“I did, I did long ago!” Boncorro cried. “It was not your doing, after all! But I cannot forgive your murderer, or forgive God for taking you from me!”
“Ah.” Prince Casudo’s face saddened. “But you must not blame God, my son. You must blame it on me, for I wanted to die.”
“You… wanted to leave me?” King Boncorro’s voice was a hiss; his eyes stared wide. “Oh, no, not that, never!” The ghost’s hands came up as if to embrace, to hold. “But I did wish to die, for I was racked with a temptation that I knew must be my downfall!”
“Temptation?” Boncorro stared. “You?”
“Oh, yes! Do not think, my son, that simply because I had resisted so many temptations already, that I did not suffer them!”
“But what kind of temptation could have swayed so saintly a man?”
“The temptations of a beautiful serving maid,” Prince Casudo sighed, “brought to this court by Chancellor Rebozo, and somehow preserved from my father’s clutches. Sweet she was, though no virgin, and with a face and form that would have distracted a stone! And I was no stone, my son, oh, no-but she was of too low a station for a prince to marry…”
“You loved a woman other than my mother?” Boncorro’s face was almost white. “Love? Ah, no, to my shame, little enough of love was there, but a great deal of lust, an ocean of lust, crashing in on the beach of my celibacy all at once, in a tidal wave! Do not think too harshly of me, I pray-remember that I had been eight years without a wife, that the chambermaid was very attractive and flirtatious, that I found myself tempted to the point of succumbing-and that I knew myself well enough to know that if I fell, I would try to justify the deed, to find some excuse for it, to persuade myself that the sin was right and good, so that I could maintain the liaison even though I could not marry her! Those excuses would have led me little by little to embrace the Devil’s blasphemies, until, believing I was damned, I would have declared myself a servant of Satan, who would then have given the throne into my hand-and rather than saving Latruria, I would have taken the kingdom with me to damnation. Nay, I resisted the beckoning ofher gazes and swayings, I refused the unspoken invitation in her eyes, I resisted the spoken invitations that came after, but my blood pounded so furiously in my veins that I knew I could not hold out forever! I besieged the gates of Heaven with my prayers, that the Lord would remove this temptation from me! I reminded myself time and again that God would not send me a trial too great for me to bear! But at last I pled with the Lord that, if he would not remove the temptress from me nor purge the lust from my heart, that he would take me home to the safety of Heaven! This was my sin, to ask to be removed from the strife of life! It is my fault, and none of the Lord’s, if He heard me and granted my prayer by relaxing His protection so that the assassin’s knife delivered me from my own weakness!”
“Weakness indeed!” Boncorro cried. “It was given to you to care for a kingdom, and to care for a son who would one day also care for that kingdom! How dare you desert me so! How dare you desert your kingdom!”
“But I never did, never truly!” the ghost pleaded. “Oh, aye, I quit this life, and could not be with you in the flesh, nor hold you when you were racked with grief nor counsel you in your confusion-but I was always with you as closely as I could be, ever hovering near to strengthen your mind and soothe your heart! Oh, I have not preserved you completely from Satan’s wiles-but if your heart was in turmoil and you felt a sudden calmness, that was me, channeling God’s grace to you! If you dreamed a nightmare, racked with confusion and fear, and I appeared to banish the monsters and show you magical wonders-that was more than a dream, it was I in the spirit! If you were tempted to hate, tempted to revenge, and a cool impulse stayed your hand and calmed you, that impulse was mine! I have never truly deserted you, my son, but have always been with you, in your heart and in your mind and, as much as I could, in your soul, strengthening you against temptation and counseling you against the sins of lust. It was I, it was always I, and I shall always be there to guide you and to give you solace, if you do not truly forsake the Lord God!”
Boncorro sat, staring at the ghost, as the color slowly came back into his face. Then, finally, his form relaxed and a single tear flowed from his eye. “God bless you, my father! I forgive you again, for in your place, I could have done no less, to save my kingdom-and my son, for I can only imagine the nightmare my life would have become if you had declared for Evil!”
“But can you forgive God?” the ghost whispered. Silence answered him, a silence that held the whole throne room and stretched on and on as young King Boncorro stared up at him, a boy no longer, but a man in the fullness of his strength-of body, of mind, and of will. Then at last he spoke, and his voice was low. “Yes, I can-but only because it has just dawned on me, through your talk, and… was that you, moving in my heart just now, to open it to grace?”
The ghost did not answer, but his eyes shone. “It comes dimly to me,” Boncorro went on, “that God may have worked for the best of us all-that my own orphaning has certainly made me the man that I am today, and that God may have wanted that, for His own reasons-but perhaps also for the welfare of the people of Latruria.”
Behind him, Rebozo winced. “I can begin to forgive Him, at least,” Boncorro went on, “though I may need to understand a great deal more of His plan before I can seek to make amends. Tell me more, that it may make greater sense to me! Why were you murdered?”
“You have guessed it, and guessed aright,” the ghost told him. “As soon as my murderer realized that I intended to turn to God, to turn my whole country to God if I gained the throne, he bent all efforts to assuring that I would not do so. Assassins began to appear about me-”
“The groom Accerese?”
“No, not he! Never he! The poor man only found my body-he did not wield the knife! Nay, he dwells here in glory among the Saints-for the small sins of his life were redeemed by the pain of his death, and his cleaving unto God until the last!”
“So much for your tortures, Rebozo,” Boncorro said, not even looking over his shoulder at the crumpled man who winced and whimpered at every mention of the Deity’s name. “But God protected you, my father?”
“He did,” the ghost said, “but I also exercised unceasing vigilance, ever wary, and foiled many an attacker myself, by an adroit move and the blocking of a blow. One learns such things, growing up in a court filled with intrigue.”
“Yes,” Boncorro said softly, “one does.”
“It is even so for you, my son. When your chancellor realized you, too, intended to be a reformer, he set the assassins on your trail-but you proved too wary for him, aye, and your magic too powerful.”
Now Boncorro did swivel about to glare at Rebozo, who snapped upright, hands raised to fend him off. “Your Majesty, no! I will admit that I did set the hounds at first, but when I saw you would not turn religious, I was reassured and called them off! I bent my efforts thenceforth to corrupting you, only showing you the ways of ecstasy, the pleasures of power and debauchery and revelry!”
“And you made good progress, did you not?” Boncorro’s gaze was steely. “Yes, until this Merovencian spell caster came!” Rebozo cried. “It would not have been necessary to seek your death!”
“No, not at all,” Boncorro said grimly. “I listened to you; yes, I yielded to temptation and gathered a harem of wenches! I condoned prostitution and its coercing of women into degradation! Oh, you did well for your master, Rebozo, but I begin to see that he was not me!” He turned back to the ghost. “Who killed you, my father?”