by Quinn Loftis
She grinned at me. “Of course I will be going. When has he ever left me behind?”
“What are you so happy about?” I asked, staring at her with a puzzled look on my face.
“That is not enough time for your troops,” she responded, ignoring my question, “but that is not for me to say; I’m no battle priestess. It is, however, the appointed time that I foresaw. It is the time frame you must adhere to. You mustn’t be late, or early, for that matter. Rather, you must arrive precisely at the appointed time, or you will lose her. The arrow that does not fly true, the scorned seeking revenge, and the greedy who is never satisfied. You must not be late.”
It was clear that I was in the presence of Hilda, the Oracle rather than Hilda, my mother. Many of our conversations evolved in such a manner—she would slip into seer mode and start spouting prophecies, telling me that our clan must do this or that. Sometimes she made sense, most of the time, however, I had no idea what she was talking about.
“Meet who, Hilda?” I asked, not sure if I wanted the answer. I felt a heavy, foreboding presence fall over me, like a tunic that was much too tight. It made me feel exposed and vulnerable.
As I waited for her reply, she shuffled over to me and, to my surprise, smacked the back of my head. I ducked and frowned. “What was that for?”
“Do you ever listen when I speak, boy?” she huffed. “I have already told you about the prophecy many times. You are the one who chooses not to listen. In order to protect our clan, you must take a foreign bride. Up until now, I wasn’t sure, but with the upcoming raid it has been made clear to me your bride just so happens to be from England.”
I wanted to groan, but I didn’t want to be smacked in the head again, so I held it in. Apparently, she was speaking as both seer and mother this time.
“That is one prophecy that cannot come to pass, Oracle. Our clan would never accept an outsider, neigh, an English princess at that, to become our queen. They would not respect her—they would consider her weak and simple-minded—it cannot be.”
As she filled our bowls with the stew she’d prepared, I watched her lips pinch in frustration. Her eyes, always cloudy, were shadowed, and she appeared weighed down by some unseen force. “It is not up to you, Torben, my son. No matter what you think, it is what needs to—no—what must happen. If we do not change, if this clan doesn’t turn away from the old ways, we will destroy ourselves. The world is changing, becoming smaller. We must be ready; we must adapt.”
“Tell me the prophecy again.” I held up my hand to stop her. “I know you’ve told me before, but I want you to tell me again.”
I watched as my mother’s eyes became unfocused and she seemed to slip into a trance just before she spoke. A young warrior, who is just, fair, and wise beyond his years, will take his rightful place as leader of his people. As he makes his ascension, he will not be alone. The warrior-turned-king will take a bride, not of his people, but from across the sea with a new vision for the Hakon Clan. She is a warrior in her own right and a healer—a rare kind for her race—but she keeps the skill hidden from her people. They fear it instead of embracing the gift that it is. Together, they are a catalyst for the change that will save Clan Hakon. Without their union, the Clan will be snuffed out, ground into nothing. We will be forgotten, a people lost to history.”
“I suppose you believe I’m this young ruler?” I asked. Once she’d returned to herself, she wordlessly took the seat next to mine, said a quick prayer to the gods, and began to eat. I did not repeat the question; there was no point. She would answer when she was ready.
Several bites later, she decided to speak. “It does not take a vision to see that you will be the next king of this clan. But, then again, you somehow manage to bury your head in the ground when something is staring you in the face.”
Whatever else she might be, my mother was honest. “Am I to marry this foreign bride—to bear offspring with her?”
“What?” Her piercing gaze met mine and mischief danced in her eyes. “Do you think her body will somehow be inferior to those of the women in our clan? Do you think she will repulse you? Perhaps she’s deformed in some way because she is not a Norsewoman, with three eyes, six breasts, and a forked tongue. Is that what you fear?”
“Damn, woman, you have a sharp tongue.” I choked as I tried to swallow the bite I’d taken before she’d begun gushing her nonsense. I took a quick sip of mead to clear my throat, and then, because I am my mother’s son, retorted, “You know I do not think such things as well as you know any warm-blooded male would be thrilled to find out his wife has six breasts. He wouldn’t even notice the forked tongue or the third eye.”
Cackles of laughter rolled out of my mother as she covered her mouth with her apron. She shook her head at me, and then she patted my hand. “I am hoping she can match your wit and stand up to your pigheadedness. Having a sharp tongue would probably serve her well also.”
“You are cruel, Mother. If a sharp tongue and stubbornness is what you desire in a daughter-in-law, I might as well marry one of our own clanswomen. I don’t have to look far to find those things.”
She stood and took our bowls to the wash bin and began cleaning them. Her back was to me, but I could see the tension in her shoulders. “A Norsewoman is not what you need—not what we need. We need a healer, not a conqueror.”
“I will not wed a woman I do not love,” I told her as I stood and walked over to her, setting my cup on the counter next to the wash bin.
“Can you not love an Englishwoman?” She pressed.
“Why do you insist she will be English?” I narrowed my eyes at her. It wasn’t uncommon for the Oracle to move people around like a chess game in hopes of bringing her visions to fruition. My mother wasn’t simply a messenger; she was sometimes a meddlesome instigator, if she thought her prophesies were not coming to pass quickly enough.
“The winds tell me there is a young English princess born with the ability to heal. Now, you come to me, telling me you are leaving to invade England in a week’s time,” she said coyly as she turned her head and raised her brow at me.
I didn’t have to respond. We’d already hashed out the coming campaign. She’d made her point. Unfortunately, her most recent revelation left me unsettled. I was supposed to be getting my soldiers ready to storm a foreign land. There were drills to be done, weapons to be maintained, provisions to be packed. I didn’t need any distractions right now. Not to mention that, when the fighting commenced, I was going to need my attention fully on keeping us all alive. I wasn’t going to have time to search for some princess healer amid the chaos. Diverting my attention on the battlefield would be utterly mad, tantamount to suicide. I could have told Hilda this, but I knew it would garner me no sympathy. So instead, I leaned down and pressed a kiss to her forehead, then bowed to the Oracle. “Peace to you this night, seeress. Thank you for the meal.”
“And to you, brave warrior. May the gods bless your battle with victory.”
I left the warm familiarity of the hut and stepped out into the cool fall air. Winter was coming—a change of season. Apparently, it was not the only change our clan needed to prepare for.
“Many people think being royal is a privilege, a gift given only to a lucky few. In some ways, I’m sure they are correct. But, most do not realize the responsibility that comes with the birthright. Please don’t think me ungrateful, but oh how I would love to walk in the shoes of a commoner and breathe in the freedom of that station. To be able to live where I choose, marry whomever I love, and be myself is a desire burning so strongly inside me that I fear it will consume me.”
* * *
~Diary of Princess Allete Auvray
As a princess, the oldest of three sisters, and future queen of England, I, of course, did the mature thing when my parents told me I was to marry the King of Tara—I ran. Allete Auvray, noble-born heiress of the Britannia Empire, ran. Now, I did not run away. There would be no point in that. My father would have sent guards searching for me
like crazed hounds to drag me back before I even made it to the borders of our land. I ran only as far as my familiar old oak tree—the ancient tree that had become a sanctuary to me and my cousin, Thomas, when we were children—our place of refuge. Disregarding the fact that I was clothed in one of my finer dresses, I hoisted myself up on to the lowest branch. Then, I continued, up and up, until I was sitting high enough that I could see the whole of my father’s lands spreading out before me like a giant green picnic blanket. Ours was a beautiful and bountiful kingdom for most, but it was but a gilded cage for me. The day I had dreaded had finally come, even though I had always known I would be married off to a nobleman. As the oldest, it was my duty to either marry a nobleman worthy of becoming king of England or marry another king in order to secure an alliance beneficial to our empire. Every decision for my family was about power—how to gain it and how to keep it. Throughout all the kingdoms, the ruler who held the most land and possessed the largest army was feared. As princess, what I personally wanted was nullified. It didn’t matter that I would wed someone I did not love. Nothing mattered except what my father, the king, wanted.
“Do you not think it is time you stop climbing trees to run away from your problems, cousin?” A voiced hailed me from the ground below.
I rolled my eyes. I should have known Thomas would not let me sulk in peace. We’d always been close, like siblings, but that didn’t mean he didn’t drive me to wanting to club him with a tree branch every now and then.
“I do not believe I asked for your counsel on the matter,” I yelled down at him.
“It is a good thing, then, that I do not sit idly by and leave you to your own devices. What sort of cousin would I be if I were to let you pursue your own destructive whims? Instead, like the selfless and loving relation I am, I concern myself with what is best for you. Come down, Allete. Let us talk about this like mature adults.”
“I don’t want to be a mature adult. I’d rather be a petulant child and stomp my foot until someone says, okay dear Allete, you don’t have to marry that brute of a king.”
Thomas chuckled. “How do you know he is a brute? Perhaps he is a paragon of charm and wit, not to mention dashingly handsome.”
I scoffed. “No king is dashingly handsome. They are old, bossy, and uncaring of what their wife thinks.”
“Oh really? Does King Albric treat your mother like he doesn’t care what she thinks?” he asked, challenging my retort.
Why, oh why, did he have to talk reasonably? I hated it when he used his calm, appeasing voice, and I hated it even more when he made sense. People who thought rationally when you wanted to marinate in your misery should be automatically stomped on by a large herd of boar. “No, he doesn’t most of the time,” I admitted. “But you know other kings are often that way.”
My father was somewhat of a forward thinker when it came to women and their intellect. He was wise enough to know that his own wife had such intelligence in abundance and that he would be a fool not to take advantage of it. Not to say he was completely reformed of his antiquated way of thinking, which was proven by his quest to marry me off to our most powerful ally without even batting an eye. Yet he did seem a tad distraught when telling me that, in a month’s time, I would be leaving the only home I’d ever known, travel to a land I’d never seen, and marry a man I’d never met. However, being upset by something and standing against hundreds of years of tradition to make your daughter happy are two different things.
“Besides,” Thomas yelled from below, “you should be more worried whether this brute of a king will even have you. If you showed up on my doorstep looking for holy matrimony, you’d be on the first skiff back to England. I would think your noble father must be playing some kind of joke on me. Surely, King Cathal can find plenty of grubby, tree-climbing children in his own country to marry. Do you really think he wants you?”
I growled at him. “Thomas, you shut your mouth.”
“Happily,” he said as he beamed up at me, “as soon as you come down.”
I shook my head, and then, thinking he might not be able to see me very well, I spoke up. “I will come down when my father decides not to pass his oldest daughter off like she is the prized cow.”
“You would actually be a heifer, dear Allete, since you are, I hope, still a maiden.”
“I…you…how dare you? Thomas, if you do not hold your tongue, I am going to sew your lips shut.” It was a mean thing to say—I knew it—but I could not keep the words from spilling out. I just wanted to be alone to wallow in my pity and disappointment. Was that too much to ask?
He must have read my mind, because he finally relented.
“Fine, I will leave you be—for now—but if you do not come down from there in the next hour, I will send Clay after you.”
“Don’t you dare.” I growled. Clay was the captain of the guard and the bane of my existence. Most of my life, he’d been assigned to protect me and he took his job very seriously. Not only did he prevail in his duty, but he sucked the fun out of everything until life was simply a shriveled-up husk. Thomas knew if anything would get me out of the tree, it would be the captain.
He began to whistle as he walked toward the castle, and I wanted to throw a rock at him. He knew how much I hated when he whistled— it was his way of signifying that he’d won some battle between us. This time, unfortunately, he had. I knew I would eventually have to come down to face my sentencing. Okay, so it was a marriage, not a sentencing, but it felt as though they were one in the same—like I would be walking to the gallows and the wedding was the noose to be wrapped around my neck. Perhaps I was being a tad dramatic, but better to be dramatic in private and then poised and mature in public. I wouldn’t lose my dignity over this, but I knew it was going to break something inside of me. The part of me that longed to be wild and free, to roam new lands and meet new people, would be snuffed out, and there was nothing I could do about it. I was stuck, a product of my circumstances, with no way to change my lot in life.
Later that evening, after I had finally decided to put on my big-girl bloomers, I sat in the warm water of the bathtub in my chambers. The scents of freesia and bath oils wafted on the steam around me, causing me to relax and my eyelids to droop. I didn’t want to think about what changes would come in a month’s time. I didn’t want to think about my duties or the expectations placed upon me. I just wanted to sit in peaceful silence.
“I can’t believe they’re making you marry that old king.” My youngest sister, Dayna, came storming in to my room.
“Why do the gods hate me so,” I grumbled as I reached for a towel. Usually, I would have Lidia, my handmaiden attend to me, but I’d sent her to bed, not wanting to see the pity in her eyes.
“What are you going on about?” I asked Dayna as I climbed out of the warm tub. Water dripped down my body and the air hit my wet skin, causing me to shiver. My youngest sister, who happened to be the tallest of the four of us and the most inquisitive, snatched up the towel from my hands and began drying me off. For many, the action would have been awkward, but Dayna was the type of person who always needed to be doing something. She couldn’t talk unless her hands or feet were also moving, so I moved obediently as she motioned for me to step out of the tub and then lifted my arms. Her movements were quick and efficient, and all the while she barely took a breath.
“Father is expecting you to marry the king of Tara! I mean, he’s ghastly, old, and he’s already been married three times. I mean…bloody hell,”
“Language,” I said, interrupting. Dayna waved me off, as if my pending nuptials were much more important than a loose tongue.
“Everyone says his wives died of natural causes, but how can we be sure? For all we know, he’s been strangling them in their sleep.”
“That’s a pleasant thought,” I muttered as she wrapped the towel around me and then grabbed another to begin working on my hair.
“Perhaps he’s poisoned them so their deaths appeared to be natural,” Dayna continu
ed, as if I hadn’t said a word. “There’s something not right about it. A man, a king no less, should not have so many wives just die like that.”
“Now you are the expert on the lifespan of queens?” I teased.
She narrowed her eyes at me. “Why are you taking this so easily? Why aren’t you pitching a fit?”
“I didn’t take it easily.” I admitted. “Honestly, I’m a right mess, but there’s nothing I can do to change it, love. Father said I am to marry the king of Tara, so I will be marrying the king of Tara.”
Dayna groaned as she took my hand and tugged me over to the chair that sat in front of the vanity. She motioned for me to sit and then grabbed the hair brush from the counter, her fingers nimble and quick as she worked through the tangles. I’d always loved to have my hair brushed and braided. It was relaxing and could easily lull me to sleep.
After I’d endured her seemingly endless theories on how the first three wives of the king of Tara had died, Dayna let out a breath, finally resigned. “There’s no hope, is there?”
I looked at her through the mirror as she finished tying off the plait into which she’d woven my hair. “I assure you, little sister, if there were anything I could do to get out of such an arrangement, I would do it in a heartbeat. I don’t want to marry someone I do not love, but I am the oldest. Such is my lot in life.”
“Your lot in life is about as pleasant as a mouthful of chicken shite.”
I laughed. “Where do you hear such things? Mother would have fit.”
She grinned back at me. “The cook’s daughters have wicked tongues.”
I longed for the day when I, too, could run about unfettered, playing with the other children who lived in the castle, most of whom belonged to the staff. Dayna was sixteen, still young enough that Mother and Father ignored her flightiness, but at twenty, I was expected to behave in a more mature manner. I showed just how mature I could be when I hoisted myself, dress and all, up into that tree today. I grinned, wondering how my future husband would handle finding me up in a tree after our first little argument.