I walk up to the bishop holding the door ajar and tell him
"Bishop Sigmund, I have decided to allow my wedding party to continue but do it without me. I feel much better now because the dizziness has already dissipated, I am a little drunk and I prefer to take a walk in the castle garden.
"Your majesty, I am glad that you are well, you see, Queen Bartolomea is looking for you, she told me that as soon as you feel better, I should go look for her. Please do me the favor of following me."
"Oh sure, I'll be happy to do it," I responded.
Who will this Queen Bartolomea be? I asked myself. I searched my new memory to find out who that queen was but I couldn't remember at that moment, so I asked the bishop.
"What queen Bartolomea?"
He responded to me.
"My lord, she is your wife."
"Oh yes, excuse me," I said, "I just had too much to drink, you know, I feel a little dazed." I replied.
Ah! So my wife's name is Bartolomea, I thought, what does she want from me? To find out, I had to listen to the bishop and followed him walking calmly through the corridors of the palace. I was impressed by how elegant the castle was. It was full of statues in metal armor, just like those medieval castles I saw in video games.
In the main hallway, where we were walking, there was a gigantic red carpet with gold embroidery in its center, it was so long that I wondered how in the world they embroidered it. And what about the windows? They were beautiful, shaped like an arch and some had engravings and mosaics of various colors and symbols of the Christian religion. The light of the full moon entered through them and greatly illuminated the slopes of the palace, as well as the hallway where I was.
We continued walking until in the distance, although not very far from me, was a woman almost my height, a little shorter than me to be exact, I looked closer and realized that it was my wife Bartolomea. He had barely recognized her because it was the second time he had seen her.
The woman stood a little thoughtful, looking through a bright window, with her arms crossed behind her back, and with her back straight as if she were a soldier standing at attention. The bishop walked towards me touching my shoulder, while he prostrated himself making a small and subtle bow.
"Your majesty Ferdinand, here is your majesty Queen Bartolomea, your recent wife."
I looked clearly at Bartolomea and realized that he was very young, even younger than me, according to my calculations his age should be around 18 or 19 years old.
Out of politeness, I extended my hand to shake her. The bishop immediately takes my hand and lowers it, shaking his head to tell me not to greet him that way.
Not knowing the customs of royalty, I made that embarrassing mistake of greeting her as we did in my world. So I lowered my arm and proceeded to kneel on one knee, lowering my gaze and taking the hilt of my sword, so I then uttered these words.
"Your majesty, I heard you were looking for me."
When I finished speaking, I stood up, signed and looked directly at the queen. She, for her part, continued looking out the window, thoughtful. At that moment, I wondered if he had heard me or was ignoring me. Maybe I was not polite and courteous enough to address someone of the highest social status. For a moment I thought she was upset because I had made a public fool of myself by suddenly canceling the wedding.
I coughed a little to clear my throat and prostrated myself again, going down on one knee. At that the queen tells me without turning to see me.
"I heard you, Lord Ferdinand, stand up, there is no need for you to be so cordial with me, after all I am your wife. Now, do me the favor of following me."
At that, I stand up and begin to follow Queen Bartolomea just as she had told me. She continued walking slowly down one of the hallways, keeping her arms crossed behind her back and looking down at the ground. I stood on his right side and the bishop on his left side.
The personality that the queen gave off seemed to me like a person who was too mature for her age, despite being very young, she knew the ways of being someone from royalty, she behaved like a real young queen, she showed her authority without hesitation, as if he had been ruling for decades, to tell the truth, due to his age he would only have been on the throne for a few years.
Suddenly, Queen Bartolomea turns to see me and says to me.
"How is your majesty feeling? I hope a little better. I figured you would need some fresh air so I thought I would go with you to the botanical garden to smell the beautiful flowers of our palace.
I understand that you are nervous about our wedding, I was too to be honest. But that is what we members of the nobility do, we must marry to maintain our political alliances with the different Christian kingdoms, it is a moral duty that we must fulfill, don't you think, prince?"
"Of course, your majesty," I replied.
Then, inside my mind I started thinking, Alliance? What alliance? Then I began to investigate my memory of this new body. It turns out that the kingdom where I come from agreed to make a political alliance between our kingdoms to avoid falling into bankruptcy, sealing that alliance with this marriage.
Just then, some guards arrive wearing thick metal armor and carrying bayonets on their shoulders.
"Your majesty, Queen Bartolomea," say the guards, bowing as they arrive. "The witch has tried to escape. I am sorry that it is your wedding day but we must notify her of this incident, we almost missed it, if it were not for "We neutralized her, she would have easily escaped from prison."
Witch? I thought, do witches exist in this universe? Or will I dedicate myself to hunting witches?
At that, I interrupted the queen.
"My lady, but what has that witch done in our kingdom? What crime has he committed?"
"Well, we have captured Melissa, a witch suspected of having murdered my father, King Alaric. I don't know if you've heard of him."
Saying that, suddenly the memories of my new body begin to come little by little. It turns out that I am a prince who comes from a kingdom far away, a kingdom in the southern part of the hemisphere. I come precisely to marry a princess from the kingdom of Sorenberg to form an alliance. But I don't remember anything about a certain King Alaric, so I decide to ask Bartolomea.
"To tell the truth," I said, "I have heard little of him, as you know, I come from a kingdom far away and not all the news comes from your kingdom. Tell me about him"
"Good," Bartolomea said. "You see, King Alaric was a monarch quite known for his bravery in war. He fought hard against the invasions of pagan kingdoms on our borders and defeated them multiple times, driving them back towards the mountains where they came from. And thanks to him, our kingdom has enjoyed great peace and freedom for several years, since those barbarians dared not set foot on our lands again.
Anyway, my father Alaric, one day he became seriously ill. While he was in his bed, the royal physicians attended to him and discovered that he had been poisoned.
To our surprise, we did not know who was capable of doing it, since he was a very beloved king within all of Sorenberg. The only known enemies were those pagans, but they live thousands of miles away, they live up to the mountains of Adra, too far from here. Maybe they sent a spy or paid an emissary but we don't believe it either.
We think that the person responsible for his death was a witch. Since then we have waged a persecution against them, before my father's death, we did not consider witches an imminent threat, we even thought that they no longer existed, since many years ago we had not seen a witch appear here, but little Little by little we began to recognize them.
It turns out that this kingdom of Sorenberg was previously a small town without a king. They were a town of pagans who practiced witchcraft or who knows what other practices they had. They built stone circles and lived in houses made of adobe with straw and oak wood. They lived in peace, without bothering anyone until one day, a Christian missionary arrived in Sorenberg with the mission of bringing the true faith to this land.
The missionary was relatively successful in converting the pagans. He learned their language and taught them ours, over time he brought more and more missionaries for their conversion, but over time, something strange happened. Instead of completely converting and acquiring our customs, they began to mix the Christian faith with their pagan traditions, until they formed a new practice, witchcraft, a practice carried out almost exclusively by women.
It was then that the missionary Franz began to persecute them since he considered their practices as demonic, so they had to hide in various places to practice witchcraft in secret. They hid under churches, they came out at night in cemeteries, in the basements of private homes, even in public squares.
The church did everything possible to put an end to these demonic practices but we were unable to do them the slightest harm. We just had them hide the magic in plain sight. Which made its persecution and complete eradication more difficult.
As I mentioned earlier, we firmly believe that the witch Melissa was my father's murderer. "Perhaps she had some resentment for the past persecutions of witches and will be executed at the stake tomorrow."