Though I was still tired and sore, after the sixth day I forced myself to continue on. I stumbled along with my son cradled in my dress. I don’t remember most of it, for I believe I was barely conscious, driven by the need to take my baby to his father. I heard voices around me and learned to ignore them, for there was never a human in sight. I forgot at times even that I had the child in my arms, waking from my stupor only when his shrill cry reminded me to put him to my breast to be fed.
After two or three days of this nonsense, I saw a farmhouse in the distance. I wanted to ask for help, but I was fearful to do so. Instead, I waited until darkness and then crept to the house. I peeked into the window and saw an older couple with a young girl, seated at a table together. I envisioned them cursing me as the townsfolk had and decided not to risk exposing my baby to them. I crept to their barn, where there was no horse and only one cow. There was a barrel of grain there, and I stole greedy handfuls of it, filling my mouth and choking the stuff down dry. It scratched my throat raw, but I didn’t care. I ate until I thought I would be sick.
I saw a large woollen blanket hanging on a hook. The material was dirty, damp, and unpleasant to touch, but I stole it anyway. After wrapping it around myself and my son, I stumbled back into the night. I wanted to cry for what I had done, what I had been reduced to, but I was too tired. I had long forgotten what it was to be warm, comfortable, free of pain, or to taste a good meal.
The next day I passed a waterfall in the distance and knew by its great height that I was close to where the river would intersect with the King’s Road. Though I had become convinced that anyone I saw would either be in league with Sashken or think me a harlot, the prospect of reaching the road that led home eased my spirit for the first time since I had been stoned. My pains somehow seemed lesser at the thought of being close to home.
As the sun fell the next day, I saw the window lights of what I assumed to be Ashlen, the closest Aleshan town to Endren. I went wide around it in my mad fear but was further comforted by the knowledge I would soon be home.
When finally the afternoon came that I reached the well-travelled King’s Road, I took stock of my situation. My shoes had worn almost completely away, one of them with barely enough whole material to keep the worn sole to my foot. My clothes were torn, stiff with filth, and smelled abominable. My hair was matted such that I wondered if it would all have to be cut off—a sad thought, since it was its length that had saved me and my son. We were wrapped in a dirty barn blanket that smelled terrible and made my skin itch.
As I walked down the road, I realized that I would be as an unrecognizable beggar to all whom I passed. I kept the hood of the blanket hanging over my face, paranoid with the idea that anyone who saw me would alert the wretched Sashken and she would have her hideous plans finally carried out.
My poor son wept often in my arms despite my attempts to keep him fed and warm. I had torn more cloth to serve as his diaper but had nowhere to wash it when it was soiled. So I tore smaller strips to line the diaper and cast those aside as he fouled them. Soon there was almost nothing left of my underclothes, and what remained was covered in my own menstrual blood and filth.
The next morning I caught sight of Endren in the distance, and had I not been so pitifully weak and starved, I would have run the remainder of the way. I whispered Kurit’s name under my breath in near madness for him.
Yet as I approached, I became filled with a terrible dread. What if he had gone in search of me and stupidly killed himself in the process? Or worse, what if he believed me dead and had taken his life in grief? I didn’t for a moment fear that his heart would have strayed, for I knew his love would last longer than my absence had been. I feared that he might have done something foolish in desperation, and that thought quickened my pace and returned some semblance of clarity to my otherwise crazed mind.
By the time I reached the north gates that afternoon, my fears and pains had turned into a wrathful hatred for Sashken. I loathed her for doing this to Kurit and my baby, not to mention myself. I whispered to my infant son that I would see her hanged for her crime, promising him that I would not allow her to escape. I had always been horrified by the prospect of hangings, but in this case my maternal instinct prevailed.
I waited near the gates with the blanket hiding my face until I saw Graek making his rounds. I approached him, but a guard caught my arm to stop me. Despite my fear of being recognized, I called out Graek’s name.
He heard my call and came to see what poor wretch had the gall to summon him by name and without title. The guard held me back from him with a painfully rough grip.
“Why did you call to me?” Graek asked in a stern voice, no doubt suspecting me of being some treacherous little fiend.
I snapped my arm out of the guard’s grip and lifted the blanket enough that Graek could see my face. For a moment he just stared, and then his eyes widened with shocked recognition.
“Praise the Gods—” he began, but I dropped the hood and held a hand to hush him. He shooed the guard away and put a fast arm around me to lead me away from the assorted people waiting entrance to Endren.
“Your Highness, can it really be you?” he whispered hoarsely.
“Graek, I need to go home,” was all I could manage to answer. I expected myself to begin weeping, but my body just couldn’t produce the tears.
“Of course! I shall summon a litter to carry you—” he began, but again I silenced him. In the fast language of a madwoman, I stammered out the rough details of what Sashken had done, naming her as guilty. His face became as stone in anger.
“Graek, please, I am so afraid to trust anyone. I trust you but I am so mad with fatigue and hunger that my mind reels even against that. Please, take me to the palace, but quietly. I am terrified she will be alerted to my return and kill my son.”
He had been so concerned and alarmed by my sudden arrival and shocking story of Sashken that he had forgotten to even ask about a child. I lifted the blanket so that he could see I had my boy cradled in my arms.
“By all that’s sacred, Your Highness, I am overwhelmed. How can this be? How can you have returned like this, bearing a child in your arms?”
“Later. I shall tell the whole tale to all who wish to hear it later. Now, please, I want to be quietly taken home. No welcome, no cries of delight that I have returned. I want to go into that Great Hall, seek out the contemptible, murderous slut that caused this misery, and accuse her there for all to see. Bring your guards so she cannot run. I want her to hang for her crime.”
“Indeed, Your Highness, I shall see to it personally if I must!” he replied angrily. “But let me fetch you a litter. You must be almost faint with fatigue.”
“No. I have walked this far. A few more steps won’t cause me further harm, and my fury at Sashken lends me more energy now than I’ve had since my child was born.” I started into the city, and he followed quickly behind, calling three guards to him as we walked. He kindly offered me an arm to lean on, but I was fuelled by my refreshed wrath and did not take it. I lifted my head high, though it was still hidden by the blanket. I felt my face grow hard and my jaw clench with the determination to see the harlot dragged away. So great did my fury build that I even temporarily forgot the joy of coming home to my beloved husband.
When finally Graek escorted me through the doors and into the Great Hall, my heart raced with an insatiable desire for revenge. My eyes swept over those who were present, stopping when they fell upon the hateful, skinny whore.
“Sashken!” I cried out, belting the word forth with venomous loathing. I saw her turn in my direction and continued, “You should demand your blood money back, because your thugs failed to carry out your request for my execution!”
I threw back the corners of the blanket, letting it fall to the floor and reveal my ragged, filthy form. The infant in my arms cried out pitifully as I shouted again. “You thought me dead, but here I stand to accuse you of paying for my abduction and ordering me to be murdered
while my son still grew in my womb!”
Her face became sickly pale, as though I were the dead risen before her. Noise buzzed around me as those present reacted in great alarm at my presence and my words. I felt my energy draining quickly as the guards approached her. She appeared to be too stunned to consider running or to speak in her own defence. The guards took her arms, but still she stared at me in horror.
“The men you paid to murder me sold me instead as a slave to the Wusul. I escaped and have walked these last weeks alone, forced to bear Kurit’s son in the wilderness, all because of your twisted lust for my husband. I will not abide the sight of you further.” I turned weakly to Graek, my fury waning, and muttered, “Get her away from me.”
He called out an order to his guards and then put a steadying arm around my shoulders as my legs began to give way. I remained standing only because of his support until there beside me was King Tarken, a look of stunned disbelief on his face. I wanted to speak to him, to say something reassuring, to ask where Kurit was, but my head was filled with madness and the return of the debilitating fatigue. I heard him call out an instruction to someone as he took my baby from my arms.
“Aenna, give me the child before you fall. I shall care for my grandson,” he said, continuing on with something about praise to the Gods that I had returned, but his words floated around me without meaning.
Then I heard a great cry from atop the staircase that led to the south wing. I focused my eyes enough to see Kurit, who again shouted my name in dreadful anguish. Someone must have run to fetch him, for he ran down the steps with an unlaced shirt, hair a mess, as though he had been in bed despite the late hour of the afternoon.
He was fast to my side, embracing me wildly, crying out my name, though in delight or grief I could not tell. Graek let me go into his arms, and he caught me up, lifting me from the floor. The relief of his touch made my head swim, and I happily let myself faint away as he covered my face in kisses, cradling my drained body.
I regained consciousness very suddenly and found myself being lowered into a tub of what felt like scalding water. After being so cold for so long, the water was searing, and I cried out. My poor raw and blistered feet kicked away from the heat of their own accord.
“Hush, Aenna, you’re safe now,” Kurit said. He was lowering me into the tub himself, putting his arms in with me to do so with great care. His shirt became soaked.
Oh, the stench that arose when my filthy body polluted that water! I gagged at it myself and felt awful, delirious shame. I tried to speak to Kurit and Leiset, who was there as well, to tell them I was sorry and ashamed of my condition, but all that came from my mouth was incomprehensible gibberish.
“Don’t worry, Aenna, we’ll clean you up. You’ll be in a warm bed soon,” cooed Leiset. She tried to shoo Kurit away from the gruesome task, pleading the impropriety of the Prince bathing any woman in this condition.
“She’s my wife!” he bellowed so loudly that Leiset flinched away from him. “I’ll bathe her. I’m not leaving her side. Now go and bring a second tub so she won’t get cold waiting for a change of water. And in the Temple’s name fetch her some food before she dies in my arms of starvation!”
Leiset heeded his orders and left. I tried again to speak, to beg him to not be so angry, but again my mind failed to connect to my mouth in any coherent fashion.
“Hush, Aenna,” he said. One of his arms remained hooked under my shoulders to keep me upright in the tub, as I would have slipped weakly under the surface otherwise. I felt him washing me with a cloth under the water. “Don’t worry—everything is going to be better now, you’ll see,” he said frantically, just as he had the day I took the arrow in my shoulder. He had that same frightened tone as he spoke, though the tears he shed in this instance seemed more the tears of relief than of dread. He repeated my name over and over: his Aenna, his sweet Aenna, dear Aenna, and endless other praises. Then he prayed out loud to each of the Gods in turn, thanking them for bringing me home to him.
I passed in and out of consciousness as he went on with his litany. At some point he lifted me from the tub and placed me in another, and I think that I recall that happening at least one other time after that. Gently and thoroughly he washed me, even my matted hair. When the bathing was done, he cradled me in large, soft towels and dried my naked skin, which thankfully no longer reeked of filth. As he did so, Leiset stood behind me, rubbing towels in my hair and soon trying to brush it for me.
I vaguely recall Tash’s presence, though I cannot be sure when during these actions he came. If he examined me, that I also do not recall, nor whether he banished Kurit from the room as he did so. I suspect that would have been impossible.
Eventually I opened my eyes to find myself in bed, bundled with thick blankets. My feet throbbed, and I realized they were bound in cloth, which I later learned to be dressing for the raw skin and blisters. Leiset was still working at my tangled mop, and I heard her snipping at the hopelessly matted portions. I wondered how short it would be when she was done and felt sad that the hair I had used to save my son was being taken away.
Kurit saw my open eyes and immediately began to feed me. “Eat, Aenna. Then you can sleep again. You must eat. There’s almost nothing left to you, my poor love.” It was warm soup, and instantly the most delicious food I had ever tasted. It was rich and thick, a chicken broth with very small bits of potato and corn. I could separately taste every ingredient, and the fat of the broth was a delightful salve all the way down my throat. It was paradise.
Kurit chopped the spoon into the bowl to make the potatoes small enough that I hardly needed to chew. I tried to reach out to take the bowl from him to feed myself, but he pushed my hand down. “You mustn’t eat too much too fast, Aenna. You’ll be sick, and your weak body can’t take that. Let me do this for you.”
The soup’s hearty warmth, the comfortable bed, Kurit and Leiset’s care, it was all like a sweet dream. Wrapped in such warm comforts, I fell asleep and remained asleep for a long time.
It was dark when I awoke, though a lantern somewhere in the room provided enough light that I saw Kurit watching me intently, so I did not panic and wonder where I was.
“Where’s my baby?” I managed to whisper.
Kurit reached a hand to my head and lovingly stroked my hair. “He’s fine, Aenna. Tash has seen him and says he is small but well. You need not worry for him just now.” Kurit began putting food in my mouth immediately.
“I must feed him,” I managed to say between mouthfuls.
Kurit shook his head. “You’re too weak for that, and you’re so starved yourself that you’re not giving him enough nutrients. Tash made him some mixture or other and fed him this afternoon. He’s fine, Aenna. He’s in good hands. Lyenta the nursemaid is watching over him. I shall bring him to you myself in the morning if you like.”
“Keep your mother away from him,” I said before I had the wit to censor the thought.
Kurit looked away, and I could not tell if he was angry, saddened, or to whom such emotion was aimed. He sighed and said quietly, “I know why you are suspicious. I wonder too if she led Sashken’s vile hand in this. But I can’t believe that she would kill her unborn grandson, Aenna. I can’t imagine she could go so far. And I am certain she will not harm him now. Whatever hatred she has for you, she bears me no ill will, and she knows all too well that he is my son. Our child is safe. But if you are going to fret about it, then I shall promise to keep her away from him until you are well.” He set the food aside, leaned to me, and kissed my forehead. “Though I would understand if you doubt my promises of protection. I clearly failed to protect my son and wife before. I shall die before I let anyone harm either of you again.”
“Don’t,” I said. “Don’t be filled with guilt. That was my greatest fear, that I would come home to find you had run off and destroyed yourself trying to find me, or taken your life in guilt and grief.”
“I suppose then I should admit that I considered the thought but la
cked the courage to do so. I am so cowardly that I couldn’t even give my life for you.”
“Stop. Don’t even dare to speak that way.”
“It’s the truth,” he confessed.
“Make it untrue. You could not have prevented what happened.”
“Perhaps. I should have been out looking for you, though, instead of pining for you behind the palace walls.” He took my hand between his and squeezed it almost painfully. “By the Temple, Aenna, I thought you were dead. When Leiset found the note that said you were running off again, she ran screaming into the Council room to show me. She knew immediately it was not your handwriting, though it was an attempted likeness. Everyone in that room rose immediately to help search the palace. Soldiers stormed through Endren, going into every home and building, for we knew that you would not leave of your own accord. Not for a moment did I believe you would be so foolish. We knew something terrible was happening to you, and it drove us all mad to not find you.
“Forces flew out of the city to search. We learned from the guards at the gate that two men had left hurriedly with a cart carrying only straw, and the palace gate records showed a similar cart had left the courtyard just before that, after delivering kegs of wine. Jarik and I rode hard up the King’s Road, but by then it had been over an hour, maybe two, and we found nothing. Later we also learned that the guard at the entrance saw both you and Sashken go out into the courtyard that night, but when Sashken was questioned, she claimed to have been stepping out for some fresh air after an evening spent talking to Mother—which Mother confirmed, by the way—and not even I dared to think that she had actually had a hand in your disappearance. Had she displayed the countenance of a pleased victor or a guilty wretch, I would have been suspicious. But she seemed unconcerned. Forgive me, my love, for being so easily fooled.” He sighed and looked at me with forlorn eyes.
Sorrows of Adoration Page 26