Book Two
The Prince's Wrath

    “Glamdrel, thou yapping harlot,” interrupted Anfelth at the feast table—for so did he commonly address his wife—“my tankard is empty. Pray, fill it with mead and not this senseless prattling.”
    “Nay, husband,” his wife responded, “if thy tankard be empty then let it remain thus, that thou might know of my plight.”
    “And pray, what plight is that?”
    “That of a woman unfilled.” This tawdry remark earned a boisterous laugh among the assembled courtiers, to whom modesty was a vice unworthy of enduring.
    Anfelth smiled. “Go on, strumpet: thy lust is a woman’s to be sure. I would fain tear thee asunder, than be badgered by thy constant thirsts, but doubtless would only win another more lustful for my troubles. Woman doth goodly use her wiles, to make hounds out of husbands.”
    “Nay husband,” his wife chided, “for a man is half a hound at birth. His eye is for flesh and bone, and sees nothing else.”
    The prince’s brows lifted. “Dost thou believe it?”
    “Aye.” said Glamdrel confidently, “There be no man alive whose eye sees other.”
    “Attend, for thou art disproven!” he replied excitedly, turning to his brother, “See here my hounded brother, whose fortune is so keen that he won the most lustful, whose wiles have put all of his senses to flight.”
    Ancleune gave a half-smile in recognition of the snickers that were directed toward him, but showed no understanding of what was being said. He was unused to being anything other than the object of derision, and so he had learned to busy himself in company and pay as little heed as possible to the goings on around him.
    “So, Ancleune, the fair sex fares not with thee. But what, prithee tell, are these new machinations thou art concocting?”
    Ancleune had poured some mead into a goblet and carefully placed upon it a sheet of parchment. He then turned the whole over quickly, so that the upended goblet lay directly on the table with the parchment between.
    “Prince of folly, thou art, Ancleune. Thou wouldst join the ranks of humanity yet, if wouldst not barter away thy time in such ridiculous arts.”
    Ancleune lifted the goblet from the table and the parchment still clung to it—the mead still within. Glamdrel applauded the achievement.
    “But an art well enough done, husband.”
    “No art this, but swindles and trickery. He has drained it covertly. Cast away the parchment, dunce, and show the empty vessel.”
    The younger prince continued to look one by one at the assembly, smiling thoughtlessly, but acted not on the request.
    “See how quick the fraud is unmasked!” bragged Anfelth. He pulled at one end of the parchment and won for his disbelief a lap full of mead. The architect of the trick did not know to temper his delight at such a comic sight and opened his mouth in impolitic glee. Upon noting this his victim’s rage exploded.
    “Simpleton!” barked Anfelth with a force that made his poor brother start,  swiftly delivering him a blow to the back of the head. “Thou art too free with my patience!” Ancleune was at once quiet, and cowered lower toward the table.
    “Good prince, pray, let thy brother be,” Hyrtryl asked plaintively, “he means no harm.”
    “I will let him be when Satan does, who has seduced his feeble mind with such evils.”
    “Please, speak not this way, for the love of our Savior.”
    “How! Dost thou think thyself pious?”
    She lowered her eyes for a moment, and replied meekly, “Only by His grace, my prince.” If there was anything in such a response which was fodder for derision, Hyrtryl knew it not. Yet all around her the courtiers were smirking and snickering amongst themselves. What manner of men were these, she wondered, who so little esteemed piety?
    “Tell me, Hyrtryl,” began Anfelth, turning a spiteful eye towards her, “what sounds from Ancleune are heard in thy bed? Doth he yap and growl like a hound upon its bitch?”
    Hyrtryl blinked in mortified surprise. Anfelth’s friends chuckled under their beards.
    “So thy tongue is not loose this night as it has been in others? Tell me, then, and all here assembled, does this fool,” here he gestured histrionically to Ancleune, “a woman’s body know? Or doth he nuzzle and nurse upon thy teats like a suckling swine?”
    A blush burned over the fair face of Hyrtryl and she cast her lovely eyes downward.
    “The flush of a harlot!” Anfelth laughed. “Feign the shame of a maiden, Hyrtryl, but I will not be so guiled. Thou wilt bare thy breasts for priests and monks to pray upon; do not pretend now that thy husband’s hand is foreign to thee. And thou,” here he turned his attention to Ancleune, “what dost thou think of my jewel for thee? True, she is well worn, but she will get no wear from thee.”
    The newest lady of the house of Andorn, stripped from family and home, bit into the flesh of her lip, resolving not to weep at such an unbearable level of abuse. For a moment fortune pitied her as Anfelth’s attention fixed again on his brother.
    “Ancleune, ‘tis a pity that thy tongue is like mud in thy mouth. For I, as the architect of this pairing, am naturally most curious to hear of its maneuvers. Ah, my brother, ‘tis now more than ever that I would wish thy daemon lifted, and the bed-tales told. Come, Ancleune, cast thy tormentor out, and pleasure our  ears with savory gossip.”
    Ancleune could not do as asked, shaking his head back and forth with a pitiably fatuous grin.
    “What is this? The trickster’s lips are as idle as his hands are restless! Speak!” commanded the prince.
    Ancleune managed only a throaty bawl.
    “That is the sound of a beast, not a man! Speak, I say.”
    The younger prince raised both pitch and volume of his voice, his face straining as he attempted to force words from his mouth. However noble the effort though, only stuttered and mumbled gibberish resulted.
    “Here,” Anfelth cupped his hand around his brother’s jaw and squeezed his cheeks as if working a puppet. The warbling continued, Anfelth’s hand modulating the tone as his peers laughed heartily.
    Ancleune’s face burned red with shame, and still he did not desist. But the more he contorted his tongue and throat, the more his warbling elicited uproars from Anfelth’s comrades, and soon he was all but drowned out by their wicked laughter. Hyrtryl could stand the sight no longer, and despite her attempts at suppression, covered her eyes and sobbed into her breast.
    “Unhand him, dog!” Eolix roared unexpectedly, and the merriment trailed off.
    “Still thy lips, churl,” the prince retorted contemptuously, “or feel the back of my hand.” He made no attempt to loose his hold on his brother.
    With no consideration for the folly of his action, Eolix rose swiftly from chair and clasped the wrist of the prince, separating Ancleune from the spiteful clasp of his elder brother.
    “Better I, cruel miscreant, than one who can avenge it not.”
    Furious, Anfelth broke Eolix’s grip and smashed a fist into his cheek. Eolix collapsed backward upon the floor, but there was still greater wrath to endure. Anfelth flung himself down upon the prostrate youth and beat him relentlessly with his fists. The prince was not overly large, but he was well built and strong, and the weaker Eolix could do nothing to gain the advantage.
    With several final blows directly to Eolix’s paunch, Anfelth hauled himself up to leave his battered victim gasping for air upon the floor of the hall. Blood dripped from the young man’s nostrils.
    “Churl!” cried Anfelth, panting from his own ferocity, “Violate my person again, and thou shalt pay even more dearly than this!”
    The object of his rage coughed, unable to speak.
    “And thou,” Anfelth growled at Ancleune who was cowering away from him in fear, “debase my honor once more and the same fate will await thee; kin or not.” Ancleune’s spiritless look further enraged his brother, and Anfelth struck him contemptuously with an open hand upon the cheek.
    “Get thee out of sight, and thy slattern as well,” he commanded.
    Hyrtryl immediately rose from the table and rapidly strode out the hall after her husband, her hand to her mouth and her downcast visage barely restraining an outpouring of tears.
    When his kin had departed, Anfelth hurled Hyrtryl’s chair against the wall in one last discharge of fury, and sat down in disgust amongst his grinning comrades, as the lord of Oscany lay bloodied and humbled upon the stone.
 

Copyright © 2001, Claudio R. Salvucci.  All Rights Reserved.