While Beauty Slept (37 page)

“The people look to you for leadership,” I said. “It would be a great boost to their spirits if you were seen tending to state business.”

“No, no,” she protested. “Sir Walthur and the others care only for worldly matters. I must serve my subjects through prayer.”

“A worthy mission,” I said. “Yet a queen cannot remove herself from the world completely, can she?”

I said the words gently, with a smile, but she reacted as if I had slapped her.

“How can you not understand?” she asked, stricken. “We are steeped in sin, every one of us. Our very souls are in peril.” For all her increasing interest in religious matters, I had never heard her speak of her beliefs in such stark terms.

“My lady, God shows mercy to those who repent, does he not? Whatever transgressions you may have committed have long since been forgiven.”

She began to cry, crumpling into racking sobs that shook her frail shoulders. To see the woman I had so long admired undone by such misery was profoundly shocking, and for a moment I was at a loss as to what to do. Cautiously, I wrapped my arms around her and comforted her in the way I would a small child, with murmured assurances that all would be well. I do not know if she heard me, consumed as she was by grief. In time her cries softened into whimpers. She wiped her tears on the sleeve of her gown and looked up at me warily. Her dark, expressive eyes, still beautiful, still mesmerizing, stared at me with desperate intensity.

“Do you really believe I will be forgiven?”

“I do.”

“To receive forgiveness one must offer it. That is what Father Gabriel says.”

A burst of jealousy swelled within me, and I flashed back to my earliest days as Queen Lenore’s attendant, to the envy I felt when she and Isla would laugh together in their native tongue. Once again I felt myself pushed aside in favor of another.

Or perhaps not, for I had a secret that could forge a new bond between us. Swallowing down my childish envy, I said, “I will defer to Father Gabriel in spiritual matters. But I must ask you to add someone new to your prayer list.”

Her eyes widened in surprise, then delight, as I told her of the child growing within me. It was still early days—I had not yet felt the baby move—but I rightly suspected that it would distract the queen from her gloomy state. I asked her to tell no one else at present, even Rose, and she savored the secret as a precious gift, an offering of hope for the future.

As the heat mounted, our ambitions dwindled, and the summer days passed in a lethargic stupor. I walked in the garden, toiled over needlework with the other ladies-in-waiting, and attempted to plow my way through one of Sir Walthur’s dry books of philosophy. I visited Flora most days, sometimes with Rose, whose vivaciousness sparked a long-lost twinkle of joy in the old woman’s eyes. Most girls of Rose’s age are unsettled by signs of the body’s decline, but she never flinched at the sight of Flora’s toothless gums or the touch of her gnarled fingers. She sat patiently through her great-aunt’s rambling stories of times past, even as certain anecdotes were retold word for word from one day to the next. I waited anxiously for tales of Millicent to surface; Rose knew only that Flora’s sister had left the castle in disgrace years before, and I dreaded facing her questions. Despite my fears, Flora never mentioned Millicent’s name. It was as if she had never existed.

Most of our evenings passed quietly, with all the ladies retiring shortly after supper, but one night will forever stand out in my memories of that time. A group of traveling nuns took shelter at the castle, having heard of the queen’s warm hospitality to religious pilgrims, and after we shared a meal, the eldest offered to play her harp. Music was a gift from the Lord, she told Queen Lenore, and playing for his glory was her form of prayer. I felt the presence of the divine as the woman coaxed notes from the strings, plucking with a delicacy and speed that could only have been the result of holy intervention. The peaceful spirit lingered even after I had returned to my room, and I went to sleep lulled by my memory of the music surrounding me.

I awoke in the middle of the night, troubled by a dream that I was drowning in a bath. I shifted back and forth, trying to shake the sensation, before I realized that the wetness against my legs was no illusion. By the faint, dying embers of the fire, I saw dark crimson staining the sheets. I cried out then, a desperate, horrified wail. I will never forget Sir Walthur’s face when he stormed in, clutching a candle, disgust crumpling his features at the sight before him. He backed away, muttering that he would summon a maid.

“Mrs. Tewkes!” I begged. “Please, fetch Mrs. Tewkes!”

I lay there some minutes before she came. By the time she bustled in, her eyes weighted with sleep but concerned, I did not need her to tell me. I had lost the baby.

She had confronted such heartbreaking scenes before. With brisk ease she pulled the stained linens from the bed and eased my shift off my shoulders. As I shuddered, naked, she wiped the blood from my legs with water so cold it turned my skin to ice. She swaddled my legs in clean cloths before pulling a fresh nightdress over me.

“Anika will be here soon with blankets,” she said. “I’ll have her relight the fire.”

I could not stop trembling. Mrs. Tewkes lay on the bed next to me and wrapped her arms around my shoulders.

“Shall I stay until you sleep?” she murmured.

I did not see how sleep could ever claim me again. Mrs. Tewkes held me in her embrace as I cried, my body heaving with such force that the howls threatened to break through my chest. Then my voice fell to an exhausted moan and my eyes, drained of tears, closed. Before I knew it, morning had come, and I awoke in my marriage bed, alone.

Fourteen

THE BURDENS OF LOSS

T
he sorrow was mine alone to carry. The servant girl Anika brought a bowl of broth soon after I woke, saying Mrs. Tewkes had told her I had fallen ill and would be spending the day resting in bed. I drifted in and out of sleep, rising once to change the blood-soaked cloth between my legs as my chest shuddered with withheld sobs. My dreams brought relief, but the knowledge of my loss struck with fresh force on each awakening. Awash in grief, I was thankful I had held my secret close. The sight of my own devastation reflected in others’ eyes might have blinded me.

I kept to myself for two days. Sir Walthur must have guessed the nature of the incident that bloodied my sheets, but he did not impose upon my isolation, for which I was grateful. The unnerving silence of the room heightened my despair, and I might have plummeted still further into misery had Queen Lenore not paid me an unexpected visit. Throughout my years at the castle, I had taken pride in my self-reliance, but I clung to her like a child as the last barriers between us crumbled. She was no longer my ruler or mistress; she was my friend, come to offer a lifeline of hope. My mother’s face had grown indistinct over the years, but I could remember vividly how it felt to be held thus, to be comforted by someone who loved me.

The winter storms came early that year, and the ladies of the castle hovered before their hearths, the only place one could shake off the chill emanating from the stone walls. The unexpected cold dealt a more significant blow to the king’s army, leaving them trapped on the far side of the avalanche-prone northern mountains. Denied a return to St. Elsip to wait out the winter, they dug in to shelters in remote villages as the rebels withdrew to their forts. A few valiant messengers braved the icy peaks to bring us news of our army’s fate: The king’s soldiers were forced to scavenge for food, these weary men told us, but their spirits were high and their taste for battle unquenched.

Given the uncertain times, Rose’s seventeenth birthday was celebrated with little ceremony, yet she used the occasion to strike a blow for independence that shocked us all. From the time she was a baby, she had slept in a bedchamber adjoining her mother’s sitting room; now she declared her intention to move to the North Tower. Queen Lenore, appalled, said she would hear of no such thing, but in the end she wearily succumbed to her daughter’s tearful pleas.

When I expressed my surprise at her sudden change of heart, the queen said, “How can I deny my daughter some small measure of happiness? She has had precious little reason to smile in these bleak times. And Father Gabriel assures me that she may well benefit from a certain degree of independence.”

The monk stood at her side, basking in his role as the queen’s most trusted counselor. I did not think it at all wise to let Rose loose in an all-but-deserted section of the castle, out of earshot of the royal apartments, but I knew it was fruitless to go against his wishes. I nodded in a manner intended to be gracious, but Father Gabriel must have noted the grim set of my mouth, for his cold stare offered a silent challenge. I had been acknowledged as a rival, and I would be dealt with accordingly.

When Rose dragged me off to see the rooms she had chosen at the top of the tower, I could not help admitting to their charm. The main door opened into a semicircular receiving room, formed by the round turret walls, and the bedchamber lay through an arch embellished with engravings of twisted vines. Rose had brought in embroidered tapestries and covered the bed with purple velvet hangings to mark the place as her own. Despite the gray skies, the rooms felt bright and airy, with windows that were taller and wider than those elsewhere in the building.

Rose waved a hand toward the landscape outside. “Do you understand now, Elise?”

While most windows in the castle’s upper levels looked out onto St. Elsip or the busy courtyards, Rose’s view was of the open tournament field where her father and his knights so often competed, with grassy, rolling hills extending into the distance beyond. It was the countryside where she had learned to ride, where she had ventured with her mother on balmy summer days, stopping to enjoy a meal in the shade of an oak tree.

“Do you know how many times I dreamed of riding off toward that horizon? I thought I could keep going and going, until I arrived at a place where I was merely Rose, not a royal princess.” Her voice sank to little more than a whisper. “A foolish fancy.”

I could understand the lure of that vista, but for me the price to obtain it was too high. How could Rose tolerate the oppressive quiet of the North Tower, much less welcome it? I suspected that the change in quarters had been prompted by her impending marriage: a last chance to fashion a private retreat, where she could do as she pleased before submitting to the duties expected of a wife and ruler. But if claiming this section of the castle was a gesture of defiance, it was also an acknowledgment of her own isolation. She had no real friends, no one of her own age she could speak to freely. Rose and her maid, Besslin, did not share the trust that had bonded me to Queen Lenore, and the other young women who lived at the castle owed their living to the king; none would risk offending Rose’s family by speaking their mind. It was, in many ways, a lonely existence.

Rose turned from the window, her expression solemn. “Elise, there is something I wish to ask you. I fear that my mother is sparing me the truth of the war’s progress. Is it true the army has been greatly weakened by the winter?”

“You must not allow every little rumor to upset you,” I admonished, smoothing the linens of her bed. Like many women who had spent their lives in service, I found the work done by anyone younger severely lacking, and Besslin appeared particularly lax in her duties.

“It upsets me if my father is close to defeat.”

I turned and spoke in a sharp tone I would never have used with another of her station. “How can you say such a thing?”

“It’s growing warmer. The snow in the mountains must be melting. Why have we heard nothing of our troops advancing?”

I had wondered the same thing. As it often did in times of trouble, my mind returned to Millicent’s curse, her promise to take Rose at the height of her beauty. Was this the form Millicent’s revenge would take, with Prince Bowen victorious and Rose dead at his hand, a sacrifice to his terrible lust for power? The very thought sickened me, but I feared he would not hold back from such atrocities.

“War is unpredictable by nature,” I said. “Your father’s men are the best-trained in the kingdom. They will prevail.”

“They must.” Rose stared at me with passionate intensity. She was not ready to rule, far from it, and I ached in that moment for all she had lost. Her mind should be taken up with thoughts of suitors and gowns, not the possible death of her father. “If all men had the strength of your husband, I would not doubt our chances of victory.” She sat on the bed and ran her fingers along the curved embroidery of the bedspread. “Do you miss him?”

“Dorian? Yes, at times. But I cannot begrudge him a chance to serve in battle. He’s longed for it his whole life.”

Rose cast her eyes downward, suddenly shy. “Was it as you expected? Marriage?”

The wariness of her request, as if she were bracing herself for bad news, took me by surprise. I had never spoken of my true feelings for Dorian to anyone. And what were my feelings? They changed from day to day.

I considered my words carefully. “I had resigned myself to life as a spinster. Yet marriage suits me more than I expected.”

“Ah, but you married for love,” Rose said.

I smiled, amused. Love had played no part in Dorian’s matrimonial plans, or mine. Whatever bond had formed between us had begun with sheer physical lust. Then I remembered the way Dorian had kissed me in the courtyard, in full view of the crowd. The promise he had made to be a better husband. Why do such things, if not for love?

“Affection can blossom with time,” I assured her. “Sir Hugill is a good man, from all accounts.” Those same accounts had also painted him as stern and humorless, hardly appealing qualities to one of Rose’s temperament.

“I am sure he is worthy of my respect,” Rose said dutifully. “It is only—” She looked away, hesitating over her next words. “I had hoped for more.”

With the instant understanding that comes to faithful servants, I knew she was thinking of Joffrey. I remembered his dark eyes glinting with pleasure as Rose danced gracefully before him. It could never be more than a youthful diversion: Even if the king could extract Rose from the contract with Sir Hugill, she would never be allowed to marry someone who did not hail from a royal family. But what was the harm in mooning over a handsome young man? I welcomed any distraction from the dismal mood at court.