Part Twenty One
 

For four years after her return from her exile, Princess Sara dutifully played the role of wife and mother, in keeping with the expectations of her family and her new husband, the Prince Adelbert.  She bore him two sons, both lusty and healthy infants who throve strongly from the day they came bawling into the world.  Although only a small woman, she survived the horrors of childbirth well,  and with the elder of of her sons now nearly three years old, her figure was as trim and captivating as ever, her great beauty undiminished.

Her husband had not aged as well as his wife!  That impressive bulk had turned to fat, a process hastened by the Prince's increasingly idle, gluttonous and pleasure seeking lifestyle.  As she lay beside him in bed one morning, feeling his sweaty corpulence against her, the Princess decided that she would sleep alone in future.  She thought of that noble youth whom she had helped turn into a king and sighed to herself.  What her husband needed, reflected, was a war to fight, or at least another man once in a while in a good hard brawling fight, but he was a coward at heart - she could see that all too clearly.

"If I had been a man and blessed with such a body as his, I should have used it to prove myself a hero and a warrior, not let it degenerate in to that mass of blubber" she said to her friend Martha one day, as they rode together, naked in the crisp, cold  early morning air as they both still loved to be, into the hills and forests.  Martha laughed sympathetically - her own husband, Baron Schroder,  was still a fine figure of a  man with an athlete's build and a love of sport,  wrestling, fencing and hunting on horseback three times a week (he still gave her a splendid time in bed every night - and she him!)

 She again asked Sara to tell her more stories of her year and a day as a wanderer, having never tired of hearing again and again of the amazing adventures her friend had experienced during those long months away.  The Princess happily obliged her closest  friend, as it gave her great joy to remind herself of that year of freedom and challenge.  As she told of her adventures, she relived them and recaptured the many differing sensations she had experienced at the time.  How she wished she were still on her travels, sleeping on the rough and dirty ground every night instead of those hateful soft beds between those  despised and loathsome white,  freshly laundered, scented sheets!

She had kept her promise to herself on her first day back home, to attend the reception as naked as she had been for the past year, allowing her maid to dress her as soon as the last guest had departed.  As the clothes had been slipped over her still dainty, but bronzed and deceptively powerful shoulders, the ring, long immovably fixed to her finger, had fallen off,  tinkling on the stone floor of her apartment.  That gentle, scarcely audible  noise,  had sounded to her like a bell tolling the end of her liberty.

She had picked up the gold band and shed a tear for her lost freedom.  The ring was now hept in a leather pouch, which she always wore next to her skin.  It bobbed up and down in keeping with the rhythm of Champion's strides, knocking gently and regularly against her delicious breasts as they rode together.

"Whatever happened to your determination to take part in the Council of State, Sara?  Too busy being a wife and mother?" asked Martha, when the Priness had finished her story of the day.  She herself had no child, a cause of some sorrow, although there was still plenty of time.

"No, Martha.  I leave the upbringing of the children to their nurses and soon they will begin their long process of instruction and education.  I see them once a day and that is it.  The joys of childhood are unworthy of future Kings and warriors.  I am prevented by the stupidity of men, whose ineptitude brings the Kindom ever deeper into crisis, from having my rightful say.  I will prevail one day, however.  There are many who are appalled at the way things are going and I am in constant touch with them.  My time will come!"

Martha glanced at the young Princess beside her as they rode towards their favourite picnic spot.  She was as proud as ever and a hundred times more determined.  She did not doubt that the day would come when her childhood friend would indeed come to have her say in the governace of the land, and that this day would be a happy one for all but the indolent and stupid.

There were many dangers impending at the present time.  A neighbouring King had been eyeing some of the country's richest provinces for some years and the reaction of the King, her father, had been weak and pusillanimous in the extreme, offering concessions and bribes which had  only served to spur the aggressor to further demands.  Things were beginning to look deadly serious.

Princess Sara knew that the army was ready to march at her father's command, but this command never came.  There was only one solution, a solution so drastic, that even this highly determined young woman  still shrank with horror and distaste from implementing the measures necessary to achieve it!