Eric Flint - This Rough Magic

"She's scarcely a girl," said Erik, latching onto the one safe point in the entire argument.

The disapproving look brought a grin to Manfred. "Among the things I can promise you, she definitely isn't a boy. Or have you forgotten a certain night in a certain brothel? Francesca says you're the biggest stiff thing she's ever had between her legs. Your whole body was rigid… with shock."

Erik fumbled for something to say, and failed. The memory of the first time they'd met Francesca, fleeing from an ambush, still embarrassed him. They'd been ambushed in a brothel in which she was employed at the time, and she'd agreed to hide them-by using the expedient device of hiding them in plain sight, engaged in the sort of activity anyone would expect to see in a brothel. Erik himself, mortified, had faked his part of the thing. Manfred… had not.

Which was perhaps why Manfred reveled in the memory. "It's old age, that's your problem. Memory's going first. Never mind, I'll get Francesca to refresh the picture. Just some millefiori beads as I recall, all she was wearing."

"Manfred! You know that's not what I meant." Erik wondered just how he should deal with this. "Have you no morals at all? I meant she's a woman, not a girl."

Manfred snorted. "Only you Icelanders seem to worry about it."

"Vinlanders take it even more seriously. It's just not respectful!"

Manfred went off into a guffaw. "Well, that's something, considering her former profession."

Erik found himself blushing; as usual, confused by what his response should be to the former whore, then courtesan, now a prince's mistress. His conservative upbringing said he should treat her with disdain. Yet…

Francesca, he knew from experience, lived by a rigid moral code too. It just had a totally different set of rules about sex.

He decided to take refuge in something he was familiar and comfortable with. "Come. You're getting fat, Manfred. Let's go down to the jousting yard."

"Erik, it's snowing out there. Besides, I know you just want to take it out on me."

There was some truth to that, even if, as the years went by, "taking it out" on Manfred was getting a great deal harder to do. But at the new rapier-work Erik still had the edge, and always would have. He was just faster than Manfred could ever be. "Then we will find a salle big enough for some more fencing practice. Come. I have the quilted jackets in my quarters."

"I'd rather go drinking," protested Manfred.

Erik threw him against the wall with a rolling hiplock.

Francesca looked severely at the Emperor. "Using me to tease your nephew is not kind."

Charles Fredrik smiled. "It's one of the few pleasures left to an old man." The smile widened. "And by now Erik will have talked him into some training and will administer some bruises, which his disrespect deserves."

"You are a very bad old man," she said, shaking her head at the most powerful man in Europe.

The first time she'd met the Emperor she'd been quaking inside. But when all was said and done, he was also a man. Men, she understood. This one, for all his power, was a good man. And behind the smiles she read genuine worry.

"He's turning out well, you know. But he is still very young."

"And very jealous. If I were twenty years younger he'd have reason to be. Now tell me, Francesca. What do you intend to do now? I am sending Manfred to Jerusalem. But I have a place for you here in Mainz. You've served me well in Denmark, much though Trolliger disapproves of your methods! Mind you, I don't think he realizes that your methods are-"

"More refined than in Venice. And not horizontal in the least." She smiled tolerantly. "Wait until his spies are done reporting to him-or until he finishes reading those reports he's already gotten. I believe he will be astonished that I have become a veritable pillar of respectability."

"Good," the Emperor replied, and sounded as if he meant it. "I gathered that already; unlike Trolliger, I read the entire reports from my spies-and his, by the way-not just the parts I deem are pertinent at the time."

"Well, I may not be Caesar's wife," she said thoughtfully, with a long look through her lashes at the Emperor, "but-"

"But you must still be above reproach, as my nephew's paramour," Charles Fredrik agreed with her. "Though a bit of banter between the two of us, in private, is harmless enough."

"And in public," she twinkled, "I find finance to be the most fascinating possible topic for discussion."

He chuckled, as she had known he would.

Francesca licked the corner her mouth. Slowly and catlike. "So, whatever could he find to disapprove of in finance?" she asked, innocently, looking at him through lowered lashes.

She was rewarded with the Emperor's laughter… which went off into coughing. It took a while to subside, and now he looked older. Gray and tired, though still able to muster a smile.

"Don't make me laugh, please!" he said breathlessly. "It's a pity. I find little to laugh at these days. No wonder the Danes were so willing to help you. You must have had them wrapped around your littlest finger. But what do you intend to do now? Because I would like to ask that you accompany Manfred. Not for the reasons he'd like, lucky young dog, but for my own interests. And yours, for that matter. I pay well, as you know."

Francesca chose her words carefully. She was aware just how dangerous these waters were. She knew she was tolerated as the mistress to the Emperor's second-in-line heir. But more than that? No.

"I was planning on accompanying Manfred. Not, I'm afraid, for the reasons he thinks. But the truth is that Mainz is not my sort of town. And I fancy seeing the east. Alexandria tempts me."

"Alexandria!" She was surprised by the enthusiasm in the Emperor's voice. "What a place! I went there, you know, as a young prince." He sighed. "A paradise of a town for a young man. But there is more to it. A place of intellect, too. More than anywhere else in the world, as I know it. I regret, in my old age, that I didn't explore that aspect more."

"I would wager you didn't regret it then!"

"True. But I'll have to tell you about it some other time. Right now I want to talk to you about Eberhard of Brunswick's mission."

"To the Ilkhan."

The Emperor shook his head. "If I didn't know you better, I'd have you burned for witchcraft."

She shrugged. "It is quite obvious."

The Emperor shook his head again. "I just hope that Grand Duke Jagiellon is not as intelligent and devious-minded as you are."

"If he isn't, he's bound to have someone who is," she said.

The Emperor looked thoughtful. "Not necessarily. The plots and machinations of Jagiellon are not constructed as you or I would construct them. You've given a lot of thought to western politics. Turn your mind now to the east. There is a factor at work there you must not forget: Power in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania is wrested by strength and cunning, not just by hereditary right or, as in Venice, by election."

He held up a hand. "Yes, I know. There are intrigues and schemes here, also. But this is the playing of puppies compared to the fight for pack-dominance there. Jagiellon dares not allow anyone into his trust. He must always act, to some extent, alone. Even his closest advisor, Count Mindaug, will pull him down if he can, and thus is not privy to the innermost workings and plans and secrets. That would require trust and a loyalty born of love, not fear. Those are as alien to Jagiellon as his kind of absolute enslavement is to us. He gains their loyalty by robbing them of their will and their self. Our most trusted people can betray us… his cannot. But his cannot think or act independently, either. Those Jagiellon allows free thought to must be kept weaker, and ignorant. We don't have that problem, although we do need to fear treachery. We must place our trust carefully."