly had his favourites and was content to let others continue making mistakes that would have lasting consequences for themselves and everyone else. Most unfortunate.

The grief that was felt keenly by both brothers was that their sense of entitlement had been challenged like never before. Duke Magnis with his form of tough fatherly love and overweening expectation had resulted in Cuthbart and Broder of Galma making royal nuisances of themselves following the end of the Golden Age.

Now that they had been released from the makeshift prison and were on a ship bound for Galma; without one of the thrones of Narnia under either backside, they were about to face the music. Cuthbart put his head in his hands once again and shook it, rubbing his eyes. He looked across at Broder, bleary-eyed and exhausted.

They had been kept in Beruna comfortably but separately, so they had not had much time to argue yet. And, now, released from the makeshift prison, they were on a ship bound for Galma.

So instead of one of the thrones of Narnia under either backside, they sat on the hard benches of the foredeck under the wintry sun, bracing themselves as the Splendor Hyaline rode the swell, the ship that had been gifted to Narnia by their own uncle, King Mardon of Terebinthia.

Broder shifted his backside miserably, put his head in his hands and tousled his hair for the fiftieth time that day. He shook his head, rubbed his bristly face and then looked across at Cuthbart, bleary-eyed and exhausted. He could taste how awful his breath was and was glad it was whipped away on the sea wind.

The ship rose up and down as it valiantly tackled the waves and a drift of freezing spray drifted over and hit them. They both flinched.

Then Cuthbart glared at Broder. 'If you'd only stuck your sword into our cousin from Terebinthia when you had the chance…' he began.

'And what the blazes was I meant to do?' interrupted Broder. 'Those slippery Naiads sent their slimy tendrils out and tripped me into the stream just as I was about to gore the bitch'.

'I thought you'd've picked a fight with her far away from water, brother-mine! You know the water sprites always took her side.'

'Oh, so I'm meant to anticipate every circumstance am I? I thought I did well to lure her into the thickets where no-one could see.'

'Where no-one could see?' retorted Cuthbart. 'It was Narnia! Every stump, stone, hole… and shrub, has something watching. Waiting to report back to that stupid Council of Legates! As I said, if it hadn't been for your blasted blunder, this would never have happened.'

Cuthbart was dogged on the point and serious.

Broder gritted his teeth. 'If father had stepped in and assumed Regency immediately, none of this would ever have happened, you mean.'

'Oh surely, just as he was off rebuffing those intrusions into the Bight of Calormen by relatives of Aravis Takheena disguised as pirates. He was meant to come back here and sort it all out was he? I don't think so Broder. That was a military as well as a diplomatic crisis. As complex as it gets. We were already in Narnia to do what we could and what he couldn't! We did what we could and it hasn't worked.'

'Oh, so you are prepared to be philosophical then… good.'

Broder spread his hands and looked across at the Earl of Galma with wide placating eyes. 'For my part, I am disappointed and embarrassed. Just as you.' He said this somewhat disingenuously, trying to soothe Cuthbart.

Then he overstepped his excuses. 'Anyway, if cousin Francesca hadn't come along when she did, I would have made sure I had my way with the little minx, whatever her name was… Acantha I think. And don't you worry, she was tapping her hooves for me the moment I walked into that inn. And her parents were all but begging me to spend some of my Trees there.'

Cuthbart was not to be appeased.

'What? Codswallop! Of course they wanted your money. You're a rich Prince and they are poor publicans. It was your libido that got us into this beastly mess and don't you deny it. I hope she kicked you hard with her hooves where it hurt.' He looked off darkly to the heaving horizon.

But Broder decided to not be goaded further. He suspected that Cuthbart knew very well that his groin injuries were only just beginning to heal. It was one of the reasons Francesca had been able to frog march him to the stream behind the inn in the first place and throw him in. And those naiads had not been gentle either. It was they who had taken him downstream in their icy clutch, in that cold water to Beruna. Brrrr. The memory still haunted him.

Instead he deflected.

'Oh… cousin Francesca! She should have been hung, drawn and quartered for what she did to me. Daring to be the self-appointed Marshall of the Council of Narnia. Was there any arrest warrant? And how about the way she treated you on the day we all chased the White Stag? There you were, the Earl of Galma, almost heir presumptive to Narnia, and she threw you into the mud when you relieved Queen Susan's skittish horse of her bow.

But Cuthbart was not falling for that false sympathy.

'Broder! You know I am the one carrying the heaviest weight of father's expectations. He will say I didn't try hard enough. But don't think he won't shout you down too. He'll try to grind both of us to a quivering mush with his eye. If he thinks I'm not good enough to be Duke after him, don't think you'll be the shoe-in.'

'Mother wouldn't let him!'.

'Oh wouldn't she? I'm not so sure about that. She's the peacemaker remember.'

Cuthbart maybe had a right to be furious with Broder, for Cuthbart had always carried father's expectations around on his shoulders most heavily. But he was also furious with himself. For if he had been able to play the game better and keep his brother just that little bit more under control, he might have had a clear path to gain one of the glamorous thrones of Narnia. And then Broder would almost certainly have been Duke of Galma with all its beastly duties. Groan.

And now, Narnia was surely not going to be welcoming either of them back with open arms after what had happened. There was that word 'treason' that Peridan had hinted at. How dare he!

So now, it looked like the heir would have the spare goading him for the rest of his life, unless there was some way of getting Broder married off to someone across the Eastern Sea. The Seven Isles loomed in his imagination, the lands of bamboo, silk, seaweeds, temples and hill rice. Yes, to some cousin of Daimyo Ichiro perhaps. Out of sight, out of mind. Hmmm.

Cuthbart put his head in his hands and just felt the swell, as they journeyed back to Galma. It would take all day and night. They were due in at Galma port at dawn.

...

Broder sniffed the sea breeze and looked up into the rigging and wondered if a runaway life at sea might be much better than facing his father.

The successful rebuff, auspiced by their awful cousin Francesca, had really blown their plans out of the ground. The wild card in the whole affair, she had proven that blood was not thicker than the water from a Narnian stream. After pulling him from that sportive nanny goat, who hadn't seemed to know quite which position to assume, Francesca had hauled him out by the scruff and then dumped him in the closest stream. Oh how he had howled!

When they had all been on speaking terms together, Narnia had been such fun.

Edmund, Francesca and Montague, the Marquis of Eastern Telmar had all become skilled hawkers and had trained falcons and whistling kites. Not the talking kind. Montague had even managed to half-train a Golden Eagle chick from the Archen Mountains in Southern Narnia that he had 'rescued' after he had shot both the parents just after the Disappearance. That had been the beginning of his fall from grace. Now it was fully fledged but still immature had taken to hunting domestic animals around Beruna. The Talking Eagles had had to take it under their wing, so to speak, so it was mostly likely not now accompanying him on the long trek back to the western border to Telmar, just as he and Cuthbart were heading to Galma. He and the minor Comptes had their marching orders.

Before the disappearance, Edmund, Cuthbart and Broder, along with the minor Telmarine Comptes, Corenian, Terans and Marcel, and numerous dwarves, centaurs and Narnian giants, had ventured into the edge of the Western Wild, and onto some high tors, seeking out the last of the White Witch's followers. They had had some success.

Corenian had even saved Broder from a werwolf bite by skilfully tripping the monster as it bolted out of a hollow tree, before lopping a foreleg off. That had been a fearsome sight. The poor creature had picked up its own leg, screaming with pain and terror and used it as a club on Corenian before Edmund had run it through with his sword.

Cuthbart and Francesca had joined Peter in fighting back the giants a few years ago and helped make a wonderful victory. They had both been knighted. And then eighteen months ago, in the middle of peacetime and the pleasure of the Narnian seasons, they had all been on the trail of the White Stag.

It was the heroism and brotherly alliance in the midst of grisly drama that had been their life blood. And a far cry from their stultified upbringing in Galma. But somehow, after the disappearance, it had all seemed to unravel.

The rest was history. Riderless horses. Empty saddles. Footprints disappearing into a thicket. Only the bow and quiver of arrows of Queen Susan still hooked onto the pommel of her brood mare. She had taken the horn with her and it was not to be found.

…

The next morning, the Splendor Hyaline pulled into Galma Port just after sunrise and Cuthbart and Broder were both rather relieved to see that their father was not there to greet them.

The rather grim crew of satyrs and sailors of Terebinthian and Galman origin who had become Narnian subjects, saw them unceremoniously down the gangplank and the two were left to their own devices. To trudge up the long hill to the keep, to face the music, or to find somewhere around the Port to freshen up, get some breakfast and delay the inevitable? This was the main question at hand.

But the choice was taken out of their hands. Just as they were about to round the corner into the high street up to the high keep, a short figure in a hood detached itself from a shadowed doorway on the corner and came towards them. There was something familiar about the gait.

'Follow me' it said, scuttling ahead of them by about ten feet. Several warehouses up the high street, the figure ducked up an alley and then under a portico. It reached up, opened a door and beckoned them inside.

Broder and Cuthbart glanced at each other and shrugged. They were easily able to defend themselves if it came to it. So in they went. The door was closed, an door opened and they were ushered into a room with light flooding in through a small window. And there, closing the door behind them, was their own sister Martha, just fifteen years old, pushing the hood back from her face.

She looked up at them critically and wrinkled her nose at their body odours, before clambering up onto a table and gesturing them to sit on chairs so their faces would be on a level, her short legs and arms completely out of proportion to her torso. They had not seen her since she was twelve.

'You two really have made such a mess of things', she intoned.

…