Duke Ulresile watched the Doctor's hands as she wound the bandages round and round the King's fingers and palms. "But sir," he said, "why anticipate this quite so far in advance? Might it not be seen as folly to-?’
"Because to wait would be the greater folly," the King said patiently. "If one plans an attack at dawn one does not wait until dawn itself before rousing one's troops. One starts to get them organised in the middle of the night."
"Duke Walen, you feel as I do, don't you?" Ulresile said, sounding exasperated.
"I feel there is no point disputing with a King, even when he makes what seems like an error to us lesser mortals," the new Duke Walen said.
The new Duke was, by all accounts, a worthy successor to his late brother, who had died without issue and so ensured that his title went to a sibling the strength of whose resentment at being born, by his reckoning, a year too late had only ever been matched by his estimation of his own worth. He seemed to be a sullen sort of fellow, and gave the impression of being, if anything, rather older than the old Duke.
"What about you, Ormin?" the King asked. "Do you think I anticipate matters too much?"
"Perhaps a little, sir," Ormin said with a pained expression. "But it is difficult to gauge these matters with any accuracy. I suspect one only finds out if one has done the right thing after some considerable time has passed. Sometimes it is only one's children who discover what the rights and wrongs of it all were. Bit like planting trees, really." He uttered this last sentence with a look of mild surprise at his own words.
Ulresile frowned at him. "Trees grow, Duke. We are having the forest cut down around us."
"Yes, but with the wood you can build houses, bridges, ships," the King said, smiling. "And trees do grow back again. Unlike heads, say."
Ulresile's lips went tight.
"I think that perhaps what the Duke means," Ormin said, "is that we may be proceeding a little too quickly with these… alterations. We run the risk of removing or at least curtailing too much of the power of the existing noble structure before there is another framework properly in place to carry the load. I confess that I for one am worried that the burghers in some of the towns in my own province have not entirely grasped the idea of taking responsibility for the transfer of land ownership, for example."
"And yet they must have been trading grains and animals, or the produce of their own trade or craft for generations," the King said, holding up his left hand, which the Doctor had just completed bandaging. He inspected it closely, as though looking for a flaw. "It would seem strange that just because their seigneur has decided who farmed what or who lived where in the past they cannot grasp the idea of being able to make their own decisions in the matter. Indeed you might even find that they have been doing so already, but in what you might call an informal way, without your knowledge."
"No, they are simple people, sir," Ulresile said. "One day they may be ready for such responsibility, but not yet."
"Do you know," the King said earnestly, "I don't think I was ready for the responsibility that I had to shoulder when my father died?"
"Oh, now, sir," Ormin said. "You are too modest. Of course you were ready, and have been entirely proved to be so by all manner of subsequent events. Indeed you proved so with great expedition."
"No, I don't think I was," the King said. "Certainly I didn't feel I was, and I'd bet that if you had taken a poll of all the dukes and other nobles in the court at the time and they had been allowed to say what they really thought, not what I or my father wished to hear — they would have said to a man that I wasn't ready for that responsibility. What's more, I would have agreed with them. Yet my father died, I was forced to the throne, and although I knew I was not ready, I coped. I learned. I became a King by having to behave as one, not simply because I was my father's son and had been told long in advance that I would become so."
Ormin nodded at this.
"I'm sure we take your majesty's point," Ulresile said as Wiester and a couple of servants helped the King on with heavy ceremonial robes. The Doctor stood back to let them slide the King's arms through the sleeves before completing the tying of the bandages on his right hand.
"I think we must be brave, my friends," Duke Ormin said to Walen and Ulresile. "The King is right. We live in a new age and we must have the courage to behave in new ways. The laws of Providence may be eternal, but their application in the world must change as the times do. The King is right to commend the common sense of the farmers and the craftsmen. They have great practical experience in many things. We ought not to under-estimate their abilities simply because they are not high-born."
"Quite," the King said, drawing himself up and putting his head back to have his hair combed before it was gathered into a knot.
Ulresile looked at Ormin as though he was going to spit. "Practical experience is all very well when a man makes tables or has to control a haul pulling a plough," he said. "But we are concerning ourselves with the governance of our provinces, and in that it is ourselves who have the whole part of the experience."
The Doctor admired her handiwork on the King's bandaged hands, then stood back. The breeze brought a distinct smell of flowers and grain-dust billowing in across the bowed fabric walls of our temporary courtyard.
The King let Wiester slide his thick stave-gloves on to his hands and then lace them up. Another servant placed stoutlooking but richly decorated boots in front of the King and carefully guided his feet into them. "Then, my dear Ulresile," he said, "you must teach the burghers of the towns what you know, or they will make mistakes and we shall all be the poorer, for I hope we can all expect a better crop of taxes from such improvements." The King sniffed a couple of times.
"I'm sure the ducal estates" share of any increase will not be unappreciated, should it materialise," Duke Ormin said, with the look of one experiencing an attack of wind. "As indeed I am sure it will. Yes, I am."
The King looked at him quickly, with the heavy-lidded gaze of one about to sneeze. "Then you would be prepared to put the reforms into effect first in your province, Ormin?
Ormin blinked, then smiled. He bowed. "It would be an honour, sir."
The King took a deep breath, then shook his head and clapped his hands together as best he could. He cast a victorious look at Ulresile, who was staring at Ormin with a look of horror and disgust.
The Doctor knelt at her bag. I thought she was going to help me put the various bits and pieces away, but instead she took out a clean square of cloth and rose to stand before the King just as he sneezed mightily, jerking his hair out of the grip of the flunky combing it and sending the comb catapulting forward on to a brightly coloured rug.
"Sir, if I may," the Doctor said. The King nodded. Wiester looked discomfited. He was only now getting out his kerchief.
The Doctor gently held the cloth up to the King's nose, letting him sniff into it. She folded the cloth and then with another corner dabbed softly at his eyes, which had moistened. "Thank you, Doctor," he said. "And what do you think of our reforms?"
"I, sir?" the Doctor said, looking surprised. "It is no business of mine."
"Now, Vosill," the King said. "You have an opinion about everything else. I assumed you would be more in favour than anybody here. Come, you must be happy with this. It's something like what you have in your precious Drezen, isn't it? You've talked about such things at inordinate length before now." He frowned. Duke Ulresile did not look happy. I saw him glance at Walen, who too appeared troubled. Duke Ormin appeared not to be listening, though his face bore a surprised expression.