by Daya Daniels
“I-am-here.” His head turns my way and his eyes sweep over me. “And-you-are-here…”
“Yes.”
“Because this is where we belong…” He marches off.
Alexander
SHE SAID NOTHING…
Not even “thank you.”
Would I truly have wanted her just to express her appreciation to my confession?
With a breath, my jaw sets tight as I march through the dank and cold passageways of Berkhamsted Castle. I could not sleep. And the last time I was here, I was not told the things I knew I did not wish to hear.
Proceeding ahead, I breathe in the putrid air.
The rats crawl over my boots and the constant drip of water down here is enough to drive someone mad.
Still, I march ahead until I find myself lingering beneath the massive stone archway and inhaling the putrid scent of dead rats in the air. But, the awful scent no longer causes my stomach to turn.
Perhaps, I am used to it.
The darkness…
The cold.
The lingering malevolence…
“I didn’t think you’d be back to visit so soon, Your Majesty.” Terra laughs.
I am not impressed.
However, she seems to be, as always…
I’m fully aware that being relegated to the bowels of this castle thousands of years ago with only rodents to call your friends could make someone, shall I say…desperate for visitors.
Terra’s statement hangs in the air.
I say nothing, only march farther into the massive stone chamber and look around.
The fear that once enveloped me as a child whenever I set foot in these tunnels no longer does now that I am a man. My boot nudges an old crate and with the action a crowd of black rats let out vicious squeaks and squeals as they scurry across the room to find another hiding place.
I pace.
“She is very precious, Your Majesty.”
Scrubbing my jaw, I continue to walk and think. “Yes, I know.”
Terra grunts. “She is nothing like your mother, Your Majesty.”
My head swings in Terra’s direction and I drink in her deathly appearance. “Yes, I know.”
She marches over to the boiling pot across the room and drops a few dead rats into the liquid. “I didn’t think you would have the guts to place your mother and her confidant down here with me.” Keeping her head low, she smiles and grabs her iron rod and begins to stir the concoction. “You surprised me there, Your Majesty.” Her voice lowers into a whisper and her eyes grow bright. “You are very much like your father.”
A breath leaves my lungs. “I stand to correct you, Terra…”
She giggles.
“My mother and Jean-Baptiste are not in the bowels of the castle, Terra. They are in the dungeon.”
Which is more than four-stories above this chamber…
“Oh, I suppose that is so much better, Your Majesty.” She chuckles.
I only stare at the old witch who is currently goading me, as she always does. “What do you propose I do with them, Terra?”
Pointing a finger at me, she tsks. “Once again…you are just like your father, Your Majesty, always thinking that I have all the answers to your questions.” She lifts her head to face me. “I do not.” She sighs. “But deep down in your heart you know what she did. You also know what she is capable of…” Her lips are pressed together as she regards me.
Marching nearer to Terra, I peer into her pot, ignoring the stench of its ingredients.
“Why do you make her suffer, Your Majesty?”
I have my reasons…
Terra stirs the liquid in the massive pot. “I hear her screams at night…” She points to a metal grate in the wall which is high above us where the sounds must come from. “I hear her screams at night when two of your beloved knights take her over and over and over again. There is nothing but pure vengeance in their brutality.”
I attempt to unhear her words, but I cannot.
I attempt to refute her claims, but I cannot.
I try to remember the woman who I can no longer stand to call my mother…
And I choose to simply not.
“She cries. She weeps. And yet, no one comes, Your Majesty.” Terra meets my eyes with her sorrowful ones.
“She should repent.” I march away, breathing heavily.
“Is her suffering not enough to at least earn her a swift death?”
No.
“How do I find justice for my father?”
Terra shrugs. “I do not know, Your Majesty. You are the King. This is for you to discover.”
I scrub my face with a hand and continue to march along the stone. Each bootstep feels heavy with questions I have no answers to and fear which I do not wish to speak of. So, my mind wanders.
“And Jean-Baptiste…”
At the mention of his name, I twist on my heel. “What about Jean-Baptiste?”
“Oh, he prays for his death, Your Majesty, every-single-night…” Terra smiles. “Your beloved knights have tortured him—his fingernails have been removed, along with a few of his teeth, and perhaps now he is festering in his own waste.” She sighs a dramatic sigh as if she truly cares about the state of Jean-Baptiste which I know she does not. “But you didn’t come here to ask me about the occupants of Berkhamsted Castle’s warm and flowery dungeon…” Lifting a brow, she smiles.
No, I did not.
My gaze lingers on Terra’s massive form and all the dirty black rags which cloak her.
“How have you been sleeping, Your Majesty?” She chuckles. “If at all…”
I turn away from her. “I have not…” My fingers thread through my hair.
“Ah, I see…”
I grip my hair tighter. “The visions…The nightmares…They’re all becoming too much.” Lowering my head, I squeeze my temples. “But when I am with her…” Pain settles in my chest with what I am about to admit. “But when I am with her, they seem to ease.”
Terra freezes, and then with slow movements, she releases the rod in her grip and shuffles over to me.
With a chest full of sadness, I stare at the stone, knowing I have done something I never should have.
I gave her my heart…
But, I’d done so long ago…
Only now I have spoken of it.
“I have no rights to her…” I breathe. “I fear I will destroy her, Terra.”
Cold, wet hands grip the sides of my face as the old woman forces me to peer into her eyes. “Against your better judgment you are drawn to her…” Her lips part, displaying the black abyss of her toothless mouth.
“Yes.” I squeeze my eyes shut and then they pop open. “Why?”
Terra cocks her head to the side. “I do not know.”
Annoyed, I turn my head and it escapes her grip. “How could you not know?” My gaze sweeps over her, disgusted. “Is this not why you are here, Terra?” I gesture with a hand around the room where all her pots and crates and dead rats are strewn about. “What is your purpose if you cannot help me?”
She puts her hands together in prayer. “In this world, Your Majesty, there is good and there is evil…”
I face her.
“I have no qualms about who and what I am.” She smiles.
I eye over the old woman who has been a resident of this castle before this expansive countryside had become so gray and before the time that we now live in had become so dark. Terra has seen wars. She’s seen death. She had even told me that once, long ago, she was even beautiful too. But, to survive, her soul had darkened and with it went her natural beauty.
Many believed that was her punishment…
Terra had defied the will of God.
She had practiced black magic.
It was an art which had found many women and men burned at the stake and cast into Hell. But when the people of England demanded that she answer for her crimes of magic, even though she was powerful,
Terra pledged her fealty to the King. She had pledged her loyalty to the House of Montforthe-Byron and agreed to serve this family for as long as she would live. Little did she know then that she would survive the many wars and famine and diseases which followed. And that darkness that had consumed her granted her with eternal life.
Gradually, as her beauty went and she morphed into the hideous creature she is now, she retreated into this chamber, away from the light and from all that she had once known.
And now, this dark, dank, and disgusting chamber is her home…
“I do not pledge to be anything but darkness, Your Majesty…” Her lips are sealed.
And for just a moment, I feel sad for this woman.
“And as of lately…” Her brows lift. “Everything in my visions have been obscured by…light.”
Light?
“It’s as though I am fighting a force which is more all-consuming than I have ever encountered before…”
“I see.”
“I cannot touch it. I cannot catch it. It moves swiftly through my visions…as though it doesn’t even exist.” Her eyes shut. “It moves through my visions like a…”
“Ghost.” I finish her sentence.
“Precisely.” With a chuckle, she places a hand to the middle of her chest. “I wish I could explain more, Your Majesty, but I am not God.”
My eyes narrow.
Terra sighs. “I have always wanted to believe that he does not exist.”
“He does exist.”
Waggling a finger in my direction and laughing, she shuffles back over to her pot. “Yes, I think I am fully aware of that now.” She peers into the boiling liquid. “Perhaps my prior disbelief is precisely why day after day, year after year, and century after century I have struggled on occasion to see what I must.” She peers into the swirling liquid.
“What do you mean?” Annoyance laces my tone. “What have you been up to, Terra?” With my boot, I kick a rat and it goes flying across the chamber and hits the wall with a squeak.
Her hands shoot up in surrender. “This is not my work, Your Majesty, I swear it.” Tipping her head forward a few times, she exhales a loud breath. “Believe me, I have my ways, Your Majesty.” She smirks. “But, you must remember that I am always fighting against forces which may be more powerful than my own.” The old witch finds her way near me again.
“Such as…”
“God.” Her tone is firm. “Other evils…Other magic…Forces much darker than you could ever imagine which exist in this world, or even in the next, Your Majesty.” Her thin lips tremble as the words fly from her mouth in a quick whisper.
She gives me a long look. “And with everything that you have faced since you have become King, my visions have been less and less clear. Obscured. Almost blocked by a thick smoke screen which has not allowed me to see things as vividly as I once had.” Her jaw sets tight.
“You cannot see Briar’s future?” I step closer.
“No.” Terra blinks.
“Or mine?” My brows arch.
“No.” Her shoulders fall.
“You have no answers…” My jaw ticks.
“No.”
“Fuck.” I march away from her and begin pacing the chamber once more.
“It is because the answers may only be for you, Your Majesty, and in due time…” She nods repeatedly. “In due time, I can assure you they will reveal themselves.”
“I do not understand.” Impatience infects my tone. “I-cannot-wait, Terra.”
“You must, King Alexander.”
“I cannot.”
Because I love her, I love her, I love her.
“She must have something you need…”
I say nothing in response to her statement because all that twists around in my heart is fear at that notion.
“I know it, Your Highness…” Her voice quavers.
“I will destroy her…” I suck in a breath and before I know it Terra’s hands are on my cheeks and urging me to peer into her evil eyes. “You speak of this woman as though she is breakable, Your Majesty. But she has survived so much…She was an orphan. She was a handmaid. She was just a girl…And now look at her…”
I peer into Terra’s eyes finding not mischief in them, but fear, for the first time in my life.
Genuine.
Heart-stopping.
Fear.
But for who?
“She is beloved by the people, Your Majesty.”
Yes.
I nod.
“She is a woman who is more influential than she’ll ever realize.”
Yes.
I nod.
“With all due respect, Your Majesty, but she may even be more powerful than you are.” Her eyes burn.
I nod once more very slowly.
“Your Majesty, you fear that you will destroy this woman with your love for her…and for everything you offer her.” Terra’s eyes shut and then they reopen slowly, dusting me with a gentle regard. “But on the contrary, Your Majesty, because I fear, that she may destroy you.”
Perhaps, truly, she ruined me long ago…
Briar
FIRE RUSHES INTO MY heart…
My lashes flutter and the warmth against my skin forces them to fly open. Planting a hand to my chest, I jackknife and find myself sitting in the middle of this very large bed and panting like mad.
A warm breeze rushes into the window, and just beyond it, Raven Forest is wild with noise.
With my ears aching from the screeching of the birds, my eyes narrow on the sight ahead. Something powerful claws at the edges of my pounding heart knowing that Alexander must be standing to his window witnessing the same with eyes rimmed red and exhausted from lack of sleep.
We are connected.
“Tethered,” as he would say…
Our lives intertwined in some inexplicable way.
Looking around this chamber, my breaths are frantic, and my skin is slathered in perspiration.
I am still in my fine dress.
Shoving a hand down into the front of it, I retrieve my tattered handkerchief and set it down on the bed with gentle movements, smoothing the fabric with shaky fingertips.
Another breeze washes into the chamber and sends goose bumps dancing across my skin in its wake.
“Oh, you beautiful, delicate flower, you…” Patiently, I unfold the handkerchief and peer down at the dead but glowing ghost orchid.
This happens often now…
And instead of fearing its meaning, I have come to adore these occasions.
Father’s flower is mesmerizing with its new hue.
Golden.
Glowing.
So, so warm.
And in these moments, I often feel this ghost orchid is injected with life.
Perhaps, I am too.
The birds grow wilder.
The ghost orchid glows even more.
A smile, big and wide, finds its home on my face and then soon a tear trickles its way down my cheek.
My fingertips skate over the warm edges of the delicate dead flower.
It is precious.
It is sacred.
It is magical.
This ghost orchid is a part of me.
It may be all I have left of value…
This flower is my heart.
Would I cease to exist without it?
Alexander
I CAN FEEL HER…
I breathe her in, along with the English wind which skitters over my naked skin.
She is awake at this ungodly hour, just as I am…
Raven Forest is alive tonight.
As am I.
Heart full and beating, and perhaps bleeding too, for a woman I know I should not pursue.
But, I cannot help myself…
I need her.
She is my heart’s one true desire.
The orphan girl.
The handmaid.
Th
e woman of my motherfucking nightmares!
The Rose Princess…
A woman who is just as dedicated to the people of this country and to England as I am.
Shoving my fingers into my hair, I take in the view beyond the large window. And then I glance back at my big empty bed—the one I find no sleep in and let out a long and labored breath.
She belongs with me.
She was always meant to stand by my side.
She has earned my respect.
But…
Her heart rebels.
It is a traitorous organ because, whenever I am near her, its beat screams all of which she attempts to hide. But she cannot hide any longer. She cannot escape me. Same as I will never be able to rid myself of her.
We are tethered by a force so terrible that it cannot be destroyed.
But God knows it should be…
CHAPTER
VI
Briar
PULVIS ET UMBRA SUMIS.
We are dust and shadow…
Head bowed, my forehead is planted against my clasped hands.
I don’t know how long I’ve been here for, on my knees, praying…
There has been so much death.
So many have perished with the merciless disease which has run rampant through this green land.
For all the poor souls which have perished and the bodies which have been burned, I weep.
I had been allowed to return to my work, but Sister Rebecca and I no longer visit the sick and poor and the hungry. We only toss flowers from our cart and often leave the muddy streets in the villages covered in roses. Davide accompanies us. We are not permitted to touch the people. We have also been forbidden to enter homes.
I had been compelled on more than one occasion to offer a hug to a child who seemed in desperate need of one. But, I could not. I left that orphaned child standing alone in the street, outside a charred home which had been set alight because of the Plague which had consumed it and all the people who once resided within it.
That day, I held on to Sister Rebecca’s hand and heeded the King’s earlier given warning…
No embraces.
No physical contact.
Cover your mouth and nose with a handkerchief when in the company of strangers.