[Tattersall 01] • Wulfyddia

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.