Three Dark Crowns (7 page)

T
he day of Joseph's return dawns overcast and ugly. Jules watches the whole gray affair lying in her bed in the room she shares with Arsinoe. She has hardly slept.

“They have known he was coming for weeks,” she says.

“Of course they did,” says Madrigal. She stands behind her as Jules sits at her dresser, pulling a brush through Jules's wild, dark brown hair.

“So why send him home now, two days after Arsinoe's birthday? He will have missed the celebration and return just in time to see the trash in the streets and the gulls and crows fighting over the leftover food.”

“That's exactly why,” says Madrigal. “And now they got to spring him on us, and watch us scramble like upset chickens. Poor Annie Sandrin must be out of her mind.”

Yes.

Down in his family's house by the pier, Joseph's mother will
be nearly overwhelmed, making things ready and barking at her husband and at Matthew and Jonah. Barking happily but barking nonetheless.

“What if he doesn't come?” Jules asks.

“Why wouldn't he come?” Madrigal tries again to pin Jules's hair up onto her head. “This is his home.”

“What do you think he will be like?” she asks.

“If he is anything like his brother Matthew, then all the girls of Wolf Spring are in danger,” Madrigal says, and smiles. “When Matthew was Joseph's age, he had half the town swimming after his boat.”

Jules jerks under the brush.

“Matthew never cared for anyone besides Aunt Caragh.”

“Yes, yes,” Madrigal mutters. “He was devoted as a hound to my serious sister, just like Joseph will no doubt be to you.” She throws her hands up and sends Jules's hair flying. “It's hopeless to try anything with this mess.”

Jules looks sadly into the mirror. Madrigal is so effortlessly beautiful, with her honey-chestnut hair and lithe, graceful limbs. People never guess that she and Jules are mother and daughter. Sometimes, Jules suspects that Madrigal likes it that way.

“You should have slept more,” Madrigal chides. “You have dark hollows beneath your eyes.”

“I couldn't, not with Camden getting up and turning around every few minutes.”

“And why do you think she could not sleep? Your nervousness
kept her awake. If she runs into the table and breaks anything today, it will be your fault.” Madrigal steps out from behind her daughter and studies herself. She touches the ends of her soft, tan-gold waves and dabs perfume onto her long white throat.

“I have done all I can,” she says. “He will have to love you as you are.”

Arsinoe comes up the stairs and leans against their door. “You look great, Jules,” she says.

“You ought to let him come to you,” says Madrigal.

“Why? He's my friend. This is not a game.” Jules twists away from the dresser and heads downstairs. She is out the door and partway down their long dirt path before she notices that Arsinoe has stayed near the house.

“Aren't you coming?”

The queen shoves her hands into her pockets. “I don't think so. This should just be you.”

“He will want to see you.”

“Yes. But later.”

“Well, walk with me for a little way at least!”

Arsinoe laughs. “All right.”

They walk together down the narrow, winding hill road that leads from the property and into town, past the docks, and into the square and the winter market. As they crest the last hill before the cove, Arsinoe stops.

“Do you ever wonder,” Arsinoe asks, “what we would be doing if it had gone different?”

“Different how?” asks Jules. “If we had never tried to run
away? If we had made it? Or if they had banished us, too?”

But they only banished Joseph. Jules's sentence was to be the solitary Midwife and nurse to the queens. To live alone in the Black Cottage as a servant to the crown, her only company the queen and her king-consort during the pregnancy, and the triplets until they grew to the age of claiming. She would be in the Black Cottage now, had her aunt Caragh not volunteered to take her place.

“They should have killed me,” Arsinoe whispers. “I should have offered, in exchange for letting Joseph stay. In exchange for keeping Caragh out of that cottage.”

“They wanted to kill us all,” says Jules. “Natalia Arron would have had us poisoned and jerking, frothing on the council floor. Right there in the Volroy.”

She would have paraded their bodies through the city square in Indrid Down, if she had thought she could get away with it. They were only eleven years old at the time.

“That may still be our fate, if we step out of line,” Arsinoe says. “And it will be bad. They'll craft something so we die over days. With blood running from our eyes and mouths.” She spits onto the gravel. “Poisoners.”

Jules sighs and looks down at the town she grew up in. Close-together wooden buildings cling around the cove like a mass of gray barnacles. Wolf Spring seems ugly today. Nowhere near grand enough for Joseph, or anyone, to come home to.

“Do you think he'll have a gift?” Arsinoe asks.

“Probably not much of one. None of the other Sandrins do.
Except Matthew, charming the fish.”

“I think Matthew just told your aunt Caragh that to impress her,” Arsinoe says. “His true gift is charming girls, and all the Sandrin boys have that. Even Jonah's started to chase them around.”

Jules curses under her breath. That is just what Madrigal said.

“Is that what you're afraid of?” asks Arsinoe.

“I'm not afraid,” Jules retorts. But she is afraid. She is very afraid that Joseph has changed and that her Joseph is gone. Disappeared in the five years they have been apart.

Camden trots ahead, paces the edge of the road, and yawns.

“I just don't know what to do with him. We can't exactly go catch frogs and snails in Welden Stream anymore.”

“Not in this weather,” Arsinoe agrees.

“What do you think mainland girls are like?” Jules asks suddenly.

“Mainland girls? Oh, they're terrible. Horrible.”

“Of course. That's why my beautiful mother fit in so well with them.”

Arsinoe snorts. “If they are anything like Madrigal,” she says, “then you have nothing to worry about.”

“Maybe she was right, though. Maybe I should not have come.”

Arsinoe shoves her forward, hard.

“Get down there, idiot,” she says. “Or you'll be late.”

So Jules goes, down toward the dock, where his family
stands in their best black coats. Joseph's boat is not on the horizon yet, but his mother, Annie, is already up on a crate straining to see. Jules could wait with them. She has been welcome with the Sandrins ever since she and Joseph were children, even before her aunt Caragh and Joseph's brother Matthew were to be married. But instead she detours up through the square to watch from afar.

In the square, the tents are still up. They have been partially cleaned out but not entirely. Since the festivities ended, Wolf Spring has been nursing a collective hangover. Nothing much has gotten done. Through the open tent flaps, Jules spies platters still on the head table, covered by the shifting black wings of birds. The crows have found what is left of her cod. After they have had their fill, someone will toss the bones back into the water.

Back at the docks, more people have gathered, and not only on the pier. All around the cove, curtains and shutters have been moved aside, and here and there, folk have ventured out to pretend to sweep their porches.

There is a nudge at her waist, and she looks down into Camden's hungry yellow-green eyes. Her own stomach groans as well. On Jules's bureau in their bedroom sits an untouched tray of tea and buttered bread. She could not think of eating then. But now she has never felt so empty.

She buys a fish for Camden in the winter market, a nice, clear-eyed sea bass with a curved tail, as if it froze while still swimming. For herself she buys a few oysters from Madge's
morning catch, and shucks them with her fat-bladed knife.

“Here,” Madge says, and hands her a dipper of vinegar. She jerks her head toward the cove. “Shouldn't you be out there, clamoring with the rest?”

“I don't care for crowds,” Jules says.

“I don't blame you.” She presses another shellfish into Jules's hand. “For the cougar,” she adds, and winks.

“Thanks, Madge.”

Down at the docks, the crowd stirs, and the movement carries all the way up the hill and into the market. Madge's neck stretches.

“Aye, there it is,” she says.

Joseph's ship has entered the harbor. It sneaked up on them; already it is close enough that Jules can make out the crewmen on the deck.

“Black sails, all,” says Madge. “Someone from the mainland is trying to kiss our arses.”

Jules stands as tall as she can. There is the ship. Carrying with it the moment she has been dreaming of, and dreading, for the last five years.

“You had better get down there, Jules Milone. We all know it's your face he will want to be seeing.”

Jules flashes Madge a smile, and she and Camden dart out of the winter market. Her feet pound through the square, past the slack, flapping tents.

There are so many people gathered around, come to the harbor after their curiosities got the better of them. She will not
be able to get through. Not even with Camden cutting a path, not unless she resorts to swatting and snarling, which Grandma Cait would never approve of and would surely hear about.

Jules paces uneasily on the slope where she watches. They unload trunks at first. Belongings and perhaps goods for trade. Gifts. Jules peers at the mainland boat. It looks out of place in Sealhead Cove, painted bright white and with plenty of gold and silver around the windows and rigging. Beneath the bleak Wolf Spring day, it practically glows.

And then Joseph steps onto the gangway.

She would know it was him even without his mother's wail. She would have known it even though he is taller, and older, and all the boyhood softness in his face has melted away.

The Sandrins throw their arms around him. Matthew picks him up in a great hug, and his father claps both of their backs. Joseph ruffles Jonah's hair. Annie has not let go of the edge of Joseph's jacket.

Jules takes half a step back. Five years is a long time. A long enough time to forget about someone. What will she do if he sees her on the hill and smiles politely? If he nods to her as he walks past with his family?

She is already backing up when he calls out her name. And then he shouts it, loud, over everyone. “Jules!”

“Joseph!”

They run toward each other, him fighting through the crowd, and her headlong down the slope. His black jacket flies open over a white shirt, and they collide.

It is no fairy-tale meeting, nothing like she imagined or daydreamed about in all the time he was away. Her chin runs into his chest. She does not know where to put her arms. But he is there, real and solid, both changed and not changed at all.

When they pull apart, he holds her by the shoulders, and she him by the elbows. She has started to cry a bit, but not from sadness.

“You're so . . . ,” she says.

“So are you,” he says, and wipes her cheek with his thumb. “My God, Jules. I was afraid I wouldn't recognize you. But you've hardly changed!”

“Haven't I?” she asks, mortified suddenly that she is so small. He will think her still a child.

“I didn't mean that,” he amends. “Of course you've grown. But how could I ever worry that I wouldn't recognize these eyes.”

He touches her temple, beside her blue eye, and then the other, beside her green. “For the longest time I was certain I would see you, if I just looked hard enough.”

But that was impossible. The council had allowed for no correspondence between them. Jules and his family had known only that he was on the mainland, fostered, and alive for the time being. His banishment was absolute.

Camden slips around Jules's leg and purrs. The movement almost seems shy, but Joseph jumps back.

“What's the matter?” asks Jules.

“Wh-what's the—?” he sputters, and then laughs. “Of
course. I suppose I have been away a long time. I had forgotten how strange Fennbirn can be.”

“What do you mean ‘strange'?” she asks.

“You would understand if you left.” He holds his hand out to Cam for her to sniff, and she licks his fingers. “He's a familiar.”

“
She
is a familiar,” Jules corrects him. “This is Camden.”

“But,” he says, “it can't be . . . ?”

“Yes,” Jules says, and nods. “She is mine.”

He looks from the girl to the cougar and back again. “But she should be Arsinoe's,” he says. “To have a familiar like this, it must make you the strongest naturalist in the last fifty years.”

“Sixty, or so they say.” Jules shrugs. “A naturalist queen rises, and the gift rises with it. Or have you forgotten that as well?”