From the Indie Side (9 page)

The wind continued its empty howl.

* *
*

“Did you sleep well, my king?” Joanna asked
Stephen at dinner the next night. The sounds of celebration in the
Great Hall hid her words from prying ears.

He did not look at her, his eyes glassy and
blank. “I was sure you would be quite exhausted from the day’s
festivities and did not wish to trouble you.”

He picked up his golden goblet and drank the
hot, mulled wine in one draught. A servant stepped forward and
filled it again, then backed away and out of earshot.

“I am at your command,” Joanna replied
dutifully, just as she had promised when her uncle threatened her
with violence if she uttered anything but words of seduction and
support. “Shall I expect to see you tonight?”

King Stephen bit into a turkey leg and
chewed. “No.”

She was unable to hide her smile.

She reached out and placed her hand upon his.
He stopped chewing and stared at her offending touch. She leaned
closer to him, careful to project nothing but the image of a
supportive wife, and whispered, “My liege, rest peacefully knowing
that you and I perhaps share much more in common than you
think.”

She then withdrew her hand and settled into
her own meal, feeling more content than she had in ages.

* *
*

She looked upon his indifference gratefully
as the days passed. Indifference was better than forced
interest.

Winter crept in with its frozen breath, the
short fall color having left the land. The trees were barren,
skeletal. The ground was brown and dead, killed by the early frost.
Joanna wrapped herself in her thick capes and frequently walked the
grounds, her ill-tempered court trailing behind, wondering who this
queen was that would force them to endure the elements when warmth
and comfort for their gossip could be found inside. The winters
were twice as bitter in the north, and Joanna did not understand
their desire to cloister themselves in hot, smoky rooms when the
final days of freedom still stretched before them.

So the days passed. Each night, she would see
King Stephen at the evening meal. Still his eyes continued to be
glassy and blank, unseeing, unwanting. It was as if she didn’t
exist. He was impervious to the rumors of their unconsummated
marriage and the kingly duties he would not partake of. His
obsession for his dead wife made him blind and deaf.

She heard that each night, the king retreated
to a wing of the castle and threatened death to any that followed
him. They said all the portraits of Queen Mary had been removed
from the walls and that King Stephen kept them in a locked room
which only he held the keys for—a chamber to which he retreated
each night, surrounded by her presence so that her face would fill
his dreams.

Joanna only knew he did not trouble her, and
that was all that she cared about.

It was several months into their marriage
when a wrinkled advisor stepped before Joanna and begged an
audience. She turned and dismissed the ladies about her.

“My queen,” he stated, bowing low. “There is
great threat to the kingdom and I am afraid that you alone are the
key to the stability of the throne.”

“Pray, tell you, what is this great threat?”
Joanna asked.

“There is no heir…” he replied, awkward and
uncomfortably.

“Ah,” she replied, folding her hands and
resting them upon the front of her wide, golden skirt. “And so I
promise you that my door has never been barred to the king. These
words of caution and request must fall upon his ears.”

“Nay, my queen, we have advised him such, and
he still is unable to part with the thought of his past wife. I
know you women have wiles and ways to trick even the most chaste
man to fall to his knees. I pray you, use such tools to sway
him.”

“You forget, sir, that I, too, had no desire
for this marriage. It was brokered by my uncle, and if a childless
family is what this bond brings, it rests entirely upon your head,”
she replied.

“Nay,” said the advisor, neatly arranging the
sleeves of his coat before meeting her eyes, “I am afraid it is not
my head that shall pay the price if you do not fulfill your
duties.”

Her blood turned cold in her veins. “What?”
Joanna asked. “Do you threaten me, sir?”

He withdrew a folded slip of paper from his
sleeve and passed it to her. The words on the front were gibberish,
but she did not have to break the wax seal to know who sent it.

The advisor informed her anyway. “A message
from your uncle.”

Fear made her hand tremble. Her uncle had
seemed so bent upon revenge for her father’s death, but then he
betrayed her and forged this marriage contract. What cruel command
did he send now? She bravely held out the message for the advisor
to take back, her heart pounding. “You shall have to bring up this
matter with the king.”

He merely bowed. “Nay, it falls to
you
, my queen, to bring up such matters with His Royal
Highness. Remind him that his duty did not end with the end of his
Queen Mary. So many lives depend upon it.” His voice dripped with
insinuation before he backed away and left.

She stared at the advisor until he turned the
corner and was gone. How she hated him. How she hated her uncle.
How her loathing burned.

She strode into her room and threw her
uncle’s note onto her dressing table, unread, not wanting to know
the words it contained.

She stared at herself in the glass, gripping
the gilt edges of the mirror. Could she turn this king? Could she
melt his heart of stone to look upon her when she herself wanted it
even less? Could she sway this king to save her own life?

She thought she caught a reflection of
something out of the corner of her eye, but when she glanced back,
there was nothing there.

Ah! she thought. Her mind would give her any
distraction to keep her from this decision. But the distractions
were imaginary. Nothing could forestall this forever.

She looked back at the note and breathed
deeply. She would see it was done. Whether she touched King
Stephen’s heart or merely his loins, she would bind him to her and
do what was demanded.

But how? she wondered.

If she was to know this man, know this enemy,
she must discover his secrets, she decided. Where did he go each
night when he dismissed all his guard and threatened death to any
that might follow him? Surely he would not condemn his new bride if
she was to see where he crept? What if there was some other secret
he held and these pinings for a dead queen were nothing but a ruse?
What if there was some secret she could use to gain his confidence,
or to hold as power over him until he granted her the required
child?

She decided this must be her course of
action.

That evening, when her toilet was done, she
turned to her ladies and said, “Begone. The king visits me tonight
and I’ll not have you here.”

They curtseyed deeply and stepped backward
out of the room. When they were gone, Joanna did not wait. She
grabbed a shawl to cover her nightdress and protect her from the
cold. She pushed aside the tapestry to a hidden door in the wall, a
door kept secret for those nights her husband might come, or she
might need to escape and fly.

Swiftly, she ran down the hallway, her black
hair streaming behind her, her lamp flickering in her hand until
she was outside the king’s chambers. There, she blew out her flame
and waited for him to emerge.

When he did, his face looked so ragged and
worn that humanity and compassion would urge her to rush to his
side in comfort, to reach out to him as her lord and master and
ease the burden he carried.

But she did not. The threat to her life if
she did not capture his heart stilled her lips.

Instead, she waited until darkness swallowed
her, then she skulked in the shadows, following the bobbing light
of his candle. He glanced neither right nor left, but walked
swiftly as if on a mission. He did not even pause to see if there
was someone matching his steps.

He stopped before a door and withdrew the key
from his belt. Carefully, he fitted it into the lock, pausing a
moment with his hands leaning against the planks, his eyes closed
in exhaustion, before he pushed it open and entered.

Joanna ran behind him, placing her hand upon
the door as he shut it so that the latch did not catch. Then she
pushed it open just a crack and looked in.

The room was like a private chapel filled
with holy icons. The king knelt upon a velvet prayer stool, his
hands clasped and his head bowed. But he did not pray to the gods.
Surrounding him, on every wall, were portraits of the dead queen
gazing down upon him.

The blood in Joanna’s veins curdled. Queen
Mary looked just like her. Her hair. Her eyes. The shape of their
faces was the same. They could have been sisters, twins even.
Joanna backed slowly away.

Whose face did this king see when he looked
into her eyes? And if it was a face which reminded him so much of
this woman that he loved, that he longed for, why was he so
repulsed? What happened to cause such guilt that he barred himself
from Joanna’s bed?

As she walked back to her room, the wind
began howling across the flat and barren land around the castle.
Joanna wrapped her shawl tightly around her arms as a draft swept
through the hallway, chilling her to the bone.

The wind picked up. It seemed to follow her
steps and match her stride for stride. It whistled through the
cracks in the windows and the nooks of the stone. It chased her
down the passage, accusing her of her trespass upon the king. And
then, there was a sound that made Joanna stop.

“Staaaaay awaaaaay…” the voice whispered.

Joanna spun.

No one was there.

“Make yourself known!” she demanded, her
voice wavering.

The wind continued to howl, but no one
revealed themselves.

Joanna’s heart pounded as fear tore through
her.

The wind gathered strength again and with it
came the same voice. “Staaaaay awaaaay…” it said again.

Joanna backed down the hall, peering into the
darkness to see who taunted her. Suddenly, there was someone beside
her! She turned. And could have laughed. It was her own reflection.
Her own reflection! She placed her hand upon her heart. It was a
looking glass hanging on the wall, and the face looking back at her
was her own.

And then the wind stopped.

The face in the mirror was
not
her
own. It was a face like hers—but not hers. It was the face she had
seen in the portraits in King Stephen’s secret chamber.

“STAY AWAY!” Queen Mary screamed from inside
the mirror.

Later, Joanna was found unconscious in the
middle of the hallway with no sign of what the trouble might be.
Her ladies helped her to bed, whispering that the king must have
driven her fearfully from her chamber, perhaps terrified her to the
point of exhaustion. They clucked and tended to her, but Joanna
could not tell them what had happened. They would think her mad,
just like their former queen. And indeed, Joanna thought, they
would be right.

At last tucked into her own bed, her lamp was
extinguished and she closed her eyes to sleep.

But her dreams were fitful, full of colors
and shapes that crushed her. A razor voice pierced her eardrum like
a needle. She needed to escape. She needed to get away. Suddenly,
she was walking along the parapets of the castle. The inky sky was
before her.

She was all alone.

Except she wasn’t. There was someone there. A
woman. A queen.

Queen Mary was suddenly before her. She stood
there, this woman with Joanna’s face, but with burning eyes. Her
gown was the color of midnight. Her black hair blew free. She
pointed out into the dark void of the air.

“Jump to your death!” the queen commanded.
Her voice brooked no denial.

Joanna could not back away, could not fight
or protest.

“Jump and die!” the queen commanded once
more.

Unwillingly, Joanna’s feet stepped up onto
the parapet. The ground below was calling sweetly to her to leap
into thin air, to shatter her bones in its embrace.

“Jump!” said the queen a third time.

Joanna placed her leg out, ready to take the
final step, when strong arms wrapped around her waist and hauled
her back to safety.

And that was when she realized her eyes were
open and she was awake. She was at the top of the palace wall,
being held down by a guard, his heavy chainmail pressing into her
skin. It had been real. She had been standing on top of the
parapet. And if it had not been for the guard who had caught her
just as her feet betrayed her, she would have leapt to her death
just as she had been commanded in the dream.

And so she wept, clinging to the stone of the
battlement like a pilgrim baptizing holy ground with her grateful
tears.

And so the guards began to whisper that King
Stephen had driven one more queen mad.

* *
*

“Why?” Stephen asked, his face full of
confusion as Joanna stood before him like an accused prisoner the
next day. The throne room was empty so that only they were witness
to their words. His crown sat heavily upon his limp curls. “What
would cause you to so sin against yourself and the gods? Why would
you seek death in the dead of night?”

“It was not my doing,” said Joanna, trying to
explain. “It was only a dream.”

“Your words are just like hers!” he burst
out, his voice pleading at her to change her story, to tell him
some other truth. “Why would you choose to mimic the path of a
woman who caused my heart so much pain and harm?”

His words chilled her. “I did not know that
she perished this way,” insisted Joanna. “It was not my intention…
It was a dream. It was just a dream.”