Love & Fury, a Medieval Masquerade

Once upon a time, in the days of knights, castles and fire-breathing dragons, there lived a beautiful, fair young maiden named Cassandra.
She was a peasant girl or serf as was often called by the lord of the kingdom. Cassandra was in her sixteenth year when Heartland, her kingdom’s name, was invaded by the evil knights of Rogenshire.
It happened at early dawn, when all the serfs left their huts to work out in the fields.
“Don’t forget your bread and goat cheese, daughter,” Cassandra’s father shouted with a chaffed and aged throat. “Is Tirzah going to meet you when we sup tonight?” he asked with a hopeful voice.
“She’s coming down to meet me this morning, father.”
“She can’t do that!” he protested, coming up from behind her as she was looking in an antiquated cracked mirror inside a tarnished silver-handled frame, which Tirzah had given her; he pulled some straw out of the back of Cassandra’s beautiful long blonde hair, and put his other hand on her shoulder, and whispered firmly but softly in her ear as if she was still a child, “What if Lord Wanton checks on our work and it is not done enough for him...” His voice quaked with worried fear…
“ O.k.,” he pondered to himself, shifting his weight from her after he received no response , “Don’t think of your own back and its belting, but for God’s sake, think of somebody else’s…and this prince!!! Oh Cassandra, Cassandra…”
“Father,” Cassandra interrupted, as she turned to look at him squarely in the eyes, “the prince has spoken to our overseer, Lord Wanton; he will say nothing today,” Cassandra’s demeanor then changed and she gazed at her father with a loving stare of seemingly gracious foreknowledge. She then winked as quickly as a hummingbird’s wing and flicked her hair as she turned her head in fast focus towards her day’s planned events walking out of the hut; her poor father limping behind her, grabbing his walking stick and shouting another protest, “I don’t mind your precious friend Tirzah, and you learning to read, but do it at night when we have a few minutes of our own time!”
Cassandra was almost thirty paces ahead of him joining a group of serfs walking along a field path. The distance between the elderly father and the determined daughter had grown fast.  She shouted back, as she saw Tirzah waiting for her up ahead by the Weeping Willow Tree along the same path, “I’m too exhausted at night from work; I can’t see and neither can she because there is not enough light, and she has a hard time getting back into the shelter of the castle wall.  They won’t let the gate down for her!”
“Why not?” shouted the father.
“Because they make it hard for her father,” shouted Cassandra, then forty paces ahead and counting.
“Because she is Jewish” the father finished the long distanced conversation as he suddenly fell in a slump on his stick in the dust of the path. He was trying hard to breathe; his chest was heavy and his soul worn out by the world’s savage work. He whispered his thoughts out loud to the leaves and the dust, “She gives to others and what do they do in return,” He moaned, “Stupid fools.” He muttered this last thought in the bravery of a lonesome morning chill that no one heard as all the serfs were now way ahead of him.  
He did not know how much longer he could take this life, and his poor Cassandra was so brilliant in every way.  Her fantasies of marrying this prince were something he did not even have the heart to discourage.  He knew the prince had a real love for her too, but the whole idea was ridiculous.  The realities of this world had belted this poor peasant too many times, and yet as he looked up towards the field, one more belt was about to strike him…
The great moat and castle wall were at least five hundred paces behind the elderly serf as the sun was still rising; the knights, earls, dukes and their ladies of the court were all fast asleep as their house servants made morning preparations for them within the protection of the moat wall. The nobility had gathered at Heartland for the prince’s twenty-fifth birthday celebration. They were told this was a feast of two weeks in length. Their extra sleep was all part of the preparation; to give them added energy for the exciting and exhilarating festivities of feasts and jousts and games galore.
The only very tall, handsome and regal man with shoulder length graying black hair, moustache and goatee, was leaning a bit over the top of the great barricade eating an apple for early breakfast; Jacob Santoro, a merchant of Jewish Heritage, had a large four kingdom territory to cover selling silk cloth and oriental rugs from the Far East. He had traded for more than twenty years along the old Roman roads of Christendom with buying connections as far away as Venice and Constantinople; his one and only daughter, Tirzah, was the only family that dared travel with him.  On this western route which he took yearly, he educated her in mapping of the roads and the stars, mathematics, languages and alchemy. His extended Venetian family could never seem to keep him in the city for more than two months at a time, “I have to make a living for all of us!” was always his reply to them. Jacob knew it was only half true.  His family, by now, was well-established and successful; he had a home in Venice but chose this harsher life willingly. At some point, Jacob would have to make some changes but, as a man caught in-between other peoples’ conflicts and prejudiced by most, he was forced to wait for a right moment. That moment was about to come…