The Rugged Edge

Chapter 19: The Summer's Promised Trip

Everyone, glad, looks forward
to the summer's promised trip.
Everyone exclaims the worth
of the summer's promised trip.
Yet I myself have never gone
on the summer's promised trip.

. . . . .

Vereniva was a large and magnificent mansion near Vilia, in the northeastern corner of Rokenmeine. It used to belong to the Duke of Shermanel, one of the few dukes in the kingdom, who watched over Rokenville and the small communities near there. The Duke of Shermanel used to use it as a summer home, but didn't for many years and decided to sell it. The purchaser turned out to be none other than King Collum, and Vereniva was the summer house that he went broke on and then proceeded to take ridiculous amounts of taxes from the people.

Collum decided that, since he had bought the house, he may as well keep it. I suppose he thought that if he could take some money from the people, then there was no reason why he shouldn't take just a tad more to hire a few servants to keep Vereniva up. The thought made me so angry.

So every summer, Collum would go to Vereniva for a couple of weeks. He would bring along only a servant or two, the stable boy to care for the horses, and his guard. At the very beginning, he brought a guard of fifty men, since there would still be another one hundred and fifty to leave behind at Rokenfort. However, as he grew unable to pay all the men, his total guard diminished to a little more than fifty, and he only brought along a dozen men to Vereniva.

The annual trip to Vereniva seemed to be one thing that the few people that went looked forward to each year. Arlie, the young stable boy, always went to take care of the traveling horses along the way and at the mansion. Whenever I went to the stables around that time of year, Arlie would rave on and on about the fantastic conditions of the stables at Vereniva and the pasture where he could take the horses to graze, just outside the gate. He always complained about having nothing to give the horses but hay at Rokenfort.

There were two men at Rokenfort that did the servant work, by the names of Fabian and Eldon. They had both gone to Vereniva, I knew, because Collum chose one a year and often switched between them. Though I had barely spoken to them in the life I'd lived at Rokenfort, during the preparations for the trip to Vereniva they could be heard in the halls, arguing with each other about which one would get to go that year. Still, the one who stayed behind wasn't so bad off: they were left in charge of the fortress while Collum was away.

There was always tons of preparation for the trip to Vereniva. A month before the trip was when Fabian and Eldon could be heard in their loudest arguments and the men in the guard bragged about being chosen for the trip - although they wouldn't be until a couple of weeks ahead. It was then, two weeks before the trip, when Collum would announce whom he chose for the trip, and the castle residents would split into two groups: the minority, consisting of the fourteen people who would go to Vereniva, wandering about with their noses in the air and their happiness indescribable; and the majority, very disappointed, left with only the dim hope of being picked next year.

Bessy never went; she and Gracelyn, the kitchen maid, always stayed behind to feed the remaining servants and soldiers. She didn't care in the least. She had never been to Vereniva, and she said she'd much rather not go. "Though it would be marvelous to see a place in Rokenmeine really green again," she said, "I've been to Vilia. It's no better than Runa. I'd rather not see Vereniva; it'll just be another ruined corner of the kingdom."

Yet everyone looked forward to Vereniva, and said it was marvelous.

I had always taken Bessy's word for it. I myself had never been able to go.

"Why should you?" Collum had said the first time I asked, when I was only six years old. "I'm sure you'd find it boring. Nothing to do but roam around; there's nothing for a little girl like you."

He didn't realize that all I did in Rokenfort was roam around, with nothing to do. Professor Alastair had always taken a break from tutoring around that time each summer; two week's vacation. But it had never been much of a vacation for me. Each summer, the chaos of the trip encircled me, and all I would do was ignore it. I'd never get to go, and I wasn't even sure I wanted to.

. . .

It was the end of May when I first heard them this year.

"Well, you went last year, so surely I'm going," said Eldon.

"But he seemed extremely pleased with me," said Fabian. "He couldn't turn me down." His voice was heavy with self-confidence.

"I can do just as good a job as you can," said Eldon, nettled.

Not only that, but squabbles could be heard from down in the barracks below my bedroom. The men were full to the brim with excitement.

"What are you doing with that mangy old bag?" came the voice of a guard.

"Packing." It was Cadence's voice. "This year I know I'm going."

"Never in a hundred years!" chided a third voice. "You've never gone, and you won't. You're too young; Collum wouldn't pick you."

"He picked Geraint!" argued Cadence. "Twice!"

It was true. Even Geraint seemed giddy, and I finally decided to ask him about it.

"What's with you?" I asked him, on the way to the stables one morning.

He had a smile on his face. "Oh, just a lot of talk about Vereniva."

"I heard. So what's it all about? Is it really that good?" I heard the tint of sarcasm in my voice.

"Sure it is," said Geraint. "Really, it is," he added, looking at my face.

I wasn't trying to be sarcastic. Even with Bessy's thoughts on the matter, I wanted to go. Could it really be so good? Or was it just in comparison to Rokenfort that everyone quarreled about it?

"It's green," said Geraint. "Really green. As in, it's not only the grey green of the grass around here, nor the black green of the forest. There's a garden, complete with walkways and ponds and hedges, with roses and orchids growing everywhere. There's this girl there that works on it, and keeps it all year long. She must be so devoted; it's perfect. I know Collum has made horrible mistakes in Rokenmeine, especially in actually buying Vereniva, but he made no mistake in hiring the people that work there. They do their job well."

"Why are you so happy, then?" I asked. "It's not like you get to go this year. Don't you have to watch me?"

"Yup," said the guard, but his smile only widened. "I do."

This made no sense to me. If he loved Vereniva so much, why was he so happy that he had to stay behind in the cobwebbed Rokenfort corridors with me?

The answer came the next day.