An enormous chest sat against the wall beneath the window and a cupboard holding the king’s clothes stood against the adjoining wall. At least, Ilsa presumed it held his clothes. It was not a very large cupboard for a king. Surely he had more clothes than that single compartment held?
The front half of the room, which held the closed door, was well lit by the brazier. The rest of the room lay hidden behind a wooden screen.
She moved to the screen which divided the room. The screen was made of wood carved into little squares, connected only at the corners. An artisan must have spent weeks making it. The wood was smooth against her fingers as she gripped the edge and peered around it at the bed on the other side.
It was enormous. She had never seen a larger one in her life. Her sleeping shelf would fit across the width of the bed five or more times, she was sure.
There were furs on the bed, too, and cushions and bolsters. Someone had arranged the cushions and bolsters in a pleasing fashion. Ilsa was certain it had not been Arawn to take such pains with the arranging. She suspected that the smaller matters of life rarely captured his attention.
The bed had bottom and top ends which rolled out and over themselves in a fashion that reminded Ilsa of the couches everyone sat upon in the dining room—the triclinium, she had discovered during the meal. There had been few chairs. Instead, low divans and couches sat on either side of the even lower tables. Some couches had arms similar to the bed, curving outward in gentle arcs.
The large bed took up most of the space on this side of the divider.
With a start, Isla realized she was expected to be waiting in the bed when Arawn arrived. Only, she had nothing to wear but what she was standing in.
She looked down at her left hand. The ring on her third finger was too large. Throughout the meal it slipped and turned and fell off. Arawn had pulled the ring off his own hand and pushed it onto her finger when she sat to his right on the same divan as him. The ring gleamed, a dull golden color, with a thick band and a flat face upon which an amber stone with orange striations glowed. “This was a gift from my father,” Arawn told her. “He said it came from Rome itself. I have worn it since then. You must wear it now.”
Everyone watched as Ilsa stammered her thanks. No one reached for the meat and dishes sitting steaming on the tables.
“They wait for you, as do I, on this night,” Arawn said.
Ilsa’s face flushed hotly. No one had ever waited for her to begin a meal. She had not known why they watched her. She reached for a peach, certain she could not eat anything else. The meat did not smell the way she was accustomed to meat smelling. None of the other dishes were familiar to her. Fruit was safe and this would be the last of the season, too. The peach was small, barely filling her hand, as all fruit had been this year.
She reached for the knife which always lived in her belt. Her belt was empty. The knife was bundled with her muddy hunting clothes and now she did not know where it was.
As everyone else, including Arawn, reached eagerly for the dishes and hacked off meat from the haunch in the center of each table, conversation sprang up around them.
Servants filled the cups in front of each diner with a thin wine. Ilsa sipped at it. She was surprised to taste a wine no different from what her village made. As she picked at her peach and struggled to keep the heavy ring on her finger, the chatter rose around her. No one engaged her in conversation, for which she was grateful. Even the king leaned to his other side to speak to the man there.
It gave Ilsa time to absorb the differences in this room, and the abrupt change which had brought her here.
Queen Ilsa of Brocéliande. That really was her. She was sitting beside the king…her husband.
This morning, she had set out to hunt for meat and her only worry had been to return with food by the end of the day.
Now she was a queen…and expected to save everyone in the kingdom by bearing the king’s child.
Ilsa put the other half of the peach down on the plate in front of her, unable to finish it. She could not bring herself to look at Arawn, either. When Stilicho bent over her shoulder and murmured that she should depart for her chamber now, Ilsa rose to her feet, anxious to be away from the big room. She wanted to be out among the trees, where she could think. She wanted silence, so she could hear her own thoughts.
Instead, Stilicho and three of the women servants led her through a series of rooms with beautiful walls and furniture, to a room guarded by two armed soldiers. “The king’s antechamber,” Stilicho announced, then swept across the big room. It was empty of everything but an enormous desk with stacks of wax tablets upon it. He pushed open a heavy curtain hanging across a flat archway, revealing another room beyond this one. He waved her inside.
Ilsa stepped inside. Her heart hurried, while the women lit the brazier and another smaller lamp now burning over the big bed.
Then they left her here.
Ilsa fingered the heavy ring on her hand, turning it over and over, so the yellow stone flashed in the light from the lamp overhead.
She didn’t feel like a queen. She felt nothing except a yearning to be back in her little cottage in the woods beyond Brandérion.
What if she was not the one to save these people? She would die, in that case.
She curled her fingers into a fist, trapping the ring inside.
The door to the chamber opened and closed softly.
Ilsa whirled, her heart leaping, as Arawn moved into the middle of the room. He watched her with narrowed eyes. His lips were full. She had not noticed until this moment, perhaps because he usually held his mouth stiffly, thinning them unnaturally. His nose was straight and proud. His face had no scars or battle wounds.
“You are not ready,” he said. “Is it you are ignorant of the acts of marriage?”
Ilsa licked her lips. She was not as ignorant as some of the village girls had been about such matters. Ilsa learned much from observing animals in the forest and from her own parents. It was a small cottage and when they thought her asleep, they had come together as a man and wife. There was little Ilsa did not know about such matters. Until this moment, though, she had not applied them to herself.
She gripped a fold of the dress. “I have nothing else to put on.”
He didn’t smile or frown. “You have no need for anything else.” He reached for the buckle on his belt. “Remove your clothes.” He unfastened the belt and dropped it to the ground.
Ilsa’s face heated. She swallowed, her heart skidding and thudding.
For the sake of my village, my parents…everyone. She whispered it silently in her mind. With a convulsive movement, she jerked the woolen gown up and over her head. The folds of fabric dislodged the circlet in her hair and she tugged it free, too. She looked around for somewhere to put the garment, only the chest was behind Arawn.
Instead, she dropped them to the ground, right beside the screen.
Arawn removed only his belt. The red, long robe hung straight from his shoulders. His eyes narrowed again. “The rest,” he murmured. His voice seemed strained.
Ilsa smoothed her hand over the linen shift, then bent and untied her shoes and removed them.
Arawn made a hissing sound. She looked up, startled. “What is wrong?”
“Nothing,” he said. He waved toward her shoes. “The rest.”
She pulled the shift up, gathering it in her hands, then pulled it off and dropped it onto the pile of brown wool at her feet. Naked, she stood in the space between the edge of the screen and the wall and fought not to cover herself with her arms.
Arawn did not move for many heart beats. His gaze lingered on her and Ilsa trembled.
He pulled the red robe up and flung it aside, removing his undershirt with it. He was just as bare as her, except for his boots, and the heavy gold chain about his neck, from which hung a medallion that winked in the lamplight.
He was engorged. Aroused.
“Get on the bed,” he told her.
Ilsa backed
into the bed area, then turned and sat on the edge of the bed.
Arawn appeared at the end of the screen. “On your hands and knees.”
Roman style. The words whispered in her mind. She didn’t know where she had learned such a crude fact, but she recognized the truth of it.
Shaking, she turned and settled on the furs on her hands and knees.
Arawn’s taking of her was gentle, she supposed. He used oil, which spared her some discomfort but not all. She closed her eyes and held her teeth together so they did not chatter and to hold in any sound she might make.
When it was done and Arawn released her, she sank onto the furs and curled into a tight ball. She was cold.
Arawn stepped back into the front half of the chamber. She could see him through the screen, putting his clothes back on. He had been breathing hard. Now his breath slowed as he fastened the belt.
He lifted his chin to look at her through the screen. “I will give you the bed for the night, madam. Tomorrow, we will see to clearing the queen’s chamber for you. Good night.”
As soon as the door shut behind him, Ilsa pulled the furs over her and laid trembling and wiping her eyes as they welled weak tears. She fell asleep that way, a long time later.
Ilsa did not wake the next morning until someone closed the outer door with a thud. She sat up, bleary and aching and snatched up the furs to cover herself when she saw three servants standing in the outer room, each holding a tray. Stilicho waited behind them. His expression didn’t change when he saw her. “Meat to break your fast, my lady. Then, your chamber awaits.”
She glanced at the high window, from where dazzling light poured to pool on the rug in front of the servants. “Already?”
“It is late, my lady,” Stilicho said. “The household has been out and about for some time. The king didn’t want to disturb you. The meal grows cold, my lady…”
She cleared her throat. “Everyone must turn around.”
“My lady?” Stilicho seemed puzzled, the first time he sounded anything but completely sure of himself.
“Turn around. I want to dress.”
His lips parted. Then he smiled. It was a small expression, yet seemed to say much, including amusement for her quaint ways.
Ilsa’s cheeks heated again. She had not felt as ignorant and humiliated in all her life as she had in the last day. Was this the lot of all brides taken to their husband’s domain? Or was she really such a savage that the smallest amount of civilization left her floundering?
She kept her chin up, waiting, her gaze on Stilicho.
He gestured with his hand and the three servants all turned their backs on her.
“You, too,” Ilsa told Stilicho.
He made a great show of turning about, then turned out both hands to indicate he had obeyed her command.
Ilsa dropped the furs and scrambled across the bed and reached for the discarded linen shift. She thrust her arms into it and yanked it down over her body, then tugged her hair out of the back of it. Her hair was knotty and wild. She could do nothing about it, for she had no comb.
Then, because the shift was so thin and the air in the chamber colder than she remembered, she bent and picked up the woolen gown and put that on, too. Then the shoes.
“You may turn around now,” she told the four waiting on the other side of the screen. She wound the belt about her waist and knotted it the way Frida had done.
She stepped around the screen as the servants put the trays of food and drink on the little table in front of the screen. A stool waited, a square thing with crossed legs. She perched on the stool. She was hungry, but not for this food. “It smells wrong,” she said, sniffing it.
Alarmed, Stilicho bent over and sniffed, too. “It smells as it should.”
She eyed the perfectly sliced layers of meat. Her stomach decided the matter. It cramped and gurgled. She lifted the edge of the top slice and tore a small piece from it and chewed.
“My lady does not have a knife?” Stilicho asked, sounding surprised.
She shook her head and swallowed. “My clothes were taken yesterday, at the bathhouse.”
“Then they await you in the queen’s chamber.”
Ilsa took another mouthful of the meat. She suspected it was mutton, yet it did not taste like any mutton she had ever eaten. There were flavors added to it that were not, she admitted, entirely unappealing. They masked the strong smell mutton often gave off.
Ilsa brushed at the particles on the edge of the slice. “What is this?”
“Rosemary, I believe.” Stilicho sounded disinterested. “Salt and perhaps some thyme.”
Herbs. Expensive ones. It explained why the meat did not smell the way she thought it should. She continued eating, burning her fingers on the hot slices. One tray held a finger bowl of water, with more herbs floating in it. A folded napkin laid beside it.
Ilsa dipped her hand in the water and rubbed the juice of the meat from the tips, then wiped them on the napkin, before reaching for the cup of mulled wine sitting on the third tray with steam rising from it. Her throat contracted as she lifted the cup and sipped.
Stilicho did not move while she ate. He dismissed the servants, who hurried away while he remained to watch her take each bite. Now he lifted his brow. “I suppose I must believe the rest of the tale about you, now.”
Ilsa put down the cup, her pulse jumping. “What tale?”
“That you are the bastard daughter of King Budic. You didn’t learn those manners in a wood cutter’s hut.”
“My mother taught me…” Ilsa pressed her lips together, halting the explanation that wanted to tumble from her. All the incomprehensible childhood lessons her mother had imparted—using a napkin, not bolting her food, keeping her fingers clean between bites… None of the other children in the village ate that way and Ilsa had resented that her mother insisted upon such silly rules. Now, though, she suspected that eating neatly was a thin hint of a different life her mother had never revealed, not even in stories and tales.
Who was her mother? Where had she come from, before arriving at Budic’s court?
Stilicho seemed to understand what she had not said. “Your mother’s name?”
“Non,” Ilsa said.
“And her parents?”
Ilsa folded and refolded the napkin on her lap. “I don’t know.”
Stilicho made a sound in his throat that might have been disgust at her ignorance. “If you are finished?” he added.
Ilsa put the napkin down and got to her feet.
“This way, my lady.” Stilicho moved over to the heavy door and opened it.
There were many people in the antechamber and they all turned to look at the open door. They were all men, most of them armed soldiers with their helmets beneath their arms.
Their gazes were speculative, curious, or amused.
Ilsa dropped her chin and looked at the floor so she would not have to see their expressions. She moved out into the antechamber as Stilicho made a lane through the men with soft words.
Ilsa glanced to her right as she moved into the room. Arawn sat behind the big desk. He was talking to the same brown-haired man he had sat beside at last night’s supper. When she looked at him, though, Arawn paused and studied her.
Ilsa dropped her gaze once more and hurried to follow Stilicho out of the antechamber. As she moved past the men, they bowed their heads.
To her.
Her heart hurting with the speed and heaviness of its beat, Ilsa gripped the front of her dress and walked even faster.
The two guards outside the door to the suite were different from the guards of last night although they stood at attention in the same way. Stilicho ignored them. He moved across the wide corridor to a door which matched the pair the guards stood beside. He thrust the door open with the palm of his hand and stood aside.
The queen’s chambers. Naturally, they were close at hand and accessible to the king.
Ilsa moved inside.
There were four women
working in the room. Clearly, the chamber was not completely prepared. Ilsa was uncertain if the women were slaves or merely servants. They wore fine gowns and their hair was arranged neatly, yet they were bent over a fur rug, straightening it.
Stilicho cleared his throat. All four jumped to their feet and turned to face Ilsa.
“Merryn, Eseld, Rigantona, Dilas,” Stilicho said, pointing to each of them in turn. “These are your ladies and companions.”
“Mine?” Ilsa said, startled.
Merryn rolled her eyes. She was an older woman, perhaps even thirty years old, with an ample figure and muddy brown eyes.
Stilicho turned to go.
“A moment…” Ilsa said quickly.
He turned back. “The king requires my attention, my lady.”
“I understand…I am told the king must give permission to bathe.”
“You bathed yesterday,” Stilicho pointed out.
“I would like to bathe again today,” Ilsa said.
Stilicho bowed. “Very well. I am sure the king will agree to your bathing with whatever frequency you wish. I will ensure the guards at the bathhouse are aware of the arrangement. Is there anything else?”
Ilsa worked her hand against the wool of her gown. She had hundreds of questions yet none of them came to her right now. “No,” she said.
Stilicho inclined his head once more. The door closed behind him, leaving Ilsa with the strangers.
Chapter Nine
The four women stared at Ilsa expectantly.
Ilsa stared back. Were they…did they expect her to tell them what to do? How would she know?
Then she remembered the way Yasmine, yesterday, had asked the slave girl, Bridget, to fetch things. The requested garments had magically appeared in the bathhouse when needed.
“Merryn, yes?” Ilsa said.
“Yes, my lady,” Merryn said.
Ilsa put her hand to her hair. “I am in need of a comb. Is there one here?” She looked around the room.
One of the other ladies stirred. “I know where one is to spare.”
Once and Future Hearts Box One Page 23