A Scholar's travels with a Witcher

The girl was alive. You could see her chest going up and down as she was breathing. But at the same time there was an atmosphere around it all that reminded me of being at a funeral, or at a wake.

I'm thinking of that moment when you're standing over the coffin, or the sarcophagus or next to the funeral pyre. Everyone is standing around in reverence to the very sincere and very real solemnity of the situation. It was like that. She was alive, definitely alive, she was warm to the touch and now that she was warming up in her newly provided clothes and under a blanket, her breath was steaming in the air. But it was as though she was dead.

It was still close enough to my fathers death and funeral that I was starkly reminded of that. But it wasn't me that was grieving. There and at that time, Kerrass had been there to support me. Now it was my turn to support him.

His face was unreadable as he stood there. Some sunlight came through some of the windows, those that weren't completely overgrown, and it caught his face at odd angles. I have recently had the opportunity to go back and read some of my earlier chronicles of my travels with Kerrass and one of the things that I remember saying at the time was about how mythic he looked in certain circumstances. About how you could imagine painters studying his likeness and putting it on canvas, about how stonemasons and carvers would spend hours looking at him and trying to capture the air of danger, of heroism and professionalism. All of those things were still true but now, as he looked down at the face of the woman that he loved, he seemed the most human to me. He looked old, very old and immensely tired.

“Can I...” My breath stuck in my throat. “Can I get you anything?”

Kerrass shook himself.

“No,” He said clapping me on the shoulder. “No you can't.” A slow and sly smile crept across his face. “Not unless you can somehow make it so that it's my kiss that will suddenly wake her up. Or you can wave a magical wand and make it all better again.”

“I think that's a little bit beyond my talents there.”

Kerrass shrunk a little.

“I thought so, I'm sorry.”

“What for?”

“I always forget how hard it is to stand here, looking down on her like this. Every time, I forget and every time it's like, I've had my heart ripped out again.”

I nodded. Several things came to mind in the way that they do when you're trying to console a friend or even a stranger through a loss or through a hard time. I wanted to tell him that I was there for him. I wanted to tell him that I cared and that she would wake up some day. I wanted to help share the load in some way.

I wanted to tell him that I knew how he felt.

But I didn't. How could I possibly have known how he felt.

I decided to go with truth.

“I want to say something that would help you Kerrass. I'm stood here trying to figure it out. But everything I think of sounds like a cliché at best and bullshit at worst.”

“I know Freddie. I know.” Kerrass sighed and rubbed at his forehead. “And I appreciate the effort. I really do.”

“Do you want me to leave you alone?”

“Would you mind?” Kerrass looked at me sadly. “I've got some things to say, little rituals you know. I need to tell her some things.”

I thought of the way people sometimes visit crypts and graveyards to visit and talk to dead friends and family.

“Of course. Kerrass. I'm going to be exploring and looking for some things.”

Kerrass nodded. “Remember what I said.”

“I know I know, be back in the kitchen by the time night is falling. Bring the stuff I need....and so on.”

“Fair enough. Probably rations tonight but I'll try and go hunting tomorrow. There's normally some boar living near the castle, the Kings old hunting ground.”

“How long do we have?”

“Before we have to leave. The dragon is the thing. The dragon will come by in a couple of days. If it's not already on it's way.”

“A couple of days. Not a lot of time.”

“It will have to be enough. We can always take things back to the village and work on them there.”

His voice sounded absurdly hopeful but I could feel our positions reversing themselves with regards to our optimism. Kerrass had been the one who had said that he wasn't as confident that we were going to get anywhere. That we weren't going to achieve anything, where as I had been the one with the new theories that I thought might mean that I could get things going again. That I could make headway in a puzzle that had been driving much greater minds than mine crazy for over a hundred years.

But now?

Now I was standing in a derelict castle that was being claimed by the elements and by nature. And suddenly it seemed an impossible task. Where was I even to begin?

But right then and there, none of that was important. Kerrass was in front of me and I had promised him that I was going to try.

So try I would.

I agreed that we could always take some stuff back to the village and I set out.

I had the map of the castle and I had some ideas as to where to start looking.

I also needed to be looking in places that no-one else is going to think of, or particularly go for.

I was reassured by the fact that there was one large room that was labelled as a library which suggested that the castle as a whole valued the written word which was important. That also suggested that there would be quite a few cases where the keeping of records would either be mandated or encouraged.

The other thing to think about was where the most information could be gathered in as short a space of time as possible.

Two or three days was not really a long time to be trying to figure out one of the greatest mysteries that this particular corner of the world had ever seen.

Context is King. I wasn't going to figure out anything without knowing what else was going on in the castle.

I also thought that the dairies of important people were not that reliable as sources as Kings and Queens are always very aware of their own status and as such have a tendency to not write anything down for fear that it will fall into the hands of their enemies.

Inconsiderate bastards.

Don't they know that some day a historian is going to come along and wonder why they were declaring war on this person or that person?

The same would be true of higher level courtiers. I had come across various studies and courtly documents in my time as a student, where pages had been torn out and entire sections destroyed to prevent them from being used as a weapons on the political battlefield.

But there is also one other truth that I hoped would be usable in this situation which was that wherever you are in a castle. Especially as royal and wealthy castle as this one. You are never further away than 10ft away from a servant or a guard.

Just try it. Have a look around the next time you find yourself in a working castle. Not so much a manor house but a working castle. There will be a servant or guard in your eyeline. Or a guarded door. Or a servants entrance.

Being in power means that you get used to them being around. Even if you are polite enough to thank them for serving your food or taking away rubbish. There is also, often, a page or squire standing or kneeling nearby so that they can catch any problems that might come up and anticipate anything that might go wrong.

These people have ears to hear and eyes to see. They are also trained to be silent and not heard. You don't see

them, but they can see you, hear you and are trained to remember things that you have said over time in an effort to provide things that you might want.

The other thing is that the entirety of our civilisation is built on the fact that, you don't see them. Out of sight and out of mind is a common saying. For you, but also for your enemies. They think of who they can get to and influence amongst your nearest and dearest. But a gold coin in the hands of the girl who comes to sweep away the ashes in your fireplace? That kind of thing could topple nations.

It has too.

Over and over again I would come across it in the libraries of the university. Small diaries of small servants that historians read and then use that to become aware of what was going on behind closed doors. We look at each other and shake our heads saying things like “imagine if King What's-his-name had known that?”

Servants are the lifeblood of a castle. Servants and guards.

So I strode off to the servants quarters and the barracks. The guard rooms and the back stair cases where men and women waited in case their masters called for them.

I also went to the library for a look around with my lantern in case I was being too clever for my own good.

There was always the possibility that I would spend my day crawling around long deserted footman quarters while in the castle library there would turn out to be a specific shelf labelled “Castle records as kept by the guards captains and chief servants since the founding of the Kingdom.”

Stranger things have happened.

The truth was somewhere between the two.

I got all excited when I walked into the servants quarters, found that bit which was an office that looked astonishingly like my fathers office back at home and there was a book lying there in the open. The page that was open was unreadable but I was expecting that. Imagine my excitement when I turned a couple of pages over to show a thin hand with a lot of ink splatter and tracery which suggested cheap quills and cheaper ink. It also had the rounded lettering which always, and I do mean always, suggests that the writer learned their letters later in life.

The book, although huge, went back a couple of months. That meant that there would be other books.

Here's where it got a little disheartening.

I spent some time exploring and I found the servants records room. That room displayed the butlers records, the cooks records, the guards records and log books. So many books. That there were so many records spoke well of the castle.

But that there were so many was a little bit....

Daunting. I'm gonna say it was daunting.

I took the most recent books down and spent the rest of the afternoon stacking up those volumes that I wanted to examine as well as searching for those volumes that would be relevant to those times that I was interested in. Namely the times when the princess was conceived, born, named and her sixteenth birthday.

Then the early evening was spent carting the volumes down to where our camp was situated. More than one volume fell apart in my hands but I was having to work a lot faster than I was, at first, happy with.

Ideally I wanted a team of people, students working and carrying and cataloguing, carefully carrying the books from one place to another with someone else taking notes of those facts that I thought of as important.

Fortunately I was invested in the project otherwise it would have been a lot harder.

I sat there, cross legged with the books in front of me along with my note-paper, peering from one book to the other, and then back again. Having to force myself to be gentle with the paper and not frantically scrabble from one page to the next in my efforts to get at the correct piece of information. As it often does in these kinds of situations, time seemed to get away from me. I have dim memories of Kerrass passing a plate of food across my face at some point. I don't know what it was but I must have eaten it as the following morning revealed several dirty plates and things near my work area.

I slept a little bit and went off to look at the royal bed-chambers in the morning. Kerrass was off somewhere, I have no idea where but that was probably for the best.

The royal bed-chambers only gave me a little bit of information but that, in and of itself, was significant.

There was only one royal bed-chamber which suggested that the King and Queen slept in the same bed on most evenings. For those people who don't come from noble backgrounds, that is unusual. Markedly so.

I remember once asking my mother why this was the case. Regular readers might be aware of the rather complex nature of the relationship between my Mother and Father but she raised an interesting point. She told me that many people see it as a sign of wealth and status to have separate bedrooms. That villagers and townsfolk often don't have the space or the money to have separate beds and as a result they sleep together, for warmth as much as anything. Nobles have the luxury of space and as a result they sleep separately.

There have since been other social things that mean that people have separate bedrooms. Sometimes it's because the marriage is one of convenience and separate bedrooms are necessary to preserve the image of peace. Sometimes it's necessary as the two people have significantly different habits to the other.

But to see a shared bed chamber was rare.

The bed was ruined, the wood had been hacked apart, presumably by looters, and the bedclothes had obviously been torn to pieces before the dust and the rot had set in. There was also the splintered remains of a woman's dressing table and a man's desk as well as a couple of chairs. I pushed my foot through them to see if there was anything that might have been interesting to me but not to a looter.

No luck.

In the corner was the corpse of a woman. I crouched next to her. Many of the corpses that there still were in the palace looked as though they were still in the position that they had initially fallen asleep in. They were lying in place, often slumped or with their heads pillowed on their hands or whatever nearby flat surface was available. This woman looked as though she had been tossed aside. Her clothing might once have been rich although there were many parts of it that were torn. Again, I am aware that assuming things is a dangerous habit to get into when you are a historian but I was lacking in time so I assumed that people had searched her clothing for jewels or the metallic golden or silver threads that can be taken from a rich persons cloths. Also any jewellery had been taken as well as there were signs that her fingers had been broken to get at rings. I thought of who could have been in this place. I tried to picture a maidservant or a lady in waiting. But there were no other bodies so it seemed that these were probably the remains of Queen Leah.

No way for a Queen to end. No way for anyone to end.

She looked brittle and I didn't want to disturb her in case I did more damage than was necessary.

All cupboards and shelves had been swept clean. Empty potion bottles, broken brushes and other pots and things littered the floor and crunched underfoot as I moved towards the woman's dressing table. There was still that sickly sweet smell that always put me in mind of my sisters dressing area and alchemical shops.

I did find one book in the corner of the room. It had fallen, the spine cracked and so once again I assumed, (My tutor at Oxenfurt is going to be so cross with me when he reads this) That it had been thrown aside by someone. Carefully I checked it to find that it had the symbol of the prophet on the cover. So some kind of holy book then. Again, not to presume anything but I assumed that it was the Queen's. I took out a small knife and poked at it to see if there had been anything in the spine. But I was disappointed.

I moved on.

I found the King's private study. Behind his own private dressing room, which was not small, there was another room that you entered through another door that looked as though it could be locked by key. This was a hundred years ago so now, locks are becoming increasingly affordable thanks to the increased availability of dwarven and Gnomish mechanisms. But back then, a lock would have been a sign of wealth.

The door opened easily enough and I guessed that others had been there before me. It was an odd kind of a lock in that it seemed to automatically fall into place whenever the door was closed. So it needed forcing from outside the room unless you had the key.

The key was easy to find however as it was around the neck of the lone remaining occupant.

The King was at home.

But his office was a mess.

I nearly despaired then.

It was a smallish room. There was a large window that faced out onto what must have once been a garden and what little light there was, shining through the dirty windows, gave the room a feeling of hopelessness. The room was lined with shelves that once must have contained books, scrolls and all kinds of written paraphernalia. There was a large desk, a fireplace and a single chair.

The corpse that was easily recognisable as the King due to the richness of the cloth, dyed purple with fur linings had, I assumed, (there's that word again) been sat in the chair when he had been found. Looters had promptly tipped him out of his chair and onto the floor to make searching his body and desk that much easier.

There was not a single drawer, nor a single shelf that had not been ransacked with the papers and contents having been tipped out and crushed under foot by the many people who had since come here in an effort to try and find hidden valuables. The common curse of the historian. True value, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. I guessed that the luxurious clothing that the King wore would have been worth plenty to the right merchant but it had been left, ignored and trampled into dust while the maps and the papers had been similarly destroyed. Local collectors, indeed the university itself would have paid a fortune for any of these things.

So there's a tip for those people who go into buildings looking for treasure. If you find a room full of scrolls and books that looks as though they haven't been disturbed in ages. Take those instead. I guarantee that you'll find a buyer. I understand that they're heavier and bulkier than jewels or gold but when you're the second or seventieth looter, you take what you can get.

But at the time, I despaired. I was suddenly certain. Absolutely certain that the answer to all of my questions was in the detritus that had gathered on the carpeted floor. But now it was faded and ruined beyond hope of recall.

But I had promised Kerrass that I would try so I went to work.

My predecessors had known their job well though. I carefully went through, lifting and moving things aside carefully. Most of the books were ruined into crumbling messes. Scrolls were torn or unreadable. I did find several bundles of what looked like correspondence that had been tied together tightly with string. Some of them looked as though they had been damaged by flames as well, as though they had been thrown into the fire but at the last second they had been rescued before the damage was irreparable. They were so tightly packed that I hesitated to pry them apart with my fingers. That would be a job for a careful hand and a knife in a properly lit room. There was plenty of stuff here. But it would take me months to sort out this room alone.

I had a couple of days.

I sadly departed the room and went up into the upper parts of the castle, the private servants quarters.

It was plainly obvious from a lot of them that these were just interchangeable beds where people would go to sleep. There were no signs of personalisation and I was forced to assume (and again. I know, I know. But I remind you of the time pressure that I was under) that most servants lived nearby and that these beds were for the servants of visiting dignitaries. There were very few places where there were any signs that someone had a permanent place to stay and those that did, I couldn't find any signs of kept diaries.

The other problem was that the higher rooms were also less stable than the downstairs areas.

I resigned myself and took what prizes I had and returned to our camp-site.

Kerrass was back in the throne room. He looked as though he was tidying the place up a bit. He'd lit a whole bunch of candles that he had dotted around the rooms and was doing things like putting flowers in pots. As I peered in I could hear his voice as he was talking to her.

I decided not to disturb him and got to work back down in the Kitchen.

Kerrass came back some time later.

No I don't know how much later that was.

“How's it going?” He asked.

“Fascinating stuff.” I said without looking up. “Do you know how much it takes to feed the household cavalry?”

“Not a clue.”

“I do. I also know how much that all costs. How much silver polish and boot polish they use. And all of that doesn't count towards the rest of the garrison which are fed out of a different system.”

“Ok?” Kerrass prompted.

“If I had showed Father these ledgers while he was still alive, flame rest his soul, he would have shat himself to death over the amount that they were paying for a particular type of flour. Not general flour because that was being dealt with under a separate account. But special flower to make special bread for the Kind and Queen's private breakfast. That and the fact that they paid money. They actively paid money to bring in manure for the Queen's rose garden.”

“But they had household cavalry.”

“Yes.”

“So wouldn't they have just used horse manure.”

“You might have done. I would have and so would my father. But here it would seem that the Queen had decided that the best kind of manure for her roses came from a sheep farm in the southern part of the kingdom.”

“I didn't know that sheep manure had that much of an effect on the production of roses.”

“Neither did I. Apparently it's not sheep dung though. The farmer has a pair of horses to cart his stuff to market. Those horses produce the best kind of dung.”

“The things you learn.”

“These people had so much money that they were literally throwing it away. I don't know how much Redania's total war chest was during the course of the last war but it can't have been small. But these people spent more money on the preparations for the Princesses sixteenth birthday celebrations than I ever saw while I was working for the Quartermaster general during the war. This is insane.”

“Royalty.” Kerrass said it with a shrug.

“That might be true, but if they'd harnessed that amount of money and turned it into a plan to conquer the continent then we wouldn't be living in a Nilfgaardian empire at the moment and instead it would be in their Empire.”

Kerrass grunted. “Have you found anything else?”

“Not particularly, I'm still building a general picture of the events leading up to the curse being cast and enacted and the events leading up to the birth of the Princess.”

“That sounds like a lot of work.”

“It is, but at the same time I do have one advantage.”

“Which is?”

“That we know when her birthday is. Not her naming day which is when the curse was first cast by the Sorceress but her actual birthday. We know that she, and everyone else, fell asleep on the day of her sixteenth birthday. It's worked into the words of the curse. So then we work backwards from that and we get her birthday.”

Kerrass nodded.

“That means I know, or can figure out where all the major players were on the day of her birth.”

“Is that important?”

“It might be. I think it is though.”

“Why?”

“Because she's the catalyst. You see, I'm struggling to believe that this curse has anything to do with the Princess. I think that the Princess was the spark that lit the fire but I don't think that she's the root cause of the problem.”

“This is because of the “hate” question again isn't it.”

“It is. Yes. Try as I might I just struggle to believe that a person, any person regardless of magical power or race or anything else could summon enough feeling to hate a baby enough to cast a curse powerful enough to all but destroy a Kingdom.”

Kerrass' mouth quirked towards a smile. “I think that might say things about you more than what it says about other people.”

“Good things I hope.”

Kerrass smiled in response.

“But anyway.” I went on. “I can appreciate general prejudice, hating other races or class structures or employment classes or the children of someone else. But that level of hate must have been powerful.”

“You are right. Anything else?”

“Yes. Two questions. In the morning could you take me to see the notary?”

“The what?”

I took out one of the maps I'd found. And unfurled it for him.

“This is a map of all the various “royal” businesses. I found it in library. These are all the places that can call themselves “The royal....”whatever it is they were.”

“The Royal blacksmiths, the royal farrier.”

“Precisely. This place is a residence rather than a working castle like my fathers. All of the trade things were kept outside the walls. More proof that they had no intention of ever being besieged here. But the building I'm curious about is this one.”

I pointed and Kerrass frowned as he saw the labelling.

“The royal Notary?”

“Yes. They would keep all the stuff about royal decrees and things like that. Who owns what land, and which tenancies and so on.”

“I know what a notary is Freddie.”

“Just checking.”

“Why do you want to go there?”

“Because they might have papers there that might tell me more. Most of the books and such things have been destroyed in the castle as looters have gone through the place, tossing books and things aside which means that they're all damaged beyond easy recovery. Maybe they have more.”

“Alright. I'll scout it out and come find you once I'm sure I've got it down right.”

“Done. But I do have another question.”

“Which is?”

“Bear with me. The curse says that on the day of her sixteenth birthday, the Princess would touch the spindle of a spinning wheel and then die right?”

“Correct.”

“So where's the spindle? Or the spinning wheel? I've been looking for one and I can't even find the wreckage of one. According to this ledger....” I pulled a huge tome out from one of the piles that was next to my feet.

“The Kingdom paid another huge amount to import textiles. They did have sheep and exported the raw wool by the bale. But it was UN-spun wool. I expect that I'll find notes at some point that will declare that the King ordered all spinning wheels in the Kingdom destroyed.”

“Nothing wrong with that. It's what I would have done.”

“Me too. So where's the spindle that she pricked her fingers on?”

I rooted around in my pack and found one of the diaries of the knight Mannfred. “It says here that the first expeditions into the country after the curse had been cast found the Princess in the coffin in her bedroom right?”

“Yes.”

“Wouldn't she have lain where she fell?”

“I don't know. But that has been asked before.”

“I thought it might. So somewhere in the Kingdom. Someone was moving around and doing things while the curse was enacted.”

“I always thought it might be the casting Sorceress. Or one of the other seven that tried to mitigate the disaster.”

“That thought did occur to me and one of the things that I've been trying to figure out is where those other seven women went.”

“No luck with that then.”

“No. Not yet at least.”

“Right. Well I'd better let you get back to it.”

“Make sure I sleep tonight though.”

I spent that night with the bricks of tied together letters. I took my eating knife and sharpened it to excessiveness on one of Kerrass' whet stones and gently slit the string until it came apart. It was slow work, gently peeling them aside one by one and carefully putting them to one side. I lit more candles to see by despite my fear that that might dry the letters out and cause them to crumble. Already some of them were destroyed in my haste.

They were love letters.

They were secret, I could tell that much. They weren't addressed by name to anyone. For all I knew they could have been written by the King for someone else and he had never had the time or the courage to post them off. Or they could have been for the King.

They all seemed to be by the same person, a long flowing hand which suggested someone who did have a lot of practice at forming the words. I couldn't see many spatters of ink and few signs of blotting. The creases were also well worn in which suggested that, although they had been kept in a bundle for a long time, they had been often folded and unfolded.

So using some ball park assumptions. We would assume that the King would only rarely write something down because, as he was the King, he would have people to do that kind of thing for him. Therefore if he was writing private letters then there would be more signs of ink spatter or inexpert blotting. So I guessed that this person was writing to him.

So many letters. They weren't dated either but it seemed that they were old. Even older than the initial enactment of the curse.

I carefully set the letters aside, putting those letters that had more legible parts in between the pages of my notebook in an effort to properly preserve them and I turned to the two main logbooks.

If you allow yourself a certain amount of leeway to assume things where you shouldn't then you can actually learn quite a lot from these things. One logbook from the servants ledger and one from the captain of the guard. I had them both propped up in front of me as I would look at one and then immediately cross reference it with another. There were also many notes in the margin about some of the castle gossip that either the Guard Captain or the Master of the stores would consider important enough to put a reminder in

the castle logs about.

The King liked to think of himself as a man of the people so he would often go out for rides through the countryside which supposedly gave him an idea as to how the common folk were doing. This despite the enormous hassle it seemed to cause the rest of the palace staff as these expeditions needed to be sorted out so that there could be proper escorts that were provisioned and equipped. They also seemed to happen at a moments notice as well as the servants ledger had several comments along the lines of... “Had to equip a full patrol today as the King went off to tour the sheep farmers again. Came down for breakfast with his riding gear on. Wish he'd let us know in advance.”

Cross referencing this with the Garrisons ledger showed me that these trips happened regularly. Mess supplies down, perishable use up.

Equipment checked out...

Equipment checked back in after two days.

I could assume that the King would often be staying with someone, a gentleman farmer of some kind while he was out and about on one of these jaunts. The soldiers would end up sleeping rough.

Poor soldiers.

But then there was something else that caught my eye.

It was one trip that he had gone on, relatively close to the Princesses sixteenth birthday. He had gone out with fewer escorts. Less horse fodder taken out. Fewer soldiers in escort. There was even a complaint by the guard captain that he hadn't been consulted on this regarding the number of soldiers that had been taken. He was new to the job. You could tell because the handwriting had changed.

Ok. So if you allowed that when he went out on similar trips and he took similar numbers of men on these, smaller trips. Did he do it often?

I read back.

There is a trick here. The trick is not to get too excited in case what you are looking at turns out to be nothing.

The King had been gone for four days and had taken two knights with him as well as one squire who would take care of the three of them.

That was painfully small as a royal escort. Ridiculously small. Carelessly small.

I sketched back and I found three other trips in the couple of weeks that were legible in the lead up to the Princesses birthday. Before that it seemed that he had merely gone on his normal way with a full escort.

A bit further back I found the place where the new Guard Captain took over from his predecessor. The “old man” had retired it seemed, to a small place outside of the capital. Just before that I found a couple more instances where the King had gone out for a similar period of time only with much larger escorts. Still not the full royal escort that would be expected for that time and place but it was still larger.

I went back. The King did this regularly. Once every few months he would take a small group of men, was away for four days and then he would come back.

The largest gap between these visits was a year.

The gaps increased in number the closer I got to the Princesses naming day, the day that the curse had been cast. The day after the naming day, the King had departed on one of his four day excursions. When he came back, he waited for a couple of days before going off again.

He did that several times in short succession. He would go off, come back for a couple of days before setting out again.

There were no trips between when the Princess was brought home with her mother and the naming day.

Interesting.

I only had a few volumes the other side of The Princesses birth. Far enough back to assume that I had the details of the days leading up to the conception.

The King was often away before the Princesses birth, travelling the lands. We knew already that he was searching for a way to help the Queen give birth.

The practical side of me suggested that being away all the time was not a good way to ensure that you would conceive with your wife.

A thought occurred.

The pair of them had problems conceiving. We had the certainty from multiple sources. So was the problem on the male side or the female side?

I tried to find any details regarding bastards on the fathers side. Had he accidentally knocked up a peasant girl or anything?

But no. I couldn't see anything.

There were comments on the question of the Queen's fertility. But there was no evidence of her taking a lover or coming to some other kind of arrangement to conceive with a strapping stable lad.

(This arrangement is actually a lot more common than you might think,)

But there was no sign of any constant male visitors to the Queen.

Nor had there been....

Nor had there been any physicians sent for, before the Queen abruptly declared that she was pregnant.

The date that this declaration had been made was quite prominent in both ledgers. The Queen declared that she was pregnant and wanted to go into seclusion almost straight away.

This was backed up by several notes from the various diaries that I had brought with me.

She declared her pregnancy and left with her closest ladies in waiting and had gone to one of the border forts where she could give birth in peace.

I found a map of the Kingdom and looked up the location of the border castle in question. It looked like a dreadful place, high up in the mountains with no soul around. I could imagine someone deciding that they wanted peace and Quiet but that seemed a little extreme to me.

Sure enough. The King had been on one of his private jaunts before the Queen declared that she was pregnant.

I sat back. I was tired and I had that feeling that I sometimes get. That feeling that there is an answer to hand. That I had a lot of the information now but I needed my brain to arrive there on it's own. I settled down to try and sleep. But it was a long time coming.

I did sleep. I know this because I woke up with Kerrass shaking me awake with his foot.

He beckoned me and led me up some stairs to a window on the second floor where he had cleared a part of the window and he pointed.

“See it?”

I peered through the gap. You could see the overgrown canopy of the forest and the thorns below me.

“What am I looking for?”

“You'll see it.”

“You're being mysterious again Kerrass.”

But then I saw it. Smoke. It was a long way off. Just visible on the edge of the horizon.

“I take it that that's...”

“That's the dragon. It's on it's way.”

“Lovely. As if we didn't have enough to worry about.”

Kerrass said nothing. Just staring off in the direction from which the smoke was coming. He looked haggard and as though his teeth were clenched. He looked like a man deciding that he had to do what he had to do.

“Kerrass, you're not thinking of doing something stupid are you?”

Kerrass shook himself as though he'd just been shaken awake. He looked very tired.

“I'm tired Freddie, I just need...”

“You need a nap is what you need.”

“There'll be time for napping later.”

“Well, you could at least have some breakfast. Come on. I've got some things I want to talk out anyway.”

“Have you found something?”

“To say I've found something is a strong. I just need a second brain, come on it won't hurt.”

We went back to the camp site where I started some sausages frying.

While they were cooking I showed him what I'd found in the two ledgers.

He looked up at me, something bright glittered in his eyes.

“So the King had a Mistress?” He asked.

“I think so, yes he did.”

Kerrass sat back. “I'm not sure how this helps us Freddie.”

“Because this changes the picture of events. It shows that what everyone has thought about what was happening in this Kingdom at the time is wrong. It didn't happen like that. Look...”

I pulled out my notebook.

“Things that we know to be true, versus things that we've only heard are true. Right?”

I made two little headings on facing pages.

“We know that King Stefan was a womaniser. We know he was the kind of man that fell in love with just about anything that crossed his path right?”

“Yes.”

“We know that he met his Queen, Queen Leah and married her. Then, to all intents and purposes his philandering ways were done. We know this because we have diaries that talk about it at the time right?”

Kerrass nodded.

“We know that it was several years before Queen Leah got pregnant. We also know that King Stefan travelled extensively in an effort to find medicine or method to help the two of them conceive. We also know that Queen Leah was not his type in that she was relatively plain.”

“All true.”

“What we don't know is what attracted the two people to each other in the first place. He was handsome, she was not. So how else do you become attracted to someone?”

“Money,” answer Kerrass.

“Cynical of you Kerrass but not unfair. Charm?”

“Humour, intelligence, at their level of social status then the rank, allegiances and whatever also have attraction.”

“Legitimacy,” I said after a moment. “He's always looking for a Queen but keeps finding some small fault in them. People and courtiers, maybe even his parents are always telling him that he should marry and settle down but he can't bring himself to marry anyone. This one is too stupid, that one isn't funny enough, that one is as boring as milk. So instead he changes tactic. Instead he finds a woman that he likes but is not necessarily someone he's attracted to. But we've got side-tracked. What do we know? what don't we know?”

“We don't know that they loved each other.” Kerrass said after a moment.

“We don't but I can't find another case of someone with whom he's had an affair.”

“All that that means is that he was faithful. You don't have to love someone to be faithful to them.”

“True, although your cynicism is showing again.”

Kerrass speared a sausage with his eating knife and started to eat it.

“This still doesn't explain to me why the knowledge that the King had a mistress is useful to us.”

“It's useful because one of the many things that we don't know is why the royal couple didn't invite the “evil” Sorceress.”

“I don't follow.”

“The King had a Mistress. Who was that Mistress?”

“Why is this important Freddie?”

“Because....” I stared at the ceiling hoping for inspiration. “Because I don't think this curse is about the Princess. I think this curse is to do with what was happening here in the lead up to her birth and naming. All the stories, all the.... the theories are about the Princess. Don't get me wrong, as the original damsel in Distress she makes for a compelling thing to hang the story off. It's also obvious that she's still here. She's still alive when everyone else is dead. But I don't think that she had anything to do with it. This issue was decided before she was born.”

“I'm not saying that you're wrong. It's a new way of thinking which I haven't heard about before. You might even be right. But how does that help us? And how does knowing that the King had a mistress help us.”

“Curses are driven by hate right?”

“Yes.”

“So why is there so much hate here? It's the one question that I keep coming back to over and over again. I don't know much about magic but that's a lot of hate to power this stuff. We know that Magic feeds off emotion. Glevissig's dying curse of King Henselt, Merigold's Maelstrom at the Rivian pogroms are both examples of this but both of those spells are dwarfed by what was achieved here. So what would cause this much hate. Especially as given that Glevissig's curse was cast with her last breath. Answer?”

“A jilted lover.” Kerrass leant forward.

“A jilted lover. That's why it's potentially important. If, as I suspect the reason that your, and other's true Love's kiss doesn't work on the Princess is because she's as much a victim of the curse as the others in the valley. It's because she's not the one that's cursed.”

“So we need to undo the curse on the King.”

“Or the Queen, the curse could just as easily have been cast at the Queen.”

“Goddess Freddie.” The Witcher passed me a sausage as though he was giving me something precious.

“So, we need to work from that angle. I've got a pile of love letters here that I'm picking apart slowly but I don't think that that's going to give us everything we need as they aren't named.”

Kerrass nodded. “Why the notary then?”

“We need to know more. I'm a hundred and twenty years behind the times here.”

“So what are we looking for?”

“Specifically or generally?”

“Both.”

“Specifically first then.” I pulled over one of my tracings of the map of the Kingdom that I had been making notes on so as not to ruin priceless antiques. I had marked buildings, roads and settlements on them. “You know more about this kind of thing than I do. The King would depart on a day before lunch and then be gone for four days arriving back in time for his evening meal on the fourth day. Assuming that, at most, he camped in the field for a night and arrived at his mistresses home in the early part of the evening on the second day. He spends the evening and night with her and departs for home on the morning of the third day. Camping out again and arriving back on the fourth day. How far could he have gotten?”

Kerrass took my map as well as the original and compared them side by side.

“How many men?”

I swallowed a piece of sausage.

“The King, two knights and a squire. Fully equipped and provisioned.”

Kerrass nodded, frowned and drew a shape on the map.

“Further by road. Not as far off road and over field.”

I took the two maps off him and put my tracing over the original. The shape that Kerrass had drawn was a lot like a starfish. The longer points of the shape were along the roads with the centre over the capital.”

“What I want from the notary is the land use agreements. Who lived where and what were they doing. As well as anything else that might crop up.”

“What do you think we're going to find?”

“I think we're going to find out that the King's Mistress was the “evil” Sorceress. I don't think she was evil. I think she was angry. They didn't forget to invite her to their daughters naming. They deliberately missed her off the invite list. I bet, that if we look far enough, we will find who owns which buildings. We'll even find out that the Royal couple tried to buy her off in some way.”

Kerrass nodded and climbed to his feet. “Better finish your sausages then Freddie. We've got work to do and a curse to unravel.”

“That's a bit more your department than it is mine.”

“True. The easiest thing to do would be to find the Sorceress and get her to counter the curse.”

“We still need to find out who it was. What if we can't find out who the Sorceress is? How are we going to fix the curse then?”

“I don't know. I have a few ideas. We could summon the ghost of the King and get him to own up I suppose. Or the Queen, Either way, we need more information. You were right Freddie, it is important. I should have seen that.”

“You were too close to it Kerrass. You said it yourself, a fresh pair of eyes.”

Kerrass grunted.

It was much harder going to get through the trees to where the notary was. It was not an established pathway and as such we had to go well out of our way to go round when in a straight line it would have been a lot quicker.

But on the other hand I wasn't dragging a reluctant donkey behind me at every step of the way.

So it was both easier and much harder.

We made it though and we had to climb up to the roof to get in as it was impossible otherwise. We levered aside some tiles and broke through easily enough before dropping through to what I guessed to be someone's bedroom.

Kerrass went first, jumping down, left hand on his sword strap, right hand cocked to aim a sign or draw his sword. He subsided and beckoned me.

“What are we expecting?” I joked. “You looked as though you were expecting monsters.”

“I always expect monsters Freddie. You know that.”

“I suppose so.” He went to the door and put his ear against it before trying it. “For the first time in a long time I'm feeling hope that we might be getting somewhere with all of this. You remember that thing about how one of the most dangerous parts of a hunt is afterwards when you start to relax and begin to think that you might be safe after all? That's how I feel today.”

The door opened out onto a landing. He signalled me to be close behind him as he tried the next door on the landing.

“I hope you don't end up being disappointed again Kerrass.”

“Oh, that's just it though.” Again he put his ear to the next door. “It's a new avenue. I can get a Sorcerer to look at it now. Even if we don't succeed here, I'll head north after this. Help your brother with his new holdings and use that fee to hire someone...”

He tried the door again.

“Locked.” he muttered, “Goddess Freddie but I feel better than I have in years.”

He pulled his lock-picks from his belt.

Yes, the Witcher carries lock-picks. Precisely for this reason. In learning about or investigating a curse, sometimes you need to go and look at what's behind closed doors.

“You're welcome. Just promise me that you don't intend to suicide when you get your results.”

Kerrass looked up at me from where he was kneeling next to the lock. “Why do you say that?”

“I don't know. Just the way you were looking out at the dragon fire this morning. It made me think that you were going to try and kill it, or let it kill you. You looked so tired Kerrass.”

Kerrass grunted before bending back to peer at the lock.

“This place has that effect on me. I hate myself for what happened here and thinking I could have done something to stop it. Before you start, I know all of the logical reasons about the decision and why what happened, happened and why I let it happen. But that doesn't help. Because it assumes I'm thinking logically.”

The door popped open with a snap.

He straightened and turned to look me in the eye. “I know all the reasons Freddie,” He pointed at his temple, “I know that those men could have cut me down between them and the Princess would still have ended up raped. But...”

He touched his chest over his heart.

“But I don't know that. I don't feel that. I could have done something. I should have done something. To do nothing is cowardly.”

“But to do anything is futile, I know the old argument. But you did do something. You lived to fight another day.”

“Ah that old lie.”

“It's a good one though.”

Kerrass shrugged. “I'm not convinced but still. I'll let you off for now. Shall we?” He gestured at the door.

“We shall.” I nodded.

Kerrass went first. We didn't expect trouble but he wasn't given to bouts of carelessness.

It was a records room that would have made my father proud. Indeed it reminded me of his office in many ways. Small cupboards and small chests of drawers filled what space there was. In more than one place I could see that the shelves were stacked, the one on top of the other. All labelled with fading bits of paper that you could still see words on if you squinted hard enough and held it so that what little light we had could shine off the ink on the surface. A huge map covered one of the walls, It showed the Kingdom as was, considerably larger than I had previously thought that it might be. Each of the different holdings was marked in different colours so it reminded me more of a patchwork quilt rather than a map.

I rubbed my hands with glee.

“What you were looking for?” Kerrass asked.

“That and more Kerrass that and more.”

I had a small bag with me and lay out the maps that I had and started to examine some of the cupboards. Many of them were locked with extremely old locks that must have been incredibly expensive at the time. Nowadays the locksmiths art is all about making the locks smaller and smaller but back then I supposed the very act of having a lock at all was a sign of not inconsiderable wealth. Kerrass indulged me by unlocking some of the larger locks before going off to explore the rest of the house.

The entire room was so well ordered that it almost brought a tear to my eye. I absolutely intended to find out who had lived and worked here and tell Marion all about them so that some kind of memorial could be made towards this person. Everything was labelled and even better. It was indexed as well.

To make matters even more exciting, the index made sense.

Those of you that don't have an academic background or have never spent much time in a library will not understand how momentous this was but believe me. Somewhere there is a very small group of people that are shaking their heads in amazement.

As a result. I found the land registry almost immediately.

A large leather bound book. It was old, dusty and well worn. I had to open it carefully as may of the pages seemed as though they wanted to crack and crumble in my hands.

In the meantime Kerrass was working on the safe.

“Would it not be easier to have a look round and see if you can find the key?” I asked him without looking up from the book.

“Easier, probably. But not as much fun.”

“You have a strange sense of fun Kerrass.”

“It has been said before.” He grunted as the safe popped open. “Huh. More papers.”

“You were expecting something else?”

“I always heard that Lawyers were ridiculously wealthy?”

“They are not poor. Or at least the good ones aren't.”

“So where would they keep their money?”

“Kerrass. They're lawyers. What wealth they have will be invested.”

“True.”

He started rifling through the papers while I was still switching my gaze from the book to the map and back again.

“You were right,” he said. “Trade things, wood, stone and other things for construction work.” He turned some more paperwork and started chuckling.

“What is it?”

“Well I know what the answer is. People have always commented how rich this Kingdom was and thought that they must have had a gold mine or something. Turns out that they don't. What they have is a marble quarry.”

“That would work.” Again for those not in the know. Marble is well sought after for the construction of statues and things for artwork.

“And lots of other trade agreements.” Kerrass went on.

“You could probably take those papers and sell them for a fortune now.” I commented.

There was a brief pause.

“Do you know something Freddie? I'm not in the least bit tempted.”

I smiled a little into the book. “I'm not surprised.”

“The Princess will need these things if she's ever going to rebuild when she wakes up.”

“Getting hopeful Kerrass?”

“A little. I'm trying not to be but I can't help but think that we're on the right track.”

“I know the feeling.”

Kerrass went through the other locked cabinets one by one but, although there was plenty that would have been interesting if we had any other purpose. None of the things would have been suitable for us. He did find a couple of interesting things though.

“Look at this,” He pulled out a folder. Two thick pieces of wood sandwiched together pencil sketches of seven beautiful women.

“The “Good” Sorceresses?”

“Possibly, even probably. They're not labelled though so we've got no way of telling who the artist was. Or who the women were. “

“Keep it. The villagers will want them.”

“They probably will at that.”

“Do you recognise any of them?”

“Why would I know Sorceresses from the south?”

“Because you're a Witcher?”

“Cousin Geralt not withstanding. Witchers don't tend to hang out with mages, Wizards or Sorceresses except on a professional basis. Speaking personally, Sorceresses make me nervous.”

“Why?”

“They're always watching you. I always get the impression that they're thinking about what they could do with me to turn me to their own purposes. Always watching and thinking.”

He shuddered theatrically.

“How are you getting on?”

I showed him my map. “I've identified a lot of farms and noble manor houses within the King's potential amount of travel.”

“Any of them likely to be pseudonyms or held in someone else's names.”

“Not so far. All of the farms and manor houses seem to have been kept in those families for generations. What I'm looking at at the moment is this area here.” I pointed at the map on the wall. “The bit right up against the mountains. There's a few towers up there that I can't seem to track down. They were border forts or watch towers originally but a couple of them were sold off when that border was secured by...” I picked up a piece of paper. “By marriage of the King's Great Aunt. Part of the terms of that marriage treaty was that those border forts and towers would be...demilitarized and given to nobles on both sides. The Kingdom had expanded by the time of the period that we're interested in so the forts fell into disuse. There's precious little up there apart from mountains, trees and a couple of tin mines so it would be a good site for a person who needed hiding away.”

“Or required solitude.”

I nodded my agreement.

Kerrass stood back.

“What can I do? I feel a bit useless. Research is your thing. If there were monsters to track down or people to talk to then I could do that but instead there are papers to look at and books to flick through.”

“Here's a thought.”

“What?”

“If I were a Lawyer, or a notary or a solicitor. Or I was a particularly wealthy person.”

“You are quite wealthy Freddie.”

“Yes, well. The point is that I would have a safe for everyone to look at and say “ooh, that's a big and impressive looking safe. That must have loads of valuables in.” Then they would waste their time looking at that and breaking into that safe. In the mean time I would have another safe place. A hidden place where I would keep the really really secret stuff. The stuff that I don't want anyone to know about.”

“You want me to look for hidden compartments don't you.”

“I do, or bring me something to eat.”

I went back to work.

An hour or two later I had a pile of little scraps of paper all over that office, with labels and notes and thoughts when Kerrass came back in. He handed me a bread roll full of something tasty. Probably meat and some of the wild onions.

“You found anything? I couldn't see anything so I found dinner instead.”

“I have actually. I've found the name of someone who lived in one of those towers. Given to her by royal decree as a gift by the state.”

I handed him the royal parchment which he took rather gingerly.

“By the grace of the crown, the sun and the moon we, King Stefan, Fourth of that name and Queen Leah do hereby grant and gift the fourth border fortress, commonly referred to as the High Crag to The lady “Draig ddyn Hardd” whoever that is.” he read aloud. “We gift her this place for services rendered to the crown.”

“I wonder what those services were.”

“I think that might be telling. “She may use that place for her own purposes. All that is required is that the

“High Crag” be maintained for military readiness should the crown require that place again.”

“Outside of the villagers on the outskirts,” I began. “You probably know more about this place and it's history than any person alive?”

“Probably.”

“You ever heard of this woman?”

“No. Odd name as well. It sounds almost elven. At that time though, a woman like that would need to be married to be given something of that much worth. Do we know anything about High Crag, or “the fourth border fort?”

“According to this.” I pulled over a list of the garrisons and how they were provisioned. It was large enough to house and maintain a hundred soldiers, plus peasantry. Judging by the map it's the kind of remote outpost that would be really difficult to take. Not too large but no invading army would want to leave it behind them in case the garrison decided to sally out and wreak havoc on the supplies. I once heard a knight call that kind of place a “leech fortification.” In that it leeches an enemies strength away from the main force.”

Kerrass grunted. He was peering at the map on the wall. “Just the kind of place that a reclusive Sorceress would want to stay in to carry out their experiments.”

“Also the kind of place that was remote enough that the King could visit it quietly without comment by others.”

Kerrass was still peering at the map.

“This map is fixed to the wall right?” He began.

“Yes, so?”

“Help me take it down.”

I stood and did as I was told. It wasn't small.

Kerrass took out his small skinning knife.

“What are you looking for?”

“There's something here, underneath the canvas of the map.”

He began to pry the frame open and I bent to help.

“This bit's loose.” One of the bits on the side was not stuck down. The frame was old and gave way with a crack. A few envelopes piled out.”

“Looks like you found the secret safe after all Kerrass.”

He made a face.

“Which one do we open first?”

“Well,” I said sitting down and sorting through the six or seven envelopes. “These three have the royal seal on them so I think we start there.”

The parchment was rich and thick. Heavy in the hands. I insisted that we cut the seals properly rather than tearing the envelopes open.

The first one was the royal wedding Certificate. Signed by the bride and groom and a dozen signatures on both sides. I set it carefully aside. Culturally and historically priceless but I couldn't think of any immediate use for it.

“This one's the King's will by the look of it.” Kerrass had opened a second one. “Looks like he's left everything to his daughter.”

“Progressive of him,”

“Maybe. Or romantic. What's that last one?”

I opened it.

“We, the undersigned King Stefan, fourth of his name and Queen Leah do hereby declare with absolute surety that the King's daughter by blood is hereby... Fuck me.”

“What? A bit odd that language for a royal decree.”

“Shut up Kerrass.”

I scanned through the rest of the document.

“Kerrass I don't know what to tell you. These are adoption papers.”

“What?” I handed the paper over carefully.

“It's a royal decree. There's the Kings will. But that is a royal decree. It basically sets forth, in legal language that the Princess is definitely their daughter. You would only decree something like that if the issue was in doubt but the important thing is...”

I gestured and Kerrass put the document on the table.

“This bit here. “The King's daughter by blood and the Queen's daughter of spirit.” That's not flowery language. The Queen love's the daughter but she didn't give birth to her.”

Kerrass looked at me in confusion.

“The Princess...” I spluttered a bit. “The princess is the King's daughter but not the Queen's. She's the child of someone else. A bastard originally that the King and the Queen adopted formally as their heir.”

Kerrass stepped back.

“Fuck me.” He whispered.