A Lord at His Dinner
Leopold pushed his lamb tagine around his plate with his spoon. It was one of his father’s favorites: Graf Friedrich von Regensburg had hefted home trunksful of brightly glazed crockery and sacks of spices from his stint in North Africa during the Crusades, and Leopold always had the cooks prepare it around this time of year in memory of his parents. But tonight the plump chunks of lamb, juicy apricots, and tender almonds just rattled around like pebbles in his mouth.
He could feel Bernard eyeing him. The Councillor had delivered Sigismund’s letter just before dinner. The king had not in fact stayed in Italy: he was back in Hungary for the Christmas holiday, ever a favorite of his deceased brother, King Wenceslas. And so Leopold’s missive and the king’s reply had been exchanged much more quickly than expected. Sigismund thought the royal hospital a wonderful idea. He would send a purse to assist in its expansion and furnishing, which Leopold would undertake in addition to raising the army of 5,000 Sigismund had commanded. The king further made it plain that Leopold would be leading those men into battle: “There is no need for you to stay at home and watch invalids in their beds. That is women’s work. You belong on the field of combat with me as one of my most valiant and decorated knights.”
“My Lord….” Bernard prompted. “A penny for your thoughts.” Leopold looked up and could see the worry plain in the older man’s face. Indeed, the graf was feeling fairly dark. He took a deep gulp from his tankard of beer, set it down with a thunk, wiped his beard.
“You want to know what I’m thinking, Bernard? I’m thinking that my cousin is trying to kill me off in battle so he doesn’t have any competition for the throne in Germany. He needs it to secure his claim to the Holy Roman Empire, and I’m twice as German as he is–if you count my breeding on top of my birth. That matters to the Bavarians and the Prussians.”
Bernard scraped at his empty plate and nodded: at least someone had a good appetite tonight, Leopold thought with a wan smile. “I wish I could say that was all fantasy, your Grace,” Bernard finally said. “But you have ever been canny beyond your years.”
“What do we do?”
“We think on it. We have time to do so. Please, try to enjoy the good food in front of you, and your friends, and the holiday cheer. Don’t let Sigismund take those things away from you, too.” Bernard rose from the table. “And now I am going home to take my own medicine,” he said with a wry grin and a deep bow. And he left Leopold alone in his rooms.
After dinner, Leopold walked down to the hospital ward. He found Mathilde sitting mending stockings by the fire and swallowed her in a hug, kissed her cheek. “What’s that for?” Mathilde asked, surprised.
“Just being you.” She patted his arm.
“Flattery doesn’t work on old ladies, my Lord.”
“I know. That’s why I try it on you instead.”
“Enough!” she laughed, waving a hand at him. “Sit, sit. Tell me what’s going on in the wide world.”
Leopold sat in the chair across from hers and kicked his boots off, stretching his toes in front of the warm hearth, but he said nothing. He just listened to the crackle of the fire and the click click click of Mathilde’s knitting needles. He might have dozed. The next thing he knew, Ursula was standing there with a hand on Mathilde’s shoulder, and both women were watching him as he imagined they might watch their patients for some sign of turning to the better or worse. Leopold sat up, sighed, and pulled on his boots. He stood and swung his fur cloak around Ursula’s shoulders. “Come with me to the church to pray,” he said. She looked up at him and nodded, and he led her out.
St. Hildegarde’s was abandoned at this late hour except for the sexton going round trimming the candle wicks for the last time. Leopold lit two candles in his family chapel and sat down in the front pew beside Ursula. He looked up at the altarpiece, a triptych painted by a famous painter in Nuremberg whose name he couldn’t remember. In the center was the Lamb of God, blood spilling from his breast into a golden chalice. In the left panel, his father knelt in the grass, praying to the lamb, his mother in the right panel. They looked nothing like Leopold remembered them. He remembered his father chasing him round the breakfast table with a napkin over his head, pretending to be a ghost. He remembered his mother drawing her yew bow and sighting on a doe in the forest, impossibly far away, and bringing it down with a single arrow through its heart. Tears burned in the corners of Leopold’s eyes. That was the one good thing about Sigismund’s madness and jealousy: most likely, Leopold would be with the people he loved more than anything, sooner rather than later.
On the way back up to the castle, Ursula asked him, “What did you pray for?”
“I asked God and my parents to guide me,” he said. “What about you?”
“I thanked Him for you and Mathilde.”
Leopold reached down and took Ursula’s hand in his, squeezed it, and tucked it under his arm as they walked the rest of the way home on a snowy road that the waning moon had turned to diamonds under their boots.
The Rookery 