"Were you carrying the child when we first met?" he asked eagerly.
"What does it matter to you, bringer of bad fortune? Because of you, she will die when I do."
"Please. I mean you no harm, Princess. Truly. Whatever sins I have committed against you, I pray you will forgive me."
She looked at him long and hard. "I pray I will, too. But not yet. And if it matters, though I have no idea why it might, yes, I was already carrying my husband's child the night you invaded my chamber and made the king think I can work miracles."
Abraham shook his head. "Your husband did that, not I. I was listening when he presented your work to the king. Miracles is his word, not mine. Come with me now, and I will save you from the king and your thoughtless husband, and when your child is born, I will see she is treated like the princess she is."
"I will not leave the man I love. Not for the king, or you, or anyone." She coughed, and reached for the bucket. "Prince Lubos will return. He will help me, and will marry me, just like he promised." She rose shakily to her feet, staggered to her bed, and fell face-first into the straw. After a long moment, she moved so she lay more comfortably. "I must rest. When I wake, I will…work more."
"Swear to me you will give me the child when she is born, and I will spin all the straw in this room into gold," Abraham said. "You will live and stay with your husband, and your sacrifice will save my life and my son's.
The princess coughed again, but she did not reach for the bucket. It took Abraham a moment to realise she was laughing. "Give up my child to you? A strange man I neither know nor trust? You are a fool. No. You shall not have her."
Abraham folded his arms across his chest. "Then I will not help you."
The standoff did not last long. The princess fell asleep, and Abraham went back to work. For he could not let the girl and her daughter die, not if one of them could save his son. And as long as he stayed, he would keep trying to convince her. She would agree eventually. She had to.
Thirty-Two
While the princess slept, he spun. When she awoke, sometimes he would sleep, and at others, he would ask her again. Her answer never changed – she would not give him her child.
Until finally, after several days of being unable to leave her bed as the sickness laid her lower than usual, she said the words he was waiting for: "Yes. If you can spin every bit of flax in this place into gold before the king executes me, then the child is yours."
He wanted to cheer and dance, but Abraham knew he could not stop working. For while there was work to be done, he could not stop. Because the pain in his chest was increasing, and his days were numbered. If he did not finish his task before the curse claimed him, then this would all be for naught.
Abraham spun until his fingers ached, and then he spun some more. Twisting flax into gold, watching the spool fill, then swapping it for another.
Until he reached for a fresh basket…and found they were all empty. A warehouse full of flax, spun into enough gold to last a kingdom for a century.
He set the last spindle on the pile and searched through the baskets again, but found nothing left to spin.
His work was done.
Abraham rose from his stool, his legs stiff from sitting so long, and staggered over to the wall. He opened a hole in the wall, and made his way back to the cottage where he'd taken up lodgings when he first arrived.
The bed was narrow and hard, little better than the pallet in the warehouse, but he fell facedown on the cool linen, pulled a blanket over himself, and slept the sleep of the dead.
Thirty-Three
Lubos had never ridden so much in his life. He lingered in each barony only long enough to hear the tales of this summer's low harvest and see the truth of it for himself, before heading to the next one. Molina was in his mind, every day and every night. A dozen times a day, he'd turn to see her riding by his side, only to find he rode alone. At night, he'd wake to a bed that was cold and lonely without her. Life was cold and lonely without her.
The faster he fulfilled his quest, the sooner he would stand with her at his side in the new cathedral as his bride.
But the longer he rode, the more he realised his father had sent him on a fool's errand. There were no grounds for his father's suspicions, as he would know if he stepped outside the castle long enough to see the farmlands for himself. Signs of the spring floods were everywhere for anyone with eyes to see. Could his father be so blind in his old age that all he saw were the slights of the past, when what the kingdom needed was a man firmly grounded in the present who could look to the future?
If only his father's body was as unsound as his mind, but Lubos could not recall his father ever knowing a day of ill health. The man might go completely mad, and yet still remain king.
So Lubos filled his saddlebags with written reports about every nobleman he visited, careful to take note of everything he saw, so his father would have no excuse to send him out again. He needed Molina, and he liked to fancy that perhaps she might like to have him home as well.
Or perhaps she was so busy ensuring every woman in the capital owned a spinning wheel and knew how to use it, that she had no thoughts to spare for him at all. Lubos smiled at the thought of a woman who loved machines more than men. At least, most men. He knew she loved him, and that was all that mattered.
When he finally rode across the bridge into the capital, he raised his eyes to the crown tower, where they'd set up her workroom above his bedchamber. Above the bedchamber they shared, he corrected himself, as his body ached to feel hers twined around him once more. Soon, he promised himself, and her, for if she happened to glance out the window, she would surely see him returning.
If only he could go to her first, but his father would want to know the news, and he might withdraw his consent to the marriage if Lubos favoured his bride over king and country. So Lubos trudged wearily to the throne room and made his report, then answered questions until even his father was satisfied.
Afternoon faded into evening before Lubos ascended the steps to the crown tower, and Molina. He'd ordered food to be sent up, for once he entered his chambers, he had no intention of leaving her until the morrow, at least.
He threw open the door, but the chamber was cold, without even a fire to chase out the chill in the autumn air. Strange. Unless Molina had taken to sleeping in her workroom above. Lubos hurried up the stairs, only to find the workroom empty, too. No fire, no spinning wheel, no Molina…where was she?
His father would know, for only his father could order the men of the castle to ignore the crown prince's orders to care for his bride.
Had he sent her home? Forced her to marry that fool, Bachmeier? Or perhaps his half-brother, Xylander? Or worse, had some terrible fate befallen his stepmother, so that the king took Molina for himself? By all that was holy, Lubos prayed this had not happened. For if it had, he would be honour bound to kill his own father, for Molina could not have gone to him willingly.
Lubos broke into a run, headed for the throne room. His father had gone too far now.
The doors to the throne room were closed, and Schuttmann, the captain of the guard, stood in his way.
"Let me pass," Lubos demanded.
Schuttmann shook his head. "You are the heir to the throne. His rages have already driven your brother and sister away. If I let you pass, he will turn his rage on you, and if he orders me to kill you as a traitor, I shall have no choice. The kingdom will need you to take the reins when he is gone. Besides, he has almost forgotten about the girl. If you did not return this week, I would have risked freeing her myself."
"You know where she is?" Freeing her meant she was imprisoned somewhere, not married to someone else. Lubos dared to breathe again. "Take me to her!"
"Yes, Your Highness. She was taken to the maiden's tower, and then to one of the tithing barns."
"Why in heaven's name would she be in a barn? They should be full of…" Too late Lubos realised there would likely be several empty barns, after this year's
poor harvest. But still it did not make sense.
Schuttmann ducked his head. "This one was full of flax, Your Highness. Flax the king commanded her to spin. She has not been harmed, I swear it."
Lubos regarded the guard captain for a long moment. He was a man of honour, who would rather die than be forsworn. A man Lubos would rely on in the future, when Lubos was king. Better to start relying on him now, for the future was coming faster than Lubos liked.
"Take me to her," Lubos repeated, more calmly this time. He followed Schuttmann down to the river, pulling his cloak tighter around him as the evening chill seemed to rise from the very stones beneath his feet.
By the time they'd unbarred and unlocked the doors, it was full dark, and Lubos lit a torch to take inside the pitch-dark barn. A wall of baskets greeted him – empty baskets, which had once contained unspun flax, judging from the fluff clinging to the sides of some of them.
"Molina?" he called, but heard no answer.
He hurried to the end of the makeshift wall, lifting his torch high above his head to illuminate the cavernous space. His breath misted before his face, for he could feel the wintry chill stealing its way through his cloak. The cold was fine for storing food, but this was not the place for Molina.
He stepped deeper into the darkness, until the pool of light from his torch touched something other than stone and baskets. Something that shone back. Golden…balls? Lubos reached down to pick one up, and realised it was not a ball but a spindle, wound around with golden thread. Thousands of them, piled up in a great mountain that stretched nearly to the ceiling.
It would have taken an army of women months to spin so much. Molina could not have done this in the time he'd been gone. Unless she had an army of women, armed with her miraculous spinning wheels…
He rounded the pile, expecting to see the machines, lined up ready for production. But there was only one, sitting in a puddle of light, all alone.
Molina had done this with only one wheel. Working day and night, never ceasing…for how else could she accomplish such a thing? His father had enslaved a free woman. His betrothed.
"Molina?" he called again, louder this time.
The sound he heard was so quiet, he might have imagined it, but Lubos was certain he had not. The smell of damp was stronger here, and there was moss underfoot. He called her name again, and something rustled to his right.
If it was a rat getting his hopes up, he'd skewer it on his sword, Lubos swore, striding forward until he met a pile of mouldy-smelling straw. And amid the straw, a familiar boot. Dropping the torch, he rushed forward to extract the half-buried woman from the straw. Molina's eyes opened slowly, shadowed as though she had not slept for weeks. Then she lifted a thin hand to her lips and coughed hard for what seemed like an eternity.
He waited until the coughing fit subsided before he lifted her in his arms, having to hide his horror at how much lighter she felt. "Were they starving you, my lady?" he choked out.
"I know the castle kitchens regularly sent food, or they did. She hasn’t touched this, and it looks two to three days old." Schuttmann nudged a plate with his foot, which sat beside a full jug of water. "The king must have forgotten about her after all."
"Then she can stay forgotten, but I'm taking her home." Lubos wrapped his cloak around her, but he couldn't stop her from shivering. "Summon a physician to my chamber."
"Yes, Your Highness." Schuttmann hurried off into the dark, his torch bobbing as he ran.
Lubos didn't dare run, carrying such a precious burden, but he strode with such purpose not even the gate guards dared to get in his way.
When he reached his chamber, he was pleased to see that someone had lit the fire, and a pot of something warmed on the hearth. He lay Molina on his bed and dared to look at her properly for the first time.
She had not been plump before, but her bones showed through her skin now, and he hadn't imagined the shadows beneath her eyes. He'd seen corpses with more colour, but her laboured breathing told him she still lived.
He peeled off her clothes, worn thin from overuse, and dressed her in one of her new linen shifts before tucking her properly into his bed. Only then did he ladle a bowl of stew from the pot by the fire and bring it to her bedside. He tasted a spoon of the stuff to make sure it wasn't too hot before offering some to her.
"You must be hungry, my lady. You haven't eaten for days. This will help you keep up your strength," he coaxed.
Her eyes fluttered open. "Lubos?" she managed to say before another coughing fit engulfed her.
"The very same," he said lightly, setting the bowl down so that he could support her. "What did they do to you while I was gone? I swear if I had known, I would have come right home." An empty promise, and they both knew it. He could not change the past, no matter how much he wished he could.
"Is he gone?" she asked, peering around.
"Who?" Whoever had frightened her, Lubos intended to see him dead by dawn.
"I do not know his name," she said.
Lubos did not need to know the man's name before he executed him.
"What did he do to you?" he demanded.
She sank back against the pillows. "Nothing. Not yet. But I don't want him to take my child…" Her hands slid down to her belly. Only now did Lubos realise it looked rounder than usual, though she'd lost weight everywhere else.
His fury burned white hot. "This man with no name got you with child?"
Molina smiled wanly. "No, the child is yours. Ours. No man but you has ever touched me like that."
"No other man ever shall," Lubos vowed. "My father said we could marry when I returned. Now I'm home, you shall name the day. As soon as you are well enough to leave my bed, if only for a few hours."
"Your Highness should not have brought some sick girl into your own bed. Heaven knows what diseases she may carry! Send her to the church, where the nuns take care of such charity cases." The physician sniffed. "And burn all the bedding."
In three strides, Lubos stood before the fool, hauling him up by his collar until his feet dangled above the floor. "Have a care how you speak about the woman I am to marry, for one day she will be queen, and it is your job to make sure she survives. For if she dies, so shall you."
The physician's eyes went wide with terror. Good. "Y-yes, Your Highness," he said.
Lubos dropped him, then pointed to the patient. "Make my wife well again." He stood by the fire, with his arms folded across his chest, and watched.
The physician scurried to Molina's bedside, where her eyes had drifted closed once more. Perhaps it was for the best, as all that poking and prodding could not have been comfortable. Lubos prayed she didn't wake up until the man's examination of her was done, for to see a strange man so close to her would surely terrify what little life she had left out of her.
But Lubos' prayers went unanswered. The moment the physician touched her belly, her hands came up to shield herself. "Don't you take my child!"
The physician muttered something. Lubos only caught two words, but they were enough. He covered the distance between them in a moment, and felt a sense of satisfaction as his fist collided with the insolent man's jaw.
"Call my wife a whore again, or our child a bastard, and they will be the last words you ever utter," Lubos promised him.
The physician rose to his feet, rubbing his jaw. "Are you sure the babe is yours, Your Highness?"
Lubos did not hesitate. "Absolutely. Just as certain as I am when I tell you that if you are responsible for the death of a future queen and the king after me, I will make sure you die a traitor's death."
The physician paled and edged away from Lubos to examine Molina again. He took longer this time, though perhaps that was because he could feel both Molina and Lubos' eyes on him. Finally, he said, "I shall stop by the apothecary's on my way home and ask him to prepare some healing draughts for the girl. I will also give you a list of things a woman in her condition should eat and drink for the best health of the child, so that your ca
stle cook can provide such things. If you should lose her or the child, it is God's will, not mine, for I have done everything I can." He scribbled something down on a roll of parchment and dropped it on the bed. "Your Highness." He bowed and departed.
Molina reached for the paper and unrolled it. "Most of these are just hearty foods. Plenty of meat, and things from the dairy. He left off lamb's lettuce. In the village where I grew up, expectant mothers all had to eat lamb's lettuce every day. To help stave off illness." The paper fell from her fingers and she lay back on the pillow again, paler than before. "I am…so tired, my love. Would you mind if I rest?" She closed her eyes, not waiting for permission.
Lubos smiled. She had been through enough, and she would need plenty of rest in order to recover from whatever she'd endured in his absence. He swore he would make things right, whatever it took.
Thirty-Four
Days passed. Lubos helped Molina to eat a little or take some of the numerous draughts the apothecary sent, though she managed to keep very few of the noxious potions down for very long. Her coughing grew worse, until she barely managed to swallow a thing without coughing it back up again. Lubos despaired as she seemed to grow even thinner before his eyes.
Hourly, he sent orders to the castle kitchens for the nourishing foods on the physician's list, but nothing could nourish her if it didn't make it down her throat.
The only thing the cook did not send up was lamb's lettuce, for the cook claimed to know nothing of a food by that name.
Lubos wanted to weep, or break something, or tear his own hair out by the roots. He was being forced to watch the woman he loved die, and there was nothing he could do about it.
Captain Schuttmann made the mistake of visiting and Lubos almost pitched him out the door again. Almost, but some spark of reason far in the back of his mind reminded him that without Schuttmann, he would never have found her, so Lubos sank back on his chair and simply stared balefully at the guard captain instead.
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