Cinder-Ugly

by Laura Strickland

  I knew Rupert lived because he sent home messages, written in his own hand, to his advisors. Sometimes these were carried part of the way by ordinary people—old men, women, and once even a child.

  Whenever he could, he enclosed a short note to me, often including a drawing of a flower. Real flowers no longer existed in our world—autumn hurried toward winter, and scarcity put an end to his kind gesture.

  But not his love. I felt that anew every time his minister put another missive—often stained and torn, and once splashed with blood—into my hand.

  My darling Cindra, how I wish I might be with you tonight, to restore myself at your deep well. Pray for us. You hold my heart—R.

  Rupert’s senior advisor, an old man called Rellison who’d also served Octavius, treated me kindly. We fell into the habit of meeting each time a dispatch came in, at which point he would or would not give me my missive, depending on my fortune. Then he included me in the ensuing discussion of what could or should be done to help our men.

  By then, of course, I knew I carried Rupert’s child. Our single, enchanted night together had at least achieved its state purpose. I told no one save Donella and my little maid, Gerta, who often caught me in the throes of morning sickness.

  Since it remained too dangerous to send messages that might be intercepted to the front, Rupert did not know. I imagined telling him, weaving endless scenarios, and pictured the glad light taking hold in his green eyes.

  I let myself think no farther than that moment, would not consider the fact that I—Cinder-Ugly—carried the next ruler of a kingdom. If we still had a kingdom seven months hence.

  Chances did not seem good.

  Sometimes wounded soldiers returned to the city. Sometimes the dead returned, though that happened far less often. A hospital was set up in the cathedral, and I requested a room should be reserved where the dead could be laid, that their loved ones might come and claim them.

  I went there in person whenever I could, on these occasions setting aside my own discomfort. I think it was only then it struck me just how dire things must be for our men on the front. The wounds the dead—and the living, for that matter—bore were most grievous.

  I did not want their wives, fathers and mothers, and sometimes children to grieve alone. I stood by and afforded them what time they might need. At the end, most of them bowed to me, or even embraced me.

  I didn’t realize, on the rainy, windy afternoon another message arrived, that the dead man laid out in the room was my sister Bethessa’s betrothed. My family—all four of them—arrived when I did; we stood facing one another just inside the door.

  I found myself staring into Bethessa’s blue eyes, and my heart fell as I grasped the truth. “I am very sorry,” I said.

  She brushed past me as if I didn’t exist, went to the bier, and studied the young man lying on it.

  The rest of them followed. Father alone paused to acknowledge me. “Daughter, it is good of you to do this. It means much.”

  “What happened to him?” Bethessa asked from the side of the bier.

  I stepped to her side and eyed the corpse. He had been a very handsome young man, as might well be expected, with a patrician nose, high, noble forehead, and fair hair now stained with blood. He lay in a tattered uniform that had once been fine, the front of it now slashed like the flesh beneath.

  No one answered her—only a fool could fail to see that he’d fought, and fought hard. Scrapes and bruises both old and new marked his skin, and a filthy bandage from an old injury swathed one arm.

  Bethessa gazed at him long. Despite my history with her, I felt sympathy, imagining how I might react in her place. By heaven, I would be on my knees at the side of the bier, weeping inconsolably, were that my Rupert.

  Yet no tears came to Bethessa’s eyes. She merely continued to stand until something inside her appeared to snap.

  “Coward!” she snarled at the corpse and slapped him, a nasty little blow that resounded through the silent room. “You were supposed to return to me. Now what am I to do?”

  I gasped, and Father caught Bethessa’s wrist before she could deliver a second blow.

  I saw Mother in her so clearly then: the smallness, the meanness, and the desire to strike out. And I knew my beautiful sister was, in truth, ugly.

  Father led Bethessa out. Mother and Nelissa walked past me without a word. Once they were gone, I walked to the corpse, laid my hand on his chest and spoke a prayer.

  The next day I learned my father had donned a uniform and left for the front.

  He never returned.

  ****

  Winter came hard and early that year, adding to our soldiers’ misery. They retreated from our northern border step by step, pursued by Ortis’s wolves, who, it was reported, treated our wounded and captured with bloodthirsty brutality.

  I lived, now, dispatch by dispatch, eager to learn whether Rupert lived still. No more little notes arrived for me, just desperate messages scrawled in his hand. But every one meant he still drew breath—at least at the time the message had been written.

  Uncertainty makes a hard mistress. I think I lost my mind a little during that time. I began dreaming Rupert came to me in the night. We held one another and made love, and when the morning came and I learned it wasn’t true, I wept.

  But I knew he wanted me to be strong, to put his people—my people—first. So I laid my own terror and insecurity aside and addressed them at the castle, sharing what information I could.

  Many women came to me later, kissed my hands, and called me their queen. Forgetting myself completely, I wept with them.

  Then came a wave of wounded, the first of them arriving on a frosty morning, with Robin among them. They were laid in the cathedral, and I went among them, sorting the living from the dead. As soon as I saw Robin, I sent for Donella, now heavily pregnant.

  Robin reared up from the flagstones and clutched my hand. “Rupert,” he said.

  I caught my breath. “He lives?”

  “He lives. He bade me tell you…” Robin fought for air, and despite my desperation for his message I pushed him down gently. “He says he loves you.”

  That, among all the messages he might have sent.

  Robin struggled on. “Wanted me to tell you…prepare. Get everyone into the castle. There will be a siege.”

  “Siege?” I repeated stupidly.

  “Gather people, supplies. Barricade. He will try and get back in time. If he does not make it…”

  My hands flew instinctively to my belly; Robin’s gaze followed me. His dark eyes filled with gladness. “Thank God. He’d be so glad to know.”

  “We may not have a kingdom for his son.” The truth of that hit me, perhaps for the first time.

  Donella reached us then. She fell to her knees and wept over her husband. “Robin! Oh, my love, where are you hurt? How badly?”

  “I’ve lost my foot, Donella. I’ll never be the man you wed.”

  “I don’t care. I don’t care!” She kissed him, and I rose and walked to the window, offering them what privacy I could.

  Over across the city, snow clouds raced cold as death. I gazed away into the northern distance, whispering only one prayer. Reach me. Oh, reach me in time.

  Chapter Sixteen

  We managed to get nearly everyone inside before the storm hit. Some few refused to come, reluctant to leave their homes and livestock. The aged I ordered brought, carried by their neighbors. Others I deemed free to choose their fates.

  Packed to capacity, the castle soon became a place of anxiety, misery, and complaint. Even the Dowager Queen opened her quarters to her friends. Only my room at the top of the tower remained sacrosanct, and that because I hoped when Rupert returned he would use it as a refuge. From there I studied the distances and saw what I thought was smoke, the sign of burning.

  I went among our folk, reassuring them and attempting to lend comfort where I might. The gates, I informed them, had been barricaded; the castle remained strong. Only th
ose we admitted would get in.

  As the cathedral had been, the castle chapel became our hospital. Robin was taken there, and despite her advanced pregnancy, Donella went with him. I knew it no place for her, but he, soon running a fever, needed the care, and our physicians could not keep up with the onslaught of wounded.

  I went every day to see him and speak with the others there, or their kin. I could scarcely believe the condition in which my strong, vibrant brother had returned, and it said more than could anything else about what our men endured at the front. I and Rupert’s advisors longed to question him, for he’d been closer to Rupert than anyone. But his fever worsened, and he soon fell to thrashing and raving, unable to tell us anything.

  Others in various states of injury did speak. Our men had fought bravely, and the first battles had indeed gone well. All praised Rupert’s valor and the strength with which he led them. But King Ortis, so it proved, had hired mercenaries, far northerners, by the look of them, and vastly outnumbered, our men fell back and back.

  Thrice, said an earnest boy who spoke with me one frigid afternoon, a livid scar down one cheek, had King Ortis sent terms of surrender. Each time Rupert had returned him a message saying, “We will die first.”

  “But,” the lad said, his blue eyes swimming with tears, “he swore we would not die slaves.”

  Yet here we were, I thought, packed like herring in a storage container. How long could we endure? Already people asked for food and clean water. Did we but await the end, and subsequent slavery?

  Ashamed of the thought in the face of Rupert’s great courage, I determined we would stand as strong here as he did out on the field. I gave orders for food to be more strictly rationed, for the children to be schooled in the ballroom, where they could also run and play. I set a session every morning when folk could come to me with their complaints. I might not be able to do anything for them, but they would be heard and would know that I sympathized.

  I was besieged during those sessions. Most of those confined to the castle were women, children, and the elderly, in addition to our wounded men. Knowing the value of work for quieting a troubled mind, I set them all to tasks and bade them look out for one another. I also held their hands, and wept and prayed with them. Their terror matched my own.

  The wounded, all bearing terrible injuries, died steadily, one or two a day, their numbers increasing as the fever took them. I ordered them carried outside, at first, for burial. Then, when the signs of burning drew closer to the city, I had them removed to the vaults instead. Our exalted dead would have to share room with our fallen.

  I worried endlessly about Donella, who refused to leave Robin’s side and consequently existed in the vile atmosphere of the hospital. I suggested they withdraw to my chamber, but we feared moving Robin even so short a distance would prove detrimental to him. I lived in terror she would contract the fever he harbored, and thus lose their child.

  Already, other women tending their men had fallen ill. For all that, I could scarcely believe no one in my immediate family had been to see Robin. My mother and sisters remained lodged somewhere in the castle, though I’d not seen them. Father had not yet returned from fighting, and I feared for him also. Had he been killed out there somewhere? Did he, with Rupert, fight on, struggling to reach us?

  The weather worsened, winter sweeping down early from the north just like the invaders. Most days, when I gazed out from my tower windows, I saw only snow. I despaired that our remaining men would reach us—for all I knew they could be lying out there slaughtered. For no further dispatches arrived. And given the terrible weather, attackers might be at the gates before we saw them.

  The castle, a drafty structure at best, could not be kept warm. The number of complaints at my morning sessions increased. Children were falling ill; I commandeered everything that could be used as blanketing, even hangings from the walls. I already knew we had insufficient firewood. Like the rest of our supplies, it dwindled rapidly.

  I resolved we’d burn the furniture if we must.

  I no longer worried about how Rupert’s subjects saw me, how I appeared, or whether or not they thought me ugly. Like everyone else, I went about swaddled in whatever warm clothing I could find, hair braided to get it out of my way, face no longer hidden.

  And neither did they seem to notice or care how I looked. My name—Queen Cindra—was on everyone’s lips. I dispensed reassurance more than anything else, and once, during a hurried conference, Rellison said to me, “My Queen, I sometimes think you are our greatest remaining asset.”

  God help them all. For I had little to give save compassion.

  Then, one frigid morning, I looked up during my morning session and encountered the gaze of my next complainant.

  Mother.

  The strange thing is I did not at first recognize her. How could I fail to know at once my own mother—even a woman who’d been as distant to me as she?

  For the first time since her injury, though, she went without a veil. The surgeon who’d agreed to operate on her—way back when life was still ordinary and such things mattered—had done her no favor. Now, like the rest of us, she’d lost weight. The skin sat ashen on the bones of her face. She’d aged, and for the first time in my life I beheld her with her hair undressed—scraped back severely, sparing her nothing.

  Only her eyes looked the same, cold and demanding. Those, I recognized.

  A sick feeling churned my gut. I experienced it often and feared for the little one struggling to grow there. But now it nearly prostrated me.

  I sat at the table where I always received complainants—no thrones here, and anyway the reception room held dozens of families. She’d waited till the crowd thinned. We were very nearly alone.

  “Cindra,” she said.

  The sound of that voice after so long triggered something in me. I experienced a flashback to that morning when she came to my room on the third floor of Father’s house with hate in her eyes and raised the strap again and again.

  I shuddered and laced my fingers together. “Madame,” I returned.

  Her eyebrow twitched. Did she grasp she could expect no special treatment? I’d told her so, the last time she came to me.

  She said, “Your sister is ill.”

  “My sister?”

  “Bethessa.”

  “Many people are ill, Madame.”

  “She pines for her lost fiancé.”

  “The same whom she struck and called ‘coward’?”

  “Emotions run high. Your sisters have both always been sensitive.”

  To their own feelings, perhaps. “Madame Bulgar, what do you want?”

  “Will you not call me ‘Mother’?”

  My eyes met hers and—for one of the few times in my life—held. “No.”

  “I suppose you wish to keep things formal and avoid accusations of favoritism. I understand that. But something must be done; we are cold. We need more fuel.”

  “Where are you being housed?”

  Her features twisted with repugnance. “Near the kitchens.”

  “You are fortunate. The kitchens emit warmth.”

  “We are in a dark, tiny closet. There is no heat from the kitchens or anywhere else.” Her annoyance threatened to overtake her, conciliation never her ready asset.

  “No one is comfortable,” I reminded her, “least of all our soldiers. This is war.”

  “I’ll warrant you’re comfortable, up in that luxurious room of yours in the tower. I demand you move us in with you for the duration.”

  “You demand?”

  “It’s the least you owe us.”

  “Owe?” I got to my feet as if drawn by ropes. For one telling moment, her eyes dropped to the swell of my belly—Rupert’s child showing now.

  Her lip lifted in a sneer. She’d never looked less lovely. “Yes, you think you’re riding high now, don’t you? Carrying the next ruler. But ruler of what? Have you thought about that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you know w
hat Ortis will do to that child if he seizes this castle?”

  “Yes—exactly what you wanted to do to me when I was born.”

  “I should have, for all the good you’re doing me now.”

  “Madame, please get out of my sight.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  Emotions rose inside me. I had feared this woman all my life. But since escaping the walled prison of her hatred, I’d learned a few things. Hate did not lend strength but stole it. Compassion, in many cases, made it possible to endure the impossible. I was not sure, given all she had done to me in the past, that I could summon compassion toward my mother. But knowing I could overmaster the hate that beset her gave me a rush—one of the most powerful moments I’d ever known.

  I raised my voice, assuming that tone I used only as Queen; everyone left in the room turned to stare. “No one within these walls, Madame, is deserving of special treatment. We all flourish or starve, live or die, together. Now please get back to your assigned place, unless you’d rather be cast outside.”

  She hissed, and her eyes narrowed like those of a snake. “You wouldn’t dare.”

  I leaned toward her across the table. “Try me, Madame Bulgar.”

  She left in a huff and never saw the tears in my eyes.

  Chapter Seventeen

  I regretted it the next day, of course, following a sleepless night. I would not have raised my voice to any other of Rupert’s subjects, and in the end, beyond being my mother, she was first and foremost his subject.

  I sent Gerta to inquire as to their situation and whether Bethessa needed removing to the hospital. She came back saying they were no worse off than anyone else and better than some, having brought a number of their fine possessions with them, none of which they consented to share.

  In Gerta’s opinion, which I valued, Bethessa seemed far too ornery to be genuinely ill. I tried to dismiss them from my mind after that but had difficulty. None of them had yet been to see Robin, even once.