The King's Vow

Chapter 1

Author's note: This story was inspired by a poem I wrote on hellopoetry four years ago or so.

Labake, the Olori (queen), rose from the bed after frantically groping at the side of her husband's bed with her hand and finding it empty once again much to her dismay. In fact, the bed was cold which meant that her husband hadn't been in bed for a while now. Alarmed, she looked around the well-furnished room lit with oil lamps and called out for her husband, but she got no response. Thinking that he might have gone out to use the royal bathroom in the outer chamber, she started to rise from the bed to go seek him. Tying her wrapper properly under her armpits and above her young heavy breasts which only sagged a bit from their own weight, she grabbed a shawl, draped it over her shoulders, gently took an oil lamp in her hand, and was about going out in search of her husband, the king, when she almost bumped into him in the narrow corridor leading out into the living room.

"Kabiyesi!" She uttered, lifting the oil lamp a bit, so that she could be sure that he was indeed the one.

"Labake, where are you going to at this time of the night?" His soothing voice reached her, discarding her doubts.

"I was coming to look for you, olowoorimi. I woke up to find out that you were not in bed and I grew worried." She explained.

"Do not be distressed dear wife. I only went out to take a leak." He said, putting his arm around her plump shoulder and guiding her back into the bedroom. "I must have taken too much water with the evening meal. You know how peppery the soup you served me was and it caused me to fill my stomach with more than enough water than is needed."

"Forgive me, your highness. I forget that you are not like my father who likes his food peppery enough to give the throat sores."

"Never mind, Ayaba, you are a new wife and such errors are expected from new wives who are yet to know their husbands that well. With time, I'm however positive that you'll get better." He assured her.

Labake smiled. She felt so lucky. Who wouldn't feel so lucky marrying such a wonderful man. Not only was he a king loved by his people, he was also the husband every maiden in town wished to have. Labake knew she was envied by every woman in the village, but unlike most of the other wanton ladies, she hadn't flirted with the king nor charmed him like her enemies claimed, she had only been returning from the stream with her water pot perched on her head a few months back, when the king who had been taking his evening walk with his Otun (the right-hand man of the king) had run into her in the popular path that led to the stream. The king had suddenly developed a likeness for her after she had offered him a drink from her water pot to quench his afternoon taste, and she had been surprised when he had come to her father's house the following week to seek her hand in marriage; and here she was now, the Queen of the whole Lagbedu land.

But there was a problem which bothered the young queen very much. Labake, had a feeling that the king had only married her as a trophy wife just to save face. She realised that although, he was eighteen years older than she was, which would have made her very young body desirable to other men at her young age, the king had refused to bed her ever since they had gotten married. All her attempts to get him to consummate the marriage had proven abortive. It had been four weeks now and the king kept giving various excuses of why he wouldn't touch her just yet. In fact, there was a rumour in the village that the king disliked women because of his reluctance to marry for a long time. People said that the king who was in his late forties had only ended up marrying her because Otun had pressured him to do so in order to stop the rumours from getting worse and making him the ridicule of other kings in neighboring village who were beginning to doubt his potency.

The act of her husband's disappearance was certainly not the first time it was happening. Labake had woken up on several occasions to find her husband gone from bed in the middle of the night when all mortal men should be sleeping, while the restless spirits and nocturnal animals roam the land. Labake had been so distressed that she had told her grieviances to the Queen Mother, and the aged woman had implored her to bear with her son and be exercise a little more patience till her son was ready to perform his manly duties as a husband.