The Heir's the Thing

"Come, let me show you your quarters and introduce you to your bodyguards," the Ritter muttered.

"Yes, please do," Rosemund answered. "I am so anxious to explore the castle. It rambles so, and it is so much bigger than my father's. Why, I surmise your own chambers are especially lush—and big too. I'd be delighted to see those someday."

"Perhaps someday, My Lady. I would be pleased to show you."

"And perhaps you will have the opportunity there, when you are not called to duty elsewhere, to provide me a lectionary of German customs. I must learn of my new home."

"It would be my honor, mistress."

"Ah, mistress," Rosemund murmured. "And I'm sure there are a good many interesting . . . German customs . . . you can teach me. I hear you German men are fine riders . . . masterful horsemen."

"I have been known as such, yes, My Lady. But it has been some time since I have ridden."

"You jest with me, Ritter. I'm sure you rode as recently as this morning. And masterfully too."

Horst looked embarrassed, but, at the same time please.

Rosemund continued, "But, in any event, once trained to the saddle, expertise never is lost, I have heard."

"Yes, I would hope so. Yes, I am sure I can free some time for . . . the lessons . . . you request. It is commendable that you should take such an interest in . . . learning of our customs." And now it was his turn to speak with a twinkle in his eye. "I trust we have a few you have not heard of before and that it would pleasure you to learn."

Rosemund decided it was time to move on. The man was showing signs of either seizing her or melting at her feet. A game well played, though, she thought. She had known from the start that she would need such a powerful supporter at the court.

"My pleasure, I'm entirely sure. Before we move on, though," Rosemund said, almost as an afterthought. "I am quite devout and must make confession and pray in private daily. In the hall, as we approached the duke, I saw there a monk."

"Yes, yes, Gregor, the castle chaplain," Horst answered. "Of course he will be put at your disposal. Just mention it to one of your handmaidens and a daily schedule will be arranged for you."

"Thank you, and now shall we proceed? I am almost giddy at the prospect of meeting my new bodyguards."

* * * *

The wedding ceremony was perfunctory, for all its pageantry, and somewhat of an anticlimax. The two, in fact, already were formally married, this having been arranged months in advance, in keeping with marriages of such import, through proxies across the sea from each other.

Some mumbo jumbo from a brocade-swathed bishop, the bestowal of a ducal crown, a desultory, sloppy kiss, and Rosemund was whisked off to the royal bed chamber, where the ritual was even more convoluted and the room crowded with dignitaries, each with a responsibility to witness the consummation of the royal contract, even if from outside a canopy of gauzy bed drapes.

Rosemund had planned and practiced and prepared well. The duke was willing, if not initially able. Rosemund delighted him and brought some spark into him, though, in moving her lips southward. He was certainly large enough, but not moving much beyond soft. Still, Rosemund sensed from his groans and grunts that she was pulling more life out of him than he'd managed in many a year, and realizing that she'd have to do with half hard, she eventually gathered his royal member between her thighs, grateful that there was no length problem, and straddled him from above and rode him, giving him the sensation that he was well sheathed when he was not, and adding delight for him with her own well-placed deep moans, until she felt the dribble of wetness signaling the seeding she would later testify to. Quickly producing the blood staining that would prove her virginity, she announced consummation, the duke too exhausted to do it himself, and was accompanied by a relieved and greatly surprised throng back to her own bedchamber.

The next morning she went directly to the chaplain in the confessional chamber behind the chapel and confessed and prayed for an hour.

Soon, she had fallen into a set schedule. On Monday, Wednesday, and Friday nights, she was ceremoniously escorted to the duke's bed and made him a happy man with her expert lips and warm thighs. After her announcement of her first laying in, though, which was accompanied by trumpets and loud hosannas, the visit to the duke's chamber were reduced to Friday's only. He would not forgo them completely, even though he was sensitive to her needs not to have anything endanger the child she was carrying.

An hour of the morning of each day except of Sunday, she devoted to her confession and prayers under the guidance of the castle's chaplain, the monk.

Tuesday and Thursday afternoons were established for very private discussions with Rosemund's three comely bodyguards, one each assigned day, in succession.

Of the three, ironically, Rosemund preferred Cuno von Daniken the best. He didn't treat her as a lady, but, rather, chased her around her chambers and, having cornered her, tore her clothes from her and ravished her, brutally. On the bed, on the floor, across a table. It did not matter to Cuno. He was a huntsman of the far western, less-civilized county, and she was the hunted. Cuno had killed two wives already, in a never-ending succession of child bearing, with the strength of his cocking and the demands of his libido. He had sons aplenty and his family had made clear what they expected of him with Rosemund and the heritage of the duke's heir.

Rosemund enjoyed him immensely—no other man had been so forceful and vigorous with her and could ride her for hours. But she had no intention of ever being breeding womb number three for him. If any man could master her, Rosemund felt it would be Cuno—and for that reason alone she was wary of him. And she quickly learned not to wear her finest clothes when he visited.

Her father's choice, Heinricus von Veltheim was a serious young man. Handsome and fully taken with himself. But he had the biggest cock of the three and the most inventive positions, and Rosemund was amused by his insistence to having mirrors above and beside the bed when he was fucking her—so that he could watch his beautiful body in motion and admire his handiwork. Rosemund rather admired his handiwork as well, and she was happy to see his surprise when she herself taught him a new trick or two from time to time.

Petrus von Keulen, Arthur's champion, made Rosemund laugh. She thought it was fitting that Arthur had signed with his family, and she could hardly wait to tell her father's chamberlain about it. He was a strikingly beautiful man, certainly. Dark and brooding looks, with full lips and satiny brown eyes that made her want to melt. And a poet and a musician. So very sensitive and sensual and talkative. He could talk her to death as he fucked her. But Rosemund quickly learned, by watching Petrus's eyes go to Heinricus, that his attentions to her were sheerly family duty. Still, she had to admit that he gritted his teeth and devoted his seed to the family cause well. She did wonder if the rumors of having male bastards scattered about the countryside had somehow been crossed with the description of Cuno von Daniken, for whom this legend was more likely

All three were nonplused initially when they came to her and she demanded of each that they use un petit linge during the first two months. She announced that the necessity of this was that she wanted to be sure of her choice before mating—and that until and unless she told one of them he could dispense with the employ of the sheep's intestine cock caps, each knew he was still competing to give the duke an heir.

All three tried hard, all three were aglow, now appreciating the trial period they had gone through, when she told each, without telling him she had made the identical declaration to the others, that they no longer needed to crown themselves—that she wanted to have a son with them.

On the same day Rosemund told Heinricus, Cuno, and Petrus that they—and they only—were chosen and no longer needed to employ un petit linge, she told Ritter Horst the same. Even before she had lain with any of her young, chosen bodyguards, she had cajoled the duke's supreme counselor to show her his quarters—and then his cock, which she had lain back and guided into her herself, as he wept his gratitude at his good fortune. He had ridden her masterfully and long, and she happily admitted that there were some German customs she could quickly become addicted to and that his horsemanship was second to none. Well, a bit behind Cuno's she had to admit. But Cuno scared her in his control and complete taking, even while she melted to it.

When Horst was told that the intervention of the sheep's intestine was no longer necessary, that it was his son who should inherit, the gray-haired man fucked her with an abandon and virility that made her laugh and melt to him. As she whispered of how they would reign together when the duke was gone, through their son, she almost believed that this was a good choice—although it wasn't the one she had already made.

A month later, the royal announcement was made at a regal banquet in the great hall, amid the assembly of all of the nobility of the dukedom. Ritter Horst made the announcement, his face split from ear to ear in a smile that was more genuine than any of those assembled realized. The duchess was with child. Horst's earnest prayer rang out across the room that it would be a son. The duke stumbled up from his throne and raised his royal staff in victory, his face beaming his good fortune, and then sputtered and fell back onto his cushions. The assembled crowd buzzed with the news, all at least vaguely aware of the pact the three counts had signed, all looking from one separate grouping, marked by different liveries, to another for a clue on who was on the ascendance.

But the three young men representing the three county families were swaggering about within their encircling kin, none conceding that it was not him who was owed the victory.

None declared, the dukedom held its breath for seven months, awaiting not only word of the birth, but a good glance at the baby. The von Veltheims were rangy red heads all, the von Danikens blond giants, and the van Keulens swarthy, raven-haired and lithe. All waited their good time for a sign, to discern whose family was marked on the child to come.

Four months into her laying by, until she was too big to be comfortably positioned for pleasure, Rosemund was still enjoying visitations from her three bodyguards and to the duke's counselor, all without depleting the dukedom's supplies of un petit linge. However, she did now forego her daily confession and prayers with the monk, no doubt having already attained the most urgent wish that she had been praying for.

When the day came, once more ritually, with a myriad of necessary representatives in attendance to testify to the requirements and affirmations of a royal birth, all gasped and applauded as the baby, straight from the womb, was held up for all to see. A boy. The royal heir.

And then, as the baby was being circled around the enfolding mob, a hushed silence fell upon the chamber and then a gasp and then great hosannas rang out.

Rosemund smiled wanly but proudly from where she lay, no longer the center of attention, knowing that the reaction to the crowd meant what she thought it meant—what she had planned and schemed for it to mean.

The baby had the unmistakable long, pointed Hapsburg chin. There was no doubt about it. The crowd was reduced to murmuring and then on a stampede out of the chamber, some to rush to their prayers of thanksgiving, some to the streets of the city of Manz below to ring out the miraculous news, and some—the members of the families of the three counts—back to their lairs to grouse and scheme anew.

The baby was a true Hapsburg—the duke's own. There had been rumors of how the heir would be provided and of a nefarious pact between the counts—and all had held their breath, grateful at least that, as long as the pact was in operation and had not come to an unbalancing conclusion, they were not living under the threat of the lance and the despoiling of their fields. But all the rumormongering meant nothing now. The baby was a son, and an heir, and most miraculously of all, a Hapsburg—the true son of the duke.

Over the next week, approached and reproached by three angry young men and a disappointed, but reality-driven and somewhat relieved elder man, Rosemund just shrugged and reminded them that she had, in fact, been with the duke in his bed thrice weekly, so nature had just taken its ironic course. Immediately thereafter, the duchess declared that she felt so safe in her new land that she had no need for special bodyguards, and the comely sons of the three county families were sent home. She resumed her thrice weekly visits to her husband's bed chamber though, as well as taking up the lessons again that the duke's counselor was giving her in German folklore in his chambers and the morning confession and prayer visits to the monk in the chapel. As blessed as she felt, Rosemund reasoned that two sons would always be better insurance than one, as unhealthy as the German mountain climate seemed to her.

* * * *

Three years later, Rosemund, the Duchess of Osten Westfalen, stood tall in front of the throne of the great hall of the castle above Manz, awaiting the arrival of a delegation from her homeland.

She was wearing black, befitting her recent bereavement.

The duke was dead.

Resting in baskets of woven gold at either side of her throne were her two sons—both with the Hapsburg chins. And standing at her side, beaming broadly, was Ritter Horst, coregent with her over Osten Westfalen until the heir reached his majority—and nearly nightly visitor to the duchess's bedchamber. Off to the sides of the hall milled the nobles of the land, including the families of the three counties still discernible in their separate gatherings by their distinguishing liveries and similarly sullen but subdued countenances, their patriarchs still glazy eyed at how this vixen from the north had managed to sweep in and take the reins of the dukedom and maintained the power balance between the three counts and the heir apparent.

Rosemund was doubly ensconced in black, however, because her father—in her faraway homeland—also now was dead. And Rosemund was his only living heir. The delegation was visiting to discuss this uncertain situation with the duchess. Women had occasionally ruled a land grant in her homeland—but it was extremely rare and they did not do so from afar. Even if Rosemund remained lady of the Costain lands, she needed to make arrangement for their maintenance and governance. Her mother was sick in mind and body and could not shoulder the burdens left by her father.

As he marched into the hall and down the red carpet, the head of the delegation, the knight, Arthur D'Arcey, lately her father's chamberlain, was sure that he knew how this knot was to be unraveled. He had made the arrangement with the sweet young Rosemund years before as she was preparing to set sail for Osten Westfalen.

"My Lady," D'Arcey murmured as he bowed before the duchess.

"Well seen, good knight," Rosemund said in a voice that rang out over the hall, grabbing all in attendance, marking them as hers. "And why are you here rather than in England, husbanding my Costain lands and people until I send instructions?"

"You know why I am here," D'Arcey muttered, looking up at her in surprise. "It is as arranged, as we agreed. You are husbandless now."

"I need you in England, Sir Arthur—that is if you wish to stay on in my service. I will not be able to attend you there for a year or more. I am with child. My dear departed husband has not left me without joy—he has left me with child. And I am in no need of a husband to rule over me. I am beyond that now."

The gathering nobles gasped and were reduced to a hubbub that crescendoed into loud hymns of praise. The counts glowered, but the other nobles reveled in the realization that, after long last, they had a ruler with balls enough to stand up to the counts—even if she was a woman.

Covered by the cacophonous din, D'Arcey gave Rosemund a hurt, pleading expression and took one step toward her. But Rosemund stayed him with her hand, and Ritter Horst took a threatening step forward.

"Rosemund," D'Arcey moaned.

"Go home, Sir Arthur," Rosemund said, her voice cold and hard and majestic all in one. "There is nothing here for you."

As D'Arcey's shoulders sagged and he turned, Rosemund spoke out again and he turned back to her briefly.

In a more conciliatory voice, she said, "I am, of course, grateful for your past service to my father . . . and to me . . . and I pledge that you have a position governing my English lands as long as you please me. And, please, take a message to my mother that I grieve with her in our shared loss, and as a token of my regard for her and for her mourning, I wish for you to take my chaplain back with you—as a comfort to my sainted mother."

Rosemund turned and spoke to Horst, and he, in turn, called forth guards who pulled the monk, Gregor, from the swirling, celebrating crowd and brought him forward. Gregor, the young grandnephew of the duke, looked on in surprise and panic, sticking out his prominent Hapsburg chin, wanting to speak, but knowing it would be the death of him to say anything—taking last, lingering, fatherly looks at the two babes in the small thrones before being nearly dragged off to his exile in faraway England.