The knot in his stomach turned to something more solid and unmanageable as the city wall came into view. Silly, he knew, but he couldn’t shake that feeling of nervousness that left him tapping his foot inside of his small carriage which Raymond deToulouse had provided for him for the long ride through Elaria. If he had had his way, there would have been no carriage or caravan carrying him to the original lands of his mother. Rather, it would have been him and his horse, riding hard with nothing but the loud clopping of galloping hooves over the land to fill his head and thoughts. There would have been no room for anxiety when he and his friendly beast were one. It wasn’t as though he had never been there before – actually the ride was quite familiar to him even after all this time. Still a fit of tapping overcame his limbs as the city slowly became bigger in the distance, something that his companion noticed immediately and smiled at. After informing Guillaume needlessly that there was nothing to be nervous about, Guillaume nodded curtly and kept his eyes fixed on the castle.
There was no real explanation for the tumultuous feeling that dwelled inside of him – usually it was a constant state of being that he could swallow and ignore. Today, however, it was provoked by his mission to visit his cousins and distant family as a sign of kinship between the deToulouse family and the Kestrels. It had been just over eight months since the King, Guillaume’s distant cousin, fell ill and passed and in that time there had been no envoy to Oberon, save letters expressing grief from the relations in France. Raymond, the duke of Toulouse and brother to Guillaume’s father, had sent the young man as a sign of his loyalty to the deceased King and to celebrate the coronation of Mayhew as supreme ruler of Elaria.
While Guillaume obviously agreed with his uncle, seeing the lands of his mother again after so long had passed struck him with an animalistic sort of fright. He had been just barely a man the last time he had seen the King and his children. Mayhew was twelve and Guillaume had been nineteen when he had left, after spending a short holiday with his family, visiting with his parents. Guillaume wasn’t even sure if he would even recognize the new King now that he had missed the shaping years of Mayhew’s life. Mayhew was a man now, a king, and Guillaume imagined that these past eight months would have made him seem much older than just eighteen winters old.
“You’re worrying too much,” his companion said, pulling on his gloves and readjusting his clothing as the cart pulled into the walls of the city hauling its goods. Guillaume ignored him again and took to biting a callous on the corner of his nail.
The ambassador was dressed to the nines and he shifted uncomfortably because of it. Donned in tones of neutral greens and grays, Guillaume pulled at his clothing that was in fact too luxurious for him to feel like himself in. When the carriage rolled to a stop in front of the palace, he pulled himself up quickly and wordlessly, despite the grin on his partner’s face. Jean-Luc had a lot of things to be smiling about these days, none of which possessed Guillaume or even convinced him that he should feel differently about his duty.
As he descended the carriage and adjusted his overcoat, he turned to the servant who had been sent to receive guests and told him to inform King Mayhew that Lord Guillaume deToulouse had arrived from France. The king had hopefully been informed of his arrival to Elaria by a letter from Raymond himself, though it wouldn’t have been the first time a message wasn’t received in time. The man who had greeted him nodded dutifully and turned to return to the palace.
It was several minutes of adjusting his coat and fiddling with his bleeding finger before Guillaume and his envoy was led into a waiting room just inside the palace. Jean-Luc, his right hand man, personal guard and advisor of sorts, stood with the young royal more patiently than Guillaume could handle. He passed a few words in French with the vicomte to pass the time, comments admiring the house in which he found himself.
The castle hadn’t changed drastically, to Guillaume’s utter (albeit displaced) shock, since he had visited. For a few moments, he had forgotten what he was there for and revisited the holidays of his youth when he found himself in the palace of Oberon. Pleasant moments of nostalgia flooded over his attention and helped ease the tension in his chest, memories of boyhood, his cousins and brothers romping around the grounds and palace. It gave him peace – until the servant returned to deliver him and his companion wherever they needed to go, or to bring whichever royal blood was willing to receive them into the kingdom of Elaria.