“No,” I said. This was Robin, my brother, the one member of my family who’d accepted me, had taken me in.
“I believe,” said the physician, “the poison from his leg has reached his brain. It’s a slow and inevitable death.”
Donella clutched Robin’s hands and began to weep. “No! Husband, awake. Awake and stay with me and our child!”
“Send for my mother and sisters,” I bade Rupert over my shoulder, and told him where in the castle they lodged. Father had not returned with the rest of our men—we were so few. It seemed no time to let anger get in the way.
He nodded and hurried off. I relieved Donella of one of my brother’s hands.
“Robin—please!”
His eyelids did not so much as twitch. I knelt there while Donella poured out her heart to him, told him she could not live without him, begged him to fight on. Rupert returned, having sent a messenger for my mother and sisters.
They never came. Robin died less than an hour later, with Donella sobbing over him.
How can I describe my grief? It filled me to overflowing. But when I staggered to my feet in that terrible place, I found anger overweighed it. I felt outrage at this loss, the unfairness of it. Outrage at Ortis and the slavering mercenary-hounds who’d joined forces with him. Outrage at the death of Robin and Donella’s innocent happiness, snatched from them. Outrage at my mother, who could not be bothered to come to her only son before he died.
That, I think, most of all.
Rupert embraced me and Donella, told her we and all the royal family would be there for her. Then he had to leave, needed at the gates, where Ortis, as expected, presented his demands. I wondered how to console Donella when I also felt inconsolable. I helped her up from Robin’s side, and she collapsed again, all her strength gone.
She clung to me and sobbed. “I want to die also! I want to follow him.”
“No, my darling—your child needs you. We need you. My dearest friend…”
I don’t think she heard me. It took me and two physicians to persuade her away from Robin’s corpse. He had to be prepared for burial and taken to the crypts. At last the Dowager Queen arrived and urged Donella away with her own hands to the Queen’s chamber, where she might take a strengthening cup of tea from the Queen’s store.
Donella went into labor that same afternoon, whilst still Rupert negotiated with our mortal enemy through the barred gates. I cannot say I was surprised, her emotional state being what it was.
A difficult birth. The child presented breech, and Donella needed to fight hard. I gave her what little I could—a hand to hold and every encouraging word I could dredge up from my mind. My nephew was born just as Ortis and his troops began to bombard the castle, a terrifying harbinger of things to come.
Donella, blinded by grief, looked at her child, but I do not think she truly saw him. I sat holding him, gazing down at the tiny mite in my hands, in stunned grief. Rather than Robin’s child, he might have been my own. At first I thought his curious form a result of the hard delivery—his right shoulder had snagged in the birth canal a long time. But his small body looked misshapen, with a hump on one side, and the crooked structure of his face echoed my own.
“Oh, little one, little one,” I whispered to him. “I am sorry.”
I was relieved then, so relieved that Mother had not come. She would have spat and disowned him, said hateful things. I swaddled the child, who did not cry but looked at me gravely, and tucked him into Donella’s arms.
“Your son.” My brother’s son. “What will you call him?”
Donella did not respond. Exhausted by her travail, her eyes sagged shut. Grief touched me again; I wondered how this could be the same lighthearted and generous girl with whom I’d shared laughter in a sunny, summer garden.
Gone, gone.
I sat and wept silently for all of us.
****
Donella left us in the wee hours of the next morning, slipping away in silence to follow her love, while the bombardment of the walls continued like some vile torture. Summoned to her side from my bed, where Rupert had failed to join me, I took my nephew in my arms and stood, too grieved to weep any more tears. To my surprise, I found the Dowager Queen at my side.
I stared at her. She’d come in her nightclothes, with her hair, the color of Rupert’s, hanging loose down her back.
“Your Majesty, you should be asleep.”
“Who can sleep through this hellish pounding? Oh, my dear, I am so sorry.”
She took me in her arms, infant and all. I stiffened in shock, never having experienced a mother’s love. But after a moment I relaxed into her.
The tears did come then. “What am I to do?” I wailed.
“Care for the child.”
“What are we to do?”
“Keep on. Keep strong.”
“What if he does not live? And look—look.” I unwrapped my nephew and showed the Dowager his little body. Eyes swimming with tears, she smiled at me.
“It seems he has landed in the perfect hands.”
Chapter Twenty
My brother and his wife were laid together in one tomb, closely entwined. I named my nephew Robin and went at once to search out a wet nurse for him.
Curious that Rupert and I had just discussed nursing mothers; we had but a few. The first refused without even glancing at the child in my arms, saying she already had all she could handle. The second, the widow of a soldier, with a child only two months old, paused and considered it.
“Best let me show you,” I said. As I had for the Dowager, I unwrapped little Robin and displayed him.
Markka, for such was her name, looked at him long, and then eyed me thoughtfully. She did not say what must be in her mind—he’s like you—but bit her lip and eventually nodded.
“All right. I’ll have him.”
“Thank you. I can arrange for extra rations to help keep you in milk.”
“That would be welcome, Majesty. We’re all starving. And, Majesty, that pounding! I’ve had no sleep.”
“I know,” I agreed unhappily.
Her blue eyes met mine. “But this isn’t the worst of it, I’ll bet. Just the beginning, right?”
“I’m afraid so.”
I placed my nephew in her arms.
“He might not make it,” she warned me. “He is so very weak.”
“I know. I’ve named him Robin after his father.”
“If he lives, Majesty, will you raise him then?”
“Yes.” Oh, yes.
“I’m sorry for your grief.”
I embraced her. To my surprise, she clutched me back heartily, her arms uniting both me and little Robin. “I’m that glad,” she whispered, “to be able to do this, Majesty—for you.”
A short time after seeing Robin settled, I went to the gates, where Rupert had stationed himself. I wanted to tell him about the child, but the sight that met my eyes stole my breath.
More snow had fallen. It blanketed the town in white, but around the castle, ringing it, Ortis’s army made a dark blot, like that of corruption. So many of them. The sun had not long risen on another gray morning, and I blinked in consternation while a single thought entered my mind.
We are all going to die. Markka, Robin, Mother, my sisters—all of us. Donella had merely gone ahead.
Rupert, who looked far too unwell to be on his feet, turned to me. “You should not be here.” But he drew me to his side and touched my belly in a fleeting caress.
My eyes narrowed. “We are most definitely trapped.”
He smiled wryly and gently reminded me, “It is the nature of a siege.”
“What are they doing?” The small black figures outside ran everywhere, industrious as ants.
“Preparing to destroy us. That group there constructs siege engines. Those men over there, ladders. The ladders are a fool’s game, too easily shoved away from the walls.” He sounded almost dispassionate. I wondered if I heard exhaustion speaking. “In this group here, you see King O
rtis himself. See? The man with the red beard.”
“What is he doing?”
“Planning. Scheming. Supposing he has won.”
I drew a breath. “Has he?”
Rupert turned his head and looked at me, his injured eye narrowed in a squint, the other clear green. “No, love. Not by half. We have been picking them off with arrows. Right, Tom?” He directed this at the man beside us.
“Right, sire.”
“We have men all along the battlements doing that.”
“But…” So many targets.
“And we have every hand available making more arrows.”
“We will soon run out of wood. Then what?”
“Make them from furniture if we have to. We are not done. Tell her, Tom.”
The aged bowman beside him grinned. “Aye, sire, we are not done.”
“Our greatest ally is the weather. The cold that pinches us here will ride roughshod over Ortis’s troops. They may take frostbite. They may fall ill. They might desert and run home. Do not lose heart. Right, lads?”
Tom responded with another wide smile, and verbal reassurance came from down the line. All the soldiers, some little more than youths, assured me, “Aye, my Queen, take heart!”
I wished I could.
****
“I want to see my grandson.”
I turned, startled, when the imperious voice rang through the crowded room.
Markka, Robin, and I stood together in the big chamber, formerly the ballroom, that now housed women—mostly widows—who had young children. The women chattered while the children, like those everywhere, squealed, cried, and played tag throughout the crowded space.
All fell silent, though, when my mother, with my sisters at her back, progressed toward us.
She had her gaze fixed on me to the exclusion of all else. I’d just been cooing over Robin, who lay in Markka’s arms while her neighbor held her little daughter, Dinnie. I froze, my finger still extended and breath flooding my lungs.
Anger followed swiftly, and I drew myself up, refusing to dodge her stare. I waited for her to reach us before I said, “Ah, Madame, now you come?”
She bridled. She looked terrible, shockingly so, wrapped in a blanket against the all-pervading chill. Only her head lay bare. Like nearly everyone else, she’d had to cut her hair, the lice being a plague, and nothing softened the scars left from her surgery. Her blue eyes burned like coals stuck into the mask of a scarecrow.
In that moment I didn’t care who listened—Markka, so close at my side, or all the other women, most of whom had suffered terrible loss. What was in my heart needed to come out.
“Where were you?” I asked. “Where, when your son died? When your daughter-in-law died? When he”—I gestured at Robin—“was born?”
She stopped as if I’d struck her; I suppose in a way I had. “I am here now.” She lifted her head regally. “Show him to me.”
I did not respond, wanting nothing so much as to protect the child in Markka’s arms from this woman’s stare, from her cruelty and condemnation. I wanted to wrap him more tightly in his swaddling, hold him to my breast, hide him.
I knew I could not.
I shot a look at my sisters, neither of whom appeared well, before focusing on Mother again. “He is in my care.”
She snorted. “I will take him if I wish.”
“You will not. Anyway”—I felt my lip curl—“you will not want him.” I steeled myself. “Show her,” I told Markka.
You could have heard an eyelash drop in that room. Even the children fell silent.
After shooting me a startled look, Markka uncovered the child in her arms and gently held him up. Robin gave a little squeak as the cold air found him, and I took him from Markka, covered him again, and cuddled him against my shoulder.
A single glimpse had been enough for Mother. Now it was her lip that curled.
Very clearly she cried, “Ah! It is our curse. We will all die!”
Stunned—though I suppose I shouldn’t have been—I covered Robin’s ear with my hand.
Markka straightened and declared, like a vengeance, “You are wrong, Madame. If the child proves anything like the Queen, he is our strength and our blessing! We could only pray for another such as she.”
A murmur traveled through the room. “Our Queen, our Queen!”
Mother’s gaze stabbed at me before she glared at my sisters, both silent. She then eyed the room full of women and spat, “Keep him. He is no grandson of mine.”
She turned and swept out the way she’d come, women snatching their children out of her path as if her skirts carried a contagion.
That night, when Rupert managed a brief visit to our room at the top of the tower, I related the scene to him.
Resting his head against the back of a chair, eyes closed, he said nothing, though the corners of his mouth tightened.
I paced in front of him. “Rupert—what if our child is born like poor Robin?”
“Then…” Rupert opened his eyes. “We will love her, or him.”
“But this child will be heir to a kingdom.”
“True.”
“I could not bear…”
He stretched out a hand to me. “Come here.”
I sat on his knees, and he cuddled me close, my head tucked under his chin. “Do you not love wee Robin?”
“Yes, oh, yes. But that’s because I understand—”
“I believe Markka is right. You are our blessing—our secret weapon, if you will. Can you not see how the people adore you? On every side they speak of you to me with warmth, telling of your kindness, your strength and encouragement while I was away. My own mother came to see me.”
“The Queen?”
“She admitted she did not know what to expect when I chose you for my wife. She also admitted she now understands what I saw in you. Stellar, I believe she called you. A beautiful choice.”
“Beautiful?” I would never get used to hearing that word applied to me.
“Cindra, do you not yet see that all real beauty lies in the spirit? Yours shines from you. I saw that in Donella’s garden; I see it still.”
“Our child will be beautiful."
“Oh, yes.”
Chapter Twenty-One
“Come with me. I wish to show you something.”
The Dowager Queen took me by the hand and pulled me away from my charges, a group of children I’d been helping to school. To them she said, “The Queen will be back in a little while.”
I looked at Rupert’s mother. “What is it, Madame?”
“Hush. I cannot tell you yet. This is for your ears alone. If anyone asks, we go to pay our respects to your brother and his wife, in the crypts.”
Completely bewildered, I obeyed. I rarely saw the Dowager so intent as this.
Nearly a month had passed since the siege began. Every day, it seemed, we suffered some loss or endured some new deprivation. All the walls had been damaged, and repaired as best as possible. Food supplies ran dangerously low, but by the grace of God, the well proved plentiful and we had sufficient water.
One could subsist on water and very little else, for a time.
Our men continued to fight from the battlements, often joined now by certain of the women. They fought with bows and arrows, with chunks of stone, and with anything else that came to hand—anything that couldn’t be eaten and wouldn’t burn. They fought with boiling water and flaming pitch. They destroyed every siege ladder laid against the walls, sometimes at cost of life.
A single mindset, encouraged by Rupert, possessed us all: Do not give in.
As an ally—our only ally—the weather proved all I could have asked. Blast after winter blast of frigid air screamed down from the north, bringing snow and ice. The shelters Ortis’s forces erected for themselves blew down, and in the rare intervals when the weather did clear sufficiently that I could look out from the tower, I saw their numbers had shrunk.
“We do not make a rich enough prize to keep the me
rcenaries interested,” Rupert declared to me and his advisors. “We’re winning. Now it’s just him and us.”
We had hope, or so I repeatedly told myself.
I missed Donella, my first friend, sorely. But Markka and I grew closer over Robin’s care, and I realized she’d become a friend of sorts. Despite the fact that I was Queen and she the widow of a carter-turned-soldier, we were united as women sharing hardship. By extension, I also became connected to her friends.
And now the Dowager Queen took me by the hand, as a mother might. What could I do but follow?
“Do we not go to pay our respects?” I asked her when we reached the lower levels, where only some priests and the crypt keeper lived. We could have used the space, but the air here remained dank and cold. I shivered as I looked at the Dowager.
“Of course. I come here often to speak with my husband, Rupert’s father.” She stared at me, her eyes a paler green than Rupert’s. “He gives me advice.”
“I see.”
She smiled. “You think I’ve gone mad. I have not. I understand he is dead and in the tomb. But I can still hear him.”
Grief, I thought, was a curious thing. To what extremes might I not go, had I lost Rupert?
I whispered, “What has he told you?”
“You will see. I know I can trust you.”
“Yes.”
She led me on past the grand tombs and the doorways to the lesser rooms, where lay the ancient dead and our more recently perished. I disliked it down here and began to protest. “Madame, where…”
“There. My husband brought me down here when first we wed; he took me everywhere about the castle, insisting it was mine as much as his. As I say, I had forgotten.”
“A door.” I stared at the end of the passage, in which was set—yes, a door. Perhaps four feet high, it bore a stout lock, and its finish bloomed with damp. “Where does it lead?”
The Dowager moved closer to me. “That’s just it. I’m not sure. Octavius told me when his ancestors built this castle they equipped it with a tunnel—an escape route. But I don’t know where it goes. It may stretch to safety. It may open in the midst of Ortis’s troops. It may have collapsed long ago.” She looked at me with those pale green eyes. “It is like everything else in life, a coin with two sides. Good or ill.”
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