The One-Armed Queen

by Jane Yolen

  Scillia, though, was a beat behind them all. “Mother,” she whispered and Jenna heard the strain in her voice even though the dining hall was noisy with the sound of chairs shifting against the floor. “Mother, you can still stop this. Do not let him go. It will be the worse for him.”

  Privately Jenna agreed. But she knew she could not stop the exchange now—not without dire consequences to the Dales. She feared the tide of history that could drown them all.

  “Be still,” she whispered back, as much to her own traitor heart as her daughter.

  Jem rose last of all. Raising his own glass, he said “I have something to say, too.” He hesitated a moment, then turned to Carum. “May I, father? May I say it?”

  At Jem’s hesitation, at the childishness of the request, Jenna’s eyes filled with tears.

  Carum nodded.

  Jem grinned broadly. “Today,” he said in his high, unbroken voice, “today I am a boy. Tomorrow I will be a man, taking a man’s journey, going as my country’s pledge to the land of the Garuns.”

  Carum mouthed the words with him. It was clearly a rehearsed speech, none the less charming for being rehearsed. Jenna had no idea when they had thought it up or had time to practice.

  Then Jem added, and this was certainly his own addition, “When I return, you will all know I am a man.”

  Involuntarily, Jenna shivered. There was too much of a threat in his little boy’s voice. She thought of the bear in the satchel. Brownie. Perhaps, she thought, I should have taken off the bow.

  “I thought it went well,” Carum said, taking off the gold-lined jacket. The collar of his silk shirt was grey with sweat. He sat down on their great bed to slip off his stockings. As he bent over, Jenna saw how thin his hair had gotten on top.

  I never noticed, she thought. She was standing in the dark corner of the room, her back against the wall. Neither moon-light nor candlelight illumined her. Being king has aged him so. Then she made a small grimace. We have both grown older. He is just too kind to say anything. Or to notice. She sighed.

  “You did not think so?” Carum asked, sitting up straight.

  “My son is going from me in the morning, perhaps forever, and you ask if things went well?” She had not meant to snap at him.

  “He is my son, too, Jenna. And we long ago agreed that this exchange was our only guarantee of peace.”

  “It is easy to agree when the day is far off.”

  It was Carum’s turn to make a face. “You knew this day would come eventually.”

  “I am like the prisoner waiting the executioner. As long as the blade is not on my neck, I do not think of the morrow.”

  “You are sounding remarkably like Skada.”

  “I am Skada,” Jenna said, moving out into the arc of the candlelight. “And on occasion she is me.”

  “Only on difficult occasions,” Skada said, suddenly standing by Jenna’s side. Dark sister and light, they mirrored their sorrow.

  This time it was Carum who sighed.

  “Jem is only a child,” Jenna said.

  “A boy,” agreed Skada.

  “And will be a man,” Carum said. “Even he recognizes this fact. Why can’t you?”

  “I would he become a man of the Dales,” Jenna answered.

  “As he is and will always be,” Carum countered.

  “He will be what they make of him,” said Skada.

  Carum stood up, and the one stocking he was still wearing slid down around his ankle, giving him a slightly comic look. But his face held anything but amusement. “We had the making of him for ten years. That making will prove true.”

  Jenna moved toward him till she was close enough to be touched. He did not reach for her, nor for Skada who stood just as near.

  Jenna’s eyes searched his and he did not flinch from her gaze, but Skada snorted. “Remember what the farmers in the South say: Better a calf of one’s own than a cow owned by another.”

  All three of them burst into laughter at that, more from the relief of tension than good humor.

  “I don’t know what that means,” Jenna said.

  “You will,” Skada answered.

  Only then did Carum put his hand out to draw Jenna to him and Skada, of course, came too.

  “Put out the light, Carum,” whispered Jenna.

  Skada laughed.

  In a swift, practiced movement, Carum turned and blew out the candle on the washstand. Then he lay back on the bed, and pulled Jenna, alone, to him.

  THE TALE:

  There was once a widow with three sons: Carum, Jerum, and little Jeroo. They lived in a hut in the middle of a dark and tangled wood. Their lives were hard and their days were long and there was precious little laughter in them.

  “Do not go to the north of here,” said the widow to her three. “For under the hill and under the dale lives the King of the Fey. He will steal you from me as he stole your father and that will make our lives harder than before.”

  For years the boys listened to their mam. And though they went east, and though they went west, and though they went south to pick blackberries and nuts, to gather windfalls and storm-blowns, they never—not even once—went north.

  One day, when they were all but men, Carum strayed into a path that was lined with bluets and set about with bay. He was so mazed by it, that twisty, windy path, that he walked a night and a day going due north and straight away was stolen by the fairies.

  When he did not come home, his mam wept and wailed and threw her apron up over her head. She knew then that what she had feared most had come at last. So she made the other two, who were still left at home with her, promise faithfully that they would never stray.

  Still, one day Jerum, too, found the twisty, windy path. Only this time it was lined with currants and set about with pine. He was so mazed by it, he walked a night and a day going true north and then he, too, was stolen by the fairies.

  “Oh, my dear little Jeroo,” said his mam. “Do not dare the fate of your brothers. Stay at home east and stay at home west and stay at home best with me.”

  Now little Jeroo was a good boy and he did as he was told. He stayed at home and took care of his old mam. But when he was an ancient himself, and his mam dead lo! that many a year, he went out into the forest one day to gather firewood.

  And even though he was not looking for it, he found the path the others had taken. Long did he stand upon it, looking due, true north past woodbine, bluets, bayberry, and thorn; past gorse, currant, yarrow, and pine. He thought he saw figures dancing in the distance—young men he could almost remember, their heads crowned with garlands, singing and drinking and being merry.

  Then he turned his back on them, the young and ever fair. He went home, lay down on his old, cold bed, turned his face to the wall, and died.

  THE STORY:

  Jenna did not have time to do more than shove her feet into boots and tie a fresh belt around her tunic. Her long braid had hundreds of escaping wisps, as if mice had been at it. But the tide was an early one and she had overslept, wine and weariness combining. No one had dared wake her until the sun, full on her face as she lay in her bed, reminded her that it was the day.

  The Day.

  She had rushed through her dressing and managed to get down the stairs in time, but just.

  Now she stood on the shore with the others, watching as Jem—looking small and terribly alone in the midst of the Garunian oarsmen—waved at them from the front of the boat, the satchel she had given him snugged under one arm.

  The sailors were a rough lot, Jenna had thought, despite their grand red-and-gold outfits. Black might have better suited them. Then they would have been as funereal as the day. She did not move until the rowboat had reached the ship, and the ship had cleared the breakwaters to sail out to sea.

  The ship’s bright red sails filled with the breeze. But the color only served to remind Jenna of blood. It was an inapt figure, but Jenna was too much mother and too little queen at the moment to care. She willed herself
not to cry, but her face was a desolation.

  Corrie came over to slip his hand in hers. “I shall have to be two sons for you now,” he said.

  She looked down at him. “Did your father tell you to say that?” she asked, and when he looked hurt, she hugged him. “You do not have to be any more than just Corrie,” she said. But the damage was already done and she knew it. So she held his hand as they marched back to the palace the long way, through the winding streets of the harbor town crowded with well-wishers. She hoped that her hand, strong on his, would tell him what she could not.

  Part way through Berick, Corrie slipped her hand like a dog off a leash, running away to join some boys playing mumbles in front of the WindCap hostelry without so much as a faretheewell. Which, Jenna thought, was just as well. There had already been too many farewells that day. Farewell to Jem and farewell to her own innocence.

  No, she thought suddenly, that had gone the day she’d agreed to exchange him for a Garun prince.

  For the first time she began to wonder what young Gadwess would be like. Would he be one of those boastful, self-satisfied princelings who looked down on the common folk? And what would his mother be feeling. Any less than I, Jenna wondered, because she is a Garun woman and not supposed to feel any pain? She scolded herself aloud for such an ungenerous thought. “How could I …”

  “For the people, Anna. For all of us.” The speaker was an old woman, her face scarred badly, the right cheek almost quilted with lines.

  “I’m sorry …” Jenna began, realizing the woman had misunderstood her.

  “Ye had to let him go for us,” the old woman said. “For the ending of wars. It says so.”

  Jenna stared, recognizing her for a fisherwoman by the striped petticoat and the black skirt kilted up over the wide leather belt. “What says so?”

  “The prophecy. Dinna ye know the prophecy?”

  “I am done with prophecies,” Jenna said. “Done these thirteen years.”

  “Aye,” the old woman said, lifting up a hand as scarred as her face. “But are they done wi’ ye?”

  Jenna reached into her pocket and drew out a coin. “Take this and forget the prophecy, old one. Buy yourself a tot of rum and toast my baby over the sea.”

  But the old woman had already begun in a singsong voice:

  “Babby over the water,

  Babby under the ring,

  Babby brings a sword and stone

  To come and crown a king.”

  “That is no prophecy,” Jenna said, dropping the coin on the ground before the old woman. “That is a children’s song. I sang it with my own when I dandled them on my knee.”

  She turned and walked away quickly, but the old woman kept singing the song over and over, even after she had picked up the coin from the dirt.

  THE HISTORY:

  The exchange of princes as hostages between formerly warring nations as a pledge of peace was not new when the first prince of the Dales set sail to the Continent. But his ten-year exile in the land of the G’runs was marked at home by a stunning surge of poetry and songs about “the prince over the sea.” Not a few of the poems—and the entire flowering of the First Romantic Movement—can be laid at the feet of the G’runian hostage who brought with him a fresh, poetic voice and a wealth of Continental song traditions.

  Until that time, the few extant Dalian tunes had been modal and without much instrumentation. The tembala—a stringed instrument of the guitar family with five melody strings and two drones—was the exception. For centuries musicologists thought it the only native Dale instrument. However three other instruments have recently been discovered from the early Altan period, instruments that have Continental counterparts but seem wholly of Dale manufacture.

  The first of these is the barsoom, which is a small hand-held skin drum, with copper bangles around the rim. The fragment of drumhead is goatskin. The bangles have slight indentations on their edges, which lends them a variety of tones.

  Secondly, there is the temmon, an early flute with five holes and a range of two modal “octaves.” There were two different flutes found in the dig, both with lateral mouth holes. One was made from a local ash, one from a black wood which never grew outside the Dales.

  The third instrument is the fidoon, a highly arched fiddle-like instrument which is played with a bow on the underside of the strings.

  All three kinds of instruments were found in the Berike Barrow, a dig of utmost importance to musicologists as it has been reliably dated to the early Altan period. We already knew that during the years of the hostage exchange, Dale songs had been marked by particular solo instrumental parts, but until the time of the Berike Barrow excavation, no corresponding instruments had been found. A few of the sophisticated Continental instruments, like the viol and shawm, were used instead by people playing Early Music concerts, for they seeming closest to the range demanded. Also as a further clue, there was still, on display in Baron Fuchweil’s collection on the Continent, “The Prince’s Consort”—a viol and a shawm said to have been brought over with the G’run prince, then returned home with him. But the Berike Dig was the first in which actual instruments of Dale manufacture of that period were found.

  Furthermore, the ten piece song-cycle collectively known as the “O’er the Sea Suite,” with its intricate rhyme schemes and surprisingly salacious (for that period) plays on words like “Jemmie went o’ering, went oaring, went whoring …” all pointed to a new and unprecedented influence from the G’runs.

  The “O’er the Sea” songs are also remarkable for their three-part texture which had long been a feature of G’runian secular songs but not previously found in the Dales. The practice of having one or more parts whose only—or principal—function is to complete the harmony was entirely a G’runian invention. However the G’run choirs, being male only, had a built-in limitation on the range of voices. When the three-part songs became integrated into the Dales, the voices included sopranos and contraltos which allowed for a greater variety in the vocal lines. This marked out the “O’er the Sea Suite” and made it such an interesting puzzle for musicologists.

  —Cat Eldridge, The Dale Musician’s Handbook

  THE STORY:

  The boat bearing the Garun prince sailed into the harbor the following morning, but Jenna did not go down to meet it. Carum and she had decided that he and Corrie, along with a guard of twenty men led by Marek, would do the honors. She preferred the task of overseeing the reappointment of Jem’s room for the Garun prince. Though it was a task that any of the servers could have completed without her, Jenna was determined to put things right for the young hostage on her own.

  “What I do for him, perhaps his mother will do for Jem,” she told Carum in Jem’s bedroom when he asked her a final time whether she wanted to accompany them to the harbor.

  “His mother will not have seen Gadwess except at formal occasions for the past six years,” Carum reminded her. “Lest she unman him. Lest she make a woman of him.”

  “A woman of him!” Jenna’s voice shook. “Do they forget that it was a Dale woman who bested them at war?”

  “Dale women and men together bested the Garuns,” Carum said acidly.

  For a moment they glared at one another, till Carum looked down. “Lips,” he said.

  “Knives,” Jenna answered, sitting down on the unmade bed.

  It was their private code, a way of remembering the old saying: If your mouth turns into a knife, it will cut off your lips. It was their way of making sure they did no lasting harm through arguing.

  “Whatever is done for Jem or not done, I must still do what I can for Gadwess. He will be wretched from the journey, and frightened. He will be alone in a new land.”

  “He is a Garun,” Carum said. “Which means he will never show his wretchedness or fear.”

  “He is still a boy,” Jenna countered. “So I will make him his own room. And freshen the bedding. Let a new wind blow through an old place.” It was a line from a song they both loved.<
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  “Then I will go along with just Corrie and the guards.”

  “Best that way,” Jenna said. “Carum …”

  He looked at her face and its familiar grief.

  “I need more time.”

  He nodded, leaned over, kissed her on the brow, and left.

  But Scillia, coming into the room on the heels of her father’s departure, cried out in dismay. “Mother! What are you doing? Do you wish all reminders of Jem gone before his boat has even reached the Garun shore?”

  Jenna turned her full fury on her daughter. “Wretched girl, how dare you say that. I carry him here, still, under the breastbone, where I carried you all.”

  “You never carried me there,” Scillia said, leaving as explosively as she had come.

  There were three servers, two men and a woman, standing in the hallway, ready to enter the room, and they did not move as Scillia stormed away. They were rigid with embarrassment for both the queen and her daughter. Jenna saw them, but said nothing directly about the incident. Her renewed fury, which was but a displacement of her sorrow, had nowhere to go but inward. She would never castigate her serving people when the fault was her own. So she grabbed up the bedding and began beating it with her hands until the air was filled with dust and bits of down.

  “Take this away,” she said between slaps to the bedding, “and bring me a new coverlet. And move this bed to there.” She pointed to the window and the servers came in to the room at last, but tentatively.

  “No—move it there.” She pointed to the far wall. “It is still too cold to sleep so far from the fire.”

  The two men picked up the heavy wooden bedstead and carried it where she commanded. Under the bed, where brooms had never fully reached, was the dirt of a long winter, a wooden ball from the Peg-in-the-Ring Jem had so loved the last summer, three game cards, and his bear still wearing its jaunty red bow.

  “Brownie!” Jenna sobbed. Then she turned and raced out of the room so that none of the servers could see her cry.

  Once in her own bedroom, Jenna closed the curtains to make a night of the morning light. She lit the hearthfire and crowded close to it. When the logs had fully engaged the flame, throwing out a rosy light, Skada appeared beside her.