Wulfyddia (The Tattersall Trilogy Book 1)
Read Wulfyddia (The Tattersall Trilogy Book 1) Online
Authors: Steele Alexandra
By Steele
Alexandra
© 2015 Steele Alexandra
All Rights Reserved
With her
windows open the wind brought all the secrets of the world rushing through her
tower room. She could hear the restless minstrels plucking at their strings,
gently striking one note, then another, until they composed a song too sweet
and too hesitant to ever be played at a court of poison and daggers. The Ladies
of the Court cavorted and giggled, and the air caught their soft sighs at the
antics of the Lords and swept them up high, to Cicely and her hungry ears. A
note was passed from one lord to a married lady, and a secret gaze was shared
from beneath powdered wigs. Cicely could taste the powder in the back of her
throat, like a tickle that wouldn’t go away.
The
Queen, ill-tempered and newly risen, was brought papers of state while still in
her bathrobe. She had already put her seal on three Death Warrants by the time
her morning hot chocolate arrived. Cicely could scent the steam on the air as
the aged Queen raised the cup to her lips. A line of waiting courtiers
stretched from the Queen’s door all the way down the hall, and at the head of
the queue stood the Royal Prophet, with a prophecy in his hand and a smile on
his lips. Far behind him waited the aged Royal Librarian, distressed by the
theft of a book from his archives. Cicely already knew that he would wait a
long time before being sent away, discouraged and sore from hours of standing.
And
Cicely knew more. Her secrets went lower, beneath the trysts and treason of the
aristocracy. She heard the bustle and clatter of the Castle Kitchens,
recognized the voice of the fat Cook who thought about spitting in the Queen’s
porridge every morning, but every morning was too afraid. She heard the little
boy Rat-catcher scraping his knees as he crawled through the sewers, a trap in
one hand and a pouch of rat poison in his pocket. In the apartments of the
Court Witch, Felunhala slapped the hand of her apprentice, Melisande, when the
girl diced herbs the wrong length, and Cicely could feel the indignant flush
that rose to the young woman’s cheeks.
And
Cicely knew still more. Her secrets went deeper, to dark places, secret places.
She heard a growl in the night. She heard the grinding of teeth in the
dungeons, the trickle of blood down a drain. She smelled sweet rot and damp
earth, and saw someone standing in the dark. It was the same woman, the woman
who wouldn’t leave but wouldn’t share her secrets either. Cicely was not used
to being denied, not in that way, not when everyone else opened up to her like
books to be read at her leisure.
“Tell
me,” Cicely whispered under the winds that raged around her, under the banging
shutters as the tapestries swayed from the creaking crossbeams. “Tell me.” But
there was no response, and she had not expected one, not really, not after all
these years.
So she
sat down and was stitching away when the North wind came shuddering through her
wide windows and brought her the newest secret of all: a royal secret, a deadly
one. It murmured to her of the Queen’s adversaries, of enemies made over a
lifetime of lies. It sighed the story of a boy and a book, and then it rushed
past her and was gone. The tapestries stilled, the shutters banged no more, and
Cicely sat down with blue thread the color of Spencer Tattersall’s eyes and
began to stitch him onto the tapestry of history.
The
delicate lace curtains in the windows of the Queen’s Wardrobe swayed as Queen
Tryphena herself pushed them aside to peer critically out at the sprawl of the
Castle beneath her. Above, dawn crawled across the sky, chased by the black
storm clouds that had appeared on the horizon, promising a day that would be
scarcely lighter than the night. In the courtyard far below, she could see
people, peasant peddlers and nobility alike, pausing to gaze up at the sky and
then hurry on their way. A Lady of the Court raised her frail parasol, as
though it might protect her from the coming rain. The wind rose, setting her
skirts billowing as she hurried away.
A man,
who from a distance looked like a walking pile of rags, pulled a tattered hood
over his head and retreated against the imposing stone wall of the Courts. As
he stumbled toward shelter, he passed two men who had paused as they swept the
gallows clean in preparation for a day of dispensing justice. One pointed to
the sky, which, recently illuminated by the dawn, was rapidly darkening again.
They conferred for a moment and then picked up their brooms and crept into the
Courts to wait out the storm.
Only one
man remained in the center of the courtyard, staring resolutely upwards, so
still he might well have been carved of stone. The old Queen’s eye twitched,
for she knew that he was staring up at her window, not the sky. An unexpected
shudder gripped her and she found herself reaching for the velvet shawl on her
shoulders, pulling it closer, tighter, to warm her neck.
“My
Lady?” The Queen’s manservant, Arthur, appeared in the doorway, keeping his
distance with the wary eyes of a skittish animal. He bowed low and
respectfully, smiling through the chills she gave him whenever she looked that
pensive.
“My
lady?”
“Arthur?”
There was a wheeze deep in the old woman’s lungs as she spoke, and even her
manservant, the most reserved of all her subjects, could not help the way that
his gaze flashed beseechingly to her chest, as though praying that the rot
there would take hold and eat away at her from the inside out.
“Princess
Frederica has proved to be somewhat, well, displeased regarding the relocation
of her youngest daughter to the Haligorn Tower. She says that the tower is too
remote and the atmosphere too gloomy for a child Justine’s age. ” Arthur’s
greatest talent was the ability to keep his face entirely blank while he spoke.
It had saved his life before, and in the service of the queen it made him an
asset.
“My
daughter-in-law displeased? How unusual,” the Queen said drily, her gaze remaining
fixed on something in the courtyard below. Arthur noted that the shutters had
been flung open and the curtains pushed aside. That was unusual. The Queen did
not like open windows. “The child is twelve years old now. The Haligorn is a
perfectly suitable residence for her. Frederica is forgetting her place again.
She isn’t Queen yet.” Tryphena snorted faintly in a rare moment of mirth.
“Of
course,” he bowed lowly again, and then cleared his throat. “My lady?”
“Arthur?”
Her voice was almost a snarl. Whatever thoughts consumed her had to be dark.
“Princess
Frederica also took issue with the new help.”
Then she
did turn around, and only years of practice kept him from flinching. She was a
small old woman, but she stood on an ornate footstool in order to reach her
window, and so she loomed over him. Her eyes were very dark and the ridges in
her crown were sharp. “What? She doesn’t like Mrs. Tattersall?”
“No, my
lady. Well, I don’t know what she thinks of Mrs. Tattersall specifically my
lady; I just know that she was upset by the dismissal of Justine’s last
governess.”
“Why?”
“Apparently
the young princess was quite close to her last governess, who had been with her
for more than six years, and her mother worries that she might feel lonely—”
“She’ll
manage,” the Queen turned back to the window, fixing her shawl about her
shoulders. “The close relationship between Justine and her governess is exactly
why I dismissed the governess. It is unseemly for a member of the royal family
to have such relations with a servant. Justine needs to realize that a
governess is a governess, not a confidant. Supervise them Arthur. I want to
know their daily routine. I want to know if anything is amiss, if anything
seems unusual, if either of them begin acting strangely. ”
“Of
course.” Not for the first time, Arthur wondered what the Queen suspected of
her youngest granddaughter.
“And
from now on, don’t feel compelled to report Frederica’s every gripe to me, word
for word. I hear enough of that woman’s moaning when I have the misfortune of
being in her company.”
“Yes my
lady. I am sorry.” He was almost to the door when she called him back.
“I have
a task for you, Arthur.”
“My
Lady?”
“Send my
guards into the courtyard.” Her voice was deliberately relaxed, her tone almost
leisurely, as it was when she was at her most lethal. “They will find a man
standing beneath my window staring. Tell them to detain him and take him to the
dungeons. He is to have his own cell and to stay there until I say otherwise.
See that it is done.”
Arthur
stood there, surrounded by racks of grand gowns swaying silently as though they
were worn by ghosts, and he nodded. “Yes my lady. As you command.”
“Yes,”
the Queen muttered as he bowed deeply and left to see it done. “As
I
command.” And as the first raindrops glanced softly off the stone of Castle
Wulfyddia, she jerked the shutters closed and shut out the storm.
***
In the
windy courtyard, a small gray dove smelled the storm and took shelter,
alighting on a window ledge just as the first raindrops dampened her plumage.
She huddled back against the shutters, fluffing her feathers to protect herself
against the wind that whipped past. Below her a man entered the courtyard, also
protecting himself against the rain, but with a cloak instead of feathers. He
was a young man with a broad build, but his boots were new and pinched his
toes, so he walked slowly and with the faintest of limps as he surveyed the
nearly empty courtyard. He was alone there, save for a slumbering vagrant and
one man who stood with his head tilted back, his gaze fixed on some point high
on the fortress above him.
Archibald
Rathbone, newly arrived at Castle Wulfyddia, could not help the way his
shoulders slumped when he saw the state of the courtyard. Coming from the
country, he had expected to be greeted with a cheery hustle-and-bustle, not the
moan of the wind and the creak of the hangman’s rope from the empty gallows.
His mother hadn’t approved of him coming to Castle Wulfyddia, but he was a
young physician and hoped to make something of himself, so he had left home
anyway. Rathbone fixed his hat more firmly on his head, drew his cloak about him,
and approached the lone man with as much optimism as someone who had been
traveling for days and badly needed rest could muster.
“Which
way to the boarding rooms?” he asked the stranger, and then he waited there
uncomfortably for the man to acknowledge him. But the stranger only stood
there, staring unblinkingly upwards. Rathbone shifted uneasily, but still
received no response. He tilted his head back himself and tried to identify
what it was about the building that had captured the man’s attention. He saw
nothing to warrant such fascination, only a number of windows, most of them
shuttered against the bad weather.
There
was a sound in the distance; it sounded like boots on cobblestones. Rathbone
dearly hoped that someone else would join them in the courtyard. This man was
eerily unresponsive and the rain was only falling faster. “Excuse me?” Rathbone
tried again.
Finally
the man turned towards him, but without actually acknowledging him. For just an
instant Rathbone caught a glimpse of the man’s face and saw that his brows were
drawn together and his jaw clenched with some strong emotion. Taken aback,
Rathbone stepped back a pace, and the man swept past him, practically knocking
him aside. Rathbone was still trying to define the expression that had startled
him as the stranger left the courtyard without ever having spoken a word to
him.
Was it
anger? Was it fear? He found it hard to say. Rathbone had always been better
with books than people. Regardless, he couldn’t imagine what it was about the
empty windows that could have evoked such an emotion in the stranger. As
Rathbone pondered the strange encounter he noticed that the footsteps sounded
louder. Rathbone stared up at the wall of windows for one more minute and then
tore his gaze away just as a line of guards filed into the courtyard, likely
going about one of their regular drills. Rathbone sighed in relief. The Royal
Guards were sure to know their way around the castle, and he would be out of
the rain in no time. They appeared to be heading his way, and he waited in the
shadow of the fortress for them to draw closer.
Whatever
the guards were doing, it didn’t look like they were enjoying themselves very
much, because their expressions were decidedly unfriendly. The man in the lead
halted with a click of his boot heels and as Rathbone opened his mouth to ask
for directions the soldier pointed directly at him and shouted, “That’s the
one! Seize him!”
Shocked,
Rathbone could only spin around and stare at the empty cobblestone square
behind him, thinking that they had to be talking about someone else. But then
they were laying hands on him, one guard grabbing him roughly by his collar
while another gripped his arm and a third kicked his feet out from under him
with a practiced swipe of one shining black boot. As the dove on the window
ledge looked down in mild consternation, the young Rathbone was mobbed by half
a dozen guards and dragged into the bowels of Castle Wulfyddia. Within a
minute, the only sign that a young physician from the countryside had ever set
foot in the courtyard was Rathbone’s hat, lost in the struggle. The vagrant
woke up long enough to catch it as it blew by. He settled it on his own head,
pulling it down securely over his ears, and then lay back down, rolled over and
slept.
***
Spencer Tattersall
leaned into the light of his candle and turned the page. The great stone walls
of the Haligorn were so thick that he could only hear the echoes of the storm
outside, a faint sighing that had to be the wind against the stones and the
soft dripping of water trickling in the arrow slits. From within the Haligorn,
the faint rustle of his pages was the only sound that broke the complete
silence. The tower wasn’t always this quiet. Sometimes the girl upstairs sang,
the sweet sound ringing down the thirteen staircases so that it sounded as if
she were just in the next room, rather than closeted away so high above.
Sometimes Spencer heard laughter, and somehow that was more haunting than the
singing, because he knew she was alone up there.
“When
can we see her?” The grave inquiry was not unexpected, but he flinched
nonetheless. He stared up from his book at the girl who watched him, unnerving
him with the force of her gaze. Daphne Lucretius was in her mid-adolescence, no
older than Spencer, but she was born of royalty and wore her self-assurance
like a second skin. She sat in his mother’s chair, which looked humiliatingly
shabby in comparison to her finery. Long tendrils of red hair, painstakingly
curled, trailed over one shoulder, and her dark eyes were fixed on him
intensely, as though she sought to sway him based on their power alone. She
wanted to visit her sister upstairs, though the Queen had forbidden it.
Daphne
had brought another sister with her, a dark haired girl a few years younger.
She was called Lorna, and she was the second youngest of the seven royal
granddaughters of Tryphena. The youngest was the girl locked away at the top of
the Haligorn. Lorna sat opposite Daphne, and while her nerves were written
plainly on her face, he couldn’t tell what worried her more, the fact that they
were trying to disobey a royal edict, or the fact that he wouldn’t let them. While
Spencer could sympathize with their desire to visit their imprisoned sibling,
he and his mother were retained specifically to keep Justine isolated. He
shifted uncomfortably at the thought of his mother, who was supposed to have
returned by now but had doubtlessly been caught up in the thunderstorm and
forced to shelter somewhere. Under different circumstances he would not have minded
a day alone in the Haligorn, but the sisters and their quiet demands made him
uncomfortable. Mrs. Tattersall would have been perfectly comfortable turning
the girls away, but Spencer was not.
He tried
to stall them, murmuring of his mother who had to be present for any visits,
but the elder one watched him with eyes that were altogether too perceptive,
and he knew the exact moment when she realized that he was not going to let
them see their sister, because her eyes lit with fury. He couldn’t quite work
up the courage to show them out, not when they were already sitting down and
especially given that the storm only seemed to be getting louder. He wasn’t
sure what to say to them, though, so they sank into an uneasy silence and
Spencer returned to his book.
Lorna
just stared into the flames, chin on her knees, seemingly miles away. Daphne
was a little more restless. She kept glancing around the room, her gaze
lingering on the staircase more than once. Spencer got the distinct impression
that she was waiting for him to say something, but he did not humor her. With
every word he ran the risk of offending royalty, and Tryphena’s lot scared him
to death.
Finally,
Daphne broke the silence herself. “Well, this is boring,” she said softly. Lorna’s
eyes flicked to her sister, but otherwise she did not move. Spencer couldn’t
explain it, but he got the distinct impression that Lorna was wary of her
sister. “You don’t mind if I read, do you?”