I did know Sir Donald and the Magus. I recall their arrival as if it happened yesterday. A herald showed up first. This was a good omen, for no one in our hapless town had seen a herald in five seasons. In fact, no one from outside Vallejon had visited our town in almost a year. No one except for beggars, that is.
There had been no contact at all from the throne for the last three years except for the tax collectors who showed up for our sullen queue before the crown coffers every autumn. Promises and projects did not interest us, for we had our own cathedral to finish. What did we care for royal highways? All they brought to our town was a crowd of beggars.
No one spent money anymore. The men in town with the heavy coffers had once met other men at the public square and haggled over papers and coins in the courtyards from sunup until twlight, but now they kept shorter and shorter hours all the time.
So when a stout gentleman in fine garb showed up at the Red Shield to spend the night, word spread quickly. No one had seen s stranger with money in so very long.
The man said that he was a herald and refused to deliver his message to anyone except the mayor. We offered him beer and pie while the mayor was summoned. By the time Mayor Andrews arrived — at a gallop, cane and buckles, but without his fine hat or his stick — the entire town knew that a nobleman’s standard had shown up in the hands of a herald, and such a crowd had gathered that a way through had to be opened.
I was with my father and mother. Coming from across the stone bridge, we were too late to hear any of the conversation inside the inn. Too many people were already at the open windows and door. The herald, we learned from whispers, had paid his keep at the inn with gold sovereigns, put a coffer in the keeping of one banker, and set a bag of coins in the hand of yet another coinmonger. A house was already being prepared for his nobleman’s arrival. A wonder, we thought.
The herald conferred with the mayor inside this very tavern under the flag of Vallejon — that one over the fireplace, there. The mayor received his copy of the announcement, marveled at the ancient seal, and broke the wax. The crowd hushed, waiting as he read in silence. Of course I did not see these things happen, but I was told about them after.
“A counter to the coup,” my father said. “Or something like.” My father was possessed of a conviction that the lineage of our young Prince Alba was suspect, and therefore he was due for bloody replacement at any minute.
Mother asked father: “Oh! Now, who do you suppose will rise up? That elder King who has gone out to pasture?” She was referring to the father of the Prince, who had abdicated in defeat. “It’s a foreign war, husband.”
I was old enough to be conscripted. Mother had always hated the wars. So many young men had been marched off to defend the kingdom from the Satraps of the East! And now those young men returned to their native shores and wandered the cities, many wandering as far as our little town looking for scarce work. Peace was the prince’s policy, and mother approved of that, but she worried about those young men.
“There is no honest work for them,” she often declared. “They do nothing but march about with useless writs of discharge in hand. Nothing for them to do but mischief.”
War, my father held, was an excellent thing for the character of young men and nations, but bad for business. He dismissed her worries about war. We were of the burgher class, he reminded her, and I was therefore under no military obligations, for he had paid good coin to the realm for my release from them.
“Two hundred sovereigns,” he said. “I need his legs more than Alba needs a soldier.”
Mother had sent gifts of pie and cake and even a dress to the barber’s wife for his help securing my writs of incompatibility with the hardships of service. I wasn’t the only son in town with the same story to tell.
Our family’s fortunes had suffered along with everyone else’s. My father’s business was ailing; farmers planted less than they might; there was enough food, but there was precious little exchange of money. The reasons…I beg your pardon sir, but they were never quite clear to any of us, here.
The farmers of Vallejon blamed the bankers for calling in mortgages and denying credit.
The town bankers blamed the bankers in the capitol for closing off credit.
The bankers in the capitol blamed an inexplicable crash of accounts.
With every man coiling around his every coin like a snake, no one responded to bills of order anymore. It was coin on the barrel or Devil have you.
My father tried hard to understand these things and explain them to me in detail. What I understood was that fewer men showed up at his mills with less grain than before, forcing him to make layoffs.
Father and mother stopped talking when the mayor emerged from the doors of this establishment into the square. There was a din of ptalk but it ceased the instant the herald rang his bell.
Such silence followed that from a distance of fifty paces, I still heard his throat clear.
“O yea, o yea, o yea!” He began. “Stout citizens of Ingenoco! Prasie God, be it known that tomorrow evening shall bring the long-delayed return of Sir Donald, House Peronus, Hero of the Wars, General of Armies, Protector of Vallejon, and Slayer of Dragons, to this esteemed town of his ancestors.”
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Osborne Ink to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.