In the Company of Night

by Mitch H

The Procession Of The Duchesse-Pretender

SBMS042

The next morning, we tracked down another member of the delegation, an exiled miller named True Grit, who had been driven out by the caribou themselves, his mill placed under a rebel journeymare. One who had been hung outside his establishment by a Company vexellation during the Ride of the Wild Hunt. True Grit held a grudge over the death of his journeymare, despite her betrayal, so we did not approach him as ourselves, but rather grooms conveying Bound Codex in her pretentious brougham. Codex did all the talking, and prompting. For a change, it was not my words in her mouth, but rather those of Bonforte. Once the prospective Duchesse put her mind to things, she did not do it half-way.

The cavalcade returned to Chateau d' Abeille, each conveyance turning off the carriage-way in an almost military evolution, arranging themselves in ranks across the fore of the entrance court. The members of the delegation descended from their carriages, their drivers (Company all, under slight glamours to hide their sometimes-distinctive features) remaining behind. The door-pony rushed inside the porte, and returned rapidly enough, followed by Lady Bonforte, two, no three of her little cousins, and an attendant hoofmare.

"You were told the other day, that there is no Duchesse under these eaves, and to apply to our cousins elsewhere, with better title and richer resources. I am, as you see, almost in the character of a governess, a poor relation of the vicomtess."

"Your grace, the lawyers and the courtiers can talk of blood and descent, estate and title. What we who are in exile and those still at home can understand, is that the old Duc is dead, and his order with him. My journeymare is dead, my mill in ruins, its business blown to the four winds. A province renowned for its productivity, the cornucopia of the North, without ground flour! A rich farming district, suffering from hunger!"

"And that is the concern of one of my cousins with the proper inheritance. Pouce Fantoche, most likely, for her descent is most close to that of the old Duc."

"A child! Who has never even set hoof in the north, let alone in the province!"

"It would be her right."

"Your grace, talk of inheritance and right are all well and good when the subject is indeed, a subject, a farmer inheriting a farm, a miller his father's mill. One piece of property or another, under authority, descending in the proper and orderly manner – in a polity under order, by order, ordered by a mature sovereignty. There is no order without a sovereign, and there is no order under a minor, herself under authority. Perhaps if the province was at peace, the prior sovereign's administration settled, developed, steady under the capable regency of a trusted guardian, who in their turn acted as the sovereign in fact, while the sovereign in law came to maturity in peace, stability and order. There is none of that in Rennet."

"What, not a single pony or donkey to maintain the new duchesse's interests, or act in regency?"

"No, rather, a swarm of argumentative self-appointees, almost-bandits, and opportunistic adventurers. No pony under authority, but rather many ponies arrogating authority to themselves."

"Should not somepony then step in and establish a regency?"

Bound Codex stepped forward, and took over the argument, the miller's preparation having extended this far and no more, although True Grit had, truthfully, struggled somewhat over his lines towards the end of his performance.

"It would merely impose a class of foreign adventurers in place of local ones, your grace. Please, allow us to show you the plans we have drawn up, and the narrow window of opportunity that is being closed by those damnable mercenaries and the adventurers they are encouraging even now in Rennet…"

The new duchesse's little cousins looked on, wide-eyed and cock-eared, as the servants of the house filled the windows of the façade above, and the audience grew by leaps and bounds. The performance grew in the playing, and as the various members of the delegation and that redoubtable jenny offered their points to each other, and found themselves debating the fine points of the law and lack of it in those war-torn districts. After a while the vicomte himself emerged from his manor, to join his children and his wife's cousin.

"Bon', you sound like someone who has her mind on new horizons. The children love you, but they do not need you. This may or may not be your patrimony, but do they need you?"

"Mon seigneur vicomte… I think perhaps they do need someone like me."

"Then, your grace, I think it is time you cease your procrastination." The vicomte turned around, herding his children before him, the delegation dismissed without a word or a glance. Only his cousin was real to him, the rest were background, furniture. He was from all accounts a decent aristocrat, but very much a donkey of his position, of his class. We heard him talking to the new duchesse, who had to hurry in an undignified fashion behind him as he disappeared from view, "You will of course take some servants with you. Your maid and two or three of the hoofmares-" and the door slammed in our faces.

Well, the habits of a lifetime were not shed in a morning. Most of the delegation had not been in on the scam, and they probably had expected there to be more… negotiating in the morning's negotiations. They did not realize that they had been witness to a donkey negotiating with herself via proxy.

The ponies of Rennet gathered their sensibilities, and chose to celebrate in the entrance court.

---

The conveyance of a newly minted ducal pretender is not a simple matter of forming up on a roadside, and marching for one's destination. Supplies and carriages had to be organized, and a contingent of guards needed to be "hired". Company ponies, of course, Octavius and his section, lightly glamoured to hide horns and tack & barding too obviously worn or "Company" to pass casual examination. The original delegation of exiles grew as rumor and gossip spread the word to the ambitious and homesick. The numbers were such that I had to send Bound Codex to the chateau again, and finagle a logistics meeting with the new duchesse. She helpfully led us to a small, unheated pavilion beside a frozen pond across from the rose-gardens I had lurked in the other night. I was glamoured with an earth-pony disguise based loosely on that of True Grit; nopony would confuse us if we stood side by side, but it was enough that nopony would ask questions about why the new duchesse was meeting with a zebra. We discussed the prospects of her procession becoming something more substantial, and how much the added numbers complicated the matter. A small convoy could power through the cold weather, and move swiftly over difficult roads. Something like what was in prospect, however, would churn snow-bound roads into mud, and overstrain inns and taverns and other resting-stops. We would also need to carry our own food supplies. At that point, it made more sense to start talking about improving the roads along the way, and importing flour and other necessary supplies into the rather strapped duchy.

In the end, we killed two birds with one stone, and the duchesse sent Bound Codex off to purchase flour and other necessities in bulk on the province's credit, and sent me off to pull my mad engineer from his winter projects to do what he did best.

Beat bad roads into well-planked submission.

There was no possibility of actually corduroying well over a hundred miles of bad road, of course. But that didn't mean that problem areas couldn't be addressed ahead of a winter procession. Mad Jack surveyed the road with a small contingent of guards, while Dancing Shadows and I met with the militia commanders of western Hydromel and then the mayors of the hoof-full of towns and hamlets along the route. It was in everypony's best interest to see some improvements on that road, and many hooves make light work. Late winter was a time that most ponies suffered from severe cabin fever, in any event, and the long winter months had accustomed everypony to the brisk weather, so it wasn't quite so dangerous to have many out and about and active in the cold. The politicians of Hydromel were greatly impressed by the argument that the current occupation of neighboring Rennet by Verdebaie militia-ponies had given that province an unfortunate hoof up on their neighbors to the south; an improved route into the heart of the desperate province in junction with the delivery of much-needed supplies would do much to balance out the disparity in participation, and help bind together the provinces of the region.

The improvement of the roads inside Rennet proper was the most difficult part of the project. There were no fat and happy farmers or burghers available to work a voluntary corvee inside Rennet; there was no surplus or margin to feed such an effort, nothing in the control of the mostly absent authorities, at any rate. Farmers had barns full of half-processed grain, but needed to be organized and cozened into working to their own benefit. Townsfolk needed the food-stocks represented by the prospective convoy, but were suffering a fairly thin winter with the mills out of operation. They could hardly be worked on the roads without causing too many of them to collapse or fall sick.

Company ponies perhaps escorted a representative of the new duchesse-pretender, a humble roan jenny of a certain age who talked one-on-one with many stubborn farmers in that month of preparation and waiting. The duchesse-pretender supposedly spent that time in seclusion with her family of twenty years, making memories to compensate for the way that they were now separating. Of course, nopony outside of Chateau d'Abeille saw her in this time. And many farmers in Rennet seemed overly familiar with the new duchesse after her installation, as if they had met her somewhere before. But that's another pony's story.

So the Company got in its winter-quarters fitness exercise in the last month of winter, clearing the route from Rennet City to the border of Hydromel, and partially corduroying the low and problem areas along the way. It left the pretense, that the Company disliked the new duchesse-pretender and favored one or more of her rival cousins, rather thread-bare, but with few town-ponies out and about in Rennet and the Company glamoured and largely out of sight in Hydromel, I think we mostly clothed our nakedness. So long as nopony looked up our skirts.

The farmers didn't much care who helped them fix their roads, so long as they got their carts back. And many of them ended up with vehicles that might technically have belonged to the burned granaries and mills, so they had incentive to ignore the Company devices on the ponies working beside them to clear blocked drainages, lay down logs in low areas, and generally clear brush and ditches and so forth.

---

The procession itself was impressive, a pageant on the march. The vicomte had contributed his grand coach, his heraldry carefully but temporarily plastered over with the arms of the duchy of Rennet. The coach was proceeded by Company ponies armed in Hydromel militia barding, but with their usual weaponry to hoof. The various broughams and landaus of the exiles and other hangers-on - who had gravitated out of the province and to the vicinity of the vicomte's door once the news had spread - surrounded the duchesse's borrowed coach like a fleet of corvettes flocking about their commodore's flag-ship. Behind the would-be courtiers rolled the many carts and wagons carrying the credit-bought wealth of the new duchesse, processed flour, preserves, great wheels of Rennet cheese returning home to the districts that spawned them. And, of course, tents and travel-supplies for the great herd accompanying this ducal migration, and a small coterie of servants, old folk from the vicomte's estate and new hires for the duchesse's palace.

For once, nothing much occurred to complicate the Company's existence. Other than a new round of the flu, which swept the cavalcade about two days out of Rennet City. I had the sick put up in tents left by the side of the road, and brought in portable hearths and my supplies to try and maintain quarantine. At some point I missed my appointment to renew my glamour, but those that had not already been wondering why an earth-pony attendant was organizing the impromptu hospital, were hardly likely to notice that he had spontaneously grown stripes and a zebra's coarse mane. All the flu outbreak meant, was that I was left behind by the procession, and missed the spectacle of Bonforte's installation in her half-wrecked, half-abandoned ducal palace. I'm told it was something impressive, and only the beginning of a life's work rebuilding what the Company had helped destroy.

But I had a Company to get back to, and that long vacation had put me far too far behind on my work. And Rye Daughter barely remembered who I was when I finally straggled back into my infirmary.

Back to work.

Comments

[Easysnuggler]

I wonder if the dutchess gave birth to a zony 10 months later.

[Mitch H]

8628349
Oh, for the love of small green equines... fixed.