Fires of Winter

by Roberta Gellis

  From Donald. Papa would not give me a long, sharp knife and Magnus would ask why. The unbidden answer was in my mind before I could guard against it, and with the thought came an involuntary bracing of my body as if to endure a physical pain. But there was no stabbing in my chest or throat so sharp as to stop my breath. There was only loneliness, the terrible knowledge that my menfolk would never again help me, cosset me, or interfere with me. In that great desolation, my resolve to kill the greedy cur that had married a mewling madwoman for favor and gold hardened, for I had nothing to lose. The punishment for murder was death, and death would save me from being alone.

  Perhaps I sobbed once or made some low sound of misery. I was not aware of it, but a woman came to me and led me to the queen. Clearly Maud had no idea that I was grieving for a loss more than half a year in the past. She thought only of my current state and tried to reassure me about the pain of coupling and explain that my husband was a kind man of the highest character and a great favorite of the king. I did not want to listen; I did not wish to hear good things about a man so venial that he would marry a madwoman for profit; I would not believe what she said.

  All I felt was surprise that she should trouble herself to try to soothe me, but I saw the way she watched me as she spoke and guessed that she was suspicious of me. I could not guess why. What danger could one helpless prisoner be to the queen of England? My father and brothers were dead; they could not come to rescue me. And even if they had been alive, there was not the strength in Ulle or even all of Cumbria to challenge the king. Yet after Maud spoke to me and I was led away, it seemed to me that I was watched constantly by one or another of the queen’s ladies when Maud was not herself among us.

  That puzzle so teased my poor head that the sharp anguish caused by remembering my loss eased. Later, I was shocked when I realized how easily I had been diverted from a pain that should be consuming me. When I thought of it, the pain was there, but put away in a corner of my being, almost as if I had been aware my dear ones were dead over the lost months of my madness and had been grieving all that time. I was familiar with the separation of grief from ordinary life; I had lived with that buried ache since my thirteenth year.

  The fact that my life was not at all ordinary right now also overlaid the pain. The queen’s suspicion must have something to do with Ulle and so did my marriage. I was certain of that, for in myself I was only a young woman without power or influence. Perhaps Mama’s relatives in England…but we had lost touch with them after Mama died. Anyway, I was certain that Papa had told me years ago that Mama’s own brothers were dead and there were only cousins, whom we never saw. It must be Ulle. If only Papa had explained to me what could give Ulle such importance instead of telling me always that a beautiful woman had no need to trouble herself with politics. What value could a poor manor like Ulle have to a queen and king who ruled a whole nation?

  I had to keep pushing the puzzle out of my thoughts, for it was leading me into senseless speculation that was diverting me from seeking a knife. Other things diverted me too—a woman who stared at me for a moment, making me so nervous that her words pierced my preoccupation. She said, with a shake of her head to the friend seated near her, that it was a shame to give Bruno of Jernaeve a wife who had not sense enough to appreciate a man with so little interest in playing with women.

  And the other laughed and said, “Did you try for him too? I think a man whose mother was a whore might know too much about women.”

  “Perhaps,” the first admitted with a shrug; then her tongue flicked out to touch her lips and her voice thickened, “but I have heard he knows all the right things as well as all the wrong ones.”

  They spoke low enough to keep what they were saying from other ladies at a little distance but ignored me as if I were a cushion or a bench, although I was too close to miss a word. I kept my head down, watching my fingers and cursing them. Until that woman spoke it, I had not known the man’s name. Now I knew it was Bruno of Jernaeve, and he became more a person, less a symbol of the fall of Ulle and of greed without honor. I rose and wandered about, touching this and lifting that, but without much hope. The queen’s quarters were not a good place to find a weapon, there being little beyond embroidery needles and small, delicate eating knives available. I did not need to steal one. I had my own eating knife, but the short, narrow blade would have to be aimed too exactly. It would not guarantee success to a hurried thrust in the dark. What I needed was a wide, double-edged hunting knife.

  I felt a fool as soon as I thought the words. That man must have a hunting knife, and he was not wearing it this morning. He had been dressed in plain, sober garments—not the sort of clothing one would expect the son of a whore to choose…Son of a whore. It was his name that had first stuck in my mind, but now, as I tried to remember the details of his dress, those words came back. They explained the hunger I had seen burned into his soul and the greed that had driven him to accept marriage to a madwoman. Pity stirred in me and I ground it down. It was true that his mother’s trade was no fault of his, but someone had lifted him out of the dirt. He had the means to gain an honorable livelihood. There was no need for him to become the lickspittle of an usurper.

  His knife would do if it was with his clothing and other possessions, but I needed to get back to the chamber in which we had slept to find it—and to free myself from the women who watched me to steal it and hide it. A need to piss came over me—from fear at the thought of what I must do and what must follow that act, I suppose—but I found that I knew where to go, although I could not remember ever having used the privies. I wandered toward the door, and I heard a voice call after me, “Where do you go?”

  I made no answer until she came after me and gripped my arm, and then I said, “To piss.”

  The woman sighed and let me go, but she followed me out of the queen’s hall to the privies at the back. Nonetheless, after I relieved myself I did not go back to the queen’s hall but to the guesthouse chamber I had found myself in last night. I stood in the doorway at first simply letting my eyes wander about the room. Since my gaoler was behind me she could not see where I was looking; perhaps she thought my eyes were on the bed—still tumbled because I had no maid of my own, as I judged from the fact that no one had come to help me dress. I suddenly remembered how skillfully Bruno—no! that man; I would not think of him by name!—had laced my dress. Yet the gossiping women had said he was not a womanizer.

  None of that matters, I told myself angrily, pulling my eyes away from the untidiness that grated on me, the cover half sliding to the floor, and the pillows all awry on the bare mattress from which the queen herself had removed the sheet. That act made me seem a person of importance, but the lack of a maidservant surely showed that I was of no account at all—unless the queen, or the lady responsible for such matters as assigning a maid (I had not the faintest idea how so great a household was managed) had forgotten. Yet people of importance are not forgotten…and unimportant people are not watched.

  My thoughts having come round full circle again, I barely restrained a cry of rage and forced myself instead to consider the knife I needed. I could see the chest holding my clothes from the doorway, but I had to step farther into the room and turn to see the man’s possessions. My watchdog followed, and I heard her exclaim wordlessly—I assume when she saw the unmade bed—and step out again. I took two swift steps toward the chest, then froze as I heard the woman call to someone and bid that person watch the door and keep me within. And then the door closed.

  I remember a strange sensation about my mouth and cheeks and then realized I was smiling. To be able to feel the difference told me how very, very long it had been since I last smiled—but what had I had to smile about? Now that I had purpose again, I could smile with satisfaction if not with joy. I was on my knees beside the chest, praying it was not locked, heaving it open before the prayer was finished, my fingers catching in the engraving on the lid. I barely stopped m
yself from grabbing garments and tossing them to the floor as I took in the neatness within. I had expected the same wild jumble that filled my father’s and brothers’ chests no matter how often I created order in them, but here every shirt and tunic and pair of braies was folded and in a place, even those that were worn and clumsily patched—no doubt by the hand of a man who had no woman to mend his clothes. Pity wrung me again; although I do not know why, there was a terrible feeling of loneliness in that inept patching and careful folding.

  I drove the pity out, cursing instead the pinchpenny ways of the low born which made it needful for me to remove and replace the contents of the chest with care when I might be interrupted at any moment. Without more ado, I lifted out the fine gown that man had worn to the wedding, then a layer of plain sober tunics and chausses like those he had worn this morning, and finally came to a set of stained leather garments that must be hunting clothes. Beneath them lay what I sought.

  The knife was long and strong with a wide, curved guard, and I had some trouble forcing it up my inner sleeve. It was sharp and keenly pointed too, and cut the cloth in several places as I shifted it around so it lay along the outside of my arm. Anyone who saw the sleeve would see what I had hidden there, but my long, wide outer sleeve would hide it, and it was heavy enough so that I could not forget it and expose it by accident. Having replaced the clothing, I closed the lid and could not help seeing that the carving that decorated the lid formed the word Bruno. I turned my eyes away and hurried back to stand where I had been when my watchdog went out. Not long after, she returned with a maid who carried a clean sheet. I did not stay to see the room put to rights, but went back to the queen’s apartment.

  The rest of the day was worse. I hardly had to pretend not to hear what was said to me or to be slow to understand. I could think of little else than what I must do this very night for the weight of the knife in my sleeve made my purpose real and did not allow my mind to wander from it. There were moments when I exulted: I would have my revenge for the violation of Ulle and of my body and cut away this favorite from the king, who had been Papa’s enemy, as my papa and brother had been cut away from me. But somehow my joy in revenge would not stay clean and hard.

  I was not much afraid, for all but my life had been reft from me already—I had no family, no lands, even my body was forfeit to my enemy—and a brief time of pain would make me safe and rejoin me with my papa forever. But somehow the contents of Bruno’s chest—not a nameless enemy but a man called Bruno—kept rising before my eyes. I saw again and again those patched and folded garments, and tears prickled behind my eyes when I thought that the hands that had taken such patient care would never touch them again.

  Still, the day passed and at least I was spared being seated beside the man Bruno either at dinner or the evening meal. The queen dined in the great hall, but the king did not, and the evening meal was served to the queen and her ladies separately in the queen’s hall. After I had choked down what I could of it, I rose and walked toward the door. As before, a lady pursued me, asking where I would go, and I paused and thought and replied slowly, “To my own chamber, to bed.”

  This reply caused great mirth and several crude jests about how even the slow-witted had sense enough to learn quickly the pleasure of the body and how I would no doubt sleep less restlessly now that I had a husband. I should have expected it, I suppose; I knew about wedding and bedding and the sly teasing that accompanied them, but my case was so different that the implication of what I had said had not occurred to me. My head came up to snap back a hot retort, but fortunately my glance caught the queen’s face, and I saw that the smile on her lips was not mirrored in her eyes. She nodded as if in agreement with the jests, but she also ordered the same woman who had followed me before to go with me and find a maid to help me undress and sit with me until I slept.

  Perhaps the fact that I made my way to the chamber unerringly and had stayed so quietly in the room earlier gave the woman confidence. Whatever her reason, I could see by the irritated downturn of her lips that she thought the queen’s precautions needless. In the hall outside the queen’s solar, she had beckoned a maid to follow us. She stopped outside the chamber, leaving me to myself while she instructed the maid, so I had time enough to move the knife from my sleeve and conceal it under my pillow. Once in the bed, I lay quietly, looking about for a time and then let my eyes close. Later, I turned to my side and thrust my hand beneath the pillow to grasp the hilt of the knife.

  I think I did sleep for a while, for I do not know when the maid left. I came awake when the mattress sagged under the weight of another body, but I could not have been deep in sleep because I knew at once who it was and what I must do. Memory of pain, of the slickness of blood on my thighs, of the hard contempt on the face of the man who had violated me without joy or pleasure flooded me with hate. My hand tightened on the hilt of the knife, ready to draw it forth and kill the moment he mounted me—but he did not touch me at all. I suppose that should have been a relief; it was not. I hated him more, both for making me wait to kill and for the scorn that dismissed me as not desirable.

  I did not move and neither did he, but I knew he was no more asleep than I. And as my heart pounded out the long, slow minutes, my rage against him grew, and I remembered tales of the old days when the most common way to gain lands was to kill the holder and his male heirs and marry a daughter of the blood. Perhaps this creature had urged the king to let him take Ulle because he had already murdered my father and brother. The longer I lay tense and still beside him, the more reasonable that seemed to me; and the more reasonable it seemed, the more eager I grew to draw out the knife and cut out his heart.

  I fought against that desire, knowing that my chance of success would be much greater if the man was asleep, and at last he turned on his back and after a little while the sound of his breathing changed. Then I dared draw the knife from its hiding place, little by little, and little by little, inch by inch, free my knife hand of the covers, turn on my back, and move my left arm so that I could lift myself up in one single, swift motion and stab downward.

  I do not know what mistake I made. Perhaps I drew a deep breath before I thrust myself upright; perhaps I hesitated a tiny instant before I stabbed downward—although I had smothered it and buried it deep, there was a horror in me at the thought of killing. I was sure he was sound asleep when I moved. I know my left arm held down the coverlet so his right was imprisoned. And still, with all my precaution, I did not even prick him. As the knife swept down, when it was no more than a hairsbreadth from his throat, he put out his left hand and caught my wrist—without effort, without surprise, with the ease of a mother preventing the mischief of a baby—and laughed, laughed!

  He did not even hurt me! He did not wrench my wrist or twist my arm. He was so strong that even though I was above him, pressing down, he simply raised my arm away from him and sat up—and laughed. And then he said the strangest thing: “Good evening, Lady Melusine. I am glad to meet you at last.”

  I gaped at him, too stunned to make a sound, and he shook his head and grinned at me. I could see his expression well enough, for my eyes were accustomed to the dark and the night candle was behind me so the light fell full on his face. I swear he looked delighted. A chill of terror rippled along my spine. All I could think was that he had been waiting for an excuse to beat me to death and now had it.

  “It is too late to look at me like that, my lady,” he said with a satisfied chuckle. “You never managed to convince the queen that you were an idiot, and your cleverness at obtaining and hiding a knife has given you away to me. I do not know the purpose of your game, but the game itself is now useless, so you may as well speak lies as act them. Come, give me the knife. I cannot let you keep it just now, and I do not wish to bruise you.”

  I blinked at the last words, and looked down at the knife, realizing that though he still held my wrist too firmly for me to move it, he also held it gently. But i
f he intended to beat me for trying to kill him, why should he worry about a bruise on my wrist? Could I use the knife to defend myself? As the question rose in my mind I realized I had instinctively been straining against his hold all the time and his hand had not even quivered. It seemed to me that he was the strongest man I had ever come across in my life, for I remembered that my brothers had never been able to control me so easily. Later it occurred to me that I had essayed no trial of strength against my brothers since we were all children, but at the time all I felt was that any idea of self-defense was hopeless. I allowed my hand to fall open, and watched him pick up the knife, raising my eyes to his face to seem unafraid.

  His smile had disappeared, but he did not beat me or turn the knife on me. He released my wrist and got out of bed, asking in an easy, cheerful voice, “From whom did you take the knife, my lady? I must return it.”

  “It is yours,” I said, beginning to wonder whether the king and queen had decided to marry a madwoman to a madman. I had a vague memory of Maud telling me that Bruno was a sweet-tempered man, but even the sweetest of tempers must resent being a target for murder.

  “Very clever, my lady.” He tossed the knife carelessly upon his chest and took a twig to the night candle to light the tapers on the stand where he had set the water for my washing in the morning. Then he turned toward me and nodded with what appeared to be real approval. “You saw that I did not wear hunting garb this morning and reasoned that I must have such a knife. Clever. Clever.”