The King's Collie

Epilogue: Odes and Blessings

Michel took the stairs down to the final resting place of the royal lineage, in the castle basement that served as a crypt, perhaps a mausoleum. Some of these graves were of his ancestors, but not directly. For that, he could look to Aragonia's counterpart. He'd taken refuge many times over in that one, but never here. He beheld the tapestries and portraits, being as much a museum of Valentia as it was a museum of its rulers. A lance that a past King used to defend the kingdom, the armor another King wore in a war best forgotten, the coronation dress of a past Queen, all securely on display.

This was not what the new King was most interested in, however. He stepped to the new section, with two new marble cases carved. Felix and Ophelia, resting beside each other. Rhys had sculpted two large new statues of each of them, in a similar vein to Sir Cameron. They both had their own wings, and minimal crown-halos, as well as simple yet hard-to-carve, flowing clothes. They faced each other, as tradition gave for immortalizing works like this, but Felix's gaze was averted to the proportionately smaller statue in the center: a rather canine-looking dog, in a pious pose.

Michel stared for a while, then pulled a small box out of his cloak. It was something Marco, then Scarpezo, managed to prepare, right after those tragic events. It was this same dog's skull; to see this would be morbid, but it was courteously and entirely enclosed, in a small wooden box. To possess it in this way meant something different entirely. It was much more beautiful this way. A chunk was taken out of the marble, to safely accommodate for this box.

Michel sighed, setting this box aside for a second. He took out a sheet of paper he extracted from the now published works of Sir Cameron's works, and silently read a passage this collie wrote:

When Christ the Lamb was just a child,
He knew a garden, small and wild.
He loved the roses that grew there,
and wove them in his russet hair.
When summer's end was drawing nigh,
a herd of youth came trudging by;
They saw the roses in His tree,
and through them tore, indignantly.

"What frills of flowers on thy brow!"
they mocked The Christ, who cried out now,
and bleated softly, "take, I say—
all but these naked thorns away."
And of those thorns was left the crown,
and lo, they tightly pressed it down,
'til from His wool, so mild and young,
the drops of blood, like roses, sprung.

Michel knelt, taking this meaning in.

This was Iago's fault, surely so. But something inside Michel made him feel like this was his burden, too, succeeding who he did. How easily did his uncle believe what he did? Were there no objections, powerful enough to counter this? Why must any of this have happened the way it did?

It was going to be a long way, but Michel wanted to make things right. He promised this to himself, as he slid the wooden box into the marble slot. The relic was in its rightful place.

A ray of afternoon sunlight flooded in through the tomb's window at that moment, with a cloud giving way to the sun.

Michel knelt again, and looked up at this newly exposed light, shining in through a ground-level window. It lit the statue perfectly. From this, Michel now felt blessed, and quietly left.

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