“Please.” His hazel-green eyes begged. “You’ll be in my coach the whole time--no one will see you. Believe me, their attention will be elsewhere,” he finished with a brittle edge in his voice.
He seemed in a vulnerable mood, just the perfect time to ask him for more jewelry or find out some useful gossip. “All right,” I said finally. “Bridget, fetch my cloak, the one with the big hood.”
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
“Your Highness, really . . .” I put a restraining hand on his arm as he raised yet another glass of brandy to his lips. “You’ll make yourself sick.”
“Don’t tell me I’m scandalizing you,” he said, shaking off my hand. He downed the brandy with a gulp, then collapsed back on the seat. Thank God we were alone with no servants, just the royal guard standing outside near the wheels of the coach. I could see them now, wavy green and gold shapes through the imperfections of the coach glass, the crowd beyond them a seething mass of colors. The carriage walls barely muffled the roar of a thousand people jabbering at once, and I touched my temple, a twinge of too-much-wine headache returning. I sank down on the seat beside Segar, hot under my hood but not daring to take it off. What if someone recognized me? I would likely be the next burned, not as a witch, but as a harlot.
“Your Highness, why are we here? It’s turning you into a sot, and I’ll likely be burned as a loose woman. We‘ll make a fine pair for the histories, won‘t we? Prince Segar the Sot and his Lady Harlot of Landers.”
He groaned. “Don’t jest about burning, Eden. Don’t jest at all, in fact. I can’t handle it today.”
“You can’t handle a jest? Your Highness, it appears you can barely handle breakfast today.”
“Don’t talk about breakfast either.” He groaned again. “I wager I’ll not keep it through the next half hour, between the brandy and the burning.”
I sighed--I hated it when he whined. “Why are we here, if it bothers you so?”
“We’re here because my coward father sends people to the stake and then goes on hunts the day of the actual execution. Rhianan deserves someone here from the royal family, even if he‘s dead drunk.”
The appearance of the execution torch stopped our conversation then. Segar straightened and tracked the flame’s progress to the iron pedestal that stood beside the heaped wall of wood around the stake. The bearer set the torch on the pedestal, then waited with clasped hands while the guards escorted Rhianan to her fate. Several priests headed the procession bearing incense burners. Supposedly the scented smoke along the condemned’s path represented divine mercy, although skeptics whispered that the incense was really meant to cover the stench of burning flesh.
A silence fell over the crowd as they witnessed Rhianan’s approach. I heard scattered jeers and shouts of “witch” but the silence soon overwhelmed all. Rhianan was so pale she appeared almost translucent, floating along amidst the dark figures of the guards, her face already in another world.
“She’s as ephemeral as smoke. She’s no longer flesh but transformed into spirit,” the prince murmured.
I glanced at him. “She looks in a stupor to me.”
“My father orders the guards to give condemned women poppy seed potion the night before their executions.”
“How chivalrous of your father,” I said with acid as I turned my attention back to Rhianan. The crowd was still silent, waiting. Rhianan’s small, somber procession had reached the pile of branches, stacked so tall it towered over the guards. There was a narrow path through the wood to the actual stake. Rhianan and one of the guards vanished down this path, our last glimpse of her through the distorted waves of the coach glass, or so I thought. Suddenly the spooky silence broke with a collective gasp, a few muffled curses.
“What is it? Surely they wouldn’t set fire to it yet--the guard’s still with her . . .” I trailed off, not believing my eyes as Rhianan reappeared, seated on a small platform that traveled up the stake with short jerks. “What are they doing?”
“The platform, you mean?” the prince asked. “That’s some new devilry--progress, you know. See the pulley at the top of the stake?”
“I see how it’s working.” Rhianan’s slumped head jerked with each movement of the platform, and I shuddered as it finally came to a stop a few feet from the top of the stake. “Why?”
“Supposedly it kills her quicker, being above the fire like that. She’ll inhale more smoke before the fire reaches her.”
“That rope holding the platform--it’ll burn through, won’t it? She’ll fall in the fire anyway.”
“Exactly. It makes her more of a spectacle to the crowd, being above the fire and then toppling in it. Of course, they would never admit that.”
Spectacle. I snorted to myself. Men enjoyed putting women’s charms on display even when they were executing us, apparently. The guard who had escorted Rhianan to the platform emerged from the path through the wood pile. Guards bearing faggots of kindling came forward and quickly filled the gap, leaving Rhianan dangling precariously above a thick-walled chimney of wood. She lifted her head. Her eyes gleamed like glass, the effects of poppy seed potion evident. Although I knew it was impossible through the reflection on the outside of the coach window, it seemed as if her gaze locked with mine for the barest instant as she looked over the crowd.
The court crier, who had been at the tail end of the procession, climbed up on the platform in the middle of the square. He carried a scroll which he unrolled and held before him with trembling hands as he shouted, “Rhianan of Norland, daughter of Basil of Norland, found guilty of witchcraft and treason by the king’s council, will be burned at the stake until rendered to ashes as punishment for her crimes this day, the 30th of August, the twenty-second year of His Majesty King Arian’s reign. May God grant mercy on her soul.”
The crowd’s eerie hush held as the head guard took the torch from its stand and walked around the perimeter of the wood. He touched the flame to the base of the pile at several points, so methodically that it appeared he had measured beforehand. The dry wood sparked and then crackled, fire soon rising and smoke billowing after.
I stared, transfixed as the fire consumed the wood. “My God.”
“Have you never witnessed a burning before?” the prince murmured. I glanced at him and found him as intent as me, not wanting to look but unable to stop himself.
“I’ve seen two burnings--Merius and Whitten and I snuck away when I was twelve and saw the last burning in Calcors, and then I saw one a few years ago when that man Rawlings was executed as a heretic.”
“You saw someone burned when you were twelve?”
I shrugged. “You think it uncommon for children to witness a burning in this country?”
“So there hasn’t been a burning in Calcors in a decade?”
“It seems there are no witches or heretics to burn in Silmer Province.” I thought of Safire and kept my tone as light as I dared. I trusted Segar to a point. But always he looked for some way of controlling the Landers and Mordric, and even though he was against burnings, best he not know Merius had married a witch.
“So it would seem,” Segar remarked dryly. A loud crackling came from the fire, and we both started. One of the bundles of sticks near the bottom was still green apparently.
“Almost all the wood is on fire,” I said. I touched the window closest the fire, and the glass was hot. The guards’ faces gleamed with sweat. The smoke rose in grayish-white billows, Rhianan a ghostly figure through the haze. I coughed, the taste of fire acrid in my throat.
“She‘s not moving. You think she’s fainted?”
“I hope so.” Segar straightened, hit his palm with his fist. “God, that I were king--I’d never allow this again.”
“Your Highness, perhaps we should leave. Please--the smell is making me ill,” I pleaded, not completely lying. The smell crept through the crevices of the coach, a sickly sweet charred odor that could only be flesh burning, the kind of odor I imagined would stick to my clothes, my hair even after I wash
ed. I rubbed my watering eyes--I could see nothing now through the smoke.
A high-pitched scream filled the square. The wind rose, the smoke parting with it, the flames whipped to a frenzy. Rhianan’s head no longer slumped. She writhed on the platform, her face contorted in a scream that never seemed to end as the wind-fed flames leapt from the wood to the hem of her robe and kissed the flesh of her legs.
I turned my face away and gagged. My eyes burned from the smoke and the effort of holding down my breakfast. The scream died abruptly, too abruptly, the silence that followed almost worse. I couldn’t look, terrified of what I would see on the platform now.
“Good aim, whoever he is,” the prince murmured. “Thank God--if I’d had a bow and had been certain of my aim, I would have shot her myself.”
“What?” I finally turned my head and saw that Rhianan was slumped again. Her body had shrank upon itself around the arrow that some merciful soul had shot her with at the moment of her agony.
Another scream split the air. At first I thought it was Rhianan, somehow alive again, and I covered my ears. Then I heard more screams, scream upon scream. The coach trembled as if the earth quaked, the pounding of feet on the cobbles all around.
Someone cracked open the coach door, and I started, almost screaming myself before I realized it was a guard. I kept my face in shadow under my cloak hood and stayed in the corner.
“Your Highness,” the guard gasped, out of breath, “someone’s shooting flaming arrows into the crowd.”
“Where from?”
“The bell tower. I sent half the guard to search. I’d advise you to order the other half of the guard and the coach back to the palace, Your Highness.”
“By all means--if Darius can navigate the horses through this crowd without crushing anyone . . .” Segar started, but the guard had already slammed the door shut.
The coach jerked around, and I tumbled to the floor. I stayed there as we lurched in fits and starts through the square. At least if I was on the floor, fewer people would be likely to glimpse me and I would be a poor target for a flaming arrow. Somehow Segar kept his seat. He clutched the brandy bottle and glanced wildly from one window to another.
“It’s burning to ashes now,” he said, staring in the direction of the fire. “It’s my father’s fault, you know, this panic.”
“Can everything be blamed on His Majesty then?”
“Yes, it can.” The prince’s head swiveled around as he took another swig of brandy, directly from the bottle this time. “Listen, Eden, that man in the square--he’s shooting arrows as a protest. He’s protesting all us ghouls who came out to witness a poor girl’s last misery.”
“I’m not a ghoul. I’m only here because my future sovereign gave me an order.”
“I’m a ghoul then.”
“Ghouls don’t feel guilty for their father’s actions and don’t bother to pay their respects to a woman facing a terrible fate. You‘re not a ghoul.” I grabbed the brandy bottle from his hand.
He lunged for the bottle and ended up on the floor beside me. I hid the bottle behind my back, and we stared at each other, his eyes bleary with drink and a few stray tears. He cried more than I did, which wasn’t saying much, since I never cried, at least not in front of anyone. We didn’t cry in the House of Landers--not even Whitten cried when he was in his cups. We raged and fought, but we didn’t cry. So, compared to a Landers, the prince was maudlin.
“Your Highness, there’s a council this afternoon, and you have to lead it. No more brandy.”
He glared at me an instant longer, then fell back against the seat with a sharp-edged chuckle. “Eden, will you marry me? If you‘re my queen, you can lead councils in my stead and be my head advisor.”
“Will I have to bear any brats?”
“Just two--an heir and a spare, you know.”
“I’d rather be your mistress then. Mistresses get more jewels and less hassle than wives.” Glee rose inside, an odd feeling after my sickness at the execution. I couldn’t help it, though--for him to say marriage, even in jest . . . I forced myself to settle down. Mustn’t read too much into it . . . but marriage to Prince Segar. That would make me Queen someday. It was a jest, I told myself, just a jest. But perhaps Segar was mad enough at King Arian to defy him the same way that Merius defied Mordric, and what could King Arian do about it, really? He didn’t have a spare, just an heir.
Segar gave another chuckle, then wiped his watery eyes with his sleeve. “Thank you for coming today,” he said quietly, suddenly serious again. “I needed someone with me, and you were the only one I knew to ask. I couldn’t wear my royal mask today, not here.”
I nodded and reached for his hand. We stayed like that, hand in hand in the muffled silence of the coach, until the wheels creaked to a stop in the palace stables.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Because I stayed in Corcin to witness the burning, I had a late start. The horrid odor of the smoke was in my hair and on my clothes, so I had to immerse myself in a bath and change before I could leave the palace. When Mordric summoned, I had to go. It was well after dark by the time I reached Landers Hall. I stopped at a tavern for dinner in order to avoid the torturous family table, so I went straight up to my chamber, Bridget trailing behind me. Someone had been apprised as to my arrival--a fire burned brightly in the grate, and fresh linen, open windows and new flowers invited rest. Despite these provisions, however, the chamber still seemed unfashionable and unused. Someone had plastered the stone walls white many years before my birth and hung dark tapestries which collected more dust than admiration. I would have wheedled Mordric for some coin to redecorate this chamber, but I hadn’t seen the point, since I spent most of my time at court. I wouldn’t waste his good will toward me on such a trifle, anyway--I had bigger plans.
I went over to the bedside table and touched the bouquet there--goldenrod and the last gentians, even a pale yellow rose stuck in amidst the others like a princess at a commoners’ dance. I took a moment to lean down and sniff the rose before I tossed my cloak on the bed. Then I glanced at the mirror over the washstand. Some strands of hair had escaped; I tucked them back into place with my fingers and water. Bridget silently brought my small carved chest of scents and face paints, and using my little brush, I darkened the kohl around my eyes. Then I picked a heavy, spicy scent made from the crushed leaves of the SerVerin flowering jade and dabbed that on my wrists.
“Now,” I said as I headed towards the door, “go ahead and unpack everything. I don’t know how long we’ll be here, but if you go to the hassle of unpacking everything, then surely it’ll only be a few days.”
“Yes, my lady.” She looked doubtful.
“It’s a superstition of mine, Bridget. Humor me.”
She smiled. “All right, my lady.”
I ducked out the door. Mordric’s study was down the hall. I didn’t need anyone to tell me that was where he would be--he worked all hours when he was here, seeing tenants in the morning, riding the grounds in the afternoon, and going over the ledgers at night. Sometimes he hunted, disappearing alone in the woods for hours at a time. But mostly he worked. Of course, he worked all hours at court as well, taking his only amusement from beating other men at sword play and indulging in chess or cards on occasion. He beat everyone at that, too. And then there were his mistresses, none of whom I had heard rumor of lately. Perhaps after he lost Merius to that witch and almost stabbed himself to death, his mind turned to more serious pursuits. Whatever the reason, I never dared ask. I could only speculate.
An unintelligible summons answered my knock. He sat at the table in the center of the chamber, flipping through a ledger, a glass of whiskey at his elbow. He glanced up as I entered, his gaze impaling mine over the rims of his spectacles. “I thought you were that idiot Whitten.”
I sank into the chair nearest the table. “What’s he done now?”
“Accepted a basket of fish in lieu of coin.” He shook his head and wrote something on the margin of a page. I watche
d him. He was only a few months shy of turning fifty-one, and he should have been ancient to me. Other older men carped about their aching joints and wanted back rubs more than tumbles or else they pinched my cheek and called me a naughty minx. Mordric didn’t know what an aching joint was. He still rode his horse between court and Calcors, a day’s ride, with few ill effects, and half the court did his bidding even when he was out of the country. The whole court feared him. As I feared him.
I first feared him when I turned fifteen and went to court as a lady-in-waiting to Queen Verna. I paid scant attention to him before--he was Merius’s father, a tall, threatening shadow who blew through Landers Hall on occasion and terrified the family and servants briefly before he disappeared for months at the mythical court. During the short periods Mordric had been home, Merius was excused from lessons, leaving me alone with the dunces Whitten and Selwyn and our tutor while he was with his father. Merius returned from these mysterious sojourns stony-faced and sullen, a vast departure from his usual careless charm and quick wit. It was my first indication besides servants’ whispers that Mordric was a harsh taskmaster. Most in the household spoiled Merius, especially after his mother died. He could get by with the most outrageous stunts. He caught Gerard of Casian in an experimental bear trap and was always sneaking down to the tavern after dark to play cards. Once, he even accidentally set fire to an abandoned outbuilding with an oil lamp he’d invented that never went out in a draft. If he, the irrepressible, reckless genius, the only one among us who could figure his way out of any tight spot, was brought low by this shadowy Mordric, then no one was safe.
My second day at court as a lady-in-waiting, Mordric had summoned me to his chambers. I walked in, my legs trembling under my new burgundy velvet gown, and dropped in a low curtsy without daring to look at him as I awaited my sentence. I was caught leaving court with a stable boy, my frock in a disarray from where we’d been kissing in one of the stalls. Mordric bid me to stand, then lifted my chin in his hand, surprisingly rough and warm for a gentleman’s hands. And strong, too strong to resist. Gulping, I was forced to meet his eyes, the same dark agate gray as Merius’s and completely unreadable.
Tapestry Lion (The Landers Saga Book 2) Page 10