†
England was weakened by over a century of war on foreign soil. Often lacking the resources to make good their temporary sieges, the English were sometimes overrun by the persistent French, and despite having higher quality troops, there was one such prolonged battle at Calais in which Mary Barnes, daughter of the Earl of Oxford, was taken hostage. Mary was to be ransomed back to the English.
It was sometimes more profitable to ransom prisoners of sufficient means than to execute them, an ever increasing phenomenon of the times. Mary fell into this category as her father was not only with significant resources, he was a very trusted captain to the King of England himself.
Prior to Mary’s ransom, however, a young knight who’d tended her capture fell in love with her. Lamond DeBourbon, a knight of substantial means, paid her ransom, thus quelling the disparity between the sides. It was not only a kind move, it was politically very savvy.
De Bourbon married Mary Barnes and inaugurated the joining of a very powerful French-English lineage. Establishment was set on both soils, and the French lands became the royal house of Bourbon in Orleans, south of Paris.
Lamond DeBourbon was, in fact, related to the king of the French throne. So DeBourbon exercised tremendous power in his domain. He was a good and brilliant man but suffered from episodes of mania. Nevertheless, his domain flourished and grew.
The son of DeBourbon and Barnes’ marriage, Philippe DeBourbon, eventually married English nobility, and so English blood on French soil was even more firmly cemented in Bourbon. The familiar insanity perpetuated itself, however. Overall, rule of the domain was like oil in water, most often run with an iron fist. The Bourbon castle boasted soldiers and archers in excess of five hundred with cannon all around. The surrounding villages were taxed heavily but well protected. The commoner’s belief system became one of, We will thrive…or else.
The Bourbon estate also paid nicely to the papacy in Rome such that the dominion did not fall too heavily under the scrutiny of the church. In fact, the castle grounds also boasted within its confines one of the largest, most ornate churches in northern France, and the castle itself was magnificent. The surrounding countryside was fertile and rich with resources, and despite the harsh inflexibility of the ruling family, Bourbon flourished.
Eventually, the castle was ruled by Antoine de Bourbon III, who married the daughter of the first Duke of Lancaster, perpetuating the Anglo-French rule. After two sons died in infancy, they finally raised a third son, Adorno Benedict Antoine de Bourbon IV. Uncannily, he held remote patriarchal characteristics, and…was also born insane.
Like the first DeBourbon, Adorno was vibrant and animated, quite small and effeminate with a shock of snow-white hair, though he was barely twenty-two years old. His thin, transparent lips held no color, and when he smiled, it was unreasonably lopsided, revealing a sharp incisor on the left side. His nose was long, narrow, and hawk-like. He was most resembling of an adolescent, albino gargoyle as one could truthfully imagine.
The young ruler to be was the only surviving son to a depressed mother and biologically insane father. Poorly managed, he watched his father endure bouts of depression and mania and grew to resent his mother’s perceived weakness. She seemed to mourn the loss of who her husband used to be, while Adorno was only repulsed by his father. Once, the young ruler entered to discover his mother cutting herself, a gesture of control that the young Adorno was both intrigued by and struggled greatly with.
After having a dream that he killed his mother, a dream that disturbed him a great deal, he attempted to connect with her in a very unusual fashion. He cut himself in the same way he observed her do but was immediately repulsed by the pain. Next he cut a dog and discovered that he very much preferred inflicting pain to receiving it.
Vanity ruled Adorno to a great extent. When his favorite horse—an exquisitely beautiful creature—injured itself, he ordered the animal destroyed even though the injury was entirely cosmetic.
Adorno was also an autocrat to excess, insisting upon lavish banquets, ceremonies, and balls at every turn. There was no detail or expense spared on the Bourbon estate, even when the surrounding village suffered. As he matured, the young Adorno’s reputation for extravagant affairs with bouts of sadistic and vicious cruelty surfaced and became widespread. Stage presentations of the rape of virgins were horribly realistic, and there was a canyon dubbed Prey’s Tomb—an overlook that more than a few of the victims had “accidentally” stepped from.
He also exercised increasingly torturous punishments for the inability to pay taxes. These punishments were immeasurably and publicly cruel at times, seldom fitting the crime. The head of the household might be left blinded or with one or more limbs amputated, leaving the surviving family indebted to the estate for several generations, never to escape serfdom.
The horrible taxation effectively added to the dynasty’s landholdings, but the price on the public humor was not without great damage. If ever a man was hated—truly and deeply hated—Adorno was, and deservedly so.
His lurid career as the only living heir to the Bourbon dynasty gave him tremendous power. When his father finally became afflicted with terminal, intermittent fevers and bouts of hysteria, his parents receded into nothingness, allowing the young man to assume power and flex his authority without obvious notice.
He swiftly rose to power and, despite his youth, made many of the important, though not necessarily prudent, decisions of the estate. His wealth was so old and ran so deep that it afforded his rule much stability despite his excess and poor choices. It was as if Adorno had bred Gomorrah with Elysium, and the offspring was his kingdom.
However, personal safety was another issue altogether. He was extremely powerful and wealthier than most kings but ill liked by even his closest acquaintances. One day, when the young ruler insisted that he would like to ride amongst the corpses of Prey’s Tomb for “entertainment,” the first attempt was made on his life. And it might have been successful had he not dropped the plate of food and the dog gulped it up.
The assassination attempt affected him greatly as he realized he was no longer invincible to the whims of others, even those he believed he might trust. He believed there was no safe council within the entire Bourbon estate. And if he was to be assassinated, a distant and probably English relative would assume dominion—a thought which infuriated Adorno intensely. He obsessed himself daily with these two fears, that he would die and that an Englishman would consequently rule his realm.
Adorno was not stupid; he knew his vulnerability was from within the confines of his heavily guarded estate. On several occasions more, even the food tasters had died from poisoning. The loyalty that existed amongst his own army was imposed, not earned. He realized he required protection, constant vigilance—a bodyguard. He also knew that there was no man amongst his ranks who possessed truehearted allegiance to him. His protection must from without. It must be bought.
There was a man who could be trusted to supply such a bodyguard and only the best. He was not an easy man to enlist the service of, but Adorno had a vast coffer of wealth and resources. He knew that gold could buy practically anything in any age.
This man had the reputation of supplying the deadliest man for the job. The man was Phillippe Censoire Benage Duval or, as anyone who knew of him, simply Duval—King of Mercenaries. He was wicked of his own right, and his mercenaries subjugated all others. Adorno coveted the thought of having one of Duval’s mercenaries as his new bodyguard and would stop at nothing to acquire him.
Assembling his knights, he ordered, “Prepare my carriage and an entourage with two hundred of my best soldiers. I wish to go to see this Monsieur Duval, and I don’t want to be intimidated.” As he spoke, he squinted, scrutinizing his well manicured nails at arm’s length.
“My lord, you would leave the estate vulnerable if you secure such a traveling militia. It is nearly half your entire army.” The man who spoke was Swiss, a pikeman who’d joined the French army as an infantry man. He was a good soldier and had risen in the royal army despite his lack of privilege or nobility. Now he was employed by Adorno’s family and trustworthy to a fault, although not adequate as a bodyguard in Adorno’s opinion.
“Silence, you idiot! I know what I’m doing. You will enlist the peasantry to protect the vineyards and secure the forefront of the walls.” Adorno sneered, his eyes mere slits as he peered sideways at his offender. “You will do as I say!”
His first officer objected meekly. “But my lord! You cannot take the peasants from their tasks. They haven’t the training or the time. It is planting season and…” His officer paused. He was a righteous man, employed by a tyrant but with integrity nonetheless. “My lord, forgive me but they must work to feed their families. They are not soldiers, my liege! I sincerely implore you.” Jamner tried to temper his voice with kind persuasion as he appealed to his master with palms up.
Adorno walked leisurely over to his first officer and spoke slowly as he circled him, hesitating as he walked behind him. The bigger man stood at grave attention as Adorno sniveled, “You dispute me again, Monsieur Jamner?”
“No, my Lord, I simply wish to—”
For a brief moment, Jamner did not even feel the sliver fine, double-edged rondel slip between his ribs. Instead, he felt his lung catch and fail to inflate, the agonizing shift of his heart to one side as the lung collapsed. He clutched his chest.
“Good…because I cannot trust a first officer that argues my every order.” Adorno murmured sweetly as though to a lover. He never hesitated. Turning the blade, he buried it to the hilt and caught the master vessel from the heart. Horribly, Adorno was familiar with anatomy as he had a personal hobby of human dissection, even sometimes when his victims were not altogether dead.
Jamner faltered and immediately collapsed, falling to his hands and knees, his head rolling forward. A frothy red meringue erupted from his mouth and nostrils, and he plunged face forward, shattering his nose as his face planted squarely onto the granite floor. The good man shuddered and twitched. It was a remarkably quiet affair as his body instantly and silently bled into itself, the life spark fading rapidly. It was alarmingly simple and utterly obscene.
Adorno was enraptured, could not take his eyes from it. As the man fell he allowed the body to pull itself from the blade. “What’s that?” He sneered under his breath, holding the blade up, studying the crimson coat it now wore. “Nothing to say?” As if satisfied with the way the blood appeared, almost as transparent as a fine ruby on the delicate steel of the weapon, he answered himself. “Good.”
The crimson made him think of her—specifically her lips. He walked deliberately over to his second officer, ignoring the final death throes behind him. Holding the blade delicately between his thumb and forefinger, he looked up into the face of the trembling, new first officer. Jamner breathed his final breath only a few steps away as Adorno slowly wiped the blood from the knife onto the cheek of the standing officer.
“Now, Monsieur Moulin, you would not question my authority? Would you?” He said it sweetly, in almost a child’s voice as his eyebrows raised, and he cocked his head lightly to one side. With a sudden, slight flick of his hand, he removed the blade from the man’s cheek, leaving an ever so delicate slice.
Moulin’s own blood beaded bright red from the tiny wound and dripped slowly, mingling on his cheek with the darker red blood of the dead man. “No, my lord,” he whispered. “I would not.”
“Good…then do as I say,” he hissed. “Assemble my traveling party.” Adorno turned briskly on his heel to return to his bedchamber. “And bring Nicolette to me.”