The Jester: Homecoming
Episode 2: At Loose Ends
“Where have you been, good lookin’?”
Startled, Mardans Santinetta looked around in confusion. He had been absently walking up the cobblestone street to his mother’s small house in the marginally fashionable Second Level below the palace, head down, wondering what he would do now that his job had ended. He turned toward where he thought the voice had come from, and a moment’s search found the voice’s owner, the neighborhood trollop, Gladwys, leaning over a balcony, her décolletage leaving little to his imagination. In days long past, when an innocent girl, she had been mildly pretty and vivacious. Of late, her shameless lifestyle had left her washed out and embarrassingly forward.
“Ah, Gladwys,” said Mardans in greeting, purposely sounding flat and tired. “Just heading to see my mother. I owe her a visit.”
Gladwys straightened, tossing a lock of brown hair over her shoulder in a manner she obviously thought seductive. “Well, pretty boy, when you’re done visitin’ mother dear, come visit me!” She tittered as if she had made a joke.
Mardans grimaced. “I’m afraid my schedule is full. I just have time to look in on my mother, and then I’m likely off again.” He hoped his exhausted tone made his unsettled life sound busy and wearying.
“Maybe you just need a little excitement to revive your spirits,” she offered with a low chuckle and a bat of her eyelashes.
“Oh, my life’s plenty exciting,” he replied. “A little too exciting these days. Look, I need to get going. Best of luck!” Touching the brim of his hat, he strode away at twice the pace he had been walking. He ignored her ever-louder calls, which stopped only when he moved out of sight around a bend in the hillside. He had hoped she had moved her residence elsewhere in his absence.
Shrugging off the encounter, he saw his mother’s house standing a hundred yards ahead, a tidy white cottage with black shutters fronted by a few square yards of grass and a waist-high, wrought-iron fence. It stood small and unpretentious, just as she had wanted when she had purchased it fifteen years before. No one would guess a former Queen’s lady-in-waiting and the daughter of a fabulously wealthy Satelen family lived just a few steps away.
Wiping his feet on the mat and knocking his usual seven-note ditty, Mardans opened the door and stepped inside, shutting it gently behind him. He shrugged out of his jacket and hung it and his hat on the same iron peg he had used since moving in with his mother from the Palace at age twelve. Taking a deep breath, he smiled at the comforting smell of freshly baked bread and a hint of something flowery and sweet. He leaned his back against the door and relaxed. He was home.
Tiena Santinetta spoke before she appeared in the doorway. “My dear boy! You don’t know how much joy your return has brought me! I’ve missed you!” She glided into the room, arms open and smile wide. Stepping forward to meet her, Mardans hugged her tightly, giving her a peck on the cheek, feeling any residual anxiety drain away in her unquestioning affection. He returned her radiant smile.
Even a few years into her fifth decade, she was still a universally acclaimed beauty. Dark hair, piercing cobalt blue eyes, flawless skin, and a fit figure made her look not much older than her son. When she left her house, aristocratically poised and polished, she turned every man’s head, and it took a strong-willed man to refuse her requests, always pleasantly phrased and presented with a smile. But at home, she was warm and witty, open and apt to laugh or break into song. Mardans considered her the perfect mother and was never shy to let anyone else know.
“Come,” Tiena said in a voice that could not be disobeyed. “You need food and rest. I can see you haven’t been taking good care of yourself.” She tsked as she moved back through the kitchen and out another door into a small back garden taking in the light of its southern exposure. “Now, sit down and relax. I will bring out a little food, a little drink, and then we can talk.” She walked away before he could respond.
“Yes, Mother,” he said with a contented sigh. He realized how much he had missed her and their talks while away. Gone for more than a year, he had been traveling with an acting troupe that had performed before appreciative crowds from Aertella to Satele and halfway back again. From the constant travel he had received no joy, but the camaraderie of the troupe and the thrill of performing had made the grueling miles worthwhile. After a few years of wrangling horses on a ranch, he had needed to do something creative and fun, and the members of the troupe had made sure he had learned as much about entertaining the masses as he could and had fun doing it. They had succeeded, but his time among them had ended. Now what was he to do?
Ever since his twelfth birthday, when his father had bowed to his queen’s pressure to send Mardans to his mother, his life had been a series of extended pursuits of his interests. He had enjoyed them all, but after a few months or a year, he had tired of them and moved on to something else that piqued his interest. Tiena had indulged him each time he had jumped to another diversion, arranging and paying for lessons or an internship with this and that craftsman. She had insisted on only one major stipulation—that he continued his studies—and until he turned sixteen, he had worked in daylight and studied by lamplight.
Now twenty-four years old, Mardans had extensive experience in various disciplines but saw himself as the proverbial “jack of all trades and master of none.” He felt too old now to be pursuing whims and dreams. He was a man, not a child. Drifting was never part of the plan, and to his shame, he had let himself ease into it. He needed to determine what he would do with his life. And he had skills and options, good ones. What he lacked was a firm belief about what would satisfy him for the rest of his life.
His mother bustled into the garden bearing a silver tray, which she set on a nearby table. Without comment, she handed him a tall glass of cold water, which he obediently gulped down, before distributing tea cups and saucers, small plates, and a large plate piled with crackers, meat, cheese, and fruit. That done, she hurried back to the kitchen and quickly emerged with a silver teapot, filling the cups with steaming tea. She beamed. “There! That should be enough!”
“Mother, it is enough for three of me,” Mardans said with a full mouth, something she had admonished him a myriad times not to do. “Did you prepare all this just now? How could you?”
Tiena laughed only as she would when they were alone. She slipped out of her house shoes and sat across from him, tucking her feet under her. “My boy, you know better! I knew when you set foot in the city, so I made sure to prepare a little welcome platter for you.”
“And you undoubtedly received reports about me wherever I went,” he replied without rancor. Tiena Santinetta’s network of informants was legendary to the few who knew. The most extensive among the Satelen families, it rivaled, if not surpassed, those of the governments, merchants, and private citizens she kept her eye on.
“Of course,” she said, equally without guilt. “Any news of my son warms my heart.”
He knew what she implied. “I’m sorry I did not write more often,” he said after a moment of self-recrimination.
Tiena chuckled, taking a sip of her tea. “I was not fishing for an apology, Mardans. You can take care of yourself. A mother should not hover.” She looked away then back at him out of the side of her eye. “But I did have my agents provide inconspicuous security here and there when you traveled through.”
Mardans shook his head as he laughed. “You can’t help yourself, can you, Mother?”
She gave him a mock-chastened look. “I’m afraid not, my boy. You are too dear to me.”
“Well, I’m back, safe and mostly sound,” he said, crushing a cracker and throwing the crumbs to the waiting birds.
“Mostly sound?” his mother probed.
He winced. “I’m at loose ends again, and this time, I want to settle into something permanent. I’m tired of hopping around from one thing to another like I have been.”
“None of the things you’ve tried suits you?” she asked.
He shrugged. “I enjoyed them all in some way, and they all taught me something useful, but they feel like parts, not wholes, if you know what I mean.”
Nodding, she refilled his teacup. “You could always work for me,” she suggested in a soft voice, not for the first time. “Many of your skills would translate over.”
The look of discomfort returned to his face. “I already do, informally. It is the family business, and I expect to end up helping you eventually. But I need to do something on my own first. Something I can point to and look on proudly and say, ‘I did that!’”
“Ah!” she said, her glorious smile shining on him. “The Santinetta Curse has fallen upon you! Against all the indications from your life until now, you are ambitious!”
“Is that it?” he said dubiously. “I thought it was just a normal man thing.”
“Well, that may be,” she said, “but Santinettas contract this curse most shockingly, you know—males and females! We disdain the thought of dying without putting our mark on the world.”
Mardans ran his hands through his dark brown hair, a shade lighter than his mother’s. “I had not framed it that way to myself, but maybe that’s what I’m feeling. It’s an emptiness that needs to be filled. A niggling dissatisfaction that I’m not living up to what’s expected of me. After all, my father is a king, I am a scion of the wealthiest and most powerful Family in all Satele, and my beautiful mother also runs the most successful information-gathering network in Osegra! I have a lot to live up to.”
“You’re still young,” she offered, her tone soothing. “You have plenty of time to find your place.”
He shook his head. “That may seem so, but it doesn’t feel that way to me. My inner voice is urging me to choose my course soon.”
“And if you don’t?” his mother asked with concern. “What then?”
“I feel I will drift forever,” he replied. “I will fritter my life away without a goal and die with many regrets.”
“That is bad,” she said, her features clouded. Tiena stood and collected the plates and cups, stacking them on the tray. Mardans remained quiet, knowing she thought best while keeping her hands busy with mindless work. Lifting the tray, she turned to take the dishes to the kitchen and suddenly turned back. “What about a wife?” she asked.
“A wife?”
“Yes, a female to love and share your life and bear your children?”
“I know what a wife is,” said Mardans, annoyed. “But how does that help me right now?”
Tiena shrugged. “It occurred to me that your frustration with yourself could be your sense you should be married by now.”
His shaking of his head was more violent this time. “No,” he said flatly. “That’s not it. That will happen in its own time. I won’t rush it. Besides, there’s no woman in my life besides you.”
“Fine,” his mother abruptly turned again and carried the dishes to the kitchen. She was back a moment later. “You are right. That, of all things, should not be rushed.” Collecting the few remaining things, she returned to the kitchen and began washing up.
Mardans followed her inside a few minutes later, finding a towel and drying the dishes on the drainer. “I’m sorry I upset you, Mother.”
Tiena stopped washing and looked him in the eye. “You said nothing wrong, Mardans. You know your own mind. You will find what you need to do, or it will find you. I am upset because of my own faults. I rushed love and allowed my girlish infatuation for your father to override my principles. Your birth I do not regret in the least. I regret my impatience, my poor choices, and all the shameful results. You are the only good result of my mistakes.”
She looked like she was about to cry, so he folded her in a long hug, letting her ease her emotions at her own pace. After a while, she pulled away and laughed grimly. “Thinking about your late and unlamented father made me remember something I promised to tell you.”
“From my father?” he asked. “He’s been dead for over a year!”
“No, not from your father,” she answered with a grin and a roll of her eyes. “Thinking of him made me think of the King, who is now Alfons. His name made me recall that he sent me a message not long ago to ask you to meet with him as soon as you returned home. He needs to speak with you about an urgent matter.”
Mardans’ eyebrows shot up. “This comes as a complete shock,” he said. “I’ve spoken to him—what?—just a handful of times over the past twelve years because his mother didn’t want me around anymore, and now he wants to speak with me about something urgent? He certainly took to acting like a king in a short time.”
“Now, now, my boy,” Tiena said in a soft voice, “your brother was not demanding. It was a request. I think he wants to ask you for a favor.”
“A favor?” His creased and darkened brow told the tale of what he thought of the idea. He began to pace the small kitchen, his voice rising in volume. “What right does he have to ask me for a favor? Are we bosom buddies again?”
“You have every right to be angry for what was done to you,” his mother answered. “I take much of the blame for that. I made you the odd man out in that family. So, be mad at me, not him. He was just a boy then and had no say in the matter. Besides, he’s your king now, and you owe him a hearing. Perhaps he wants to make it up to you.”
“Humph,” Mardans muttered, though his quick anger was already slipping away. “Why do you do that? Why can’t you just let me be mad at them?”
Tiena smiled. “Because your brothers and sisters are good people. Every time I see them at a function or a tea, they speak to me despite their mother’s obvious disapproval, and they ask about you and send their greetings. They are not your enemies. If anyone in that family wishes you ill will, it is the Dowager Queen. You remind her of her husband’s infidelity with me—and she hates me with a passion.”
Mardans nodded, and after a moment, he gave her a small smile. “I guess I assumed a lot.” He stood up straighter and took a deep breath. “All right. I will find out what Alfons wants. Where am I to meet him?”
A few notes:
I purposely wanted Mardans’ encounter with Gladwys to evoke both Joseph’s confrontation with Potiphar’s wife (Genesis 39) and Solomon’s warnings against the crafty harlot in Proverbs 5, 6, and 7. Mardans and his mother, Tiena, are not paragons of virtue, but they have learned by hard experience that premarital affairs are wrong and damaging. So, he runs from Gladwys as the apostle Paul advises (I Corinthians 6:18).
For all his other faults, the late king, Lorens II, was loath to send Mardans away at twelve, but to appease his wife, Queen Karasta (now the Dowager Queen), he did. It roughly coincided with the end of Tiena’s service with House Ankara as a lady-in-waiting. Lorens did not want to upset House Santinetta due to the long and profitable friendship and quasi-alliance between their families, a relationship that went back generations—a century and a half—to the boyhood friendship of then-Prince Margonne and Estevao Santinetta.
As for Tiena’s intelligence network, well, that information will be divulged on a need-to-know basis.
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