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

there.
After all, the eager young lady was always moving about, asked to speak at the most incredible occasions. Even the stuffy old Senate wanted her opinion from time to time. She even stuck her nose into affairs that did not concern her: But only because she was genuinely interested in it. Morgana did it because she was horny. Belinda had a mind beyond her groin. Any way one saw it, at those spontaneous occasions the orchestra was quickly assembled for an equally spontaneous run-through. But that was a hard way to rehearse.
Belinda was quite mobile and could be back any minute. Where Morgana fenced mostly with her sister Patricia, Belinda rode, and vice versa. They were both fencers and riders. But their personalities were both different. Belinda moved, a born rider. Morgana did most of her moving in one place at a time, usually stationary and on her back. Bantrard laughed at that idea. But he would never say that to his majesty or her, although she wouldn't mind. He would in fact be fired if his majesty knew that he did more than play her ditties and jigs over at The Rose. There were twenty of these guesthouses, all named after flowers, all housing kitchen staff and thermal baths, founded by Queen Lucia a few centuries back.
Morgana hardly ever left the house except for three reasons: men, flensing and stately visits. That was mostly for male reasons. Anything in pants that moved was hers to own at least she thought so. Belinda used her charms in other ways. She was faithful to one, Steven, even when he was away or she was. When someone did not want her to join a conference or speak at a mostly male dominated arena, she used three things: her regal position, her intellect and her cleavage. These things got her what she wanted. When creating a wedding opera for a future queen one did not write a tragedy. Laughing was important. It was then hard to make something worthwhile. Bantrard thought a story that was all positive about the girl and portrayed her well at all times was very action-less. But Bantrard thought the result was compelling.
He knew Belinda quite well by now. He had seen her in action for seven years. So there were jokes at her expense and jokes about her that were touching, funny, or complimentary. The story was just a skeleton. A vehicle for the actual true motive: Look at the ingenuity of our future ruler! The Resolvation Aria was sung after L'Orfeo turned out to be the evil Butler Lorf, which was a joke at Rolf's expense. It was widely known that Rolf had always had a crush on Belinda and said that he wanted to marry her one-day when she was an adult. When the wedding was announced he said nothing but ‘Oh, well. My chances are lost!' That line was in the opera as well and it would go down well, even by Rolf, who knew how to laugh at himself.
But the aria had to be the final grand triumph of feelings bottled up for the entire evening, right before the coronation. He had tried it at least fifteen different ways but it always ended up sounding heavy and tired. Maybe the tempo had to be changed? Maybe he needed a break. He walked out of the room and went for a walk in the garden.

Meanwhile in the royal palace garden

In the garden this royal lute player met Louis and Geena talking to Alex who was sitting by a table under a tree with Belinda and Sieglinde with a dark middle-aged man that must’ve been Mormidar, the king of Hispania, who was living in The Lily. His ancestor Luisa, who had married into the Prosperanian royalty, had designed these twenty guest houses and given them themes such as the sunflower and the rose and everything in the houses, including the staff, fitted into the category. It was obvious that his wife was still in the house. He was quite muscular and short, but his face was strong and stern and he was telling Alexander a story about his suit, a blue and red satin one with a cape that stuck out against the white garden furniture. The man next to him was a man that Bantrard knew from sight. He had been here before on numerous occasions. It was Ulfaas Nordhjiil, the minister of commerce. Belinda was with him. Geena and Louis were standing politely and nodding at the story Mormidar was telling them all. Louis held a rose and Belinda smelled it.
Sieglinde was entranced by Mormidar’s looks. The meeting had gone very well yesterday. Theo had come riding in a flurry ten minutes before Belinda was ready to take off and told her that the Senate had agreed to pass the medication law, that would grant legal physicians rights to use herbal treatment on wounds across the country, which gave Belinda time to prepare the meeting with the representatives. Her father had arrived separately and impressed them all by telling them that he would grant each country full import/export rights and access to merger dealings, which meant an open trade zone within the eleven countries. Belinda had impressed them with her immense knowledge of each individual national legal structure.
Belinda had only first today met Tom, having been in the Senate until late in the evening and it had been very nice to see him again, if a little awkward.
“Hello, Bantrard!” Mormidar smiled, interrupting the story he was telling his audience.
“Your Majesty! What a great honour to have you here!”
“Play something for us, Silvermoon!” Alexander said.
“What would you like to hear?”
“Anything you fancy!”
The lute that had been hanging on his back was brought to his front and his hands grabbed the instrument and started plucking the strings while wandering round the table. Alex indicated to the two empty chairs and asked the gardener and the cook to sit down. The tune was Hispanic and the theme Prosperanian. The verses, just as the melody, were old and one of the first he had written back in 1411 after the incident at Rigor Mortis. It was a sonnet for vocalise and quill plucked lute in D – minor.
It was ancient Wandiffian, Alexander claimed, or so Bantrard had told him. Wandiffian was the predeceasing language that inspired Prosperanian and its origin’s were unclear, only that it had its origins in Latin, Celtic and Germanic lore. The words meant: “He who excels above everyone” and it was a phrase paying homage to the greatest of angels.

ANGELIC HERITAGE
Sonnet for vocalise and quill plucked lute by Bantrard Silvermoon
IN THE KEY OF D-Minor

In a land before time,
It was told, in rhyme,
Two angels wandered Eve’s City.
From their purified glow
A splendour did flow
That was made of angelic pity.
The two brothers they sought
What was true and was nought
Over land flourished sky over sea.
What they created they gave
To the cowardly and the brave
To the elderly and to the wee.
Hway-Le-Vay! See-Ay-Sihl-Iyeh!
A victory for Galilee!

“Our land it lays blessed
With riches caressed”
Gold and myrrh were the treasures.
Though it was sought,
What the victory brought
The people they loved them, these pleasures.
Hway-Le-Vay! See-Ay-Sihl-Iyeh!
Regal purity’s inside a king’s mind.


“For we all know the truth:
The real kings they soothe
They work as angels on earth.
Which Prosperanian knows not how,
that upon regal brow
Is a glow of angelic mirth.”
We all know the truth:
the kings they can soothe
The gentle, the worried, the kind.
And when a king lives when he knows that he gives,
The good spirit rules the weak minds.
Hway-Le-Vay! See-Ay-Sihl-Iyeh!
Regal purity’s inside a king’s mind.

So it was clear in the end,
That the angels did send
The Good Kings to rule the earth.
When the ill will can’t win
The ancestor will begin
To in passion and pride conquer sin.
Oh, Way-Leh-Way, See-Ay-Sihl-Iyeh.
The angels they are smiling at their kin.


Belinda smiled at Bantrard and said it was a song that he had played all through her teens. She had been so influenced by the idea of these angels fighting and the good one winning that she had spent hours sitting by the waterfall oasis with her stallion and between skinny-dips thinking up angelic stories and writing them down once back in the castle. She even had pictures of angels in her bedroom, drawn by the former royal painter John Eric Penderesci.
She had, under his guidance, tried to paint herself, but had never really managed. Sieglinde disagreed and said she was a great painter. Geena agreed on that. Louis had to ask what was being said and Ulfaas had to take him aside and hold him with his large hands and tell him.
Louis’ face lit up and he smiled at Belinda, who smiled back.
Ulfaas told the a story of his childhood and his nanny who used to tell him how angels actually showed themselves to help you by ringing a bell somewhere, so you could know they were there. Mormidar smiled at all this and added that Silvia, his wife and queen, was an increadable fan of angelic literature, primarily the Hispanic Folklore, inspired by Moric tradition from the East.
Ulfaas and Alexander then got caught up in a discussion about how they better could protect the Britannic and Hispanic ships passing through their harbour. Belinda and Sieglinde took a walk with Mormidar, who insisted on being led by Bantrard, plucking on his lute. Louis showed them his rosebushes, the small pasture of sunflowers in the form of the royal insignia and the yellow and red tulips surrounding the fountains in the back. Geena served the men some food and wine and ended up meeting Patricia in the front playing Backgammon with Eleonore and sat down with them and laughed a while over Lancelot and Fabian’s antiques, imitating toads and turtles and snails and all kinds of animals they had seen whilst wandering in the forest with their wooden swords, pretending to be Prosparanian knights.
Tom and Steven came riding down the main path and instantly were met by two stable boys who took Steven’s grey mare Mercury and Tom’s brown stallion Cellaphere to the stables. Tom had been his friend since childhood and he had not seen the place for ten years. He was a chubby but quite handsome man with a wide grin and a gap between his teeth that always seemed to joke around. But only Steven knew that the surface of the joker concealed a frail heart.
He had met Belinda an hour ago under the birch, just before Mormidar arrived and the scene had been quite touching as Belinda realized it brought back memories that she had forgotten, or pushed away, because of what had happened back then. For some reason, Tom had been blamed for it.
He had been told to accompany Belinda to the sunflowers and had been jealous of Steven’s competition and left her. However, the truth had been Belinda had sent him away and when she was whisked away by the evil one, Tom was falsely accused and dismissed by an angry father. Not having contact for so many years had been bad for all of them. Belinda had loved Tom, even as a girl. Tom was three years older than Belinda and two years younger than Steven. Both men had the fastest booming careers in the Prosperanian military, literally working in the same circles for years without meeting until a conference in Daneland last year actually forced the meet. They had then started meeting and Belinda’s face this morning had brought tears to