The Forsaken Monarch by Amy Mantravadi

Author:Amy Mantravadi [Mantravadi, Amy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781700334213
Published: 2019-11-17T18:30:00+00:00

XIII

“But anxious cares already seized the queen:

She fed within her a flame unseen;

The hero’s valor, acts, and birth inspire

Her soul with love, and fan the secret fire.

His words, his looks, imprinted in her heart,

Improve the passion, and increase the smart”[14]

Thus Virgil wrote of Dido, the queen of Carthage strung up by an evil fate, who for the love of Aeneas set herself alight. She never burned without ere she burned within, betrayed by the one she loved. When he set sail upon the Middle Sea, she hurled forth a curse upon his line, that there should never be peace between their two peoples. And indeed, history proved this to be true, for the Romans and the Carthaginians were sworn enemies through and through.

How the Romans must have rued their father’s disloyalty when the hordes of Hannibal visited their threshold! How Carthage was made to feel that betrayal again when the Romans salted their fields! And what did this hate yield? Naught but suffering. Therefore, we may conclude either that the Romans received the just punishment for Aeneas’ betrayal, or that in her cursing Dido brought about the end of her kingdom, or that all of life is chaos and there is little purpose to it all.

But I took a different lesson from Dido: namely, that Brian fitz Count was a most fortunate man. When he forsook me, I did fall into despair for a time, but I never sought to curse him or anyone else after the manner of Dido. Within the space of a few weeks, I had been forced to accept my state of being. There would be no fiery bier for Empress Maud.

So how did I avoid the fate of Dido and make myself instead as one of the Stoics? I owed it all to the knowledge that Anjou was a less certain possibility than it had been before. The idea of that marriage had seemed to me no less fearful than marriage with Gunnar must have appeared to Brünnhilda, a fate unworthy for an empress. I lived in hope that some other match might find favor with the king. It was not much of a hope, but it allowed me to continue with life for the time being.

About a month after the nobles all swore to make me queen upon my father’s death, we traveled by way of Winchester toward the hunting lodge at Woodstock, near the city of Oxford. It was the first time I had visited that part of the country since I was born just up river, and as I had no memory of those early years, it was essentially my first visit. Woodstock was a fine manor and easily twice the size of the other hunting lodges in the kingdom. Some complained that it could not have been built without the destruction of the peasants’ homes nearby, but the king was always ready with a reply: “It’s hardly my fault that they chose to live next to the choicest wood in England!”

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