the haunted kingdom by Charles E.J. Moulton (best detective novels of all time .TXT) 📖

lace net across her chest and her white parasol across her shoulder was filled with strings and cotton bells. Richard was holding her hand and conversing with Patricia who, dressed all in blue today, was pointing a small child in the crowd with a drawing in her hand. A few people started waving and the royals waved back. There was thunderous applause from the crowd that seemed to spread like wildfire across the marketplace. Even the lute player smack in the middle of the marketplace, which was very much into his music, stopped playing and applauded. They all waved at the crowd of citizens held back by traditional guards in blue and gold uniforms.
Belinda, dressed in a very pretty light pink and white dress, kept waving at the crowd whilst telling her mother how much she liked this festival when it was at its peak.
Marcus and Philip were dressed in capes and hats and had their customary gilded swords at their side, walking behind the royals and smiling, but also trying to keep a good lookout for eventual attackers or people with eager intentions.
“Here they built the tent for the mead you ordered, but being an expert on the cleanliness of public festivals you know that the old open tables were far too impractical.” The interesting part was that he had refused to build the tent a week ago. Now suddenly it was there. She looked inside. No drunks. Well-dressed people. There were five barrels and ten servants, a music ensemble in the corner. Everyone that walked by bowed to the Princess and she bowed back.
They passed the smaller well by the tent by which musicians with three fidiculas and two lutes were playing a soft tune, accompanying a very dashing young man in a dark blue and auspiciously festive suit, whose baritone was rich and appealing. Next to him was a fire juggler next to a longhaired gent swallowing a sword. Behind them was a stage with four jesters telling jokes and jabbing at one another with sticks for every story that the audience didn’t like. They leaped and turned and twisted, making the comedy look positively acrobatic. In front of the row of red four story houses were stands with different kinds of food, meat, fruit, vegetables, fish and then clothing and services like haircutting and a man with a magic serum. He was standing looking at Belinda wearing a big sign entitled “Theo Rofar’s Wonder Tonic”.
“Quite a few lovely things here today!”
She looked at Steven and nodded. “Thinking of anything special, dear?”
He pointed at a young woman standing across from the small ensemble by the well. She wore a green dress so green that it could be seen from Alliland. She played the aulos, a quite unusual one with a long neck and smiled at Belinda as she played.
The street behind her was filled with four groups of people who seemed to be dancers dancing. They stopped for a second and waved. Belinda waved back.
“She has quite an unusual aulos!” Belinda chuckled and gave him an irritated look.
“You dog!” She waved at the people.
Steven looked at her and smiled surprised. “No, Darling! I wasn’t being uncouth. One sees so many unusual things here. That dress is gruesome.”
“I know. I was joking.” She smiled at the waving people.
Cretan smiled. “What are you two whispering about?”
“Just jesting.” Belinda was cooing and grinning at the Senator, stretching her head forward and clucking sensually. Steven had not seen this sexual philly for a bit and liked it. She curtsied and said: “We are in love, Sire Senator.”
A small child with blond curls hanging down across her ears came up to her, her mother holding her hand. The child smiled. Julius Cretan stopped and tried to see what Belinda wanted. She was smiling. The girl handed her a drawing of a palace.
“Your highness, here is my drawing of the royal palace.”
She took the drawing and smiled.
It was blue and red and yellow with a big orange smiling sun in the right corner.
“You drew this?”
”Mmm-hmm!” She nodded happily. “That’s you in the doorway!”
She looked at the girl with a crown on her head standing by the gate. The two towers were there, to be sure. There were large roses everywhere and one rose was growing beside Belinda.
“That’s me?”
”Mmm-hmm! And I made the paint myself, all on parchment.”
“Tell me,” Belinda enthused.
“My father showed me how. Lapis lazuli, cinnabar, orpiment and malachite.”
”Really?”
”Mmh-hmmm!” the girl chirped. “This is Egyptian Blue and that colour is Naples Yellow.”
”This is my granddaughter Lisa.” Cretan said.
Sieglinde smiled. “What a sweet child!”
“Oh, it is?” Belinda bowed down to talk to her. “Do you want to become a painter, Lisa?”
“Maybe,” she sang.
“Politics?”
She shook her head and made a sour face. The nearby crowd along the houses began to laugh.
Belinda laughed. “What do you want to do?”
“Become a princess!”
Belinda smiled, caressing the girl’s head. “Being a princess needs that.”
The mother in a white dress and a lovely summer hat courtsied to her.
“This is my daughter Ariana.” Cretan said.
“Pleased to meet you.” Ariana beamed.
“You have a lovely daughter, Ariana!”
The mother beamed and turned red as a beet. “Thank you!”
”How old is she?”
”Five, your highness!”
“Quite a little lady.”
Lisa nodded.
“She agrees. And a good painter, too!”
She giggled.
“Maybe we can arrange for you to come over for a reception some time.”
”It would be an honour, your highness!”
The two girls curtsied, then continued walking past the crowd standing along the walls. Belinda strolled up to the multitude, Philip and Marcus following her and Sieglinde trying to stay as close as she could. Cretan smiled as Belinda walked up to a very gentle looking man and shook his hand. He had put on his Sunday best suit and shaved and even combed his hair for this. He was rather short with very strong muscle build, but his hair had never seen a bone comb it seemed. Not until today, that is. Little did he know that he could’ve had a private conversation with her last Sunday under a different roof. The man was glowing and the woman beside him was joyful as well. The princess looked at the chubby woman and her coloured scarf. She recognized her at once. It was the woman who had been praying the Pater Noster in Latin next to the altar and this was the husband. She had only seen him a second, but it was the couple that she had saved. She couldn’t reveal herself as her friend, but she was happy to see them. Obviously something had happened that had saved the man.
The man nodded and bowed. “Your highness, pleasure to meet your acquaintance!”
She laughed at his unusual phrasing, cocked her head to one side. “The pleasure is all mine!”
”And this must be the wife, I gather!”
She took the woman’s hand and she bowed, obviously not recognizing her without the blue hood over her head. “It is an honour!” She shook Belinda’s hand with a reverence that was heartwarming. Or did she recognize her? Hard to say. “An absolute honour!” She put her head back and beamed. The nearby people beamed as well and she took a glance at all the people that had arrived today standing politely alongside the houses of the marketplace as she spoke.
“Such a fine day isn’t it? And the beauty of the weather makes one happy. I think they have arranged it really nicely here.” She looked back at the couple. “Don’t you?”
The couple smiled and nodded.
“My husband here just recovered from a sickness that we thought would have fatal consequences. But the wound suddenly disappeared Sunday night.”
Belinda half-smiled. “Really?”
”So we are all the happier now that we can keep on living our lives and have already receive new job offers. A shoe that needs reshoeing and two wagons that need fixing.”
Belinda nodded and patted the woman on the back and for a moment the three of them just stood there and smiled, watching each other, not knowing what to say. Belinda was, at that moment, just another girl who happened to be a princess. A girl whose happiness knew no bounds.
“Take care of yourself now, yes?”
They nodded. “We will. It was an honour.”
The entourage started walking on and shaking the keen hands of
several other people in the crowd and some of them congratulated the soon to be newlyweds, some commended her on her dress and some would not let go of her hand. Patricia stayed a while with the people she had talked to and chatted, and Richard and Morgana kept on conversing with the elderly couple. But all the while Sieglinde and Steven saw that Belinda had turned contemplative after talking to the couple. Something had occurred. Even Marcus and Philip noticed a difference.
“You did that well, your highness!” Cretan said.
“Thank you, Julius!” He nodded, aware of having done something good for himself. “My granddaughter is so impressed by you.”
Belinda smiled. “She is very sweet, You can be proud of her.”
”I am. She would be honoured to visit the palace. Can it be arranged? If so, she could…”
“We will see, Julius!”
“I know that I might be persistent, but my daughter is a very good ”
Sieglinde jibed in. “Do not push Princess Belinda, Senator. She
likes making her own decisions!”
”Oh, your majesty, I know. She is the expert, undoubtedly!”
Sieglinde gave Steven a bemused look.
Belinda was in another world, still thinking of the old couple.
“Tell me, Senator,” she said. “What you have added in view of my recommendations.”
”The tent is already up, as you can see. We have marvelous live
entertainment in almost every part of the city. The drunks are out of the tent and if someone gets too rowdy they are sent to the local inns to drink, where many musicians and jugglers already are positioned to keep them inside.”
”What else?” Sieglinde asked.
”We have provided enough food and drink for most of the poor people and some of the stands provide free food with the non alcoholic meads free. We have certain spaces where citizens can sing and perform their own songs toward the afternoon at local capacity show demonstrations.”
”Grand.” Belinda whispered, her thoughts still focused around the old couple and how the fate of those two innocent civilians had touched her for a small instance, how their lives had joined.
There was a group of five jugglers on a small stage next to the mead tent and in front of them was the semifinalist singer that yesterday had impressed them so in the castle. The crowd of performers here were, many of them, semi-finalists and Belinda enjoyed talking to him yesterday. His knowledge of wines and foods were commendable. He was a court musician from the Ottoman Empire and quite an expert in the art of healings herbs and serums.
She walked up to him, smiling. The assembly followed her. He stopped playing and the jugglers stopped juggling. She recognized them from the gathering at the royal palace and nodded a greeting. The man slid his lute toward his back and bowed, taking her hand, putting his left foot forward and kissed it. “Honoured to see you again, your highness!”
She smiled, very touched by this air of masculine nobility. “Likewise, Mr. Snekawa!”
“Your Royal Majesty.” the young man said, giving the queen a half smile.
“Good Sire, we enjoyed your humorous mixture of styles and stories immensely yesterday” Sieglinde giggled. “We find the fact that you can juggle whilst singing and eating a bursting shield