Chapter Twenty

My brother and his wife were laid together in one tomb, closely entwined. I named my nephew Robin and went at once to search out a wet nurse for him.

Curious that Rupert and I had just discussed nursing mothers; we had but a few. The first refused without even glancing at the child in my arms, saying she already had all she could handle. The second, the widow of a soldier, with a child only two months old, paused and considered it.

“Best let me show you,” I said. As I had for the Dowager, I unwrapped little Robin and displayed him.

Markka, for such was her name, looked at him long, and then eyed me thoughtfully. She did not say what must be in her mind—he’s like you—but bit her lip and eventually nodded.

“All right. I’ll have him.”

“Thank you. I can arrange for extra rations to help keep you in milk.”

“That would be welcome, Majesty. We’re all starving. And, Majesty, that pounding! I’ve had no sleep.”

“I know,” I agreed unhappily.

Her blue eyes met mine. “But this isn’t the worst of it, I’ll bet. Just the beginning, right?”

“I’m afraid so.”

I placed my nephew in her arms.

“He might not make it,” she warned me. “He is so very weak.”

“I know. I’ve named him Robin after his father.”

“If he lives, Majesty, will you raise him then?”

“Yes.” Oh, yes.

“I’m sorry for your grief.”

I embraced her. To my surprise, she clutched me back heartily, her arms uniting both me and little Robin. “I’m that glad,” she whispered, “to be able to do this, Majesty—for you.”

A short time after seeing Robin settled, I went to the gates, where Rupert had stationed himself. I wanted to tell him about the child, but the sight that met my eyes stole my breath.

More snow had fallen. It blanketed the town in white, but around the castle, ringing it, Ortis’s army made a dark blot, like that of corruption. So many of them. The sun had not long risen on another gray morning, and I blinked in consternation while a single thought entered my mind.

We are all going to die. Markka, Robin, Mother, my sisters—all of us. Donella had merely gone ahead.

Rupert, who looked far too unwell to be on his feet, turned to me. “You should not be here.” But he drew me to his side and touched my belly in a fleeting caress.

My eyes narrowed. “We are most definitely trapped.”

He smiled wryly and gently reminded me, “It is the nature of a siege.”

“What are they doing?” The small black figures outside ran everywhere, industrious as ants.

“Preparing to destroy us. That group there constructs siege engines. Those men over there, ladders. The ladders are a fool’s game, too easily shoved away from the walls.” He sounded almost dispassionate. I wondered if I heard exhaustion speaking. “In this group here, you see King Ortis himself. See? The man with the red beard.”

“What is he doing?”

“Planning. Scheming. Supposing he has won.”

I drew a breath. “Has he?”

Rupert turned his head and looked at me, his injured eye narrowed in a squint, the other clear green. “No, love. Not by half. We have been picking them off with arrows. Right, Tom?” He directed this at the man beside us.

“Right, sire.”

“We have men all along the battlements doing that.”

“But…” So many targets.

“And we have every hand available making more arrows.”

“We will soon run out of wood. Then what?”

“Make them from furniture if we have to. We are not done. Tell her, Tom.”

The aged bowman beside him grinned. “Aye, sire, we are not done.”

“Our greatest ally is the weather. The cold that pinches us here will ride roughshod over Ortis’s troops. They may take frostbite. They may fall ill. They might desert and run home. Do not lose heart. Right, lads?”

Tom responded with another wide smile, and verbal reassurance came from down the line. All the soldiers, some little more than youths, assured me, “Aye, my Queen, take heart!”

I wished I could.

****

“I want to see my grandson.”

I turned, startled, when the imperious voice rang through the crowded room.

Markka, Robin, and I stood together in the big chamber, formerly the ballroom, that now housed women—mostly widows—who had young children. The women chattered while the children, like those everywhere, squealed, cried, and played tag throughout the crowded space.

All fell silent, though, when my mother, with my sisters at her back, progressed toward us.

She had her gaze fixed on me to the exclusion of all else. I’d just been cooing over Robin, who lay in Markka’s arms while her neighbor held her little daughter, Dinnie. I froze, my finger still extended and breath flooding my lungs.

Anger followed swiftly, and I drew myself up, refusing to dodge her stare. I waited for her to reach us before I said, “Ah, Madame, now you come?”

She bridled. She looked terrible, shockingly so, wrapped in a blanket against the all-pervading chill. Only her head lay bare. Like nearly everyone else, she’d had to cut her hair, the lice being a plague, and nothing softened the scars left from her surgery. Her blue eyes burned like coals stuck into the mask of a scarecrow.

In that moment I didn’t care who listened—Markka, so close at my side, or all the other women, most of whom had suffered terrible loss. What was in my heart needed to come out.

“Where were you?” I asked. “Where, when your son died? When your daughter-in-law died? When he”—I gestured at Robin—“was born?”

She stopped as if I’d struck her; I suppose in a way I had. “I am here now.” She lifted her head regally. “Show him to me.”

I did not respond, wanting nothing so much as to protect the child in Markka’s arms from this woman’s stare, from her cruelty and condemnation. I wanted to wrap him more tightly in his swaddling, hold him to my breast, hide him.

I knew I could not.

I shot a look at my sisters, neither of whom appeared well, before focusing on Mother again. “He is in my care.”

She snorted. “I will take him if I wish.”

“You will not. Anyway”—I felt my lip curl—“you will not want him.” I steeled myself. “Show her,” I told Markka.

You could have heard an eyelash drop in that room. Even the children fell silent.

After shooting me a startled look, Markka uncovered the child in her arms and gently held him up. Robin gave a little squeak as the cold air found him, and I took him from Markka, covered him again, and cuddled him against my shoulder.

A single glimpse had been enough for Mother. Now it was her lip that curled.

Very clearly she cried, “Ah! It is our curse. We will all die!”

Stunned—though I suppose I shouldn’t have been—I covered Robin’s ear with my hand.

Markka straightened and declared, like a vengeance, “You are wrong, Madame. If the child proves anything like the Queen, he is our strength and our blessing! We could only pray for another such as she.”

A murmur traveled through the room. “Our Queen, our Queen!”

Mother’s gaze stabbed at me before she glared at my sisters, both silent. She then eyed the room full of women and spat, “Keep him. He is no grandson of mine.”

She turned and swept out the way she’d come, women snatching their children out of her path as if her skirts carried a contagion.

That night, when Rupert managed a brief visit to our room at the top of the tower, I related the scene to him.

Resting his head against the back of a chair, eyes closed, he said nothing, though the corners of his mouth tightened.

I paced in front of him. “Rupert—what if our child is born like poor Robin?”

“Then…” Rupert opened his eyes. “We will love her, or him.”

“But this child will be heir to a kingdom.”

“True.”

“I could not bear…”

He stretched out a hand to me. “Come here.”

I sat on his knees, and he cuddled me close, my head tucked under his chin. “Do you not love wee Robin?”

“Yes, oh, yes. But that’s because I understand—”

“I believe Markka is right. You are our blessing—our secret weapon, if you will. Can you not see how the people adore you? On every side they speak of you to me with warmth, telling of your kindness, your strength and encouragement while I was away. My own mother came to see me.”

“The Queen?”

“She admitted she did not know what to expect when I chose you for my wife. She also admitted she now understands what I saw in you. Stellar, I believe she called you. A beautiful choice.”

“Beautiful?” I would never get used to hearing that word applied to me.

“Cindra, do you not yet see that all real beauty lies in the spirit? Yours shines from you. I saw that in Donella’s garden; I see it still.”

“Our child will be beautiful."

“Oh, yes.”