the haunted kingdom by Charles E.J. Moulton (snow like ashes txt) 📕

the table. Her parents noticed it the next morning only because of the ooze of hard liquor from her breath.
Her affairs were equally legendary. Being quite a tease and very ripe for her age, she mostly got what she wanted. She looked 19 at age 14. The fights she had with her parents about this behaviour were legendary, all over the country, and the girl would shout at her father to stop ruining her youth and “Let her be”. In fact, she said that so often that it became a catchphrase among the locals. She would shout it at anyone who disagreed. King Bertrand, otherwise gentle and kind, would start to yell and Gertrude would have to intervene and calm them down.
Sometime in 1391 the state that Lucinda was in – the state of sexual promiscuosity and practical jokery – had turned wicked. Sieglinde and Alex were now proud parents and living at Iuventus.
Prince Alex was being tutored in the ways of a king, as he was to succeed his father the following year, a father whose health had turned bad due to an accident whilst riding around the grounds the previous spring. He could no longer do any good as a politician and knew that his smart and gifted son could do a better job.
Lucinda’s concentration turned to Alex upon that day when this succession was announced. The future king promptly received sarcastic remarks from his younger sister and even was provoked into brutal fights. King Bertrand was now suddenly treated with love and warmth and she would make him dinners and rub his back and Gertrude had to pull her daughter back in order to get her away.
Two things changed that year, according to Belinda’s father: Lucinda’s relationship with her family and the potency of her fury. She had grown a lot angrier and was now playing tricks on Maria, for instance, Maria always made sure that Lucinda was out of the house before coming out of her room. Auntie Lucinda, only nine years older, had yet only dropped frog’s eggs into her shoes and ants into her nightgown. In 1391 the tricks she played turned intricate, complicated. She would build machines in order to make a trip and invite archenemies of the royal house to visit and spend the evening making love to them. She would rip off Maria’s clothes and force her to stand there stark naked watching them make love. There were torture tools and hot buring candles and sticks.
This went on into 1392 when the incidents preceeding the event that shook the empire twisted into visciousness. When Alexander on his birthday succeeded his father on the throne, he made a decision to lock Lucinda up in a separate wing of the summerhouse after she had been caught planting poisonous lizards in her mother’s bed. The decision was highly unpopular and made Alexander a much suspected man, but as the summerhouse was large and the attic far away there was no fear of escape. This was what he thought.

Monday, September 23rd, 1392 A.D.

The doors to Lucinda’s prison room had been bolted and local guards were stationed outside the door day and night. She had a separate closed garden on the roof for recreation and a separate music ensemble that was there to give her joy, separate cooks and even separate maids. The horror that these people had to endure was first known when one of the cooks escaped on the day of the famous fire. His name was Gordon Rumus. Much later it became known that this had been the father of the deliveryman whose horse had been injured in the crash back in April of 1422. That year, Alexander had bought a bolted prison wagon in case of an emergency with Lucinda. He did not know why, but he would find use for it one day in the very close future. A big entourage of guests was at the summer house to celebrate the birth of Princess Morgana and the party was in full swing when Gordon came down to the bottom floor bleeding, rose thorns stuck into his body. He was running into the reception hall telling the guests that Lucinda was holding a black mass up there with him as a victim. Alexander and five other guests ran up and broke down the door, found Lucinda pouring herbs and serums over a few of the maids. All of the guards barged in and were accused of neglecting their duties. They claimed not to have heard anything and didn’t feel responsible for the havoc. Everyone but Lucinda was given leave and the guests were kept away from all of this, taken on a tour of the grounds by Rolf’s father Olaf. Five men, all senators from the Parliament, walked up to Lucinda’s attic. Together with Alexander they chained Lucinda to a chair and threw her in a cage originally designed to hold merely a medium sized parrot. A stack of bibles was thrown in and a prayer was yelled. The men then ran down and waited for the guests to return. When they did, the feast continued. People sang and drank, ate and joked and there were even two or three pairs that disappeared into back rooms to make love.
The second warning shook the manor around mid evening.
Sieglinde and Alex had been talking to Gertrude and Bertrand about having the old guest house, The Rose, renovated when a great crash shook the mansion. The six men who had chained Lucinda to the chair ran up to the attic and found Lucinda fallen over inside her cage. She had been chewing on a bible. Around early nightfall all of the guests met for supper and everyone seemed a little morose about what had happened, but by mid nightfall Alex was already telling stories that made everyone laugh. Peter, Laura and Barbara sat next their brother and were especially happy that their king was happy again. The proud parents smiled all through the laughter and the joviality.
When the party was at its peak with everyone laughing and performing charades and lewd imitations, Lucinda was there and smiling at the edge of the table with Gordon’s head in her left hand. She had apparently broken out and knocked him down, beheading him with his own sword. No one really knew what happened after that, as it all went very fast. Lucinda sprang around on the walls and tables, grabbing torches from the walls and setting things on fire. Alexander tried to grab her, but she was too fast for him. She called him an old man and knocked him over, hurting his knee and presenting him with a life-long wound that would hurt him until his death.
Soon enough all hell broke loose and the summer mansion was evacuated with a crowd of people out on the lawn crying and gasping for air. The house was burning down steadily and soon enough there was not much house left to rescue. The whole sky was full of smoke that day, or so they said.
At one point, Alex had vowed to rescue his siblings but had seen them drop into oblivion three stories down in a hole that Lucinda had made in the floor. They died in the fire. In spite of this, Alex vowed to count the survivors and it was made clear that somehow Alexander’s three siblings had all died in the fire. When that was clear, Bertrand fell apart and started weeping and had to be taken home and nursed by Gertrude, who did her best not to cry, although her heart was aching.
As soon as the guests were on their way to the various guesthouses and the guards on their way to try stopping the fire where they could, Alexander took the injured Lucinda by the hair and locked her up tied to the wall in the back of the wine cellar of Main Iuventus.
He rode by himself to town and ordered the Royal Senate personally to arrange a carriage and a driver who was willing to take Lucinda to Nocturania and leave her there in custody with King Henry John, but in the meantime it was clear that Lucinda had started gnawing on her ropes. By the time Alex was back Olaf was dead, strangled by the ropes and Lucinda was crouching over Olaf’s son Rolf ready to kill him. A driver was already there with a carriage. The carriage was no good, so he pulled her into the stables and threw her into the multicoated prison carriage that he had bought that year. Alex ordered the driver to leave for Callenia. When she had turned around to face him and told she would return he told her that she would not have a chance because she was to be beheaded across the border. But a month later, it had been told through a message that was brought to the castle by way of a dove, Lucinda was on the run. The Madeleine-Scandal that almost ruined the kingdom before Patrick’s birth, the second of the problem children, gave Alex his puritanism. When Belinda finally was born it was obvious that it was a victory for Alex because of the great difficulty that Sieglinde had in bringing the baby to the world.

Thursday, June 4th, 1411 A.D.
Iuventus Sacrum, last day of childhood peace

Iuventus Sacrum was and always had been the palace of sacred youth. In that respect, the little girl named Princess Belinda Winsletenna of Clurafar was its’ prime representative force. She was a sacred little girl. Not in her holiness. She was a feisty little thing. She was honest. Moody, I’ll give you that. But honest and fair was she. She was true to everyone but herself.
She was ten years old today and had been treated with custard tart, chocolate spice cake, pumpkin pudding, rosemary truffles, raisin bread, rosemary lemonade, apple nectar, marzipan juice, fruit pudding and mint cream.
She had cheated herself to taking this walk alone and now she felt guilty about that.
The royal princess was walking among the sunflowers on the field west of the grand palace. The sun up in the sky was about two hours away from its’ zenith and the sunflowers that filled the field to the brim from hill to hill made Belinda rejoice.
As her presents had been so countless that she had spent four hours this morning discussing with fifty courtesans what each and every present was and how much she liked them. Yes, the teddy bear had real diamonds as eyes. How impressive. That bell was solid gold. That was fabulous.
A boy five years her senior named Thomas Count of Barnesworthy, Tom Barnes for short, had been assigned to protect her by her father. Her dear father was constantly afraid that something would happen to her, even though Belinda had insisted she needed just a moment for herself. Tom had accordingly followed her and she had told him that she wished to be alone now and that he could amuse himself otherwise among the poppies and she would come there in an hour or so and get him and then they would go back together to the palace and pretend that they had been together all along.
Tom Barnes was not happy about it and did what he was told, albeit against his will.
She was happy though to be alone, since there had been only weeks ago that her father had notified her succession to the throne. She was now a crown princess, a fact that sort surprised her. Was she smart enough, pretty enough, quick enough, nice enough, hard enough to be queen? According to everyone, yes. Maria had given her the assignment after careful consideration, because she felt that she was not good enough or