| |
“Oh good. Everyone is here now!” Muriel said with the perfect hostess smile. The morning was the warmest so far of the spring and a few of the early blooms—crocuses and daffodils—could be seen. They were gathered in the courtyard of the Prince’s Palace, by the tents of the Gramiren soldiers camped on the grounds. Behind the tents, glimmering with dew, loomed a scaffold.
Rohesia looked at Aldrick and Rachel, hoping for some indication of what awaited. But if they knew anything, she could not read it on their faces. Sir Oliver was in attendance as well. He scuffled about nervously and Rohesia wondered if this stemmed from knowing what was about to happen or not knowing. Once again, Alice and Helena were in the care of Rachel’s governess and nurse, Joanna’s presence being requested by Muriel. Some senior knights and ladies also stood about anxiously, awaiting the latest display of Muriel’s theatrics.
Just as Rohesia realized that the infamous Sergeant Wyman was not in the crowd, he came out of the palace. For the past month, everyone in Rawdon had steered clear of the man who seemed to emanate cruelty and pain in his every abrupt gesture and heavy scowl. No one had seen Sir Franklin since the night of Muriel’s arrival when he had been dragged in bleeding to supper. The walks for both he and Sir Alan on the beach had ended. Now, they both walked behind Sergeant Wyman.
Sir Alan, though, could not really be said to walk, so much as he hopped along with the aid of his guards. He could place no significant weight on his right foot, and the horrible truth struck Rohesia that his leg was likely broken. Sir Franklin’s bloody and filthy hair did not hide that the ear, which had been mutilated at dinner a month ago, was now entirely gone.
At Rohesia’s side, Joanna made a gagging noise.
“Do not look,” Rohesia whispered. “Stare over their heads at the top of the palace. You do not have to see this.”
“Earstien, why are we here?” Joanna groaned.
She was perhaps louder than she intended to be, and Muriel overheard. “Why indeed?” She smiled. “Allow me to explain.”
Muriel stepped forward from the gathered crowd. She gazed wistfully at both Porchers, who had been brought to a stop near the group, and she shook her head. Turning back to the spectators, she said, “We are here to show what happens when traitors are found. When people refuse to tell the truth to agents of the true King of Myrcia, Broderick Gramiren.”
Most in the crowd stood in stunned silence looking either at the tortured prisoners or at the scaffold. Some of the Gramiren men made grunts of agreement, but that marked the extent of enthusiasm for Muriel’s speech. Rohesia, however, could not hold her tongue.
“What happens, it seems, is that honorable knights of Myrcia are tortured and maimed. And if you hang these men today without the benefit of a trial, you will be the one guilty of treason against the laws of this kingdom.”
Mutters traveled through the crowd, but Rohesia could not discern if it was favorable to her or otherwise.
Muriel, clearly, was not impressed. “What does that even mean? Treason against laws. That is not actually how treason works. Do you want to know something that really is treason, though, your majesty?” She walked up to Rohesia and leaned in so close that their faces were near enough that Rohesia could see Muriel’s crow’s feet and feel her breath. “When the queen has a child that is not the king’s.”
“The lie about Edwin’s parentage is the most loathsome you and your foul husband have ever perpetrated. My son is the true King of Myrcia and your husband is nothing but a common bastard.”
“Oh, I assure you, there is nothing common about my husband. But your treason is not the issue at hand today.” Muriel leaned back and clapped her hands. “These two men were tried privately, let us say, and found guilty of lying to the king’s men. For this, Sir Alan Porcher shall be hanged.”
“You cannot do this,” Sir Franklin screamed. In his fury, he broke free of his guards and lunged toward Muriel. Sergeant Wyman swiftly stepped between Sir Franklin and the whore he called a queen, and punched Sir Franklin in the throat. He crumpled to ground, struggling to breathe.
“I assure you, I can,” Muriel answered, unperturbed by the violence. “I had decided to allow you to live, Sir Franklin, in memory of your connection to my brother the Duke of Severn. Don’t make me change my mind.”
“Then what about the connection between our grandparents and your mother and father?” Sir Alan pleaded. “They were friends! They attended each other’s’ weddings.”
Muriel sighed. “Familial good will can only go back so many generations. No. You die, Sir Alan. I would ask if you have any final words, but I feel you have already said enough. Gag him.”
“You and your husband are abominations!” Sir Alan yelled as the guards searched for something to stop his mouth. “Earstien bless Edwin Sigor, the true King of Myrcia. May the Light of Earstien always fall on the Sigor family. And long live the noble Queen Rohesia, the finest woman in the kingdom. And blessed be—”
“For Earstien’s sake,” Muriel groaned. “Someone hit him in the mouth with a sword hilt. He can’t talk if he’s choking on his teeth.”
Sergeant Wyman enthusiastically followed this order, and as the guards dragged Sir Alan to the scaffold, the only noises he made were muffled screams of pain.
Rohesia did not want to watch, but when she briefly glanced away, her eyes rested on Sir Franklin, still collapsed on the ground, blood trickling from his mouth, breathing labored, tears on his cheeks. He could only watch his brother, bloody and broken, having a noose slipped over his head. She would watch. She would stand witness to this atrocity, and one day see Muriel punished and the sacrifice of the Porchers honored throughout Myrcia.
“Holy Finster,” Joanna whimpered. “This is really going to happen. She’s really going to do this.”
Rohesia wrapped an arm around Joanna and pressed the girl’s face against her shoulder. “You don’t have to watch.”
But Rohesia did, and she saw Sir Alan’s body drop when the stool beneath him was kicked away. Poor Joanna, though, could not be shielded from Sir Franklin’s wail of despair, which Rohesia found far more painful than what she had seen.
***
NOT EVEN MURIEL MANAGED to say much after Sir Alan’s body was cut down and his brother returned to the dungeon. The crowd quietly dispersed, and that was an end to the brutality. For the moment, anyway.
Rohesia sent Joanna off to rest, and she said she would tend to the girls until lunch. In point of fact, Rohesia felt badly rattled herself and would very much have appreciated a quiet hour alone with her thoughts and feelings. But never putting herself first was one of the hallmarks of a good queen, and she felt the importance of that today most acutely.
In the hallway outside of the nursery, she found Rachel, just leaning against a wall, blankly staring at a case of lockets collected by a Sigor princess two hundred years previously. Her hands would not stop shaking, no matter where she moved them to or how she clenched them.
“Your grace. Rachel? Are you well?” Rohesia rested a hand on her shoulder.
Rachel jumped and scooted away. “I am quite well, and I would thank you not to touch me.”
“My apologies. It has been an overwhelming morning. No one would blame you for being out of sorts.”
“Isn’t that a comfort,” she scoffed. “No one might blame me, but I blame you for all of this.”
“Cousin Rachel, we are on the same side here. Clearly you can see now that Muriel is our mutual enemy. I never meant to bring trouble to your home. It was Muriel who made that decision, and it was Muriel who decided to come here now and begin executing honorable men.”
Rachel whirled on Rohesia, and hissed in a whisper, “He was guilty. You do understand that. You might call yourself the rightful queen, but she is the queen in fact, and Sir Alan was a traitor.”
“He was a man with a conscience, and Muriel is a monster. Never forget that, for the love of Earstien. She will lash out, torture, kill anyone she perceives as a threat. And tonight, I promise you, she will sleep well.”
“I should tell her,” Rachel said, now staring out of the window overlooking the royal dock. “I could tell her, and then she would punish you and leave me and my family alone.”
The day before, Rohesia would have assumed that Rachel was not serious and merely attempting to frighten her. But today, after watching Sir Alan die and seeing poor Sir Franklin, Rachel may be scared herself and not thinking clearly. In this fey mood, Rachel just might be capable of confessing all.
“Cousin Rachel, think for a moment who we are talking about. Muriel will not thank you for finally coming forward. She will punish you for not coming forward sooner. She will punish you and Aldrick for ever allowing Edwin in the palace and then letting him escape. This is what Aldrick has been saying all along, and he is right.”
“Don’t call him ‘Aldrick’,” Rachel hissed. “He is a duke, and you shall refer to him as such. You are not so intimate with him as to use his given name.”
Rohesia berated herself for being so informal. Of course, there had been a time, long ago, when she and Aldrick had been close enough for first names, and it was not a time that Rachel wished to be reminded of. If Rohesia were not so shaken by the morning, no doubt she would not have made the mistake. “Of course, you are correct, your grace. I beg your forgiveness.”
“It is not granted. Please remove your child and niece from the nursery immediately.”
“Yes, of course.”
***
BACK UP IN THEIR APARTMENT where they would be unlikely to see Rachel, Rohesia tried to muddle through the rest of the day. Alice was old enough to perceive the mood, and she quietly read on her own. Helena, however, was too young to understand, and she had as much energy as always and required the same amount of attention as any other day.
After lunch, again taken in their rooms so as to avoid Rachel, and honestly, to protect Joanna from company, which she was not up for, Helena ran herself down to the point of exhaustion. Once she was stretched out for a nap, Joanna got out the slate to go over an assigned history reading with Alice. Rohesia appreciated Joanna trying to gather herself and bring some normalcy to the day, but Rohesia found it difficult to follow suit.
In fact, rather than finding something to read or correspondence to write or taking out her embroidery, she found herself half watching the lesson. Joanna was getting better at quizzing Alice on the facts of what she read, but she still hesitated when she had to write on the slate. In fact, she almost never wrote two or three words together correctly on the first try. She was constantly transposing letters or writing the wrong word and needing to erase.
Watching this, Rohesia realized that, if she still maintained any doubts about Joanna being the person who betrayed Edwin, she could dismiss them. Sir Oliver had received a note. Yes, the note was most likely quite brief, but even so, Rohesia did not think Joanna could have learned the truth from Sir Russell, composed a note, and seen it delivered in the short timeframe required.
So, the betrayer was not Joanna, the Porchers, or the guards on the beach according to Robert Tynsdale. That only left Aldrick and Rachel. But they had nearly as much to lose as Rohesia if Edwin had been found at the palace. It still made no sense.
One thing that often helped Rohesia make sense of a difficult situation was writing out her thoughts. Years ago, even up until the fall of Leornian, she had enjoyed putting her thoughts in a journal. But here, even on Faustinus’s magysk paper, she did not like writing down her ideas and then holding onto them. She could write a letter, though. She could write someone who might understand her difficulties and then be in a position to help with them.
Rohesia went to her desk by the window. For a moment, she recalled the sprawling walnut desk Edgar had given her as a wedding present. She wondered if it was still in Wealdan Castle and if anyone used it. She set up her supplies on the worn and wobbly table that was now all she might call hers.
April 17, 358
Prince’s Palace, Rawdon
Dear Presley,
I have been thinking today a great deal about the past. I thought of my royal rooms in Wealdan Castle and of first being married. Edgar was so generous with me in so many ways. I do not believe many people knew of his truly generous nature, which disappoints me now more than I can say. He did not have as many friends as he deserved, although I would expect he would say he had precisely as many as he required.
He always considered the Porchers friends. Do you remember his stories about them? Lady Gloria, who mastered the tourney system better than any man. And her husband, Sir Quintilian, the greatest tournament champion of his generation. Edgar credited their talent and unstinting kindness while teaching him with the success he had as a tourney champion himself.
I saw one of their grandsons, Sir Alan Porcher, executed this morning on Muriel’s order. His brother, Sir Franklin, is currently being tortured in the palace dungeon. It has been the worst morning of my life since the loss of Leornian.
Do you think all might have been different if we had held Leornian? Even if we still did not have Formacaster back, would there be more or less blood being shed right now? I find it impossible to guess for all my obsession with the question. Whenever I think of Leornian, I wonder, too, what might have happened if Brandon had lived longer.
I know everyone must die, and Brandon lived to a respectable age. But Sir Quintilian and Lady Gloria are still alive, so it certainly would have been possible. I cannot move beyond thinking that if Brandon had outlived Edgar, everything would have been different. There are men in Myrcia everyone likes, but Brandon was the last man universally respected. If the bastard usurper had tried his lies about Edwin’s parentage or in any other way attempted to put himself on the throne, Brandon would simply have said, “No. This is ridiculous,” and that would have been an end of it. I would be Regent, Edwin would be king, and Myrcia would be whole.
My apologies. I have rambled without ever coming to a point. Sir Alan’s execution, which all the nobles at the palace were made to watch, has affected me. I have a point, my old friend. Allow me to get to it. If the Empire was ever going to send additional aid, now is the moment. This morning’s tragedy goes to show how unpredictable Broderick and Muriel have become. Flora has called out her levies. Leornian, Keelweard, and Pinburg join her, and Edwin is working at gathering more support. The Sigor side has not been this strong in years, nor the Gramirens so desperate and cruel. Please use your influence with Tullius and Vita. I know Faustinus already itches to lend more support. Thank him for me. Also tell him I saw Caedmon recently, and he was as magnificent and, well, Caedmon-like as ever. Together, I know they might achieve much.
Otherwise we are well. Alice is studying Sigor history, and it both gladdens and breaks my heart. Give my love to Grigory and all my old, dear friends. I hope you are well, and that we might meet again someday in the not too distant future.
With deep affection,
Rohesia