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On the road down from the convent gates, Wallace pulled Lauren behind a flowering cherry tree and kissed her hard. “One more time before I go?” he whispered, grinning.
She laughed, knowing it was a joke, and yet wishing it weren’t. “Silly boy. Your men are waiting. My brother is waiting, too, and if I make you late, I’ll never hear the end of it.”
He was completely healed, and while she thanked Earstien for it, she was aware of the terrible irony. The fact that he was safe meant he could now go back into danger.
Andras’s whole cavalry column was moving out again. The last of the March snows were a memory, and in spite of some light flurries and some frosty mornings, spring had definitely arrived. The hillsides were green now, and the bare gray limbs of the Almoner’s Woods were filling out with the first hint of new leaves. At the river, on either side of the stone bridge, blue and yellow iris were starting to show among the willows. Daffodils were pushing up through the meadows where days before there had been snow.
Andras was waiting at the bridge by the little statute of the Blessed Fenne, and he dismounted to give Lauren a hug, too.
“Take care of him this time, please,” she whispered.
“I will,” he replied. “Don’t let Morwen push you around. Or Mother, either.”
Then she really had to say goodbye to Wallace. It felt so different from the first time he had gone off to war. He’d been a stranger then, and she had felt ashamed of herself for feeling relieved that he was going away. Now it was so much worse, because she loved him, and she didn’t want him to leave. But she didn’t regret anything they had done over the past few months. It was awful to have him go away. But how much worse would it have been not to discover how perfectly suited they were for each other?
She had to take leave of Wallace’s knights and sergeants, too. She knew them all by name now; she knew the names of their wives and lovers. She knew where they were all from, and who their parents were. She knew the names of their children. They all bowed and promised, “We’ll keep him safe, my lady.”
She curtsied back and said, “Yes, you’d better, or you’ll answer to me.” She laughed and smiled, too, though by that point she was starting to feel the tears burning at the corners of her eyes.
They all rode away, banners streaming, helmets shining, horses shaking the ground and raising a terrific cloud of dust that settled over the willows and iris and the new green fields. Lauren watched them go and then went up the road and cried for a while under the same cherry tree where Wallace had kissed her, not even an hour earlier.
Morwen was waiting for her at the convent gate with a handkerchief.
“Thank you,” said Lauren, dabbing at her eyes. “It’s all the dust, you see.”
“You’re allowed to cry,” said Morwen softly, patting her on the back. “He’s your husband.”
Lauren tried to convince herself that Morwen meant well. “Thank you, yes. He is my husband.”
“Exactly. And speaking of your marriage, there’s something I’ve been meaning to talk to you about.” Morwen looped her arm through Lauren’s and led her past the abbey toward the garden.
“Is this really a topic that we need to discuss at this very moment?”
“When better? But wait until we’re alone.”
Morwen took them past the herb garden, through the arcades of roses, and into the grape arbors on the other side. As she walked, she looked from side to side with a satisfied, pious smile, like a fat earl surveying his lands. She had been treasurer of the abbey now for over a month, and objectively speaking, she seemed to do her duty well.
From Lauren’s point of view, though, it had made her older sister more insufferable than before. It exacerbated all of Morwen’s worst qualities: the desire to manage other people’s lives; the need for power; the love of insignificant details.
When Lauren could see they were out of sight or hearing of anyone else in the garden, she asked, “So what’s wrong?”
“Oh, nothing. But I couldn’t help noticing that you and Wallace became far more...marital during his stay here. Sometimes you were marital two or three times a day, in fact.”
Lauren noted that her older sister’s cheeks reddened a bit at this oblique reference to sex. “Yes, we were ‘marital,’ as you say. But we’re married. So what of it?”
“Well, I hate to bring this up again, since you were so annoyed when I mentioned it before, but what are your plans in regard to children? I only ask because, since you and Wallace have...performed the act of procreation so very, very many times since coming here, it seems logical to assume that a pregnancy might be a foreseeable result.”
“Oh, that. It’s nothing to worry about. We discussed it, and we’re taking precautions.”
“Ah. Um...what sort of precautions?”
Lauren saw how embarrassed Morwen was by the subject, and so she took a small degree of malicious pleasure in dispensing with euphemism. “Wallace pulls out and finishes on me.”
Morwen looked aghast. “Lauren, dear, if you mean to delay pregnancy, that’s incredibly risky! You’re trusting your family’s future to your husband’s ability to...er, hold himself back. Look, the infirmerer and the librarian here could both recommend some books on the subject.”
Lauren was unable to contain a giggle. “Books, Morwen? Seriously?”
“Yes. We’ve got Anchonius’s De Puerperium—that means, ‘on childbirth’—in translation. We’ve got a collection of old Leorniac Bertehannelings. Birthing manuals, that is. All of them explain the process quite clearly. There are chapters on contraceptive herbs, and—”
“But Morwen, you’re talking about books. Books! No offense, but what practical experience do you, or any of your sisters here, have on the subject?”
Morwen’s expression soured. “What experience do I have? I admit, Lauren, that I have no experience in rutting all over a consecrated abbey like you do. I admit that I’m not married, and that I never will be. But do you know what I have experience of?”
“I don’t know, what?”
“All of us here at the abbey take training with the infirmerer, and all of us ride out with her, from time to time, on charity calls around the valley here. And do you know what the most common medical emergency we face is?”
A chill ran up Lauren’s back, and she looked away from her sister. “I...I suppose it’s childbirth.”
“Exactly. Did you wonder why none of the sisters hesitated to treat battle injuries? It’s because we’ve seen bloody horrors before.”
“That’s...that’s awful,” Lauren said. “But what’s your point? Do you think I shouldn’t have children at all?”
“No!” said Morwen. “No, that’s not what I meant. It’s just that you’re my sister, Lauren, and I couldn’t stand to see you die because...because I told you that it was your duty to have children.”
That was the closest that Lauren had ever heard Morwen come to admitting a mistake. Several nasty answers occurred to her, but she decided to meet her sister halfway. “Trust me, when Wallace and I have children, it’s not going to be because you told us to.”
The very next day, Lauren went to the privy and found herself bleeding. Not that it was much of a surprise—she had been aching and sore for a couple days now. But it proved that Wallace had pulled out in time, all those dozens of times.
Lauren almost wanted to produce the bloody rag for Morwen’s inspection, to prove her sister wrong. Except that, knowing Morwen, she would examine it and then explain how Lauren had menstruated incorrectly, and if she would read the classical scholars on the subject, her bloody, painful embarrassment could be perfected.
It was time to go. It was time to leave the convent. And she wasn’t afraid of going back to Keneburg anymore. Her parents had long since accepted the fact that she was at Erstenwell, and she could see, between the lines of their letters, that they were pleased she was shut up in a cloistered community with Wallace for months on end. No doubt, they were thinking of grandchildren.
Lauren told her sister she was leaving. She left an offering at the Erstenwell chapel, as was customary. She packed her bags and planned her trip home. And then, the night before she was to leave, Donella returned.
This time she wasn’t paying even a semi-official visit. Donella said she had jumped the wall, and that was why she turned up in Lauren’s guestroom in the middle of a thunderstorm without anyone hearing her arrive.
“Or maybe,” said Donella with a laugh, “it’s that I can look like whomever I choose.”
“I’m so sorry!” cried Lauren. “Andras is gone. He and his whole column are gone now. And in fact, I’m ready to head home to Keneburg myself. But obviously I’ve got time to—”
“I know Andras is gone,” said Donella. “I’m not here for him. I have a favor to ask you.”
Lauren saw the determined look in her friend’s eye. “What sort of favor?”
“I want to end the war.”
“I’m not sure how.... You’re not serious, are you?”
The princess sat up even straighter. “Of course I am. You and I are friends, aren’t we? Our brothers would kill each other on the field of battle, but in civilian life, how do they get along?”
Lauren frowned. “Well, Andras has always said your brother is a marvelous commander and a true gentleman.”
“Exactly. And my brother, Broderick, is always talking about how much he admires Andras. And how much he admires Elwyn Sigor, as well.”
“Yes, I like Elwyn, too. And yes, I admit this puts me and your brother in a very select group of people, but why does that make any difference?”
Donella grasped Lauren’s hands. “Because we can end this war, Lauren. It’s a damned stupid thing started by our parents. If we could get together—you and I and all of our old friends—then I’m sure we could find a solution. So let’s go to court and make our case. Just you and me.”
It took Lauren only seconds to decide. On the one hand, she could go back to Keneburg and live under her mother’s thumb. On the other hand, she could go with her best friend to Formacaster, and together they could finally live the great courtly adventure they had always imagined in their stories. They could stop a war, and they could save their brothers’ lives. And they could save Myrcia, too.
“Let’s do it,” said Lauren, clasping her friend’s hand. “Now come with me downstairs to the laundry, and I bet we can borrow some clothes that will get us through any checkpoint in Myrcia.”