"´Idhra´ chapter 6" by J. lawrence

I’ve been having problems getting stories published by moderators. They’ve been nagging me about my use of so many different languages, and not knowing what it is I’m saying. It’s nothing bad, I promise, though some things the soldiers say to Idhra are a bit impolite. I figure I have to add what everything means, though I think it takes away from the story. I’ll put meanings at the bottom of the page for the words that I didn’t explain inside the story, in the order that they appear. It will go: foreign word – English meaning, original language. If you guys think the story’s completely confusing and can’t be understood without translations in the text, let me know.

Chapter VI

Mireille and Karita chatted through the meal, mentioning things to Idhra every so often. Everything was delicious, and course after course came and then was replaced, and the candles grew dim, and Idhra had fun watching candle boys scurry up the wall hangings to replace them.

Finally, as Idhra started getting bored, but well after she was full, the King stood, and everyone quieted. He made a long speech in Tysk, and Idhra lost interest quickly, though she pretended to pay attention, not knowing when the King’s eyes would flick past her as they did so often, and he finally finished, and there was a pause where Karita whispered a terse summary out of the corner of her mouth.

“This is a banquet for his youngest daughter, Aleit. She will be named and blessed by His chief advisor, the holy priest. Since you can’t understand… the priest will come in with the child and mark her with the royal symbol. He’ll call the child’s mother, then the rest of his wives, and then the other children, one by one.”

“You don’t like being only one wife of five?” Idhra tried, knowing she was on thin ice. Karita stiffened, and Idhra was sure she had found what had bothered her aunt earlier. As the King had made his speech, Karita’s tiny figure had tensed, and Mireille’s eyes had saddened. There was a veil over them now, blocking any emotion but a little sadness from escaping.

It did indeed happen that way with the priest and all, and Idhra wondered how Karita could’ve known that was the way it would be, until the children started standing, and she lost count somewhere near ten. So they’d gone through this a few times before…

The ones named Scalk and Bern were standing behind Karita, both boys younger than Idhra. Mireille was the eldest wife, and the first, and she had four children: two men, a married woman who went up with her husband, and a boy Idhra guessed was just older than she. Their names were Alban, Anke, Claus, and Conrad.

The ceremony continued forever, and was over at sunrise, when they all crawled off to bed. Mireille’s youngest son Conrad showed Idhra back to her room, followed closely by curious Scalk and Bern, keeping up a steady stream of Tysk between them, the entire way to Idhra’s room.

She was tired, and full of food, and fell asleep at once.

Something was shaking her hard. Idhra opened her eyes slowly, still tired and worn from her recent roadtrip.

“Up, Idhra, time to get up,” called a familiar voice.

“Karita?”

“It’s morning, dear, get up.”

“Why?”

“It’s mor ¾”

“I’d rather sleep.” Idhra never liked being woken, and today, she was particularly sleepy. She batted the woman’s arm away and pulled the covers up over her head.

“Get up now, you lazy child, or I’ll call a servant to flog you!”

Karita’s moods were getting on Idhra’s nerves more than the shaking had been. Whenever her aunt came into her room, she seemed to be upset and nervous. She was talking now in her thin strained voice, and Idhra realized that she’d been wrong in assuming the only reason for her tenseness the day before was from jealousy.

Nevertheless, she rolled out of her nice warm bed, and strolled into the clothes room, where Karita threw at her a pair of warm gray chausses, black kirtle, and something else, which looked a little like a sideless surcoat and a little like a coathardie.

“The King didn’t like the dress last night,” Karita said. “It was to bold and extreme for his taste. This is another.”

“I ¾ nobody liked¾”

“Stop gibbering, Sara. It happens sometimes. Anyone in the hall last evening knows how the King starts his fashions…”

She was still rummaging through clothes, moved on to boxes, pulled out a black escoffion and deemed the outfit complete.

“Put it on now, or you’ll be late, dear. And you can’t be late, because that’ll cut the lesson short.”

Her eyes were darting over everything, trying to make sure there was nothing lurking in a corner Idhra might wear, and started mumbling to herself.

“And it can’t be made longer today because of the party for Aleit. The public one, with singing… dancing and bards… Herr Schrieber won’t be happy if you’re late… no, not happy. Though I don’t see why the King is bothering¾”

She cut off mid-sentence, turning pale, eyes grown wide. Then, she went back to muttering as if nothing had happened. She grabbed a long rectangular box filled with brushes and inkbottles and with a ribban tied in a loop at the top. She thrust it at Idhra harshly and shooed her out of the room, into the hallway, then back into the room, muttering about losing her mind and that a girl shouldn’t prance around undressed in the halls of a castle.

Clothed, Idhra was shoved back into the hall, and led down hall after hall, winding, weaving, looping. Spurring from every hall, there seemed to be two more, and they kept going, and going, and going on forever.

“Stay here,” Karita said eventually. “I’ll be right back.”

“Why am I here?” Idhra asked quickly, before her aunt could leave.

“What do you mean?” she asked back, but her brow was furrowed, and her eyes were worried.

“The King killed my parents and my aunt, uncle, and cousin, so why am I his guest, why hasn’t he killed me, too?” she blurted. “And my name’s not Sara.”

Karita’s brows went slack, but the worry in her eyes increased. Tears struggled to rain down her cheeks as she held them back. Her hands trembled, and she burst into tears and hugged Idhra tightly.

“I knew it wasn’t Sara, dear. Your mother told Mireille in a letter when you were born. We hadn’t heard from her since. I thought maybe… something had happened. We were so worried!” She was sobbing, holding onto Idhra, who didn’t have any idea of what to do. Mireille’s head appeared from around a corner, and she smiled worriedly and came to put a hand on Karita’s shoulder, but the woman kept crying.

“You,” she blubbered, “are the only person left of royal blood in the entire world, who isn’t under Kamin’s control, or allied with him. He hasn’t decided yet whether he wants to kill you or not. All yesterday he was preparing for the execution, then decided definitely against it. And now he’s back to thinking it would be safer if he had you killed…”

She ended with the hiccups, and tear splotches all over her dress. She put her head in her hands, and rushed past Idhra and Mireille, down the hall.

“She be like that…” Mireille said in her heavy accent and bad grammar. “Never never.”

Idhra frowned. “Never never?”

“Oui! Never of never.”

“Always?” Idhra tried. Her aunt shrugged, and nodded her head. “Do you mean she’s like that all the time?”

“Oui! Ja! Yes! She go up und runter with moments.”

Idhra laughed, confused by Mireille’s mix of Fransk, Tysk, and Norsk, then followed her aunt down more hallways, and began to think about the King, and what Mireille had tried to say to her.

Surprisingly, she wasn’t scared to die at the moment, only regretful. She decided, even as toffee-nosed an idea as it was, that she was plain bored of her life being threatened at every twist and turn.

“Run, tonight?” Mireille asked timidly back at Idhra. It caught Idhra off guard, and she faltered.

“I ¾ no, I… I can’t do that.”

“Your mother made it. She ran.” They were the two best-constructed, best-pronounced sentences she’d said, and Idhra looked closer at her aunt, whose eyes were still misted over, like she was stuck sad and numb, and she thought of Karita, who was always either laughing, or crying, or worried sick. And she wondered how many times Mireille had shared her story with Karita, and visa versa, and whether the two of them tried to teach each other their precious stories in their native tongues. A tear slipped down her cheek, and Mireille wiped it away with an embroidered handkerchief.

“It all right. You don’t have to,” she said quietly, the veil over her eyes growing as they walked on.

“Willkommen!” came a shout.

“Willkommen, it means welcome, or hello.” There was an old man, smiling and rocking on his feet, his thin, balding, gray hair sticking up from his head in small tufts.

“Willkommen,” he said again. “It’s Tysk. Say it with me, five times: Willkommen, willkommen, willkommen, willkommen, willkommen!” He stopped talking to frown at Idhra, then continued and bounced along the rest of the hallway to the door at its end.

“We have some work to do, Fräulein. Come in, come in. And the Frau, too, Große Königin. It would surprise me if you wouldn’t like to stay. But oh! You don’t speak Norsk, Frau, do you? Sie werden zugelassen, große Königin, der Lektion zuzuschauen.”

He turned back to look at Idhra. “That means: You are permitted, great queen, to watch the lesson… But don’t worry about that, we’ll begin with simple words first.”

He beckoned her to a chair, and sat himself in another, taking the box she’d been holding and pouring the contents on the table, careful not to spill the ink.

“Can you write?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“The alphabet, please,” he said, gesturing grandly at a partly opened scroll.

“A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z Æ Ø Å”

“Very good!” the man yelled. “But look here.” He took another pen and said as he started to write: “In Tysk, there is none of this, Æ, and none of this, Ø, or this, Å. But we do have this letter here, ß. It goes in the place of two ‘s’. Now say after I do: Zera.”

“Zera.”

“That is how many people here will say your name. Now ich.”

“Ich.”

“It means I. Now say it five times.”

This went on for an hour, with the man making her repeat a word, say it five times, then showing her its spelling. Every once in a while, he would go back over the earlier words, and keep asking about them until she got them all right. By the end of the hour, Idhra knew about twenty words, and could say a few things.”

“My name is Sara.”

“Ich Heiße Zera.”

“Thank you.”

“Danke.”

“Hmmm…” the man mumbled. “Don’t say that to anyone, Sara, they might think you to be rude. Just try not to talk today, to anyone who is not fluent in Norsk. I’ll make sure Königin Karita will follow you everywhere to translate.”

“That wasn’t right?” Idhra asked. She’d rather correct herself and be able to walk around freely than to be stuck with Karita all day. Nice as she was, her emotions were able to test the best of patience.

“Oh, no. No. That was perfectly correct, my dear. But there are plenty a nicer way to say it. Between you and me, dear, noble-born make talking harder than it should be. Without so many manners, speaking might be easy! Go along now, and dress for the party.”

Idhra was then led back to her room and shoved into a red dress, which, Idhra happened to notice, was quite normal. Back through the halls they walked, until coming to the great hall where dinner had been the night before. The seat at the top of the table was empty, but the others were filled with various royalty, with the queens at the top, and the princes and princesses coming after. Mireille sat down across from Karita again, beginning her breakfast and leaving Idhra alone in the middle of the room.

“Hier!” Bern called, and waved enthusiastically.

“Komm!” said Scalk, and he beckoned her over to where they were sitting.

“Sie lernen Deutsch?” Bern asked.

Idhra thought for a moment. “Ja?” she said, but it was more of a question than an answer.

“Ja! Ja!” Scalk said, and started to clap, and Bern followed, then Conrad, Claus, and a black-haired man whose name Idhra couldn’t remember. Mireille and Karita exchanged delighted glances and smiled, and the two princesses turned to each other and giggled.

“Das Kleid gefällt dir schön,” Conrad remarked from across the table.

The only word Idhra had understood was ‘das’, a form of ‘the’. What should she say?

“Oh. Ern… Dan ¾ no!”

“Ja,” Bern prodded. “Danke ist richtig!”

“But I’m not supposed to say that,” Idhra protested.

“Why not?” Karita asked, laughing.

“I ¾ the Teacher said ¾” Everyone burst out laughing at the same time, and it surprised Idhra that they all seemed to know a little Norsk.

“We… care… nichts,” the black haired man said, obviously having trouble remembering his Norsk lessons.

The rest of the meal was consumed in laughter and jokes, the most of which Idhra understood nothing, but she smiled all the same. Servants came in and removed their bowls, and everyone got up. The men shouted still more jokes over each other’s heads, while the ladies dusted their skirts.

“Come, come, time to go,” said Karita in her ear.

“I still don’t know what we’re doing,” Idhra replied, shamefaced.

“It’s a public party for Aleit,” she explained, walking toward the door. “The ceremony was last night, and today the Kingdom plays and feasts.”

“I guess they’re all fat with so many feasts,” Idhra retorted, looking around and counting near twenty young nobles. Karita was silent the rest of the walk outside, except to scold Bern for stomping a flowerpot.

Oui- yes, French

Ja- yes, german

Runter- down, german

Fransk- French, Norwegian

Tysk- german, Norwegian

Fräulein- miss/title for an unmarried woman, german

Frau- missus/title for an old or married woman

Norsk- Norwegian, Norwegian

Königen- queen, german

Hier- here, german

Komm!- come (a command), german

Sie lernen Deutsch- you (formal) are learning german?, german

Das Kleid gefällt dir schön- that dress looks beautiful on you, german

Danke ist richtig- thank you is right, german

Nichts- nothing, german