The Rose of Winter
and
The Thorn That Disagrees
Dramatis Personae
Witch, Observer/Narrator.
Captain of the King’s Guard – An unnamed member of Royalty.
First Knight – Authorized to perform executions by order of the King.
The King’s Counsel – Chief Legal Advisor to the Crown.
The King’s Inner Council of Nine. All also serve as Justices of the Royal Court, all appointed by the King. The Council assists the King in ruling the entire Kingdom.
The Duke of Diamondshire (The Thorn). A popular and influential regional governor, and a former member of the King’s Inner Council, before resigning due to disagreements within the Council.
Cassandra – Sylvan Dryad, Fairy, Queen of Truth. Disbelieved and viewed as a Faerie Trickster by those who walk asleep.
ACT I
Scene I.
Witch. (secluded within dark woods near the Duke of Diamondshire’s castle)
Hungry vultures scry in their witness trees.
An arrival from deeply velvet shores.
A detachment ordered by Majesty
to seize and extinguish him instantly,
this Thorn that disagrees.
Capt. The King’s mistakes are none.
One lord will not agree.
This warrant issued by the Royal Court
shall surely, fully, duly demonstrate
the wise will blink and freely abdicate
their reason in exchange for gain.
Witch. It is said,
This Thorn does wassail in woken wonder.
What justifies any king
where the sworn march in step
to the rule of whim and fancy?
Capt. Death to our King’s disloyal, tarnished blade
who stirs unrest in every village near;
where be this lord, a knight we thought we knew?
Who speaks their mind behind the Crown unchecked?
Witch. The King’s knights sense woe betide,
this blade’s castle vibrates foully dark.
First Knight. With caution, we will move!
Our wayward brother knows the unfair fate;
that force is well but not enough.
Deception plays upon the minds
of those who value fairness kind,
and upon their graves, we smile.
This head for the King we will find!
In shadows, how he disappears!
Witch. The troops, they sigh a knight is near.
And while this knight in darkness sneaks
they all do live in fear. And then these wights who tremble,
hear an echo of a question from the dark woods.
Duke. My blade is here, inside your inky shadows.
By what authority are my kindred knights
so expected to butcher one of their own?
What below the seal does this writ say to all?
Capt. Hear these orders blessed by an earthen deity,
purpled opinions from supreme fealty.
The Royal Court has spoken thus:
Counsel. This esteemed Council having received allegations of these,
a lord’s omissions, though they be so few,
so unintentional, so sub-rosa! So difficult to detect
and deemed so motely in another king’s realm,
here we elevate in more than minor ways,
where this lord’s merely disloyal failures
become so very great.
Therefore, from transgressions of a minor sort,
so small, so subtle, and so few were they,
this thorny knight does graduate to proven treason!
Judged by this anointed court’s newfound reason.
Witch. And then an echo of remarks from the dark woods:
Duke. Hear This! His sovereign sword may seek my blood,
but it is the dragon’s teeth he does now sow.
They grow within his garden, first unseen
until one morn he’ll wake to hang alone
in a withered tree of his own thinking.
This very eve here visits me a Fairy Queen
with more than warns of a wafting foul wind.
Capt. Ha! Spirits of the Trees, of course, Sylvan Dryad.
And of us, King’s knights, what sayeth she?
Duke. The Queen of Truth did so foretell of you.
Sayeth She:
Loyal knights will slay a thousand lilies
before they whack the Royal Weed that grows.
First Knight. Come hither, be more than just a ripple.
Your comrades sense you’re near, not so far away.
What we hear are echoes of a thought;
a thought our King does surely fear.
We sheathe our blades and will engage.
What do you see as true? Where are you?
Cassandra. This lord you seek no longer sleeps
in a sovereign’s darkened castle.
Capt. Oh! The Truth Faerie echoes from behind,
a message for our King’s knights. How so kind!
Cassandra. The castle’s bridge, now unwound for you to find
the one whose fate will now unwind
and walk or swim, your minds will stay within
the lands of do be careful where you go.
The castle of the One, seethes darkness still,
for those who walk asleep, they see no ill.
Prepare your glaives to cleave before the cross
and hear the doves; they fly away
and kiss the air of your last breath
and feel the chill of an unshrived death.
Capt. The Crown’s crimson’d blades brook no Sylvan Faerie!
On this, our blackest Hallowed Eve, with chill
across an angry moat, we must ferry
to reach the prize, our Master’s errant jewel.
We shall find this lord, in his castle seized,
the Duke of Diamondshire, the Thorn that disagrees.
Witch. And so across their fosse, they did ferry
and through their night, the castle reached.
Now, just outside the walls and towers,
which greeted them with a charcoal’s black,
one by one, the Kings knights did trespass
upon a darkn’d castle; through iron’d gates,
that seemed to breathe and wheeze,
and wink and grin, until the knights,
all one hundred, all crept within.
To be continued…
For a close reading of this poem, see the video above
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