The Tavern
“I heard the graf was down in the market yesterday with a woman!”
“A woman? St. Hildy’s bones! I thought horses were all the man cared for.”
“He’d best start prizing skirts over saddles. He needs an heir! If he doesn’t get one, Sigismund will take most of his domain and give it to his uncle Paulus–and all of us with it. We’re too close to the Bohemian border for the king to let us go.”
Bernard stood to silence the men, but Leopold put a hand on his arm, shaking his head slightly in the shadow of his hood. His knight sat back down, face red. They were in the tavern having a late breakfast after shooting grouse, and the graf’s mud-spattered boots and hunting gear had lulled the few patrons into ignoring the corner booth behind the brazier.
“They shouldn’t be permitted to speak so loosely, your Grace,” Bernard muttered, shaking his head.
Leopold took a drink of his beer and wiped his beard. “Mathilde used to tell me, if you stop a man from saying what he thinks, he thinks it twice as long and three times as hard.”
Bernard seemed to ponder that for a moment, then nodded. “A wise woman, that Mathilde.”
“Indeed, though I worry I’m working her too hard at her age, having her look after the war-wounded at the castle.”
“I’m sure we can find someone to help her,” Bernard said absently. “Your grace, those farmers are ignorant, but they’re not altogether wrong. You need to secure your succession, the sooner the better. Isn’t there any young lady of rank who’s caught your fancy? Prince Harald made inquiries on behalf of his sister Katrin in your absence. Then, there’s always Sigismund’s sister’s eldest, Isabel. Perhaps we should throw a New Year’s ball in Regensburg? Marooned out here in Kiefersheim with us, you’re unlikely to meet….”
Leopold cut off his favorite councillor with a wave of his hand. “Need I remind you we’re still at war with the Hussites? This is hardly the time for serenades and posies.”
“Your grace,” Bernard pressed. “With Sigismund on the throne, we’re always at war. So, if you keep using that excuse, I fear that what those fools blurted out in ignorance may well come to pass.”
Leopold frowned and turned his pewter mug on the splintery tabletop. On the one hand, he would be relieved if Sigismund took away most of his domain–and with it his obligations to raise army after army for his cousin’s ridiculous vendetta against the Hussites. On the other hand, Leopold feared what would become of his subjects under the iron rod of Paulus, Prince of Nuremberg. If marriage could magically settle the issue, why didn’t he do it? Because the thought left him cold. He didn’t know why–if it was that he truly didn’t desire women or just couldn’t desire them the way everyone seemed to want him to–as a potential acquisition for ranking and weighing and measuring, as if she were a horse and not a person. That wasn’t how Mathilde had taught him to think about or act toward women. But now it seemed the only way he was allowed to.
He thought then of the girl he had met in the field the other day: Ursula von Koppl. She hadn’t told him her name; he had found it out by asking Mathilde. Apparently, she had been the wine merchant Hans von Koppl’s daughter, but after her father’s death and mother’s remarriage, she had been effectively disinherited, sent to live with her dowager aunt in that awful tower on the west wall. Leopold liked her–had liked talking to her, even about nothing. He had felt easy with her, like he did with Bernard. And yet this was one friendship he would never be allowed to have. Ye gods, he had barely given her a ride back to town and bought her a mug of wine to stop her teeth chattering, and the way the burgers were talking, you’d think he’d made a marriage contract on the spot.
Leopold stood, tossed a couple of silver pieces on the table for breakfast, and clapped Bernard on the shoulder. “I’ve got something I need to do,” he said. “I’ll see you later at Council.” And he strode out of the tavern, trying not to enjoy, too much at least, the way the drunken flush suddenly faded from the cheeks of the men who had been opining on his progeniture as he passed their table.
The Rookery 